Kill Eat Exploit the Weak update - new webpage at CFMU.ca!

The folks at CFMU 93.3 FM launched a brand new awesome website on March 24. Among the many impressive features of this new site is a dedicated page for Kill Eat Exploit the Weak (and every other show on the station).

The new page - cfmu.ca/shows/65-kill-eat-exploit-the-weak - will make it easier for you listeners to tune in to our show at your convenience. Click the above link and you'll find an archive of the eight most recent episodes, which you can download or stream right in your browser.

Click on the link for each episode and you'll find our brief show notes as well as the full episode playlist, with links to how you can find out more about each band and listen to or purchase their music.

One of the best things about the new CFMU website is that it works on mobile devices - something the old site just couldn't do.

Another new feature is the Twitter chat option - tag any post #CFMU_KEEW and it will show up on our page and make it easier for us to respond. There's a button right on the page if you feel like commenting on something you're reading or hearing.

With all this going on over at cfmu.ca this blog site, which primarily posts playlists these days, is now redundant. This site will remain online, and may get new content occasionally, but if you want to know what's going on with Kill Eat Exploit the Weak, listen to the show, or check out our playlists, please visit us at cfmu.ca/shows/65-kill-eat-exploit-the-weak.

Peace, love and carrots, baby!

KEEW playlists: August 27 & September 2 (good new music and previews of some great live line-ups)

CFMU is broadcasting live next week for the annual McMaster University Welcome Week, which means Kill Eat Exploit the Weak is taking a short break. For now, here are our latest playlists, previewing the wealth of live music happening around here as summer draws to an end and checking out some of the new music hitting the shelves (physical and otherwise) in recent weeks.

August 27

ARTIST	ALBUM	TRACK
Grade	Under the Radar	Victims of Mathematics
Men to Wolves		Nightmare
Soulstorm	From Euphoria to Paranoia	Seethe (murdersong)
Evergrey	Recreation Day	The Great Deceiver
Voyager	V	Breaking Down
Borealis	Purgatory	From the Ashes
Thantifaxath	Thantifaxath	Violently Expanding Nothing
Old Witch	Come Mourning Come	The Frost and the Tyrant
Raven	ExTermination	Destroy All Monsters
Cult of Luna	Eternal Kingdom	Owlwood
Kylesa	Ultraviolet	Unspoken
Inaeona	Force Rise the Sun	Soldier
Kosmograd	Kosmograd	Velossaraykin
Adversarial	Death, Endless Nothing and the Black Knife of Nihilism	Eonik Spiritual Warfare
Battlecross	Rise to the Power	Not Your Slave
Kadavar	Berlin	The Old Man
Scythian	Hubris in Excelsis	Apocalyptic Visions
Manegarm	Vredens Tid	Frekastein
Myrkur	M	Haevnen
Ahab	The Boats of Glen Carrig	Red Foam (The Great Storm)
F--k The Facts	Desire Will Rot	Prey
Nile	What Should Not Be Unearthed	Call to Destruction
Rivers Of Nihil	Monarchy	Perpetual Growth Machine

September 2

ARTIST	ALBUM	TRACK
Prophets	single	Separate
Cardinals Pride	Those People Will Never Die EP	Refracted
Prismind	single	Diamond Eye
Conflicted	In the Water	Outerspace
Insomnium	Shadows of the Dying Sun	While We Sleep
Omnium Gatherum	single	Skyline
Diemonds	Never Wanna Die	Hell is Full
TimeGiant	single (Soundcloud download)	Waiting for the Sun
Python	single	Too Young to Die
Amorphis	Under the Red Cloud	Sacrifice
Riverside	Love, Fear and the Time Machine	Discard Your Fear
Mesarthim	Isolate	Osteopenia
Cruciamentum	Charnel Passages	Tongues of Nightshade
Iron Maiden	The Book of Souls	Speed of Light
Iced Earth	Live in Ancient Kourion	Dracula
Ghost	Meliora	Mummy Dust
Thrawsunblat	Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings	View of a Million Trees
Beyond Creation	Earthborn Evolution	Elusive Psychological Reverence
Altars of Grief	Of Ash and Dying Light	In Dying Light
Cynic	Kindly Bent to Free Us	The Lion's Roar

Best of... 2004: metal albums I was really digging a decade ago

I've been putting together metal year-end lists for many years. For almost as long – ten years perhaps? – I've also been using the turning over of the year as an excuse to look back to the previous decade, revisiting the albums that most captured my attention at the time and tracking down a few I had missed out on. Now that we've put 2014 to rest, it's time to revisit 2004 and recall what I was listening to then and maybe what I should have been...

writing about metal for the mainstream - a writer's reflections

Over at Last Rites, writer Craig Hayes has just finished a compelling and important set of reflections – Mainstreaming Metal – on writing about metal for more mainstream publications. For my own (and anyone else's) benefit, I've linked the posts here, with a few of notes on the issues I find especially intriguing about each entry.

