Monday we will begin counting down Meat Mead Metal’s 40 favorite metal albums of 2012, one week earlier than we did last year. It’s been an exhausting process putting together this year’s rundown, but anything worth it is going to require some grunt work.

Before we get to that countdown, I want to take a look at some releases from the past year that aren’t full-length efforts but certainly still deserve mention as some of the finest recordings of 2012. In fact, putting together this list was more challenging than I expected it would be, mostly because I didn’t realize how many quality EPs, splits, demos, and other smaller releases were actually out there. So let’s stop bullshitting and talk about some of these pieces of work.

Anyone who’s read this site with any regularity or who were around for last year’s Top 40 knows the love we have for Minnesota-based black metal dreamers FALSE. Their debut was our top record of last year, and they also made for one of my favorite live shows this year, when they pulled into The Mr. Roboto Project for a scathing, violent, two-song set that was a battle for singer Rachel to endure because she seemed under the weather. But they fucking destroyed. Another great new band from last year was Barghest, a nasty, hate-filled black metal outfit that’s a little more traditional and filth-based and makes you feel like your face is being grinded away when you hear their music. This year, the two bands teamed up for as split that never ceases to blow me away, no matter how many times I hear it.

Gilead Media put out the split effort, and I remember Adam Bartlett telling me how blown away I was going to be about FALSE’s 18-minute epic “Heavy as a Church Tower” and the non-human nature of Rachel’s vocals on the cut, and he may have undersold it. It’s a blistering, exhaustive, dramatic, relentlessly heavy track that, as the band is wont to do, covers everything from black metal, to death, to power. There are glorious keyboards, a drum assault that’ll burst blood vessels, and vocals filled with violence and anguish. Awesome stuff. Can’t wait for their next release. As for Barghest, they’re dirty and mean as always, going off on their two tracks that each are about eight minutes in length. One is brand new, one is an older track, and both are explosive warheads filled with poison and nails. You’ll feel like you got your ass kicked by a street gang when they’re done, and I’m also quite interested in hearing what they blow up next. Killer release.

For more on FALSE go here: http://gileadmedia.bandcamp.com/album/untitled-2

For more on Barghest, go here: http://www.facebook.com/barghestsoulless?ref=ts&fref=ts

To buy the album, go here: http://www.gileadmedia.net/store/

Brooklyn’s Mortals are one of those bands that really needs signed. Right now. Seriously, what are people waiting for? The band’s self-released new “Death Ritual” EP not only infused new music into the scene, it also showed an incredible growth for the band, with more complex, expansive songs, and a killer production that made this recording sound massive and crushing. There are but two tracks on this collection, with a total combined run time of over 15 minutes, and while it may seem like a small morsel, these ladies manage to take that time and use it to leave mega bruises with their sludgy, doomy metal. Someday a label’s going to get super lucky when they sign these banshees, and by that point, Mortals may be ready to capture the world.

For more on the band, go here: https://www.facebook.com/mortalstheband

To buy the album, go here: http://mortals.bandcamp.com/

Deathspell Omega put out on of the year’s more surprising releases with their “Drought” EP. Well, that’s surprising for them because their music generally is so dissonant and bizarre that to hear them put together a collection of more straightforward black metal pieces is kind of alarming. But that’s what they did on this six-track, 21-minute collection that shows a completely different side of the band. At the same time, the songs here are still more warped and imaginative than most other black metal bands’ creations these days, so it’s not like they abandoned their mission. I’d expect the next DSO will be as fucked up as anything else in their catalog, but for now, it was cool to hear what they could do with something more digestible.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.deathspellomega.com/

To buy the album, go here: http://e-shop.season-of-mist.com/en

Two bands that aren’t necessarily pure metal but that certainly have crossover appeal are Alaric and Atriarch, and both seemed to have different paths after the release of their split effort on 20 Buck Spin. Atriarch went on to sign with Profound Lore and put out their haunting, psychologically marring “Ritual of Passing,” while Alaric, at least temporarily, dissolved. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, and their heady, bruising deathrock lives on, which is a relief as their contributions to this split are infectious and churning. Atriarch are great at making everyone feel uncomfortable, and they do a lot of that with their two songs, especially the utterly scathing “Oblivion,” which is a perfect song for your holiday season.

For more on Atriarch, go here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ATRIARCH/241062512127

For more on Alaric, go here: http://www.facebook.com/alaricband?ref=ts&fref=ts

To buy the album, go here: http://www.20buckspinshop.com/0

It’s been a big year for NYC black metal crushers Mutilation Rites, signing with Prosthetic Records and putting out their debut full-length “Empyrean,” a release you’re probably going to hear more about next week. Just saying. But before they got to that point, they put out two mangling EPs on two different labels that hinted to the chaos ahead. First up was “Devoid,” a four-track album that came out on Forcefield Records that showed the promise most of us knew was in the band. Then they topped themselves with “I Am Legion,” a blood-spurting, three-track release put out by Gilead Media around the same time the full-length landed on CD (the label released the vinyl version of “Empyrean” later in the year). This band crushed on all cylinders this year, and I’m really excited to see where they go in the future.

