Unsolicited Recommendations 3

Run The Jewels 2

While RTJ are by no means new nor unrecognized, they're one of the very few new (9 years is new ...kinda)  American rap acts who's music delivers haymakers. Both El-P and Killer Mike have storied and successful back catalogues but once you go RTJ it's hard to go back.

Honestly each of the band's four records has my explicit recommendation but two is my all time favorite. Firstly because I never finished kindergarten and I can't count to three. Secondly because the aggression on songs like Blockbuster Night Part 1 and Oh My Darling Don't Cry beats up most rappers and takes their lunch money.

Tactics Ogre Reborn

Anyone who knows me personally knows that the black circles around my eyes are so vast and dark they look like warpaint. Recently they've been vaster and darker because I can't put this fucking game down and frankly fuck sleep.

I've always loved strategy and RPG games but until recently I was kind of hesitant on Square Enix. Final Fantasy never really spoke to me because I'm not a 12 year old anime eyed boy with spiky hair who gets away with owning a weapon (like they do in Texas) but their strategy games on the Switch have been killing it.

Their most recent one, Ogre Tactics Reborn, is a game that takes a while to settle in. In the beginning it feels like the usual "we are sad anime people in the continent of Not Europe fighting against medieval Nazis" but about 2-3 hours in it takes a turn. The difficulty ramps up and suddenly you're weighing up moves so that you can get that kickass dragon for the next fight, alternating troops to take advantage of different enemy set ups and trying to decide if assassinating a duke will lead Wallister to a better position against Galgistan.

Honestly, being Polish and therefore melancholic and Eastern European, I don't know much about fun, but I'm enjoying myself.

Babalon’s Bands I - The Dutch Masters (God Dethroned)

I know everyone has a bone to pick about a band they think deserves more credit, but I want you to know - every time someone makes a list about the greatest Dutch Death Metal acts and doesn't include God Dethroned, a tulip wilts. Not only that but a heavily tattooed Polish man in New York cries and yells at his computer. But I get ahead of myself.

God Dethroned is a Dutch band hailing from Beilen-a town Wikipedia has assured me exists but I cannot verify this information.  About a year and ten months after their demo, Christ Hunt, the band released their debut album called The Christhunt. Except for adding an article and removing a space to make it a much more memorable title, the debut of God Dethroned already gives a hint of what was to come. Whereas their countrymen, Asphyx, appropriately feel almost hammer-like and blunt, God Dethroned's power lies in the polar opposite. They have this Black-Thrash sharpness to them that would place them as comfortably alongside Nifelheim as Possessed.

The band was perhaps in its infancy but lead composer and vocalist Henri Sattler had already started showing his distinct writing style. Might ruffle some feathers here but in my heart, this early day evolution hit its apex with Grand Grimoire. Coming out a whole 5 years and a reunion (or as Metallica would call it, 20 seasons)  after their debut, The Grand Grimoire showcases the band hitting their sweet spot.  It's where the band first found their optimal footing. Henri's infectious and massive melodies interwoven with breakneck but unique rhythms sound like a cavalry charge.

Two years later, in 1999, the band began releasing material more frequently. They rounded out their early years with another stone cold classic, Bloody Blasphemy. Many  of they whose feathers were ruffled a mere 6-7 lines ago would hold up The Christhunt and Bloody Blasphemy as counterarguments to my use of the word "apex." But they're wrong because my taste is better than theirs.  That aside, the quality is consistent enough that really, it's mostly a matter of which melodies speak to you the most. It really is almost like judging parts of a painting.

When I said "more frequently" you probably imagined that I was implying their next releases are not as good, but that is not the case. While neither Ravenous nor Into The Lungs of Hell improve upon the first three records and the latter has the cover of a Doom 3D expansion pack, both records feel like they make the band's discography more robust and complete.  Both contain many crucial tracks like “Villa Vampiria” and “The Warcult,” but I'd say Into the Lungs of Hell is the first God Dethroned record that doesn't feel wholly indispensable. It's good, but not the imagination sparking goodness that came before or after.

Key after. So  A year after Lungs..., the band would  release The Lair of the White Worm. The band’s 2004 opus is a masterclass on how to make blackened death metal catchy while maintaining its identity. While The Lair of the White Worm is what I imagine a pornstar calls his jeans, the band use this record to cast us out into fresh waters. The production is more modern but the razor-like sharpness is unmistakeable and relentless. If the first few records had that Morbid Angel sprawl, this album is the early Emperor answer. The scenic playing is larger than life and the drums tastefully serve as the guitar's engine.

To Lair... was borne The Toxic Touch. It is very much the Bloody Blasphemy to Lair's The Grand Grimoire. An excellent followup that, while not revolutionizing the band's sound on the former, extends their repertoire and brings some further stone cold classics to the table. Yes I like the term stone cold classic, sue me.

