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You know when you want something that's kind of scarce, and you go ages and ages without managing to find any, and then suddenly a whole pile falls into your lap all at once? That's happened to me with metal this week. I'm always looking for more women vocalists, but they're tragically rare in the genres I like. Now all of a sudden I have three whole new female-fronted bands and they're amazing.
Praise the Sun is Polish melodeath whose vocalist does both beautiful cleans and beautifully harsh growls. The opening track of their new album shows her range best, but I really enjoyed the whole album.
Casket Robbery call their style 'death metal with a wink' and that about sums it up. I'll be honest, the amount of love I have for this album is partly my bias showing: it's solid but not exactly innovative, and I doubt it would stand out as much to me if the vocalist was male. But she's not, and it's so hard to find women doing a more brutal style like this that for me it elevates a likeable album to absolutely lovable.
But the new find I'm most excited about is Sonja, a classic heavy metal act fronted by Melissa Moore, who was infamously booted from her last band when she came out as trans. I've listened to this album a ridiculous number of times since I found it (it's even Minimonster-friendly! No screaming or extremity!) and I think it's probably going to end up being my favourite album of the year. There's some goth rock mixed in there, which I love - it reminds me a bit of Unto Others, who were one of my favourites from last year (though in looking back to link my gushing post about them, I've realised I never actually wrote one??? Weird). And a smug little side-note, even though it's really none of my business: Sonja's debut is getting five star reviews all over the place while the old band has collapsed without her. If that's how it went with transphobes more often, the world would be a nicer place.
Anyway, here's the video clip for the first single, Nylon Nights. Friends who don't usually like metal, this might even be worth a watch/listen anyway? It's something I can definitely see having broader appeal. It's full of 80s metal sleaze, with enjoyably unpolished vocals and catchy riffs. (The clip is very NSFW.)
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After a disappointing false start with my veggie patch this spring, I've finally got some harvest coming good! I've eaten my own home-grown greens the past couple of nights, and one of my zucchinis is flowering. I also prepped a new bed over the weekend and have put in some seedling strawberries and tomatoes from the nursery while I wait for my self-sown seeds to sprout.
One tomato plant is an heirloom with black fruit that I'm especially excited about. I've got some eggplants and black shell beans in the propagator as well - if all goes well and I like the flavour of these cultivars, maybe next year I can double down and have a proper gothic veggie patch, lol. I searched 'black' in my favourite seed shop and a surprising number of summer veggies come in shades of black/purple/maroon.
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I've hit a bit of a slump on my current reading project, so to take a break I've started rereading Wuthering Heights. Man, I think time must have blunted my memory of how hard these characters are to like. But then, that's always been the main part of the novel's appeal: it shows humanity in all its ugly glory, and zooms in crystal-clear on the dark side of passions we'd rather leave romantically blurred.
Praise the Sun is Polish melodeath whose vocalist does both beautiful cleans and beautifully harsh growls. The opening track of their new album shows her range best, but I really enjoyed the whole album.
Casket Robbery call their style 'death metal with a wink' and that about sums it up. I'll be honest, the amount of love I have for this album is partly my bias showing: it's solid but not exactly innovative, and I doubt it would stand out as much to me if the vocalist was male. But she's not, and it's so hard to find women doing a more brutal style like this that for me it elevates a likeable album to absolutely lovable.
But the new find I'm most excited about is Sonja, a classic heavy metal act fronted by Melissa Moore, who was infamously booted from her last band when she came out as trans. I've listened to this album a ridiculous number of times since I found it (it's even Minimonster-friendly! No screaming or extremity!) and I think it's probably going to end up being my favourite album of the year. There's some goth rock mixed in there, which I love - it reminds me a bit of Unto Others, who were one of my favourites from last year (though in looking back to link my gushing post about them, I've realised I never actually wrote one??? Weird). And a smug little side-note, even though it's really none of my business: Sonja's debut is getting five star reviews all over the place while the old band has collapsed without her. If that's how it went with transphobes more often, the world would be a nicer place.
Anyway, here's the video clip for the first single, Nylon Nights. Friends who don't usually like metal, this might even be worth a watch/listen anyway? It's something I can definitely see having broader appeal. It's full of 80s metal sleaze, with enjoyably unpolished vocals and catchy riffs. (The clip is very NSFW.)
-
After a disappointing false start with my veggie patch this spring, I've finally got some harvest coming good! I've eaten my own home-grown greens the past couple of nights, and one of my zucchinis is flowering. I also prepped a new bed over the weekend and have put in some seedling strawberries and tomatoes from the nursery while I wait for my self-sown seeds to sprout.
One tomato plant is an heirloom with black fruit that I'm especially excited about. I've got some eggplants and black shell beans in the propagator as well - if all goes well and I like the flavour of these cultivars, maybe next year I can double down and have a proper gothic veggie patch, lol. I searched 'black' in my favourite seed shop and a surprising number of summer veggies come in shades of black/purple/maroon.
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