It’s been a while since I’ve opened the great grimoire of doom and inscribed a new entry. I’ve been busier than a kobold berserker with St. Vitus dance. Since we last met (over brimming tankards of dark ale), a lot of new music has been released, and I’ve written up some reviews and recommendations to serve you well on your journey… (more…)
Since 2002, Nadja — the Toronto-based duo of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff — have released over 40 full length LPs, split records, singles, CD-Rs and a live DVD. Nadja began as an offshoot of Aidan Baker’s solo career — a place for the darker and heavier sounds he wanted to explore.
Nadja create music that is brutally slow, heavy and deliberate, but with multiple layers of sound — swaths of ethereal shimmer, various reverbed tonalities and feedback. The effect is extremely hypnotic and even downright pretty at times. Like watching a little blue butterfly landing on your wrist as you watch a tall building collapsing over your head.
This year looks to be their most prolific yet, including When I See the Sun Always Shines on TV, a covers album featuring everything from Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask” to a-ha’s “The Sun Always Shines on TV.” There’s even a cover of “Long Dark Twenties,” a Paul Bellini-penned song that originally appeared on the Kids in the Hall Brain Candy soundtrack. (more…)
II.
Kromrod the Fierce wiped the blood from his massive broadsword. The chill fog of the Northern Wastes cleared the fetid dungeon air from his senses. He adjusted his loin cloth and stepped down the stony embankment.
There was a dwelling ahead – a crude yurt made of skins and hempen rope. A woman peered out of the doorway at the swarthy barbarian. Her eyes were as dark as her hair and her breasts as ample as a king’s banquet. The smell of sorcery and some sort of roasted meat was about her.
“Would you…like to…listen to some records…and warm yourself by my fire?” She asked in a slithering tone.
Kromrod grunted a reply, and pushed his way into the smokey darkness of the hut.
The woman presented the barbarian with a curved clay pipe and lit the bowl with a wave of her fingers.
“What is it you seek, barbarian?” she asked, crawling over to a box of crow skulls and LPs.
“I seek a standard.” Kromrod said, exhaling blue smoke from the hash pipe, “Two snakes, coming together, facing each other…but they’re like, one…” He drew heavily on the pipe again. “Like on a shield, or a banner, or the side of a van.”
“Or a bass drum head?” The woman whispered, putting the needle on the record and ripping off her flimsy silken kimono and throwing herself at Kromrod’s heavily muscular form…
Sometimes when I’m listening to the new Gates of Slumber record, I feel like I’m watching an epic sword and sorcery film play out in my mind. Or an especially spirited round of D&D back in the day.
The cover of the power trio’s fourth epic-length album, Hymns of Blood and Thunder, features an obsidian-armored warrior, dealing the death stroke to some wretched goblinoids, while a scantily-clad sorceress babe looks on. Oh yeah, and there are some lightning bolts and crows too. (more…)
