Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Count Nosferatu - Das Schwarze Order (1996)


I honestly thought that I was maybe done with this blog, but I just went to share a link to listen to this and I couldn't immediately find one available, and I heard the call of duty. SOMEONE has to ensure that this obscure, lo-fi, French black metal demo remains attainable. I mean, what kind of world would it be. Maybe I'll turn this place into something like the Library of Congress but for shitty black metal demos.

Track listing:
1. Prologue - Das Schwarze Order
2. Christians Fall in Blood
3. Legions of Lucifer
4. Into the Circle of Black Fire
5. Raising the Dark Sword of Baphomet
6. Epilogue - War & Sodomy


More:

Friday, June 6, 2025

Morgan Fisher - Flower Music (1998)


Previously on OPIUM HUM:
Lol Coxhill & Morgan Fisher - Slow Music (1980)

Beautiful, shimmering ambient sounds for sunny days. Real ones know that this type of stuff + black metal used to be this blog's bread and butter.

Years ago, a couple of old friends of mine dated for a few months, and when he met her dad, they shook hands then stood around not saying anything until her dad looked up at the sky and said, thoughtfully, "those... sure are some... slow moving clouds." Still makes me laugh. (This is a reference to the last song on this album.)

Track listing:
1. The Breathing Earth
2. The Beauty of Clay
3. Kalimba Petals
4. Waterglide
5. Photosynthesis
6. As the Sap Rises
7. Slow Moving Clouds


You should also listen to:

Friday, May 16, 2025

Monster X - Indoctrination (2003)


Grind-y straight edge hardcore. I first discovered Monster X back in high school via their split with Spazz, when I was still young enough to be blown away by the mere existence of guttural vocals. Rediscovered a few years back while re-organizing my records, and shit, those gutturals still rule. They're more expected over the grind parts, but there's a really cool dissonance to hearing them over more traditional hardcore. Great band.

Also, I stopped drinking recently -- didn't really 'quit' so much as noticed that I wasn't drinking anymore and decided to embrace it -- so if you don't count my prescription speed or my openness to microdosing psilocybin every now and then, it's almost like I'm straight edge, too.


You should also listen to:

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Lalu - Oniric Metal (2005)


If I'm checking out a band that I've heard described as "neoprog/prog metal", this is what I am hoping they will sound like: melodic, dreamy, melancholic, fantastical, layers of arpeggiating synths, soaring guitars, and enough polyrhythms and general heaviness to keep it all from getting overly frilly. There's even that inexplicable 'wacky' moment that these types can't seem to resist that seems designed solely to test my patience, but thankfully, it doesn't come till the last track, and that track is otherwise an absolute tour de force. Members (on this album) of Mekong Delta, the Devin Townsend Band/Project, and more.

Track listing:
1. Yesterdayman
2. Wolven Eyes
3. Windy
4. Night in Poenari
5. Moonstruck (The Soulish Element)
6. Timestop
7. Starwatcher
8. Potboy: The Final Fantasy


Also listen to:

Saturday, May 10, 2025

Beatrik - Requiem of December (2005)


Related:

Found this LP in the wild a few weeks back for $12. Requiem of December was the swansong for this project, and for me, it's unquestionably one of the greatest DSBM records ever made. The perfect soundtrack for this relentlessly dismal reality we've made for ourselves. I haven't listened to the rip I'm linking, hope it's good.

Track listing:
1. My Funeral to Come
2. Requiem of December
3. Eternal Rest
4. The Last Wandering
5. Apollonia's December, 7th 1647
6. Returning After a Death


More all-time DSBM contenders:

Saturday, March 8, 2025

These New Puritans - Field of Reeds (2013)


These New Puritans really had an extraordinary first-3-album arc, moving from post-punk revival to percussive art rock to experimental chamber music with such precision that each of those albums could rightly be considered their best. (The fourth one's really great, too; it just wasn't such a massive shift.)

For me, though, Field of Reeds is an all-out masterpiece. A series of haunting, elusive songs grappling with the (possibly futile) search for meaning, understanding, or connection, against a musical backdrop of piano, woodwinds, horns, strings, synths, and spare percussion. Although there is at least one obvious predecessor -- Mark Hollis -- the mood that this album sets is truly unlike anything else I've heard: always drifting in the liminal space between the beautiful and the sinister without ever fully committing to either one. This sense of constant unease and uncertainty is not for everyone, but at least a few of you are about to discover a new all-timer.

