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1000 results for “nicks_gehts_mehr”
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It must hurt to be #2... Magnus remains #1 from a rating perspective. The world champ, #DingLiren, has the 3rd highest rating. Hopefully #Nepo doesn't give up, and gets even more motivated to go after the highest rating...
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It must hurt to be #2... Magnus remains #1 from a rating perspective. The world champ, #DingLiren, has the 3rd highest rating. Hopefully #Nepo doesn't give up, and gets even more motivated to go after the highest rating...
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It must hurt to be #2... Magnus remains #1 from a rating perspective. The world champ, #DingLiren, has the 3rd highest rating. Hopefully #Nepo doesn't give up, and gets even more motivated to go after the highest rating...
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It must hurt to be #2... Magnus remains #1 from a rating perspective. The world champ, #DingLiren, has the 3rd highest rating. Hopefully #Nepo doesn't give up, and gets even more motivated to go after the highest rating...
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Stuck in the Filter: August 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
The heat persists, but now the humidity comes in full force as storm systems wreak havoc upon the coasts. I hide in my cramped closet of an office, lest I be washed out once again by an unsuspecting deluge. However, I still send my minions out into the facility, bound by duty to search for those metallic scraps on which we feast.
Fortuitously, most all of those imps I sent out came back alive, and with wares! BEHOLD!
Kenstrosity’s Galactic Gremlin
Silent Millenia // Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil [August 26th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Have you ever seen such a delightfully cheesy cover? Probably, but it’s been a while for me. I bought Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil, the second raw symphonic black metal opus from Finnish one-man act Silent Millenia, on the strength of the artwork alone. Little did I know that what lay beyond this crimson veil was some of the most fun melodic black metal this side of Moonlight Sorcery. The same low-fi roughness that personifies Old Nick’s work grounds Silent Millenia’s starbound songwriting as it traverses the universe with an energetic punch reminiscent of Emperor or Stormkeep (“Awaken the Celestial Spell,” “Daemonic Mastery”). To help differentiate Silent Millenia’s sound from that of their peers, a gothic atmosphere ensorcells much of this material to great effect, merging eerie Victorian melodies with galactic adventurism in an unlikely pair (“Enthrone the Spectral”). Swirling synths and sparkling twinkles abound as well, creating blissful moments of interest as frosty tremolos and piercing blasts take full advantage of the false sense of security those entrancing clouds of synthetic instrumentation create (“Benighted Path to Darkness Mysterium,” “Reign in Cosmic Majesty”). Simply put, Celestial Twilight is an unexpected gem of a symphonic black metal record, bursting with killer ideas and infinite levels of raw, unabashed fun. You should hear it!
Kronos’ Unexpected Unearthments
Street Sects // Dry Drunk [August 15th, 2025 – Self Release]
Dry Drunk sticks to your inner surfaces, draining down like cigarette tar along paralyzed cilia to pool in your lungs until the cells themselves foment rebellion. Once it’s in you, you feel paranoid, wretched, and alone. So it’s the proper follow-up to Street Sects’ visionary debut, End Position. Like that record, Dry Drunk plumbs the most mundane and unsavory gutters of America for a cast of protagonists that it dwells in or dispatches with a mixture of pity and disgust, with vocalist Leo Ashline narrating their violent crimes and self-hatred in a mixture of croons, shrieks, and snarls that cook the air before the speakers into the scent of booze and rotten teeth. And like that record, Shaun Ringsmuth (Glassing) dresses the sets with a fractal litter of snaps, squeals, crashes, gunshots, and grinding electronics, caked in tar and collapsing just as soon as it is swept into a structure. And like End Position, Dry Drunk is a masterpiece. The impeccable six-song stretch from “Love Makes You Fat” through “Riding the Clock” ties you to the bumper and drags you along some of the duo’s most creative side-roads, through the simmering, straightjacketed sludge of “Baker Act” to the chopped-up, smirking electronica of “Eject Button.” Swerving between addled, unintelligible agony and unforgettable anthems, Dry Drunk, like End Position before it is nothing less than the life of a junkie scraped together, heated on a spoon, and injected into your head. Once you’ve taken a hit, you will never be quite the same.
Thus Spoke’s Frightening Fragments
Defacement // Doomed [August 22nd, 2025 – Self Release]
There’s music for every vibe.1 The one Defacement fits is an exclusively extreme metal flavor of moody that is only appreciable by genre fans, made tangibly more eerie by their persistent idiosyncratic use of dark ambient interludes amidst the viciously distorted blackened death. Audiences—and reviewers—tend to disparage these electronic segments, but I’ve always felt their crackling presence increases the analog horror of it all, and rather than being a breather from the intensity, they prolong the nausea, the sense of emptiness, and the abject fearfulness of head-based trauma. This latter concept grows more metaphorical still on Doomed, where the violence is inside the mind, purpose-erasing, and emotionally-detaching. The ambience might be the most sadly beautiful so far (“Mournful,” and “Clouded” especially), and the transitions into nightmarish heaviness arguably the most fluid. And the metal is undoubtedly the most ambitious, dynamic, and magnificent of Defacement’s career, combining their most gruesome dissonance (“Portrait”) with their most bizarrely exuberant guitar melodies (“Unexplainable,” “Unrecognised”). Solos drip tangibly with (emotional) resonance (“Unexplainable,” “Absent”) and there’s not a breath or a moment of wasted space. Yes, the band’s heavier side can suffer from a nagging sense of homogeneous mass, but it remains transporting. While I can appreciate why others do not appreciate Defacement, this is the first of their outings I can truthfully say mesmerised me on first listen.
ClarkKent’s Heated Hymns
Phantom Fire // Phantom Fire [August 8th, 2025 – Edged Circle Productions]
While I waded through the murky depths of the August promo sump, Steel implored me to take the eponymous third album from Phantom Fire. “The AMG commentariat love blackened heavy metal,” he said. I disregarded his advice at my peril, and while I ended up enjoying what I grabbed, it turns out this would have been solid too. Featuring members from Enslaved, Kraków. Hellbutcher, and Aeternus, Phantom Fire play old school speed metal that harks back to the likes of Motörhead and Iron Maiden’s Killers. Thanks to healthy doses of bass and production values that allow the instruments to shine, each song is infused with energetic grooves. The music sounds fresh, crisp, and clear, from the booming drums to Eld’s “blackened” snarls. Early tracks “Eternal Void” and “All For None” show off the catchy blend of simple guitar riffs and a hoppin’ bass accompanied by energetic kit work. While placing a somewhat lengthy instrumental track in the middle of a record usually slows it down, “Fatal Attraction” turns out to be a highlight. It tells a tragic love story involving a motorcycle with nothing but instruments, an engine revving, and some police sirens. The second half of Phantom Fire gets a bit on the weirder side, turning to some stoner and psychedelia. There’s a push and pull between the stoner and Motörhead speed stuff on songs like “Malphas” and “Submersible Pt. 2,” and this blend actually works pretty well. It turns out that they aren’t phantom after all—these guys are truly fire.
Burning Witches // Inquisition [August 22nd, 2025 – Napalm Records]
With six albums in eight years, Swiss quintet Burning Witches has really been burning rubber. While such prolific output in such a short time frame generally spells trouble, Inquisition is a solid piece of heavy/power metal. Burning Witches dabbles in a mix of speedy power metal and mid-tempo heavy metal, often sounding like ’80s stalwarts Judas Priest and Def Leppard. With Laura Guldemond’s gruff voice, they produce a more weighty, less happy version of power metal than the likes of Fellowship or Frozen Crown. While the songs stick to formulaic structures, tempo shifts from song to song help keep things from growing stale. We see this variety right from the get-go, where “Soul Eater” takes a high-energy approach before moving into the more mellow “Shame.” There’s even a pretty solid ballad, “Release Me,” that grounds the back half of the record. Songs of the sort that Burning Witches write need catchy choruses, and fortunately, they deliver. “High Priestess of the Night” is a particular standout, delivering a knock-out punch in its delivery. It helps that the instrumental parts are well-executed, from crunchy riffs to subdued solos to booming blast beats. Anyone looking for a solid bit of power metal that’s not too heavy on the cheese will find this worth a listen.
Deathhammer // Crimson Dawn [August 29th, 2025 – Hells Headbangers Records]
Celebrating 20 years of blackened speed, Deathhammer drop LP number six with the kind of energy that exhausted parents dread to see in their children at bedtime. This is my first foray with the band, and I am in awe of the relentless level of manic energy they keep throughout Crimson Dawn’s 39 minutes. If science could learn how to harness their energy, we’d have an endless source of renewables. The two-piece out of Norway channels classic Slayer on crack and even has moments reminiscent of Painkiller-era Judas Priest. They play non-stop thrash cranked to 11, with persistent blast beats and some dual guitar parts that leave your head spinning from the rapid-fire directions the riffs fire off in. The heart of the mania is singer Sergeant Salsten. His crazed vocals are amazing—snarling, shouting, and shrieking in a way that took me back to the manic pitch Judge Doom could reach in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He sings so fast that on the chorus of “Crimson Dawn,” it sounds like he says “Griffindor,” which had me searching confusedly for the Harry Potter tag. This was probably my favorite song, not just because of the Griffindor thing, but because that chorus is so catchy. Either way, it’s tough to pick a standout track because they all grip you by the throat and don’t let go. Crimson Dawn is a ton of fun and a must listen if you like your music fast.
Grin Reaper’s Bountiful Blight
Kallias // Digital Plague [August 14th, 2025 – Self Release]
Machine gun drumming, spacey synths, Morbid Angel-meets-Meshuggah riffing, Turian-esque barking and Voyager-reminiscent vocal melodies…what the fuck is going on here? The only thing more surprising than someone having the moxie to blend all these things together is how well they work in concert. Kallias doesn’t hold back on sophomore album Digital Plague, and the result is a rocket-fueled blast through forty-four minutes of eclectic, addictive prog. The mishmash of styles keeps the album fresh and unpredictable while never dipping its toes in inconsistent waters, and staccato rhythms propel listeners through eight tracks without losing steam. As with any prog metal worth its salt, Kallias brandishes technical prowess, and their cohesion belies the relatively short time they’ve been putting out music.2 The mix is well-suited to spotlight whoever needs it at a given time, whether the bass is purring (“Exogíini Kyriarchía”), the drums are being annihilated (“Pyrrhic Victory”), or a guitar solo nears Pettrucian wankery (“Phenomenal in Theory”). The end result is three-quarters of an hour filled with myriad influences that fuse into a sound all Kallias’s own, and it’s one I’ve returned to several times since discovering (also, credit to MontDoom for his stunning artwork, which helped initially draw my attention). Check it out—you’ll be sick if you avoid this one like the Plague.
Luke’s Kaleidoscopic Kicks
Giant Haze // Cosmic Mother [August 22nd, 2025 – Tonzonen Records]
Whereas many of my colleagues are bracing themselves for cooler conditions and harsh winters to come, in my neck of the woods, things are warming up. While my own wintry August filter proved scarce, there was one particular summery gem to lift moods with burly riffs and fat stoner grooves. Unheralded German act Giant Haze seemingly emerged out of nowhere during a random Bandcamp deep dive. Debut LP Cosmic Mother channels the good old days of ’90s-inspired desert rock, featuring grungy, doomy vibes via a groovy batch of riff-centric, hard-rocking and uplifting jams, evoking the nostalgic spirit of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Clutch and perhaps even a dash of Danzig. Punching out raucous, groove-soaked hard rockers with skyscraping hooks (“Geographic Gardens Suck,” “King of Tomorrow,” “Panic to Ride”), summery, funk–psych jams (“Sunrise”), and bluesy, punk-infused fireballs (“Crank in Public,” “Shrink Age”) Giant Haze get a lot of things right on this assured debut. The songwriting is deceptively diverse and punchy, bolstered by solid production, tight musicianship, and the swaggering, ever so slightly goofy vocal charms and powerful hooks of frontman Christoph Wollmann. Inevitably, a few rough spots appear, but overall Cosmic Mother showcases oodles of budding potential, an impactful delivery, cheeky sense of humor, and infectious, feel-good songcraft.
Spicie Forrest’s Foraged Fruit
Bask // The Turning [August 22nd, 2025 – Season of Mist]
Last seen in 2019, Bask returns with fourth LP, The Turning, a concept album following The Rider as she and The Traveler traverse the stars. They still peddle the unique blend of stoner rock and Americana Kenstrosity reviewed favorably in 2019, but 2025 sees them looking up for inspiration. The Turning incorporates a distinct cosmic bent (“The Traveler,” “The Turning”) and post-rock structures (“Dig My Heels,” “Unwound”). These augmentations to Bask’s core sound are enhanced by the masterful pedal steel of new official member Jed Willis. Whether floating through the firmament or tilling earthly pastures, Willis creates textures both fresh and intensely nostalgic. The infinite shifting vistas of The Turning’s front half coalesce into singular timeless visions on the back half, supporting its conceptual nature in both content and form. Like a combination of Huntsmen and Somali Yacht Club, Bask weaves riffs and melodies heard across the plains and through the void above with an unguarded authenticity felt in your soul.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Disseminating Discharge
Plasmodulated // An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell [August 1st, 2025 – Personal Records]
Stinky, sticky, slimy—all adjectives that define the ideal death metal platter. Myk Colby has been trying to chase this perfect balance in a reverb-wonky package with projects like the d-beaten Hot Graves and extra hazy Wharflurch, but vile death metal balance is hard to achieve. However, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell contains a recklessly pinched Demilichian riffage, classic piercing whammy bombs, and spook-minded synth ambience that places Plasmodulated with an odor more pungent than its peers. With an infected ear that festers equally with doom-loaded, Incantation-indebted drags (“Gelatinous Mutation ov Brewed Origin,” “Trapped in the Plasmovoid”) and Voivod-on-jenkem cutaways to foul-throated extravagence (“The Final Fuckening”). An air of intelligent tempo design keeps An Ocean from never feeling trapped in a maze of its own fumes, with Colby’s lush and bubbling synth design seguing tumbles into hammering deathly tremolo runs (“Such Rapid Sphacelation”) and Celtic Frosted riff tumbles (“Drowning in Sputum”) alike, all before swirling about his own tattered, trailing vocal sputters. Steady but slippery, elegant yet effluvial, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell provides the necessary noxious pressure to corrode death metal-loving denizens into pure gloops of stained-denim pit worship. Delivered as labeled, Plasmodulated earns its hazardous declaration. We here at AMG are not liable for any OSHA violations that occur as a result of Plasmodulated consumption on the job, though.
#2025 #Aeternus #AmericanMetal #Americana #AnOceanOvPutridStinkyVileDisgustingHell #Aug25 #Bask #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BurningWitches #CelestialTwilightBeyondTheCrimsonVeil #CelticFrost #Clutch #CosmicMother #CrimsonDawn #Danzig #DarkAmbient #DeathMetal #Deathhammer #DefLeppard #Defacement #Demilich #DigitalPlague #Doomed #DryDrunk #DutchMetal #EdgedCircleProductions #Emperor #Enslaved #Fellship #FinnishMetal #FrozenCrown #FuManchu #GermanMetal #GiantHaze #Glassing #Hardcore #HeavyMetal #Hellbutcher #HellsHeadbangersRecords #HotGraves #Huntsmen #Incantation #Inquisition #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Kallias #Kraków #Kyuss #MelodicBlackMetal #Meshuggah #MoonlightSorcery #MorbidAngel #Motörhead #NapalmRecords #NorwegianMetal #OldNick #PersonalRecords #PhantomFire #Plasmodulated #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SilentMillenia #Slayer #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SomaliYachtClub #SpeedMetal #StonerRock #Stormkeep #StreetSects #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SwissMetal #SymphonicBlackMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheTurning #TonzonenRecords #Turian #Voivod #Voyager #Wharflurch
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Stuck in the Filter: August 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
The heat persists, but now the humidity comes in full force as storm systems wreak havoc upon the coasts. I hide in my cramped closet of an office, lest I be washed out once again by an unsuspecting deluge. However, I still send my minions out into the facility, bound by duty to search for those metallic scraps on which we feast.
