Bear

Yeah, me too. Good first album, but the second was really poor and weak. Nothing good or interesting about it at all.

There is still a few more coming. Not sure how many more bands I saw, but was at least a couple. Will finish up when I get home from work. Yeah, totally recommend seeing CP today. Looked much better than they did before. More serious and more of a classic black metal approach to everything. But still rocking!

Dark Funeral - I was looking forward to Dark Funeral considering their latest album, Where Shadows Forever Reign, is by far their best release since Diabolis Interium, but this was one hell of a disappointing gig. They're known for poor, muddy sound live, but the overall sound wasn't really too bad. The setlist was disappointing with only three tracks off Dark Funeral, The Secrets of the Black Arts and Vobiscum Satanas (and album that should have been in the focus considering it's 20 years old this year), the new frontman, Heljarmadr of Domgård and Grá, was too slick, too boring. But the main problem was the sound of the bass drums. Made it unbearable really. Napalm Death - The band, with Mitch Harris in the front, made one hell of an energic and fun show . The sound was top notch, Mitch Harris moved around like he was on some strong, scary fucking drugs and the setlist was alright. Great gig! Covered fucking Anti Cimex as well. Top notch! Fleshgod Apocalypse - I've already written about these guys, but let me add that I've seen them two times and both gigs are among the 5 worst gigs I've ever seen. Maybe even among the 3 worst. Fans of these shitheads should be executed right away. Fuck off! Origin - I'm not fan of this kind of brutal and technical death metal, and I didn't like the music a lot. But it was a really fucking fascinating gig and I am glad I saw them. I was just standing there with my mouth open and watching their bassist for the entire gig really. Holy cow. The speed, technicality and precision, man. Wow! It was both fun and interesting watching him. The thing I did not like was the vocalist. Jason Keyser acted and sounded like he belonged in a shitty deathcore band, not a death metal band. Grave - Grave is among the classic death metal bands from sweden that helped form the classic swedish death metal sound, and I was looking forward to this gig. But I did expect to be let down by a setlist with too many new songs. They played one song from Out of Respect for the Dead and Dominion VIII, and the rest of the tracks, which was 10, was from 1993 and backwards. Six songs from Into the Grave, two songs from You'll Never See..., one song from ...and Here I Die...Satisfied and one song from their third demo Anatomia Corporis Humani. That is a truly amazing setlist. All respect to the band who seem smart enough to understand what their audience wants. Fantastic! Ahab - I'm not the biggest fan and when I want funeral doom I tend to go for something else, but this gig was so fucking good. Dark, heavy and crushing. It was like being taken on a trip over the seas in the boat of Captain Ahab. Superb! Earth Electric - Earth Electric is the new band of Rune "Blasphemer" Eriksen and his wife Carmen. We're talking 70's inspired prog rock meets heavy metal, and I was surprised. Had never heard the band, but the gig was really damn good. And Carmen Susana Simões, the female vocalist, brought something really special to the gig and she gave off a very traditional Louisiana Voodoo-feeling. It was really cool! Liked it a lot. So did my friend who isn't really into this type of music.