Just want to add this bit from the liner notes regarding the title of the first track, because I love how annoyed they sound: "The opening track originated from a field recording made by Jack Barnett of an amateur singer half-recalling fragments of a song. TNP were unaware of the original song until completion of recording 'The Way I Do' [original title]. Since then the trustees of Bacharach and David's songwriting material have demanded that the title of the half-recalled song be used in place of TNP's title."

Track listing:
1. This Guy's in Love with You
2. Fragment Two
3. The Light in Your Name
4. V (Island Song)
5. Spiral
6. Organ Eternal
7. Nothing Else
8. Dream
9. Field of Reeds


You should also listen to:

Sunday, March 2, 2025

Flux of Pink Indians - Strive to Survive & Neu Smell (1989)


Unsurprisingly, I've been tripping down musical memory lane. This comp is a real formative punk classic for me that I've somehow managed to miss posting all these years. Strive to Survive... is easily a top 5 anarchopunk album, and Neu Smell is arguably the best Crass Records 7" that isn't by Crass. From an era in which it probably felt, for a second, like punk might actually amount to something resembling a political movement.

(I haven't actually listened to this rip, I'm listening to my physical copies, let me know if the rip sucks.)

Track listing:
Strive to Survive Causing the Least Suffering Possible
1. Song for Them
2. Charity Hilarity
3. Some of Us Scream Some of Us Shout
4. Take Heed
5. T.V. Dinners
6. Tapioca Sunrise
7. Progress
8. They Lie We Die
9. Blinded by Science
10. Myxomatosis
11. Is There Anybody There
12. The Fun Is Over
Neu Smell
13. Sick Butchers
14. Background of Malfunction
15. Poem
16. Tube Disasters
17. Poem End


More peace punk that we would listen to in our cars driving around suburban Maryland:

Saturday, February 22, 2025

Asunder - A Clarion Call (2004)


Not to sound like a broken record but: my friend died. No, not that one; a different one. Pat. The person who in middle school introduced me to punk rock as a lifestyle. Who I was lucky enough to call my best friend from my late teens through early 20s, before I got too old and cool to have "best friends." A beautiful, gentle man whose absurd sense of humor and small, sweet gestures made our awful reality just a little bit better.

I wish the world had been better to him.

I feel a deep, wrenching regret that I didn't try to reach out to him for so many years, to make sure that he knew how much he and his friendship meant to me, how deep my love for him was.

We have to say what we mean while we still can.

I am exhausted by grief. I'm tired of feeling it, of witnessing it, and of talking about it. Tired of more and more songs being added to the pile of songs that I can't listen to unless I have an hour to recover. But most of all, I am tired of losing friends. It's an inevitability of life, but for fuck's sake, I'm 42. Why do I know so many dead people?

Pat loved as wide a variety of music as I did. He was the first friend of mine who liked Springsteen -- I didn't get on board until years later, but I do have fond memories of walking around Towson Town Center with him, laughing my ass off as he screamed the lyrics to "Born in the USA". We got into and obsessed over Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails together. Eventually, by way of Dystopia and Grief, we got into doom metal. He fucking loved Asunder. I remember his MySpace page used to autoplay "Twilight Amaranthine". Here's A Clarion Call.

After I found out, I was digging around in crates, looking for my old notebooks, in which he and I used to jot down stupid ideas for joke bands, made up languages, drew unflattering sketches of mutual friends, shit like that. Pretty sure I hadn't looked in them for over a decade. Inside the front cover of one, I found a small, folded piece of paper. On the outside, it says "To Tim, Love from Pat. Happy birthday." Unfolded, the inside just says "I love you." It fucking wrecked me, and it's wrecking me right now just thinking about it. I love you too, Pat.




Saturday, February 8, 2025

Brendan Walls - Cassia Fistula (2002)


Pure minimal drone from Australian composer Brendan Walls, with assists from Oren Ambarchi. If you, like me, haven't been able to shake that gnawing sense of dread for the past, oh, month or so, Cassia Fistula probably won't help, but it will transmute that anxiety into an aural form, so that instead of just feeling it, you can listen to it, too.

