It’s high time I finished my 2018 favorites list (or at least the thorough reviews).

Every year, I try to get into a new style that pushes my appreciation of extreme music just a little bit further.  In 2017, I took a deeper dive into grindcore with some classic Napalm Death and Agoraphobic Nosebleed.  This past year, I attempted to grasp the appeal of the super-dissonant side of death metal.  Portal are probably the best known band in this style right now and are still well beyond me, but I think I’m more invested at wrapping my head around Gorguts at this juncture, as their melodic sensibilities are more pronounced and I’ve been a Colin Marston fan ever since I first heard “You Will Be Reincarnated As An Imperial Attack Space Turtle”.

That said, after 2018, I think Anachronism might have been the band I was looking for this whole year.  After hearing the first couple tracks of Orogeny, which I believe to be their second album, I was pretty sure Anachronism would be a great gateway into the thick, murky, dissonant ends of the death metal spectrum.  Orogeny ended up exceeding my expectations on every front and was one of the strongest albums I heard this year.  (Also before the cut I need to tell you that this album shares a name with the magic system in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy, which you absolutely must read if you’re up for some heavy-hitting fiction.)

Continue reading Scriv’s Favorite Albums of 2018: Anachronism, Orogeny →

Alright, let’s say you’ve got an album by a band called Rivers of Nihil (spooky), and they’ve got a real spiky logo (at least it’s legible) and the album cover is a Dan Seagrave (he’s done all their album covers)–you, and most everybody else, will probably conclude that this is a metal album.  But from the very first chord, if you’re even remotely familiar with the genre, you can further guess that Where Owls Know My Name isn’t going to be just another metal album (and if you’re not, you’ll come to the same realization around when the first saxophone solo kicks in).  Even then, you still might not expect how beautifully written, how emotive, how powerful an experience it ends up being.

Continue reading Scriv’s Favorite Albums of 2018: Rivers of Nihil, Where Owls Know My Name →