What have you been listening to this week?

So, inspired by the annual Listurnalia season fun over at AngryMetalGuy blog, the guts of my listening for the past two weeks was focused on looking back at the new metal releases that landed hard with me last year, and then throwing together some semi-coherent drivel for my own amusement, which I shall now inflict upon you fine folks.

It turned into a year heavily dominated by black metal atmospherics, moody electronics, and all things doom. Plus, the occasional film score. Here’s a Spotify playlist I’ve been adding to throughout the year with everything that caught my interest, while Bandcamp links are provided for the cream of the crop below. An imperfect list missing a ton of gems to be sure, but these are the ones that hit me early enough and/or hard enough to stick throughout the year.

1914 // Viribus Unitis
(Blackened Death / Doom Metal)
This Ukrainian band of brothers is unstoppable, and ever merciless in their presentation of the horrific futility of war through an onslaught of Bolt Thrower-style tank battalion grooves, mournful Amon Amarthian melodies, and their own special blend of sludgy, blackened heft.

Blackbraid // Blackbraid III
(Atmospheric Black Metal)
Third time’s the charm here as Jon Krieger has more firmly shed the skin of his influences, and much of the songwriting fat, to deliver his most confident and well-realised release so far.

Blut Aus Nord // Ethereal Horizons
(Atmospheric Black Metal)
Pulling a lot of the melodic atmosphere from the Memoria Vetusta trilogy and then smearing it out with Hallucinogen’s psychedelia with a touch of the 777s sprinkled in makes for one of BAN’s most lush and cinematic releases.

Castle Rat // The Bestiary
(Doom Metal)
A noticeable step up from the debut without sacrificing any of the doomy VHS charm. The shift from a blues-based core towards hazier psychedelic leanings works really well, while new guitarist Franco Vittore ups the ante considerably in the leads department.

Fer de Lance // Fires on the Mountainside
(Epic Heavy / Doom Metal)
Blending the mightiest bits of Manowar and Bathory is an easy recipe for epic success.

Havukruunu // Tavastland
(Pagan Black Metal)
The blessed progeny of Quorthon, born to the Mighty Ravendark, return riding black winds of triumph with one of their finest albums.

Igorrr // Amen
(Black / Death Metal, Breakcore, Baroque)
Whiplash genre-switches to sizzle the neurons and frenzied metal blasts to snap the spine, that’s the Igorrr I love.

Kryptan // Violence, Our Power
(Atmospheric Black Metal)
An unabashed ode to the glory of ‘90s Swedish black metal, this thing is packed with enough vicious riffs and searing tremolo melodies to have stayed in regular rotation since dropping early in the year.

Labyrinthus Stellarum // Rift in Reality
(Atmospheric Black Metal)
Gorgeous blend of soaring melodies, vast synthscapes and swirling blasts of blackened intensity. Really addictive stuff!

Messa // The Spin
(Doom Metal / Rock)
A sultry and stomping slice of goth-tinged, prog-pronged, jazz-adjacent doom

Paradise Lost // Ascension
(Doom / Death Metal)
This is the kind of the thing you love to see from long-established bands: an album that manages to pull in the sounds from every beloved era, nail those sounds authentically, and to do it all justice through excellent songcraft.

Structure // Heritage
(Atmospheric Doom / Death Metal)
Absolutely immense doom / death that crushes as much with heaving riffs as it does heartrending guitar leads.

Tómarúm // Beyond Obsidian Euphoria
(Progressive Black Metal)
An intricate progressive black metal kaleidoscope of deftly navigated dynamics that can soar from chaos and despair through to catharsis and triumph.

Bonus: Non-metal highlights

Nine Inch Nails // Tron: Ares // (Electronic, Film Score)
Ludwig Göransson // Sinners // (Blues, Film Score)
Ghost Cop // Trouble // (Darkwave)
Perturbator // Age of Aquarius // (Synthwave, Industrial, Post-punk)
Crippling Alcoholism // Camgirl
(Post-punk, Noise / Grind, Synthwave)
Wrapping bright synths and club-ready beats around a sinister thematic core ready to explode into violent noise without a moment's notice makes for one of the most unsettling yet addictive records of the year.

I have been delving deeply into reggae/dancehall and I am not really a big fan of the genre but something just hit right about it now. Found this dude called yellowman and he is really cool. Also got into sister nancy and cutty ranks . Gonna see how this goes but its kinda cool digging into a completely different genre than the usual stuff.

Floating Points - Promises w Pharoah Sanders was a beautiful and epic accompaniment to a bike ride yesterday

I've been listening to a few albums on vinyl and on spotify lately. Destiné by Aya Nakamura, I'm Only F**cking Myself by Lola Young and Bonne Chance by San James are the three top ones right now I would say.