Went to Inferno last week like usual and like previous years I missed out on a lot of good bands because they played too early, John Dee was full or because I was hungry or something, but I got to see some very good bands too.Right now I can't really remember everything that played, so I might miss out on a few ones. But let's try anyway: Emperor - Emperor were, to my huge surprise, not a headliner, but they played Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk in its entirety, before they ended the gig with Curse You All Men!, The Majesty of the Nightsky, I Am The Black Wizards and Inno A Satana. I have never really been a big fan of the album but the concert was amazing and completely changed my view of the album. Been playing it several times since I got home and I am really enjoying it now. Like really, really diggin' it. The magic of live gigs, folks! They don't look very black metal and I do wish they'd done a bit more image-wise, but the sound was fantastic, they had superb stage pressence and was really good. By far the best I've ever seen them. Satyricon - My first time seeing them, and I will not be seeing them again. Awful setlist with only 5 tracks being off Volcano and the albums before it. But it just didn't sound good. Towards the end of the gig I told my friend they were gonna play Mother North soon, and then he just told me they had just played it. I was not able to recognize one of the most iconic black metal tracks ever. Was not able to recognize Walk the Path of Sorrow either. Which kinda sums up how bad this was. Obituary - Obituary played a mix of new and old tracks, but as they don't have a single bad album that's not a problem. Of course I would love more old, but it wasn't a problem. Great, groovy death metal gig. Was real good! Electric Wizard - With sleazy horror films with a lot of torture of naked girls, occultism and nudity playing in the background Electric played through a set mostly of newer songs, but also made sure to play a couple of classic tracks from their older albums. The sound was good with the vocals buried beneath the instruments which, unless you already knew the tracks, made it impossible to hear what he was actually singing. But there was nothing wrong with it. Made it even more hazy and smokey. I've heard much negative about ElWiz live, but this was great with The Chosen Few as the highlight. One of the best doom metal songs ever. Carpathian Forest - These guys were to my huge surprise headlines for one of the evenings. The reason I was surprised is because they hadn't released a full-lenght since 2006 and their upcoming EP is not yet released. But this was a great gig with tracks taken from all their albums (with the exception of the poor Fuck You All!!!! as far as I know), as well as a demo and old EP track and a few cover songs of Turbonegro and The Cure. Played a lot of good songs, but the highlight was when Nattefrost suddenly picked out a harmonica from his backpocket and played the worst piece of music I have ever heard. But it was bad and ugly in a beautiful and fun way. I also have to admit that he did a lot better than expected, and he delivered a very mature gig. Very good! Too be continued...

They've released three albums, The Nightspectral Voyage, Colossal Christhunt and Whom the Fire Obeys, and an EP called The Vehemence. They also released two demos under the name The Gate. The two first albums, The Nightspectral Voyage, Colossal Christhunt, are complete classics as far as symphonic black metal goes. The keyboards are out of this world, but they also got amazing riffs and song structures to back it up. The debut album is atmospheric black metal, and the later are more in the vain of avant-garde and progressive metal. You've also got the debut EP My Angel which is more in the line of death/doom and the EP Constellation which are more of a cross between the gloomy doom on My Angel and atmospheric black metal of their debut album. I haven't bothered with the latest album yet, but I love everything they've done before. Aspera Hiems Symfonia are among my very favourites no matter the genre. And I think it fits here as this has been more of a general black metal thread. I mean, there's no old school (80's and very early 90's) and raw black metal yet, but there's been talked about a lot of different stuff.

Gonna try being a bit on topic too and post a few of my favourite symphonic black metal albums Didn't find the whole debut album, The Nightspectral Voyage, from Obsidian Gate on youtube, but this album is damn fucking good. It's one hell of a massive album. These would also be my favourite albums from all these bands. Grand, dark, majestic, powerful. When done right, symphonic black metal is among my favourite subgenres of black metal. It's a shame too many piss weak bands are giving the genre a bad name, though.