Disclaimer: Craig's reflections are well thought out and articulated – a great example of quality metal writing. My own notes here are hastily thrown together while I drink my morning coffee and they do not constitute a well thought out and articulated response to Craig's ideas.

nevermind these twenty-teens! (aka: what I was digging in 2003)

When Kill Eat Exploit the Weak used to air on CKMS in Waterloo, my new year's tradition was to look back to the previous decade and highlight some of the best albums from ten years in the past instead of recapping the best of the year just ending.

I've been pretty diligent at maintaining the habit here on the blog, and though we're back on the radio this year, on CFMU 93.3FM, I've decided to constrain my excessive nostalgia to the online list. Tonight, on air, we review our favourite records of 2013 - tune in at midnight ET! But here, below, are some of the albums I did and do like best from 2003 (in no particular order but some particular favs are in bold).

KEEW back on the radio (May 22) and IASPM Canada comes to Hamilton (May 23-26)

If you've been following along, you know that Kill Eat Exploit the Weak started as a campus/community radio program but went off the air (after many years) when I moved away from Kitchener-Waterloo. You'd also know that I've been dabbling in campus radio again during the last couple of summers, co-hosting a fill-in show for McMaster's CFMU 93.3FM on Saturday nights: Hellbound Summer Metal Meltdown.

good stuff from 2012, revisited

I saw Stolen Babies and Turisas at the Mod Club in Toronto last night. Breaking my winter concert drought was enough to put me in a good mood on its own, but both bands are excellent entertainers and performers, so seeing them play live on the same night was pure pleasure (despite the fact that I nearly ate myself into a coma at Utopia before the show).

Stolen Babies' set reminded me how good their 2012 album Naught really is - the first from the band in many years. Which also reminded me of the regrets I felt for not managing to squeeze the record onto  my best of the year list. So, in honour of how awesome last night's concert was, and in tribute to both bands that made it so, here's my list of 2012 albums I really liked but which didn't make it to my top 10.

(fall) metal reviews round-up

Despite the relative quiet around here the past few months, I've been pumping out a slow and steady stream of metal reviews (and the odd interview) elsewhere. Check them out if you're so inclined.

SEPTEMBER to NOVEMBER

• Korpiklaani / Moonsorrow / Tyr / Metsatoll live @ The Opera House, Toronto ON, August 30, 2012
• Stolen Babies - Naught (teaser: I thought it was awesome)
• Epic Kings and Idols tour: Devin Townsend Project / Katatonia / Paradise Lost / Stolen Babies @ The Opera House, Toronto ON, September 19, 2012
• The Gathering - Disclosure (it's pleasant but...)
• My Dying Bridge - A Map of All Our Failures (it's not the best MDB, but even average MDB is year-end list material)
• Daylight Dies - A Frail Becoming (don't know why I didn't give this the Exclaim 'mark of excellence' because it's well deserved)
• Killing Joke - MMXII (a strong album, but I didn't like it as much as Absolute Dissent)
• Cradle of Filth - The Manticore and Other Horrors (solid CofF but I was hoping for more)
• Tiamat - The Scarred People (Tiamat doing their thing, which is pretty enjoyable as always)
• Therion - Les Fleurs du mal (... hmm ...)

And an interview with Dark Forest for Hellbound.ca.


FROM EARLIER IN 2012 (some noted here already, some not)

• Evergrey - A Decade and a Half 
• Ghost, Blood Ceremony and Ancient VVisdom live in TO 
• The Eleventh Hour - Lacrima Mortis 
• Iced Earth, Symphony X and Warbringer live in TO 
• Megadeth, Motorhead, Volbeat and Lacuna Coil live in Hamilton 
• Drudkh - Eternal Turn of the Wheel 
• Barren Earth - Devil's Resolve 
• Atoma - Skylight 
• Memorial Concert for David Gold 
• Woods of Ypres - Woods 5: Grey Skies and Electric Lights 
• Anathema - Weather Systems 
• Paradise Lost - Tragic Idol 
• Paradise Lost interview 
• Moonspell - Alpha Noir 
• Def Leppard, Poison and Lita Ford live in Hamilton
• Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper live in TO 
• Agalloch, Taurus and Musk Ox live in TO 
• Dark Forest - Land of the Evening Star 
• Schizoid interview 
• Nechochwen - OtO 
• HEAVY TO festival in TO 
• Forest of Stars - Shadowplay for Yesterdays 

2012-2013 Conference Round-Up, Part 2: Metal, Music, and a Little (Non)Seriousness

Despite the overwhelming abundance of conferences and conventions listed in my last post on upcoming speculative fiction cons, it didn't come anywhere close to covering the interesting conference activities that have caught my eye recently. Part two here turns from science fiction, fantasy and horror to heavy metal, popular music studies, and a cultural studies approach to seriousness or the lack thereof. See you there, perhaps?

NOCTIS METAL MUSIC CONFERENCE

Part of the Noctis V Metal Fest
September 28-29, 2012

Ramada Hotel
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Guest appearances include: Venom front-man and black-metal legend, CRONOS, music journalists JOEL MCIVER and MARTIN POPOFF, label head CHRIS BRUNI from Profound Lore, professor at Bowling Green University, DR. MATT DONAHUE, journalist and metal scholar SARAH KITTERINGHAM, and many more.

