Monsoon Fever

Man, I went to bed with a fucking epic preamble/ rant rattling around my head, but it was gone by the time I woke up...  I think it probably boiled down to this:

My various traumas and mental illnesses make it super difficult/ uncomfortable for me to trust people and/ or make friends, but there will always be just enough bullshit to make my paranoia seem like a totally valid survival mechanism.

Grateful for the few that have chosen to share this road with me.

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Light - Less depressive black metal/ ambient/ funeral doom and more a field recording of a battle to the death between a pterodactyl and a particularly melodic vacuum cleaner. I fucking love these albums.

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Wyrding - Ok, imagine Skepticism's Stormcrowfleet with the distortion dialed way down, recorded even further from whatever block of concrete the microphones were buried under, and fronted by the ghost of Pete Steele.

It felt like these guys were destined for "next big thing" status when this album came out, but I guess that fizzled which is a real shame cos I would have loved a few more albums of this stuff.

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Magick Incense/ Apothecary - Killer split of warped lo-fi/ experimental black metal. Hadn't heard of either band before picking this up but both sound totally fucking nuts. Gonna write about the two sides separately, see below...

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Magick Incense - Imagine multiple Striborg/ Gnaw Their Tongues/ Cryostasium albums all playing at once with the resulting din blasted through a busted shortwave radio... By about 5 minutes into this nearly 30 minute track you'll have to fucking spit to figure out which way is up.

Weird clean/ jangly section that popped up about 2/3 of the way through started to remind me of Codeine or Luxurious Bags with screeching/ croaking Xasthur vocals and by the time I realized what the fuck I was listening to they were off and blasting again...

Fuck, this shit is bonkers... I wanna hear way more from this project.

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Apothecary - Super bass-heavy psychedelic black metal blizzard. The clunky detuned bass smeared across the two longer tracks gives this stuff kind of a Godflesh vibe which is something I'm pretty much always in the mood for. 

First track is an awesomely confusing 16 minute tangle of blast, lumber, drift, and swirl. 

Second track dips into 5 minutes of gentle ambient ala Eno/ Tangerine Dream.

Last track comes churning out the gate and eventually EXPLODES into an expanse of frantic machine-blast that gradually downshifts into a series of scything mid-tempo grooves overlaid by skronky/ atonal Krallice style guitar swirl.

Nice. 

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Dunnock - It's weird that Dunnock don't get more love because to me they're one of the more interesting bands going... Equal parts drone, noise, hyper distorted psycheledia, and bedroom recorded outsider black metal that reminds me of the kind of stuff I'd read about on the aQ or Crucial Blast mailing list(s) then geek the fuck out trying to score a copy.

Side note: The world is a much sadder place without aQ and C-blast.

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Low - Any time there is a new Low album you bet your ass I am listening to the new Low album on repeat for at least a week and a half. One of my favorite bands ever.

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