Iron Dogs - Free And Wild (Iron Bonehead)

Heavy fucking metal stripped down early 80s style. Fist pumping NWOBHM headbanging heavy metal. If you're into stuff like High Spirits, Slough Feg and Manilla Road then you can't go wrong.

The Fierce And The Dead - Spooky Action

80s King Crimson meets The Raincoats meets Sleepytime Gorilla Museum?

Satanic Dystopia - Double Denim Shotgun Massacre

Another bit of heavy metal for Live Evil. One of Fenriz's bands of the week so that's a somewhat trustworthy seal of approval. Raw thrashings.

Midnight - Satanic Royalty (Hell's Headbangers)

Bought this a while back but never got round to reviewing it. Posting it now as I'm off to see them at Live Evil fest. Midnight are in the vein of Venom/Bathory/Judas Priest etc. Heavy fucking metal.

some brilliant recent albums......

.....that aren't available on FLAC.

I'd be more than happy to pay cash money for FLAC versions of these recordings. I'm sat here with my wallet open ready to give the bands & labels money.

Anyway, these bands come highly recommended:-

CALIFORNIA X - s/t (Don Giovanni Records)



I think this is my most played album this year. Fucking amazing. Best bits of Dinosaur Jr but with a slightly rougher punk sound. Sounded good on first listen and since then these songs have become embedded in my head.

You know when several bits on an album make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up? That!! Also, when you involuntarily start air guitaring in the street when you've got your headphones on. That too.

I can absolutely guarantee that if you're into an old American indie rock stuff like Dinosaur Jr, Husker Du, Superchunk, Pixies, Wipers, Replacements, Smashing Pumpkins and all the rest of it then you will fall in love with this album.

---

DEAD LORD - GOODBYE REPENTANCE (High Roller Records)



Thin fucking Lizzy! Everyone loves Thin Lizzy.

Plenty of great 70s rock revival bands in recent years. However, most go with the heavier end like Black Sabbath or for the more obscure heavy end (you need to check out Kadavar and their Sir Lord Baltimore worship!). Rise Above are putting out loads of the good ones.

Dead Lord go in for Thin Lizzy worship and damn it's good. They totally get that killer twin guitar sound. Great tunes as well.

Video above is from the 7" that came out last year. Great song with an amazing video.

---

ENFORCER - DEATH BY FIRE (Nuclear Blast)



Ripping NWOBHM style heavy metal from Sweden with a bit of thrash/speed metal going on as well.

Iron Fist magazine gave it album of the issue and those folk have got impeccable taste in metal.

---

EIEFITS - s/t 7" (Mangrove Records)



Raging punk from Japan. Ex-Lipcream and Forward. Kind of mixes up the raw metal guitar solo Burning Spirits sound with a 77 punk female vocal sound.

Japanese lyrics (foreign lyrics always a plus for punk bands in my book). So yeah, kind of sounds like one of those awesome 80s Japanese hardcore bands covering old 77 punk tunes.

Black Magician - Nature Is The Devil's Church

Black Magician seem to have cast a spell taking doom back to the time when it meant folk with long hair and flares listening to Cathedral. When mushroom freaks like Acrimony would be given column inches in Terrorizer. Y'know, when being into doom meant you were into 70s rock by default.

This sounds like it could have been released by Hellhound Records many moons ago. Or Rise Above for that matter.

The thing that really sets Black Magician apart is their use of the organ. Come on, who the hell doesn't like a good bit of fuzzy 70s organ? Brings to mind things like Jacula and other obscurities.

They're not afraid to break out of the doom crawl tempo either. The end of Four Thieves Vinegar brings the tmepo right up for a head banging march to the end. The organ is going full pelt as well. Doesn't sound much like Deep Purple but it does kind of remind you of the way the organ goes wild on things like Highway Star.

Basically, this is the real deal when it comes to doom. Loads of Black Sabbath and other old-fashioned doom riffage, fuzzy organs, long hair, hammer horror-esque lyrics about medieval england, flares, skulls. The song writing is spot on and so si the production.

It's everything you want in a doom album.

Serpentine Path - s/t

Well the single was bloody excellent - http://spoonfuloftar.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/serpentine-path-erebusdepravity-7.html

The whole album is even better. This is going to take several months to sink in fully but I think it's going to join Pallbearer and Krallice as the best metal albums of the year. There's a ton of stuff going on under the surface that'll take a while to reveal itself.