For more information on all the speakers, bands, venue and tickets please visit: www.noctisvalkyries.com

Heavy Metal and Popular Culture

Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, in collaboration with Heavy Fundametalisms: Metal, Music and Politics and the International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)

April 4-7, 2013
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, Ohio, USA

Featured at the conference will be keynote lectures by Robert Walser, Laina Dawes, and Keith Kahn-Harris, a screening of the film Motörhead Matters, three roundtables featuring Niall Scott, Steve Waksman, Deena Weinstein and other international metal scholars to be announced, and a special exhibit on facepaint and masks.

All materials must be electronically date-stamped by December 1, 2012 at midnight CST and emailed to Clifford@ucmo.edu with “HMPC Submission” in the subject line and required documents attached.

You Can’t Be Serious: An Exploration of the Idea, Importance and Influence of Seriousness and Nonseriousness in the Contemporary Humanities

The 2013 John Douglas Taylor Conference
May 15-17, 2013
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Confirmed Keynotes: Jeremy Gilbert (University of East London), Julie Rak (University of Alberta).

Please submit all proposals (paper and roundtable) via e-mail attachment by October 15, 2012 to tayconf@mcmaster.ca with the subject line “Taylor Conference: Seriousness.” Attachments should be in .doc, .docx or .rtf formats.

Music and Labour

IASPM-Canada 30th Annual Conference
May 23-26, 2013

McMaster University

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

From the earliest days of academic popular music studies, concepts of labour have been of paramount importance both for their intellectual richness and for their ability to link academic practices with broader patterns of social and political action. The site of this conference, in Hamilton, Ontario, resonates both with the history of labour in Canada and with the contemporary transformation and reinvention of those urban spaces which originally developed around heavy industry.

While proposals on any topic relating to popular music are welcome, the conference organizers especially invite proposals for individual presentations, panels, workshops or performances on topics related to the theme of the conference. Please submit your abstract in French or English, depending on the language in which the paper will be presented by 31 October 2012 to willliam_echard@carleton.ca.

"Still Alive" (in a Nightingale-ish kind of voice) PLUS Schizoid live in TO!

Iron Maiden
Originally uploaded by kill eat exploit the weak

So, yeah, I haven't been posting much lately. But I'm still doing stuff!

Like giving guest lectures on heavy metal (yesterday). And co-hosting the Summer Metal Meltdown on CFMU 93.3 FM (Saturdays 10:30pm-midnight). And seeing Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper - twice! (it was awesome)

(Maiden/Cooper review and great photographic shots at exclaim.ca. I forgot you could give concerts exclamation points...)

But other people are doing interesting stuff too, like live taping side A of their upcoming CD/digital release. And by other people, in this case, I mean Schizoid (D-Trash Records). The show is this Wednesday, July 25, at Nocturne in Toronto, and it's only $5. You should go.

not so tragic idols (wherein I explain why I've always wanted to interview Paradise Lost)

This post is really about Paradise Lost. Well, that's not quite true. This post provides you with links to the exclaim.ca pages that feature my review of the new Paradise Lost record, Tragic Idol, and a Q&A with guitarist Greg Mackintosh. That page is about Paradise Lost. This post, as so many of my blog ramblings are, is more so about me and my idiosyncratic reflections on being in this world.

This particular rambling reflection is historical, reaching way back to my high school days. Back to when I wanted to be a metal guitarist. I did - it's true. I had dreams of standing on stage, with my shaggy hair, generic jeans, heavy boots, and baggy t-shirts, wailing away - wait, I was more into rumbling power chords, actually - in a metal performance where my musical impulses met up with expert execution. And though it seems a little sad to me now to think of it this way, I imagined transcending gender to get there, even envisioning myself as a gender enigma, too difficult to decode. It's an intriguing memory to think back on, because that particular headspace is forever locked up in a me that's long gone.

Many of you can likely speculate with some accuracy why I had trouble imagining myself as a woman and a metal guitarist. I was just starting to immerse myself in thrash and death metal and at that time female role models were even fewer than now. And most of the woman performers I knew of in the lighter end of the metal spectrum capitalized in some way on big hair, bright red lips, and tight leather, which was not a tactic I wanted to explore. Not as a career move anyway. So, I cultivated baggy metal shirts and shaggy hair, and practiced my guitar playing.

My progress was slower than my ambition. I wanted to be in a band, but didn't have the chops to back the desire up. Of course, lots of people have refused to let skills-in-progress keep them from getting started, but I discovered riot grrrl rather late and didn't know of any community of like-minded women who I could make noise with. Sadly, the only bandmates I've had have been men. (sadly only in a way though - I don't regret my musical partnerships)

If you haven't forgotten all about my earlier reference to Paradise Lost by now, you may be wondering, 'what the hell? what does this have to do with Paradise Lost?!' Fair enough. But I'm getting there.

While I'm working on my guitar playing chops (we're still in the past here), making slower progress than my desire to play demands, I notice a new flyer in the window of my favourite local record store (Encore Records are still there, in fact – check 'em out: www.encorerecords.ca). Some local metal band is looking for a keyboardist and female back-up vocalist.

