Guest Spot: Almost Human’s Josh Ethier on the 10 Best Heavy Records of 2014

Early 2014 saw the release of brisk, gory alien slasher Almost Human, a film which eschews easy homage and instead properly recalls the nasty fun of its 80s influence. Directed by Joe Begos, Almost Human stars Josh Ethier (who also produced) as the flanneled extraterrestrial demolisher. Over the course of its pre-release fest run, I had the pleasure of talking a lot with Ethier and found that beyond his horror filmmaking and fandom lies an earnest, knowledgeable passion for all things heavy. As a result, I asked Ethier to contribute a guest spot to Shock, one that both shines light on some of the best metal/hardcore/noise records of the year, as well as leads off how I’d like to cover music here: with a lot of crossover. Soundtracks will get their due, but anything outside will come in a more conversational manner, like we’re swapping recommendations and tastes at a party. Josh, take it away… 

• The Body, I Shall Die Here (Listen)

The Body first formed in Providence, Rhode Island, and as a Rhode Islander, I’m inclined to point out that not everything that comes from our horrifically small state is Mafia indictments, seafood, and Farrelly Brothers films. Some of it is experimental/noise/doom/electronica with choral arrangements. Stick with me. With 2013’s Christs, Redeemers, duo Chip King (guitars and vocals) and Lee Buford (drums) dropped a disgusting, noisy, sound designed slice of doom onto us all. I eagerly anticipated the next record, and then the news came. The next album would be produced by Haxan Cloak.

Haxan Cloak’s Excavation was already a favorite and if you haven’t heard it, circle back. If you’re reading this website, you’ll likely love Haxan Cloak, I can pretty much guarantee that. And if you don’t circle back, don’t worry, you’ll be hearing him score horror films in the future, because there’s really no other practical use for his music than scaring the shit out of people. So here’s a band that’s completely willing to do off the wall, experimental, noise-driven doom metal, and they’re going to have their new album produced by a British electronic artist whose chopped up beats sound like the score (and sound design) from a horror film? Sold. I wouldn’t listen to the stream Pitchfork offered a week before release. I wouldn’t add the album to my Spotify queue. I was going to listen to this record for the first time, at high volume, on wax, in a pitch black room.

It starts in typical fashion (for The Body)—high pitched wails, hyper compressed drums—but halfway through “To Carry The Seeds Of Death Within Me”, it sounds as if our main character has been introduced, and abandoned, the lights turned off, and something is crawling through the house towards us. The hair stands up on your neck, a pulsing bass gives way to a charging hiss, rhythm begins building in a Mansell-ian hip hop montage of sound design, and you’re suddenly keenly aware that everything you hoped this album would be, it fucking is. Listen to it front to back, fully immersed, and get excited about one of your new favorite bands.

• Indian, From All Purity (Listen)

Talking with a friend about starting a doom project, he remarked, “I’m in, but we can’t play that stoner sludge shit. If we’re going to write doom, it has to fucking hurt.” Next time I saw that friend was at an Indian show. Indian hurts. Playing at an Asunder-like tempo, with every instrument filling every square inch of available sound with rotted fuzz and feedback, vocalist Dylan O’Toole screaming like a man being pulled sideways out of a car wreck, Indian is the real deal.

Noise as an instrument, nay, as a weapon. The unrelenting dirge of “The Impetus Bleeds”, the crust of “Rhetoric Of No”. Indian rolls out of your speakers, kicks you in the face, and stomps you into the ground. Dissonance at every turn, this is a band daring you to be sonically offended. And then it hits, a change, a sudden groove, a riff you can latch onto. Right when you’re feeling safe, the amps break, the cymbals crack, and O’Toole was just t-boned by an 18 wheeler going 75. Chicago has a great heavy music scene right now, but after From All Purity, I can’t help but compare the rest of the outfits tearing up the windy city to Indian, and this unforgiving album.

• Alcest Shelter (Listen)

When I first heard Les Voyages de l’Âme (2012), my jaw was on the floor. Black Metal and Shoegaze have been mingling for years now, but here was the prime example of this newly evolving sound. Digging back through their discography, there’s an obvious movement away from Black Metal and into Shoegaze, Les Voyages de l’Âme just came at the perfect moment in their career arc so as to encompass both. I thought to myself, “there’s nowhere to go from here, this is that sound, perfected.”

So two and a half weeks into 2014, they drop this fucking bombshell. A complete abandonment of the Black Metal sound. Here were clean, delayed, compressed guitars, keyboards that drift into, and out of, the empty spaces, and dreamlike, layered, clean vocals. A rhythm section that supplements the wall of harmonious sound, but never steps into the driver’s seat. “Voix Sereines” is hands down the most beautiful song I heard this year. The production on the record is absolutely gorgeous, and I imagine I’ll be hearing these songs in trailers when the world comes around to playing the fuck out of this album, like I did in 2014.

• Nihill, Verderf (Listen)

Nihill doesn’t care if you listen to them. They don’t care what you think “music” is, they don’t care what you think a “song” is, they don’t even care what a level meter is. Nihill is the bleakest, noisiest, scariest black metal I’ve ever heard. So as soon as I heard they’d put out a new record, I put it on. The first thing you hear is an engineering exercise (lead off track “Ghoul”), which seems to say, “How can I make something that sounds like the feeling you get when you’re stabbed repeatedly in the eyes?” From there: blasphemy, jarring noise, and top heavy tremolo picked anti-chords blast mercilessly for seven tracks.

Of all the friends I have who listen to extreme music, only a scarce few listen to Nihill. Verderf is an album created for those that don’t even want to consider music as having boundaries, who don’t turn down the noise and feedback. Front to back, this album fucking destroys. It is absolute filth, and I love every second of it.