Track listing:
1. Section One
2. Section Two
3. Section Three


Similar vibes:

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

The Dead Science - Bird Bones in the Bughouse (2004)


Previously on OPIUM HUM:
The Dead Science - Submariner (2003)

When I posted the above album, I actually wanted to post this EP because I like it just a little bit more, but I was unable to find either my copy of the CD or a decent rip. But I just found one of the latter, so we're in business. Favorites include the slowcore-ish "Film Strip Collage", which includes the line "garbage truck wants to fuck", and their cover of "Sign Your Name" by (the artist formerly known as) Terence Trent D'arby.

Track listing:
1. Ossuary
2. Gamma Knife
3. Film Strip Collage
4. Cuz She's Me
5. Sign Your Name


Also listen to:

Saturday, February 1, 2025

Dreamboat - Dreamboat (2016)

Related:
Ilyas Ahmed - Between Two Skies (2005)

One-off collaboration between two phenomenal Portland artists. The rare collaboration that actually delivers on its implicit promise: Ahmed's spectral desert folk intertwined with Golden Retriever's shimmering synth drone.

Track listing:
1. Aftershock / Face to Face
2. Mirrored Image / Your Sunday Best


You should also hear:

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Left Behind - No One Goes to Heaven (2019)


Punishing, sludgy metalcore. Groove-heavy, Down-inspired riffs as filtered through beatdown chugga-lugs for husky boys. Sounds like half of them wants to smoke blunts, the other half wants to beat up the first half for polluting their body and minds. But make no mistake: No One Goes to Heaven is no joke. It's a fucking killer album, whether you wanna maximize your gains or sit around wondering where it all went wrong.

Track listing:
1. Hell Rains From Above
2. Eternity of Empty
3. Throwing Stones
4. Peeling Wax
5. Shadow of Fear
6. Staring at the Sun
7. God Calls Out
8. Smoke and Pain
9. Outside the Body
10. The Mirror
11. Prisoner of Mind
12. What Makes Your Hurt


You should also hear:

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Various Artists - Someplace You Cannot See (2024)


This is a mix that I made when I was really, really going through it, probably in late April of last year. Unlike the last mix I posted, this one I really put some time into, piecing it all together into two suite-style, 46-minute sequences in Garageband over the course of a few days. It's pretty depressing, obviously, but I was in desperate need of an outlet, and it's definitely one of the best mixes I've ever made. There's a ton that I could write about why I chose each track on here, but y'all have already heard enough about my grief, so I'll just let you enjoy it however you like.

(To be clear: this is two 46-minute tracks.)

Saturday, January 4, 2025

Joan Bibiloni - Una Vida Llarga I Tranquila (1984)


Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Folk-infused, synth-y Spanish jazz-funk/lite fusion. My commute to work starts around 6:15-20 in the morning, which means that there are generally not a lot of cars on the road when I leave, and, for most of the year, the sun isn't even up yet. I have a couple of mixes specifically made for this dark, slightly eerie, but laid-back early morning commute, and this record's title track is the first song on one of them. (The next two songs, you ask? "Song for Sharon" by Joni Mitchell, and "Falling to Pieces" by Faith No More. I'm usually at work by the time "Falling to Pieces" fades out.) So take that as my overall assessment of the album. Also, please stick around till the end, things get pretty fucking weird and I wouldn't want you to miss it.

Track listing:
1. El Cumpleaños Se Jaimito
2. Unda Vida Llarga I Tranquila
3. El Aguacito
4. Lailala Lailala
5. Doble Volta
6. Sagitari
7. Jazmin 29
8. Una Vida Llarga I Tranqiula II


Also listen to:

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

My 10 Favorite Non-Black Metal Records of 2024


That up there is Scene from a Deluge by Anne-Louis Girodet. I saw it in the Louvre when I was 13, and something about it must have really captured my little imagination, because for years afterwards, I called it my favorite painting. This was before the internet, and my parents didn't buy the art book, so I didn't lay eyes on it again for literally about 2 decades, when I took an art class and something we were learning about it made me remember it.

That has nothing to with this post; I just thought I'd mention it. Here are 10 records that I could not, in good conscience, leave out of the 2024 conversation. My tastes have always been on the dark/morose side, but looking at it, Christ, even by my own standards, this is a pretty bleak top 10. That's where I'm at, clearly. As some of you commented on my previous list: here's hoping that 2025 is at least a little better than 2024. Thanks to y'all, I keep getting "A Long December" by Counting Crows stuck in my head because of that line about "maybe this year will be better than the last."

