October is Music Month!

[Shad_]

Well, in my opinion at least.  I've always felt a special connection between this time of year and the folk and metal music that I enjoy most.  For the past five years or so I've taken the opportunity to run a music series on my friend's entertainment blog throughout the month, ranging anywhere from in-depth editorials to a simple "song of the day" sequence.  I didn't plan out anything fancy this year.  I'm just going for a daily song approach and posting whatever happens to strike me in the moment with very little in the way of commentary.  I'm not going to repeat anything I made a single-track post about in previous years, so unfortunately a lot of the songs that mean the most to me are already used up, but I still thought I'd share this year's series with you all.  Maybe you'll find something that you like. 

 

I got a late start and just kicked things off today.  Here's my first entry:

 

Song of the Day (October 8th):

Opeth - The Twilight is My Robe

 

If there's one thing that will draw me back out of obscurity no matter how much work I'm bogged down with, it's Horror season here on [our blog].  As a de facto film blog's one author who pretty much never watches movies, I like to do my part by digging out a mix of tunes appropriate for the season.

This is always the time of year when I stop focusing on new releases and revisit a lot of my metal and folk favorites of old.  From b-side Satanic cheese to authentic pagan anthems to the truly deranged, all the music I love most seems to find a home when that oppressive summer sun gives way to pleasant temperatures and dimming lights.  It's my favorite time of year, and my music collection rises to the occasion.

Opeth is pretty common fair in the textbooks of heavy metal these days, but Mikael Akerfeldt's finest works came before the fame, in my opinion.  Their 1995 debut, Orchid, ranks highest for me.  While Akerfeldt's trademark progressive rock experimentation was present from the get-go, those early albums had a sort of hollow, natural tone to them that lent the band a distinctly folk vibe.  Orchid (and Morningrise) seem to drift through the crisp, foggy air surrounding a lake on the edge of a forest, the sun just beginning to rise over the horizon.  I don't wake up early when I can help it, but if a morning commute is necessary, Opeth always sees a spike in my play count.  The vision that songs like "The Twilight is My Robe" paint is stunningly vivid, and surprisingly peaceful in contrast to Akerfeldt's harsh vocals.

[Shad_]

Song of the Day (October 9th):

Agalloch - Dead Winter Days

 

 

Throughout the 2000s, Agalloch unleashed a series of albums that have influenced countless bands across the metal spectrum. Not only did Ashes Against the Grain (2006) play an enormous role in ushering in the era of post-black metal, but Pale Folklore (1999) pioneered the folk metal aesthetic for a nation whose traditional genres stood leagues apart from the metal scene. (It would be another decade before Austin Lunn nailed a metal interpritation of bluegrass.) Most American folk metal bands carry Agalloch’s stamp of influence with them, and why not? Pale Folklore perfectly captures a sense of melancholy mystery that reflects a land whose native sons were slaughtered, leaving their secrets only a faint whisper in the air.

[Guest]

October is a somber month for me, so i'd listen more to gothic metal than folk metal lol

(old nightwish for example ^.^)

 

i liked Agalloch. Never heard of it before

[Shad_]

Glad you liked it! I suspect you won't care so much for this next one :

 

Song of the Day (October 11th):

Veilburner - Scorched Earth Exorcism

 

 

Well, I started out this series featuring a couple of songs I've been enjoying for the better part of two decades. Here is one I discovered less than a week ago. It's not too often that music successfully creeps me out these days, but I suppose I should have known I was in for a treat when Veilburner were described to me as a bad acid trip.

 

Veilburner are a two-piece band out of the Philadelphia area who just released their first album last year. "Scorched Earth Exorcism" appears on their sophomore follow-up, Noumenon, released this July. (I highly recommend picking up a copy on Bandcamp if this sample track intrigues you.)

 

"Scorched Earth Exorcism" is a great example of this band's unique, psychedelic mix of death and black metal. It's some seriously twisted stuff, and nothing on the album better captures the deranged spirit of the season than the melody that takes over this song around the 4 minute mark. I've been watching AMC's The Walking Dead marathon over the past few days, and I seriously had a dream about hunting zombies with this screwed up tune playing in the background. It was disturbing and awesome.

