Alright, I feel really ignorant sometimes when there's a fantastic band out there that I really should know about, but just don't. This is how I feel about Enslaved right now. They've been around for 16 years now and have released 9 full albums. I didn't really know anything about them, but their latest album, Ruun made so many people's "Best of 2006" lists that I had to pick it up. Of course, I'm broke 80% of the time, so I got it a good year after its release date (May 2, 2006). But whatever, Ruun is so ridiculously fantastic (except for track 2, which I haven't warmed up to at all yet) that I can't stop listening to it. When I first heard the term "progressive black metal" I wasn't quite sure how to imagine it, but wow, it's right up my alley. And by alley I mean a glorious enema of buzzing guitars, squealy/screechy vocals, melodically dark keys passages and wonderfully varied drumming. I love great black metal drumming in all its blastiness, but here there's plenty of change in terms of style and structure that it opens up beautiful new black metal paths. Man, I have a wicked boner for these guys right now, it's bordering on embarrassing. Fuck it. I know exactly why this made so many lists for last year. I also have to dive into their back catalog and boner up on my Enslaved history. This is gonna be fun.
In other news, my little affair with Enslaved got in the way of my big crush on the new Dinosaur Jr album, so a full review of that will have to wait. However, since Dino is playing here in NYC next week, I can do some big awesome thing to celebrate. I also finally just got my hands on the final Bucket Full of Teeth installment, IV. I'll be writing about that soon, too, because it also rules. What a good fucking haul this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment