Come To Grief

Drown your sorrows in the dismally alcoholic whirlpool of sludge that Grief create. Feel your emotions tugged by the undertow of feedback eroding their riffing. Fall into drone-induced fits of depressive paralysis. Head bang back into consciousness. Come To Grief    

Cult of Blood

As promised (tweeted, that is) here is another tome from Italy's cobwebbed and shrouded vault of occult rites. Released the same year as In Absentia Christi and featuring Agua Regis (Roberto Mammarella, vox + gtr with MonumentuM) on guitar and bass, Cultus Sanguine's epononymous EP is a morose ritual of Lombardian anguish. This is a good soundtrack for the type of party where no one shows because there is a thunderstorm and you drink all the bottles of high percentage table vino you bought and then wander through the darkness and rain into the cemetery only to leave a white rose at the wrong grave and remember that you left candles burning in your appartment. Since those don't happen every weekend (or so I'm told; for me they do) you could just listen now and feel sad.

Ride the winds of hate

In The Absence of Christ

Friends, devoted followers, trash collectors, forgive me for not posting in so long. I have been in a dark place, I am still there. It is a place of text, quotes, indents and of ancient philosophies. It's kind of like the scene in Hackers where they get into that secret folder and E=MC2 is floating around, but more monocrhome and monotonous. Don't fear for me, though, I can see a light at the end of this bleak tunnel of intellectual purgatory. But for now, I barrel on. However, I felt I must share with you the music that both best reflects the interior of my mind at the moment and makes the best soundtrack for this taxing journey I am embarked on.

Very special thanks to Aesop over at the Hearse for dropping yet another forgotten classic quickly become personal fave on my miserable earholes. MonumentuM's In Absentia Christi is just what I've been craving, some good old fashione Italian occultitude. Not easily described using metal terminology (because it sounds like little other metal I've heard) I will attempt to give an experiential equivalent to what I feel listening to this album. Imagine you are at an Italian Catholic funeral in a huge church, everyone is dressed in black and sobbing as the incense burns and the sound of murmured prayer gets louder and louder. The procession starts and you shoulder through the crowd to the son of the deceased to voice your condolences. This sends his long, dark-haired, pale, lanky frame into convulsions of bellowed balling. His tears soon turn to morbid reflection and he begins expounding to you his every thought of dejected agony, in Rozz Williams-like oration, while the chorus of chants and bells behind you rises and falls. He becomes more and more animated as the unusually long walk to the graveyard grows longer and stranger. Daylight turns to unsettling twilight and shadowy cobblestone streets stretch on into infinity. You feel very odd. You realize that the libation someone gave you at the church seems to have had hallucinatory effects. You want this depressing journey to end and yet with his every word you become more sympathetic for your host's bleak revery. Suddenly, the buildings fall away and you look out in front of the crowd to see an expansive cemetery, tombstone upon tombstone, crypt upon crypt, restful and still in the soft hues of the setting sun.

fade to grey...

BEST 4 LAST BITCHES!

Evidently my 2011 ear was in crude enough shape to overlook one of Canada's most monolithic doom metal offerings of some time, right under my nose here in Montreal no less! Ensorcelor have been making waves in the city's small but mighty scene of true sonic sculptors of morbidly misanthropic magic. Their bearded, tree-wielding wizard-reared rituals caught my attention not more than a year ago at the unholy Death Church in St. Henri and they have remained ever-present in my mind as a colossal local live force worthy to dish it out along side numeroUS heavies (Thou, Yob, Krallice) to pass through this city's gates in recent times. It is the lumbering emotional juggernaut of their live performance, perhaps, that obscured my radar when hunting down great Canadian metal releases this past anno. I have seen the error of my ways. I could not see the dark woods for the light of the true path had blinded me. Having properly installed this blackened volume at my cylindrical altar my heart now rests as it should: in mother nature's darkness. What has struck me most immediately here is the band's ability to invoke such unholy hordes to my mind Thergothon, Skepticism, Mournful Congregation and the Woodsmoke crowd while remaining entirely unique and original, retaining only a few hints of such influences. On top of all this, the record very eloquently evades the all too common sludgisms of much modern funeral doom. The true strength of this unit is their ability to capture the earthiness of doom metal lore and the seasonal moodiness this music exudes. For those south of our snowy expanses, this is the most direct audio tap into the feeling of long trudges through white abyss; of waking up to days on end of dimmed sunlight consumed willingly by early nightfall. This album represents perfectly the musical equivalent of the black cloud that can envelope one's thoughts under a winter's moon...

and if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment...

Raise Your Glass

Have one on me...

K, y'all know the drill. It's finals time and I am a slave to paper until the 15th, at which point I will begin my "2011 in review" series of daily posts of albums that made waves (with myself or with others) this year and why they did/should/shouldn't have. Until then, enjoy this gift of 20-year-old sweet, syrupy sludge.

Happy Holidays