How to Destroy Angels: Welcome Oblivion (Columbia, 3/5/13)
Post-industrial collective How to Destroy Angels has put out two EPs of haunting, glitchy pop, made our 2012 end-of-year lists, and generally proved that despite the hiatus of Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor remains a creative force.
In March of this year, we’ll finally get a proper full-length from the band, which also includes Atticus Ross, Mariqueen Maandig, and Rob Sheridan.
North Carolina’s Gray Young provides ethereal riffs, ghostly vocals, and kinetic energy in the excellent “Canopy Reflected” from upcoming album Bonfire.
Aesop Rock: Skelethon (Rhymesayers, 7/10/12)
“Zero Dark Thirty”
Aesop Rock: “Zero Dark Thirty”
Rap, understandably, always has placed an emphasis on lyrics, but most rappers are content to find the cleverest way to proclaim their sexual prowess and/or ability to rap well and call it a day. Rapper Aesop Rock (born Ian Bavitz), a veteran of now-defunct label Definitive Jux, doesn’t aim so low, shoving allusions, metaphors, and symbols into a motley band of verbosity that’s unmatched in hip hop. This is rap on hard mode. Don’t expect to understand everything he says on first listen (or tenth), a fact that’s earned him both praise and contempt. Case in point: one of the biggest selling points of a 2005 EP was a fat book of his collected lyrics. He returned this past July on Rhymesayers with Skelethon.
Announced for the big NAMM trade show, prog-metal instrumental outfit Scale the Summit has partnered with Strandberg Guitarworks to release the Boden CL7, an instrument based on guitarist Chris Letchford’s specifications, and bassist Mark Michell has released an instructional book for right-hand bassists.
Grizzly Bear: Shields (Warp, 9/18/12)
Brooklyn-based indie rockers Grizzly Bear produced a killer album last year in Shields, a sweeping combination of the electric and acoustic that cements them as one of the genre’s elite. Now they’ve produced a disturbing but beautiful video for “Gun-Shy,” one of the album’s standouts. Evoking elementary-school science videos as well as body horror, the band’s use of animated GIFs might just win it some sort of newfangled Internet award.
Converge: All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph, 10/9/12)
Vocalist Jacob Bannon, frontman of Converge, balances a career of music, fine art, and business. His raw vocals belie a depth, beyond the bleeding paint and canvas of tattoos, explored in the short documentary “Rungs in a Ladder.”
A twelve-minute meditation on life, meaning, and intention, “Rungs in a Ladder” is an eloquent creative manifesto — the musings of someone fighting insecurity, staying active, and dealing with being out in the open when he really just wanted to “be a bass player or a drummer…to be completely anonymous.”
Check out “Rungs in a Ladder,” directed by Ian McFarland.