Fortuitously, most all of those imps I sent out came back alive, and with wares! BEHOLD!
Kenstrosity’s Galactic Gremlin
Silent Millenia // Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil [August 26th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Have you ever seen such a delightfully cheesy cover? Probably, but it’s been a while for me. I bought Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil, the second raw symphonic black metal opus from Finnish one-man act Silent Millenia, on the strength of the artwork alone. Little did I know that what lay beyond this crimson veil was some of the most fun melodic black metal this side of Moonlight Sorcery. The same low-fi roughness that personifies Old Nick’s work grounds Silent Millenia’s starbound songwriting as it traverses the universe with an energetic punch reminiscent of Emperor or Stormkeep (“Awaken the Celestial Spell,” “Daemonic Mastery”). To help differentiate Silent Millenia’s sound from that of their peers, a gothic atmosphere ensorcells much of this material to great effect, merging eerie Victorian melodies with galactic adventurism in an unlikely pair (“Enthrone the Spectral”). Swirling synths and sparkling twinkles abound as well, creating blissful moments of interest as frosty tremolos and piercing blasts take full advantage of the false sense of security those entrancing clouds of synthetic instrumentation create (“Benighted Path to Darkness Mysterium,” “Reign in Cosmic Majesty”). Simply put, Celestial Twilight is an unexpected gem of a symphonic black metal record, bursting with killer ideas and infinite levels of raw, unabashed fun. You should hear it!
Kronos’ Unexpected Unearthments
Street Sects // Dry Drunk [August 15th, 2025 – Self Release]
Dry Drunk sticks to your inner surfaces, draining down like cigarette tar along paralyzed cilia to pool in your lungs until the cells themselves foment rebellion. Once it’s in you, you feel paranoid, wretched, and alone. So it’s the proper follow-up to Street Sects’ visionary debut, End Position. Like that record, Dry Drunk plumbs the most mundane and unsavory gutters of America for a cast of protagonists that it dwells in or dispatches with a mixture of pity and disgust, with vocalist Leo Ashline narrating their violent crimes and self-hatred in a mixture of croons, shrieks, and snarls that cook the air before the speakers into the scent of booze and rotten teeth. And like that record, Shaun Ringsmuth (Glassing) dresses the sets with a fractal litter of snaps, squeals, crashes, gunshots, and grinding electronics, caked in tar and collapsing just as soon as it is swept into a structure. And like End Position, Dry Drunk is a masterpiece. The impeccable six-song stretch from “Love Makes You Fat” through “Riding the Clock” ties you to the bumper and drags you along some of the duo’s most creative side-roads, through the simmering, straightjacketed sludge of “Baker Act” to the chopped-up, smirking electronica of “Eject Button.” Swerving between addled, unintelligible agony and unforgettable anthems, Dry Drunk, like End Position before it is nothing less than the life of a junkie scraped together, heated on a spoon, and injected into your head. Once you’ve taken a hit, you will never be quite the same.
Thus Spoke’s Frightening Fragments
Defacement // Doomed [August 22nd, 2025 – Self Release]
There’s music for every vibe.1 The one Defacement fits is an exclusively extreme metal flavor of moody that is only appreciable by genre fans, made tangibly more eerie by their persistent idiosyncratic use of dark ambient interludes amidst the viciously distorted blackened death. Audiences—and reviewers—tend to disparage these electronic segments, but I’ve always felt their crackling presence increases the analog horror of it all, and rather than being a breather from the intensity, they prolong the nausea, the sense of emptiness, and the abject fearfulness of head-based trauma. This latter concept grows more metaphorical still on Doomed, where the violence is inside the mind, purpose-erasing, and emotionally-detaching. The ambience might be the most sadly beautiful so far (“Mournful,” and “Clouded” especially), and the transitions into nightmarish heaviness arguably the most fluid. And the metal is undoubtedly the most ambitious, dynamic, and magnificent of Defacement’s career, combining their most gruesome dissonance (“Portrait”) with their most bizarrely exuberant guitar melodies (“Unexplainable,” “Unrecognised”). Solos drip tangibly with (emotional) resonance (“Unexplainable,” “Absent”) and there’s not a breath or a moment of wasted space. Yes, the band’s heavier side can suffer from a nagging sense of homogeneous mass, but it remains transporting. While I can appreciate why others do not appreciate Defacement, this is the first of their outings I can truthfully say mesmerised me on first listen.
ClarkKent’s Heated Hymns
Phantom Fire // Phantom Fire [August 8th, 2025 – Edged Circle Productions]
While I waded through the murky depths of the August promo sump, Steel implored me to take the eponymous third album from Phantom Fire. “The AMG commentariat love blackened heavy metal,” he said. I disregarded his advice at my peril, and while I ended up enjoying what I grabbed, it turns out this would have been solid too. Featuring members from Enslaved, Kraków. Hellbutcher, and Aeternus, Phantom Fire play old school speed metal that harks back to the likes of Motörhead and Iron Maiden’s Killers. Thanks to healthy doses of bass and production values that allow the instruments to shine, each song is infused with energetic grooves. The music sounds fresh, crisp, and clear, from the booming drums to Eld’s “blackened” snarls. Early tracks “Eternal Void” and “All For None” show off the catchy blend of simple guitar riffs and a hoppin’ bass accompanied by energetic kit work. While placing a somewhat lengthy instrumental track in the middle of a record usually slows it down, “Fatal Attraction” turns out to be a highlight. It tells a tragic love story involving a motorcycle with nothing but instruments, an engine revving, and some police sirens. The second half of Phantom Fire gets a bit on the weirder side, turning to some stoner and psychedelia. There’s a push and pull between the stoner and Motörhead speed stuff on songs like “Malphas” and “Submersible Pt. 2,” and this blend actually works pretty well. It turns out that they aren’t phantom after all—these guys are truly fire.
Burning Witches // Inquisition [August 22nd, 2025 – Napalm Records]
With six albums in eight years, Swiss quintet Burning Witches has really been burning rubber. While such prolific output in such a short time frame generally spells trouble, Inquisition is a solid piece of heavy/power metal. Burning Witches dabbles in a mix of speedy power metal and mid-tempo heavy metal, often sounding like ’80s stalwarts Judas Priest and Def Leppard. With Laura Guldemond’s gruff voice, they produce a more weighty, less happy version of power metal than the likes of Fellowship or Frozen Crown. While the songs stick to formulaic structures, tempo shifts from song to song help keep things from growing stale. We see this variety right from the get-go, where “Soul Eater” takes a high-energy approach before moving into the more mellow “Shame.” There’s even a pretty solid ballad, “Release Me,” that grounds the back half of the record. Songs of the sort that Burning Witches write need catchy choruses, and fortunately, they deliver. “High Priestess of the Night” is a particular standout, delivering a knock-out punch in its delivery. It helps that the instrumental parts are well-executed, from crunchy riffs to subdued solos to booming blast beats. Anyone looking for a solid bit of power metal that’s not too heavy on the cheese will find this worth a listen.
Deathhammer // Crimson Dawn [August 29th, 2025 – Hells Headbangers Records]
Celebrating 20 years of blackened speed, Deathhammer drop LP number six with the kind of energy that exhausted parents dread to see in their children at bedtime. This is my first foray with the band, and I am in awe of the relentless level of manic energy they keep throughout Crimson Dawn’s 39 minutes. If science could learn how to harness their energy, we’d have an endless source of renewables. The two-piece out of Norway channels classic Slayer on crack and even has moments reminiscent of Painkiller-era Judas Priest. They play non-stop thrash cranked to 11, with persistent blast beats and some dual guitar parts that leave your head spinning from the rapid-fire directions the riffs fire off in. The heart of the mania is singer Sergeant Salsten. His crazed vocals are amazing—snarling, shouting, and shrieking in a way that took me back to the manic pitch Judge Doom could reach in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He sings so fast that on the chorus of “Crimson Dawn,” it sounds like he says “Griffindor,” which had me searching confusedly for the Harry Potter tag. This was probably my favorite song, not just because of the Griffindor thing, but because that chorus is so catchy. Either way, it’s tough to pick a standout track because they all grip you by the throat and don’t let go. Crimson Dawn is a ton of fun and a must listen if you like your music fast.
Grin Reaper’s Bountiful Blight
Kallias // Digital Plague [August 14th, 2025 – Self Release]
Machine gun drumming, spacey synths, Morbid Angel-meets-Meshuggah riffing, Turian-esque barking and Voyager-reminiscent vocal melodies…what the fuck is going on here? The only thing more surprising than someone having the moxie to blend all these things together is how well they work in concert. Kallias doesn’t hold back on sophomore album Digital Plague, and the result is a rocket-fueled blast through forty-four minutes of eclectic, addictive prog. The mishmash of styles keeps the album fresh and unpredictable while never dipping its toes in inconsistent waters, and staccato rhythms propel listeners through eight tracks without losing steam. As with any prog metal worth its salt, Kallias brandishes technical prowess, and their cohesion belies the relatively short time they’ve been putting out music.2 The mix is well-suited to spotlight whoever needs it at a given time, whether the bass is purring (“Exogíini Kyriarchía”), the drums are being annihilated (“Pyrrhic Victory”), or a guitar solo nears Pettrucian wankery (“Phenomenal in Theory”). The end result is three-quarters of an hour filled with myriad influences that fuse into a sound all Kallias’s own, and it’s one I’ve returned to several times since discovering (also, credit to MontDoom for his stunning artwork, which helped initially draw my attention). Check it out—you’ll be sick if you avoid this one like the Plague.
Luke’s Kaleidoscopic Kicks
Giant Haze // Cosmic Mother [August 22nd, 2025 – Tonzonen Records]
Whereas many of my colleagues are bracing themselves for cooler conditions and harsh winters to come, in my neck of the woods, things are warming up. While my own wintry August filter proved scarce, there was one particular summery gem to lift moods with burly riffs and fat stoner grooves. Unheralded German act Giant Haze seemingly emerged out of nowhere during a random Bandcamp deep dive. Debut LP Cosmic Mother channels the good old days of ’90s-inspired desert rock, featuring grungy, doomy vibes via a groovy batch of riff-centric, hard-rocking and uplifting jams, evoking the nostalgic spirit of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Clutch and perhaps even a dash of Danzig. Punching out raucous, groove-soaked hard rockers with skyscraping hooks (“Geographic Gardens Suck,” “King of Tomorrow,” “Panic to Ride”), summery, funk–psych jams (“Sunrise”), and bluesy, punk-infused fireballs (“Crank in Public,” “Shrink Age”) Giant Haze get a lot of things right on this assured debut. The songwriting is deceptively diverse and punchy, bolstered by solid production, tight musicianship, and the swaggering, ever so slightly goofy vocal charms and powerful hooks of frontman Christoph Wollmann. Inevitably, a few rough spots appear, but overall Cosmic Mother showcases oodles of budding potential, an impactful delivery, cheeky sense of humor, and infectious, feel-good songcraft.
Spicie Forrest’s Foraged Fruit
Bask // The Turning [August 22nd, 2025 – Season of Mist]
Last seen in 2019, Bask returns with fourth LP, The Turning, a concept album following The Rider as she and The Traveler traverse the stars. They still peddle the unique blend of stoner rock and Americana Kenstrosity reviewed favorably in 2019, but 2025 sees them looking up for inspiration. The Turning incorporates a distinct cosmic bent (“The Traveler,” “The Turning”) and post-rock structures (“Dig My Heels,” “Unwound”). These augmentations to Bask’s core sound are enhanced by the masterful pedal steel of new official member Jed Willis. Whether floating through the firmament or tilling earthly pastures, Willis creates textures both fresh and intensely nostalgic. The infinite shifting vistas of The Turning’s front half coalesce into singular timeless visions on the back half, supporting its conceptual nature in both content and form. Like a combination of Huntsmen and Somali Yacht Club, Bask weaves riffs and melodies heard across the plains and through the void above with an unguarded authenticity felt in your soul.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Disseminating Discharge
Plasmodulated // An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell [August 1st, 2025 – Personal Records]
Stinky, sticky, slimy—all adjectives that define the ideal death metal platter. Myk Colby has been trying to chase this perfect balance in a reverb-wonky package with projects like the d-beaten Hot Graves and extra hazy Wharflurch, but vile death metal balance is hard to achieve. However, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell contains a recklessly pinched Demilichian riffage, classic piercing whammy bombs, and spook-minded synth ambience that places Plasmodulated with an odor more pungent than its peers. With an infected ear that festers equally with doom-loaded, Incantation-indebted drags (“Gelatinous Mutation ov Brewed Origin,” “Trapped in the Plasmovoid”) and Voivod-on-jenkem cutaways to foul-throated extravagence (“The Final Fuckening”). An air of intelligent tempo design keeps An Ocean from never feeling trapped in a maze of its own fumes, with Colby’s lush and bubbling synth design seguing tumbles into hammering deathly tremolo runs (“Such Rapid Sphacelation”) and Celtic Frosted riff tumbles (“Drowning in Sputum”) alike, all before swirling about his own tattered, trailing vocal sputters. Steady but slippery, elegant yet effluvial, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell provides the necessary noxious pressure to corrode death metal-loving denizens into pure gloops of stained-denim pit worship. Delivered as labeled, Plasmodulated earns its hazardous declaration. We here at AMG are not liable for any OSHA violations that occur as a result of Plasmodulated consumption on the job, though.
#2025 #Aeternus #AmericanMetal #Americana #AnOceanOvPutridStinkyVileDisgustingHell #Aug25 #Bask #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BurningWitches #CelestialTwilightBeyondTheCrimsonVeil #CelticFrost #Clutch #CosmicMother #CrimsonDawn #Danzig #DarkAmbient #DeathMetal #Deathhammer #DefLeppard #Defacement #Demilich #DigitalPlague #Doomed #DryDrunk #DutchMetal #EdgedCircleProductions #Emperor #Enslaved #Fellship #FinnishMetal #FrozenCrown #FuManchu #GermanMetal #GiantHaze #Glassing #Hardcore #HeavyMetal #Hellbutcher #HellsHeadbangersRecords #HotGraves #Huntsmen #Incantation #Inquisition #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Kallias #Kraków #Kyuss #MelodicBlackMetal #Meshuggah #MoonlightSorcery #MorbidAngel #Motörhead #NapalmRecords #NorwegianMetal #OldNick #PersonalRecords #PhantomFire #Plasmodulated #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SilentMillenia #Slayer #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SomaliYachtClub #SpeedMetal #StonerRock #Stormkeep #StreetSects #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SwissMetal #SymphonicBlackMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheTurning #TonzonenRecords #Turian #Voivod #Voyager #Wharflurch
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Stuck in the Filter: August 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
The heat persists, but now the humidity comes in full force as storm systems wreak havoc upon the coasts. I hide in my cramped closet of an office, lest I be washed out once again by an unsuspecting deluge. However, I still send my minions out into the facility, bound by duty to search for those metallic scraps on which we feast.
Fortuitously, most all of those imps I sent out came back alive, and with wares! BEHOLD!
Kenstrosity’s Galactic Gremlin
Silent Millenia // Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil [August 26th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Have you ever seen such a delightfully cheesy cover? Probably, but it’s been a while for me. I bought Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil, the second raw symphonic black metal opus from Finnish one-man act Silent Millenia, on the strength of the artwork alone. Little did I know that what lay beyond this crimson veil was some of the most fun melodic black metal this side of Moonlight Sorcery. The same low-fi roughness that personifies Old Nick’s work grounds Silent Millenia’s starbound songwriting as it traverses the universe with an energetic punch reminiscent of Emperor or Stormkeep (“Awaken the Celestial Spell,” “Daemonic Mastery”). To help differentiate Silent Millenia’s sound from that of their peers, a gothic atmosphere ensorcells much of this material to great effect, merging eerie Victorian melodies with galactic adventurism in an unlikely pair (“Enthrone the Spectral”). Swirling synths and sparkling twinkles abound as well, creating blissful moments of interest as frosty tremolos and piercing blasts take full advantage of the false sense of security those entrancing clouds of synthetic instrumentation create (“Benighted Path to Darkness Mysterium,” “Reign in Cosmic Majesty”). Simply put, Celestial Twilight is an unexpected gem of a symphonic black metal record, bursting with killer ideas and infinite levels of raw, unabashed fun. You should hear it!
Kronos’ Unexpected Unearthments
Street Sects // Dry Drunk [August 15th, 2025 – Self Release]
Dry Drunk sticks to your inner surfaces, draining down like cigarette tar along paralyzed cilia to pool in your lungs until the cells themselves foment rebellion. Once it’s in you, you feel paranoid, wretched, and alone. So it’s the proper follow-up to Street Sects’ visionary debut, End Position. Like that record, Dry Drunk plumbs the most mundane and unsavory gutters of America for a cast of protagonists that it dwells in or dispatches with a mixture of pity and disgust, with vocalist Leo Ashline narrating their violent crimes and self-hatred in a mixture of croons, shrieks, and snarls that cook the air before the speakers into the scent of booze and rotten teeth. And like that record, Shaun Ringsmuth (Glassing) dresses the sets with a fractal litter of snaps, squeals, crashes, gunshots, and grinding electronics, caked in tar and collapsing just as soon as it is swept into a structure. And like End Position, Dry Drunk is a masterpiece. The impeccable six-song stretch from “Love Makes You Fat” through “Riding the Clock” ties you to the bumper and drags you along some of the duo’s most creative side-roads, through the simmering, straightjacketed sludge of “Baker Act” to the chopped-up, smirking electronica of “Eject Button.” Swerving between addled, unintelligible agony and unforgettable anthems, Dry Drunk, like End Position before it is nothing less than the life of a junkie scraped together, heated on a spoon, and injected into your head. Once you’ve taken a hit, you will never be quite the same.
Thus Spoke’s Frightening Fragments
Defacement // Doomed [August 22nd, 2025 – Self Release]
There’s music for every vibe.1 The one Defacement fits is an exclusively extreme metal flavor of moody that is only appreciable by genre fans, made tangibly more eerie by their persistent idiosyncratic use of dark ambient interludes amidst the viciously distorted blackened death. Audiences—and reviewers—tend to disparage these electronic segments, but I’ve always felt their crackling presence increases the analog horror of it all, and rather than being a breather from the intensity, they prolong the nausea, the sense of emptiness, and the abject fearfulness of head-based trauma. This latter concept grows more metaphorical still on Doomed, where the violence is inside the mind, purpose-erasing, and emotionally-detaching. The ambience might be the most sadly beautiful so far (“Mournful,” and “Clouded” especially), and the transitions into nightmarish heaviness arguably the most fluid. And the metal is undoubtedly the most ambitious, dynamic, and magnificent of Defacement’s career, combining their most gruesome dissonance (“Portrait”) with their most bizarrely exuberant guitar melodies (“Unexplainable,” “Unrecognised”). Solos drip tangibly with (emotional) resonance (“Unexplainable,” “Absent”) and there’s not a breath or a moment of wasted space. Yes, the band’s heavier side can suffer from a nagging sense of homogeneous mass, but it remains transporting. While I can appreciate why others do not appreciate Defacement, this is the first of their outings I can truthfully say mesmerised me on first listen.
ClarkKent’s Heated Hymns
Phantom Fire // Phantom Fire [August 8th, 2025 – Edged Circle Productions]
While I waded through the murky depths of the August promo sump, Steel implored me to take the eponymous third album from Phantom Fire. “The AMG commentariat love blackened heavy metal,” he said. I disregarded his advice at my peril, and while I ended up enjoying what I grabbed, it turns out this would have been solid too. Featuring members from Enslaved, Kraków. Hellbutcher, and Aeternus, Phantom Fire play old school speed metal that harks back to the likes of Motörhead and Iron Maiden’s Killers. Thanks to healthy doses of bass and production values that allow the instruments to shine, each song is infused with energetic grooves. The music sounds fresh, crisp, and clear, from the booming drums to Eld’s “blackened” snarls. Early tracks “Eternal Void” and “All For None” show off the catchy blend of simple guitar riffs and a hoppin’ bass accompanied by energetic kit work. While placing a somewhat lengthy instrumental track in the middle of a record usually slows it down, “Fatal Attraction” turns out to be a highlight. It tells a tragic love story involving a motorcycle with nothing but instruments, an engine revving, and some police sirens. The second half of Phantom Fire gets a bit on the weirder side, turning to some stoner and psychedelia. There’s a push and pull between the stoner and Motörhead speed stuff on songs like “Malphas” and “Submersible Pt. 2,” and this blend actually works pretty well. It turns out that they aren’t phantom after all—these guys are truly fire.
Burning Witches // Inquisition [August 22nd, 2025 – Napalm Records]
With six albums in eight years, Swiss quintet Burning Witches has really been burning rubber. While such prolific output in such a short time frame generally spells trouble, Inquisition is a solid piece of heavy/power metal. Burning Witches dabbles in a mix of speedy power metal and mid-tempo heavy metal, often sounding like ’80s stalwarts Judas Priest and Def Leppard. With Laura Guldemond’s gruff voice, they produce a more weighty, less happy version of power metal than the likes of Fellowship or Frozen Crown. While the songs stick to formulaic structures, tempo shifts from song to song help keep things from growing stale. We see this variety right from the get-go, where “Soul Eater” takes a high-energy approach before moving into the more mellow “Shame.” There’s even a pretty solid ballad, “Release Me,” that grounds the back half of the record. Songs of the sort that Burning Witches write need catchy choruses, and fortunately, they deliver. “High Priestess of the Night” is a particular standout, delivering a knock-out punch in its delivery. It helps that the instrumental parts are well-executed, from crunchy riffs to subdued solos to booming blast beats. Anyone looking for a solid bit of power metal that’s not too heavy on the cheese will find this worth a listen.
Deathhammer // Crimson Dawn [August 29th, 2025 – Hells Headbangers Records]
Celebrating 20 years of blackened speed, Deathhammer drop LP number six with the kind of energy that exhausted parents dread to see in their children at bedtime. This is my first foray with the band, and I am in awe of the relentless level of manic energy they keep throughout Crimson Dawn’s 39 minutes. If science could learn how to harness their energy, we’d have an endless source of renewables. The two-piece out of Norway channels classic Slayer on crack and even has moments reminiscent of Painkiller-era Judas Priest. They play non-stop thrash cranked to 11, with persistent blast beats and some dual guitar parts that leave your head spinning from the rapid-fire directions the riffs fire off in. The heart of the mania is singer Sergeant Salsten. His crazed vocals are amazing—snarling, shouting, and shrieking in a way that took me back to the manic pitch Judge Doom could reach in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He sings so fast that on the chorus of “Crimson Dawn,” it sounds like he says “Griffindor,” which had me searching confusedly for the Harry Potter tag. This was probably my favorite song, not just because of the Griffindor thing, but because that chorus is so catchy. Either way, it’s tough to pick a standout track because they all grip you by the throat and don’t let go. Crimson Dawn is a ton of fun and a must listen if you like your music fast.
Grin Reaper’s Bountiful Blight
Kallias // Digital Plague [August 14th, 2025 – Self Release]
Machine gun drumming, spacey synths, Morbid Angel-meets-Meshuggah riffing, Turian-esque barking and Voyager-reminiscent vocal melodies…what the fuck is going on here? The only thing more surprising than someone having the moxie to blend all these things together is how well they work in concert. Kallias doesn’t hold back on sophomore album Digital Plague, and the result is a rocket-fueled blast through forty-four minutes of eclectic, addictive prog. The mishmash of styles keeps the album fresh and unpredictable while never dipping its toes in inconsistent waters, and staccato rhythms propel listeners through eight tracks without losing steam. As with any prog metal worth its salt, Kallias brandishes technical prowess, and their cohesion belies the relatively short time they’ve been putting out music.2 The mix is well-suited to spotlight whoever needs it at a given time, whether the bass is purring (“Exogíini Kyriarchía”), the drums are being annihilated (“Pyrrhic Victory”), or a guitar solo nears Pettrucian wankery (“Phenomenal in Theory”). The end result is three-quarters of an hour filled with myriad influences that fuse into a sound all Kallias’s own, and it’s one I’ve returned to several times since discovering (also, credit to MontDoom for his stunning artwork, which helped initially draw my attention). Check it out—you’ll be sick if you avoid this one like the Plague.
Luke’s Kaleidoscopic Kicks
Giant Haze // Cosmic Mother [August 22nd, 2025 – Tonzonen Records]
Whereas many of my colleagues are bracing themselves for cooler conditions and harsh winters to come, in my neck of the woods, things are warming up. While my own wintry August filter proved scarce, there was one particular summery gem to lift moods with burly riffs and fat stoner grooves. Unheralded German act Giant Haze seemingly emerged out of nowhere during a random Bandcamp deep dive. Debut LP Cosmic Mother channels the good old days of ’90s-inspired desert rock, featuring grungy, doomy vibes via a groovy batch of riff-centric, hard-rocking and uplifting jams, evoking the nostalgic spirit of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Clutch and perhaps even a dash of Danzig. Punching out raucous, groove-soaked hard rockers with skyscraping hooks (“Geographic Gardens Suck,” “King of Tomorrow,” “Panic to Ride”), summery, funk–psych jams (“Sunrise”), and bluesy, punk-infused fireballs (“Crank in Public,” “Shrink Age”) Giant Haze get a lot of things right on this assured debut. The songwriting is deceptively diverse and punchy, bolstered by solid production, tight musicianship, and the swaggering, ever so slightly goofy vocal charms and powerful hooks of frontman Christoph Wollmann. Inevitably, a few rough spots appear, but overall Cosmic Mother showcases oodles of budding potential, an impactful delivery, cheeky sense of humor, and infectious, feel-good songcraft.
Spicie Forrest’s Foraged Fruit
Bask // The Turning [August 22nd, 2025 – Season of Mist]
Last seen in 2019, Bask returns with fourth LP, The Turning, a concept album following The Rider as she and The Traveler traverse the stars. They still peddle the unique blend of stoner rock and Americana Kenstrosity reviewed favorably in 2019, but 2025 sees them looking up for inspiration. The Turning incorporates a distinct cosmic bent (“The Traveler,” “The Turning”) and post-rock structures (“Dig My Heels,” “Unwound”). These augmentations to Bask’s core sound are enhanced by the masterful pedal steel of new official member Jed Willis. Whether floating through the firmament or tilling earthly pastures, Willis creates textures both fresh and intensely nostalgic. The infinite shifting vistas of The Turning’s front half coalesce into singular timeless visions on the back half, supporting its conceptual nature in both content and form. Like a combination of Huntsmen and Somali Yacht Club, Bask weaves riffs and melodies heard across the plains and through the void above with an unguarded authenticity felt in your soul.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Disseminating Discharge
Plasmodulated // An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell [August 1st, 2025 – Personal Records]
Stinky, sticky, slimy—all adjectives that define the ideal death metal platter. Myk Colby has been trying to chase this perfect balance in a reverb-wonky package with projects like the d-beaten Hot Graves and extra hazy Wharflurch, but vile death metal balance is hard to achieve. However, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell contains a recklessly pinched Demilichian riffage, classic piercing whammy bombs, and spook-minded synth ambience that places Plasmodulated with an odor more pungent than its peers. With an infected ear that festers equally with doom-loaded, Incantation-indebted drags (“Gelatinous Mutation ov Brewed Origin,” “Trapped in the Plasmovoid”) and Voivod-on-jenkem cutaways to foul-throated extravagence (“The Final Fuckening”). An air of intelligent tempo design keeps An Ocean from never feeling trapped in a maze of its own fumes, with Colby’s lush and bubbling synth design seguing tumbles into hammering deathly tremolo runs (“Such Rapid Sphacelation”) and Celtic Frosted riff tumbles (“Drowning in Sputum”) alike, all before swirling about his own tattered, trailing vocal sputters. Steady but slippery, elegant yet effluvial, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell provides the necessary noxious pressure to corrode death metal-loving denizens into pure gloops of stained-denim pit worship. Delivered as labeled, Plasmodulated earns its hazardous declaration. We here at AMG are not liable for any OSHA violations that occur as a result of Plasmodulated consumption on the job, though.
#2025 #Aeternus #AmericanMetal #Americana #AnOceanOvPutridStinkyVileDisgustingHell #Aug25 #Bask #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BurningWitches #CelestialTwilightBeyondTheCrimsonVeil #CelticFrost #Clutch #CosmicMother #CrimsonDawn #Danzig #DarkAmbient #DeathMetal #Deathhammer #DefLeppard #Defacement #Demilich #DigitalPlague #Doomed #DryDrunk #DutchMetal #EdgedCircleProductions #Emperor #Enslaved #Fellship #FinnishMetal #FrozenCrown #FuManchu #GermanMetal #GiantHaze #Glassing #Hardcore #HeavyMetal #Hellbutcher #HellsHeadbangersRecords #HotGraves #Huntsmen #Incantation #Inquisition #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Kallias #Kraków #Kyuss #MelodicBlackMetal #Meshuggah #MoonlightSorcery #MorbidAngel #Motörhead #NapalmRecords #NorwegianMetal #OldNick #PersonalRecords #PhantomFire #Plasmodulated #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SilentMillenia #Slayer #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SomaliYachtClub #SpeedMetal #StonerRock #Stormkeep #StreetSects #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SwissMetal #SymphonicBlackMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheTurning #TonzonenRecords #Turian #Voivod #Voyager #Wharflurch
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Stuck in the Filter: August 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
The heat persists, but now the humidity comes in full force as storm systems wreak havoc upon the coasts. I hide in my cramped closet of an office, lest I be washed out once again by an unsuspecting deluge. However, I still send my minions out into the facility, bound by duty to search for those metallic scraps on which we feast.
Fortuitously, most all of those imps I sent out came back alive, and with wares! BEHOLD!
Kenstrosity’s Galactic Gremlin
Silent Millenia // Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil [August 26th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Have you ever seen such a delightfully cheesy cover? Probably, but it’s been a while for me. I bought Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil, the second raw symphonic black metal opus from Finnish one-man act Silent Millenia, on the strength of the artwork alone. Little did I know that what lay beyond this crimson veil was some of the most fun melodic black metal this side of Moonlight Sorcery. The same low-fi roughness that personifies Old Nick’s work grounds Silent Millenia’s starbound songwriting as it traverses the universe with an energetic punch reminiscent of Emperor or Stormkeep (“Awaken the Celestial Spell,” “Daemonic Mastery”). To help differentiate Silent Millenia’s sound from that of their peers, a gothic atmosphere ensorcells much of this material to great effect, merging eerie Victorian melodies with galactic adventurism in an unlikely pair (“Enthrone the Spectral”). Swirling synths and sparkling twinkles abound as well, creating blissful moments of interest as frosty tremolos and piercing blasts take full advantage of the false sense of security those entrancing clouds of synthetic instrumentation create (“Benighted Path to Darkness Mysterium,” “Reign in Cosmic Majesty”). Simply put, Celestial Twilight is an unexpected gem of a symphonic black metal record, bursting with killer ideas and infinite levels of raw, unabashed fun. You should hear it!
