The Metal Examiner

Triptykon

The Metal Examiner: Triptykon’s Shatter EP

Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.

Triptykon: Shatter: Eparistera Daimones Accompanied (Prowling Death, licensed to Century Media, 10/25/2010)

Triptykon: “Shatter” Official Video

Tom Warrior’s creative output is both extensive and divergent. Since 1983, Warrior has released music as part of Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, and Apollyon Sun, and now his current project is Triptykon. If one takes inventory of the music created by this man over the last two-plus decades, one finds that none of his albums really sound all that much like any of the others. There are common threads and tendencies that tie everything together, but each release stands on an island of its own.

Gnaw Their Tongues

The Metal Examiner: Gnaw Their Tongues’ L’Arrivée De La Terne Mort Triomphante

Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.

Gnaw Their Tongues: L’Arrivée de la Terne Mort Triomphante (Crucial Blast, 9/7/2010)

Gnaw Their Tongues: “L’Arrivée de la Terne Mort Triomphante”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Gnaw_Their_Tongues_LArrivée_De_L.mp3|titles=Gnaw Their Tongues: “L’Arrivée de la Terne Mort Triomphante”]

L’Arrivée de la Terne Mort Triomphante is the new five-song full-length under the Graw Their Tongues moniker, the creation of Mories, a man with a history in the Dutch extreme-metal scene dating back to the early ’90s.  From the start, it intends to put listeners on edge by presenting sheer sonic terror — towering, string-infused sheets of noise, riffs, and chaos, with just enough melody lurking beneath it all to make it especially uncomfortable.

Circle of Animals

The Metal Examiner: Circle of Animals’ Destroy the Light

Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.

Circle of Animals: Destroy the LightCircle of Animals: Destroy the Light (Relapse, 10/12/2010)

Click here to download Circle of Animals’ “Poison the Lamb”
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Producer/multi-instrumentalist Sanford Parker (Minsk, Buried at Sea) and saxophonist Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) have long and assorted ties in and around Chicago, where the two reside and contribute to the city’s vibrant underground.

Parker, in addition to his main gig in Minsk, has produced the likes of Pelican, Rwake, Unearthly Trance, Jai Alai Savant, Lair of the Minotaur, and Nachtmystium, and Lamont, outside of Yakuza, recently finished recording a solo album and regularly plays with other experimental metal and noise outfits (Decayist, Sick Gazelle) as well as improvised-jazz players (Jeff Parker, Ken Vandermark, Dave Rempis).

Each man’s résumé is a mile long, and now the two have come together to pay tribute to Chicago’s late-’80s and early-’90s Wax Trax! industrial scene with their new project, Circle of Animals. A diverse and widely recognizable cast of drummers rounds out the lineup on this release, with names like Dave Witte (Discordance Axis, Municipal Waste), John Herndon (Tortoise), John Merryman (Cephalic Carnage), and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) lending their talents.

Autopsy

The Metal Examiner: Autopsy’s The Tomb Within

Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.

Autopsy: The Tomb WithinAutopsy: The Tomb Within (Peaceville, 10/5/2010)

Autopsy: “My Corpse Shall Rise”
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Following his early stint in death-metal progenitors Death, drummer/vocalist Chris Reifert formed pioneering metal act Autopsy. Like other bands in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Autopsy invented its own rules in its quest for extremity, and its blend of doom, punk, and thrash coalesced into a definitive take on the emerging death-metal sound.

Enslaved

The Metal Examiner: Enslaved’s Axioma Ethica Odini

Enslaved: Axioma Ethica Odini (Nuclear Blast / Indie Recordings, 9/28/10)

Enslaved: “Ethica Odini”
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Enslaved abandoned black metal long ago in favor of expansive rock songs coated in darker aesthetics. This release continues in the tradition of post-Syd Barrett Pink Floyd by creating compositions of textures over a few simple rock riffs.