At this point I was still a better piano player and singer than guitarist, and my desire to be in a band seemed to trump all... So I made the call (never mind I didn't actually own a keyboard at the time), and a few weeks (?) later, it was all real.

Gothic doom we called it, though I don't remember when precisely we settled on the term. But after a few months with still no death growler I was voted up to the main mic, fronting what we (or at least I) imagined as at core a doomy death metal band. At the time, at least to us, this seemed like a new idea. I didn't know any extreme bands with women singing lead vocals. (hell, I don't think I'd ever even used "extreme metal" as a term that early on.) And when The Gathering released Mandylion in 1995, I thought, 'wow, someone else has got the same thing in mind...'.

I'm not claiming to be a trail blazer – this all just kind of happened rather than being the result of some elaborate plan. But at the time, we weren't following a formula we already knew, more so reacting against some of what we knew. For instance, I remember being extremely concerned that my vocals blend in with the rest of the band, just one more instrument in the mix, in contrast to the female pop metal performances I witnessed on the radio or tv.

Somewhere between then and now, bands with female singers ended up getting labelled, most often, as gothic metal by default, however much or little their music actually sounds goth. I find this ridiculous, but I can sort of see where it came from. To some extent, the use of female singing in metal was pioneered by the founders of gothic metal (or death-doom, depending on who you ask), and that's who inspired the guys I ended up performing with. Think Paradise Lost, that flyer suggested. And I was super into Paradise Lost's Icon at the time, and loved making up my own countermelodies to various death metal tracks, so I knew exactly what they had in mind.

You won't find female vocals, and almost no keyboards, on the latest Paradise Lost record. But listening to Tragic Idol I still get that driving urge to perform in a band (and I still want to play guitar most of all). And so, finally, nearly two decades later, I got the chance to interview guitarist Greg Mackintosh for Exclaim, if only by email. How could I pass that chance up?

scimetalvegan holiday guide for the last-minute shopper (2011 edition)

I have mixed feelings about this whole Christmas/xmas thing. I enjoy celebrations, excuses to get together with people, maybe dress up, and eat and drink decadent things. And I'm a sucker for things with schnazzy lights (even if I cringe at the energy getting sucked up into strings of plugged-in xmas decorations). But sometimes it's all a bit much in too short a time.

It's a similar deal with the xmas gift exchange. I get a kick out of the challenge of finding the right present for the people I care about, but there are more people I care about than my time/money budget can cope with. And, like many folks, I take issue with the uber-consumerist insanity that this time of year has a tendency to perpetuate.

In a lot of cases, I just try to see people, share some good food and drink, and enjoy the company. But there are still a few people I need (and want) to buy for, which raises a whole string of related quandaries... How do I satisfy several important, but often competing criteria, while on the quest to find the right gift?

My main goals:

• support local and independent businesses, especially socially-conscious and vegan-friendly ones (or use gift-giving as a way of supporting important charities)
  
• get people something they can actually use, need and appreciate (and avoid contributing to unnecessary clutter or waste)
• be generous but thrifty (and I don't have any particular talent for making gifts)
  

I can't check off all these ideals with every gift, but I make an effort. So, in the spirit of ethical giving, here are some holiday shopping resources it can't hurt to keep in mind.

• Bazaar of the Bizarre: neat, usually handmade stuff, much of it vegan-friendly. The holiday version takes place in Toronto on December 11.
• Vegan Etsy: discovered this through Sick on Sin. The worldwide shipping might be a turn-off for the greener shoppers, but there's also a chance there's a member nearby, wherever you may be.
• Local farmer's market (Hamilton version): aside from the usual fruits and veggies, local markets tend to be a go-to source for delicious baked and prepared treats, but they often feature great homemade crafts as well.
• Artists' co-ops and galleries: Hamilton features at least a couple of stores run by or supporting local artists and filled with their unique creations, and I expect this is true of many cities. I've happily perused the goodies at Textures and AllSorts Gallery.
• Simply Zen: begun as an online business, this eco- and vegan-friendly shop in Hamilton has an amazing array of gift-giving possibilities packed into a relatively small space. Smells good too!
• Animal shelters and wildlife protection: as a Burlington Humane Society volunteer I came home with several gift baskets designed for friends' and family members' pets. But there are other ways to support groups that care for animals while working through your xmas shopping list, and donations are only the start! (but giving someone a surprise pet is NOT recommended)
• Metal: how could I complete any list of gift giving suggestions without at least one shout-out to metal? From a heavy-metal playlist designed with someone's particular tastes in mind, to an independent/underground artist's merch, to concert tickets or a music DVD, it's hard to go wrong with metal (well, as far as I'm concerned, anyway). A few potential sources - Sonic Unyon Metal, Catacombs, Dr. Disc.
  

This list (just a start! - there are many more deserving places for your holiday business!) comes a bit late for online shoppers (many small online businesses have to set a fairly early xmas order deadline). Maybe next year?

cats and metal (like birds of a feather)

I know a lot of cat-loving metalheads, so I was pretty confident I'm not the only crazy cat freak in the metal world. (Apparently I would have understood this better had I been a more dedicated Decibel reader, since they published a feature on metalheads and cats in 2009.)

