LIST: 10 MOST ANTICIPATED BANDS of MARYLAND DEATHFEST

I love making lists. In fact, that probably why I was offered the role of Oskar Schindler, in Schindler’s List. I said, “Steven [Spielberg], I make lists all the time.” And he said, “That’s exactly what I’m looking for.” (My next list will be HBO shows that I quote from too often, starting with this quip from Liam Neeson in Life’s Too Short.)

Before I let the rabbit out of the hat or the cat out of the bag or whatever other animal cliche fits here with my TOP 50 EXTREME ALBUMS OF THE YEAR, I wanted to start with a list of the bands I’m looking forward to seeing most at Maryland Deathfest. It’s my first year attending, so I’ll be targeting international bands who don’t tour often, and a few North American bands who have evaded me thus far:

10) Noothgrush. Recently missed them playing in Brooklyn, and you never know how long it will be before these West Coast sludge-slingers visit the borough again. If there was a split album you enjoyed over the last 17 years they were probably involved.

9) Bongripper. I love the Chicago doom scene, and there’s nobody in the Midwest who can touch the bleakness of Hate Ashbury and Satan Worshipping Doom.

8) Crowbar. I traded Monster Magnet’s Powertrip album for Crowbar’s Obedience Thru Suffering back in junior high school, and it went down as one of the best trades of all time.

7) Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. With so much screaming and growling, this UK band’s brand of macabre doom rock will be a reprieve from extremity. Great songs that avoid that lazy “retro” tag people love and just provide great hooks and a sense of mystery.

6) The Secret. I still think Solve et Coagula is one of the more underrated albums out there, and I’ve missed my chance at seeing this Italian band several times in Brooklyn. NOT THIS TIME.

5) Coffins. Blurring that line between death metal and sludge, their music seems like the perfect soundtrack for swimming through a pond of entrails. With the government holding up work/travel VISAs to the point where Church of Misery cancelled their NYC show earlier this year, any time a band I dig from Japan heads this way I make sure to attend.

4) My Dying Bride. I always loved the sense of sophistication and drama they brought to doom, and Turn Loose the Swans was one of the first albums that persuaded me to embrace slower-tempo genres back when I was a grindcore maniac in high school.

3) Gorguts. Unfortunately I’ll be missing their show at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn in December, so MDF offers me a chance to see a band whose comeback has given us Colored Sands, an album I feel even surpasses the legendary Obscura in terms of vision, focus, and grandiosity.

2) At the Gates. Since the first time I heard an old Earache records sampler, I was infatuated with Tomas Lindberg’s bark and the melodic savagery of Slaughter of the Soul.

1) The Church of Pungent Stench. Not only does the Been Caught Buttering album art adorn my battle vest, but Martin Schirenc is the culprit for igniting my adoration for death metal. I love his Hollenthon project as well, but it obviously starts with the gruesome excess of Pungent Stench.

Check out the full list of bands over at the Maryland Deathfest website, and tell me how wrong I am about this list:  https://www.marylanddeathfest.com/

REVIEW: OKUS - S/T

I don’t know what Okus means, but the first acronym my brain came up with was Only Kill Ugly Saints. The problem is, that omits all the photogenic saints that Okus could behead just with the sharp blade of their music. This Irish four-piece hails from Drogheda, a city that publically displays the severed head of Saint Oliver Plunkett. History says he was executed in London in 1681, but I think he dreamed of Okus’ music centuries before and it incinerated his faith so quickly that he decapitated himself. Their seven song self-titled long EP/short album is mean as hell and feels like it’s putting cigarettes out on your eardrums.

The album is built around a foundation of death-doom but often blasts into ferocious d-beat punk and noisy hardcore. While their bursts of blackened crust remind me of Young And In The Way, they’re more similar to bands like The Secret or Full of Hell who change tempos more drastically song to song, avoiding easy characterization. Okus’ music is so ugly (HOW UGLY IS IT?) I wouldn’t kiss it with my worst enemy’s bloody asshole. If you read this blog you know right now this is pretty much my way of writing a love poem to a band: Bloody assholes. And I typed that up before even noticing one of the members was in a band once called Bleeding Rectum. This really could be love.