Kronos’ Unexpected Unearthments
Street Sects // Dry Drunk [August 15th, 2025 – Self Release]
Dry Drunk sticks to your inner surfaces, draining down like cigarette tar along paralyzed cilia to pool in your lungs until the cells themselves foment rebellion. Once it’s in you, you feel paranoid, wretched, and alone. So it’s the proper follow-up to Street Sects’ visionary debut, End Position. Like that record, Dry Drunk plumbs the most mundane and unsavory gutters of America for a cast of protagonists that it dwells in or dispatches with a mixture of pity and disgust, with vocalist Leo Ashline narrating their violent crimes and self-hatred in a mixture of croons, shrieks, and snarls that cook the air before the speakers into the scent of booze and rotten teeth. And like that record, Shaun Ringsmuth (Glassing) dresses the sets with a fractal litter of snaps, squeals, crashes, gunshots, and grinding electronics, caked in tar and collapsing just as soon as it is swept into a structure. And like End Position, Dry Drunk is a masterpiece. The impeccable six-song stretch from “Love Makes You Fat” through “Riding the Clock” ties you to the bumper and drags you along some of the duo’s most creative side-roads, through the simmering, straightjacketed sludge of “Baker Act” to the chopped-up, smirking electronica of “Eject Button.” Swerving between addled, unintelligible agony and unforgettable anthems, Dry Drunk, like End Position before it is nothing less than the life of a junkie scraped together, heated on a spoon, and injected into your head. Once you’ve taken a hit, you will never be quite the same.
Thus Spoke’s Frightening Fragments
Defacement // Doomed [August 22nd, 2025 – Self Release]
There’s music for every vibe.1 The one Defacement fits is an exclusively extreme metal flavor of moody that is only appreciable by genre fans, made tangibly more eerie by their persistent idiosyncratic use of dark ambient interludes amidst the viciously distorted blackened death. Audiences—and reviewers—tend to disparage these electronic segments, but I’ve always felt their crackling presence increases the analog horror of it all, and rather than being a breather from the intensity, they prolong the nausea, the sense of emptiness, and the abject fearfulness of head-based trauma. This latter concept grows more metaphorical still on Doomed, where the violence is inside the mind, purpose-erasing, and emotionally-detaching. The ambience might be the most sadly beautiful so far (“Mournful,” and “Clouded” especially), and the transitions into nightmarish heaviness arguably the most fluid. And the metal is undoubtedly the most ambitious, dynamic, and magnificent of Defacement’s career, combining their most gruesome dissonance (“Portrait”) with their most bizarrely exuberant guitar melodies (“Unexplainable,” “Unrecognised”). Solos drip tangibly with (emotional) resonance (“Unexplainable,” “Absent”) and there’s not a breath or a moment of wasted space. Yes, the band’s heavier side can suffer from a nagging sense of homogeneous mass, but it remains transporting. While I can appreciate why others do not appreciate Defacement, this is the first of their outings I can truthfully say mesmerised me on first listen.
ClarkKent’s Heated Hymns
Phantom Fire // Phantom Fire [August 8th, 2025 – Edged Circle Productions]
While I waded through the murky depths of the August promo sump, Steel implored me to take the eponymous third album from Phantom Fire. “The AMG commentariat love blackened heavy metal,” he said. I disregarded his advice at my peril, and while I ended up enjoying what I grabbed, it turns out this would have been solid too. Featuring members from Enslaved, Kraków. Hellbutcher, and Aeternus, Phantom Fire play old school speed metal that harks back to the likes of Motörhead and Iron Maiden’s Killers. Thanks to healthy doses of bass and production values that allow the instruments to shine, each song is infused with energetic grooves. The music sounds fresh, crisp, and clear, from the booming drums to Eld’s “blackened” snarls. Early tracks “Eternal Void” and “All For None” show off the catchy blend of simple guitar riffs and a hoppin’ bass accompanied by energetic kit work. While placing a somewhat lengthy instrumental track in the middle of a record usually slows it down, “Fatal Attraction” turns out to be a highlight. It tells a tragic love story involving a motorcycle with nothing but instruments, an engine revving, and some police sirens. The second half of Phantom Fire gets a bit on the weirder side, turning to some stoner and psychedelia. There’s a push and pull between the stoner and Motörhead speed stuff on songs like “Malphas” and “Submersible Pt. 2,” and this blend actually works pretty well. It turns out that they aren’t phantom after all—these guys are truly fire.
Burning Witches // Inquisition [August 22nd, 2025 – Napalm Records]
With six albums in eight years, Swiss quintet Burning Witches has really been burning rubber. While such prolific output in such a short time frame generally spells trouble, Inquisition is a solid piece of heavy/power metal. Burning Witches dabbles in a mix of speedy power metal and mid-tempo heavy metal, often sounding like ’80s stalwarts Judas Priest and Def Leppard. With Laura Guldemond’s gruff voice, they produce a more weighty, less happy version of power metal than the likes of Fellowship or Frozen Crown. While the songs stick to formulaic structures, tempo shifts from song to song help keep things from growing stale. We see this variety right from the get-go, where “Soul Eater” takes a high-energy approach before moving into the more mellow “Shame.” There’s even a pretty solid ballad, “Release Me,” that grounds the back half of the record. Songs of the sort that Burning Witches write need catchy choruses, and fortunately, they deliver. “High Priestess of the Night” is a particular standout, delivering a knock-out punch in its delivery. It helps that the instrumental parts are well-executed, from crunchy riffs to subdued solos to booming blast beats. Anyone looking for a solid bit of power metal that’s not too heavy on the cheese will find this worth a listen.
Deathhammer // Crimson Dawn [August 29th, 2025 – Hells Headbangers Records]
Celebrating 20 years of blackened speed, Deathhammer drop LP number six with the kind of energy that exhausted parents dread to see in their children at bedtime. This is my first foray with the band, and I am in awe of the relentless level of manic energy they keep throughout Crimson Dawn’s 39 minutes. If science could learn how to harness their energy, we’d have an endless source of renewables. The two-piece out of Norway channels classic Slayer on crack and even has moments reminiscent of Painkiller-era Judas Priest. They play non-stop thrash cranked to 11, with persistent blast beats and some dual guitar parts that leave your head spinning from the rapid-fire directions the riffs fire off in. The heart of the mania is singer Sergeant Salsten. His crazed vocals are amazing—snarling, shouting, and shrieking in a way that took me back to the manic pitch Judge Doom could reach in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He sings so fast that on the chorus of “Crimson Dawn,” it sounds like he says “Griffindor,” which had me searching confusedly for the Harry Potter tag. This was probably my favorite song, not just because of the Griffindor thing, but because that chorus is so catchy. Either way, it’s tough to pick a standout track because they all grip you by the throat and don’t let go. Crimson Dawn is a ton of fun and a must listen if you like your music fast.
Grin Reaper’s Bountiful Blight
Kallias // Digital Plague [August 14th, 2025 – Self Release]
Machine gun drumming, spacey synths, Morbid Angel-meets-Meshuggah riffing, Turian-esque barking and Voyager-reminiscent vocal melodies…what the fuck is going on here? The only thing more surprising than someone having the moxie to blend all these things together is how well they work in concert. Kallias doesn’t hold back on sophomore album Digital Plague, and the result is a rocket-fueled blast through forty-four minutes of eclectic, addictive prog. The mishmash of styles keeps the album fresh and unpredictable while never dipping its toes in inconsistent waters, and staccato rhythms propel listeners through eight tracks without losing steam. As with any prog metal worth its salt, Kallias brandishes technical prowess, and their cohesion belies the relatively short time they’ve been putting out music.2 The mix is well-suited to spotlight whoever needs it at a given time, whether the bass is purring (“Exogíini Kyriarchía”), the drums are being annihilated (“Pyrrhic Victory”), or a guitar solo nears Pettrucian wankery (“Phenomenal in Theory”). The end result is three-quarters of an hour filled with myriad influences that fuse into a sound all Kallias’s own, and it’s one I’ve returned to several times since discovering (also, credit to MontDoom for his stunning artwork, which helped initially draw my attention). Check it out—you’ll be sick if you avoid this one like the Plague.
Luke’s Kaleidoscopic Kicks
Giant Haze // Cosmic Mother [August 22nd, 2025 – Tonzonen Records]
Whereas many of my colleagues are bracing themselves for cooler conditions and harsh winters to come, in my neck of the woods, things are warming up. While my own wintry August filter proved scarce, there was one particular summery gem to lift moods with burly riffs and fat stoner grooves. Unheralded German act Giant Haze seemingly emerged out of nowhere during a random Bandcamp deep dive. Debut LP Cosmic Mother channels the good old days of ’90s-inspired desert rock, featuring grungy, doomy vibes via a groovy batch of riff-centric, hard-rocking and uplifting jams, evoking the nostalgic spirit of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Clutch and perhaps even a dash of Danzig. Punching out raucous, groove-soaked hard rockers with skyscraping hooks (“Geographic Gardens Suck,” “King of Tomorrow,” “Panic to Ride”), summery, funk–psych jams (“Sunrise”), and bluesy, punk-infused fireballs (“Crank in Public,” “Shrink Age”) Giant Haze get a lot of things right on this assured debut. The songwriting is deceptively diverse and punchy, bolstered by solid production, tight musicianship, and the swaggering, ever so slightly goofy vocal charms and powerful hooks of frontman Christoph Wollmann. Inevitably, a few rough spots appear, but overall Cosmic Mother showcases oodles of budding potential, an impactful delivery, cheeky sense of humor, and infectious, feel-good songcraft.
Spicie Forrest’s Foraged Fruit
Bask // The Turning [August 22nd, 2025 – Season of Mist]
Last seen in 2019, Bask returns with fourth LP, The Turning, a concept album following The Rider as she and The Traveler traverse the stars. They still peddle the unique blend of stoner rock and Americana Kenstrosity reviewed favorably in 2019, but 2025 sees them looking up for inspiration. The Turning incorporates a distinct cosmic bent (“The Traveler,” “The Turning”) and post-rock structures (“Dig My Heels,” “Unwound”). These augmentations to Bask’s core sound are enhanced by the masterful pedal steel of new official member Jed Willis. Whether floating through the firmament or tilling earthly pastures, Willis creates textures both fresh and intensely nostalgic. The infinite shifting vistas of The Turning’s front half coalesce into singular timeless visions on the back half, supporting its conceptual nature in both content and form. Like a combination of Huntsmen and Somali Yacht Club, Bask weaves riffs and melodies heard across the plains and through the void above with an unguarded authenticity felt in your soul.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Disseminating Discharge
Plasmodulated // An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell [August 1st, 2025 – Personal Records]
Stinky, sticky, slimy—all adjectives that define the ideal death metal platter. Myk Colby has been trying to chase this perfect balance in a reverb-wonky package with projects like the d-beaten Hot Graves and extra hazy Wharflurch, but vile death metal balance is hard to achieve. However, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell contains a recklessly pinched Demilichian riffage, classic piercing whammy bombs, and spook-minded synth ambience that places Plasmodulated with an odor more pungent than its peers. With an infected ear that festers equally with doom-loaded, Incantation-indebted drags (“Gelatinous Mutation ov Brewed Origin,” “Trapped in the Plasmovoid”) and Voivod-on-jenkem cutaways to foul-throated extravagence (“The Final Fuckening”). An air of intelligent tempo design keeps An Ocean from never feeling trapped in a maze of its own fumes, with Colby’s lush and bubbling synth design seguing tumbles into hammering deathly tremolo runs (“Such Rapid Sphacelation”) and Celtic Frosted riff tumbles (“Drowning in Sputum”) alike, all before swirling about his own tattered, trailing vocal sputters. Steady but slippery, elegant yet effluvial, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell provides the necessary noxious pressure to corrode death metal-loving denizens into pure gloops of stained-denim pit worship. Delivered as labeled, Plasmodulated earns its hazardous declaration. We here at AMG are not liable for any OSHA violations that occur as a result of Plasmodulated consumption on the job, though.
#2025 #Aeternus #AmericanMetal #Americana #AnOceanOvPutridStinkyVileDisgustingHell #Aug25 #Bask #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BurningWitches #CelestialTwilightBeyondTheCrimsonVeil #CelticFrost #Clutch #CosmicMother #CrimsonDawn #Danzig #DarkAmbient #DeathMetal #Deathhammer #DefLeppard #Defacement #Demilich #DigitalPlague #Doomed #DryDrunk #DutchMetal #EdgedCircleProductions #Emperor #Enslaved #Fellship #FinnishMetal #FrozenCrown #FuManchu #GermanMetal #GiantHaze #Glassing #Hardcore #HeavyMetal #Hellbutcher #HellsHeadbangersRecords #HotGraves #Huntsmen #Incantation #Inquisition #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Kallias #Kraków #Kyuss #MelodicBlackMetal #Meshuggah #MoonlightSorcery #MorbidAngel #Motörhead #NapalmRecords #NorwegianMetal #OldNick #PersonalRecords #PhantomFire #Plasmodulated #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SilentMillenia #Slayer #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SomaliYachtClub #SpeedMetal #StonerRock #Stormkeep #StreetSects #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SwissMetal #SymphonicBlackMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheTurning #TonzonenRecords #Turian #Voivod #Voyager #Wharflurch
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Schon gewußt? #ITI
Die #Programmiersprache #COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) dient vor allem der Programmierung kaufmännischer Anwendungen. Ihre Entwicklung geht auf das Jahr 1959 zurück und entstand aus dem Ansatz, eine hardwareunabhängige, standardisierte, problemorientierte Sprache für die Erstellung von Programmen für den betriebswirtschaftlichen Bereich anwenden zu können. COBOL ist noch heute (anno 2022) im Einsatz.
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EA80 – ● ● (Stecker)
(Punk, Deutsch-Punk / Major Label)Wer auf Hochglanz wartet, wird enttäuscht. Wer Sehnsucht kennt, wird belohnt. Denn „Stecker“ ist nicht bequem, aber wahr. Und das ist selten geworden.
EA80 forever
Wie lange es EA80 noch geben wird? Hoffentlich ewig. Oder zumindest so lange, bis sie eines Tages doch verraten, wofür der Name steht. Bis dahin: Stecker rein, Welt aus.
Hier geht's zur Review von Lagartija Nick:
https://vinyl-keks.eu/ea80-●-●-stecker/ -
28 New Songs Out Today
https://www.brooklynvegan.com/28-new-songs-out-today-54/#brooklynvegan_category_music #Music #Arooj_Aftab #Friko #Georgia #Georgia_Gets_By #Golshifteh_Farahani #Grandaddy #halo_maud #Kora_Puckett #Louisa_Stancioff #Maria_Chiara_Argiro #Meshell_Ndegeocello #Mick_Harvey #Mutilation_Barbecue #New_Songs #New_Tracks #Nick_Mulvey #Omni #one_true_pairing #Orion_Sun #Serpentwithfeet #Sinister_Feeling #Wild_Beasts
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Poor Nick Bosa. The pedophile supporting, rapist supporting, fascist sympathizer gets injured and appears to be, temporarily at least, out of the game…
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Thoughts and prayers. -
CW: spoiler for the movie #LordOfWar
@BlackAzizAnansi This is objectively not the saddest movie moment of all time, but the #Hallelujah sequence in #LordOfWar — specifically the bit where Nick Cage on voiceover says that his wife might have forgiven him if the combination lock was his birthdate or her birthdate as the camera pans down to their kid and the song gets to its saddest bit — gets me every time. https://youtu.be/M3vejAvwjWU
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Nick Broomfield’s The Stones and Brian Jones documentary gets a trailer. Watch it here https://www.liveforfilm.com/2023/10/11/nick-broomfields-the-stones-and-brian-jones-documentary-gets-a-trailer/
#TheStonesandBrianJones #documentary #BrianJones #TheRollingStones #NickBroomfield #music
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“When Harry Met Sally” is Rob Reiner’s everlasting message of love – Salon.com
Billy Crystal as Harry Burns and Meg Ryan as Sally Albright in “When Harry Met Sally” (Columbia Pictures)commentary
“When Harry Met Sally” is Rob Reiner’s everlasting message of love
A classic scene written to reflect Reiner’s love for his wife, Michele, embraces a brighter future
By Coleman Spilde, Senior Writer, Published December 17, 2025 12:00PM (EST)
Billy Crystal as Harry Burns and Meg Ryan as Sally Albright in “When Harry Met Sally” (Columbia Pictures)It’s almost time for the page to turn again. Whether we like it or not, time marches on, the year comes to a close and we reflect on everything that’s happened. It’s a time for old friends, new loves, and speaking to our feelings so that we don’t dare carry a single burden into another year.