For more on the band, go here: https://www.facebook.com/mutilationritesnyc

To buy “Devoid,” go here: http://www.forcefieldrecords.org/store/

To buy “I Am Legion,” go here: http://www.gileadmedia.net/store/

Broken Limbs Recordings had an aggressive year, putting out a great deal of releases and even having one of their discoveries signed to Century Media, that being Vattnet Viskar, whose self-titled EP seemed to have moved a ton of people following its release. But they put out a lot more releases that went sort of under the radar, and many of them fell into the smaller collection category, including impressive stuff from Fhoi Myore, Deafest (which is rad as fuck, and if you like grimy black metal, you’ll dig this heavily), Unsacred, Hunter’s Ground, and the Cara Neir/Ramlord split. This label is giving a lot of underground bands a chance to be heard, and arguably the best record they put out this year we will discuss again next week. I’m excited to see where they go in 2013 and what undiscovered gems they unearth.

To buy or sample any of these recordings, go here: http://brokenlimbsrecordings.bandcamp.com/

Obviously, these are just a few releases we wanted to mention in detail, but there are plenty others worth your time including Pelican’s “Ataraxia/Taraxis” on Southern Lord; the Locrian/Mamiffer collaborative project “Bless Those That Curse You,” out on Profound Lore; two fine releases from Northless, including their split with Light Bearer and their excellent new 10-inch “Valley of Lead,” both out on Halo of Flies; Hydra Head made some final noise with the Mamiffer/Pyramids split and the JK Flesh/Prurient effort we discussed this past week; and the killer Inverloch EP “Dusk/Subside,” out on Relapse.

When I started Meat Mead Metal last year, I didn’t know what would really happen. I didn’t know if people would read it or even care, and I didn’t plan to whore it out all over the place because I didn’t want to be obnoxious. I wanted the thing to grow organically and gradually. I’m pretty damn happy with how things have gone.

Here we are, 1.5 years after launch, and we’re getting ready to unveil our Top 40 albums of 2012, beginning Monday, Dec. 17. I’m really excited to have compiled the list (and I’m still battling with myself a bit over some of the rankings) and having a chance to get some comments from the bands listed near the top. You can read those from Dec. 24 through Dec. 31, taking a break on 12/25 for Christmas. It’s a landmark series for the site, and I can’t wait to get it going.

Even more astonishing to me than the increased readership this year, the retweets and Facebook posts by various labels and bands directed to my work, and now again being featured on a band’s main site, is the submissions from readers with links to their own groups’ recordings. It might sound silly, but I was flattered to get so many unsolicited submissions yet a little angry with myself that I didn’t get to a lot of them. Well, I didn’t ignore any of you and I listened to everything sent my way (at least I think I did), and today I want to present a few of the recordings I liked the most. I am making a promise to myself and you, the readers, that I will pay greater attention to this area next year so that bands looking for some honest feedback to their work, and a way to get their name out to more people, can be done through us. So thanks to everyone who sent me their music. I’m flattered you think that much of my opinion.

First up is Denver-based, filthy doom crushers In the Company of Serpents, a band that is a rock-n-roll-punished brand of grit that reminds of High on Fire, Motorhead, and Black Sabbath. The music is riff-fueled and roughed up, which gives the songs a proper sense of grime, and the two-headed beast of Grant Netzorg (guitars and vocals) and Joseph Weller Myer do an excellent job bringing the thunder and storming madness to the five cuts found on their self-titled debut. After a fitting, smoking intro, the band tramples into the bad-ass, bluesy “Dirtnap”; the melodic, crunch-filled “Immolation,” that will burn you down; slow-driving, molten lava-filled “Malice”; and epic closer “Canto III Inferno,” a punishing song that also gets dressed in drone, trancey fog, and howled vocals. This is a killer effort from a band that, after a little more seasoning, will be ready to sign up with in indie metal label. They also sound like they’d be excellent to hear if you were in your backyard burning a bunch of shit or trying to find something that’ll help you blow off some steam from the week. Remember them. I know I will.

For more on the band, go here: https://www.facebook.com/InTheComapanyOfSerpents

To buy or download their album, go here: http://inthecompanyofserpentsdoom.bandcamp.com/

Triple-headed doom-sludge band Tome hail from Ireland, and their “MMXII” demo is a one-two gut punch that’ll leave you heaving for air. The music is lo-fi and super muddy, and the vocals are practically buried underneath 10,000 pounds of rock. The two songs “In Fire and Ash” and “Void Cantation” basically act like one piece, with “In Fire” having more of the growling and Sabbath-style affinities, while  “Void” is built more on noise and ear-piercing instrumental madness. It’s a really hellish, dark experience, and it’s worth tracking down if you like truly roughed-up, abrasive doom. It can be downloaded from their Bandcamp site (find the link below), and they actually sold out of their original running of green cassettes. Into the Void picked up from there and put it out on blue, and it’ll serve you well if you feel like being crushed to death in under 20 minutes. I could see Southern Lord, in their current mind frame, potentially being interested in this band down the road.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.facebook.com/tomedoom?ref=ts&fref=ts

To download the album, go here: http://tomedoom.bandcamp.com/

To buy the cassette go here: http://www.intothevoidrecords.com/shop/

If ever there was a band born and bred to be signed by Hell’s Headbangers Records, it is Israel’s Promiscuity, a black-n-roll band that blends charred death metal and thrash along with sweet leads and riffs most American bands forgot how to play years ago, and it all makes for one hell of a great time. Their music makes me think of the glory days of the first wave of black metal and bands such as Venom and Hellhammer, but they also make me sink a bit into “Wolverine Blues”-era Entombed. Of all the readers submissions that landed in my inbox, this was the one I had the most fun hearing, and I’ve gone back again and again. “Infernal Rock n Roll” kicks off with a sample of “Rock Around the Clock” that wraps and snaps, only to have these three guys – Butcher, Werewolf, and Dekapitator — rush in for the assault. “Crime and Punishment” also is a blast and gives you one hell of a kick in the ass; while “Gybenhinnom” is a little dirtier and nastier, but it still has rock-solid chops and incredibly fun guitar work that will sound great with a cold beer. Or a hundred. Metal can be a little too serious sometimes and often forgets to be fun. Promiscuity solve that problem a hundred-fold. Great stuff.

For more on the band, go here: http://promiscuity-band.com/

To buy the album, go here: http://infernalrocknroll.bandcamp.com/

Swedish duo Walls of the Eyeless are an ambitious, aggressive group to put it lightly. Their music can be compared, roughly, to Cult of Luna and Altar of Plagues, and they certainly give you no time to rest during their music. Their songs are constructed of a ton of different parts, and if you’re not paying close attention, you can lose your place in a hurry. That’s the one criticism I have of the band’s music is that they have a little too much going on. You don’t get a chance to really know what these guys are about because they change things up so much, but they certainly show a ton of promise. Opener “The Hands” has one of the better guitar riffs I’ve heard anywhere in metal all year. Fresh and inventive work, and that grabbed my attention right away. That’s a major strength throughout this “Through Emptiness” demo. “Do We Belong Here” has some classical guitar work and ambiance; “Wall of the Eyeless” has thick growls, more solid guitar work, and suddenly a proggy section that soars into space. Closer “The Rain Song” is heavy, yet melodic, takes on a primitive feel, then thrashes sort of like early Prong. Good stuff, and with some self-editing and focus, they could be scary.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.facebook.com/walloftheeyeless

To get the album, go here: http://walloftheeyeless.bandcamp.com/

Or here: http://walloftheeyeless.bigcartel.com/

It would seem there would be no worse place imaginable than hell. Maybe Baltimore. But at least they have the Inner Harbor. Hell likely would not have that, or much water. Of course, what is hell? A fiery place with caverns, fires, and devils? A boiling pit of lava? Or is it something else?

People often talk about experiencing hell on Earth, and that can mean all kinds of things. One can be in great pain or stress, and that could end up feeling like the ultimate torture. Or perhaps a person is overwhelmed by personal demons and psychological matters, and the very idea of existence could be the most unfair, inhumane thing imaginable. I could see how that might feel like hell, and the very experience of such misfortune could seem like being baked alive over hot coals.

Whatever the case, hell is bound to be one of those concepts that means something different to everyone. It’s one of the things that initially intrigued me about the band Hell and their bleak, tortured, death-swarming doom metal that’s become some of the most morose and humbling on the planet. There are many bands that take the name Hell, including the English NWOBHM band that recently released a comeback album on Nuclear Blast, but the incarnation we will discuss today is a one-man project led by M.S.W. that calls Portland, Ore., home. Over three full-length albums and two split recordings, Hell has become a project that’s gotten darker with every turn and musically more astonishing with each release.

“III” is the newest document from M.S.W. (“I” was released in 2009, while “II” surfaced in 2010), and it’s also one of the most haunting he’s conjured yet. Consisting of two, epic-length tracks, the album captivates and terrifies at the same time. There are levels of great beauty and valleys of extreme horrors that comprise the landscape of this album, and just gazing at the stunning album art (the cassette inlay folds out into a poster) gives you a great indication of the journey ahead of you. Like-minded acts? Thou, Pallbearer, Dragged Into Sunlight would do.

The album opens with “Mourn,” and 18-minute journey full of tumult and passion. The song opens cleanly, with trickling guitars and solemn passages before it completely ignites and catches full conflagration. From there, total gut-mangling sludge doom erupts, with beastly growls, gazey playing, and a fog of anger and frustration blanketing the terrain. “Falling from your heavens, to the hellish dirt of our hellish Earth,” M.S.W. yells in pained, lacerated howls, almost as if you can imagine him bleeding to death as his mangled body tries to pull itself over rock and dirt. Drone bleeds in and noise takes over, with moaning and delicate strings raining down over the chaos.

“Decedere,” which means simply “to die,” is breathtaking from the very start. Again we begin clean, with cellos and other sounds sweeping in and building a base, and melody lines bubbling up and down again. The volume and tempo rise ever so slowly, letting the drama take hold, and once things begin to hit a fevered pitch, a female voice erupts with an angelic aria that feels like it’s carrying with it the curtains of death. M.S.W.’s wails return and sprinkle the song with potent anguish, and the pace settles back into a temporary sense of ease. Then it kicks back up on a trad-heavy guitar line. From there, the track opens back up, and beams of hellish light burst forth, with more throaty growls, gazey lead guitar work, and a long silence that stretches out only to be broken up by another guitar assault and noisy warbling that mangles the senses. By the time this track is done, you’ll be completely spent.

I’ve spent a lot of time with “III” since downloading it (legally, might I add), and it’s been a great, thoughtful companion during nighttime walks, while working, or simply while thinking. It’s a record you have to experience with your mind devoted to fully comprehend. It’s an emotionally moving, spiritually wrecking album, and it’s a fitting, climactic final piece to this trilogy. There has been a lot of doom that’s come out this year, and a lot of it good, but little of it compares to this incredible album that is the crown jewel of Hell’s nightmarish catalog.