My contributions to cat rescue have been modest so far – sharing my house with cats, being nice to strays, donating and spreading the word when I can (in print and online), and volunteering for a short time at Burlington Humane Society. Compared to Nuclear Blast USA accountant, Tanja Schoor, I'm a complete amateur!

Nuclear Blast announced this week that Schoor has opened her own cat shelter in Virginia: Clover Cat Rescue. The mandate is to save cats from euthanasia and other sad fates, adopt them out to good homes, and to promote spaying and neutering to help reduce the numbers of uncared for and unwanted cats.

The main ways of helping are adoption and donation - check out their Facebook page for more info (website to come). Perhaps we'll see Clover Cat Rescue benefit shows or recordings in the future as well...

loud ladies and the unease they provoke

Last week I jokingly declared that I live metal. But in a sense it's true. I'm so thoroughly immersed in the metal scene that I sometimes take its conventions for granted and forget that not everyone likes it heavy or can make sense of the imagery that goes along with musical aggression. So I was, I admit, a little surprised at the intense unease provoked by Mares of Thrace's "General Sherman" video when I played it for a few hundred undergrads.

The context was my short lecture on women in punk and new wave, and one of my main points was the gendering of musical genres. However far we've come in the world since the first woman picked up an electric guitar (I wonder who that might have been?), amplification, distortion and (musical) aggression are still understood as masculine phenomena. Admit it - when you see an axe-wielding woman on stage demonstrating her mastery of the guitar you still view this as counter to the norm.

It's partly a matter of numbers. Numerically, women guitarists are still under-represented. But there are deeper cultural codings at work that make women who like it heavy and loud seem to be gender misfits with uncharacteristic tastes. (As I'm one of those 'grrrls' the subject has been on my mind for a while, and I was first inspired to write about women in metal for UW's Imprint many many moons ago.)

Nevermind that almost no one in the class had heard of the early 90s women's counterpoint to grunge, Riot Grrrl. I'll give them a break because of their ages, though I know that's not the only reason why. More interesting though is many students' disturbed reaction to Mares of Thrace, their embrace of the heavy, and their willingness to engage in aestheticized representations of violence on screen - all the while displaying and subverting markers of traditional femininity.

Admittedly, the video is maybe a bit much for the squeamish. As Adrian Begrand notes on Pop Matters, the

"clip quickly shifts to a twisted, torture-porn storyline involving the ladies and an unsuspecting suitor. With MacKichan as the demure girl and Lanz as the evil, corpsepainted voice in her head, our heroines have their way with the fella in ultraviolent fashion, including an incident with garden shears that will make anyone wince."

As Begrand recognizes, the video participates in a visual discourse familiar to any fan of current horror film. There is a common, mass market precedent in contemporary entertainment. But, significantly, his comments read a kind of dark humour in this representation. And even more significantly for my point here is that he also situates the video in relation to the metal genre as a "male-dominated" world.

Because of that male domination in the aggressive music scene, regardless of its causes, any time a woman picks up an axe (metaphorically, or literally - both of which happen in the Mares of Thrace video) she is inevitably (whether she intends to or not) commenting on our cultural assumptions about music and gender, gender and violence. The degree to which the "General Sherman" video unsettled many of the students I played it for suggests that these cultural assumptions are still very deeply entrenched.

EDIT: I should add - a few of the students really appreciated the video, the fact that I played it, and that we were discussing this kind of thing in a university classroom. And even some of the uneasy students were interested in talking about the video and trying to make sense of it.

It was a pleasure to visit the class.

hellbound's year-end wrap up and metal news (updated)

Now up on Hellbound.ca...

New feature: recent news in metal.

And, counting down... I'm sorry to say I haven't heard everything on this list, but I like what I've heard. (stay tuned for more to come!)

The first five entries in Hellbound's top 20 of 2010.

Top 15 to 11.

Bottom half of the top 10.

Plus, the Hellbound writers' individual top 10s (mine included).

Hellbounders' retrospective: memorable metal events of 2010.

cynic reviewed (live)

I've been enjoying much live music this spring and summer, but last night's Cynic concert may have been my favourite of the lot. It seemed to be the night of the drummer, with the percussionists from all three bands (Cynic, Intronaut, Dysrhythmia) being all over their kits plus one Intronaut guitarist banging on a few extra toms at the end of their set. With a perpetual interplay of complex rhythms the drummers were the ones propelling the machine, keeping up a driving momentum where the multiple layers and (self-indulgent? nerdy?) experimentation might have ground that forward power to a halt. Normally I'm more intrigued by vocal and guitar textures, melodies and harmonies, but this show had me drum kit focused.

I've listened to a bit of all three bands before, Cynic much more than the other two. Dysrhythmia bowled me over in the best way possible, but revisiting their recorded stuff today I find it doesn't quite match up. Intronaut was a little more hit and miss for me, winning me over then completely losing my attention till they won it over again. As for Cynic, I'm surprised by how much their newer material has wormed its way into my brain, so that their special presentation of Focus in full felt like just a warm up to the tracks off Traced in Air, Re-Traced and Portal. Even now I've caught myself singing "The Space for This" and "Integral Birth" repeatedly throughout the day.