Needless to say, shaking off 2025 will require quite a bit of verbal blotting. The year has felt like a century, at best, and just when things were supposed to wind down and get quiet, a weekend of tumult and tragedy reminded the world just how much we’re suffering.
An antisemitic massacre during a Hanukkah celebration at Australia’s Bondi Beach. A shooting at Brown University killed two students and injured nine others. And, late Sunday night, the horrific, violent deaths of Hollywood legend Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, purportedly at the hands of their son, Nick. The extent of the horror is indescribable, and it’s occurring on a global scale. And, yes, it often feels as though the weight of it is too much to bear. All we’re left with is confusion and the frustrating feeling of helplessness. We are at our wits’ end. There is no more avoiding, no more pretending. Something has got to change as soon as possible.
There’s something to that. I don’t mean to sound trite or wilfully glib, but it’s merely the truth that every ending is followed by a beginning. Reiner’s seminal film “When Harry Met Sally” is full of them — beginnings and endings, false starts and full stops. It’s a movie for dreamers, realists and romantics alike, the kind of film that’s so fantastic and so painfully human that its brilliant existence is reason enough to believe in good things. Reiner’s filmography was full of these gems, with stunners like “Stand By Me” and “The Princess Bride” that defined not just their era but people’s entire lives.
(Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for TCM) Rob Reiner, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal attend The 30th Anniversary Screening of “When Harry Met Sally…” on April 11, 2019 in Hollywood, California.Loving openly and candidly shouldn’t feel like a radical act, but in a world proliferated with violence and hatred, it’s become one.
“When Harry Met Sally,” however, is a special kind of classic. It’s no mere comfort watch, and certainly no chick flick. It’s a film for autumn, winter, spring and summer, just as much of a Christmas and New Year’s movie as it is a Valentine’s Day or anniversary movie. In its bones, there is a deep, true love that is the result of a close working relationship with screenwriter Nora Ephron, stars Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, and Reiner’s wife, Michele, whom he met and fell in love with during production. Their passion incited a change of the film’s ending, and in turn, one of the all-time great professions of love ever captured on film — a change of fate, right at the stroke of midnight. Call it lightning in a bottle. Call it evidence of magic. Call it a kernel of hope to hold onto as we turn the page.
Related, The questions “When Harry Met Sally” make us consider today
In Kristin Marguerite Doidge’s 2022 biography of Ephron, the author peers into the fascinating details behind Ephron and Reiner’s long-gestating film, which began as an idea tossed toward Ephron from Reiner after a few lunch meetings. It was over those meals where Ephron became intrigued with the way Reiner talked about his bachelorhood. His anecdotes would become the basis for Crystal’s character, Harry, while Ryan’s witty foil, Sally, was the embodiment of Ephron’s sharp and observant eye. “This is a talk piece,” Reiner said about the film in 1985. “There are no chase scenes, no food fights. This is walks, phones, restaurants, movies.”
Editor’s Note: Movie information below, a new feature from DWD. –DrWeb
When Harry Met Sally... Plot: Sex always gets in the way of friendships between men and women. At least, that's what Harry Burns believes. So when Harry meets Sally Albright and a deep friendship blossoms between them, Harry's determined not to let his attraction to Sally destroy it. But when a night of weakness ends in a morning of panic, can the pair avoid succumbing to Harry's fears by remaining friends and admitting they just might be the perfect match for each other? The Movie DB: 7.404/10 Information Runtime: 96 min Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama Language: English Country: United States of America Budget: $16,000,000 Revenue: $92,823,546 Homepage: Release date: July 12 1989A talk piece, indeed. While it’s Ephron’s characteristically strong dialogue and flair for realism that so many viewers fall head over heels for, Reiner’s blissfully simplistic direction is what captures the spark of two people slowly falling in love. Across years, Reiner follows Harry and Sally from their first meeting during a long-haul drive after college through their reconnection and eventual friendship and flirtation. There are long walks and even longer talks, conversations in book stores, on the leaf-strewn concrete sidewalks of a bygone era of New York City and, of course, on the phone.
Ephron based the late-night phone conversations between Sally and Harry on Reiner’s frequent talks with Crystal, when the two would watch something on television together and provide commentary throughout. From Sally’s overly particular restaurant orders to Harry’s shock that women fake orgasms, all of it came out in the development process between Ephron and Reiner, and made it into the script. “When Harry Met Sally” rings so true because there isn’t a single false note in its lovely sonata.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: “When Harry Met Sally” is Rob Reiner’s everlasting message of love – Salon.com
#1989 #BillyCrystal #Director #Everlasting #MegRyan #MessageOfLove #NoraEphron #RobReiner #Salon #SalonCom #WhenHarryMetSally -
This started off as a baseline post regarding generative artificial intelligence and it’s aspects and grew fairly long because even as I was writing it, information was coming out. It’s my intention to do a ’roundup’ like this highlighting different focuses as needed. Every bit of it is connected, but in social media postings things tend to be written of in silos. I’m attempting to integrate since the larger implications are hidden in these details, and will try to stay on top of it as things progress.
It’s long enough where it could have been several posts, but I wanted it all together at least once.
No AI was used in the writing, though some images have been generated by AI.
The two versions of artificial intelligence on the table right now – the marketed and the reality – have various problems that make it seem like we’re wrestling a mating orgy of cephalopods.
The marketing aspect is a constant distraction, feeding us what helps with stock prices and good will toward those implementing the generative AIs, while the real aspect of these generative AIs is not really being addressed in a cohesive way.
To simplify this, this post breaks it down into the Input, the Output, and the impacts on the ecosystem the generative AIs work in.
The Input.
There’s a lot that goes into these systems other than money and water. There’s the information used for the learning models, the hardware needed, and the algorithms used.
The Training Data.
The focus so far has been on what goes into their training data, and that has been an issue including lawsuits, and less obviously, trust of the involved companies.
…The race to lead A.I. has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology. To obtain that data, tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law, according to an examination by The New York Times…
“How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.“, Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nico Grant, New York Times, April 6, 2024 1
Of note, too, is that Google has been indexing AI generated books, which is what is called ‘synthetic data’ and has been warned against, but is something that companies are planning for or even doing already, consciously and unconsciously.
Where some of these actions are questionably legal, they’re not as questionably ethical to some, thus the revolt mentioned last year against AI companies using content without permission. It’s of questionable effect because no one seems to have insight into what the training data consists of, and there seems no one is auditing them.
There’s a need for that audit, if only to allow for trust.
…Industry and audit leaders must break from the pack and embrace the emerging skills needed for AI oversight. Those that fail to address AI’s cascading advancements, flaws, and complexities of design will likely find their organizations facing legal, regulatory, and investor scrutiny for a failure to anticipate and address advanced data-driven controls and guidelines.
“Auditing AI: The emerging battlefield of transparency and assessment“, Mark Dangelo, Thomson Reuters, 25 Oct 2023.
While everyone is hunting down data, no one seems to be seriously working on oversight and audits, at least in a public way, though the United States is pushing for global regulations on artificial intelligence at the UN. The status of that hasn’t seemed to have been updated, even as artificial intelligence is being used to select targets in at least 2 wars right now (Ukraine and Gaza).
There’s an imbalance here that needs to be addressed. It would be sensible to have external auditing of learning data models and the sources, as well as the algorithms involved – and just get get a little ahead, also for the output. Of course, these sorts of things should be done with trading on stock markets as well, though that doesn’t seem to have made as much headway in all the time that has been happening either.
Some websites are trying to block AI crawlers, and it is an ongoing process. Blocking them requires knowing who they are and doesn’t guarantee bad actors might not stop by.
There is a new Bill that being pressed in the United States, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, that is worth keeping an eye on:
“…The California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff introduced the bill, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would require that AI companies submit any copyrighted works in their training datasets to the Register of Copyrights before releasing new generative AI systems, which create text, images, music or video in response to users’ prompts. The bill would need companies to file such documents at least 30 days before publicly debuting their AI tools, or face a financial penalty. Such datasets encompass billions of lines of text and images or millions of hours of music and movies…”
“New bill would force AI companies to reveal use of copyrighted art“, Nick Robins-Early, TheGuardian.com, April 9th, 2024.
Given how much information is used by these companies already from Web 2.0 forward, through social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram (Meta), Twitter, and even search engines and advertising tracking, it’s pretty obvious that this would be in the training data as well.
The Algorithms.
The algorithms for generative AI are pretty much trade secrets at this point, but one has to wonder at why so much data is needed to feed the training models when better algorithms could require less. Consider a well read person could answer some questions, even as a layperson, with less of a carbon footprint. We have no insight into the algorithms either, which makes it seem as though these companies are simply throwing more hardware and data at the problem than being more efficient with the data and hardware that they already took.
There’s not much news about that, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see any. It does seem like fuzzy logic is playing a role, but it’s difficult to say to what extent, and given the nature of fuzzy logic, it’s hard to say whether it’s implementation is as good as it should be.
The Hardware
Generative AI has brought about an AI chip race between Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Nvidia, which definitely leaves smaller companies that can’t afford to compete in that arena at a disadvantage so great that it could be seen as impossible, at least at present.
The future holds quantum computing, which could make all of the present efforts obsolete, but no one seems interested in waiting around for that to happen. Instead, it’s full speed ahead with NVIDIA presently dominating the market for hardware for these AI companies.
The Output.
One of the larger topics that has seemed to have faded is regarding what was called by some as ‘hallucinations’ by generative AI. Strategic deception was also something that was very prominent for a short period.
There is criticism that the algorithms are making the spread of false information faster, and the US Department of Justice is stepping up efforts to go after the misuse of generative AI. This is dangerous ground, since algorithms are being sent out to hunt products of other algorithms, and the crossfire between doesn’t care too much about civilians.2
The impact on education, as students use generative AI, education itself has been disrupted. It is being portrayed as an overall good, which may simply be an acceptance that it’s not going away. It’s interesting to consider that the AI companies have taken more content than students could possibly get or afford in the educational system, which is something worth exploring.
Given that ChatGPT is presently 82% more persuasive than humans, likely because it has been trained on persuasive works (Input; Training Data), and since most content on the internet is marketing either products, services or ideas, that was predictable. While it’s hard to say how much content being put into training data feeds on our confirmation biases, it’s fair to say that at least some of it is. Then there are the other biases that the training data inherits through omission or selective writing of history.
There are a lot of problems, clearly, and much of it can be traced back to the training data, which even on a good day is as imperfect as our own imperfections, it can magnify, distort, or even be consciously influenced by good or bad actors.
And that’s what leads us to the Big Picture.
The Big Picture
…For the past year, a political fight has been raging around the world, mostly in the shadows, over how — and whether — to control AI. This new digital Great Game is a long way from over. Whoever wins will cement their dominance over Western rules for an era-defining technology. Once these rules are set, they will be almost impossible to rewrite…
“Inside the shadowy global battle to tame the world’s most dangerous technology“, Mark Scott, Gian Volpicelli, Mohar Chatterjee, Vincent Manancourt, Clothilde Goujard and Brendan Bordelon, Politico.com, March 26th, 2024
What most people don’t realize is that the ‘game’ includes social media and the information it provides for training models, such as what is happening with TikTok in the United States now. There is a deeper battle, and just perusing content on social networks gives data to those building training models. Even WordPress.com, where this site is presently hosted, is selling data, though there is a way to unvolunteer one’s self.
Even the Fediverse is open to data being pulled for training models.
All of this, combined with the persuasiveness of generative AI that has given psychology pause, has democracies concerned about the influence. A recent example is Grok, Twitter X’s AI for paid subscribers, fell victim to what was clearly satire and caused a panic – which should also have us wondering about how we view intelligence.
…The headline available to Grok subscribers on Monday read, “Sun’s Odd Behavior: Experts Baffled.” And it went on to explain that the sun had been, “behaving unusually, sparking widespread concern and confusion among the general public.”…
“Elon Musk’s Grok Creates Bizarre Fake News About the Solar Eclipse Thanks to Jokes on X“, Matt Novak, Gizmodo, 8 April 2024
Of course, some levity is involved in that one whereas Grok posting that Iran had struck Tel Aviv (Israel) with missiles seems dangerous, particularly when posted to the front page of Twitter X. It shows the dangers of fake news with AI, deepening concerns related to social media and AI and should be making us ask the question about why billionaires involved in artificial intelligence wield the influence that they do. How much of that is generated? We have an idea how much it is lobbied for.
Meanwhile, Facebook has been spamming users and has been restricting accounts without demonstrating a cause. If there were a video tape in a Blockbuster on this, it would be titled, “Algorithms Gone Wild!”.
Journalism is also impacted by AI, though real journalists tend to be rigorous in their sources. Real newsrooms have rules, and while we don’t have that much insight into how AI is being used in newsrooms, it stands to reason that if a newsroom is to be a trusted source, they will go out of their way to make sure that they are: They have a vested interest in getting things right. This has not stopped some websites parading as trusted sources disseminating untrustworthy information because, even in Web 2.0 when the world had an opportunity to discuss such things at the World Summit on Information Society, the country with the largest web presence did not participate much, if at all, at a government level.
Then we have the thing that concerns the most people: their lives. Jon Stewart even did a Daily Show on it, which is worth watching, because people are worried about generative AI taking their jobs with good reason. Even as the Davids of AI3 square off for your market-share, layoffs have been happening in tech as they reposition for AI.
Meanwhile, AI is also apparently being used as a cover for some outsourcing:
Your automated cashier isn’t an AI, just someone in India. Amazon made headlines this week for rolling back its “Just Walk Out” checkout system, where customers could simply grab their in-store purchases and leave while a “generative AI” tallied up their receipt. As reported by The Information, however, the system wasn’t as automated as it seemed. Amazon merely relied on Indian workers reviewing store surveillance camera footage to produce an itemized list of purchases. Instead of saving money on cashiers or training better systems, costs escalated and the promise of a fully technical solution was even further away…
“Don’t Be Fooled: Much “AI” is Just Outsourcing, Redux“, Janet Vertesi, TechPolicy.com, Apr 4, 2024
Maybe AI is creating jobs in India by proxy. It’s easy to blame problems on AI, too, which is a larger problem because the world often looks for something to blame and having an automated scapegoat certainly muddies the waters.
And the waters of The Big Picture of AI are muddied indeed – perhaps partly by design. After all, those involved are making money, they have now even better tools to influence markets, populations, and you.
In a world that seems to be running a deficit when it comes to trust, the tools we’re creating seem to be increasing rather than decreasing that deficit at an exponential pace.
- The full article at the New York Times is worth expending one of your free articles, if you’re not a subscriber. It gets into a lot of specifics, and is really a treasure chest of a snapshot of what companies such as Google, Meta and OpenAI have been up to and have released as plans so far. ↩︎
- That’s not just a metaphor, as the Israeli use of Lavender (AI) has been outed recently. ↩︎
- Not the Goliaths. David was the one with newer technology: The sling. ↩︎
https://knowprose.com/2024/04/10/from-inputs-to-the-big-picture-an-ai-roundup/
#AI #amazon #artificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #facebook #generativeAi #Google #influence #LargeLanguageModel #Meta #openai #socialMedia #socialNetwork #trainingData #trainingModel #twitter #x
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This started off as a baseline post regarding generative artificial intelligence and it’s aspects and grew fairly long because even as I was writing it, information was coming out. It’s my intention to do a ’roundup’ like this highlighting different focuses as needed. Every bit of it is connected, but in social media postings things tend to be written of in silos. I’m attempting to integrate since the larger implications are hidden in these details, and will try to stay on top of it as things progress.