For more on the band, go here: http://loweryourhead.bandcamp.com/

To buy the album (digital or physical), go here: http://loweryourhead.bandcamp.com/album/hell-iii

And here: http://www.eternalwarfare.org/?page=viewitem&item=81&view=all

For more on the label, go here: http://www.eternalwarfare.org/

It is with a heavy heart and a great deal of sadness that we have come to the end of the line, the final new release from Hydra Head Records. The label announced earlier in the year that they would be closing shop for various reasons. The industry sucks, money sucks, and the bands they champion, for the most part, aren’t exactly ones that rack up gigantic sales. It’s just a perfect storm of badness that the world has lost one of the most vibrant, creative, unpredictable, and trustworthy sources of new music, and for that we should all be sad.

HHR has a point about the artists they sign. They’re not easy nuts to crack, and many of them probably serve that niche audience, a smaller group of people who want something more challenging than even what indie labels have to offer. Let’s not even discuss mainstream art, for fuck’s sake, because that’s beyond dead. But, as a music writer with tons of new records to review each year, so many of which sound exactly the same, it was always great to hear from HHR. They opened my eyes to band such as Bergraven, Nihill, Oxbow, the Austerity Program, Pelican, and Old Man Gloom, not to mention hugely important bands they helped break to the public such as Discordance Axis, Botch and Cave In.

After the announcement that they would fold their new music division, we got a few final releases from the likes of Mamiffer/Pyramids and Jodis, and now the record we’ll discuss today, the split album featuring JK Flesh and Prurient. But there also was some hopeful news floated on the label’s website just before this collection dropped. HHR is trying its best to live on in a new incarnation, one where they can still serve up reissued versions of older titles and provide copies of their entire catalog like they have all along. That way, although you might not be able to get a new HHR release from, say, Big Business, at least you still would be able to grab a hold of their older stuff. The label has a rehabilitation sale going on, and a link to that will be provided below, so if you care about the music Hydra Head has released since its inception and want to see them live on in some version, check out what they have to offer and buy a few things. There’s a lot of cool stuff to be had, and if you happen to have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket, you can find some rare things you can’t just get anywhere, such as a test pressing of the whole HHR catalog.

Keep all that in mind, but we’re really here today to talk about “Worship Is the Cleansing of the Imagination,” a punchy little title and one that should hit cheeks particularly hard as we’re in the midst of the holiday season and the deadly, albeit imaginary, war on Christmas… The collection actually sums of perfectly the label’s assertion that they release music that doesn’t have widespread appeal. Both artists’ music can be a little tough to welcome and embrace for non-ambitious listeners — and let’s face it, that’s most people — and their penchant for heady, dream-state, ambient-style music eliminates them from Billboard glory. But for us who love and pay adulation to such styles of music, this is a perfect an ending for HHR imaginable.

JK Flesh is the latest name/project adopted by the great Justin Broadrick, who has made some of the most inventive and influential music in the so-called “extreme music” genre with Godflesh, Napalm Death, and Jesu, among others. His music always is full of heart and soul, and even when it’s grinding industrial gears and scraping across the landscape, it maintains a level of humanity and vulnerability that makes Broadrick’s music shine. The three songs he contributes to this split effort continue that trend, but he delves back into his Godfleshier days more so than he has in quite some time. It’s also stabbier and more violent than Broadrick has been in a while, and that’s a nice thing to hear from him.

“Fear of Flesh” is Broadrick’s first selection on the record, and it opens with steely beats, screamy, abrasive vocals, and a heavily industrial bend that feels like steel beams over your head sparking. Windy wooshes mix in with the mechanical madness eventually, and the song takes you into “Deceiver.” That track is full of noisy moans, haunting arrangements, and what seems like machines becoming self-aware and going off on humanity. “Obedient Automaton” wraps up Broadrick’s end of the deal with zapping synthesizers, layers of noise, minimal vocals buried underneath sound, and a penetrating outer layer that refuses to allow you to slip into total concentration.

JK Flesh is a cool amalgamation of all the things Broadrick does well, and it’s a little bit like a trip through his creative history. Also, if you like what you hear from Broadrick on this project, check out his other 2012 JK Flesh release “Posthuman,” that was released by Daymare and 3BY3. It doesn’t appear that this man is running low on his creative fuel, and I’m really interested to see where he takes this project next.

Prurient is the long-standing project by Ian Dominick Fernow, and if you can say you’ve collected every piece of his releases, then I congratulate you. That could not have been an easy endeavor as the amount of Prurient releases in nearly impossible to count. Fernow has released his music on a variety of labels, from Hospital to Important to Hydra Head, and he has so much creative energy, it’s mind boggling to imagine how he keeps this machine moving forward. In that sense (and in many others) he’s perfectly matched with Broadrick. Neither of these two men seem to take a break, and every time you turn your head, they’re dreaming up something new.

Fernow’s approach is spacier and more atmospheric. It’s a calming, soothing display that’s a nice come down from (or preparation for, depending which side you tackle first) Broadrick’s thornier work. Here you have a chance to mellow out and float away, such as on opener “Chosen Books,” a track that’s painted with crashing noises and plane propeller-like drone that soars into the sky. “Entering the Water” is a total trance out, with a steady bed of ambiance acting as the base and a swarm of noise that erupts over you, retreats, regroups, and blows in again. It’s easy to get caught up in the patterns and imagine underwater colonies and beings going about their daily business. “I Understand You” closes things out with a grimy top layer, and a cool, shimmery bottom end that lets you meditate and freak out at the same time.

