So when I first started this blog my intent was to provide a variety of literature, but ya know, shit happens. So here's part of that variety I was talking about. Hey, we all love beer and we should all love this beer!
2009 was the year I believe that Sierra Nevada made a tweak or two to Bigfoot's recipe. Up until this batch Bigfoot was a hop bomb. It was one of the beers that established a West Coast style. There was a presence of malt, but not enough to keep up with the hop overload. Polar opposites, but the hops always came out on top. In 2009 they boosted up the malt to mellow out the hop bite. Still big, still unforgiving to the pallet. It's 2011, let's see how this vintage holds up.
It pours a copper-reddish hue with a creamy, tan head. The head fades away after letting the beer sit for a few minutes, but leaves a nice dirty line of lacing around glass. Heavy hop aroma. Lots of grapefruit and citrus rind. Hints of vanilla frosting. A little, tiny bit of earthy notes. Lots of alcohol warmth. I don't find many beers at 9.6% alcohol to be this hot from alcohol.
The first sip is smooth, almost creamy, until the hops break down the door. Two and a years aged and this beer still puts up a fight! These's hops don't die, they just mellow out a bunch. Thick texture. No real intense opening notes. This beer lets you slide into the flavor before the hoppy finish kicks you on the way out, and leaves you with a bitter feeling in your mouth. Any really presence of malt is certainly not sweet. Letting this baby get some air brings some sweet flavors (hints of honey) to the front, but they don't seem to last long. The hops engulf anything that isn't hopped already. I could be easily mistaking this flavor for the hops. Maybe they didn't even change the recipe and my hop tolerance (more distinctly my West Coast style hop tolerance) has gone up and I just didn't think it was too hoppy. Bigfoot is a hop beast. This 2009 vintage as shown signs of significant mellowing, but it won't go down quiety.
Morbid Angel's new album, Illud Divinum Insanus, comes to us after a eight years. While Trey and David Vincent have been reunited for quite a few years, and playing shows, we're only now hearing new offerings. It's not safe to say that an album eight years in the making will blow minds and be perfect. A rejoining of one of the best duos in death metal also doesn't mean that the album will be perfect. The new Morbid Angel album is, well, um, it's new.
The album's opener, Omni Potens, serves as an intro, but can easily be thrown away. The first real track, Too Extreme, is too extreme. Lets forget for a moment that Morbid Angel is the band that brought you such classics as Alters of Madness and Blessed are the Sick. The opening lines to this song are, "This is a warning." No shit. It's not secret that Trey Azagthoth has an affinity of electronic music, and it shows on this album, a little too much (sometimes you shouldn't bring you hobbies to the office). It sounds like Morbid Angel was listening to Ministry, a lot. The drums sound like they were sampled from a Berzerker album. Before this track is over you're scratching you head wondering why after eight years of waiting you get this. You feel like you've been wronged.
Don't fret, the next four songs will reassure you that the Florida deathsters haven't ran off the deep end. These are the tracks remind you of who this band is. Think Domination era, Vincent's vocals are as good as ever. However this moment of rejoicing is then broken up again by the song Destructos Vs. The Earth - Attack, an even worse attempt at industrial music. Radikult is even worse, take the lyrics from Body Count's Cop Killer and place it over really, really bad industrial rock. Hearing Vincent scream 'Kill a Cop' makes me uncomfortable, not that he'd kill cop, but a Morbid Angel album is the last place you'd hear something like this.
Nevermore has been well heard for the past few years, and should have been the album's opening. Vincent's roar is like a lion who has just reclaimed his throne. It's as if he never left. While videos of this song have been all over the web, hearing the studio version is welcomed with open ears. It served as insurance to the fans that we'd see another album. Unfortunately, Tim Yeung's fill in spot is not as exciting. As amazing as this Yeung is (winner of the fastest feet award), this guy was born and raised on Florida death metal. He does a great job sounding exactly like Pete 'The Feet' Sandoval'. He was hired because he could replicated Sandoval's work
I'm sorry to say it, but this album shows why musicians should start side projects. The industrial tracks are completely misplaced. If he has released them under another moniker, then we'd all be happy. This album is a mixed bag, the good tracks are good and what you'd expect. The problem is, it's a new album. Hearing this album is like seeing a friend who'd been away for years and is the same, but with a few new quirks from their travels. Why Trey and the gang decided the infused what should have been a good return with confusion is beyond me. This is not to be confused with the a fan's demand for the familiar and same old. Perhaps this was the only way These new sounds would get heard, and quickly ignored.
The video below was taken from Metalsucks.net
"A few years ago there was this popular internet meme in which people took a scene from Downfall, a movie about Hitler’s final days, and re-did the subtitles so that, instead of reacting to the news that he was losing the war, The Führer seemed to be freaking out about some horribly insignificant bit of nerdery (e.g., that the end of The Watchmen movie wasn’t exactly the same as the end of The Watchmen graphic novel, etc.).
Like most memes, it got old after awhile. But our friend Mark sent us the below one over the weekend, and, well… I don’t think I have ever typed these words before, nor am I likely to ever type them again:
From time to time there comes along an album that manages to find a happy medium. Too often are bands described using a shopping list of adjectives that really just covers up that fact that either a band lacks a focus (not always a bad thing) or are just beyond description. Too often are genere's mashed together to create something unique but still fall short of allure ( Folk metal and deathcore). The comes along a band that just gets it. Struck By Lightning does just that.
The debut album from these Ohio crushers, lead by former Mouth of the Architect Axeman Gregory Lahm, takes progressive sludge ala early Mastodon and adds 90s hardcore to conceive a post NeurIsis masterpiece (see what I did with that sentence? Hahahaha!). Serpents came to me shortly after its release. It took me to see them opening for Weedeater to witness their magic. Lahm's departure from MOTA only helped him. The sticker on the wrapper said something along the lines of "the soundtrack to a Blues Brothers style chase scene." Sold. This album has teeth. Heavy and complex. Lots of d-beat style hardcore, some melodic parts, lots of heavy crushing sludge. The complexity of Converge with the power of Tragedy and His Hero is Gone. Struck By Lightning seem to be more focused on writing fast and heavy rather than slow thick. You can't tell whether the hardcore is influencing the sludge or the other way around, but you don't care. You're too busy enjoying the music. This album comes at a time where a lot bands of a similar nature seemed rather lost. These guys have a good ear for what works and what doesn't. 'Becoming Earth', while on the sludgier side of the coin, opens with probably one of the coolest riffs I've heard in years, and displays some great rhythmic parts. They could have easily sped this jam up, but let it soak in the gravy just for a little longer. Having come up with music from the late 90s and the early 00s, this brings a lot to the table that I haven't heard in a while. You can tell why a lot of hardcore kids started listening to Neurosis and all that stuff.