It’s long enough where it could have been several posts, but I wanted it all together at least once.
No AI was used in the writing, though some images have been generated by AI.
The two versions of artificial intelligence on the table right now – the marketed and the reality – have various problems that make it seem like we’re wrestling a mating orgy of cephalopods.
The marketing aspect is a constant distraction, feeding us what helps with stock prices and good will toward those implementing the generative AIs, while the real aspect of these generative AIs is not really being addressed in a cohesive way.
To simplify this, this post breaks it down into the Input, the Output, and the impacts on the ecosystem the generative AIs work in.
The Input.
There’s a lot that goes into these systems other than money and water. There’s the information used for the learning models, the hardware needed, and the algorithms used.
The Training Data.
The focus so far has been on what goes into their training data, and that has been an issue including lawsuits, and less obviously, trust of the involved companies.
…The race to lead A.I. has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology. To obtain that data, tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law, according to an examination by The New York Times…
“How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.“, Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nico Grant, New York Times, April 6, 2024 1
Of note, too, is that Google has been indexing AI generated books, which is what is called ‘synthetic data’ and has been warned against, but is something that companies are planning for or even doing already, consciously and unconsciously.
Where some of these actions are questionably legal, they’re not as questionably ethical to some, thus the revolt mentioned last year against AI companies using content without permission. It’s of questionable effect because no one seems to have insight into what the training data consists of, and there seems no one is auditing them.
There’s a need for that audit, if only to allow for trust.
…Industry and audit leaders must break from the pack and embrace the emerging skills needed for AI oversight. Those that fail to address AI’s cascading advancements, flaws, and complexities of design will likely find their organizations facing legal, regulatory, and investor scrutiny for a failure to anticipate and address advanced data-driven controls and guidelines.
“Auditing AI: The emerging battlefield of transparency and assessment“, Mark Dangelo, Thomson Reuters, 25 Oct 2023.
While everyone is hunting down data, no one seems to be seriously working on oversight and audits, at least in a public way, though the United States is pushing for global regulations on artificial intelligence at the UN. The status of that hasn’t seemed to have been updated, even as artificial intelligence is being used to select targets in at least 2 wars right now (Ukraine and Gaza).
There’s an imbalance here that needs to be addressed. It would be sensible to have external auditing of learning data models and the sources, as well as the algorithms involved – and just get get a little ahead, also for the output. Of course, these sorts of things should be done with trading on stock markets as well, though that doesn’t seem to have made as much headway in all the time that has been happening either.
Some websites are trying to block AI crawlers, and it is an ongoing process. Blocking them requires knowing who they are and doesn’t guarantee bad actors might not stop by.
There is a new Bill that being pressed in the United States, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, that is worth keeping an eye on:
“…The California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff introduced the bill, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would require that AI companies submit any copyrighted works in their training datasets to the Register of Copyrights before releasing new generative AI systems, which create text, images, music or video in response to users’ prompts. The bill would need companies to file such documents at least 30 days before publicly debuting their AI tools, or face a financial penalty. Such datasets encompass billions of lines of text and images or millions of hours of music and movies…”
“New bill would force AI companies to reveal use of copyrighted art“, Nick Robins-Early, TheGuardian.com, April 9th, 2024.
Given how much information is used by these companies already from Web 2.0 forward, through social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram (Meta), Twitter, and even search engines and advertising tracking, it’s pretty obvious that this would be in the training data as well.
The Algorithms.
The algorithms for generative AI are pretty much trade secrets at this point, but one has to wonder at why so much data is needed to feed the training models when better algorithms could require less. Consider a well read person could answer some questions, even as a layperson, with less of a carbon footprint. We have no insight into the algorithms either, which makes it seem as though these companies are simply throwing more hardware and data at the problem than being more efficient with the data and hardware that they already took.
There’s not much news about that, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see any. It does seem like fuzzy logic is playing a role, but it’s difficult to say to what extent, and given the nature of fuzzy logic, it’s hard to say whether it’s implementation is as good as it should be.
The Hardware
Generative AI has brought about an AI chip race between Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Nvidia, which definitely leaves smaller companies that can’t afford to compete in that arena at a disadvantage so great that it could be seen as impossible, at least at present.
The future holds quantum computing, which could make all of the present efforts obsolete, but no one seems interested in waiting around for that to happen. Instead, it’s full speed ahead with NVIDIA presently dominating the market for hardware for these AI companies.
The Output.
One of the larger topics that has seemed to have faded is regarding what was called by some as ‘hallucinations’ by generative AI. Strategic deception was also something that was very prominent for a short period.
There is criticism that the algorithms are making the spread of false information faster, and the US Department of Justice is stepping up efforts to go after the misuse of generative AI. This is dangerous ground, since algorithms are being sent out to hunt products of other algorithms, and the crossfire between doesn’t care too much about civilians.2
The impact on education, as students use generative AI, education itself has been disrupted. It is being portrayed as an overall good, which may simply be an acceptance that it’s not going away. It’s interesting to consider that the AI companies have taken more content than students could possibly get or afford in the educational system, which is something worth exploring.
Given that ChatGPT is presently 82% more persuasive than humans, likely because it has been trained on persuasive works (Input; Training Data), and since most content on the internet is marketing either products, services or ideas, that was predictable. While it’s hard to say how much content being put into training data feeds on our confirmation biases, it’s fair to say that at least some of it is. Then there are the other biases that the training data inherits through omission or selective writing of history.
There are a lot of problems, clearly, and much of it can be traced back to the training data, which even on a good day is as imperfect as our own imperfections, it can magnify, distort, or even be consciously influenced by good or bad actors.
And that’s what leads us to the Big Picture.
The Big Picture
…For the past year, a political fight has been raging around the world, mostly in the shadows, over how — and whether — to control AI. This new digital Great Game is a long way from over. Whoever wins will cement their dominance over Western rules for an era-defining technology. Once these rules are set, they will be almost impossible to rewrite…
“Inside the shadowy global battle to tame the world’s most dangerous technology“, Mark Scott, Gian Volpicelli, Mohar Chatterjee, Vincent Manancourt, Clothilde Goujard and Brendan Bordelon, Politico.com, March 26th, 2024
What most people don’t realize is that the ‘game’ includes social media and the information it provides for training models, such as what is happening with TikTok in the United States now. There is a deeper battle, and just perusing content on social networks gives data to those building training models. Even WordPress.com, where this site is presently hosted, is selling data, though there is a way to unvolunteer one’s self.
Even the Fediverse is open to data being pulled for training models.
All of this, combined with the persuasiveness of generative AI that has given psychology pause, has democracies concerned about the influence. A recent example is Grok, Twitter X’s AI for paid subscribers, fell victim to what was clearly satire and caused a panic – which should also have us wondering about how we view intelligence.
…The headline available to Grok subscribers on Monday read, “Sun’s Odd Behavior: Experts Baffled.” And it went on to explain that the sun had been, “behaving unusually, sparking widespread concern and confusion among the general public.”…
“Elon Musk’s Grok Creates Bizarre Fake News About the Solar Eclipse Thanks to Jokes on X“, Matt Novak, Gizmodo, 8 April 2024
Of course, some levity is involved in that one whereas Grok posting that Iran had struck Tel Aviv (Israel) with missiles seems dangerous, particularly when posted to the front page of Twitter X. It shows the dangers of fake news with AI, deepening concerns related to social media and AI and should be making us ask the question about why billionaires involved in artificial intelligence wield the influence that they do. How much of that is generated? We have an idea how much it is lobbied for.
Meanwhile, Facebook has been spamming users and has been restricting accounts without demonstrating a cause. If there were a video tape in a Blockbuster on this, it would be titled, “Algorithms Gone Wild!”.
Journalism is also impacted by AI, though real journalists tend to be rigorous in their sources. Real newsrooms have rules, and while we don’t have that much insight into how AI is being used in newsrooms, it stands to reason that if a newsroom is to be a trusted source, they will go out of their way to make sure that they are: They have a vested interest in getting things right. This has not stopped some websites parading as trusted sources disseminating untrustworthy information because, even in Web 2.0 when the world had an opportunity to discuss such things at the World Summit on Information Society, the country with the largest web presence did not participate much, if at all, at a government level.
Then we have the thing that concerns the most people: their lives. Jon Stewart even did a Daily Show on it, which is worth watching, because people are worried about generative AI taking their jobs with good reason. Even as the Davids of AI3 square off for your market-share, layoffs have been happening in tech as they reposition for AI.
Meanwhile, AI is also apparently being used as a cover for some outsourcing:
Your automated cashier isn’t an AI, just someone in India. Amazon made headlines this week for rolling back its “Just Walk Out” checkout system, where customers could simply grab their in-store purchases and leave while a “generative AI” tallied up their receipt. As reported by The Information, however, the system wasn’t as automated as it seemed. Amazon merely relied on Indian workers reviewing store surveillance camera footage to produce an itemized list of purchases. Instead of saving money on cashiers or training better systems, costs escalated and the promise of a fully technical solution was even further away…
“Don’t Be Fooled: Much “AI” is Just Outsourcing, Redux“, Janet Vertesi, TechPolicy.com, Apr 4, 2024
Maybe AI is creating jobs in India by proxy. It’s easy to blame problems on AI, too, which is a larger problem because the world often looks for something to blame and having an automated scapegoat certainly muddies the waters.
And the waters of The Big Picture of AI are muddied indeed – perhaps partly by design. After all, those involved are making money, they have now even better tools to influence markets, populations, and you.
In a world that seems to be running a deficit when it comes to trust, the tools we’re creating seem to be increasing rather than decreasing that deficit at an exponential pace.
- The full article at the New York Times is worth expending one of your free articles, if you’re not a subscriber. It gets into a lot of specifics, and is really a treasure chest of a snapshot of what companies such as Google, Meta and OpenAI have been up to and have released as plans so far. ↩︎
- That’s not just a metaphor, as the Israeli use of Lavender (AI) has been outed recently. ↩︎
- Not the Goliaths. David was the one with newer technology: The sling. ↩︎
https://knowprose.com/2024/04/10/from-inputs-to-the-big-picture-an-ai-roundup/
#AI #amazon #artificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #facebook #generativeAi #Google #influence #LargeLanguageModel #Meta #openai #socialMedia #socialNetwork #trainingData #trainingModel #twitter #x
-
This started off as a baseline post regarding generative artificial intelligence and it’s aspects and grew fairly long because even as I was writing it, information was coming out. It’s my intention to do a ’roundup’ like this highlighting different focuses as needed. Every bit of it is connected, but in social media postings things tend to be written of in silos. I’m attempting to integrate since the larger implications are hidden in these details, and will try to stay on top of it as things progress.
It’s long enough where it could have been several posts, but I wanted it all together at least once.
No AI was used in the writing, though some images have been generated by AI.
The two versions of artificial intelligence on the table right now – the marketed and the reality – have various problems that make it seem like we’re wrestling a mating orgy of cephalopods.
The marketing aspect is a constant distraction, feeding us what helps with stock prices and good will toward those implementing the generative AIs, while the real aspect of these generative AIs is not really being addressed in a cohesive way.
To simplify this, this post breaks it down into the Input, the Output, and the impacts on the ecosystem the generative AIs work in.
The Input.
There’s a lot that goes into these systems other than money and water. There’s the information used for the learning models, the hardware needed, and the algorithms used.
The Training Data.
The focus so far has been on what goes into their training data, and that has been an issue including lawsuits, and less obviously, trust of the involved companies.
…The race to lead A.I. has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology. To obtain that data, tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law, according to an examination by The New York Times…
“How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.“, Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nico Grant, New York Times, April 6, 2024 1
Of note, too, is that Google has been indexing AI generated books, which is what is called ‘synthetic data’ and has been warned against, but is something that companies are planning for or even doing already, consciously and unconsciously.
Where some of these actions are questionably legal, they’re not as questionably ethical to some, thus the revolt mentioned last year against AI companies using content without permission. It’s of questionable effect because no one seems to have insight into what the training data consists of, and there seems no one is auditing them.
There’s a need for that audit, if only to allow for trust.
…Industry and audit leaders must break from the pack and embrace the emerging skills needed for AI oversight. Those that fail to address AI’s cascading advancements, flaws, and complexities of design will likely find their organizations facing legal, regulatory, and investor scrutiny for a failure to anticipate and address advanced data-driven controls and guidelines.
“Auditing AI: The emerging battlefield of transparency and assessment“, Mark Dangelo, Thomson Reuters, 25 Oct 2023.
While everyone is hunting down data, no one seems to be seriously working on oversight and audits, at least in a public way, though the United States is pushing for global regulations on artificial intelligence at the UN. The status of that hasn’t seemed to have been updated, even as artificial intelligence is being used to select targets in at least 2 wars right now (Ukraine and Gaza).
There’s an imbalance here that needs to be addressed. It would be sensible to have external auditing of learning data models and the sources, as well as the algorithms involved – and just get get a little ahead, also for the output. Of course, these sorts of things should be done with trading on stock markets as well, though that doesn’t seem to have made as much headway in all the time that has been happening either.
Some websites are trying to block AI crawlers, and it is an ongoing process. Blocking them requires knowing who they are and doesn’t guarantee bad actors might not stop by.
There is a new Bill that being pressed in the United States, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, that is worth keeping an eye on:
“…The California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff introduced the bill, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would require that AI companies submit any copyrighted works in their training datasets to the Register of Copyrights before releasing new generative AI systems, which create text, images, music or video in response to users’ prompts. The bill would need companies to file such documents at least 30 days before publicly debuting their AI tools, or face a financial penalty. Such datasets encompass billions of lines of text and images or millions of hours of music and movies…”
“New bill would force AI companies to reveal use of copyrighted art“, Nick Robins-Early, TheGuardian.com, April 9th, 2024.
Given how much information is used by these companies already from Web 2.0 forward, through social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram (Meta), Twitter, and even search engines and advertising tracking, it’s pretty obvious that this would be in the training data as well.
The Algorithms.
The algorithms for generative AI are pretty much trade secrets at this point, but one has to wonder at why so much data is needed to feed the training models when better algorithms could require less. Consider a well read person could answer some questions, even as a layperson, with less of a carbon footprint. We have no insight into the algorithms either, which makes it seem as though these companies are simply throwing more hardware and data at the problem than being more efficient with the data and hardware that they already took.
There’s not much news about that, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see any. It does seem like fuzzy logic is playing a role, but it’s difficult to say to what extent, and given the nature of fuzzy logic, it’s hard to say whether it’s implementation is as good as it should be.
The Hardware
Generative AI has brought about an AI chip race between Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Nvidia, which definitely leaves smaller companies that can’t afford to compete in that arena at a disadvantage so great that it could be seen as impossible, at least at present.
The future holds quantum computing, which could make all of the present efforts obsolete, but no one seems interested in waiting around for that to happen. Instead, it’s full speed ahead with NVIDIA presently dominating the market for hardware for these AI companies.
The Output.
One of the larger topics that has seemed to have faded is regarding what was called by some as ‘hallucinations’ by generative AI. Strategic deception was also something that was very prominent for a short period.
There is criticism that the algorithms are making the spread of false information faster, and the US Department of Justice is stepping up efforts to go after the misuse of generative AI. This is dangerous ground, since algorithms are being sent out to hunt products of other algorithms, and the crossfire between doesn’t care too much about civilians.2
The impact on education, as students use generative AI, education itself has been disrupted. It is being portrayed as an overall good, which may simply be an acceptance that it’s not going away. It’s interesting to consider that the AI companies have taken more content than students could possibly get or afford in the educational system, which is something worth exploring.
Given that ChatGPT is presently 82% more persuasive than humans, likely because it has been trained on persuasive works (Input; Training Data), and since most content on the internet is marketing either products, services or ideas, that was predictable. While it’s hard to say how much content being put into training data feeds on our confirmation biases, it’s fair to say that at least some of it is. Then there are the other biases that the training data inherits through omission or selective writing of history.
