The Moon Above Me

Hung out, watched Conan the Destroyer, and started work on what will probably be our next album. No idea what the band name is gonna be. No idea if the album will even come out. But we're working again, and it's good to be working again.

Ditching the old band name was the right choice, there's no baggage, no weight, no bummed out acceptance that even if we do the coolest shit we've ever done people will shrug it off because of the whacked out band name.

Right now there's just music and a handful of song titles and a vague idea of sequenced/ arpeggiated Tangerine Dream style synths and tribal drums cut with doom and black metal guitars.

Like a fucked up planetarium show about the eventual death of the planet/ galaxy/ universe.

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Shining - Metal tinged spazz-jazz from Norway. These guys eventually smoothed out most of their jagged edges and morphed into more of a straightforward "industrial rock" type thing that's much less interesting to me, but man... Black Jazz is still a cool fucking album.

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Ihsahn - Here's some heavy-duty "hot-take" blasphemy for you: I like the solo Ihsahn albums a hell of a lot better than I've ever liked Emperor.... 

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Melechesh - Middle Eastern black metal with kind of a psychedelic edge. These guys came up in conversation because DD and I were wondering about 12 string guitar in metal music and they were the only band I could think of that use one semi regularly.

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Deafheaven - Yeah they're hipster shit or whatever, but I like this new Deafheaven song and there is no doubt in my mind that I would whip your ass in a fight so maybe keep your dumb opinions on the inside of your dumb fucking mouth. xoxox.

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Khonsu - I'm a total sci-fi/ comic book nerd and by extension I was probably the one person on earth who was SUPER into that weird moment in the late 90's/ early 00's when black metal got futuristic and all the bands started to look like villans from the X-MEN: Age Of Apoclypse story arc... Still love Thorns, Red Harvest, late Dodheimsgard, Khold, mid/ late Satyricon, Arcturus, etc. etc.

Khonsu looks and sounds like a total throwback to that style so I'm wicked into it.

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Hecate Enthroned - Yeah, they're kind of Wal-Brand Cradle of Filth, but they were one of my friend Jessie's favorite bands so there are a lot of heartstrings attached to them for me...

Me and her hung out a lot.

Then we dated for a while.

Then we had a blow up over something stupid (Basically, she didn't want me to go on tour because my ex-girlfriend was the guitarist of the band I was in at the time and she was convinced we'd have no choice but to start fucking again if we were stuck in a van for a week... Joke's on her, we were barely even speaking at that point). 

Then she decided to "teach me a lesson" by cheating on me with some dickhead surfer dude.

Then we split and I wound up having to do an anger management course after smashing the surfer dude's head through a car window.

Then she found out I hadn't cheated on her and felt pretty awful about the whole thing.

All told, it was kind of a mess.

After our relationship hit the wall she begged me to stay friends with her and see if we could maybe "work things out" someday. I agreed, but I was fucked off and bitter and my pride was hurt so I pretty quickly abandoned any effort to stay in touch.

Kinda feel bad about it now cos she was at a pretty low point when I stopped talking to her, but I guess that's just how it goes in the tiny "not-even-suburbs" out near Cape Cod... You get out of high school, meet someone you care about, slowly fall in love, then you get bored and complacent and gradually start hating each other because it's something to do.

Eventually shit falls apart and if you live there for even a couple years you wind up surrounded by so many "people you used to know" that if you've got any sense at all you finally just give up and either commit suicide in a fucking cranberry bog or move away so you don't have to watch every single person that used to mean something to you turn into shitty opioid addicted grown ups.

At any rate, this particular album always reminds me of driving around with her in middle of nowhere Southeastern MA looking for some place to get a halfway decent cup of coffee and being caught in a thunderstorm so godawful violent that we had to pull off the road under a highway overpass and wait for it to pass for fear of being crushed to death by falling trees.

Christ, what a storm that was.

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Gorgon - French black metal circa '95. Another album that reminds me of late night drives around middle of nowhere MA... There was pretty much nothing to do within 30 miles of where I grew up, especially if it was after 9pm, so me and my friends tended to spend a lot of time just driving nowhere. Talking about life, blasting heavy metal, desperate to get out and move to the city.

Cemeteries. Mall parking lots. Nature preserves. The one Diner that was open 24 hours a day until it suddenly wasn't anymore. Winding roads flanked on both sides by deep dark woods that seemed all the more menacing when something like this was on the stereo.

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Borknagar - For whatever reason I have a wicked soft spot for Borknagar. Love they way they did melody on this album, especially this tune.

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Excommunicated - Massively under-appreciated death metal from Louisiana. Ex-members of Catholicon who are a big favorite of mine. Overall vibe reminds me of Pessimist (from Maryland) or early Deicide, but then they'll veer off into these parts that are weird and thrashy/ punky/ unhinged in a way that sort of reminds me of Macabre.

Weird mix of things, but works rather well.

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Ulver - I hated the more electronic oriented Ulver stuff when I was younger but at some point it clicked and now it's some of my favorite shit going... Morose. Abstract. Desolate. Beautiful. Heaven and Hell and Blood Inside are the ones I've been coming back to lately.

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Trench Foot - Sludgy "old-school" DM that packs a whole lot of Autopsy "Mental Funeral" into a real quick sixteen minute run time. Nothing particularly new or original happening here, but man this stuff is good. Thick heavy production too. Ugly. Raw. Thumbs up.

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Morgue Tar - Gross. 

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Red House Painters - Summer Dress has gotta be the most wrenchingly miserable song of all time and my life is significantly worse for ever having heard it. Consistently makes me remember a lot of things I would much rather forget and I'm a fucking moron for continuing to inflict it on myself.

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Cindytalk - Ok, this is an incredibly oversimplified description, but Cindytalk have always kinda reminded me of rhythms ala early SWANS with the rest of the sound-field coming via 4ad. I guess this album was reissued recently? Had no idea, but saw it when I was at the record store the other day and grabbed a copy.