Victhor The Viking

I could not close out the year without adding a few albums that are pretty damn good.

Astra’s debut album The Weirding is an incredible album.  Astra is a straight up progressive rock band from San Diego.  And when I say progressive rock I do not mean this weird modern shit but something that could have been recorded in the early 70’s.  If you are going to Roadburn make sure you take time to check them out.

Nachtmystium’s put out an superb metal album a few years back that is a high point of the decade.  Assassins: Black Meddle, Part 1 is Pink Floyd and Darkthrone’s love child.   The last three songs on the album are epic!  Nachtmystium put on a hell of a live show too.

Another tattooist/artist/musician, Danial Higgs and Lungfish are a band I just got turned onto this year.   So I did not want to include them in the my top 10 even though they are pretty damn bad ass.  Being from the tattoo world I did not know that the Lungfish Danial Higgs and the Tattooist and Artist Danial Higgs were the same person.  My favorite Lungfish album to date is probably 2006’s Love is Love.  I am just got hep to them so I am way into them right now.  Great album!

Doom supergroup Shrinebuilder are a powerhorse force of doom greatness.  Shrinebuilder features Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Wino (The Obsessed, St. Vitus, Spirit Caravan) Al Cisneros (Sleep, OM) and Dale Crover (The Melvins). This self titled LP is doom at it’s finest.  Each member adds a little something to each of the songs.  Killer.

Danny Barnes is one of the most prolific song-writers in the music business today.  With his albums with the Bad Livers and his solo albums he just keeps putting out more and more stuff every year!  2006’s Oft Mended Raiment is a smorgasbord of sound and wonder.   I love the use of samples on this record along with Danny’s high lonesome vocals.  A contrast that works will.  Also this years, Pizza Box, is awesome!  He is the master of the claw-hammer.  The highlights for me are the title track, Sleep, and Charlie.  Danny is an awesome story teller.  Many Hailz Danny.

I could go on and on but I won’t…I can’t wait for the next.

Enslaved is another band that came out of the second wave of black metal that has gone beyond the standard black metal riffs and add something more to their music.  If you listen to a their older albums, there has been an evolution to a more progressive song structure and sound and lyrical content.  Where the songs on their earlier albums were straight forward telling of the Norse mythology, the later albums are a more inner search and understanding of it’s meaning of the mythology.

2001’s Monumension in my opinion is one of Enslaved’s finest albums to date.  I feel that this one was the first of there albums that is straight ahead prog metal.  The mellotron is one of the highpoints to this album.  The sound on this album could have easily come from a Led Zeppelin/King Crimson era band.  The first song, Convoys to Nothingness starts with a rockin’ and ends with a 4 minute meditation in time and space.  I have had to pleasure of hearing track 2, The Voices, live and I would have to say it is one of my favorite songs of all time.  Three major highlights of this album are Hollow Inside and the bonus track Sigmundskvadet.  Hollow inside is just a spaced out truely unique song that takes you on a trip across the cosmos.  Hollow Inside along with Sigmundskvadet feature vocals by Norwegian punk rock pioneer Trygve Mathisesen.  Sigmundskvadet is an actually old Norse chant that Trygve learned word for word from a Norse tribe that live on an island off the cost of Norway.   What a way to start of a decade of metal for Enslaved.

Vertebrae is a perfect way to close out a decade worth of music.  The production alone is incredible!  Cato Bekkevold’s drumming is superb.  It adds so much dimension to each track.  Vertebrae has a great balance between Herbrand Larsen’s clean vocals and Grutle Kjellson’s growl.  Herbrand has a Eric Woolfson (Alan Parsons Project) feel to it.  Vertebrae also takes the listener on a journey.  But this journey is more of an adventure.  From the start the listener travels on fast pasted romp through the elements. My favorite song on the album is New Dawn.  Cato’s ride on that is spastic and unique.

What a way to begin a decade and end it.  Thank you Enslaved!

Ulver’s Shadows of the Sun is a mediation of sound and wonder. Mournful and somber.  Ulver has gone from extreme metal to something very unique and wonderful.   Like Enslaved, Ulver has broken free from the brick and mortar black metal clique.  Ever since Kveldssanger, they have been moving the genre they started in and have created some very unique and inspiring music.

Shadows of the Sun is another step in the move.  It is more mellow than their previous album, Blood Inside, but is works.  Garm’s (Kristoffer Rygg) vocals are soothing and mantra like.  Unlike the vocals on Blood Inside, the vocals are a touch like David Sylvain from Japan.  The album includes a cover of Black Sabbath’s Solitude.  A great touch to a already great album!  A album that everyone should have!

Jinxi has got some of the coolest tattoos I have ever seen.   You go out and get the December Issue of Bizarre Magazine and check them out.   Check out her blog.

Last month, I wrote about the new Body Art 3 book that I was honored to be featured in. Today, I am again thrilled to share with you the new article that Bizarre Magazine was so kind to include me in. The December, 2009 issue of Bizarre features a 4-page article about me, written by Denise Stanborough and Ben Miller, with photos by the incredible Michelle X Star.

via Jinxi Article in the December Issue of Bizarre Magazine – Blog – Jinxi Boo.

There is prog and then there is prog. During the 80’s and 90’s prog kinda went on the wayside. There are bands out there that are called prog, but none of it really jumped out at me and said, “Wow that is awesome!”  Then something must have gotten in the water in Europe and the UK, because seemingly out of no where there has been a progressive rock explosion.  From Sweden you have Witchcraft, Graveyard (which I consider both to be prog and more than doom), Seina Root, and Asteroid.  Germany has it’s own resurgence of Kraut rock with bands like Samsara Blues Experiences.

