The RadioActivist

"Any press is good press." That may be the reasoning over at 20 Buck Spin, where despite my known lack of interest in blackened doom, drone and all associated styles, their releases just keep showing up in my mailbox. Of course, it’s not all about me. My approach to reviewing has always been to write for the reader more than to impose a personal opinion, but in this case the two paths probably arrive at the same destination. If you’re a regular, active user on Punknews.org, chances are slim this is going to be an album you seek out. If you’re reading this only because you Googled “Laudanum – The Coronotion” or something similar, chances are you already have an interest in this, and therefore it may very well be to your liking. But again, this review isn't for you. Granted, there is a small minority of hardcore kids who don’t mind sludgy, repetitive noise and they might be the most likely significant demographic of readership to have an interest in Laudanum. After all, the...

You know what’s bullshit? When bands are so lazy and unoriginal with their name that they take--for their own--the name of an already established band both within their own country and, even worse, within their own genre of music. The example here is that it necessitates any reference to this Liturgy as “the Brooklyn black metal band,” not Liturgy “the Chicago death metal band.” No one would be dumb enough to name their Long Island skatepunk band Pennywise, so why can’t metalheads think of something new? Yeah, I know, there are two groups of Subhumans and a pair of Youth Brigades, but this was well before the internet in a time where such excuses could be legitimated. That’s the first thing about this that pisses me off. The second is more inherent in the style but no less distracting. I’ll admit without shame I’m no scholar of black metal, but it’s a little tedious being assaulted by an inexhaustible chain of blast beats song after song for 45 minutes. These compositions, almost by de...