I'm not an expert on this subject, but there is a difference. I think an easy explanation would be so say that avant-garde is about being very heavy on the experimentation and about being innovative and unique, whereas progressive are about making more complex music and creating music with more complex song structures. A lot of progressive music are also radio friendly as fuck, but avant-garde usually isn't - for a good reason. Some suggestion that makes it easy to hear the difference. Progressive black metal: Enslaved - Below the Lights Borknagar - The Archaic Course Hidden in the Fog - Damokles Avant-garde black metal: Anubi - Kai pilnaties akis užmerks mirtis Ved buens ende - Written in Waters Deathspell Omega - Paracletus But which bands would that be? I have a decent knowledge of the genre and I have heard a lot of bands, but I have yet to find a band that can not be placed in an already existing subgenre of black metal. And if they don't fit into one, we usually use two. Hell, maybe we'll use three to describe the sound. I think genres, be it in form of comics, music, books, films/TV-series, games or whatever else should be helpful in a way. It should tell you something helpful about the product, about how it is. If you throw 10 entirely different sounding bands into one genre, how is that genre any helpful at all? Wouldn't the better thing to do be to just call the likes of Altar of Plagues and The Great Old Ones atmospheric/ambient black metal, and call Bosse-de-Nage black metal/post-hardcore? Because there's just no way they belong to the same subgenre. I don't agree at all. By putting black metal, prog, jazz, electronica, classical or whatever maingenre you can think about after the avant-garde you'll get a much better idea about what type of avant-garde it is, because avant-garde can be a lot of different things. If you take a listen to the four albums below you'll get what I mean, and why I mean it's necessary. Igor Stravinsky - Petrushka Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come Ved buens ende - Written in Waters Ulver - Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell I know we might be a bit off-topic here, but I really enjoy this discussion. I feel like I am getting a lot of knowledge atm. Two thumbs up!

No. I have a problem with the tag because it doesn't tell you anything about the actual music. Like I previously said - the tag post-black metal tells you that the band evolved from black metal and focus a bit on experimentation and non-traditional elements in the music, but so does symphonic black metal, ambient black metal, avant-garde black metal and more. What defines melodic black metal? What defines symphonic black metal? What defines ambient black metal? What defines progressive or psychedelic black metal? What defines avant-garde black metal? What defines post-black metal? All those can easily be answered with the exception of the last one. You can easily explain to someone why Naglfar is melodic black meta, why Obtained Enslavement is symphonic black metal and why Sigh is avant-garde black metal. It's not a problem at all. But how on earth are you gonna explain to someone that Altar of Plagues' "White Tomb" and Lantlos' ".neon" belongs to the same genre when they in reality don't share any of the same elements and traits other than being rooted in black metal? They belong to the same subgenre, but neither have any of the same elements of traits in the music than make them belong to that genre. But with symphonic black metal bands, you can know they belong to the same genre because they both put emphasis on the symphonic element in the music. The riffing might be different and the symphonic element itself may be different, but the main element that put them into the same genre will be very obvious. And with melodic black metal they will be called melodic black metal because they both put emphasis on the melodic element in the music. The riffing might be different and the symphonic element itself may be different, but the main element that put them into the same genre will be very obvious. But you just can't say this about post-black metal as there isn't a specific element or trait that makes it into post-black metal. That's why a band sounding like A and a band sounding like Z suddenly belong to the same genre, even though they're not got anything in common. This is why post-black metal is such a shitty and useless subgenre. You get what I mean here? I think it's a bit hard to explain, but that should be good enough I guess.

I agree. Takes a god damned eternity to download from places like rarelust and myduckisdead, which is a real shame because the contents of both are absolutely magnificent for fans of a lot of hard-to-find and unknown horror, western, action, martial arts and general exploitation films. But I wish both would use other file hosts, or just torrented the shit out of all the films.

Which ones are you thinking about?

