an inaugural post borne of a general malaise about social media and wanting a place to yell — really loudly — about music! this is a terrible first line but they’ve never been a strength and now it’s out of the way
i’ve never been one for long-form blogging, missing the livejournal era by about a year and doing the majority of my internet growing up on tumblr (yes, i know), but let’s give it the old college try.
also holy shit do i miss concerts. everyone says to get a hobby outside of writing when you’re a professional writer, and music and concerts has always been my hobby and my god, this year.
i am constantly asked for music recs, which, understandable, i listen to a range that encompasses just about everything, though i always had a skeptical “it’s not that hard to find music, algorithms do all the work these days” knee jerk to the question. then i considered the fact that maybe most people don’t spend six-hour deep dives into spotify, youtube, and last.fm’s algorithms at least once a week. but this is what i grew up doing.
i tend to feel alienated when most writers talk about their backgrounds. most of the time there’s some level of fandom involvement and they wrote fanfiction. i wish? sometimes? that i had had that? i’ve written no fanfiction, but i grew up seeking out music in genres that were not readily available because they weren’t mainstream.
i may not be able to write fanfiction (how do you do it and not feel so self-conscious??? i’ll never know), but my god am i good at making music algorithms work for me.
and my god do i love metal.
so! enough intro!
as i note, i’m linking to bandcamp where possible to encourage you to purchase music there! for the past few months, on the first friday of the month, bandcamp has been waiving their fees so all money goes straight to the artists and considering many many many metal bands survive on touring and, well, that’s not happening, purchasing music as opposed to just streaming off spotify is more important than ever.
as a second note, my taste ranges from the palatable metal genres, to the extremely unpalatable. i do try to vet my black metal choices because that genre in particular can get messy, but, on the other hand, i do love mess. and black metal is made to be provocative.*
*about, like, death and gore and stuff not nazi shit. that doesn’t fly here.
these posts will be long by nature, if you just want the playlist of my current recs, then here they are. if you want editorial, then onward!
Vigil by Zeal and Ardor
actually? little for me to say. i would rather put frontman Manuel Gagneux’s words about this track from an upcoming EP here.
Frederik Pohl once said:
“It is and remains my conviction that a story has to speak for itself, and that any words a writer adds to it after he has finished telling it are a cop-out, a lie or a mistake.”
While I agree I feel pressed to make an exception for this EP.
'Wake of a Nation'’s intent and context should be obvious. I like to revel in ambiguity and in room for interpretation. This is not the case here. These 6 songs are a knee jerk reaction to what has happened to my fellow people in the last months. Originally I was set to record an album scheduled to come out next year. As these songs were written due to the horrendous events that instilled them I decided to release them as soon as possible. Using the rich heritage and culture as a part of my musical identity it felt like cowardice to sit by and continue with my routine as if nothing happened.
This record is for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, George Floyd and the countless untold and nameless killed.
It is for the brave souls willing to take a stand and ready to risk their own wellbeing so that others may have theirs intact.
All revenues from sales and streaming of ‚I Can’t Breathe‘ will be donated.
Stay vigilant; stay loud
Black Lives Matter. donate to bail funds.
i’ll save my gushing about Zeal and Ardor, and how the show i went to in Detroit last year was one of the best of my life, for a future post.
The Soundtrack to My Last Day by Oceans of Slumber
Oceans of Slumber turned up on my radar in 2015 when vocalist Cammie Gilbert joined the band and brought with her a powerhouse of a voice. i feel extremely comfortable saying Cammie’s is some of the best vox in metal currently and Oceans of Slumber’s particular brand of gloomy melodic doom is beautiful. their latest album came out last week and i listened to it straight through three times in a row. it’s gorgeous. each song is a stunner. not only does the album artwork incite a kind of cosmic dread, but the songs do, too.
i saw Oceans of Slumber a year ago and cammie gave me a hug after and yes i can die at peace.
