A Muck-Caked Museum Exhibit

Wandering through the halls of heavy metal with Iron Maiden, Dio and Judas Priest

Jan 17, 2021

Finally we’re starting to get rolling in the new year. This past week brought a bunch of interesting albums, both metal and non-metal. We’ll be digging into those new records and plenty more throughout this letter. So let’s jump on in.

Nomadic Rituals - TIDES

This week is officially a stoner doom week. And in a week of impressive stoner doom albums, TIDES stood head and shoulders above its peers. Following a crew on their journey through space, the album has touches of Sleep’s The Sciences in both theme and sound. But despite clearly being influenced by Sleep, they still take stoner doom in an exciting direction. The guitars are furiously distorted and the vocals are fairly easy to understand despite being screamed. Really though, it’s about the execution on this one. Few bands can make a genre like stoner doom feel fresh and exciting. TIDES manages to make the overdone genre sound fun and exciting without ditching the core tenets of stoner doom itself.

Great Metal from this Week

This week provided a decent yield for solid metal albums. As you’d expect, mostly doom metal albums caught my eye, but what can I say, when it works it works.

Our playlist is finally starting to gain steam too. As the year rolls onward, we’ll keep updating the list with the best new metal tracks and soon we’ll have 2020 tracks completely removed from the list. Click the button below to check it out.

Apotheosis Fresh Kills

Loud Books

The past few weeks I’ve been reading Into the Never: Nine Inch Nails and the Creation of The Downward Spiral, by Adam Steiner. Originally, I wasn’t sure that it would be a fit for this newsletter, seeing as NIN isn’t really metal. However, they’re also not NOT metal.

From the jump, it’s clear that Steiner has done his research. The book is impressively lengthy for a dissection of a single album, but in many ways, the sprawl of the narrative is its ultimate strength. Steiner thoroughly examines interviews with Trent Reznor, his associates and various media critics to paint a compelling picture of how The Downward Spiral came to be created.

At the same time, like any good critic, Steiner injects his own hypotheses on the impact and quality of the album itself. To pay the record its full due, Steiner investigates each track, and provides numerous interpretations of the tracks in addition to the circumstances and mental states that led to their creation.

While there were a few theories I disagreed with, or felt were reaching, they were all enjoyable to entertain. And given the wide ranging impact of the album, anything is on the table. If you grew up close enough to the ‘90s or consciously lived through all of the decade, this book is well worth your time. I only wish that Steiner had been able to hear and dissect the soundtrack to Soul in time to put that in the book.

Purchase "Into the Never"

The Original: Heavy Metal

With the release of Black Sabbath, the world came to know heavy metal. But despite their undeniable influence on other genres of metal, the importance of Black Sabbath’s contributions to metal would largely be passed over in traditional heavy metal. Instead, the most popular heavy metal bands would be groups like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Dio.

If you read last week’s newsletter, you know our thoughts on Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. If not, the short version is that both bands are tremendous, Zep is our personal pick for the greatest rock band of all time in fact, but to us, they’re proto-metal or hard rock (and Robert Plant agrees with us). But despite not feeling like metal to us in 2021, their influence is so palpable in the bands that followed, and their style was so hard for the time, that it’s easy to see why the label retroactively sticks.

That said, when most of you think about heavy metal, you think about Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Dio. Stylistically these bands are marked by mid-to-fast-tempo riffs, consistent, thumpy basslines, frequent and flashy guitar solos, and most importantly, soaring choruses and clean high-pitched vocals. Many of these stylistic flairs would break off into other genres in the future, but Heavy Metal most directly leads to power metal in style and influence. It also leads into Glam Metal (Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe) and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (aka NWOBHM, Motörhead, Def Leppard).

Looking back on OG Heavy Metal today, the genre can seem innocuous, unthreatening and even kitschy, but at the time it was some of the most abrasive music you could hear outside of an academic or free-jazz setting. Beyond the sound, Heavy Metal has left a lasting influence on the style of the entire metal scene. Where Black Sabbath leaned hard into occult imagery, Heavy Metal bands took it a step further, turning the occult into a comic book. Images of leather clad badasses riding buzzsaw bikes and ass-kicking zombies became the norm. These images persist to this day, and help dispel the notion that all metal is made by misanthropic dropouts. Sometimes it’s made by theatre kid dropouts too.

Unlike the original three, where you only have to choose between three albums, Heavy Metal lacks a singular record that you can point to as a cornerstone. But it’s hard to argue against Dio being the most important act of heavy metal. He simultaneously pushed the sonic limits of the genre and did so with an impressive command of the guitar and an iconic vocal flair. The group itself suffered from tumult in the lineup, and eventually dissolved in 2010 with the passing of Ronnie James Dio. But despite the inconsistencies, Holy Diver remains a cornerstone of heavy metal. We’ll throw the horns up for it any day.

Non-Metal AOTW

Viagra Boys - Welfare Jazz

If we’re well known for loving any genre outside of doom metal, it has to be weird post-punk stuff. Viagra Boys’ Welfare Jazz, certainly fits into that category. Blending horn sections, post-punk and funk all into one bewildering package, this album refuses to stand still. The second you feel like you have a grasp on it’s multifaceted form, it shifts into something else entirely. A manic tone poem that blasts through genres and concepts with no regard for them whatsoever, Welfare Jazz may be the best listening experience of this young year.

Runners-up

Peering into the Time Vortex

The album release machine finally chugs into motion this week with a healthy crop of new albums. We’re especially stoked to hear the new EP from Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou. Their last project made our best metal albums of 2020 list and there’s no reason this EP couldn’t be one of 2021’s best.

Metal Albums

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - The Helm of Sorrow
Gatecreeper - An Unexpected Reality
Monolord - I’m Staying Home

Non-Metal Albums

shame - Drunk Tank Pink
Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs
Front Line Assembly - Mechanical Soul

Looking forward to a deeper dive into some of these records with next week’s newsletter. Lots of great music to get excited about.

Shrinekeeping

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Let’s try to keep the earth alive until the next edition of Apotheosis. We’ve seen what lurks in the bowels of the Earth and trust us, that’s one egg you don’t want to break.

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