Music – Page 8 – Gemma D. Alexander

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Black Morning Winter Green, Burn the Ships, Hvile I Kaos, In Cauda Venenum, Into the Empty, Kontinuum, Lamassu, No Need to Reason, Opeth, Still Life, The Electric Mud

Music I Like – Metal-Inflected

No, that’s not “metal infected” although I guess you could call it that. I recently enjoyed an Alcest album, then had a hard time figuring out where to put it in on the blog. I realized that I listen to a lot of music that gets lumped with metal, but really isn’t. Sometimes bands start out really heavy and then mellow or become more sophisticated with age. Or a metal musician does a side project in a different genre. Sometimes, there are weird social dynamics that get an artist lots of metal fans, even though their music doesn’t have any of the sonic markers of metal. So here’s a bunch of metal-inflected music that I like.

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Ég vil finna fyrir þér, Eydis Evensen, Gus Gus, I Want More, k.ola, Kaleo, Out of Place, Stormasamt Kvold, Vofa

Music I Like – Icelandic Singles

I usually don’t like listening to singles. I prefer to put on an album and let it run. But mostly thanks to the Reykjavik Grapevine I’ve stumbled across a few emerging Icelandic artists who only seem to have a song or two posted online. And I’ve liked what I heard enough to make a note of it.

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Ballard, concerts, fox and the law, local bands, macefield festival, rock stars

Fox and the Law

The first and last time I ever saw Fox and the Law was at Macefield Festival in 2015. I think it was one of their last shows before breaking up. Folks in Fox and the Law are involved in Freakout Records and Freakout Festival, which seems to have replaced Macefield, and the band Acid Tongue, which I also like, and have gotten to see more than once.

But Fox and the Law was particularly my jam, a very particular type of rock music that I can never adequately describe because it is such a baseline sound for me. I even love the name, which sound like an ’80s tv show in the vein of Simon and Simon.

Plus, I’m really proud of getting a clear picture in red stage light. That is so hard to do.

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Ami Dang, BaBa ZuLa, Birds Contending, Dakha Brakha, Derin Derin, Exulansis, Frucht-Schleifen, Jupiter, Parted Plains, Sequestered Sympathy, Zhaoze

Music I LIke – Unusual Instrumentation

I admit I spent many years in the thrall of rockism. Music was supposed to be five guys (it was always guys, too, wasn’t it) on drums, bass, two guitars and vocals. Or else like, a string quartet, or full orchestra. But eventually I came around to industrial and electronic music. Now nothing grabs my attention like an unexpected instrument thrown into the mix. There’s always a risk of being gimmicky, but done right, unusual instrumentation is music I like.

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Absolution, Andavald, Arx Atrata, Ashbringer, Essence of Datum, Hope Drone, Nechochwen, Spellcrying Machine, The Ancient Pulse, The Path Untravelled, Undir skyggdarhaldi, Void Lustre

Music I Like – Black Metal

I’ve always liked metal, but it took me a long time to come around to black metal. First, there’s the culture. I have a strong negative reaction to the self-righteousness of white males slavishly copying a handful of mentally ill teenaged white males from decades ago. Besides the cultural *shudder* “purity” of a movement, there’s the sonic rigidity. The tropes of #trveNorwegianblackmetal are so rigid that I struggle to tell any of the thousands of copy cats apart. But black metal is ubiquitous, so it was inevitable that I would find a few bands to enjoy. In fact, one of the best concerts I’ve been to in recent history had a line up heavily skewed towards black metal. Mostly I enjoy groups whose blackness is polluted with other colors, or bands who blacken other genres. Anyway, here are a few black metal and black metal adjacent bands I’ve enjoyed lately.

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Music I Like – Metal-Inflected

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Music I Like – Metal-Inflected

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