My favorite moments on the album were the gut-churning and intimidating as fuck-all “Bodies” and the rabid grinder “Burn It To the Ground,” though “Light Obscene” also features a tasty metallic groove. Every sound on this album feels blackened, like the songs are heretics splashed with tar, covered in asp scales and ash, then burned alive in front of an audience of cheering children. My only concern is that a couple of the songs linger a bit long, like the two minute intro to “Light Obscene” that delays us from getting to the bone marrow of the song, and “Born In Chains” which seems to lumber forward after the third minute. Apart from these choices this is still a focused, vicious release that treats brutality like the art form it truly is. Also, just to save you a weird visit to eBay, you don’t need to live within spitting distance of a severed saint head to appreciate this music. Those heads are dumb expensive, spend the money on this album instead.

Listen to Okus over on Bandcamp, where this album is available as a “name your price” download:  http://okus.bandcamp.com/album/okus

And check them out on Facebook over here:  https://www.facebook.com/Okusband

REVIEW: ANCIENT SHORES / CYNARAE - SPLIT

A389 Recordings, the label out of Baltimore, has gift-wrapped another lethal offering that should have hazard warnings attached. Eventually A389 LPs will require waivers to be signed, because they release some serious spine-snapping material. Every fan of heavy music owes it to themselves to study the A389 roster and salivate over the talent. This split album featuring Ancient Shores and Cynarae is a great representation of the A389 approach to music making: Songs you break faces to.

When I first heard the band name Ancient Shores, especially matched with the album’s artwork, I was prepared for blackened music that would accompany fog rolling off a black ocean onto the majestic banks of a snowy Norwegian beach. But these shores aren’t majestic, they’re littered with shattered whiskey bottles, discarded switchblades, and the splintered bones of rats caught in food processors. Ancient Shores, a downright dangerous crew from Morgantown, WV, fuse crust, sludge, doom, and heavy slabs of hardcore with punk rock energy that spits on your attempt to classify by genre They share strands of the same DNA as The Secret and the Dazzling Killmen, bands that demand to be separated by how much viciousness they pack into a track as opposed to some forum-created sub-genre. Album opener “SSDD” laces hardcore punk with classic rock licks to create perfect driving music for road-rage enthusiasts. The melancholy, slouched melodies of “The Omen” throws off its sheep disguise and reveals a predatory d-beat wolf beneath. From the dissonant, harrowing doom of “Not on the Ground” to the metallic burst closing “Destroyer,” this is abrasive, mean-spirited music proud of its scarred, ugly mug. Ancient Shores carve their initials into this album with a rusted scalpel deeply enough that the impression is guaranteed to last.

Cynarae rampage through the second half of the album with a murkier, meatier production that reminds me of a meaner, snaggle-toothed cousin of Skitsystem, Earth Crisis, and early-Napalm Death. This nasty Seattle band plays songs that feel like they escaped their cages, running free at last and hungry for whatever bleeds and breathes. They seem unconcerned with polish, relying on ferocious, reckless energy that greatly hints at the mayhem that must occur when these miscreants take a stage. I’ve never seen them perform but I’m going to guess right now that concussions in their pits are not rare and Roger Goodell will approach them about helmet regulations. “An Elegy” is the type of song a band dreams of closing an album on. It thrashes and bangs heads with a massive, confident mid-song riff before leading into the following track “Harbinger,” a grinding assault that pounds skulls into dust and skulldust into nothingness. Unfortunately the album ends on “Attrition,” which just didn’t have the same craft or energy to keep my interest and just faded into memory. Still, there’s plenty of raw promise to convince me that Cynarae is an uncaged animal you need to keep track of, if only to make sure they don’t eviscerate you in the wild.

I strongly encourage you, dear, deranged reader, to check out A389 if you are not familiar with their venomous releases. I’ve read an alarming number of reviews of split albums that pit the bands against each other like it’s some sort of death match. What’s really important is that these bands would share the same bill, they both have blood on their knuckles, and they are perfectly willing to knock your ear drums the fuck out. Bottom line: They are intense bands that know how to inspire a frenzy and are well worth your time. Leave “picking favorites” to those creeps on The Bachelor, this is extreme music and all true ambassadors are welcome.

Listen to the split album here:  http://a389recordings.bandcamp.com/album/a389-121-ancient-shores-cynarae-split-12

You can track down Ancient Shores over on Facebook here:  https://www.facebook.com/ancientshores

And learn the pronunciation of Cynarae here:  https://www.facebook.com/cynaraekittenmachine

And don’t forget to check out 389 Recordings for all their sinister releases:  http://www.a389records.com/site/