The Age of Starlight Ends by Anaal Nathrakh
yes, the band name looks like what you think it does (it means snake breath in gaelic) (it’s an arthuriana reference) (welcome to metal wherein the most brutal among us are only nerds) (now does malachiasz make sense?)
i love this band. i found them right before drafting ruthless gods and they are mostly what i listened to while writing that book (y-you can tell, i think). they are a beautiful combination of horror, incoherence, and discordance. all things that i love in metal. they have a new album out soon and so far the first two songs have been bangers. they seem to be swinging a little melodic, which is fascinating, and my favorite kind of turns for bands to make. i especially love this song because it feels like i’m being hit in the head with a hammer while listening to it and i like that in my music.
Floare de Fier by E-An-Na
pivoting to F O L K M E T A L and also my bandcamp find for the week. E-An-Na is from Romania, have an extremely good folk flair to their music, and are a delight. i love an accordion in a metal song. i love raucous folk metal.
i had a conversation with another author recently about drawing inspiration from music and it was like we were from two different worlds because she takes the lyrics whereas i take the music itself. most of the time the songs i listen to are in languages i don’t know, or the lyrics mostly incoherent. i draw an extreme amount of writing inspiration from music, but lyrics have always been a lesser necessity for me.
Pleistocene by The Ocean
in what other genre do you get bands that make music about the Phanerozoic geological eon? Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic came out in 2018 and was my introduction to the band because Katatonia’s Jonas Renkse did a song with them (while Katatonia was on a nail biting extended hiatus) and i will listen to anything Jonas does. the chorus from Cambrian II: Eternal Recurrence:
And then you will find every pain and pleasure
Every friend and every enemy
Every hope and every goddamn error
Every blade of grass and every ray of light
has been cycling in the back of my brain since that album came out. it’s the way Loïc says ‘goddamn’ that does it for me, i think. should i post that song because i’m talking about it? idk. anyway they have a new album coming out (Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic) and i am extremely stoked for it. this song is amazing. it really gets going at the 4 minute mark, which is a, uh, extremely metal thing to say.
Night Witches by Sabaton
i’m writing this as if i haven’t been listening to nothing but Sabaton since the pandemic hit in march. they’re just. instant serotonin. i’m framing this newsletter for people that don’t have wide breadths of metal knowledge, so i will explain Sabaton even though they’re one of those bands that it feels like everyone who likes metal loves or at least knows.
swedish nerds who write power metal about war.
“emily,” you say, “ that sounds like it could be problematic?”
h i s t o r y n e r d s writing about punching nazis.
“ah, i see.”
this song is about the night witches, the Russian female bomber pilots of wwii, and it’s to this level of intricate historical knowledge with cheery bombastic musicality that you should expect from Sabaton. oh my god i’m not kidding i had actually never heard of the Attack of the Dead Men in wwi where the Russians were bombarded by poisoned gas by the Germans in Poland and just kept fighting even though they were practically zombies until this song. (the linked lyric video has facts about the event during a guitar solo. this is Sabaton.)
i now go around cheerily singing:
Osowiec then and again
Attack of the dead, hundred men
Facing the lead once again
Hundred men!
Charge again!
Die again!
but, you know, it’s keeping the memory alive.
i was going to finally see them this year and, yes, i am extremely sad about it. it would have been next month! haha! i’m fine!
In All Conscience by Epica
Epica released an EP of B-Sides from The Quantum Enigma today (uh friday of writing this) and my history with Epica goes back……………………………….. as far as my history with Kamelot. so. since i was 12. it’s been a bit.
these tracks aren’t suuuper new, but if you want to be reminded about how good Epica is, this is perfect for that!