Straight away it sounds great. Continuing the doom-y riffs that Unearthly Trance had including the uniqueness. Fantastic grasp of structure and dynamics etc that separate them completely and utterly from the generic sludge crowd.

The Royal Arch Blaspheme - II

This is as filthy, necro, satanic, ugly, thrashy and metal as fuck of a release as you could ever dream of hearing.

After polluting minds and corrupting souls with their self-titled debut album, THE ROYAL ARCH BLASPHEME return to wage war on the holy with the cryptic “II.” Once again the vision of PROFANATICA guitarist/songwriter John Gelso and KRIEG mastermind N. Imperial but now expanded into a full lineup, THE ROYAL ARCH BLASPHEME's highly anticipated "II" expands upon ideas from their original template: the primitivism is cruder, the sludge more volcanic, the blasphemy more vile, the production fuller and more devastating. What results is sickened (and sickening) miasma of black metal filth that only THE ROYAL ARCH BLASPHEME can create... bow down in obeisance.

Pay Homage and Worship!
 

Thawed Out -s/t LP

Do you like later Black Flag when they bunged in some deranged solos and slowed down? You bloody well should. My War Side Two is clearly better than First Four Years.

Thawed Out aren't quite into MWS2 territory just yet. There's some Void and United Mutation going on in there as well. For modern bands think Mob Rules and some of that Katorga Works Records stuff.

You can buy the LP from Shogun Records. They've been putting some stuff like Nasa Space Universe so you know they've got taste.

Slightly awkwardly to download the whole LP you have to go to two different place. The link above has Side A of the LP with 4 new songs. Side 2 is the Thawed Out demo which can be downloaded here - http://eatabookrecords.bandcamp.com/album/thawed-out-demo-cassette

Serpentine Path - Erebus/Depravity 7"

Essentially this is Unearthly Trance reborn. Someone from Ramasses/Electric Wizard is involved as well.

Stupidly Unearthly Trance kind of passed me by at the time. I was under the impression they were just an identikit doom band. Cursing myself for not finding out sooner that they were in fact pretty damn unique with a bunch of other influences.

This seems to carry on quite well from Unearthly Trance. Doom that crawls along at a snail's pace but unusual in structure.

$2 for a 7" worth of music is also very reasonable.

Dawnbringer - Into The Lair Of The Sun God

This is heavy metal. As in heavy fucking metal. As in false don't entry on pain of being burned and died.

Not only is it heavy fucking metal it's heavy fucking metal on Profound Lore. What else needs saying?

Uzala - s/t

Any normal year and this would win doom album of the year easily enough. Unfortunately for Uzala, Pallbearer decided to drop their masterpiece this year. Nevermind, you can still buy two great doom albums in one year can't you.

The vinyl is out on At War With False Noise and is an example of exactly how to do an LP. Proper old-style thick card sleeves like they used to do in the 50s/60s. Super heavyweight vinyl. Thick innersleeve and great artwork which has been drawn specifically for the record. Oh, and great tunes too.

Musically I think doom might not be an accurate description. I think we can go back to heavy metal for this lot. For the most part they kick along with the Sabbath but there's also occasional hints at fuzzy black metal, NWOBHM and almost straight up punk. Wardrums, which kicks off the second side, even has hints of Killing Joke. It's all one sound though and not just disparate parts glued together. It all fits.

The sound of the recording is also great. It's got that warm but raw sound of proper old metal. All the instruments are completely clear and it's not muddy at all but there's no horrid studio polish thrown everywhere. I wouldn't be suprised if you told me they'd got a wizened old analogue recording expert to drag a vintage 8 track recorder down to the practice room.

I like the way that the male and female vocal parts complement each other as well. She's got a bit of gravel in her voice and he's not just barking.

The tunes also get stuck in your head and have loads of hidden ideas that appear after a few listens. First time round it didn't quite grab me but then you quickly get it. Certainly not a one-dimensional doom band just throwing out the standard obvious riffs for cheap kudos. It's fully steeped in underground guitar music history and Uzala will still be talked about (and, no doubt, the members will still be digging underground metal) long after the current crop of sounds-like-a-copy-of-current-popular-metal-band bands have departed.