Fernow’s work always perplexes and satisfies, and he adds some neat new clouds of gases here on his portion of “Worship Is the Cleansing of the Imagination.” Whether it’s here with Prurient, with any of his other projects, or even playing live keys with Cold Cave, Fernow is an artist who deserves your attention and intrigue. Even if only a handful of people in a crowd will get him, he’ll keep doing his best to come up with something even more adventurous than what preceded it.

I’d also like to thank Hydra Head Records not only for releasing great, challenging music that always kept me guessing but also for always being great to work with. There’s never been a request I made of them, either when I worked for The Daily News here in Pittsburgh or this site here, that went unattended. So major thank you to all of them. Good luck to everyone there, and I look forward to buying from them well into the future, even if it isn’t a brand new piece of music.

For more on JK Flesh, go here: http://justinkbroadrick.blogspot.com/

For more on Prurient, go here: http://prurient.bandcamp.com/

To check out HHR’s rehabilitation site sale, go here: http://www.realtomatoketchup.com/

To buy the split album, go here: http://www.bluecollardistro.com/hydrahead/categories.php?cPath=4

For more on the label, go here: http://www.hydrahead.com/

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here: If your band can make me tilt my head, be it out of confusion or intrigue, half the battle’s been won as far as swaying me to spend time with your music. Not that I’m the king of music or anything. But I’m an avid listener, and I like to be knocked from my seat now and again.

At the same time, there’s also such thing as a little too much oddness, which can lead to uneasy shivering and a tendency to want to retreat and not return. That’s after repeated listens, mind you, because if at first something makes my bowels quiver because I’m uncomfortable, I have a much better chance of going back to figure out what confused me so much. In fact, some of my favorite bands had that initial effect on me before I retraced my steps and learned to absorb what was being presented to me.

Then there are bands that strike somewhere in the middle of all of that, groups that certainly have something interesting and unique going on, but for as many times as I visit, I can’t call their surroundings home. It’s a place I like to visit now and again, not set up real estate ventures and find a favorite local pub. New UK doom outfit Black Magician perfectly embody what I’m describing here on their debut record “Nature Is the Devil’s Church” (the first-ever release for Shaman Recordings). They have rivers of personality and charisma, they play a foggy style of ’60s and ’70s doom rock and metal, and their compositions are boiling cauldrons waiting to spill over onto the floor. Their sound would go great with candlesticks burning at length, dusty bookcases, and weird potions you’re working to perfect. They are vintage. They don’t just sound that way.

There are many bands to which I can point as reference material, from Black Sabbath to Cathedral to Coven to Candlemass, and it seems like the band cut off most of their musical influences somewhere in the 1980s. Their lyrical and spiritual content goes back centuries further. Their style is filled to the brim with alchemy, old-time magic, evil folklore, and spooky walks in a haunted countryside, and they do an excellent job conveying all of these things.

So, where’s the problem? Most of it falls in the lap of vocalist Liam Yates, as expressive and engaging a singer as you’re going to find in doom, but one whose style certainly is not for everyone. I count myself among that contingent, because it’s the one element of the record that has kept me at an arm’s length. He growls and moans and tells his tales, and at that he’s quite effective, but it always sounds like he’s singing the exact same thing. Like, if you lifted his vocals from one song and placed them into another, you wouldn’t know the difference. His cadence and patterns never change, and as maniacal as he can be, I think he’d be even more effective it he found a way to exercise some variety in his delivery. I want to feel like I’m hearing a new story with every song, not the same one told over new music. I might be alone in this assessment, and I can see where some listeners might really like what he does. We’ll call it personal preference.

“The Foolish Fire” trickles from the gates, full of smoking keyboards and eerie intentions, but it’s a mere introduction that runs into “Full Plain I See, The Devil Knows How to Row,” a song dripping with organs, Sabbath-style doom guitar work, and darkness and plague slithering across the land. It is here we first hear from Yates, as he tyrannically begins turning the pages and reciting the horrors in front of him. It’s a strange, unconventional approach, but as much as I may not have fully enjoyed his vocals, I did pay attention. “Four Thieves Vinegar” has sickness and decay eradicating masses, as bell and crows signal the coming death, and a blues-style shuffle erupts on guitar. “God’s wrath begins to spread,” Yates howls, and the sense of dread is thick.

“Of Ghosts and Their Worship” certainly is aptly named, as the presence of the dead hangs over this song like a black cloud, and there even are elements of hillside folk music that goes along with this cut and adds a rustic sense of spookiness. The 15:21 closer “Chattox” tackles the Pendle witch trials of 1612, and, perhaps more specifically, the case of Annie Whittle. The song slithers along as doom should, though there are some power metal-influenced leads tucked into places, and the lyrics tackle issues of faith, torment, power, persecution, and murder. It’s an unsettling epic, and although Yates’ vocals remain unchanged stylistically, they do fit the subject matter and add an icy uneasiness to it all.

Despite my aversion to the vocals, this was a fun listen all the times I spent with it. I’m not sure it’ll be a go-to doom record for me, but I could see taking future trips with it from time to time, especially when things begin to rot and decay in the autumn. I also encourage you to experience Yates’ work for yourself, because I fully admit it’s likely a personal feeling, and some listeners are bound to love his vocals. This is a fitting record for absorption in a dimly-lit room, with choice spirits, and willingness to reach beyond realms. You might end up scaring the hell out of yourself.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.blackmagician.co.uk/

To buy the album, go here: http://www.shamanrecordings.com/releases/black-magician-nature-is-the-devils-church/

For more on the label, go here: http://www.shamanrecordings.com/

I appreciate unpredictability in a band when the people involved can pull it off just right. Not everyone does, mind you. There’s a good reason some bands just stay the course and do what they do well for as long as they can, and there’s nothing wrong with that strategy. But some artists feel compelled to grow and change.

