The Sea & Cake have successfully been filed under guilty pleasures.

Repeat listens of the new Black Elk and Dianogah. Fucking awesome. I've also been spinning UT's Electrocution a fair bit as of late. Again, magnificent stuff.

Heard Will Stronger Than Death by Graveland and liked it a good deal. Ages back, GK had sent me a CD-R by these guys and while I generally enjoyed his reccomendations, this one left me very cold. The music was some occasionally interesting quasi-martial jangling but the vocalist was a total deal killer; sounding like a goat shitting out its intestines. After a very positive review on DC, I thought I'd revisit these guys since my tolerance levels for more primitive production values has increased considerably over the last three years or so. This album is pretty damn good. It's slightly more conventional sounding than the one i'd heard before (I've forgotten what it was called) and Rob D sounds less goatlike and more like Attila from Mayhem. The songs play out a tad clumsily during the tempo changes - i'm told they use a drum machine and not a drummer - but for all that, it sounds very impressive in a droning lo-fi wall of fuzz and noise manner.

Also revisited Into the now by Tesla, daring it to impress me. If it didn't I'd have put it up for sale/trade. While the problems I had with the album when I heard it the first couple of times still exist - no memorable solos and an album that's at least four songs too long - the good parts more than justify keeping this. Also Forever Bore has permanently etched itself as the weakest Tesla album ever and Into the Now is borderline genius compared to that album.

Haven't heard Graveland in years. Should check this album out one of these days. Still been listening to the new albums by Lamp of Thoth and SuperHeavyGoatAss both of which are just really solid and fun albums. Also heard Peter Tagtren's new Pain - Cynic Paradise and it's a really shitty album. Synth heavy psuedo industrial with melodies that are very euro-pop and riffs that seem ripped off from Rammstein, Paradise Lost and FLA. This is some really weak limp dick shit. Also heard Grey - Sisters of the Wyrd. Grey is an all girl doom trio that specialises in some seriously heavy sludgy doom with some weird but well suited vocal harmonies. Good stuff over all.

Lots of great music happening. One occasionally gets into these phases where everything one obtains is gold and I'm in one of the best of those. Heard the self-titled Jerusalem apparently a short lived metal act of the 70s produced by Ian Gillan. The Purple influence is quite palpable along with a LOT of Sabbath and occasionally even a bit of The Doors. This album is heavy as fuck by the way. When I heard Primitive Man for the first time, my hair literally stood on end. Fucking brilliant and a must-get for most of the people on this board.

Also the self titled album by the rather plainly named Elder - psychedelic doom that doesn't take it easy on the psychedelic part of the descriptor. This is bone crunchingly heavy with a fairly innovative approach to the genre. Some tastefully used keyboards and the occasional acoustic guitar solo. And fucking brilliant riffs - you've heard em all before, but its unlikely they've sounded this good. Also a vocalist who sings and has a passably decent voice for the genre - not like that squawker from The Sword.

Between these, Efendi's Garden, Lamb of Thoth and Graveland this has been a very impressive fortnight.

Was playing Nebula's To The Center today. Awesome album.. I like how it has slight leanings towards grunge/alternative rock while most of the time lurking in bluesy stoner/psych territory.

Godlfesh - Selfless
Intronaut - Prehistoricisms
Goatsnake - Dog Days EP

HathyaSaiBaba wrote:
Lots of great music happening. One occasionally gets into these phases where everything one obtains is gold and I'm in one of the best of those. Heard the self-titled Jerusalem apparently a short lived metal act of the 70s produced by Ian Gillan. The Purple influence is quite palpable along with a LOT of Sabbath and occasionally even a bit of The Doors. This album is heavy as fuck by the way. When I heard Primitive Man for the first time, my hair literally stood on end. Fucking brilliant and a must-get for most of the people on this board.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Absolutely, one of the best rock albums ever. "Hooded Eagle"! And the vocalist is bloody great, I think. Nothing spectacular about his voice or anything, but it just sounds like he put absolutely everything into it. ("Primitive Man" being especially noteworthy on that count).

Just heard Chinese Democracy for the first time and it's not bad but there's a plastic artificial feel to these songs and Axl's voice is completely gone. Like a million times worse than what it was on The Spaghetti Incident. There are 14 songs on the album and I can't remember even one of them 10 minutes after finishing the album. Some of the guitar parts are alright and like Ravi said, some of the stuff sounds like a Buckethead album with vocals and overall it's not the complete piece of shit that I was expecting but it's still pretty bad.