There's also been a mix of songs from Charlotte Day Wilson from Cyan Blue and Alpha, and Im getting into Wolf Parade after watching / reading Heated Rivalry.

Im also trying to get a hold of Rosalía's LUX on vinyl, but it is seemingly a difficult task.

I realize the genres here are a bit all over the place - but maybe that's the fun part :)

[Genres: Hip-Hop/Rap (mostly*)]

While I don’t really use last.fm, for this week and probably many to come, I couldn’t even properly make a chart if I wanted to: I finally saved, tagged & organized – and expanded – my local collection of Blaccmass remix songs!

Due to the nature of these remixes (see below), they’re typically not really published on the usual streaming platforms but rather all over the place on YouTube, SoundCloud, and even Instagram, so I downloaded the ones I knew I wanted to have and was still missing, added metadata tags to all .mp3 files for original artists and song title(s), and gave them an album cover image. I’m now at ≈70 tracks and about 2.5 hours of runtime in my collection, and not even done yet! I’ll continue to download and categorize new mixes that I find & like. (At least wherever possible, I don’t even know all of the beats he uses for these songs.)

Typically, a Blaccmass remix will be of the type “new” rap flow over “old school” beat, or vice versa, and it tends to work incredibly well… not the least due to Blaccmass’ unique ability to hear good “matches” in advance

• 50 Cent on the Leon Thomas “Mutt” instrumental
• Clipse "Chains & Whips" on Frank Ocean "Novacane"
• Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) Freestyle on Kendrick Lamar's "Worldwide Steppers" (2nd Beat)
• Pop Smoke on the “Still D.R.E.” beat
• Migos’ Straightenin over Kendrick’s Euphoria beat

Another common theme is genre-crossovers:

• If Future made Jazz music
• R&B Gunna
• Lil Uzi Vert over MJ’s Billie Jean
• Clairo on a Drill beat
• Migos x Fergie

Trying not to sound too much as if I only listen to pre-2000’s music, this works very well due to a lot of rappers making rather, ahem, unpleasant-to-the-ear beat choices at times these days** compared to the more… mellow? instrumentals being used here – and due to Blaccmass meticulously changing the extracted vocal recordings’ tempo, pitching, sometimes even chopping them line-by-line when it’s required to really fit the second instrumental.
Here’s a snippet from a (rather rare) interview appearance of Blaccmass where he talks about his process for creating these mashups/remixes: https://youtu.be/duZ5SvpvLps

Come to think of it, his work reminds me a bit of AriAtHome’s live music production (see recent discussion on here): It’s typically hip-hop, raw, incredibly well-sounding and put-together, made with love and attention to the detail – and not only to maximize the commercialization of music.

Also, just to completely change gears for the end, I’ve been getting into UK-style DnB again. :P

*mostly that means hip-hop/rap vocals, but sometimes it’s “only” the instrumental that’s taken from a hip-hop or R&B song, which also works super well:

• Night Call (Adele’s Hello on Frank Ocean’s Nights)
• Billie Eilish on production from a Miguel track: Wildflower x Sure Thing and Birds of a Feather x All I Want Is You

**Seriously, listen to Future’s or Lil Uzi’s original songs for the examples I gave above. They’re not necessarily bad per se, it’s just that the remixed version is so much more exciting and fresh than a lot of these original beats. Same for this standout of Kodak Black on an old school beat flowing like his life depended on it vs. his feature part in the original Lil Yachty song where it’s just more… forgettable.

Edit/addendum: This is a CarPlay screenshot of what it looks like now with my proper tagging & sorting. Much, much better :D

I was introduced by a YouTuber to a new to me band.

Bad//Dreems

https://open.spotify.com/artist/54f24706ua34STMhWSzPV7?si=BwH4B5CwR1mBrwD7iDbmfA

Sounds to me vocally a bit like the levellers but with more of a punk edge.

I’m listening to all their albums on rotation right now and enjoying them all.

This week lots and lots of Ringworm. One of my favorite hardcore bands. This record especially: https://ringworm.bandcamp.com/album/death-becomes-my-voice

Especially the tracks Do Not Resuscitate, Acquiesce, and I Want To Tear The World Apart

Absolutely brutally angry and in a way that lifts me out of the despair and anxiety of our times and fires me up

I've been jamming any tracks I can find from Earth Tongue (stoner rock with a nice twist, you'll see if you listen) and Sweet Pill (just check them out) and I simply can't get enough. I can't think of more to add but I think for those who would enjoy these bands they'll get a lot out of them.