#sabbracadaver

It's the weirdest thing. In that regard, one need look no further for the prime example of this kind of retroactive disdain than Metallica. Though it might be an exercise in naivety or simple lack of culture on the part of those who refuse to disrespect the band's unequivocal influence over heavy metal as we know it now, it's hard not to be anything but baffled when the whole body of a musician's work is dismissed based on the few (or even many) questionable choices they happen to make along the way. 

Thirty years ago, Megaforce Records released Ride the Lightning, the sophomore album from Metallica. As a heavy metal album, Ride the Lightning is an inarguable landmark for the genre. As a collection of songs and the creative output of a band whose early output is damn near untouchable, Ride the Lightning is perfection. It isn't simply thrash. It isn't simply anything. Listening to any number of bands formed and reformed in the wake of Metallica's reign over the 80s will, outside the scope of delusion, immediately reveal that for all our needless dismissal of the band, they are perhaps the main reason we have a genre to talk about. 

I'm as uninterested in Lulu as I am any of the endless groan-inducing moments from Metallica over the past several years. Yes, they have a spotty track record. Yes, they made St. Anger - the heavy metal equivalent to a whipping boy when there's apparently nothing else to talk about (read: there will always, always, always, always be something else to talk about). Yes, they showed their asses in the most unintentionally hilarious way in the documentary that, for all its side-eyed focus on the band, actually paints producer Bob Rock as more of an insufferable prick than anyone else. But who cares? Sometimes you earn your keep eternally. Regardless of the Internet's selective or just downright piss poor memory, these albums, that time period, and those riffs exist.

Cliff Burton's incredible bass line will be etched into metal immortality, but you won't. Just the solo from "Trapped Under Ice" likely gave birth to no less than 500 bands who went on to create new perspectives on the genre much like their influences. The list of bands with that same kind of widespread and lasting influence who are still making music is thankfully very small and for good reason. There's only one Metallica, and rather than spend your time debating how true or real they are like the mouth-breathing masses that do, just turn Ride the Lightning up and be in awe of how quickly those songs drown out the noise. Metallica didn't pave the way thirty years ago. They leveled the landscape for a genre in desperate need of bullshit inoculation. They've more than earned metal's respect, and they'll have it long after you waste your time debating that fact. 

6 THINGS TO HEAR

Exordium Mors – The Apotheosis of Death (Iron Blood & Death)

SfB's Craig Hayes has been preaching the Exordium Mors gospel now for quite some time and for good reason. The New Zealand blackened thrash group are as given to those subtle nods to their obvious influences as they are to creating new compositional perspectives well outside the bounds of familiarity. In a genre seemingly replete with pretenders, Exordium Mors are forging 

Judas Priest – Redeemer of Souls (Epic)

If longevity is the White Whale of the rock n’ roll ego war, relevance is the Holy Grail in a listening culture now defined by its collective gnat-on-meth attention span. Six years after the somewhat bloated and overwrought Nostradamus, Judas Priest threw a welcomed battle-axe into the sacred sandbox of metal skepticism in mid-July with Redeemer of Souls. No, the album isn’t perfect. No, it’s not as good as [insert personal untouchable Priest album here]. Yes, Halford and Co.’s latest is a glorious exercise in sticking to formula. But what better band to revisit and reimagine the first chapter of Metal 101 than the band who helped write the book in the first place? Less a fine wine and more an angel-winged bottle of whiskey engulfed in flames and riding a motorcycle through the stratosphere, Judas Priest are still making your flavor-of-the-week band look weak. 

  Martyrdod - Elddop (Southern Lord)

Pilfering through the glut of crust punk bands who sound nearly identical to their crust punk contemporaries can be a tedious venture. More positively, it can also provide a clear point of distinction for those bands who stand out amidst the banality. Enter: Sweden’s Martyrdöd. Blending is great and all, but treating different sounds like a half-assed salad does fuck all in terms of actual compositional congruency. The “blackened” descriptor for Martyrdöd’s brand of crust punk is less a point of reference and more a declaration of the absolute. The songs on Elddop are unhinged and brutal, sure, but the vehicle carrying those elements here is the band’s sense of their own black metal influence as the primary driving force of their sound rather than a peripheral accent for effect. Those “black metal touches” employed by other bands for crossover appeal are replaced on Elddop with an indivisible core that turns genre-bending mechanics into a devastatingly powerful machine. 