Heard The Dividing Line by SSS and the band seem stuck in a holding pattern. The ST influences have toned down in favour of a The Exploited meets DRI feel and overall sounds alright but not particularly great. Still pretty derivative but its 20 songs in 32 minutes and I can't really complain except that the band is yet to master the art of writing memorable choruses.
Elder's self titled debut was okay, A bit too downer for my current mood. Then heard this really cool Finnish band Blake and their new album Sa7urnus which was somewhere between Mustach and Volbeat. Good fun. Iron Thrones - Visions of Light was a very good take on Opeth circa Blackwater Park. Derivative to an extent but the band does manage to keep things interesting and they keep the songs reasonably short. A band to watch out for. Then finally heard the self titled debut from My Uncle The Wolf which turned out to be terribly sloppy, amateurish and derivative stoner/ southern heavy rock. It has Jimmy Bower playing bass and producing and I'll probably give it another shot but first impression was really fuckall.

Still tripping on the new Jarboe, Lamp of Thoth and Blake albums but heard this very cool band called Relicts from Turkmenistan and their 12 on the Richter Scale album is quite awesome. A crazy mix of black metal, death and thrash with some folk interludes and very complex songwriting. The new one from Russian tech death crew Heironymos Bosch is like a dirtier and slightly better take on Quo Vadis and sounds damn good. The songs get a bit too long though. Finally, heard the new Dir En Grey and while they have sort of stayed away from their older visual kei style in favour of a more prog-thrash-death approach the songs have a tendency to go gay very quickly. The album's got some great parts but too many parts that are just gay.

Went to NLS last night and saw P-man's Khiladi which was the most fun band I've seen play NLS in years. Then saw Inner Sanctum and these guys were damn good. Apart from one slightly iffy breakdown the set rocked and they had a nice wall of sound going for them. Unbelievable that they didn't get into the finals and completely homosexual shit like Chilli Potato and the shitty Metal Messiah did.

Anyway, Warrior Soul has a new album out and in what might be a slightly bizarre case, the album's called Chinese Democracy. It's a good bit better than the Guns N Roses album too. Solid fuzzy hard rock.

Listening to this Atmospheric Sludge/Post-Metal band called Snowblood. Their 2005 output, Being And Becoming is pretty ass-kicking at the moment.

General Knowledge wrote:
Went to NLS last night and saw P-man's Khiladi which was the most fun band I've seen play NLS in years. Then saw Inner Sanctum and these guys were damn good. Apart from one slightly iffy breakdown the set rocked and they had a nice wall of sound going for them. Unbelievable that they didn't get into the finals and completely homosexual shit like Chilli Potato and the shitty Metal Messiah did.
Metal Messiah r0x0rzz!

The only good thing I got out of NLS(apart from the 2k I won):

Went to NLS last night and saw Shruti Hassan and the Extramentals. Kickass backing band. Shruti Hasan is cute but does this Avril Lavigne rock chick thing and has a slightly hard time staying in tune. Pentagram were their usual sucky self.

Chinese Democracy by Warrior Soul is a damn good rock album. This is some really catchy, fuzzy hard rock with proper solos and Corey Clarke sounding damn good. His voice has taken on a more gravely whiskey and cigarettes tone and overall the album's too short but damn good fun till it lasts.This is what the real Chinese Democracy should have sounded like.

Also heard Kiss the Lie by Candiria which is the bands latest. Sounds a bit like Faith No More's Album of the Year in places and overall the band has chilled out a lot and dropped the rap and jazz bits. What's left is a smooth mid paced rock album with the occasional heavy bits and overall sounds pretty good on first listen.

A Perfect Circle - The Outsider - [Thirteenth Step] - [01:03 of 04:06]

Any fans? I like a couple of songs a lot. But some songs are just plain meh-material.

Heard Freedom Metal by Bible of the Devil and my initial impression of these guys being the Scrabby Doo of the metal revival is confirmed. Nothing new on offer, nothing old done particularly well. After this one and Firewater, both of which were by no means bad but just very ordinary, I doubt I'll bother keeping up with them unless one of you guys praises a new release to the skies.

Great old school death/doom.