I'm not gonna be nitpicking too much on this stuff, but this is not it. The vast majority of post-black metal bands have no traits of post-hardcore in their music whatsoever. It's black metal that's gone beyond the boundaries of what black metal was originally about, which in general means that there's hella lot of post-black metal out there. But in newer times it's a term often been applied to bands that mix either post-rock, shoegaze or drone and black metal. The problem with modern post-black metal is that there isn't any specific traits or rules as to how it should sound, which makes it really hard to classify bands as post-black metal. It's just experimental and non-traditional black metal. But if we were to look at it like that 70% of all black metal out there would be post-black metal. Not really a fan of the post-black metal name tag at all. On one side of it you have Lantlos and Deafheaven who are considered post-black metal, and on the other side you have Fen, De Arma and Skagos who are not considered post-black metal. Despite all relying heavily on mixing black metal and post-rock. And just to make it even more confusing. Amesoeurs and Lantlôs. Lantlôs' second album .neon, which are brilliant, are considered one of the best post-black metal albums around. But it's basically a rip-off of Amesoeurs with Neige of Alcest and Amesoeurs handling the vocals. The thing that makes it a bit confusing is that Amesoeurs is not considered post-black metal. When it comes to the post-hardcore thing you have bands like Bosse-de-Nage, Castevet, Scenery of Tomorrow and Cracked Vessel. But they're not post-black metal because they incorporate post-hardcore into their black metal, but they mix post-black metal and post-hardcore. It's hard to explain, so like I said I don't like the post-black metal name tag at all. In recent times I've been a huge fan of Deafheaven's debut album "Roads to Judah", The Great Old Ones, Altar of Plagues (everything up until Mammal), Lantlôs' two first albums), Scenery of Tomorrow. But if you go back to the begining of it all, before it got trendy as fuck, you have norwegian black metal like Solefald, Fleurety, Arcturus, Dødheimsgard, In the Woods... and more which really stretched the sound of black metal into something quite special and unique. Really ground-breaking stuff at the time. And these bands fit the post-black metal tag A LOT better than the likes of Deafheaven, The Great Old Ones and so on as they actually set themselves apart from the traditional sounds of black metal a lot more and experiment more. But all these are also just considered avant-garde/black metal. You could also throw in Celtic Frost's Into The Pandemonium as the very first post-black metal album, even though that was way ahead of the term post-black metal. But it was the beginning of it all.

Fleshgod Apocalypse is playing as we speak. Fucking LOL. Giving the band 1/10 would be way too generous. It's the second time I see them and I still can't make my mind up. Serious or not? I say not

I got to see Uada live at Inferno festival yesterday. Oh dear, what a band! I won't hesitate to give them 10/10. Jesus, they were so good

Could you maybe add post-neo-oshare and post-nagoya keigaze to the poll?

Oh dear...

Game Over, Man! - This film has been panned by the critics and I can understand why, but I liked this quite a lot. It's childish, grotesque, violent, and offensive, but I don't mind any of those things. Didn't laugh at everything, but when it did make me laugh I could not stop laughing. I can see this becoming a proper cult film in the future. 30 Minutes or Less - Another action-comedy. I liked it as much as Game Over, Man! but it's not offensive enough. I wish it was further out there as the film has a lot of good qualities. But it kept me very, very entertained and both Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride and Nick Swardson and very funny throughout the film. Kill the Irishman - Cool crime film about Danny Greene, an Irish-american thug from the 70's who more or less spent his life making fun of the mafia and how weak they had become. It was slightly disappointing, but it was good nonetheless and Vincent D'Onofrio is superb in his supporting role. 13 Hours - A Michael Bay film that doesn't feel like a Michael Bay film, is a Michael Bay film that I can properly enjoy. 13 Hours is pretty much the opposite of what you'd imagine a Michael Bay movie would be like, a bit like Pain & Gain (albeit not nearly as good as Pain & Gain). It's a pretty mature film, and unlike shit like Transformers this isn't aimed towards a young audience, but a mature one. It has a lot more than huge robots, big explosion and a good looking cast. That doesn't mean it's perfect though. For some reason there's not a main character here. No-one stands out. When the film is finished, you'd remember the one with the most screen time as much as the one who had 50 minutes less screen time. The build up of the movie isn't too interesting and the first big fight isn't either, but around half way into the film it turns into a military version of Assault on Precinct 13 and that's when shot turns good. The battle sequences are really good, and I like the start-stop-start-stop formula. I also like how gritty and brutal it is. There's nothing glamorous about war, and it gets that right. Not a big fan of the patriotism thou, and american patriotism is the worst by a long shot. I'm also not sure why these "heroes" are so glorified in the film. But it doesn't matter. Entertaining film.