Also, I know how this all might look -- the intro to my black metal top 20 kinda reads like a suicide note -- but I swear, I'm gonna be fine. A lot of things have gone/stayed right for me this year. My job, as busy as it keeps me, is great; I still have a wonderful, hilarious wife who loves and supports me; I have great friends and family in my corner; and music, even the bleakest of it, continues to bring me joy. Life is an endless parade of chaos and grotesqueries, but that's nothing new, right?

So now that I've been neurotic a bit more, and mentioned Counting Crows, let's get on with the list!





#10
Total Blue
Total Blue

Total Blue sounds like a lost ECM ambient-jazz gem from the early 80s. From top to bottom, at no point does Total Blue break the enchanting, time capsule-like vibe -- just soft, echoing synths, fretless bass, sporadic percussion, gentle saxophone, and the like, all melting into a nice, warm musical bath.





#9
Keeley Forsyth
The Hollow

The second coming of Tilt-era Scott Walker. Haunting, sparse compositions made up of organ, strings, horns/woodwinds, and sputtering percussion, with Forsyth's entrancing vocals at the center, offering comforting affirmations like, "Shake my life out of my mouth" and "Let the body lay down and die." Not an easy listen.





#8
Cabinet
Hydrolysated Ordination

Disgusting, muddy, experimental death metal encased in hovering, ghostly, atmospheric guitar figures. Kinda feels like the album itself is decomposing in real time as you listen to it.





#7
bnny
One Million Love Songs

"I'm hanging on to the good stuff / I'm hanging on to my big love."

An indie rock breakup record that I willfully misinterpret as a grief record. For instance, the first track, "Missing", plays as a sweet, dreamy reverie, until the final gut-punch: "When I'm with you, I almost forget / That he's missing." I understand the intention, but it's so easy to hear it as describing grief's tendency to stick around in the peripherals, even in our most joyful moments.




#6
Cosmic Putrefaction
Emerald Fires Atop the Farewell Mountains

Lysergic death metal -- in space! Honestly, the band name pretty much has it covered. Brutal and gross, with cool, angular solos and reverb-y death growl, plus a bunch of dissonant clean guitars and even some synth to flesh out the cosmic atmospheres. If this record hadn't come out this year, maybe I would've liked the new Blood Incantation more, because I wouldn't have had such a perfect counterpoint locked and loaded. Whoops!




#5
Grandaddy
Blu Wav

Grandaddy goes country -- in space! Nothing but slow-to-midtempo sadboi ballads, with a glimmering sheen of pedal steel and bright, gauzy synths. The vibe is there, but what really matters is that these are truly phenomenal, interesting songs with unorthodox subjects, like doomed inter-office romance and torturing an ex-lover with remote jukebox selections. Easily the most I have enjoyed a Grandaddy record since The Sophtware Slump.




#4
Lætitia Sadier
Rooting for Love

I have a friend who lives in another city and, bless him, listens to a lot of what I consider to be pretty boring music. It's not terrible, just not my thing: faceless neo-garage rock and polite, vibe-y, Spotify-approved R&B/pop. And earlier this year, he sent me a link to Billie Eilish's then-new album, which I'd already heard, and sure, it's fine. If you like it, I'm not trying to yuck your yum. But for me, it felt emblematic of many of the things that turn me off about pop music circa 2024 -- it's glum, musically bland, and you have to actually care about the artist's personal story to engage with it. And I do not care about Billie Eilish's personal story. She is rich beyond my wildest dreams, her life looks nothing like mine, and I couldn't give less of a shit about whether or not fame is hard for her, or she just figured out that she likes to eat pussy. (This is true of all pop stars btw, Billie Eilish just happens to be the one I'm talking about right now. I still like "Bad Guy".)

So I essentially say all that to my friend, because I know he can take it because he's secure in his own tastes -- an admirable trait -- and he's like, "Fine, dickhead, what are you listening to that's so great?" And what's the first album that pops into my head? Rooting for Love by Lætitia Sadier, which is now officially my favorite of Sadier's solo records. Like everything she does, it's bittersweet and subtle, with an undercurrent of unease. It pulls from jazz, fusion, chanson, post-rock, trip-hop, and bachelor pad music -- difficult, knotty music that is somehow all very easy on the ears. And it has one of my all-time favorite album closers.

