Review: Woods of Ypres - Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light (Metal as Fuck)

The Grey Skies are wet with tears; the last recording made with David Gold (RIP) takes on a new, powerful Romantic dimension while still retaining their bitter cynicism and expert musicianship. 

 

There’s a particular twinge of grief that threads itself through this record – of course, the untimely passing of David Gold was as saddening as it was sudden. As he mournfully and sonorously rattled off his desperate words, screaming “Only death is real!” one’s eyes feel pregnant with tears and almost nothing can stem the flow. The heinous crime the Earth has committed in prematurely claiming our dark dreamer only serves to intensify this monochromatic vista of doom metal, like a portrait washed in rivers of hatred and modern bile, dripping with venomous, jarring guitar lines.

Read the review over at Metal as Fuck.

Writing: Australia Day - And What it Means to Us (Onya Magazine)

(By Editor Sandi Sieger with contributions from the Onya Team)

I’m in the business of celebrating Australia every day. Being Editor-In-Chief of this magazine means I see, do, taste and feel so much of this great land every day of the week. So when I sat down to think about the meaning of Australia Day, I was a little stuck. It’s just another day, after all.

Sure, there’ll be a lot of stereos beating to the sound of Triple J’s Hottest 100. There’ll be a lot of barbeques sizzling with snags and steaks, and tops being twisted off bottles, and corks being popped. There’ll be Australian flags emblazoned on windows and cars and tattooed on the shoulders and backs of the citizens of this country. But what about it should matter?

Read more at Onya Magazine.

Podcast: The "Lost" Devin Townsend Interview

The long lost interview has finally been found! Conducted in Feburary 2012 for Metal As Fuck, it was once thought perished in the rusty innards of a fried HDD, this interview with the incredible Devin Townsend turned up in the most unlikeliest of places much to my surprise and delight. So here's my gift to you - a rare, earnest insight into the always entertaining and thought-provoking mind of Heavy Devy!

Listen to it in full on SoundCloud.

Article: Migrant Metal (The Big Issue)

Far from being a closed-door cabal, Australia's metal scene has become a proudly multicultural subculture.

Watching a heavy metal show as an outsider is like walking into a psychotic circus that’s as bizarre as it is fun. Confronting by nature, metal is defined by its hulking, “louder than hell” guitar driven sound, occult or satanic imagery as worn by bands and their fans with a cult like devotion to the scene and its craft. Bands run the gamut from cool-headed, wispy-haired heavy rockers to leather clad black metal fanatics, brandishing fake axes, their faces greased up in white “corpsepaint.” Some frontmen (and women) growl, some sneer and some sing to ear-shattering, herniated heights.

Read the rest in The Big Issue (#398) on sale from vendors across the nation - buy a copy to help the homeless and long-term unemployed.

Interview: Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society (the AU Review)

 Sporting a bedraggled beard and fierce axe to stir the envy of Odin and his mighty sons, Zakk Wylde and his Black Label Society have knocked the paisley-mellow orthodoxy of metal virtuoso guitar on its ass; breathing nothing but fire and spittle while shredding up storms of fury throughout his colorful career. Mastering his craft since the age of fourteen, Wylde drops recondite phrases into his genre-spanning career just for kicks as enraptured, raw-throated crowds cheer on. Jetting into Australia for Soundwave, the confidante and doom-driven acolyte of Ozzy Osbourne shoots straight from the hip laying down some real talk for y’all about spirituality, strange times and the Shatner. You’d expect nothing less from the fearless leader of the famed Black Label Order, leading the wounded cult of rock n’ roll back into the darkness.

Read more at the AU Review.

Article: The Recess of Electoral Education (Onya Magazine)

What are the most important subjects taught to our children in primary school? Mathematics. History. English. Foreign Languages. Politics. If you thought the last subject felt out of place, you aren’t alone. During my time at a state primary school in the South Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, politics was a barely touched upon subject – I scarcely recalled learning about the separation of powers or the Australian Federation until at least the intermediate years of high school. Although it didn’t deter me from higher studies of politics at VCE and tertiary levels, it would seem an exception to the rule. In Australia it’s compulsory to vote in elections – another exception to worldwide democratic norms – but are we afforded a suitable introduction to our vital institutions, civil society and its processes to make an informed decision from a young age and into maturity? What is meant by “political literacy” in 2011?

Read more at Onya Magazine.

The Top 10 Metal of 2011 - #1

Hauled over the shoulders of a dark priest, we're carried off in the moonlight to a cathedral of magick and ritual, overseen by the minions of Satan himself...

 #1

Ghost - Opus Eponymous

Ghost are like their namesake. They dress in Emerald robes fashioned by Satanic brotherhoods. The silences in between their notes are haunted by an all-consuming darkness all their own. The band are like a dark cabal seething timeless doom and chilling, merciless melody; their "self-titled" record a triumph of occult practicing, retro loving dark rock masters. It’s not like they’ve rummaged though boxes of dusty Nazareth or Free records from the 70s and purloined riffs in the vain hope no-one will notice (thanks for nothing, Opeth); Opus sounds like a fresh, new record; not some kind of hackneyed early 70s hand-me-down. Harder still is to imagine that their hymns like Satan Prayer are tongue-in-cheek homage to scheming cartoon devils, when they (and who really knows who they are – their identities are shrouded in complete secrecy) chant “Hear our Satan Prayer/ anti-Nicene creed” over simple martial beats of drum and shuddering bass, the tunes burrowing themselves into our minds so effortlessly. 

Like brothers in arms they invoke the insidious Mercyful Fate spirit in Elizabeth, our gloried gossamer-throated vocalist's (who?!!) herniated cries to the long departed Ms. Bathory as devotional as it will ever sound. They don’t even care for convention, especially on the pulsating Ritual; the band joins in harmony to finish the chorus, yet they loathe even waiting to start the first line of verse – but it works so damn well it’s impossible to fault them; especially that confident, fluid bluesy soloing to close the track out.

Though completely out of place, the genuinely beautiful closer Genesis is packed full of freewheeling synthesizer and acoustic flourishes, like looking through a prog rock glass darkly. Black metal has engorged and exhausted itself on providing listeners with “maximum Satan” through faster blast beats, more pompous lyrical posturing and a pleading insistence that their work is art, dammit, art! If you hear their cover of the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun, it’s worth the price of admission alone. Ghost have reworked it into a black mass hymn abounding with organ hits and phaser-driven guitars marching at a funereal pace, grandly building as a chorus of ghouls harmoniously sing those immortal words; “Sun, sun, sun, here we come,” submerging them in inky blackness. Proceedings end with an abrupt halt as their gargantuan organ reverberates to a thunderous close.

The irony aside, Ghost eschews all that pretentious bullshit that’s accumulated and ossified the black metal scene; Ghost have unleashed a truly remarkable debut metal record upon this cruel world. The black gauntlet has been thrown, the torch bared, the keepers of which are true heirs of the cult of metal. All hail, Ghost!

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The Top Metal of 2011
#1 - Ghost - Opus Eponymous
#2 - Insomnium - One for Sorrow

#3 - 40 Watt Sun - The Inside Room

#4 - Mercenary - Metamorphosis

#5 - Devin Townsend Project - Deconstruction
#6 - Mastodon - The Hunter

#7 - Fair to Midland - Arrows and Anchors

#8 - Primordial - Redemption at the Puritan's Hand

#9 - Hammers of Misfortune - 17th Street

#10 - The Black Dahlia Murder - Ritual

The Honorable Mentions

Gold Award: Amorphis - The Beginning of Times
Silver Award: Within Temptation - The Unforgiving
Bronze Award: Anthrax - Worship Music