Mar 1, 2008

KIND OF LIKE A REVIEW SORT OF MAYBE, Tomb Of... - Those Dismal Moments, Tour de Garde cassette 2007

I'm in a new place. I've found myself at a strange distance from what I'm listening to and reviewing. It's not the music; certainly I've been marveling at the stuff since my age was a single digit. So...I guess it's the writing aspect.
I'm sure this is something everyone that writes about music, whether it's on a blog that 6 people read (like this one!) or in a proper magazine goes through. Shit, it's probably something everyone goes through with everything. This isn't a new impasse.
Thankfully, the ripe and wild whiff of the black metal has called me back to my senses. The black metal is sometimes sloppy, frequently bleak, politically naive or just plain stupid, DIY, and always reaching around in the dark for ideas and identity. In short, it's perfect outsider art, to use a term I hate as much as the aforementioned "DIY." Maybe it's got something to do with hearing stuff like this Tomb Of... tape and wondering what the hell is going on inside their grease-painted Grecian domes, but I've been drawn back inside the speakers at last. I can't tell what's good--actually good--and what is a personal revelation poppin' out of a tangent anymore. I know that I like this tape, but I can't say why--at least not definitively.
I can tell you that this sounds like an unholy blend of an imaginary soundtrack for Zombie Nightmare (not the Motorhead song that opens the real movie) and the whispery, hissy atmosphere of the Constellation Records crew if they didn't have their Galois-smoking heads so far up their anarcho-rumps. The guitars are buried and ring out in the distance like the tinnitus that closes a long night of fruitless mischief. I'm not even sure if that amounts to a good listen or something that will make me want to spin these reels in future days. But whatever. I had a moment and I ain't gonna loosen my grip on it til I'm good'n'ready.

1 comment:

Andreas Whelan said...

I am not sure how often you read your comments, especially for old posts such as this one, but I would like to express my gratitude for your great words for '...Those Dismal Moments'. I am the musician behind Tomb Of..., and I would love to give you some free copies of other Tomb Of... material if you believe you can review them too.

Let me know, at voai@lycos.com