[Shad_]

Song of the Day (October 12th):

Månegarm – Ur själslig död

 

 

If I asked a random metal fan to name ten folk/viking metal bands, chances are they wouldn't drop Sweden's Månegarm among the contenders. It's a bit odd, considering they've been around since 1995. But besides having a name that isn't entirely easy to reproduce on a standard keyboard, there's no reason to leave "Månegarm" off the list. Their ability to fly under the radar is something I don't really understand; this band has definitely drawn less attention than they deserve over the years.

 

I am guilty to an extent, with nothing prior to Vargstenen--their 2007 release--in my collection, but I was still a little surprised to realize I had never featured this band before let alone this song. Following a brief intro track, "Ur själslig död" kicks off Vargstenen with epic bombast and a creative progression that avoids the easy temptation to repeat the track's catchy main melody in excess. One thing that always stood out to me on this song was the vocals. Erik Grawsiö demonstrates a level of diversity I'm more accustomed to out of Slavic metal bands than their Germanic counterparts, and I absolutely love how he transitions back and forth between guttural singing and atonal growls. I couldn't resist the urge to belt out a death metal roar of my own at the 40 second mark when I was listening to this in my car earlier today. So much for not scaring the new neighbors. <_<

[Thane Vakarian]

October is ROCKtober *nods*

[Shad_]

Song of the Day (October 14th):

Myrkgrav – Endetoner

 

 

Lars Jensen has been working on his solo project, Myrkgrav, since 2003, but his discography is pretty brief. Trollskau, skrømt og kølabrenning (2006) is his only full-length album, and it's a pretty solid entry into the annals of pagan metal. The album is a bit brooding overall, with a lot of slower tempo black metal-infused hymns, but the optimistic closing track has always stood out to me the most.

 

"Endetoner" feels like a victory anthem--a celebration of Norse history and tradition that honors those old gods who always seem to make a brief return to Midgard around this time of the year.

[Sooh]

I think Shad knows more about Norwegian music than I do...

[Shad_]

Song of the Day (October 16th):

Gorgoroth – Procreating Satan

 

 

Part of the 'appeal' of the second wave of black metal as it manifested in Norway is the feeling that you are listening to a product of truly deranged minds. Granted most of the artists in the scene were fairly normal kids who matured and went on to enjoy long-term musical success, the genre's focus on the occult, Satanism, and all things traditionally "evil" brought a few real wackos into the fold. Most of them wound up dead and behind bars. Gorgoroth pressed on.

 

This is a band that continues to project itself as dead-serious Satan-worshiping masochists long after their peers evolved away from the genre's early image or else dropped sufficient hints to be recast as a sort of warm cuddly metal-spiked parody. Does their sound reflect this? I like to believe it does. "Procreating Satan" is the opening track to Twilight of the Idols, the band's sixth studio album, released in 2003. It features the most notorious of the many vocalists the band has had over the years: Gaahl.

[Shad_]

Song of the Day (October 17th):

Falkenbach - Heathen Foray

 

 

If there is one artist I have consistently returned to every October for the 15 or so years that I've had a clue what I'm talking about, it's Vratyas Vakyas. I first discovered Falkenbach via Audiogalaxy--a long forgotten site that stood out back in the Napster days for a design which allowed users to easily explore non-mainstream genres. I had never heard anything remotely similar to Falkenbach at the time, and I fell in love with the plodding hymns that seemed to turn black metal on its head and generate a spirit of reverence rather than darkness.

 

Of course, in hindsight Falkenbach fits into a broader historical progression, but his sound is still entirely unmistakable. Vratyas Vakyas was one of the earliest artists to really latch on to the 'viking metal' ideal that Bathory began in the late 80s, before too many stylistic norms were standardized, and the sound he landed on has never ceased to captivate me. "Heathen Foray" is the opening track to his fourth studio album, Heralding - The Fireblade (2005), and it also makes an appearance in somewhat grimmer form on his second album, ...Magni blandinn ok megintiri... (1998). How far back the basic idea of the song dates is hard to say; there is a ton of earlier demo material available going as far back as 1989. I could have chosen any of dozens of stand-out songs to showcase here without any reservations, but this one has been speaking to me lately. Enjoy!