The Mule wrote an excellent review of the Vancouver show here. And the always entertaining Natalie Zed has a review up on Hellbound with photos by Adam Wills. But if you want to read my own 'professional' account of what went on last night, exclaim has it up here.

Heavy MTL! \m/

Heavy MTL
Originally uploaded by kill eat exploit the weak

My first multi-day outdoor metal festival in North America.

The exclaim! review.

More details to follow.

winter reviews round-up

aka part 2...

The general trend? My ears have not been wowed much yet in 2010.

A few more reviews to check out at exclaim.ca if you're in the mood:

Orphaned Land - The Neverending Way of ORwarriOR

Borknagar - Universal

Dark Tranquillity - We Are the Void

Finntroll - Nifelvind

Pagan Metal: A Documentary (DVD)

And two for Hellbound.ca:

Shining - VI Klagopsalmer

Rotting Christ - Aeolo

One more - not by me but potentially interesting to anyone who's seen Heavy Metal in Baghdad:

Acrassicauda - Only The Dead See The End Of The War

Another DVD mention if not a full review: I got a chance to preview the Norwegian black metal doc Until the Light Takes Us, though I didn't make it out to the theatre in Toronto to see it. It's a strange film, attempting to tap into the atmosphere of the scene it infiltrates. It's not cinema verité but the interviewer(s) is absent, all part of shaping the mystique that pools around three very different characters: the violent ideologist, the passive nihilist, the masochistic goth. The film represents black metal as counterculture, art, ideology, and lifestyle, particularly catering to fans of Darkthrone, Burzum/early Mayhem, and Satyricon. It's worth seeing if you get a chance.

woods of ypres: a different kind of green

The latest (February) online issue of Exclaim.ca features my review of the new Woods of Ypres album along with a Q&A style interview with Woods' main man David Gold. David was generous with his words, sharing much more than the Exclaim feature could hold. If you've read the original interview/review and still can't get enough WoY, scroll down for some more.

More on what the word "green" had come to mean and why Woods IV is the Green Album...

DG: “Green” was everywhere and I couldn’t escape being reminded of everything that I lost. It knocked the breath out of my chest every time I saw it like a punch in the heart and I saw it everywhere, mostly in modern advertising. There was a time when I was on my way to work in Seoul, Korea, when I stepped out of the subway to see a huge 50-foot environmental awareness billboard that read “Love Green” in huge green block letters. Knowing I would encounter this word throughout the rest of my life often enough and knowing that I was severely attached to it enough for it to have the potential to continue to wear me down and eventually destroy me, I needed to do something for my own survival, even if it meant tricking myself by changing the meaning. At the very least, I distract myself from the love that I lost with the consolation that I am reminded instead of Woods of Ypres and the album that I wrote about the love that I lost, of the same name, Green. My little experiment was a relative success in salvaging what was left of me. It was also the source for some unique, once in a lifetime type inspiration that I would use to create something heavy, intense and convincing, as a kind of souvenir. At least now, “Green” reminds me somewhat more of the album, than the unfortunate events that inspired the album, the same way that seeing any forest reminds me of Woods of Ypres more than it does the personal tragedies that often inspired the music. We are the trees, and now we are “green,” too. However, these are still small battles won after the war had been lost, and I still long for all that was. It’s certainly not the album I ever wanted to write but it did indeed become my story and I wanted it to be told. It was also a way for me to communicate my feelings one last time, like a message in a bottle on the ocean. See track ten: “You Are Here With Me (in this sequence of dreams).” I thought that was a fitting place and a bittersweet sentiment on which to finally part ways, in song. Some warm, nostalgic class, post-reactionary-doom-metal-chaos.

How directly autobiographical is your writing?

DG: Maybe it finally borders on “too much,” but in my defence, on the right side of the border, and doesn’t go over. I imagine (hope) that this is last time I will ever write an album like this. Woods songs have always been cathartic for me, paying tribute to some terrible experience with self-satisfying song. I already knew when embarking on my adventure to Korea that I would eventually write the “Green” album, and I’m very happy that we were successful in putting it together and making it happen as quickly as it did, in less than two years since the release of Woods III. I know that the “green” album was the only album I knew how to write in the condition I was in and I felt that it was a good idea to purge all of those feelings and get them out of my system and into song all at once and asap, so those themes didn’t continue to reappear in my songwriting, or my real life, in the future. I also had to make this album before too long, to deliver myself to a place of peace and prove to the rest of the world that I didn’t die, it didn’t kill me. I guess all that experience brought me to a point where I was weak enough to call it quits, but also too tough to die, which is very characteristically “Woods of Ypres” of me.

Early copies of Woods 4 come with Necramyth’s Slaughter of the Seoul as a second disc. Why the double release? How did your experience with Necramyth impact the writing or performances on Woods 4?