The Toronto-based duo Nadja have about a million full-length, split/collaboration, and EP releases to their credit, and I defy you to find two that sound alike. I don’t have all of their recordings personally, though I’ve heard just about every one of them, and they seem incapable of repeating themselves. Aidan Baker (guitars, vocals, other stuff) and Leah Buckareff (bass, vocals, other stuff) always seem to have something new up their sleeves, and when they’re ready to unleash their latest creation, it’s always safe to throw all expectations out the window.

Nadja have recorded for a number of labels including Profound Lore, The End, Crucial Blast, and Alien8, but their latest record “Dagdrøm” is out on their own label Broken Spine Productions, set up as an outlet for Nadja’s, Baker’s, and any other related project’s music. They’re keeping things in house, and for a band as diverse and ambitious as Nadja, that’s probably a wise choice, because that way there are no weird expectations or demands. Baker and Buckareff are free to create whatever moves them, not that they necessarily felt handcuffed in the past, and they can have ultimate control over their art and how it’s presented.

One thing Nadja always did very well was create moods. Often, their songs were long soundscapes that could lull you into an intellectual slumber before you were jarred awake by piercing fuzz or drubbing doom or something to pull you suddenly from the fog. They always made great concentration music, and their “Bliss Torn From Emptiness” was an album I listened to practically on loop a few years ago when I was working on a major project at my last job. It kept me stimulated but calm, and while it promoted and encouraged my creativity (the little of it I was allowed to employ at that position) it never distracted. Much of Nadja’s music feels that way, but there’s something wholly different about ” Dagdrøm.” The record is far more conventional than what these two normally conjure, and they work toward making music that could be understood and embraced by a wider audience. It’s still widely smeared with noise and fuzz, but it’s a step in a new direction.

A slight disclaimer about the paragraph above: Conventional for Nadja does not mean formulaic or boring. They have their own style of making more traditional types of songs, but their way still is way different than what 99 percent of other bands are doing. We’re still talking songs that top out at 10 minutes or more, and there’s a very Nadja way of going about these tracks that still keep them in their own universe, and they’re not trying to find favor in someone else’s. A good reference point would be their 2009 covers album “When I See the Sun Always Shines on TV,” where they revealed a glimpse of what they could do with other people’s work, only to put their own spin and gloss on it. It was something dramatically different, but it made sense. So does “Dagdrøm,”

There are four tracks on this record, and there are some slight reference points as far as sound goes, but none are spot on. I can hear bits and pieces of My Bloody Valentine, Xasthur, early Smashing Pumpkins, and Sonic Youth, bands that all embrace heavy noise but also weave in tons of different things into the chaos. “One Sense Alone” opens the record gently, but not long after it bursts wide open, Baker sings underneath 100 million lbs. of sound, and a slight sense of Pink Floyd at their most cerebral and psychedelic bleeds in. It’s a song you can let wash over you and take you into a syrupy dream, though the doom punches always bring you back around again. “Falling Out of Your Head” reveals some attitude, something not usually a part of Nadja recordings, but the bluesy guitar lines, dusty vibe, and eventually tumultuous exclamation points pounded at the end of their melodies shows a new face. The song is fuzzed out, and bursting with personality, and it’s one of the biggest revelations on the album.

The title cut is flooded with heaviness and murk, but at the same time, it’s kind of blissed out. Once again, Baker’s vocals are buried under everything, but it works well that way because they almost act like dialog from a dream, and the effect of the whole piece feels like enveloping your head in a pillow case full of stars. The song is numbing and eventually slows its pace to a slurry crawl. The 14:11 closer “Space, Time, and Absence” cracks open, with the drums (courtesy of Mac McNeilly formerly of The Jesus Lizard) way up front and the fuzz at a minimum, and their commitment to flat-out rock never is been more apparent. There’s a structure that comes as close to verse-chorus as Nadja ever has (or possibly ever will), and elsewhere there are surging melodies and a trippy finish that caps off the story just right.

Once again Nadja have returned with a pleasant surprise of an album, something that forged yet another new path for this explorative duo. “Dagdrøm” is a vision all its own, stamped with the trademark Nadja philosophy, and it’s already made for hours of great listening. I’ll always heavily anticipate any piece of music this band puts out, because I know that no matter what they create, I’ll be taking an adventure to a place I’ve never been before.

For more on the band, go here: http://64.92.105.10/~coldsnap/aidan/nadja.htm

To buy the album, go here: http://brokenspine.bigcartel.com/

For more on the label, go here: http://brokenspineprods.wordpress.com/

As close as we are to the year coming to an end, 2012 just won’t release us from its grasp. It feels like the month has been the longest ever, and we’re only five days into it. Coming up with fresh content in December is a total bitch, and usually it’s clean-up land, but we’ve been saved from that today by the wonderful throes of death.

No one’s dead. That I know of. But we do have two brand new death metal albums to discuss that still are due in stores near you (or your mailbox if you buy from the source itself online), and both of them come from Finnish beasts. They also come courtesy of Dark Descent, a label that’s been on an impressive roll all year long and has consistently been one of my favorite sources of music for all of 2012. They’ve become one of those labels that, when their promos arrive, I drop what I’m doing and get to them immediately.