What did my friend think? He said, "damn, this is really good," then we never talked about it again. I'm guessing he listened for about 30 seconds then put something else on. Probably thought, "huh, not terrible, just not my thing." He still sends me links to "grown folks music" pretty regularly, despite my telling him that all I listen to is "morose bullshit for cranky nerds", and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Previously:




#3
meth.
Shame

Unrelentingly ugly noise-rock-sludge-metal. Very reminiscent of early Swans, but with high and low-register growls, blast beats, and the kind of crushing heaviness that can only come from the realms of extreme metal. I was still in the depths of acute mourning for my friend the first time I heard this -- according to metadata, it was a week and one day after he passed -- and I played it so fucking loud I'm pretty sure I damaged my hearing. This record is a 43-minute-long panic attack, and it's been extremely cathartic to repeatedly almost level my house by blasting it while I do pushups.




#2
Itasca
Imitation of War

It's honestly going to be hard for me to talk about this record as a collection of music, as it has meant a great deal more to me than that since my friend Danny's passing. But I'll try. The watery, wandering guitars suggest to me a more meditative take on Meat Puppets circa Up on the Sun (one of my all-time favorite records, don't think it's ever come up on here), with just a touch of the icy shimmer of Joni Mitchell circa Night Ride Home. Vocally, Itasca (actual name: Kayla Cohen) is gentle, warm, and borderline conversational -- in places, the line between singing and speaking becomes blurred. Her lyrics are naturalistic, psychedelic, impressionistic, even fantastical, but grounded in very real emotion that often, to me, feels like grief; in fact, the last lines of the opening track, "Milk", go: "With my walking stick / I check the depths of my grief / Standing as water / I must dive down."

I had a whole story I was planning to tell about the first time I listened to it, but ultimately it's not that interesting: I was walking to meet my friends, still really going through the grieving process, it was sunny, I put this on, it touched my soul. I wish I could describe that feeling better, but words fail me. Itasca, play me out:

"Misguided wish for fire’s song
Chaos in the veil that we’re walking upon
My prayer is tired but my rosary is long
That’s the effigy I’ll hold 'til the shadow’s gone."





#1
Ingurgitating Oblivion
Ontology of Nought

Jazz and technical death metal have a lot in common. Both require considerable chops; favor angular, dissonant themes; and thrive in a near-constant state of barely controlled chaos. On paper, it's as intuitive a mix as black metal and shoegaze. However, unlike shoegaze, which is about 95% buying the right pedals and tweaking the vocal reverb, jazz requires a ton of training and practice to get right. And there is one key core difference: jazz is inherently loose in both composition and execution, and technical death metal is, conversely, extremely rigid in both areas.

Ingurgitating Oblivion is not the first band to merge the two (shout out Cephalic Carnage, who kinda sucked at it but bless them for trying, and who are somehow now coming up in my year-end content for the second time -- see #5) but they are by far the most successful. Ontology of Nought is an absolute mammoth of a record. It consists of five massive, amorphous pieces of experimental technical death metal played with the loose, explorative feel of avant-garde jazz, rich with non-metal flourishes -- vibraphone, sample manipulation, choral vocals, singing bowls -- and free-floating in pitch-black atmosphere. I've never heard anything like it.

At full-tilt, it's utterly disorienting. There's no obvious time signature or structure, no light or point on the horizon on which to affix your gaze; you're alone, treading water in the middle of the ocean in the dead of night, with no sense of space or time, getting pummeled by waves that you can't see or brace yourself for. And these moments are not brief -- the shortest song is just over 10 minutes long, and two songs top 18 minutes. However, the listener is offered respite in the form of extended denouements at the end of every track, wherein dark ambient and neoclassical elements are pushed to the forefront. I'm particularly fond of the end of "The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in My Heart", in which a choir of demonic angels repeatedly insists: "It does not have an essence / It will cease and be no more" as the music fades, until it's just a single speaking voice, repeating "no more" against a minimal, pulsing drone.

Just imagine that happening at the end of this list. That way, I don't have to come up with a proper ending.