There are a lot of problems, clearly, and much of it can be traced back to the training data, which even on a good day is as imperfect as our own imperfections, it can magnify, distort, or even be consciously influenced by good or bad actors.
And that’s what leads us to the Big Picture.
The Big Picture
…For the past year, a political fight has been raging around the world, mostly in the shadows, over how — and whether — to control AI. This new digital Great Game is a long way from over. Whoever wins will cement their dominance over Western rules for an era-defining technology. Once these rules are set, they will be almost impossible to rewrite…
“Inside the shadowy global battle to tame the world’s most dangerous technology“, Mark Scott, Gian Volpicelli, Mohar Chatterjee, Vincent Manancourt, Clothilde Goujard and Brendan Bordelon, Politico.com, March 26th, 2024
What most people don’t realize is that the ‘game’ includes social media and the information it provides for training models, such as what is happening with TikTok in the United States now. There is a deeper battle, and just perusing content on social networks gives data to those building training models. Even WordPress.com, where this site is presently hosted, is selling data, though there is a way to unvolunteer one’s self.
Even the Fediverse is open to data being pulled for training models.
All of this, combined with the persuasiveness of generative AI that has given psychology pause, has democracies concerned about the influence. A recent example is Grok, Twitter X’s AI for paid subscribers, fell victim to what was clearly satire and caused a panic – which should also have us wondering about how we view intelligence.
…The headline available to Grok subscribers on Monday read, “Sun’s Odd Behavior: Experts Baffled.” And it went on to explain that the sun had been, “behaving unusually, sparking widespread concern and confusion among the general public.”…
“Elon Musk’s Grok Creates Bizarre Fake News About the Solar Eclipse Thanks to Jokes on X“, Matt Novak, Gizmodo, 8 April 2024
Of course, some levity is involved in that one whereas Grok posting that Iran had struck Tel Aviv (Israel) with missiles seems dangerous, particularly when posted to the front page of Twitter X. It shows the dangers of fake news with AI, deepening concerns related to social media and AI and should be making us ask the question about why billionaires involved in artificial intelligence wield the influence that they do. How much of that is generated? We have an idea how much it is lobbied for.
Meanwhile, Facebook has been spamming users and has been restricting accounts without demonstrating a cause. If there were a video tape in a Blockbuster on this, it would be titled, “Algorithms Gone Wild!”.
Journalism is also impacted by AI, though real journalists tend to be rigorous in their sources. Real newsrooms have rules, and while we don’t have that much insight into how AI is being used in newsrooms, it stands to reason that if a newsroom is to be a trusted source, they will go out of their way to make sure that they are: They have a vested interest in getting things right. This has not stopped some websites parading as trusted sources disseminating untrustworthy information because, even in Web 2.0 when the world had an opportunity to discuss such things at the World Summit on Information Society, the country with the largest web presence did not participate much, if at all, at a government level.
Then we have the thing that concerns the most people: their lives. Jon Stewart even did a Daily Show on it, which is worth watching, because people are worried about generative AI taking their jobs with good reason. Even as the Davids of AI3 square off for your market-share, layoffs have been happening in tech as they reposition for AI.
Meanwhile, AI is also apparently being used as a cover for some outsourcing:
Your automated cashier isn’t an AI, just someone in India. Amazon made headlines this week for rolling back its “Just Walk Out” checkout system, where customers could simply grab their in-store purchases and leave while a “generative AI” tallied up their receipt. As reported by The Information, however, the system wasn’t as automated as it seemed. Amazon merely relied on Indian workers reviewing store surveillance camera footage to produce an itemized list of purchases. Instead of saving money on cashiers or training better systems, costs escalated and the promise of a fully technical solution was even further away…
“Don’t Be Fooled: Much “AI” is Just Outsourcing, Redux“, Janet Vertesi, TechPolicy.com, Apr 4, 2024
Maybe AI is creating jobs in India by proxy. It’s easy to blame problems on AI, too, which is a larger problem because the world often looks for something to blame and having an automated scapegoat certainly muddies the waters.
And the waters of The Big Picture of AI are muddied indeed – perhaps partly by design. After all, those involved are making money, they have now even better tools to influence markets, populations, and you.
In a world that seems to be running a deficit when it comes to trust, the tools we’re creating seem to be increasing rather than decreasing that deficit at an exponential pace.
- The full article at the New York Times is worth expending one of your free articles, if you’re not a subscriber. It gets into a lot of specifics, and is really a treasure chest of a snapshot of what companies such as Google, Meta and OpenAI have been up to and have released as plans so far. ↩︎
- That’s not just a metaphor, as the Israeli use of Lavender (AI) has been outed recently. ↩︎
- Not the Goliaths. David was the one with newer technology: The sling. ↩︎
https://knowprose.com/2024/04/10/from-inputs-to-the-big-picture-an-ai-roundup/
#AI #amazon #artificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #facebook #generativeAi #Google #influence #LargeLanguageModel #Meta #openai #socialMedia #socialNetwork #trainingData #trainingModel #twitter #x
-
This started off as a baseline post regarding generative artificial intelligence and it’s aspects and grew fairly long because even as I was writing it, information was coming out. It’s my intention to do a ’roundup’ like this highlighting different focuses as needed. Every bit of it is connected, but in social media postings things tend to be written of in silos. I’m attempting to integrate since the larger implications are hidden in these details, and will try to stay on top of it as things progress.
It’s long enough where it could have been several posts, but I wanted it all together at least once.
No AI was used in the writing, though some images have been generated by AI.
The two versions of artificial intelligence on the table right now – the marketed and the reality – have various problems that make it seem like we’re wrestling a mating orgy of cephalopods.
The marketing aspect is a constant distraction, feeding us what helps with stock prices and good will toward those implementing the generative AIs, while the real aspect of these generative AIs is not really being addressed in a cohesive way.
To simplify this, this post breaks it down into the Input, the Output, and the impacts on the ecosystem the generative AIs work in.
The Input.
There’s a lot that goes into these systems other than money and water. There’s the information used for the learning models, the hardware needed, and the algorithms used.
The Training Data.
The focus so far has been on what goes into their training data, and that has been an issue including lawsuits, and less obviously, trust of the involved companies.
…The race to lead A.I. has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology. To obtain that data, tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law, according to an examination by The New York Times…
“How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.“, Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nico Grant, New York Times, April 6, 2024 1
Of note, too, is that Google has been indexing AI generated books, which is what is called ‘synthetic data’ and has been warned against, but is something that companies are planning for or even doing already, consciously and unconsciously.
Where some of these actions are questionably legal, they’re not as questionably ethical to some, thus the revolt mentioned last year against AI companies using content without permission. It’s of questionable effect because no one seems to have insight into what the training data consists of, and there seems no one is auditing them.
There’s a need for that audit, if only to allow for trust.
…Industry and audit leaders must break from the pack and embrace the emerging skills needed for AI oversight. Those that fail to address AI’s cascading advancements, flaws, and complexities of design will likely find their organizations facing legal, regulatory, and investor scrutiny for a failure to anticipate and address advanced data-driven controls and guidelines.
“Auditing AI: The emerging battlefield of transparency and assessment“, Mark Dangelo, Thomson Reuters, 25 Oct 2023.
While everyone is hunting down data, no one seems to be seriously working on oversight and audits, at least in a public way, though the United States is pushing for global regulations on artificial intelligence at the UN. The status of that hasn’t seemed to have been updated, even as artificial intelligence is being used to select targets in at least 2 wars right now (Ukraine and Gaza).
There’s an imbalance here that needs to be addressed. It would be sensible to have external auditing of learning data models and the sources, as well as the algorithms involved – and just get get a little ahead, also for the output. Of course, these sorts of things should be done with trading on stock markets as well, though that doesn’t seem to have made as much headway in all the time that has been happening either.
Some websites are trying to block AI crawlers, and it is an ongoing process. Blocking them requires knowing who they are and doesn’t guarantee bad actors might not stop by.
There is a new Bill that being pressed in the United States, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, that is worth keeping an eye on:
“…The California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff introduced the bill, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would require that AI companies submit any copyrighted works in their training datasets to the Register of Copyrights before releasing new generative AI systems, which create text, images, music or video in response to users’ prompts. The bill would need companies to file such documents at least 30 days before publicly debuting their AI tools, or face a financial penalty. Such datasets encompass billions of lines of text and images or millions of hours of music and movies…”
“New bill would force AI companies to reveal use of copyrighted art“, Nick Robins-Early, TheGuardian.com, April 9th, 2024.
Given how much information is used by these companies already from Web 2.0 forward, through social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram (Meta), Twitter, and even search engines and advertising tracking, it’s pretty obvious that this would be in the training data as well.
The Algorithms.
The algorithms for generative AI are pretty much trade secrets at this point, but one has to wonder at why so much data is needed to feed the training models when better algorithms could require less. Consider a well read person could answer some questions, even as a layperson, with less of a carbon footprint. We have no insight into the algorithms either, which makes it seem as though these companies are simply throwing more hardware and data at the problem than being more efficient with the data and hardware that they already took.
There’s not much news about that, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see any. It does seem like fuzzy logic is playing a role, but it’s difficult to say to what extent, and given the nature of fuzzy logic, it’s hard to say whether it’s implementation is as good as it should be.
The Hardware
Generative AI has brought about an AI chip race between Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Nvidia, which definitely leaves smaller companies that can’t afford to compete in that arena at a disadvantage so great that it could be seen as impossible, at least at present.
The future holds quantum computing, which could make all of the present efforts obsolete, but no one seems interested in waiting around for that to happen. Instead, it’s full speed ahead with NVIDIA presently dominating the market for hardware for these AI companies.
The Output.
One of the larger topics that has seemed to have faded is regarding what was called by some as ‘hallucinations’ by generative AI. Strategic deception was also something that was very prominent for a short period.
There is criticism that the algorithms are making the spread of false information faster, and the US Department of Justice is stepping up efforts to go after the misuse of generative AI. This is dangerous ground, since algorithms are being sent out to hunt products of other algorithms, and the crossfire between doesn’t care too much about civilians.2
The impact on education, as students use generative AI, education itself has been disrupted. It is being portrayed as an overall good, which may simply be an acceptance that it’s not going away. It’s interesting to consider that the AI companies have taken more content than students could possibly get or afford in the educational system, which is something worth exploring.
Given that ChatGPT is presently 82% more persuasive than humans, likely because it has been trained on persuasive works (Input; Training Data), and since most content on the internet is marketing either products, services or ideas, that was predictable. While it’s hard to say how much content being put into training data feeds on our confirmation biases, it’s fair to say that at least some of it is. Then there are the other biases that the training data inherits through omission or selective writing of history.
There are a lot of problems, clearly, and much of it can be traced back to the training data, which even on a good day is as imperfect as our own imperfections, it can magnify, distort, or even be consciously influenced by good or bad actors.
And that’s what leads us to the Big Picture.
The Big Picture
…For the past year, a political fight has been raging around the world, mostly in the shadows, over how — and whether — to control AI. This new digital Great Game is a long way from over. Whoever wins will cement their dominance over Western rules for an era-defining technology. Once these rules are set, they will be almost impossible to rewrite…
“Inside the shadowy global battle to tame the world’s most dangerous technology“, Mark Scott, Gian Volpicelli, Mohar Chatterjee, Vincent Manancourt, Clothilde Goujard and Brendan Bordelon, Politico.com, March 26th, 2024
What most people don’t realize is that the ‘game’ includes social media and the information it provides for training models, such as what is happening with TikTok in the United States now. There is a deeper battle, and just perusing content on social networks gives data to those building training models. Even WordPress.com, where this site is presently hosted, is selling data, though there is a way to unvolunteer one’s self.
Even the Fediverse is open to data being pulled for training models.
All of this, combined with the persuasiveness of generative AI that has given psychology pause, has democracies concerned about the influence. A recent example is Grok, Twitter X’s AI for paid subscribers, fell victim to what was clearly satire and caused a panic – which should also have us wondering about how we view intelligence.
…The headline available to Grok subscribers on Monday read, “Sun’s Odd Behavior: Experts Baffled.” And it went on to explain that the sun had been, “behaving unusually, sparking widespread concern and confusion among the general public.”…
“Elon Musk’s Grok Creates Bizarre Fake News About the Solar Eclipse Thanks to Jokes on X“, Matt Novak, Gizmodo, 8 April 2024
Of course, some levity is involved in that one whereas Grok posting that Iran had struck Tel Aviv (Israel) with missiles seems dangerous, particularly when posted to the front page of Twitter X. It shows the dangers of fake news with AI, deepening concerns related to social media and AI and should be making us ask the question about why billionaires involved in artificial intelligence wield the influence that they do. How much of that is generated? We have an idea how much it is lobbied for.
Meanwhile, Facebook has been spamming users and has been restricting accounts without demonstrating a cause. If there were a video tape in a Blockbuster on this, it would be titled, “Algorithms Gone Wild!”.
Journalism is also impacted by AI, though real journalists tend to be rigorous in their sources. Real newsrooms have rules, and while we don’t have that much insight into how AI is being used in newsrooms, it stands to reason that if a newsroom is to be a trusted source, they will go out of their way to make sure that they are: They have a vested interest in getting things right. This has not stopped some websites parading as trusted sources disseminating untrustworthy information because, even in Web 2.0 when the world had an opportunity to discuss such things at the World Summit on Information Society, the country with the largest web presence did not participate much, if at all, at a government level.
Then we have the thing that concerns the most people: their lives. Jon Stewart even did a Daily Show on it, which is worth watching, because people are worried about generative AI taking their jobs with good reason. Even as the Davids of AI3 square off for your market-share, layoffs have been happening in tech as they reposition for AI.
Meanwhile, AI is also apparently being used as a cover for some outsourcing:
Your automated cashier isn’t an AI, just someone in India. Amazon made headlines this week for rolling back its “Just Walk Out” checkout system, where customers could simply grab their in-store purchases and leave while a “generative AI” tallied up their receipt. As reported by The Information, however, the system wasn’t as automated as it seemed. Amazon merely relied on Indian workers reviewing store surveillance camera footage to produce an itemized list of purchases. Instead of saving money on cashiers or training better systems, costs escalated and the promise of a fully technical solution was even further away…
“Don’t Be Fooled: Much “AI” is Just Outsourcing, Redux“, Janet Vertesi, TechPolicy.com, Apr 4, 2024
Maybe AI is creating jobs in India by proxy. It’s easy to blame problems on AI, too, which is a larger problem because the world often looks for something to blame and having an automated scapegoat certainly muddies the waters.
And the waters of The Big Picture of AI are muddied indeed – perhaps partly by design. After all, those involved are making money, they have now even better tools to influence markets, populations, and you.
In a world that seems to be running a deficit when it comes to trust, the tools we’re creating seem to be increasing rather than decreasing that deficit at an exponential pace.
- The full article at the New York Times is worth expending one of your free articles, if you’re not a subscriber. It gets into a lot of specifics, and is really a treasure chest of a snapshot of what companies such as Google, Meta and OpenAI have been up to and have released as plans so far. ↩︎
- That’s not just a metaphor, as the Israeli use of Lavender (AI) has been outed recently. ↩︎
- Not the Goliaths. David was the one with newer technology: The sling. ↩︎
https://knowprose.com/2024/04/10/from-inputs-to-the-big-picture-an-ai-roundup/
#AI #amazon #artificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #facebook #generativeAi #Google #influence #LargeLanguageModel #Meta #openai #socialMedia #socialNetwork #trainingData #trainingModel #twitter #x
-
Dolven – In My Grave…Silence Review
By ClarkKent
In his review of Aganoor’s Doomerism, Killjoy discussed how the “myriad subgenres” of doom “can sound so wildly different from one another.” We can add to this discussion Portland, Oregon’s Dolven, who bills their latest album, In My Grave…Silence, as acoustic doom. This begs the question, what constitutes doom metal? Doom typically buries you in melancholy and despair with heavy, plodding, low-tuned guitars, or it sets you up for a good trip by adding some fuzz to the guitar tone. Can one really write doom music using acoustic instruments? Could you even call it metal, or is it just folk music? Sure, an acoustic guitar doesn’t get the same tone as an electric, but what matters is the spirit of the music–the mood and the tempo. Of course, I’m not really here to argue the semantics of what makes an album doom. Ultimately, I’m here to tell you whether Dolven’s latest album, In My Grave…Silence, is worthy of a spin or two.