The one negative of releasing new work from Maveth and Desolate Shrine  so late in the year is that they’re not going to be up for most outlets’ best-of lists — except ours, that is, because we don’t finalize our list until the last possible second on purpose — and both albums certainly will blow your doors off in one way or another. And while, yes, both groups are death metal through and through, there are noticeable differences between the two bands so that you’re not being drubbed by two groups with the same formula.

We’ll kick off with Maveth, whose new record “Coils of the Black Earth” is their first full-length effort, following an EP, demo, and compilation brought your way by labels such as Nuclear Winter Records and Aural Offerings. Their sound is filthy and mean, and their music is a total bludgeoning experience. Of the two bands, they’re the heaviest and most to the point, so you can kind of lay back and get your ass totally kicked without worrying about too many curveballs.

The members of Maveth also dot another noted death band Cryptborn, who have a couple EPs to their name, as well as a few other bands in which they sharpened their vicious teeth. Maveth is made up of guitarist Mikko Karvinen, bassist Jani Nupponen, drummer Ville Markkanen, and, of course, vocalist Christbutcher. No surname for the butcher, though it would be amazing if it was Johnson or Kirkpatrick or something. Together, they make an infernal, sooty sound hammered home by Christbutcher’s authoritative, hellish growls that make it sound like he recorded his parts somewhere in a cave buried in the hottest region of the Earth’s crust. Sound like a silly description? Go listen and see that I’m right.

The 10-track, 57-minute album takes some energy to get through, but that’s not a bad thing. It rips open with “The Devourer Within the Gulf,” a 7:33-long serving of blackened death metal that also can be quite spooky at times and also sounds like what they might play on the train ride to hell. “Dragon of the Continuum” is growly, punchy, and massive, and the drum work is particularly explosive and rocky. “Hymn to Azael” is riff heavy and meaty, with guitar lines that hang in the air like a poisonous fog and a pace that treads violently. “Beneath the Sovereignty of Al-Ghul” is spidery and melodic. The whole thing is covered with lung-coating dirt and takes some time to let infection set in. “Hymn to the Black Matron,” however, explodes on impact.

“Sating Erictho” pretty much follows the same path as the rest of the album, delivering strong guitar buzzing and throat-mangling vocals, while the title cut is tricky and grindy, totally damaged in spots, and blindingly storming in other areas. You don’t know whether to patch holes or run for cover. “To Seed the Succubi” goes back to being mind-baffling, as the composition takes some chances and dares to slip away from the carved path. The music is cloudy and machine-like, hell-bent on destruction, and totally content to leave you a heaving pile. The dual “Terminus” tracks close out the album as a nice one-two punch to the mouth, with fast riffs, gruff vocals, and one more face-first fall into an ash pit in hell, the place at the center of these two songs.

This is a nice debut long player by Maveth, one that offers zero mercy and plows ahead for total body count. I’d like to hear a little more of the experimentation next time around, as that’s when the album is the most interesting, but this is a worthy first shot in what’s sure to be a lengthy assault by this Finnish quartet.

Desolate Shrine are no less mean or hellbound than Maveth, but they tend to spread out their infamy and imagination over a larger canvas of horror on “The Sanctum of Human Darkness.” They keep things active and ever-changing, always remembering to bloody your face with their death metal tendencies, but also refusing to give in to formula or expectations. This is a record that will keep you up at night, not only because of the dark, negative subject matter, but also because of the horrific compositions this trio sprawls out on this record, their second overall.

The band itself is almost as interesting and their dark crafts. LL handles all instrumentation for the band, a gigantic task considering how many layers of chaos are stacked up onto this thing, and he also produces the shadowy artwork. RS (also of Lie in Ruins and Perdition Winds) and ML (Famulus ab Satanus, Lord of Pagathorn, Urn,  etc.) provide the strange, lurching vocal work, weaving their horrific stories so seamlessly. It’s near impossible to tell where one person’s tale ends and the other begins. Often, they seem intertwined.

“Corridor: Human Altar” is your first taste of the ugliness this band unfurls on this record, with grimy, damaged build-up, and a landslide of terror before it slips into quiet acoustic and calm. And it’s just the opening interlude. “Plane of Awake: Dreams Over Angel-Serpent Tower” is filthy, slithering and doomy, with lurching growls, an insane tornado and chaos, and eventually a rough and crushing underbelly that blows your face off. “Pillars of Salvation: The Drowned Prince” has dizzying guitars, charred melodies, and mashed thrashing, with growling like RS and ML are gargling on their own blood. “Lair of Wolf & 1,000 Lions: Nine Forgotten Names” is nine minutes of madness, evil intentions, swirling and hazy melodies, and channeled punishment.

“Old Man’s Visit” is the eerie introduction to the second half of the album, with a ghostly furnace of noise and suffocating static. “Chalice of Flesh and Bone: The Eminence of Chaos” begins with a red herring, as piano notes drop and a calm sweeps over. And then it’s ripped to shreds, as crunchy riffing and exploratory trails unfurl before you and pull you screaming into “Demon Heart: The Desolate One,” a 9:35-long slab of smoldering doom, dizzying intensity, and inhuman growls and shrieks that sound scraped from the throat of a torture victim. Closer “Funeral Chamber” has black metal-style guitars, a penetrating attack, and the absolute essence of hopelessness, as lonely, chilling bells stand as the final sounds you hear.

