360: Cemetery Skyline

Dreams of Consciousness Podcast Episode 360 features an interview with Santeri Kallio of Cemetery Skyline.

[cover photo by Sam Jamsen]

Watch on Youtube

Listen on Youtube Music

Listen on Apple Podcasts (IOS)

Direct Download [right click + "Save As"]

Winter '98 [Mixtape 35]

The Crown • Sacrilege • Dark Tranquillity • Edge of Sanity • Ceremonial Oath • The Haunted
In Flames • Dawn • At The Gates • Eucharist • Dan Swanö • Opeth • Hypocrisy

Direct Download [right click + "Save As"]

Best of 2013: Challenging the Orthodoxy

Best of 2013 by Adrian Sol on Mixcloud

Gorguts - Colored Sands

Here's an honest confession: I bought Gorguts' Obscura when it came out, and didn't understand it for years. I appreciated it for its strangeness, and I sung the album's praises to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen, but Luc Lemay's intent and execution were beyond anything I'd heard or could wrap my head around at the time.

Likewise, on Colored Sands, Gorguts present a death metal album quite unlike any that have come before it. It's a work of astounding depth and craftsmanship, taking preconceived notions of prog, tech, and brutal death and throwing them out the window to attain a unique and mature vision of the genre that will stand as a high water mark for years to come. I'm not going to pretend I'm any closer to fully understanding Gorguts, but I've never been so at peace with befuddlement.

Highlights: An Ocean of Wisdom, Enemies of Compassion, Absconders

Deicide - In the Minds of Evil

Deicide has been wildly inconsistent since their 90's heyday. Like a formerly great fighter alternating between wins and losses, you never know what you're going to get from their albums these days. Well, I'm happy to report that their latest is solidly in the "win" column. In The Minds of Evil spices up the meat-and-potatoes approach of the band's early years with vicious hooks and just a hint of experimenting with new sounds. Other than that, it's fucking Deicide, unabashed haters of Christ and servants of Satan. What more do you need?


Highlights: Beyond Salvation, Even the Gods Can Bleed, Kill The Light of Christ

Dark Tranquillity - Construct

At this point the most long-lived and dependable of the Gothenberg bands, Dark Tranquillity continue making stellar albums that take their love for florid melodies into new directions. Boldly entwining keyboards and Michael Stanne's New Wave-ish vocals with their melodic death metal, Construct is a treat for those of us who have both Kreator and Depeche Mode on our iPods.

Highlights: Endtime Hearts, Uniformity, Immemorial

Ulcerate - Vermis

Like Gorguts, Ulcerate have deconstructed the death metal paradigm to arrive at a vision that keeps some of the genre's intrinsic hallmarks (blastbeats, growling) and ignores its more obvious cliches. Vermis shows that death metal's territory is too vast to be policed, and heretics like Ulcerate roam its far borders challenging the orthodoxy. Let the retro bandwagon take heed and be wary.

Highlights: Vermis, Weight of Emptiness, The Imperious Weak

Cult of Luna - Vertikal

Cult of Luna have been solidifying their position at the top of the doomcore heap for almost a decade now; Vertikal is an accomplished work with elements of kraut rock, prog, and psychedelia adding texture to its sombre and oppressive palate. Whatever influence Cult of Luna took from Isis or Neurosis in the past, they are now those bands' equal.

Highlights: I: The Weapon, Vicarious Redemption, Synchronicity

Necrophobic - Womb of Lilithu

Necrophobic have been an undeniable (if largely unsung) pillar of black metal's second wave, with solid releases stretching over two decades. Womb of Lilithu expands on their hallmarks of blistering speed and frozen melodies with a symphonic flourish that occasionally makes the album sound like a Satanic metal opera. While most eyes were on Watain and their traveling E-Coli sideshow, Necrophobic snuck in with the best black metal album of 2013.