[Shad_]

Song of the Day (October 19th):
Векша – Царство снега

The short-lived, Yaroslavl-based band Векша (Veksha) offer a look at that strange world of ultra-nationalistic, rabidly pagan Slavic metal that began to emerge shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. I love the awkward juxtaposition (by 1998 standards) of black metal and this anonymous woman's clean, almost childish singing in the environment of absolutely rock-bottom recording quality. The aesthetic consequence is spooky--a sort of half-formed ghost of a demo tape that dares you to shut off your speakers and see if it continues to play.

But the appeal that keeps me listening to На пороге ночи (Na Poroge Nochi) might not have been the band's intent. Believe it or not they actually had a website, on which they greet all Aryan brothers with pastel flowers and rotating heart gifs.

umm...

But creepy by accident is always more effective than creepy by intent, right? The bizarrely pervasive fixation on race throughout a lot of early Slavic pagan metal bands probably has an interesting historical explanation that is well beyond the scope of my knowledge, and the explicitly sinister intent of a few prominent bad apples in that bunch might cast the rest a little out of context, but at any rate it's another off-kilter factor in rendering Veksha's lone release just a wee bit disturbing for reasons the band probably never intended. They've definitely earned a spot in my Halloween playlist.

True Slavonic Romantic Pagan Metal ?

[Shad_]

Song of the Day (October 20th):

Jason Hayes – Darkmoon Faire Merry-Go-Round

 

 

One of the first novelties to really captivate me in World of Warcraft was holiday events. WoW was the first game I ever played that really felt like a full-blown world and not just a collection of zones. (At least, it did back before Blizzard effectively shrunk everything with portals and fast travel.) Holidays added a further immersive element--a sense that this world actually experienced the passage of time. While that aspect was left by the wayside as the game expanded, it had a powerful effect on me back in 2005. Playing the game for me then didn't mean statistics-grinding--being the first on my server to down a boss or accomplish an 'achievement'--it just meant checking out of real life for a few hours and immersing myself in this fantasy environment. You could start a new character on Halloween, set off on the long hike to a major city, and there you'd find the whole place decked out in pumpkins and ghouls with themed mini-games and the like. Come back at Christmas, and the world will have aged again. I loved it.

 

The Darkmoon Faire is an event unique to Azeroth. Originally a traveling carnival that you might happen upon by chance, it eventually set up permanent shop with easy access to the major cities, but the settlement maintained its air of mystery. In practice, the Darkmoon Faire Merry-Go-Round is a necessary stop for anyone interested in speed-leveling a new character due to the beneficial enchantment that visitors receive, but its music leaves you wondering if you didn't just lose your soul in exchange...

 

This Jason Hayes composition was not actually introduced to the game until late 2012, in the Landfall patch for Mists of Pandaria, but it could easily find a home in the game's annual Halloween event.

[Shad_]

Song of the Day (October 31st):

Dissection - Where Dead Angels Lie

 

 

My music series this year fell victim to a game of forum mafia that's eaten up every ounce of my free time (and a little more I couldn't really afford to lose <_<) but I wanted to share one last song here before we lay the Halloween season to rest. Dissection are one of the more notorious black metal bands of the 90s, embroiled in murder and occult suicide and all sorts of trouble. Generally, bands in that ballpark produced the more deranged, off-kilter songs that granted 90s black metal such a strong air of the sincerely sinister. But Dissection was a bit different. For all of Jon Nödtveidt's faults, he was a really brilliant songwriter in a surprisingly traditional sense. The band's most famous song--"Where Dead Angels Lie", off Storm of the Light's Bane (1995)--is a masterful six minute progression of beautiful melodies that would not be out of place on an early In Flames album. (Is it a mere coincidence that the band's home town of Strömstad is not terribly far north of the melodic death metal capital of the world: Gothenburg, Sweden?) It is sinister in a theatrical sort of way, quite different from the traditional roots of the genre and <i>quite better than</i> the few 'mainstream' bm bands, who are generally more willing to take this approach.

 

Hope you enjoy, and Happy Halloween!

[Nikonis]

Great job Shad, thanks for the music throughout the month!