If I had to choose a favorite of these two bands, it would be Desolate Shrine. I love the darkness, the mystery, and the ambition, plus so much of this record is legitimately scary and psychologically challenging. This band has a great chance to be one of Dark Descent’s top bands, and with more albums as strong as “The Sanctum of Human Darkness,” they could soon be one of the standard bearers for all of death metal.

For more on Maveth, go here: http://maveth.com/

For more on Desolate Shrine, go here: https://www.facebook.com/desolateshrine

To buy the albums, go here:http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/store/

For more on the label, go here: http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/

This past year’s been a pretty good one for doom metal legends Paradise Lost. First, they put out a great new record “Tragic Idol” that’s one of their best recordings of the past decade, and then they toured the United States alongside equally celebrated Swedes Katatonia to form one of the best gloom one-two punches found on any stage anywhere.

But that wasn’t the end of things for Paradise Lost fans, not by a longshot. The End Records, who have been re-releasing much of the Music for Nations catalog, including the work Opeth did under that banner, now are putting Paradise Lost’s earlier works back on the market in fresh, reissued form. Their third through sixth albums are readily available once again, as well as a best-of collection that properly summarizes those efforts, and hearing these records again really gives the listener a memory or history lesson of where they originated and how they’ve changed.

When Paradise Lost started, they were much more aggressive and death metal-minded, which you can hear for yourself on their first two records – 1990’s debut “Lost Paradise” and the following year’s “Gothic” – if you’re not already familiar with their career path. But the albums this project focuses on really are the ones that pushed forward their more melodic, and at times, poppier transformation that alienated some fans and found stimulated pockets of admirers among other people. Over the last decade the band’s gotten heavier again, but never the way they were at the start. But despite that sort of return to form, there is much you’ll hear on these records that will remind you of the material on “Tragic Idol” and “Faith Divides Us—Death Unites Us.”

“Shades of God,” released in 1992, is Paradise Lost’s third album, and it is the one that signaled their stylistic shift away from death and more toward doom and goth sounds. The growls are still there from Nick Holmes, and he can sound downright savage at times on tracks such as “Mortals Watch the Day,” “Crying for Eternity,” and “No Forgiveness,” but he also leans more into his cleaner, sometimes James Hetfield-like croons on “Daylight Torn” and “Pity the Sadness,” a cut that sounds a lot like their modern material. Musically, the tone is dreary and muddy, with Greg Mackintosh’s lead playing both bleeding-heart emotional and pulverizingly dangerous. This is a great album, one that signaled the end of the band’s thorniness.

“Icon,” their 1993 follow-up effort, is the first to fully resemble the works the band has been producing the last decade or so. The growls are gone, the guitars are melodic and melancholy and the songs are noticeably shorter than the driving epics of their first three records. It’s the dawning of their goth metal era. The album also is a little too long and overstuffed at 14 tracks and 50 minutes, almost as if they didn’t know when to say when. There’s some good stuff on here, from “Embers Fire” to “Remembrance” to the sludgy, punchy “Colossal Rains,” but clearly this was a feeling-out effort for these guys, one that would pave the way for, arguably, their masterpiece and one of the best pure doom metal records of all time. Speaking of which…

Paradise Lost’s fifth record “Draconian Times” remains a powerful document to this day, so much so that they opened their recent U.S. run playing “Enchantment,” one of the best and most beloved songs in their entire catalog. If you caught them live, was the whole room shouting back, “All I need is a simple reminder,” like the one here in Pittsburgh? They hit on all cylinders here, perfecting their new goth/doom style, writing razor-sharp songs that had immediacy and purpose, and coming up with timeless gems such as “Forever Failure,” “Shadowkings,” “Elusive Cure,” that has some nice moments of deathrock-style gushing, and “Hands of Reason,” where Mackintosh got to slip in some sinister riffs. This also comes with a bonus disc of demo tracks, live cuts, and a fairly by-the-books cover of The Smiths’ hit “How Soon Is Now?” that originally was offered as a bonus cut on “One Second.” Just an excellent record. An all-time great.

Naturally, that leads us to 1997’s “One Second,” yet another dramatic departure for the band. This record is practically devoid of any strains of metal, and the band goes head-on into the Depeche Mode/Sisters of Mercy terrain. Holmes’ vocals sound completely different, as he’s not howling and yowling but actually singing, and truth be told, he’s really good at working with this style. Mackintosh’s and Aaron Aedy’s guitars practically take a backseat to synthesizer and programmed beats, and the entire record sounds like the soundtrack to a rainy, dreary day. How you feel about this record is determined by how you digest this era of the band, I’m sure, and while it isn’t my favorite of their collection, there are some great songs on here, such as the poppy title cut, New Wave-inspired “Mercy,” pushier “Blood of Another,” and “Say Just Words,” a track that ended the set of their U.S. run. This record changed their game for a while, and it led right into polarizing selections “Host” (1999) and “Believe in Nothing” (2002) before they returned to an edgier sound.

“Reflection” is a best-of collection, as noted earlier, and it’s useful if you don’t know much about the band from this time period or if you’re a completist and need to have this title. It’s a summary of their finer moments from the Music for Nations run, as well as some remixes and a few live cuts. Not a bad thing to have, but some consumers may see this as unnecessary.

These documents are vital to metal and to the history of Paradise Lost, and having them back in circulation is only right. These are great pieces to add to your personal collection if you lack them and also could make one hell of a great gift for the metal fan in your life. Give the gift of sadness.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.paradiselost.co.uk/

To buy the album, go here: http://www.theomegaorder.com/MUSIC-FOR-NATIONS_2