  Monarch – Sabbracadaver (Profound Lore)

Enigmatic French metal band is no longer a selling point. Hell, it might never have been given the fact that those bands and artists included in that group of French heavy music experimentalists are so utterly distinctive from each other. Bayonne’s Monarch have spent the twelve years of their existence as a band culling sonic landscapes from a sound that’s as given to commanding surges as it is those disquieting moments of silence. July saw the release of the band’s eighth and most outstanding full-length yet, Sabbracadaver. In contrast to the drone/doom MO of letting loudness be the music’s singular dynamic, Monarch goes to great lengths on Sabbracadaver to create a sense of call and response between those towering moments where the music soars with urgency and those where it collapses to a kind of exacting stillness. Rarely is an album so sonically removed from any structural composition and yet still so completely engaging. It’s a dynamic that bends the listener to the will of the band and elevates Sabbracadaver to a devastatingly brilliant place. 

 Mortals – Cursed to See the Future (Relapse)

The fact that two members of Brooklyn-based Mortals also play in the all-female Slayer tribute band Slaywhore lends itself to hope that whatever original material the band wrote would herald the same (at least earlier) Slayer sense of metal devoid of bullshit. Thankfully, the band’s second full-length Cursed to See the Future makes quick work of riffs as mired in sludge as they are scorched in the kind of sneering black metal aesthetic that made last year’s Agrimonia so memorable. Cursed to See the Future is another example of a metal band creating songs based in the simplicity of a handful of repeated riffs that work more as a common thread than a safety net of redundancy for the music. 

Wrought Iron – Rejoice and Transcend (Grimoire)

From the Steel City of Pittsburgh comes Wrought Iron, a four-piece blacked out death metal band whose full-length debut Rejoice & Transcend might just be one of the nastiest sounding metal albums of 2014 so far. Considering the fact that the nine tracks on the album are from a band who formed just two years ago, Wrought Iron make an impressive case as one of the most exciting new bands in a death metal genre that continues to offer up some of metal’s most engaging music. Vocalist Kenny S. sounds as menacing as the music he screams over with his vocals staying just level enough for the words to be understood yet serrated enough in the delivery to drive the point home. From the standpoint of death metal that works, Rejoice & Transcend succeeds in simply stripping the sound down to its most primal components, unapologetically raw and equally as memorable. 

                              <a href="http://grimoirerecords.bandcamp.com/album/rejoice-and-transcend" data-mce-href="http://grimoirerecords.bandcamp.com/album/rejoice-and-transcend">Rejoice and Transcend by Wrought Iron</a>

  6 THINGS TO READ

Unlocking the Truth Interview // Noisey  

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/unlocking-the-truth-is-the-most-brutal-sixth-grade-metal-band-ever-ever-ever-ever

Gary Suarez (MySpace, PopMatters, The Quietus, Noisey, etc.) Interview // The Haulix Blog 

http://blog.haulix.com/post/92836072785/industry-spotlight-gary-suarez

  Richie Faulkner (Judas Priest) Interview // About Heavy Metal

http://heavymetal.about.com/od/interviews/fl/Judas-Priest-Interview.htm

  Beck Laverty (Pioneer Music Press) // Metal Recusants

http://metalrecusants.com/2014/07/18/women-in-metal-becky-laverty-of-pioneer-music-press/

  Mike Hill (Tombs) Talks Fight Club // Decibel

http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured/die-with-scars-mike-hill-on-fight-club/

  Jason Heller's piece on folk music is an absolute must read // AV Club

http://www.avclub.com/article/folk-2014s-heaviest-music-206414

6 THINGS TO KNOW

July 2nd, 1971 - Queen plays their first show at a Surrey College just outside London with the lineup of Mercury, May, Deacon, and Taylor.

July, 1983 - Mercyful Fate begins recording their debut album, Melissa, in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

July 21st, 1987 - Guns N' Roses releases their debut album Appetite for Destruction. 

July 21st, 1987 (also) - Tampa, Florida becomes a little less sun-shiney as Deicide is formed. 

July, 1990 - Alice in Chains releases their first recording, the We Die Young EP.