...Stay... - tears of happiness

Highlights of 2023: part 1

I am (sort of) back, with plans to restart writing about music in 2024. As a teaser, I have some albums from 2023 I really enjoyed to share with you. In lieu of a top ten list, or an Album of the Year post, you instead get a small selection of albums I think were stand outs in the past year.

First up is ...Stay..., a depressive suicidal black metal one-man project in the vein of Sadness and None (one word dsbm band titles seem to be a through-line in my album picks).

I am a sucker for this type of dsbm. Depressive Suicidal Black Metal essentially comes in two forms: Goth dsbm, focused on mood and texture and calm despair; and school shooter dsbm, focused on shrieking anthems to, well, shoot up a school to. Both have their place in my rotation, but the gothier end of things is what I dig most.

Call it griefcore - music that attempts to lure you into drowning yourself in a swamp, to wandering into the woods alone never to be seen again. The sort of album that doesn't wonder if it can get the cops to shoot it once its shot all its classmates, but wonders if it kills itself inside a dumpster, would that inconvenience less people than if it did so in a bathtub.

This is a more metal focused offshoot of Fernando Mejía, the force behind A Rose Dying In The Rain, one of the best blackgaze projects going these days. Viva Guadalajara, Viva muerte

Comments

Agriculture - Agriculture

a While calling themselves ''ecstatic" black metal, Agriculture traipses along the line between atmo-black and blackgaze pretty adroitly. I am not as head over heels as some of the metal press I have been reading about them (like Rolling Stone for instance), but I think they have a good thing going here. They remind me of Vattnet Viskar sort of, and I am going to withhold judgement until I can see them live to really decide. That said, this is an album that has been in heavy rotation at my house since its release. Agriculture by Agriculture

2022 Year In Review

Yeah, I have been MIA for 18 months. So what? You don't pay for this blog, I do. And I've been really busy starting my permaculture farm / goat cult in the abandoned mountains of northern Spain. Now that things are appropriately sustainable and grim, I am back to vomit my opinions on music all over the internet some more. Let's dive back into things with a wrap up of 2022. Here are my favorite-ish albums of the year, along with why they are superlative. Best Aural Approximation of a Mental Health Crisis Chat Pile - God's Country Would you like to know what it sounds like to be stuck in a trailer in the middle of nowhere USA with none of the drugs you need to forget exactly how terribly and awfully fucked your life is? Are you interested in turning the collective despair of a small town poisoned by unregulated mining and refining into a howl of impotent protest? Would you like to peel back the facade of "faith, family, farm" to gaze at the raw and bloody dis...

Dødsferd - Skotos

Raw atmospheric black metal it it's sun soaked Mediterranean best. Wait... That's not right. Oh, but it is. For 20 years, Greece has been the home of Dødsferd since it's beginning as a one-man side project. Now, 10 albums, as many splits and EPs, and five comps, two new songs are available. Packaged with a re-release of the landmark album 'Diseased Remnants of a Dying World', what you have here is the pinnacle of what raw atmo-black can be. A full LP of this would easily be Album of the Year. I can still hope right? Skotos (Atmospheric Black Metal) by DØDSFERD (Greece)

Trumpet of Amdusias

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