Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts.
So, I quit my day job this past month. This was a relatively shocking change even for me, the one who initiated it; while I’d felt stress at the position, I don’t think I would have told you I was about to quit especially in the relatively hasty fashion I did. I came from a place of precarity, spending most of my 20s struggling with fairly intense poverty, such that the idea of willfully leaving income on the table was for the longest time deeply insane to me. It is not to say that there is a thin line between bravery and stupidity: no, it is to say that they are the same thing with different names, that all things brave require an element of foolhardiness which is to say foolishness. But likewise the struggle toward liberty, not the defamed right-wing idiomatic sense of the word but that overriding sense of being free, bound as often as possible only by chains we have consented to or resigned ourselves to, that complex and ugly thing, requires an absolute determination that is itself foolish.
The thunder and bravado inherent to heavy metal, even its slowest and most lugubrious forms, is not a rationalist thing. We can build life, perhaps, from the coolness of the mind, the cerebral and considered, but something I picked up in therapy is that for people like me, that kind of rationalist intellectualizing of life is almost a form of addiction, a way to silence and numb the self the way someone else might turn to drugs or alcohol for. It is built in part from a sense of shame and confusion toward the heat of the self, that furnace of being, which heavy metal in me stokes bright. When I’m alone at night, Sumerlands or Morbid Angel or Bell Witch on the stereo, Voivod and Gorguts in my blood, I am not a thinking-being: I am a feeling-being, mind swarmed with heat and image, like the taste of copper in the mouth. And yet all this frustration in my working life, a place where we spend roughly a third of our day as adults, was something I had convinced myself I just had to slog through.
I phrase it this way because it also wasn’t ultimately about the job itself. It’s a job I loved and a place I hope continues to thrive. But I didn’t feel that joy anymore, that animal joy that is the root of even (to an outsider) the most cruel and aggressive heavy metal. We love this stuff the way dogs love their people; years roll back and you can watch a grown adult, aging and in their 50s or 60s, effortlessly peel back the years like magic, become a child again. We are allowed, ultimately, to choose and pursue joy in our lives, be that the labor of our day jobs, the shape and boundaries of our relationships with friends and families and lovers, or the desires of the heart. It is easy to say this, to write it down, but hard to do it. But lord do I ever feel… well, free since quitting. Affirmed that life is not a cage, that I am not trapped. It helps that I learned how to sock away money into savings, the less sexy part of all this poetic fixation on passions and liberation and whatnot. But ah, that’s just the song ending, isn’t it? Iron Maiden step off the stage and the spell ends, the years return, the mirror becomes cruel for another day. Until next time!
And for those who stuck around to read the intro, a record of quality we didn’t have space for: the shockingly, confoundingly great Impregnate My Hate by Whythre, which by name alone should be corny and eyeroll-inducing but instead is a sharp, smart melodic death metal ripper with some unhinged almost Van Halen-style soloing, reminding me somewhat of how badly I misread the superlative record from Barn from last year.
— Langdon Hickman
Ascended Dead – Evenfall of the Apocalypse
Sometimes you don’t want death metal you can follow; you want to feel as if you’re drowning. Ascended Dead’s second album provides that feeling, submerging you in a swamp of coiled, strangling riffs. Or, imagine if Tangela was constructed from riffs and had 1,000 eyes. There’s a layer of mustiness to Evenfall of the Apocalypse, especially in the guitars, that recalls Portal, though Ascended Dead repurpose it in service of their technical spectacles. This potential barrier can drive a wedge between artist and audience, but Ascended Dead slice it open with the knowledge that music such as this still needs to whip ass. See Exhibit A, “Bestial Vengeance,” for reference. To some, it doesn’t matter how many tempo changes you cram into a thimble, but Evenfall of the Apocalypse answers those naysayers with a sneer. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
Botanist – VIII: Selenotrope
By now, you’d think Botanist’s arc as a post-black metal misanthrope seeking to end humanity to preserve nature would’ve peaked, but the act’s latest album confirms there’s still room for growth. The framework of a hammered dulcimer, bass, and drums proves as evergreen as a traditional metal cast. VIII: Selenotrope is warmer and gentler than prior Botanist albums, leaning into dream pop at certain points, however, there’s still a menacing layer indicative of the group’s black metal roots. Those dream pop excursions are undoubtedly aided by the newfound interest in clean vocals, which are layered in such a way that they mimic an exhalation from the planet rather than a human living by modernity’s terms. All this is to say that VIII: Selenotrope is airy and refreshing while remaining, whether narratively or sonically speaking, a black metal album. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
