old man gloom

Quickies: Big news from Century Media, Sanctuary’s new guitarist, and more!

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Only one more work day stands between me and… Behemoth (and friendship. Happy, Dan?). Hmmm. This is a good situation.

That’s some creepy shit. Track is called “The Lash”.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”

– Corey

Live. Love. Plow. Horns Up. 

Album Review: Sumac – “The Deal”

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sumac

As I was reading about metal supergroup Sumac’s new debut album, The Deal, I was thinking: we often reduce what a band sounds like to a mere math problem. There’s one member who’s also in a hardcore band, one who used to be in a sludge band, and one in a doom metal band. And, as press releases often breathlessly claim, the band they’re all in together sounds like a mixture of those styles. Groundbreaking! So what happens when your math problem consists of Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom), Brian Cook (Russian Circles, These Arms Are Snakes), and Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists)? Does the proven skill of the combined musicians ensure that the music will be greater than the sum of its parts? Continue reading →

Album Review: Keeper / Sea Bastard Split

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Clocking in at 34 minutes for two songs, this transatlantic split record from California’s Keeper and the U.K.’s Sea Bastard will please fans of plodding, evil doom metal. It sounds like the two bands are competing to see who can stretch out their song more, as one side of the split is slow and the other is…slower. Both sides of the album meditate on the same riff for eight to ten minutes at a time, turning it over, inspecting it, wringing out every bit of feeling they can from it. It takes patience to listen to this split, but it’s worth it. Continue reading →

Quickies: Steel Panther plays Kimmel, Alice in Chains playing NFC Championship, and GODDAMMIT PSYCHO CALIFORNIA

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It’s Friday! Time to cap off probably the busiest week we’ve ever had here at Horns Up—with some Quickies! Here’s what we missed in the metal world today:

  • It’s times like these that I hate living on the East Coast: check out the lineup for this year’s Psycho California festival. Sleep. Earth. Pallbearer. Old Man Gloom. Wo Fat. Goddammit. (That last one isn’t a band, but wouldn’t it be cool if it was??)
  • Need a nice kick in the ass to start your weekend? Check out the new Morgoth track “Black Enemy.” Oh yeah, the guys also announced a new album, Ungod, which will drop in April.
  • Alice in Chains will be performing at the halftime show of Sunday’s NFC Championship game, which is really great news if you’re actually going to be at the game! (And really “who-gives-a-fuck-they-won’t-show-a-non-Super-Bowl-halftime-show-on-TV-anyway” news if you’re not!)
  • After an eternity’s worth of development under Paramount and MTV, the film adaptation of Mötley Crüe‘s autobiography, The Dirt, is switching studios and will now be a Focus Features joint. You know, as if it’ll ever actually come to fruition anyway…
  • And finally, here’s footage of Steel Panther‘s performance on last night’s edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live:

Kinda lolarious how out-of-sync the audio is with the visuals in this YouTube upload. GOOD JOB, KIMMEL TEAM! Anyway, that’ll wrap things up for tonight. A happy long-weekend to you all!

-Dan

Live. Love. Plow. Horns Up.

Daily ‘Bang: Dan’s Top 25 Albums of 2014 — in One List!

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HornsUpTop25

So remember a week ago, when I said we’d each be listing out our Top 25 albums in a single, coherent list? (You know, to make amends for the three-a-day-on-the-blog, plus three-three-and-then-four in our three most recent episodes of the podcast approach that we ended up going with?) Welp, with the holidays coming around, that became a bit of a tall order. But fear not, a week later, here are my Top 25 albums of 2014, listed out in a normal fashion!

— TOP FOUR —

Panopticon – Roads to the North

Cretin – Stranger

Behemoth – The Satanist

Triptykon – Melana Chasmata

— REST OF THE TOP 10 (ORDERED) —

Agalloch – The Serpent and the Sphere

Pallbearer – Foundations of Burden

Allegaeon – Elements of the Infinite

Sólstafir – Ótta

Winterfylleth – The Divination of Antiquity

Tombs – Savage Gold

— REST OF THE LIST (UNORDERED) —

Alraune – The Process of Self Immolation

Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

YOB – Clearing the Path to Ascend

Primordial – Where Greater Men Have Fallen

The Atlas Moth – The Old Believer

Inter Arma – The Cavern

Thou – Heathen

 Saor – Aura

Devin Townsend Project – Z²

Earth – Primitive and Deadly

Thantifaxath – Sacred White Noise

Old Man Gloom – The Ape of God

Godflesh – A World Lit Only By Fire

Misery Index – The Killing Gods

Steel Panther – All You Can Eat

—

I’m leaving to catch a bus, so I didn’t really have time to Spotify all of these. The good news is: I’m sorry! And also, we’ve embedded these playlists before. So if you haven’t heard any of these yet, for whatever reason, look ’em up in our archives and give ’em a spin. Corey will be back with his Top 25 list later today, so keep eyes peeled. Until then!

-Dan

Live. Love. Plow. Horns Up.