Review Round Up 9/20/19

Incident Report

Incident Report by  Stormland DIY 10/11/19

Based somewhere in the great state..er prefecture..? No, province of British Columbia is a band that's peopled by a single human, Justin Pierrot. This just proves there are French people all over Canada.

Stormland has been busy doing what I've been pining for...extreme metal songs about nerdy things. Lately, he's been on about Gundam...A Lot.

What's important though is that when you write a song that's a "reference salad" (TM MC Lars) it has to be a good song that can be enjoyed without even getting those references.

Here we have a thunderous death metal EP about god only knows what sort of stuff that I've never watched...

Nice solos, good usage of arpeggios, and semi-intelligible vocals. Stormland is headed in the right direction.

DLP Review: "IV: Mythologiae" by Slow

It's been about a year since Slow came into my life. Their record, V: Oceans was an absolute game changer for me.

It's now time to check in on their followup, IV: Mythologiae. Wait. What?

So, this album was originally released in very small quantities a couple of years back, but due to a hard drive crash, most likely caused by gremlins or the use of Apple iProducts, it was lost.

So, this isn't a re-release of that record, but wholly re-recorded version of that album. IV gives us the gift of Slow's evolution in reverse.

IV is mellower. It has a calmness to it that it's successor doesn't have. It wouldn't be wrong to say that V is the payoff of IV. After IV ends, the anger has built and it manifests itself along the edges. This makes me wonder, what will VI be like?

Slow will never win any awards for originality. Their albums aren't genre bending tours de force that'll leave you wondering what you just heard. They are examples of atmospsheric doom metal perfected.

This is a band that's true to their name and they take it SLOOOOOOOW.

RELEASE 1/25/19 BANDCAMP FACEBOOK

XLP Review: "V-Oceans" by Slow

V-Oceans

Groundswells of emotion are hard to take.

Like the Butthole Surfers said, it's pouring like an avalanche and it's comin' down the mountain.

When bleakness hits for me, it often feels like snow is falling all around me. Snow is the perfect metaphor for blackness, because to survive, you literally have to claw your way out.

Self-medication will always come into play here. That's not to say it's all booze and pills to fix problems, but we all have to find the spark that returns us to ourselves.

Music has always been a very cathartic experience for me because it's able to enhance, change, or simply alter my moods. Mood swings, though hopefully not outwardly apparent, have long been something that affects me.