A Certain Taste

I'm relatively new to funeral doom. In the past, I was mainly interested in the fastest, most technical music. I completely ignored this other side of extreme music. But when I dived in, I went deep. I've gone all the way back to proto funeral doom, with Cathedral's Forest of Equilibrium, and Lost Paradise by seminal gothic doom legends Paradise Lost all the way up to Bell Witch's epic Mirror Reaper and the "funeral steel" AOTY contender Stygian from Atramentus. One thing I appreciated from Atramentus' Phil Tougas was his devotion to remaining true to the roots of the genre. Reading acts he recommends and lists as influences proved a wealth of fantastic new (to me) material. Portugese black/doom newcomers Sepulcros (or their label Transcending Obscurity) note some similar bands as a reference point for what to expect from their debut, Vazio - including Atramentus.  So naturally, I was intrigued. The intro and outro track don't do much for m...

I started this blog for a few reasons. I wanted to get back into writing regularly. I'm not saying I'm great at it, but I enjoy the craft. There was a time when I put out MMA articles almost every day. I miss that. But that was when I was single, a full-time student and living with a flatmate. Now I've got a partner and I'm working full time with two kids. So I've had to ease myself back into it. I also want to force myself to commit to doing something on a regular basis. I have a habit of putting off things that are for me. Just for pleasure. It's really easy to get sucked into just doing the next thing then the next thing then the next thing. Purposefully resting is important. I also bail on things I enjoy doing and flit between multiple things but never finishing any of them and I want to break that. I chose to write about music because I was stuck in a rut of listening to the virtually the same things I have for years. I've been listening to new releases...

I don't know why, but the UK isn't really a place I would instantly associate with black metal. Yes, I know about Venom. I know they exist thank you. I'm also somewhat familiar with others; Cradle of Filth, Winterfylleth, Akercocke, Anaal Nathrakh, The Meads of Asphodel, and a few others. It still feels like a very small scene with few established acts. With this third album being released by 20 Buck Spin, we absolutely need to add Wode to that list. If you already had Wode up there as one of the best black metal acts to come out of the UK, then you probably think you know exactly what to expect. Shit, you've probably pre-ordered the vinyl and tell everyone you saw them playing a pub in Machester in 2016 before the first album came out. Nerd. You're also probably wrong. Burn In Many Mirrors is still recognisable as a work of Wode, but feels a lot like a band getting comfortable enough in their leather jackets that they can start adding less kvlt patches and showing ...

February is a weird one. The names for our months all come from the Romans. They really went to town initially with the names; literally just named numerically. When the time came to add a few more months, Janus was an obvious name for the first month, being the two-faced god of beginnings and endings. February however... Spring is on the wind, and Romans prepared for this through rituals of purification (februa). One such ritual was the festival of Lupercalia, where young men would run around Rome naked save for a goat-skin cape and playfully whip women with strips of goat-skin on the 15th of February. Not only was this to cleanse the city, but also to stir the loins of the young and fertile and encourage fornication. The Empire needs babies! Cleansing has always been ritualised but not many people know the Romans named a month after the process of gathering materials to prepare for a spring clean. A great time then for a snowstorm to cover the country in white, before shrinking back ...

Metalheads are no stranger to lyrics in languages other than English. From the more mainstream such as the German Rammstein and the Japanese Babymetal to more niche Icelandic and Finnish black metal acts like Misþyrming and Havukruunu, there is a lot of music popular within the wide genre of metal not performed in English. And we don't shy away from it. In fact, bands singing in their own tongue are often seen as more authentic . This idea of authenticity and thus worthiness of attention or respect is a big thing in metal. We are no strangers to gatekeeping in metal, after all. And what better way to stamp your authenticity than with your native language? While English itself is a bastard language with a number of different influences making up what we recognise as modern English, the UK also has a number of native languages: Scottish and Manx Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Scots and of course Irish. You're more likely to hear music sung in these languages in folk music, but the sens...