Highlights: Astaroth, Furfur, The Necromancer

Demonical - Darkness Unbound 

Sometime last year, for the first time since Entombed introduced the 15 year old me to the wonder of Swedish death metal, I had had enough of the style. The onslaught of second rate bands flaunting their HM-2 pedals and lack of creativity seemed to mark the end of my interest in the NWOOSDM, and few recent albums seemed to interest me. Luckily, Demonical reappeared to remind me why I loved the style so much. Driven by hooks and a blackened strain of melody, Darkness Unbounds wisely makes sure the Riff holds more importance than any distortion pedal. With no clear successor to Dismember in sight and their peers overly comfortable with wallowing in old school pandering, Demonical deserve to rise to the top of the heap.

Highlights: Healing Control, Contempt and Conquest, Hellfire Empire

deafheaven - Sunbather

The black metal album all your indie friends are talking about. The post rock and shoegaze elements may endear deafheaven to Pitchfork types, but don't hold that against them. Mixing shoegaze with black metal is not exactly new, but where deafheaven really shine is the way they use those elements to create atmosphere. Like the best black metal albums, Sunbather takes you on a journey, one with unexpected twists and turns.

Highlights: Sunbather, Vertigo, The Pecan Tree

Sepultura - The Mediator Between Head and Hands
Must Be the Heart

It can't be easy for Sepultura. Somehow Derrick Greene hasn't accrued the same kind of defenders as, say, Dio-era Sabbath, and the band's popularity has waned except with the die-est of die-hards; and even those would prefer a reunion with Max and Igor back at the helm. Once one of the most important metal bands in the world, the albums since their infamous split have alternated between decent and disappointing, with few memorable moments. Maybe that's why The Mediator is such a surprise; somehow finding a way to make the cerebral death-thrash of Arise co-exist with the wild experimentation of Roots, Sepultura came out swinging at naysayers with possibly their heaviest album in years. The writing may be on the wall for this iteration of Sepultura, but the band seem unwilling to go gentle into that good night, and I for one couldn't be happier.

Highlights: The Vatican, Obsessed, The Age Of The Atheist

Sabazius - The Descent of Man

I probably spent more time listening to this album than any other released this year - and I don't think I listened to it all the way through more than once. No other extreme metal band strove to challenge the status quo and top their past accomplishments like Sabazius. At over 11 hours long, The Descent of Man is less about catharsis and more like an endurance test, taking doom and drone to misanthropic, mind numbing depths. Part performance piece, part musical prank, it's the apex for slow and heavy music. For now.

Highlights: Cranking the volume to make your neigbours think they have tinnitus. Causing music critics to rethink their profession. Listening to the whole thing in one sitting and emerging from the other side with your sanity intact.

The Ten in 2010

Dark Tranquillity - We Are The Void
It's no secret that Dark Tranquillity have a weakness for synthpop, and their latest album skews in that direction more often than not, leading to accusations that they've lost their balls. Prone as I am to resentment, I've taken criticism of modern Dark Tranquillity to heart. I have to say, though, of all the stuff I've heard this year, nothing has stuck with me as much or as well. Void is at times shamelessly commercial, proving that metal can be melodic and catchy, while still being intelligent and heavy. But DT also throw the listener for a loop with 2 songs of blackened doom ("Iridium" and "Arkangelisk") that are as bleak and epic as anything that Satyricon have written. And of course there's that title track, a neckwrecking 4 minutes that rivals the best of Character in sheer thrashing power. For a band with an already stellar discography, We Are The Void is a fine addition, and one that I'm confident will still hold up in 5 years.


Unleashed - As Yggdrassil Trembles
"VIKING DEATH METAL!" Johnny Hedlund informs us, and there's no arguing with him, since Unleashed 2010 give Amon Amarth a run for their money as Valhalla's house band. As Yggdrassil Trembles completely changed my perception of Unleashed; as I've written about previously, they were previously the Swedish death metal band that mattered least to me, and who I characterized as an also ran that paled in comparison to the rest of the Stockholm scene. Well, I've since reversed my position, because this album simply SMOKES; brutal, concise, and ending with a fantastic cover of Death's "Evil Dead," it puts the recent albums by Dismember and Grave to shame. It's rare that a single album forces you to reassess a band's entire catalog, but that's what AYT has forced me to do. The best part is I'm still only halfway through.