TQE was an album that i needed to warm up to. The Divine Conspiracy was My Epica Album and Design Your Own Universe hit me hard (the power in that heartbeat before the chorus hits you in the title track is just. fucking phenomenal.) and then i found Requiem for the Indifferent extremely disappointing (i’ve warmed up to it now!) so i was so skeptical of TQE when it came out but i adore it now.
it’s also been four years since The Holographic Principle so it’s been a long time since Epica has given us new music. the wait makes sense. Epica’s music is extremely complicated, the songs tend to be 7 minutes at minimum, they have a level of bombast that nearly every symphonic metal band of their era has left behind, and the band members are all at stages in their lives where breakneck album production and touring doesn’t make sense.
there’s a part of me that wants so desperately to hear Epica’s always politically tinged take on 2020, but seeing as how i recently unfollowed Mark Jansen on facebook for his COVID denial posts i uhhhhhhh……… well. we’ll see with their next album i guess!
regardless, the B-Sides are all really wonderful and it’s so good to hear Epica again, especially from that era, which was very philosophical and fun.
PA PA YA!! (live) by BABYMETAL
BABYMETAL RELEASED A LIVE ALBUM THIS WEEK AND I’M JAMMING.
ALL HAIL BABYMETAL.
Hunt by Genus Ordinis Dei
Ritual | Hunt were in my new releases on Spotify and I’ve actually not listened to this band outside of a song they did with Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia, so i was interested to see if i liked the band outside of that.
yes.
in the earlier linked playlist i put both Ritual and Hunt. Ritual is an instrumental intro with pounding drums and a vibe for your fantasy mix, absolutely check it out if you dig Hunt.
Genus Ordinis Dei is one of my favorite kinds of bands. (i say, listening to Hunt and having listened to two songs of theirs) grating harsh vocals put against a sweeping, occasionally orchestral backdrop.
Italian death metal, when it leans symphonic, is just absolutely my favorite fucking thing. (see Fleshgod Apocalypse one of my FAVORITE bands:
RENAISSANCE DEATH METAL BUG CULT (tw for gore)
I WAS GOING TO SEE FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE IN APRIL AND THEY WERE GOING TO TOUR WITH A STRING QUARTET BUT IT’S FINE. I’M FINE.)
Celestial Violence by Ihsahn (feat. Einar Solberg)
Ihsahn just released a new EP and you should absolutely check it out.
this song is a bit older but the double whammy of Ihsahn’s harsh vocals and Einar’s (from Leprous, a band that is 2nd in bands i have seen live the most times) positively angelic clean vocals has to be shared. this is the song i listened to relentlessly while drafting Blessed Monsters and you can do with that information what you will.
Ihsahn is one of my favorite artists, but he has a history to him. i’m not going to get into it here outside of recommending you read the wikipedia page on the history of black metal (it’s not about Ihsahn but he was in one of the bands that was involved in….. what happened………)
(the history of black metal is my favorite thing to drop on unsuspecting friends. it’s just….. so bonkers…..)
now Ihsahn does things like… paint cabins with Einar (his brother-in-law) but also make genius progressive metal with black metal influences that only one of the founding fathers of black metal can do.
the still anticipation of a scream is a lyric that just. haunts me.
Crossroads by Hail Spirit Noir
lastly, another black metal turned prog metal band!
i found this band on spotify at random and felt like i had been punched in the chest by the vocals at the beginning of this song. the technical prog married with the 80s psychedelic electronic elements just makes for baffingly good music. their earlier work is more black metal but also, just, so extremely good.
crossroads is a shorter example of the gut punch of the vocals, but their Signature Prog Long Track Automata 1980 (at 10 minutes it’s not that long. i will make you all listen to Seventh Wonder’s The Great Escape one day. it’s one of my favorite songs ever. it clocks in at 30 minutes) is one where when the vocals start (at about 3:40) i feel like i’ve been slammed facedown into the ground and have a visceral reaction to every time.
if you made it all the way here, holy shit thank you. here’s the link to the playlist again
if you really liked what you read you can leave a tip!
or, just as good, you can buy one of my books:
Wicked Saints
Ruthless Gods
Blessed Monsters (out 4.6.21)
what I’m reading (if you’re into that kind of thing):
The Missing of Clairdelune by Christelle Dabos
Star Eater by Kerstin Hall (summer 2021)
if you came for armadillo facts then:
poetrygirl128 / Getty Images
apparently Nine-Banded Armadillos give birth to identical quadruplets. that’s a fun fact.
it's sabaton all the way down
Already loving this lol