• Salem’s Pot …Lurar Ut Dig På Prärien (Listen)

First things first, best band name (possibly ever), and best album cover of 2014. Blasting this one day, a friend asked, “Has it been this riff for the last 5 minutes? Why is it so repetitive?” Because they’re fucking high. So incredibly, unwaveringly high. The Swedish four piece was so high, in fact, that they displaced Electric Wizard on this best of list. They should’ve just printed on the inner sleeve, “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.”

You don’t need to be stoned to enjoy this album, though. The production reaches “Are You Experienced” levels of experimentation at times, stereo panning and cable pulling, sitar effects, accordions. This is an album so rooted in the late 60’s/early 70’s rock model that if you’d told me it was 40 years old, I’d have taken you at your word. This album feels right at home next to Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, and really, what’s better than that?

Trap Them, Blissfucker (Listen)

When I first started buying records, I went on a spree with Deathwish’s back catalogue. It was there that I first found Trap Them’s glorious Seance Prime EP, and got kicked in the teeth by Brian Izzi’s crushing riffs. His guitar tone stabs. Guitars haven’t sounded this good/dirty/crushing (take your pick) since Entombed put out Left Hand Path and Ryan McKenney’s vocals sound like they’re being ripped from a dying animal. He’s fucking terrifying.

Blissfucker shows obvious songwriting growth. You could listen front to back, and the only perceptible song changes come with freakish blasts of amp feedback. It’s like you’re being jumped, allowed to recoup, only to get a bat cracked over the back of your skull. It’s punishing, and it’s fucking grimy. It’s hardcore, wrapped in thrash, and dripping with sludge. You’re going to need to clean your ears out after you listen. Or just start the record over, like I did.

• Twilight, III: Beneath Trident’s Tomb (Listen)

I found myself saying something surprising this year: “I fucking love Twilight.” For the uninitiated, Twilight is a black metal supergroup, originally featuring members of Xasthur, Leviathan, and Nachtmystium. For their second and third album they moved a new songwriter into the rotation, last time it was Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, House Of Low Culture), this time it was Thurston Moore (I’m not even going to type Sonic Youth into these parentheses). Which makes for some incredibly interesting black metal.

First thing you should know about this record, it’s noisy. It’s filthy, in fact. It sounds like people at the height of their abilities trying new things, emboldened by the collaborative mentality that comes from a supergroup. It doesn’t even really sound like black metal. It sounds like something Steve Albini would record for free, if you’d let him. It sounds live. This is the record you pull out when your friend tells you he’s heard it all. And when you’re done, circle back to the first two records, this is a band you should be following, intently.

• Wolves in the Throne Room, Celestite (Listen)

Let’s get one thing straight. Wolves in the Throne Room is the best band on this list. And this list is nothing but great bands. However great, none of them has touched (yet, at least), the mastery that is WITTR’s debut, Diadem of 12 Stars. It’s in a class of maybe five other albums (which is an entirely different article) that encompass the highest reaches of metal (black or otherwise). Arriving at my point, this is why Celestite is such a monstrous feat.

Track one, “Turning Ever Towards the Sun”, is a love letter to Tangerine Dream, written by Wendy Carlos. Ten seconds after I dropped the needle, I was seeing the Overlook Hotel, the coming snow sliding down the face of the mountain, the look on Shelley Duvall’s face when she realizes who she’s spending the winter with. The best ambient music can trigger these visualizations, it’s the brain looking for a story to explain music without words. The Weaver brothers are storytellers. Celestite is pure art. Each listener will see a different story unfolding. I see Thief, Only God Forgives, Blade Runner, The Shining, Irreversible. This album conjures up the best visual stimuli that my brain can muster. And it’s absolutely fucking amazing.

• Nothing, Guilty Of Everything (Listen)

I love Shoegaze. I love how it’s infected Black Metal. I love the idea at the very core of Shoegaze, a sound that envelops the room, and takes on a life of its own just by presentation, not by trickery or guitar wizardry. It was only going to be so long before someone took the rule book, and skipped chapters 2-10 and started over with the basics. This year, we got that album.

This is a band that’s had “Loveless” stuck in their cassette player since they bought that truck in high school. Guys who use two fuzz pedals, and three reverbs. Guys who put the vocals low enough in the mix that you could pass it off as an instrument, and with that half moaned delivery that throws back to the Jesus and Mary Chain. Standouts include “Endlessly”, “Dig”, and “Get Well”, the latter containing a gorgeous second half that I can’t believe was written in this decade. In a year of filthy, disgusting, noisy metal, Guilty of Everything was my jam when I had to have non-metalhead friends in my car for more than 20 minutes. The fact that it’s a debut only makes it more impressive. I haven’t been this excited about a band releasing a second album since Deafheaven.

• Thou, Heathen (Listen)

Upon revisiting this album, I couldn’t stop listening. I’d make longer coffee trips just to get in an extra song. Here’s a band that has put their time in. In 2014 they also released an EP (Sacrifice) and a split 12” (with the Body, no less). And on Heathen, all of that hard work pays off. Of the albums on this list that reach for the beautiful melody, and harsh rhythm, none of them hit both in the same way that Heathen does.

Half speed Doom gives way to acoustic interludes. Ambient, delay driven chordal passages slide into downpicked, palm muted sludge. Every song is part of the whole, and it’s dynamics and mood changes shapeshift into the larger picture. Here’s a band firing on all cylinders, comfortable in a space that seldom can reside in. In the way that Neurosis sounds like Neurosis, Thou sounds like Thou. And in time, I think we’ll see Heathen as their Times of Grace. I can’t recommend it enough.