HEAVY FRIENDS: Corrections House - "Hoax the System"

(Heavy Friends is the segment of YPOIW where Robby introduces you to the latest music in the worlds of heavy music)

I really hate the term "supergroup" but dammit for my tastes this is as super as a group can get. Corrections House is a collaborative project between Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Mike IX Williams (Eyehategod), Sanford Parker (Nachtmystium), and Bruce Lamont (Yakuza/Bloodiest). If you guessed this project would be of the heavy variety, you'd be correct. The first nugget of music we've gotten from the group is below, entitled "Hoax the System" which will be released on a limited 7" on Parker's own label War Crime Recordings (b/w "Grin with a Purpose"). The track might not be of such a sludgy variety as you might expect, but the tribal drumming definitely give me whiffs of Neurosis, and there's a bit of an industrial edge to the music. If you can't already tell, I'm stoked to hear more from this project, and you can give "Hoax the System" a listen below.



(For more metal news as it happens, feel free to follow Robby on Twitter @ClydeNut)

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HEAVY FRIENDS: Krallice - Years Past Matter

(HEAVY FRIENDS is the segment where Robby babbles on about metal in the underground or kinda-mainstream. Basically anything heavy that's worth talking about, 'kay?)

Krallice has been one of the most celebrated bands of the recent stream of black metal groups coming out of the United States. While some criticize them and put them under the "hipster black metal" umbrella, others praise every work they put out and deem them to be among the best in modern black metal. I find myself right in the middle. I sadly have never been a Krallice fan, even though I love a lot of new American black metal bands and I love the brand of technical black metal that Krallice seems to be pulling from. There are bands like Weakling, Deathspell Omega, and yes, Liturgy that bring a ton of technicality to their black metal but make it enthralling for me. While I always admire that Krallice is composed of such accomplished musicians, the music just never translated to me; sometimes it was a bad mix, sometimes the songs just didn't grab me, I don't know. I feel like I just missed the boat on these guys.

However I was curious to listen to Years Past Matter when it was announced, because I was still holding on to some hope that the band would finally click with me and I would be in love. Well, Krallice hasn't completely won be over, but I must say this is the most I've liked a Krallice project thus far. While I still have issues with the muddy mix with little emphasis on the mids and highs, some of the band's compositions are finally starting to wow me, particularly tracks two and four; moments on those tracks are enthralling, exciting, and sometimes beautiful. The end result is an album that's more memorable to me, and doesn't just sound like a black metal band playing really fast.

While I'm still not in love with this project, I'm glad to say that Years Past Matter will not be an album that will be a chore for me to return to. That sounds like faint praise, but if the band stays on the path of writing memorable compositions and refine the way the music is mixed, we could end up with an album that puts me on the Krallice bandwagon after all.

Stream Years Past Matter courtesy of Krallice's bandcamp account below:


(Sacrifice yourself on the altar to Robby via his Twitter account @ClydeNut)

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HEAVY FRIENDS: Agalloch - "Faustian Echoes"

Agalloch have been one of my favorite metal bands for a good long while. They've been innovative in the past with introducing folk and post-rock elements into conventional black metal, and have stayed relevant throughout their sixteen year career. This past week they surprisingly released their long-talked about EP "Faustian Echoes", which consists of a single, 21-minute track based off Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epic masterpiece “Faust.”

And the track in question is very epic. If you were to be really nitpicky with this one, the band haven't evolved the sound of this one much from their previous album, 2010's Marrow of the Spirit, but who cares. This isn't a full length, so why would it need that huge of a shift in sound? What we have here is everything that's made Agalloch so great in one 21-minute package (it's a little light on the acoustics though). I just wish I knew more about "Faust" so I can understand the concept of this song more deeply; but that definitely doesn't hinder my extreme enjoyment of this EP at all.

Stream the whole damn thing below. Agalloch starts touring next month, so if they come in your area I highly recommend seeing them. I know I am.



(Robby loves brak metal. Hit him up on Twitter @ClydeNut)

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VIDEO: Liturgy - "True Will"

Black metal band Liturgy, who made waves of both excitement and controversy (see frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's manifesto for the source of the controversy) last year, have a released a new video for the track "True Will", which comes from last year's Aesthethica LP. Watch the found footage-heavy video, which was directed by Hunt-Hendrix, below.

Liturgy - True Will from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

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