On the 25th day of the 12th month of 2012, the Six-Tongued Hellgoat was summoned to arise from the ashes and bring darkness to this place called POPdose. Join him in his quest.
Don’t forget to listen to the new theme song, “(Love Theme) From the Six-Tongued Hellgoat” (download)
Ritual Thrust into the Profane Maw of Churning Filth
Album: Primitive Man, Scorn
Label: Throatruiner/Mordgrimm
Release: January 31, 2013
Genre: Sludge/Doom
Rating: 9.5/10
You see that cover art? The Hellgoat barely needs to say anything about the debut full-length from Primitive Man since it describes the music perfectly. Scorn is a kidnapping in progress, gun forced down your throat as you shit your pants hoping just to live to see tomorrow.
There are a few things you need to know here, the first being that this is anything but your standard metal release. If you aren’t familiar with Throatruiner Records (fantastic name BTW), their releases usually fall somewhere between flat out noise and bizarre-o freakouts with almost every release being a complete challenge to the listener. While Scorn isn’t accessible to the masses by any means, it does have moments that a wide range of metalheads could appreciate while still being remarkably unique. The second thing to know is that the band consists of members of Clinging To the Trees of a Forest Fire but doesn’t have a thing to do with their sound.
Primitive man make doom metal with some experiments thrown in. The typical doom record is down-tuned and rattles your insides while mostly encouraging you to huddle in a corner with your favorite bong. Scorn is not your typical doom album. It truly feels like being right in the middle of a brutal attack. The album isn’t heavy because it’s low and loud, it’s heavy because it assaults your senses from start to finish.
The album starts out with the title track which is the perfect introduction for the rest of the record because it combines all the elements used throughout the disc; ridiculously heavy riffs, a passage of chaotic riffing, tons of feedback and screaming that could only come from the bowels of hell. It is the perfect soundtrack to your worst nightmare. The perfect soundtrack to impending doom, locusts, floods and a hoard of free roaming Hellgoats with six tongues.
The only thing that has prevented the Hellgoat from going absolutely crazy while listening to this record are the short tracks of pure noise as the third and fifth tracks. They give you a little time to get your head back on straight to prepare for the assault to finish the record. The Hellgoat believes this record and that’s the most important thing. This isn’t an album where douchebags are screaming because they think it’s cool. This is an album where you just know there was despair, anger, violence and hatred in the studio with these guys as they were recording. That’s what makes Scorn so worthwhile of your time and money.
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Somnolent Regurgitation of the Scrolls of Proselytism
(The Hellgoat wishes to convert you to the ways of the metal. But he prefers to let the press release and bio do most of the talking on these nefarious black circles.)
Album: The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Down Among the Deadmen || Traveller || Twilight of the Idols
Label: Metal Blade
Release: February 5, 2013
Genre: Heavy Metal
Press: Metal Blade Records is pleased to announce the signing of Slough Feg, whose style is an eclectic mix of Celtic Folk and Traditional Metal peppered with buckets of energy and lyrical depth. On February 5 the label will also be releasing three of the band’s early releases that, until now, were only available as imports. Twilight of the Idols (1999), Down Among the Deadmen (2000), and Traveller (2003) will be packaged as a 3CD box set will also be made available on their own, digitally, via iTunes, Amazon, Google+, or your favorite digital retailer.
The Hellgoat’s Take, 9.5/10: Fucking Awesome. The Lord Weird Slough Feg is simply a fantastic band that has went under the radar for way too many years. For anyone that hasn’t heard it, Down Among the Deadmen is considered an almost perfect album. And now you don’t have to spend $40 to get it from Asia. All three records are awesome, so splurge for all of them.
Album: Spektr, Cypher
Label: Agonia
Release: February 19, 2013 (US)
Genre: Experimental Black Metal
Press: Cypher is an experimental black metal album, recorded entirely without vocals. The album introduces industrial and ambient elements and as a whole should be considered as a strongly psychedelic release; it produces a feeling, as if the mind of the listener, dragged into the music, were unable of concentrate itself or were experiencing a powerful hallucinogen effect.
Commented by the band: “Six Years of burning visions for the Spektr to return wrenched from the hermetic silence of Initiated Temples. The ectoplasm Cypher thus stands as the stone-principle emerging out of philosophical fumes – the transcended transcription of the most sealed occultism on audio format. Spektr commits, Agonia endorses – I’ll be right there in the afterlife – and we ain’t going nowhere.”
The Hellgoat’s Take, 5/10: The Hellgoat is a fan of bands that push the limits of their genre but in all honesty, most of this just sounds like random noise.
Album: Portal, Vexovoid
Label: Profound Lore
Release: February 19, 2013
Genre: Experimental Death Metal
Press: There has been no death metal band in the genre’s history as bizarre, unique, and aesthetically engaging as Australia’s Portal. Whether it would be the band’s singular vision through their polarizing music, their otherworldly live show, or the visual imagery the band portray themselves as, Portal have incidentally, slowly building over the last ten or so years through this crawling culmination, set a new standard within the death metal scene and have given new meaning to the term ”death metal” respectively.
It was a sound unheard of, that Portal emanated through the artistic surrealist death metal psychosis; weird rhythms and perplexing musical structures to create this cinematic soundscape of sheer terror and horror. Like a soundtrack to a Lovecraftian nightmare manifested, Portal would bring sonic plague and disease through three full-length albums which helped signal the future of death metal, the last one Swarth being the band’s most recognized album that was released in 2009. The follow-up to Swarth, entitled Vexovoid, sees Portal taking their sound even further with their biggest and most dense sounding album to date and taking their artistry to new levels unheard of and proving once again why they are the harbingers of the new coming dreadful age of death metal.
The Hellgoat’s Take, 7/10: Portal is a polarizing band for damn sure. 99% of the population that have heard them either love their experiments or absolutely think they are dreadful. As usual, the Hellgoat is that 1% that’s really unsure. It’s really a mood thing for the Hellgoat. If he wants straightforward, this isn’t what he pulls out. If he wants bizarre and different, Portal can be his thing. No matter what you think of Portal, the truest statement is that there’s simply no band out there that sounds quite like these dudes.
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