Tales From Bandcamp: 5 Doom Metal Bands You Should Know About

I love me some doom metal.  Riffs as chewy as Dubble-Bubble, grooves that make Fat Albert look like Calista Flockhart, and more experimentation than a suburban teenager who just discovered weed and masturbation.  There’s so much to love from this genre, and yet I see that a lot of doom fans are still stuck in the Candlemass, St. Vitus, Black Sabbath days and they tend to not notice that there are a great amount of bands in the modern scene really innovating on the genre (while simultaneously keeping what’s so great about it intact).

Here’s a little list of five bands (in no particular order) which can be found on Bandcamp I feel any self-respecting doom fan should take the time to listen to.  My rules for this list were they had to have a full album to listen to on Bandcamp naturally, be relatively new, and they have to still be active.  So as much as I’d love to add Avatarium, Order of Israfel, or Alunah, they don’t quite meet my guidelines, so go check them out on your own time.  If you know of some doom bands that you want to shout out, drop a comment!  Enjoy! Peace Love and Metal!!!

Matt’s Top 15 Albums of 2014!!!

It’s that time of year again for arbitrary lists of really great albums that were released since the last time I did one of these things.  Contributing to my absolute burnout of writing about kick ass metal bands, I can not think of another year where there were just so damn many stellar records released.  I simply had to say fuck it, step back, and enjoy the great stuff I already had.  Sure, I missed out on some great stuff, but on the other hand, all killer no filler.  To try to make up for the insane amount of great albums this year I’ve expanded my usual 10 to 15 and will have an honorable mentions post sometime in the near future.  I hope you find yourself something cool to listen to with this list or at least nod in agreement with some of my picks.  Thanks for reading, sticking with AMSOM, and being awesome and stuff.  Enjoy!!! Peace Love and Metal!!!

Album Review: Foundations of Burden by Pallbearer

I’m a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, often to a fault.  I always try to keep a smile on my face and keep talking/thinking about negativity to a minimum.  I like things that make me happy, make me laugh, and are over-all optimistic in nature.  Yet, my preferred genre of music is metal.  A genre popularly known for its darkness, pessimism, misanthropy, obsession with mortality, etc.  Of course, any well refined metal head will tell you that the vast majority of our music has much more complex, introspective, and positive themes, and it’s quite true, still there is a lot of themes and music to be found on the darker sided of the scale.  And I love it just the same.
“But why do I love it?” I’ve asked myself quite a few times during my near lifelong obsession with the genre.  In their opening lines of their latest release, Foundations of Burden, Pallbearer sum it up quite concisely and poetically:

Without light
The dark encloses all
Our works would be but ash
No knowledge of the time that crushes love to dust
Or the life that’s frozen deep within our veins
Without dark
The light burns out our eyes
And turns each of us to ash
Our hearts, too hard to ever learn to feel
And mouths, laid open, deep in silent song