But really, if not the real Spiderman, who is this figure?
Metalligator sat at his desk stumped, staring at the slowly falling snow outside the office window. “I was sure I had him this time”—a mutter escaped as he tossed aside his “Spiderman” album.
The frigid December nights have a way of bringing out the misery in a wait for the bus. After hours and hours of listening to Scuttlegoat remark about how silly believing in superheroes is, and Anti-Peat blabber about his list of cool superhero names he had waiting to be used, Metalligator stood watching the powder glisten the mostly empty roads. “Well, at least we’re off until the new year now…”
And so the bus came and Metalligator found a seat amongst its barren quarters. All seemed normal until a pecular man boarded a few stops later, his hair flat but tussled as if he’d been wearing some sort of cover all day. “Mind if I sit here” he quipped before plopping down right next to Metalligator without waiting for reply.
“Uh, hello” Metalligator croaked
“Yeah these are waterproof boots, really great at this time of year. They’ve also got a composite toe which is perfect for a hard and regulated work environment” the unknown man stopped briefly to take a sip of kombucha.
“O…kay…”
“Normally I’d drive my Subaru Forester to get this here cat food but sometimes taking the bus is just the vibe, you know”
“Yeah…” Metalligator had yet to put on his ear buds and fumbled in his bag to find them for sweet relief.
“Oh, also I like to dress up as Spiderman sometimes, does that make me strange?”
“You… what???”
Metalligator remembered that despite having destroyed his print outs, he still had some images saved on his phone. “Is this… is this you?”
“Oh, yup, yeah that’s me alright.”
“You have to come back to the office with me, I need to show you to my boss.” and for the first time that day Metalligator smiled.
“Yeah sure, I’ve got some time to kill. By the way, my name is BB.”
“We can workshop that” Metalligator remarked as he realized friendship was the real reward of his hunt.
Sometimes you piss, sometimes you shit and get caught on camera. That’s the moral of this story. And with that, we at The Goat Review wish you a happy holidays. We’ll catch you in the new year with lists and reviews and who knows what else.
HOT OFF THE PRESSES
Metalligator can't stop proggin'
Paul Masvidal, Chuck Shuldiner and Miklós Rózsa walk into a bar. Yeah, you've heard this one before, but Alarum is no joke. Their new album Recontinue is one of the weirder concoctions that I have heard of death metal, jazz fusion—and yes, a bit of film noir score. Weird as Recontinue is, it's compelling and manages to walk the line between all of its disparate moods with aplomb. There's enough fart bass to make you want to move out of your shared college apartment and enough violent proggy death metal to get crushed under when moving the boxes. Yet Recontinue jumps between that and chilled out and bright fusion moments that it never gets stuck. Though it's at times a bit hard to parse what's going on, it's an entertaining listening despite that. Recontinue is so comfortable in the '90s that you'll suddenly be wearing a jean jacket after having listened to it and floated away on the seas of proggy death/thrash for a moment.
You ever wake up in the morning and think to yourself: "Today I feel like listening to some progressive melodic black metal that's the second part of a double album released separately"? Yeah, me neither. But what if it's 38 minutes long and stands alone? What if it has acoustic parts and clean vocals that more than match the metal? And what if there's sneakily some death metal on it too? That's too many hypotheticals, but listening to Amiensus' latest album Reclamation, Pt.II is a lot simpler than that. Billing themselves as "progressive black metal from The Land of The 10,000 Lakes", Amiensus boasts an epic sound in practice. Lars Nedland of Borknagar guests on one of the tracks to even further the vocal variety and great clean vocal moments. The songwriting is engaging throughout and does well with building into dirges as well as melodically cathartic moments. The whole album flows well and- What's that? Have I heard Pt. I? Well, no. Ain't nobody got time fo' that!
Cosmo has that dawg in him...
Concrete Winds have been delivering their punishing blend of death metal and grind for a while now, and third album Concrete Winds doesn’t tamper down the intensity one notch. Indeed, these Finns remain as always, with this self-titled release serving one of the most violent collections I’ve listened to this year. In true Concrete Winds fashion not a single moment lets off the gas for this 25 minute tussle. Industrial sections punctuate their rabid blend of extreme sounds with a militaristic flair, especially on “Subterranean Persuasion”. All in all, Concrete Winds is the result of injecting an angry Kodiak/polar bear hybrid with amphetamines and steroids before letting it loose in a locked petting zoo. DAS CONK CREET, BAYBEE!!!
Peat still enjoys way too many things and Grin is one of them so we trust him...
Grin have got love on these pages before for their punchy, minimalistic approach to all things heavy and fuzzed out before. Hush is a continuation of that philosophy. Every song is under four minutes, with each, save one, supplying a very distorted bass, a drum kit, and distant foreboding voices. The exception is “Portal” where they have a guest guitar soloist. For a moment, the contrast leaves me wishing they returned to using a guitar more often, but then Grin return to their core business and all is well. That business is rumbling rhythms that take control of the body and leaves the mind free to its own devices. There’s some experiments with quieter tracks, like “Venom” and “Neon Skies”, but they don’t always land so well with me. No, what makes Hush work for me are the sludgy stoner stomps of songs like “Calice” and “Silver”. They say nothing is as catching as a smile, but this Grin is contagious.
Are Fellwarden getting a shout out solely because they released a concept album based on one of my favorite books? That decision doesn’t hurt the case for Legend: Forged in Defiance but rest assured, Fellwarden have good musical taste to go with their good literary taste. Fellwarden’s brand of sword-waving, friend-mourning black metal isn’t just perfect for a last stand, it helps fill some of the gap left by there only being one Caladan Brood album. An abundance of trad metal riffs weave throughout to create an epic sound. There’s times when Fellwarden take their idea too far, particularly when they meddle with spoken word — I’m looking at you ”Renewed Hope”. In fact, at a fairly leisurely paced fifty-six minutes, Fellwarden possibly pushes all of the album too far and that’s the one big weakness here. But when Fellwarden sweep you up in their mix of glory and despair, they’re as good as anyone.