Agalloch - Marrow of the Spirit
Even platitudes from hipster-centric Pitchfork and Stereogum couldn't shame me away from this album. Though Agalloch's new post-rock inclinations are jarring at first, eventually they make perfect sense. Featuring Amber Asylum/Giant Squid/Grayceon cellist Jackie Perez Gratz (who knows a thing or two about mutating strains of metal), Marrow of the Spirit takes USBM from tremolo guitars and blastbeats into the realm where single notes ring the loudest. If you ever wondered what the Red Sparrowes would sound like crossed with Opeth, wonder no further.


Keep of Kalessin - Reptillian
In a year that featured solid albums by both Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir, the title of "best symphonic black metal album" belongs to the Keep. What these guys lack in costumes and a video budget, they more than make up in their songwriting prowess and stellar musicianship. And balls, huge, dragon-sized balls: witness their bid to take the song "Dragontower" to the top of the European pop competition Eurovision: They made it as far as the Semi-finals. For a black metal band that spends their time writing songs instead of gussying around in silly costumes, that's huge, and "Dragontower" isn't even the best part of the album.


Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini
In contrast to the sometimes directionless Vertebrae, Axioma Ethica Odini is fantastically direct, and possibly the best Enslaved album since Isa. Axioma is the sound of black metal in 2010, of Vikings embracing a new kind of epic, of prog without the wanking connotations, and of space rock without the lazy stoner vibe. If I ever get chosen to defend the Rylan Star League from the Ko-Dar armada, I can only hope that this album is playing as I take on the mother ship. I'm not sure where Odin fits in to all this, but no doubt the All-Father is listening to Enslaved as he puffs on his pipe and rides through the sky.


Kataklysm - Heaven's Venom
Some bands reinvent, while others merely retool, and there's no doubt that Kataklysm belong to the Bolt Thrower school of "just like the last one, but with different songs." These French-Canadians sometimes come off like a death metal Hatebreed, alternating between chunky moshpit-baiting riffs and blasting melodic death sections. It can get a little samey, and the band seem aware of this, as Heaven's Venom shows them taking slow shuffling steps towards maturity, especially on the epic "Suicide River. In a year sadly bereft of blasting death metal, Kataklysm fill that particular cup for me nicely.


All Out War - Into the Killing Fields
This album is on my top ten because, unlike any other album I heard this year, I was compelled to get up and dance in my kitchen when I first heard it. That, my friends, is sway. Though I rarely listen to hardcore anymore, this album fired me up and took me back to my early 20's when the words "metal + core" had only the pleasant connotations of dogpiles and circle pits. Gloriously pissed off, thugged out, and wielding Slayer riffs like machetes, All Out War are the soundtrack to a bar brawl post-apocalypse.


Killing Joke - Absolute Dissent
While not as earthshaking as their 2002 self-titled album (featuring closet metalhead Dave Grohl), Absolute Dissent is still a modern post-punk masterpiece. Killing Joke are perhaps the only band capable of veering from metal to reggae to synthpop while still retaining their heaviness. Among the albums many gems is "The Raven King," a touching, appropriately bass-driven 7 minute tribute to their recently deceased four-stringer Paul Raven. The pied pipers of industrial malaise, Killing Joke have crafted the perfect soundtrack to dancing into the darkness.


Evocation - Apocalyptic
The wheel keeps turning, and as the gritty overdriven sound of Stockholm death metal comes back into style, there will be an inevitable hankering for the particular brand of searing melodicism that flooded out of Gothenberg in the mid-90s. Enter Evocation, who have stripped down their songcraft till nothing remains but catchy hooks that dig through your ears into your skull and won't let go. Though these days I prefer my death metal rawer and more blasting, Evocation took me back to my late teens when the likes of Sacrilege, Ebony Tears, and Ceremonial Oath were dominating my cd player. Though I'm intensely critical of revivalism, Apocalyptic won me over by being a death metal album from Gothenberg that reminded me why, 13 years ago, that used to be my favourite type.



Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here
No album has confounded my expectations this year like Anathema's We're Here Because We're Here. In the 8 years that they've been gone, Anathema have taken their love for Pink Floyd from their doom metal mantle and lovingly wrapped it around a piano-centric pop dress form that can be described as Coldplay-esque. That's right, Coldplay. At times, it gets gratingly Disney, but goddamn it, when it works (as on the luscious opening track "Thin Air") it's disarmingly moving. And more often than not, it does work. Before you run screaming in the other direction yelling "sell-out," spare a thought for poor Anathema; in this year of progged-out post-black, it should be remembered that these guys were one of the first extreme metal bands to take the chance and stride over those spaced out waters, almost 17 years ago. Though their current relationship to metal can be described as tangential at best, it's still an album I'm glad Anathema were at long last able to finish. Hopefully, it won't be the album that finishes Anathema.

Top Ten Albums of 2007

This was originally written and posted on my Myspace blog (the Special Olympics of blogging). I've decided to include it here for posterity's sake. Apologies for the sub-Hunter S. Thompson rambling. Wish I could say I've come a long way since then.

Anaal Nathrakh - Hell Is Empty And All The Devils Are Here
Upgrading one-dimensional necro blast into the best 3rd (or is it 4th?) wave black metal record ever - grindcore bluster with ICS Vortex choruses. The principle of mysanthropy made awesome.


Dodheimsgard - Supervillain Outcast
Forget Dillinger Escape Plan and their radio friendly pandering. The mighty DHG take extreme metal into strange new places, boldly going where no svartmetal heroes have gone before.


Machine Head - The Blackening
With a pedigree extending to three classic thrash bands (Vio-lence, Forbidden, Sacred Reich), Flynn and co. finally drop the umlauts and run circles around the kids on their latest bandwagon.


Behemoth - The Apostasy
Death metal anthems. Fists in the air, double pedal to the metaaaaaaarghl. Credit Behemoth for singlehandedly keeping death metal interesting without resorting to cheap gimmicks.


Dark Tranquility - Fiction
Projector/Haven in its ambition and huge choruses, sliding back and forth between Gothenberg and just plain goth. DT were always the classiest of the NWOSDM, and have never released a bad album, ever.


High on Fire - Death is the Communion
If Mastodon are the Rush of hipster metal, then High on Fire are Motorhead - amps to 11, riffs so huge they block out the sun, and vocals that are more Lemmy than Lemmy. It's like a magic space rock that gives those who touch it the knowledge and power to crush all lesser monkeys.


Reverend Bizarre - III So Long Suckers
Typical. I discover the greatest doom band ever just as they break up.


PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Shut up, this rules.


Naglfar - Harvest
Sailing off to Ragnarok in no particular hurry, mid-paced and melodic black metal that's not afraid to just rock. Like a mix of old Dissection and new Darkthrone, except way better than either.


Killwhitneydead - Nothing Less, Nothing More
Deathcore that's stupid and awesome in equal measures, referencing swedish deathrock, Rob Halford, and meshuggah in their onslaught. Never tedious, always brutal, and definitely better than the new Red Chord. The well-placed movie samples make everything just a little better.

OTHERS
Best Song Title:
Cephalic Carnage - "Let them Hate So Long As They Fear"
First runner up: Death Breath - "Giving Head to the Dead"

C'mon, they're not THAT bad:
Job for a Cowboy

If I were a superhero, this would be my theme song:
Transformers OST, "No Sacrifice, No Victory".

Better late than never:
Public Enemy - Yo! Bumrush the Show
Botch - American Nervoso

Released last year, but blew me away this year:
Gwynnbleid  - Amarathine