Judging from the OP koteosa is basically what we simply called oshare kei back in the good ol' days of VK.

Been spinning the new Gost quite a lot lately and it's a damn good album. As far as synthwave goes, this is by far the weirdest, most out there, chaotic and hard-listening album I've heard. Synthwave with lots of metal elements and clear nods to horror film scores of the past. I love it!

That alone is a reason to hate the song lol

I think Audrey is one of Dir en grey's best songs, and I feel it's placed perfectly on Macabre. One of the 2-3 furst songs I'd make sure to include on a best of album.

1. Disorder 2. Akuyuukai 3. Cockayne Soup 4. Hankou Seimeibun 5. Madara 6. Spermargarita 7. Gama And aside from Gama, Taion and 2-3 tracks off Dim I don't like anything this band did after 2004. I kinda agree a bit with Ghost. I don't hear any hardcore punk influences on Disorder or any of their other releases, but I do enjoy the general punk influences and punky attitude of a lot of the songs made up until 2004. The riffs, the productions on every release, Ruki's nasal voice, the general chaos of the releases. In one way they seem like compilations as they are all over the place and seem kinda unfocused, but in another way they've managed to melt all these different influences and sounds together. Stitched it up real well. Disorder ranks among my favourite Japanese albums ener. A complete masterpiece!

Necer had any problem with dubving in italian films. Grew watching tons of spaghetti westerns and horror films, so I've never really had any problem with dubbing in italian films. It's just so natural to me. But I can totally understand why people don't like it.

Ah, my bad. As for Inferno, you might want to pick up Argento's The Mother of Tears too. It's the third film in the Three Mothers trilogy. Not nearly as good as Suspiria and Inferno, but not nearly as bad as people make ut out to be either. Pretty decent tbh.

Did you watch the original Let the Right One In or the remake? The Swedish original is on a whole other level than the remake. They've done their best to bring it justice, but they're not even close. Also, seeing someone being negative to Deep Red truly shocks me. One of the best giallos ever, and also not surprising one of the best and most important slasher films ever made. A bit shocked about your thoughts on Inferno. Such a visual film, and few films can match its visual style. But I am happy to see your review of The House of the Devil, one of my all time favourite horror films. 10/10!

Hacksaw Ridge - One can say a lot of stuff about Mel Gibson, but a bad director one simply cannot ever call him. And Hacksaw Ridge is another great example of this. Hacksaw Ridge tells the story of Desmond T. Doss, a deeply religious man who refused to even touch a gun during his military training or in combat. The first 40 minutes of the film just tells the story of his youth, and they are necessary to be able to build some meat on the main character. There's a few good points and such in the story, most importantly to believe in yourself and what you think is right. Stand for it and be proud. But as the underlying themes of religion is so strong I do have a few problems with it. But after those 40 minutes is over and they are going into combat everything is forgotten. As hell breaks loose, things gets really interesting and Mel Gibson gets to show off his skills. The war scenes are among the most intense, dark, brutal, gritty and chaotic I've ever seen in a war film, and it really makes for a lovely watch. And from there on and out, the film is excellent. Andrew Garfield and Vince Vaughn are really great. Those early scenes with Vince Vaughn are exceptional because of his skills. Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes - One of many classic Werner Herzog films, and one of his very best. It marks his first collaboration with Klaus Kinski, and is about a group of conquistadors traveling down the Amazon in search for El Dorado. It's slow, is sparse on the dialogue and focus on atmosphere to bring forth a certain madness and surrealistic feeling to it all. It has no proper sets and was made on a small budget, but it is visually stunning because of Werner Herzog's eye for details and cinematographer Thomas Mauch's skills with the camera. Popol Vuh stood for the soundtrack, and as with Nosferatu it's exceptional and a huge part of why the film is as good as it is. The first 4-5 minutes are among the very best scenes ever filmed. The photo combined with the beautiful music is just too damn good. It's just magnificent in its simplicity.