The next big shakeup was on 2009's Passiondale and here things get complicated. This time the shakeup is lyrical and thematic. God Dethroned put on their pickelhaube (yes I know that's a German helmet and they're Dutch and neutral, relax) and went to the early 1920s. Passiondale itself is one of my favorite albums about World War I and is really a better representation of that conflict than all of the great many we've seen recently. The band's music evokes the grime, the moments of bravery and the ubiquitous death with a faithfulness that matches the fantastic Hail of Bullets and their WWII related releases.

But, to my mind, Passiondale also led the band down the road to its two worst albums, Under the Sign of the Iron Cross and The World Ablaze. The biggest sin of these two albums is that they both feel like waddling. The wealth of imagination and passion (dale) that brought the band to where it was on Passiondale is frankly just absent. If the former felt like grim and poignant storytelling, the latter two feel like the dry documentary version.

I was very disappointed, but then in 2020, I was busy one day trying to decide what shows I wasn't going to when the band hit out with Illuminati. This Jay-Z based concept album is proof that when the band is driven, they can drop apex level music whenever they feel like it.  Where do I even start? The guitar work showcases an entirely new side to the band. While still possessing the famous melodies, the rhythms on this record sound lumbering and gigantic. The band delves into all kinds of interesting topics lyrically and doing them justice was always going to be a challenge. They meet this challenge, and fuckin' A, they keep going. The grandeur they manage to bestow on songs like the title track, "Gabriel" and "Eye of Horus" shows, in my humble opinion, why God Dethroned and Henri cannot be left out of any conversations about the Dutch masters. Right up there next to Asphyx, Pestilence, Rembrandt and most importantly, stroopwaffles.

Their new single,  "Asmodevs" drops today, and so help me god (dethroned,) I will print this piece on stone tablets and throw them at venues until they get a full fledged US tour.

The Grand Grimoire

The Apology of Caligula

Blood is blood whether it’s shameful or proud

And you best be sure it is parceled and met out

Lest I grow upset

My name is Gaius Augustus Germanicus, Caligula for short

The horned devil who steals for pleasure and murders for sport

It’s your honor to be in my behest

But you should know better

2,000 years and you haven’t learned a thing

It’s about he who dies in poverty and powerless

That poets beatify and sing

Yes I wanted power, every minute and every hour

The only meat never to sour,

But for that you would poke your finger at me?

They say I planned to make a consul of Incitatus

Believe me, I was surrounded by so many murderous bastards

I should have done so more expediently

And I, emperor

You, a mere student, laugh in giddy joy

But I had an empire of millions, all I could’ve wanted

Prey tell, who of us is the man and who’s the boy?

And you compare these paupers to me

Who fly between groups of plebeians so diligently

Not even to me but to this cartoonish effigy

My horse commended far more respect than you or your scrutiny

(An apologia or an apology

apology [Gr.,=defense], literary work that defends, justifies, or clarifies an author's ideas or point of view. Unlike the ordinary use of the word, the literary use neither implies that wrong has been done nor expresses regret)

Unsolicited Recommendations Part 2

In today’s Unsolicited Recommendations, we start off with the funniest reviews you’ve ever read, heard and seen. Then we swing by Athens to pick up Spyros Giasafakis on our way to the nearest temple to Dionysus.

1. Zero Punctuation

It's hard to overstate how monumental Zero Punctuation was and is in my life. Yahtzee basically wrote the playbook on what it is I find funny with these 4-5 minute long video game reviews (even if you're not a huge gamer, only a very vague knowledge is necessary to enjoy ZP.)

But once you delve deep, there's a world of complexity to the jokes and references that will guide you to good books, movies and hell even interesting historical events to look up. So much so that a whole decade and some after Ive begun watching ZP, I regularly rewatch old episodes of games I still haven't played, unconvinced? Very well, behold!

https://youtu.be/zHnYFP73MKE

2. Daemonia Nymphe- Κραταια Αστεροπη (Krataia Asteropi)

What would happen if you dragged Einar Selvik from Wardruna, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry from Dead Can Dance and Psarantonis (from Crete? No but he's a solo artist) into a studio? Well you'd probably get a very angry group of musicians but say you managed that and you got them to record, what would you get? Something much like Daemonia Nymphe

Opinions may vary in regards to what the ideal starting point with the band may be, my take would be Krataia Asteropi. The band's personality and explorations into Greek mysticism goes hand in hand with a memorable but not overly simplified approach. It's definitely a time investment but a rewarding one.

(For those coming from a Metal place, Sakis Tolis of the black metal institution Rotting Christ recently covered track 4, "Nocturnal Hecate." You can find this excellent cover on the last track of his debut solo album, Among the Fires of Hell.)