DG: Necramyth, Slaughter of the Seoul, was a big part of the W4 process for me. I don’t even know if another Woods album would have happened otherwise. Necramyth saved my life. I was a wreck over there and completely lost with what to do with myself outside of teaching, alone, for a year. Playing brutal drums for a metal band again helped me get back in shape, mentally and physically, working and sweating and blast-beating my defeated, bleeding heart back to life. W4 is like a reflection on my year in Seoul and all the stages I went through in grieving, while Slaughter of the Seoul sounds like how I felt inside during that year, with all the internal violence and chaos.We wrote and rehearsed the songs on Slaughter… throughout the year, trying them out live at shows, before finally beginning the recording process in April 2008, as my contract in Seoul was nearing its end. Necramyth really was a live band. The album was recorded without a metronome or guide tracks and it resulted in a real fluid, live feel with lots of groove. I’m really proud about that album, too! I can vividly remember the feeling of riding the Seoul subway system with my double bass pedals in a case over one shoulder, my Chinese Wuhan cymbals in a bag and a backpack on my back, in my teacher clothes, going to rehearsal at one of the many different rehearsal spots we’d frequent, depending on the day of the week. Lots of sweat and love when into making that album. I felt camaraderie in that band like I had never felt before. I will always feel indebted to the Necramyth guys and I’ll always cherish that experience.

Both albums are like a different side to the same story. There was the side of me that would have to leave my emotional challenges at the door when going in to work everyday and pretend that everything was fine in order to remain professional and do my job. I was able to work out my frustrations in a physical way at night by getting back to extreme drumming while playing in Necramyth, rehearsing twice a week and playing a show almost every Saturday. The content on W4 is like the chapters of the different stages I went through while I was there and the feelings I had but couldn’t try to deal with or even try to talk about at the time. There was my work life, my personal life, my Necramyth life, and W4 is like a chronicle of the whole experience. W4 is like a cup of green tea while sitting in a dark room in personal reflection, while Slaughter of the Seoul is like slamming soju (Korean booze) and smashing the bottle in the street.

On top of the Necramyth connection, you recruited some guest performers for Woods 4, from Ottawa neofolk project Musk Ox. Why and how that did that come about?

DG: I met Nathanaël / Musk Ox through Adrian Bromley a little over a year ago. Musk Ox played Adrian’s memorial show and also opened up for Woods in Hamilton last May on our Eastern Canada Tour. While we were in the writing process we got talking about having the Musk Ox team (Nathanaël Larochette classical guitar, Raphael Weinroth-Browne cello, and Angela Schleihauf oboe) add some melodic instrumentation. They contributed the music for the track “You Are Here With Me (in this sequence of dreams)” and Angela added oboe leads on three other tracks. I recently just saw Musk Ox live in Ottawa at Club Raw Sugar and they opened the set with “You Are Here…”. We may just end up working together again in the future.

More on the irony and the multi-dimensional nature of W4...

DG: I take the risks in believing that for every young black metal kid who says, “this is not for me,” there’s a college age doom-kid totally connecting to it, relating to it, identifying with it, thinking, “this album is about me!” I wouldn’t want to write a doom album like this unless it had a point. It would be irresponsible of me to write a depressing doom album where the message from the first track is “Abandon All Hope” and the message in the last track is “Kill Yourself.” What’s the point? Instead we have “Drag that Weight,” “Don’t Open the Wounds” and “Move On!”

On the subject of musical influences...

DG: Musically, I took influence from Type O, Sentenced, Crowbar, Katatonia, other random, unnamed goth and doom metal from my past and real-time influence from whatever $100 riffs that happen to end up in my hands while playing guitar, sitting on the edge of my bed in Seoul. I didn’t have the capacity to focus or the brainpower to be conceptualizing W4 at the time, but I would play guitar and try to write “something,” simply to keep myself occupied but not knowing what would come of it. Eventually, there came moments where some casual riffing would result in thinking out loud, “That’s going to be a Green Album riff.”

And while writing and recording the Green Album...

DG: I was listening to mostly Nick Cave and The Magnetic Fields, bawling my fucking eyes out at night in the privacy of my apartment. Lyrically, I certainly pulled some lyrical irony from those two heroes of mine, Nick Cave and Stephen Merritt. Also, the “low voice” parts that most metalheads attribute to Peter Steele (Type O Negative) could just as easily be a Stephen Merritt influence for me.

One of the songs, “I Was Buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery,” names several people – Glenn Gould, Alexander Muir, Eaton, Joseph Mulgrew. This is Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto? What’s the significance of these particular individuals?

DG: The first three are real people actually buried in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery: Gould the pianist, Muir the composer and Eaton the businessman. Joseph Mulgrew is the real name of the character Joe Dick, played by Hugh Dillon in the movie Hard Core Logo. In the movie, it is said that Joe Dick (HCL frontman who shoots himself in the head in the final scene of the movie) is buried in Mt. Pleasant and that his body is later stolen and never recovered. I am a huge HCL fan, and I have always identified with Dillon’s “Joe Dick” character as well as Dillon’s character, himself as a frontman and band leader, being just as desperate as he is passionate. Before my job offer in Seoul came in, I spent a few weeks jogging after work in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, which was just behind my apartment in Toronto. It was June, already far too hot for my liking and I hate jogging but it became an outlet, to do something with myself while I tried to think about what I was going to do next. I liked the idea that the old me, the version 1.0 me was slowly ‘buried’ there over the course of a few weeks, or that I progressively faded away a little bit more each day, evaporating in the heat, under the sun, and eventually disappeared. That’s where the Toronto part of my story ended just before the part “In exile” was to begin. This might be my favourite part of the album and sure to become a classic favourite Woods song. It’s my first choice if we are so lucky to end up making a music video to support W4.