And then there is the U.K.  Along with neo-heavy folk band Circulus and space rock upstarts Litmus, Brighton’s Diagonal have picked up where Van der Graaf Generator, Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Yes left off.  There debut self-titled record is a progressive rock masterpiece!  Right from the first song you know it is going to be good.  Alex Crispin’s vocals are awe inspiring!  The beautifully maudlin start to Child of the Thundercloud is epic and the harmonies during the whole song are luscious.  Then midway through the song it takes a psychedelic turn.  Luke Foster’s drum fills through out the whole album remind me of John Bohnam on Physical Graffiti.

With a song title like Deathwatch you would imagine something being epic and grim.  But the grace that comes through the speakers is astonishing!  I am a sucker for a Fender Rhodes so I was instantly sold.  The spastic bass and sax on Cannon Misfire are too groovy for my mind to comprehend.  I would keep and eye on Diagonal.  If there debut album is this good, there is no telling what they can do.

From avant jazz to avant metal, if you do not have Trinacria’s Travel Now Journey Infinitely, then you are missing out on something unique and spectacular. Trinacria was originally a composition by Ivar Bjørnson of Enslaved and Maja S. K. Ratkje and Hils Sofie Tafjord, commissioned by Rikskonsertene for a concert series. It is a pleasant cacophony of metal, doom, and industry.

I personally think it is stands out in the because it has quite a mix of music on it. Part I: Turn-Away is colossally doom. Iver Sandøy’s blast beats and the sound effects add volume and weight to Part II: The Silence. Grutle’s vocals on are perfectly grim as always. I think the highlight of the album for me is Part IV: Endless Roads. A 10:00 minute doom masterpiece!

Great album all around. Hail to Trinacria.

I might have to get this book.  Leo Zulueta and the other interviews sound great!

Edition Reuss recently released Black Tattoo Art: Modern Expressions of the Tribal, a photographic homage to a particular genre of skin art. The book is curated by Marisa Kakoulas (lawyer, writer, circus lady, and blogger.) Above and after the jump, Boing Boing’s exclusive peek at some of the hundreds of striking, full-page images you'll find inside.

The 536-page hardcover includes work by tattoo artists from Borneo, Argentina, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Europe and North America. The book weighs nearly ten pounds, and the binding is stitched with silver embossing. It's fat, heavy, and gorgeous.

“There has never before been a book on this style of tattooing in English,” Marisa told Boing Boing over email. “The style is called “blackwork,” where the artists are limited to one color and so they have to stretch their imagination in terms of design elements to create original works, rather than having a palette of colors and shading techniques to chose from as in other styles of tattooing.”

Some of the photos we selected to share on Boing Boing also include the use of a single additional color.

Black Tattoo Art examines how indigenous tattooing has evolved over the years, beginning with a history section, then each of the styles that originate in tribal arts.

Lots more photos from the book after the jump. NSFW-ish warning: one of them is a human hiney.

continue reading @ Black Tattoo Art: Modern Expressions of the Tribal Boing Boing.

What can I say about Tom Waits that hasn’t already been said. An incredibly prolific songwriter of Avant-garde and strangely beautiful jazz (and I use jazz lightly).

I put Alice and Blood Money together because seem to be from the same mold. Alice is contains songs written for a play of the same name. The play is tail of forbidden love between Lewis Carrol and Alice Liddell, for whom he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Each song tells it’s own story and each song has a unique flavor. From the title track to alluringly tragic Flower’s Grave to the volkstümliche musik inspired Kommienezuspadt, each song on Alice leads the listener on a ride through the looking glass.

Blood Money is also contains songs for a play. This one is an adaptation of the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner. Where Alice mournful and languishing, Blood Money has a dour and surly feel to it. The production on Blood Money does not seem as polished as Alice which adds to it’s ambiance.

Out of Tom Wait’s double aut album’s these two are my favorite and they are two of my favorite albums of the decade.

When I first heard Kid A I was like, “What the Fuck?” I was not sure if a dug it or not. I listened to a few times and then put it back on the shelf. Then about 6 to 8 months later I came back to it and boom! It hit me. Wow this is a groovy album! The songs are so complex but also simple. (I know weird). Take A National Anthem for instance. The song does not change that often in chord structure, but the different layers of instruments adds so much to the song that it sounds more complex than it really is. The baritone sax is killer.

Thom York’s vocals rival the greats like David Gates, Brad Delp, and Jon Anderson. Jonny Greenwood’s use of guitar effects has a lot to do with the oddness of the album.

Radiohead’s Kid A is truly a masterpiece.

Lucker of Chalice is the shit. Period! Wrest (Jef Whitehead) is one of the best all around musicians in extreme metal. He is one of the best drummer out there. His blast beats are fucking insane! His guitar work is chaotic and beautiful. As for vocals, creepy as fuck!

This self titled album is one of my favorite albums of all time. It so melancholy and creepy I can listen to it every day and not get tired of it. The album starts off with the funeral march I, and quickly moves into hypnotic drone of Piercing Where They Might, but my favorite song on the album has got to be the 10 minute epic This Blood Falls As Mortal Part III. The samples add so much dimension that I could meditate with this song on repeat for hours.

This album and the Leviathan album A Silhouette in Splinters go hand in hand even though the Lurker of Chalice album is a little more metal.

If you are looking for another The Tenth Sub Level of Suicide this is not it. But if you are in the mood for some misanthropic meditation, then Lucker of Chalice is your album.