Music I Liked – Black Tones, Khuu.eex’, Ritual Necromancy, and more

It was a good week for music, y’all. Last week I was still coasting on the high from Death Cab for Cutie, which included music from opening bands The Black Tones and Khuu.eex’. I also continued my dive into the backlog of posts from music blogs I subscribe to, which unearthed Ritual Necromancy, Twilight Fauna, and Anicon. Then Monster Magnet paid a visit.

The Black Tones

I was one of the lucky ones who got to see Death Cab for Cutie‘s free concert at the Paramount in celebration of that venue’s 90th anniversary. It was, if possible, even better than I expected. But I wrote about it elsewhere, and I won’t repeat myself here. No, I want to focus on the opening bands. I’d never heard of either of them, but both made a big impression. The Black Tones sounded so bluesy and gritty, with some Black Power energy. But at the same time, they could have passed for the house band on a kiddie tv show. The contrast was most perplexing, in a “wait let me hear that again” way.

Khu.eex’

A Tlingit storyteller walks in to a funk band….

Khu.eex’ combines funk music, Raven stories, Tlingit language and cultural education in a most perplexing way. A lot of times projects like this are all well-meaning education and yaawn – where was I? But Khu.eex’, with a solid foundation of jazz and funk (ex-Parliament’s late Bernie Worrell was a founding member; local funk legend Skerik still performs with them) feels taboo. When storyteller Gene Tagaban shouts, “We all have the spirit in us,” you want to believe him. When Nahaan (whose musical inheritance is as much Snoop Dog as his cultural inheritance is Tlingit) calls, “When I say Khu you say Eex,” you’re really not sure if you’re respecting tradition or appropriating it. Khu.eex’ are obviously legit. But is the music really for me? Or am I just a witness of something for the First People? Check out the Indiegogo for their next album. Founding member Preston Singletary is a glass artist and the perks are incredible.

Ritual Necromancy

No crazy backstory here. Just a killer NW death metal band I found on a blog. Ritual Necromancy has got so much juicy carnage it could make a vegetarian crave meat.

Anicon

Anicon is another bloggy find.

Chocolate:Peanut butter :: Melody:Black metal.

Who knew?

Twilight Fauna

Bandcamp told me Kim Kelly bought this so I clicked through and saw this description:

Twilight Fauna is an atmospheric metal band devoted to telling the stories of Appalachia.

Intrigued, I hit play and was instantly hit with some wicked banjo picking. Banjo and black metal? Shut up and take my money. Alas, Twilight Fauna doesn’t so much meld the two as perform each in sequence. But the banjo got it’s hooks in me hard, and the metal is sharp, so if I can’t have them together I’ll enjoy them in parallel. (Also, one of the songs is titled “Crooked Road,” so these folks have clearly got my number.)

Monster Magnet

Despite listening to loads of good music last week, the garbage fire of world events and an usually high concentration of rejected pitches got me down. I was feeling pretty squished when I went to yoga last Thursday, until a familiar song came up on the instructor’s playlist. It was an instrumental version of Monster Magnet‘s “Space Lord.” (What, you thought I went to a yoga class that played Krishna Das?) And all of a sudden, I remembered how it felt to be the one stomping instead of the stomped.