REVIEW SOULSTORM "DARKNESS VISIBLE"

This time I'm presenting an album that I discovered by chance while on vacation in Tenerife at the local record store called Rock Shop in Santa Cruz, a remarkable little store by the way. It's about the Canadian Soulstorm, more precisely from Toronto, who celebrate an absolutely outstanding mixture of industrial and death metal on their debut album from 1992 called “Darkness visible”, so a band member wore Grave shirts in band photos. Of course, Pitch Shifter and Godflesh and the early Fear Factory were the main inspiration here, but the band around mastermind, guitarist, bassist and singer Nick Sagias really didn't have to hide behind their quality and compositional skills in any way. However, because of the vocals, the pendulum often swings more in the direction of death metal, although there are also one or two clean vocal parts that bring back memories of Fear Factory.

FILMREZENSION "THE WICKER MAN"

An dieser Stelle soll es um einen Film gehen, der als Klassiker der Filmgeschichte gilt, nämlich „The Wicker Man“ aus dem Jahre 1973. Oftmals in die Gattung des Horrorfilms einsortiert, trifft es dies doch nicht ganz. „The Wicker Man“ ist vielschichtiger, Elemente von Gewalt, Blut und Tod gibt es kaum -auch wenn diese natürlich kein zwingendes Merkmal für die Definition eines Horrorfilms darstellen. Gerade zu Beginn kann die Handlung vielmehr dem Schema des Krimis zugeordnet werden, bevor es immer verworrener wird, was auch den absoluten Reiz des Filmes ausmacht, in dem u. a. auch Christopher Lee mitwirkte und der vom British Film Institute auf Platz 96 in die Liste der besten britischen Filme aller Zeiten aufgenommen wurde. 1973 erschien übrigens auch ein weiterer britisch-(italienischer) Kultfilm namens „Wenn die Gondeln Trauer tragen“, aber das nur am Rande…

REZENSION DR. HARTMUT ROSA "WHEN MONSTERS ROAR AND ANGELS SING"

Dr. Hartmut Rosa, Professor für Soziologe an der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena und Direktor des Max-Weber-Kollegs an der Universität Erfurt hat ein Buch über Metal geschrieben, genauer gesagt trägt das Werk den Untertitel "Eine kleine Soziologie des Heavy Metal". Dieses Werk ist das erste der "Metalbook"-Reihe, unter anderem hat in diesem Rahmen auch Manuel Trummer, Professor für vergleichende Kulturwissenschaften an der Universität Regensburg und wahrscheinlich den meisten eher bekannt als Gitarrist von Antlantean Kodex, eine Publikation namens "Highway to Hell" herausgebracht.

Nun sind gerade in den letzten Jahrzehnten Unmengen von Büchern erschienen, deren Autoren sich mit Heavy Metal, seinen Subgenres, bestimmten nationalen bzw. regionalen Szenen und / oder bestimmten Epochen beschäftigten, sei es aus Fansicht oder auch aus wissenschaftlicher Perspektive. Wobei bei letzterem angemerkt werden muss, dass auch in diesen Fällen die Verfasser selbst fast immer aus der Szene selbst kamen, ich erwähne hier beispielsweise-wenn auch länger zurückliegend- Bettina Roccor, die 1996 mit  „Heavy Metal – Kunst, Kommerz. Ketzerei“ promovierte oder auch Sarah Chaker, die 2014 mit "Schwarzmetall und Todesblei- über den Umgang mit Musik in den Black- und Death-Metal-Szenen Deutschlands" den Doktortitel erlangte. Der Psychologe Dr. Nico Rose, der es in jüngster Vergangenheit mit seinem Buch "Hard, Heavy & Happy" sogar bis in die Spiegel-Bestseller-Liste schaffte, und auf den sich Rosa in seiner Publikation des Öfteren bezieht, ist ebenfalls passionierter Metalfan. So auch Rosa, der sich nebenbei noch als Hobby-Keyboarder diverser Bands "outet" und - sehr sympathisch - das Buch seinen folgend namentlich genannten "Metal-Brüdern" und Mitmusikern widmet. 

INTERVIEW TOMBTHROAT

"This omnipresent arrogance is the reason for all the shit that happens in this world."

Here is an old interview with the death metal band Tombthroat from Ludwigshafen am Rhein in Rhineland-Palatinate. The band was founded in 1996, it took them four albums, two EPs and the obligatory demo at the beginning and disbanded after almost two decades in 2015. Back then I organized a concert with the band in my hometown of Brühl (Rhineland), shortly after which this interview took place in the summer of 2007. Band founder Björn, who I'm sure some people know from his band Maladie (look for an interview in German here) and who recorded a really great, recommendable death / grind album with (ex-) members of Misery Index and Dying Fetus under the name God Enslavement in 2016, talked about the then newly released album "Blood red history", live gigs, the tour with Vital Remains and also about somewhat different topics such as his beard. In 2012, the band released what I consider to be thier best work, the truly exceptional album "Eden apoacalypse". Now reading the interview,  it's also interesting how time flies, 17 years later, many of the bands mentioned, such as Necrophagist, Veneral Disease and Lifthrasil have since passed away.  But read for yourself what Björn had to say back then...

INTERVIEW MORTEM

"Perhaps it's in our blood!"

Here you can read an interview with the Peruvian underground institution Mortem, who have been haunting the underground since the distant year 1986. Read here what founding member, drummer and vocalist Alvaro Amduscias has to say about the band's beginnings, influences, goals, upcoming gigs and a new Mortem album.

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Hello Alvaro, best regards from the Rhineland in Germany, how are you doing at the moment?

Hi Gerald. Thank you very much for this interview! All good, here in the burning desert of Phoenix, Arizona.

REVIEW PENTAGRAM (CHILE) "ETERNAL LIFE OF MADNESS"

The announcement of a new album by Pentagram Chile, the band around the charismatic cosmopolitan Anton Reisenegger, who should also be known from bands like Criminal, Lock Up or Brujeria, came to me out of nowhere. This is only the second album by the band, which was founded back in 1985 and has been on ice for a long time in the meantime, changing its name because of the namesake doomers from the USA around Bobby Liebling and forming the ominous triumvirate of Chilean death metal together with Atomic Aggressor and Sadism.

Just how influential the Chileans have been in the past can be seen from the fact that bands like Dismember have been seen wearing Pentagram shirts on promo photos or Napalm Death have covered “Demoniac Possession”, a track by the South Americans.

INTERVIEW MANDATORY

"When I personally think back to the last really great death metal records from Germany, whose songs I can always remember, I can only think of Morgoth's "Odium" and the debut album by Crack Up, which was released twelve years ago."

Here is an interview with German old school death metal outfit Mandatory, which I conducted in 2007. Bandleader and guitarist Sascha Beselt talks about the German death metal scene in an interesting way- from a music-historical point of view alone this interview is interesting. The new wave of German death metal bands - names such as Chapel of Disease, Lifeless, Slaughterday, Arroganz, Sulphur Aeon, Wound or Revel in Flesh, many of which were or are still based at the busy label F.D.A. Records - only started a few years later. The album "Adrift Beyond" announced here was finally released in 2010 via the renowned Spanish label Xtreem Music, and in 2012 the band released their previously unreleased debut album "Ripped from the tomb" from 2003. Nothing has happened on Mandatory's Facebook profile since 2015, so the band is probably no longer active, even if there was never an official break-up. Looking back, you might think that Mandatory should perhaps have stayed active with their old-school sound for a few more years in order to gain more attention in the course of the aforementioned revival of more traditional sounds. But be that as it may, enjoy this little trip back in time to an era when most bands were still on Myspace instead of Facebook.