Woods of Ypres has gone through several line-up changes over the years. What effect did line-up issues, including the current cast of characters, have on the latest record?

DG: Look, no one gives Devin Townsend a hard time about line up changes these days, so why me…? (hah! Just kidding.) I’ve been doing Woods since 2002, so eight years in which the world has never stood still. Change is inevitable and a natural, healthy part of the process, in retrospect. It all ended well this time, which was refreshing. We had another guy on bass who fought for the gig, only to quit two weeks before he was to start recording, so in classic Woods fashion, we had to think fast and adapt to rearrange the recording schedule in order to meet our deadline of doing this album between an Eastern Canada tour and a Western Tour. Evan’s brother Shane came to rescue by committing himself to the project, learning and writing his parts in less than a month and producing excellent results. Evan Madden is just a monster on drums who can put himself through all the physical abuse of the classic Woods black metal blast and double bass drumming but also understood what this new album was about and how to make it work. Last but not least, fellow Sault Ste. Marie guy Bryan Belleau contributed his lead guitar skills and added solos to the album.

Playing live seems to have been an off and on activity for Woods of Ypres, recently more on than off. How has that affected what you’re doing now with the band?

DG: Well, it’s closer to where I want us to be, being able to release albums and tour to support them. In the very beginning we played lots of shows, then we played only 1-2 a year during the challenging WII and WIII years in Toronto. In the W4 era of the last 1.5 years, we’ve toured coast-to-coast across Canada, co-headlined the Noctis metalfest in Calgary and ventured into the USA to co-headline the Heathen Crusade 3. We’re planning another cross Canada tour in June 2010, and our first real tour of the USA in July. Europe is inevitable for Woods of Ypres. It’s just a matter of time. Overall, being able to tour is a dream come true. I love writing, recording and releasing music but touring and connecting with the listeners live and in person completes the process. It’s an awesome feeling to hit the stage in any town and see listeners nodding, frowning, with fists in the air, making eye contact with me and singing along to anything from “Your Ontario Town is a Burial Ground” to “The Ghosts of Summer’s Past.”

The first Woods of Ypres release, the EP Against the Seasons, came out in 2002, followed by Pursuit of the Sun and Allure of the Earth in 2004 and The Deepest Roots and Darkest Blues in 2008. What would you say has been the biggest change from what Woods was then to what the band is now?

DG: Nothing has stayed the same. I’ve moved, grown, changed, mostly abruptly and usually against my will, and as a result the music has evolved and my reasons for continuing has changed. I guess I’ve gone with the flow, even though it rarely feels like it, and by that what I mean is that we let change happen. For example, instead of trying to force that fast, youthful black metal sound of 2002 across a career, I prefer to reflect the honesty of our dark, slow doom of 2009. That’s where we were then, but this is where we are now. We’ve had blessings in disguise, too. Getting to where we are now has been a struggle, but admittedly it’s always been a voluntary labour of love. Everything else just seems to come and go but I always come back to Woods of Ypres. I will always have it and no one will ever be able to take that away from me. There have been many good opportunities to quit, namely less than two years ago. Now, there are so many good reasons to continue, reaching new heights with the band in 2009 and 2010. It’s ironic and highly entertaining to me to reflect on the absurdity that I play in a depressive, often suicidal-themed black and doom metal band, and yet, heredity suggests that I will likely live for a very long time, in which I can’t ever imagine putting the band to rest. Eventually, I would like to bring the band and myself to a good, strong, healthy place and have that strength and sense of hope reflected in the music. It would only be fair, honest.

And a few more words on staying independent...

DG: It gives me something to do until I find a greater cause. The main advantage is that we make the albums that we want to make and there’s no one to interfere. However, the major challenge is that we must do everything ourselves and there’s no one to help share the burdens. Now in 2010, when it seems all the other bands are finally going independent, it would seem backwards for me to sign to a label, when really, we could be entering into the era in which we will finally capitalize on our years of experience in the independent underground. Or, we will continue to make albums and most people will continue to download them for free from blogs, etc… We will sign a good long-term deal with a good label who is prepared to adapt with the industry. Labels have only offered us shit so far and told us to take it or leave it, and we have always left it and continued to do our own thing and grow on our own.

new year goodies from hellbound

If your holiday goodie bag didn't satisfy your metal cravings, Hellbound's got the solution: enough free music to feed your ears for days straight (longer if you give them a nap break).

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Hellbound is seven months old now, and for me, the webzine's emergence and growth definitely qualify among the most memorable developments of 2009.