Anyone familiar with Dolven’s prior work will quickly notice In My Grave…Silence sounds a little different. This is thanks to new singer, Jori Apedaile (Eneferens, Hyalithe), and percussionist, Hunter Ginn (Agalloch). Apedaile, who generally shrieks on his one-man black metal projects, sings gentle, plaintive cleans, at odds with the previous vocalist, Henry Lauer, who had a lower tenor and occasionally provided some growls. Ginn makes use of hand drums that bring a light, meditative touch, in addition to drums gently-tapped by stick. Even outside of these two n00bs, In My Grave…Silence has a much more refined and polished sound than prior outings. Main songwriter and guitarist, Nick Wusz (Snares of Sixes), remains Dolven’s heart and soul. He plays a mix of lightly plucked tunes and softly-strummed chords and provides such a soulful touch that it’s as if his guitar itself is crooning. Finally, bassist Jason W. Walton (Agalloch, Sculptured) provides a deeper resonance on his acoustic bass, reminding you of the sorrow residing behind Wusz’s sometimes uplifting, hopeful melodies.
There’s an intimacy to the musical compositions that brings the feeling of sitting around a campfire and watching Dolven play live. The phenomenal production values enhance these qualities.1 You can clearly hear every note, even the sliding of Wusz’s fingers on the strings. The album is also exceptionally quiet, forcing you to turn it up and pay close attention. This closeness brings a sense of comfort in spite of the otherwise mournful sounds and words. Where electric guitars leave lingering noise with each strum, the acoustic instruments create empty spaces that add to the tranquil melancholy. The tracks on In My Grave…Silence are thoughtful and intentional. The nine-minute “You’ve Chosen,” for example, doesn’t feel a second too long. It mixes a catchy whistling tune, terrific guitar playing, soulful singing, and meditative hand drums to create what will end up being one of the best songs of the year.2
The issue with a 45-minute album filled with acoustic plucks is that the songs start to blend together. Each song has its own distinct melodies, but without other distinguishing features a few of them are tough to differentiate from the pack. The more memorable tracks make use of unique features, such as the whistling on “You’ve Chosen” or the string instrument (likely violin) on “Beside Me.” The instrumentals in particular, are more ephemeral in nature and don’t necessarily stay with you after the record’s over. In My Grave…Silence also gets repetitive, especially on the longer tracks. This is more noticeable with the lyrics, where Apedaile repeats himself a lot. On “Anymore” he sings, “I don’t want to talk about it,” over and over, every other time adding the lyric “anymore.”3 A little bit of editing and trimming could have helped reduce this feeling of repetition.
All that said, In My Grave…Silence is a beautiful listen. It will haunt you with its melodies and plaintive singing, and it will calm you with its lightly-played arrangements. Wusz is a talented musician, and he has made wise choices in who to surround himself with. The long-form compositions he writes are outstanding, and he plays them wonderfully. His songs remind me of classical compositions, and that a record like this gets treated as metal or metal-adjacent says a lot about what makes heavy metal such a diverse musical genre. Across three records, Dolven has made clear improvements, and I have no doubt the next go around will be even better.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Winding Stairs Records
Websites: dolven.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/dolven.oregon
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025#2025 #35 #AcousticDoom #Agalloch #Aganoor #AmericanMetal #Dolven #DoomMetal #Eneferens #Folk #Hyalithe #InMyGraveSilence #Jun25 #NotMetal #Review #Reviews #Sculptured #SnaresOfSixes #WindingStairsRecords
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Dolven – In My Grave…Silence Review
By ClarkKent
In his review of Aganoor’s Doomerism, Killjoy discussed how the “myriad subgenres” of doom “can sound so wildly different from one another.” We can add to this discussion Portland, Oregon’s Dolven, who bills their latest album, In My Grave…Silence, as acoustic doom. This begs the question, what constitutes doom metal? Doom typically buries you in melancholy and despair with heavy, plodding, low-tuned guitars, or it sets you up for a good trip by adding some fuzz to the guitar tone. Can one really write doom music using acoustic instruments? Could you even call it metal, or is it just folk music? Sure, an acoustic guitar doesn’t get the same tone as an electric, but what matters is the spirit of the music–the mood and the tempo. Of course, I’m not really here to argue the semantics of what makes an album doom. Ultimately, I’m here to tell you whether Dolven’s latest album, In My Grave…Silence, is worthy of a spin or two.
Anyone familiar with Dolven’s prior work will quickly notice In My Grave…Silence sounds a little different. This is thanks to new singer, Jori Apedaile (Eneferens, Hyalithe), and percussionist, Hunter Ginn (Agalloch). Apedaile, who generally shrieks on his one-man black metal projects, sings gentle, plaintive cleans, at odds with the previous vocalist, Henry Lauer, who had a lower tenor and occasionally provided some growls. Ginn makes use of hand drums that bring a light, meditative touch, in addition to drums gently-tapped by stick. Even outside of these two n00bs, In My Grave…Silence has a much more refined and polished sound than prior outings. Main songwriter and guitarist, Nick Wusz (Snares of Sixes), remains Dolven’s heart and soul. He plays a mix of lightly plucked tunes and softly-strummed chords and provides such a soulful touch that it’s as if his guitar itself is crooning. Finally, bassist Jason W. Walton (Agalloch, Sculptured) provides a deeper resonance on his acoustic bass, reminding you of the sorrow residing behind Wusz’s sometimes uplifting, hopeful melodies.
There’s an intimacy to the musical compositions that brings the feeling of sitting around a campfire and watching Dolven play live. The phenomenal production values enhance these qualities.1 You can clearly hear every note, even the sliding of Wusz’s fingers on the strings. The album is also exceptionally quiet, forcing you to turn it up and pay close attention. This closeness brings a sense of comfort in spite of the otherwise mournful sounds and words. Where electric guitars leave lingering noise with each strum, the acoustic instruments create empty spaces that add to the tranquil melancholy. The tracks on In My Grave…Silence are thoughtful and intentional. The nine-minute “You’ve Chosen,” for example, doesn’t feel a second too long. It mixes a catchy whistling tune, terrific guitar playing, soulful singing, and meditative hand drums to create what will end up being one of the best songs of the year.2
The issue with a 45-minute album filled with acoustic plucks is that the songs start to blend together. Each song has its own distinct melodies, but without other distinguishing features a few of them are tough to differentiate from the pack. The more memorable tracks make use of unique features, such as the whistling on “You’ve Chosen” or the string instrument (likely violin) on “Beside Me.” The instrumentals in particular, are more ephemeral in nature and don’t necessarily stay with you after the record’s over. In My Grave…Silence also gets repetitive, especially on the longer tracks. This is more noticeable with the lyrics, where Apedaile repeats himself a lot. On “Anymore” he sings, “I don’t want to talk about it,” over and over, every other time adding the lyric “anymore.”3 A little bit of editing and trimming could have helped reduce this feeling of repetition.
All that said, In My Grave…Silence is a beautiful listen. It will haunt you with its melodies and plaintive singing, and it will calm you with its lightly-played arrangements. Wusz is a talented musician, and he has made wise choices in who to surround himself with. The long-form compositions he writes are outstanding, and he plays them wonderfully. His songs remind me of classical compositions, and that a record like this gets treated as metal or metal-adjacent says a lot about what makes heavy metal such a diverse musical genre. Across three records, Dolven has made clear improvements, and I have no doubt the next go around will be even better.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Winding Stairs Records
Websites: dolven.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/dolven.oregon
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025#2025 #35 #AcousticDoom #Agalloch #Aganoor #AmericanMetal #Dolven #DoomMetal #Eneferens #Folk #Hyalithe #InMyGraveSilence #Jun25 #NotMetal #Review #Reviews #Sculptured #SnaresOfSixes #WindingStairsRecords
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Dolven – In My Grave…Silence Review
By ClarkKent
In his review of Aganoor’s Doomerism, Killjoy discussed how the “myriad subgenres” of doom “can sound so wildly different from one another.” We can add to this discussion Portland, Oregon’s Dolven, who bills their latest album, In My Grave…Silence, as acoustic doom. This begs the question, what constitutes doom metal? Doom typically buries you in melancholy and despair with heavy, plodding, low-tuned guitars, or it sets you up for a good trip by adding some fuzz to the guitar tone. Can one really write doom music using acoustic instruments? Could you even call it metal, or is it just folk music? Sure, an acoustic guitar doesn’t get the same tone as an electric, but what matters is the spirit of the music–the mood and the tempo. Of course, I’m not really here to argue the semantics of what makes an album doom. Ultimately, I’m here to tell you whether Dolven’s latest album, In My Grave…Silence, is worthy of a spin or two.
Anyone familiar with Dolven’s prior work will quickly notice In My Grave…Silence sounds a little different. This is thanks to new singer, Jori Apedaile (Eneferens, Hyalithe), and percussionist, Hunter Ginn (Agalloch). Apedaile, who generally shrieks on his one-man black metal projects, sings gentle, plaintive cleans, at odds with the previous vocalist, Henry Lauer, who had a lower tenor and occasionally provided some growls. Ginn makes use of hand drums that bring a light, meditative touch, in addition to drums gently-tapped by stick. Even outside of these two n00bs, In My Grave…Silence has a much more refined and polished sound than prior outings. Main songwriter and guitarist, Nick Wusz (Snares of Sixes), remains Dolven’s heart and soul. He plays a mix of lightly plucked tunes and softly-strummed chords and provides such a soulful touch that it’s as if his guitar itself is crooning. Finally, bassist Jason W. Walton (Agalloch, Sculptured) provides a deeper resonance on his acoustic bass, reminding you of the sorrow residing behind Wusz’s sometimes uplifting, hopeful melodies.
There’s an intimacy to the musical compositions that brings the feeling of sitting around a campfire and watching Dolven play live. The phenomenal production values enhance these qualities.1 You can clearly hear every note, even the sliding of Wusz’s fingers on the strings. The album is also exceptionally quiet, forcing you to turn it up and pay close attention. This closeness brings a sense of comfort in spite of the otherwise mournful sounds and words. Where electric guitars leave lingering noise with each strum, the acoustic instruments create empty spaces that add to the tranquil melancholy. The tracks on In My Grave…Silence are thoughtful and intentional. The nine-minute “You’ve Chosen,” for example, doesn’t feel a second too long. It mixes a catchy whistling tune, terrific guitar playing, soulful singing, and meditative hand drums to create what will end up being one of the best songs of the year.2
The issue with a 45-minute album filled with acoustic plucks is that the songs start to blend together. Each song has its own distinct melodies, but without other distinguishing features a few of them are tough to differentiate from the pack. The more memorable tracks make use of unique features, such as the whistling on “You’ve Chosen” or the string instrument (likely violin) on “Beside Me.” The instrumentals in particular, are more ephemeral in nature and don’t necessarily stay with you after the record’s over. In My Grave…Silence also gets repetitive, especially on the longer tracks. This is more noticeable with the lyrics, where Apedaile repeats himself a lot. On “Anymore” he sings, “I don’t want to talk about it,” over and over, every other time adding the lyric “anymore.”3 A little bit of editing and trimming could have helped reduce this feeling of repetition.
All that said, In My Grave…Silence is a beautiful listen. It will haunt you with its melodies and plaintive singing, and it will calm you with its lightly-played arrangements. Wusz is a talented musician, and he has made wise choices in who to surround himself with. The long-form compositions he writes are outstanding, and he plays them wonderfully. His songs remind me of classical compositions, and that a record like this gets treated as metal or metal-adjacent says a lot about what makes heavy metal such a diverse musical genre. Across three records, Dolven has made clear improvements, and I have no doubt the next go around will be even better.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Winding Stairs Records
Websites: dolven.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/dolven.oregon
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025#2025 #35 #AcousticDoom #Agalloch #Aganoor #AmericanMetal #Dolven #DoomMetal #Eneferens #Folk #Hyalithe #InMyGraveSilence #Jun25 #NotMetal #Review #Reviews #Sculptured #SnaresOfSixes #WindingStairsRecords
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Dolven – In My Grave…Silence Review
By ClarkKent
In his review of Aganoor’s Doomerism, Killjoy discussed how the “myriad subgenres” of doom “can sound so wildly different from one another.” We can add to this discussion Portland, Oregon’s Dolven, who bills their latest album, In My Grave…Silence, as acoustic doom. This begs the question, what constitutes doom metal? Doom typically buries you in melancholy and despair with heavy, plodding, low-tuned guitars, or it sets you up for a good trip by adding some fuzz to the guitar tone. Can one really write doom music using acoustic instruments? Could you even call it metal, or is it just folk music? Sure, an acoustic guitar doesn’t get the same tone as an electric, but what matters is the spirit of the music–the mood and the tempo. Of course, I’m not really here to argue the semantics of what makes an album doom. Ultimately, I’m here to tell you whether Dolven’s latest album, In My Grave…Silence, is worthy of a spin or two.
Anyone familiar with Dolven’s prior work will quickly notice In My Grave…Silence sounds a little different. This is thanks to new singer, Jori Apedaile (Eneferens, Hyalithe), and percussionist, Hunter Ginn (Agalloch). Apedaile, who generally shrieks on his one-man black metal projects, sings gentle, plaintive cleans, at odds with the previous vocalist, Henry Lauer, who had a lower tenor and occasionally provided some growls. Ginn makes use of hand drums that bring a light, meditative touch, in addition to drums gently-tapped by stick. Even outside of these two n00bs, In My Grave…Silence has a much more refined and polished sound than prior outings. Main songwriter and guitarist, Nick Wusz (Snares of Sixes), remains Dolven’s heart and soul. He plays a mix of lightly plucked tunes and softly-strummed chords and provides such a soulful touch that it’s as if his guitar itself is crooning. Finally, bassist Jason W. Walton (Agalloch, Sculptured) provides a deeper resonance on his acoustic bass, reminding you of the sorrow residing behind Wusz’s sometimes uplifting, hopeful melodies.
There’s an intimacy to the musical compositions that brings the feeling of sitting around a campfire and watching Dolven play live. The phenomenal production values enhance these qualities.1 You can clearly hear every note, even the sliding of Wusz’s fingers on the strings. The album is also exceptionally quiet, forcing you to turn it up and pay close attention. This closeness brings a sense of comfort in spite of the otherwise mournful sounds and words. Where electric guitars leave lingering noise with each strum, the acoustic instruments create empty spaces that add to the tranquil melancholy. The tracks on In My Grave…Silence are thoughtful and intentional. The nine-minute “You’ve Chosen,” for example, doesn’t feel a second too long. It mixes a catchy whistling tune, terrific guitar playing, soulful singing, and meditative hand drums to create what will end up being one of the best songs of the year.2
The issue with a 45-minute album filled with acoustic plucks is that the songs start to blend together. Each song has its own distinct melodies, but without other distinguishing features a few of them are tough to differentiate from the pack. The more memorable tracks make use of unique features, such as the whistling on “You’ve Chosen” or the string instrument (likely violin) on “Beside Me.” The instrumentals in particular, are more ephemeral in nature and don’t necessarily stay with you after the record’s over. In My Grave…Silence also gets repetitive, especially on the longer tracks. This is more noticeable with the lyrics, where Apedaile repeats himself a lot. On “Anymore” he sings, “I don’t want to talk about it,” over and over, every other time adding the lyric “anymore.”3 A little bit of editing and trimming could have helped reduce this feeling of repetition.
All that said, In My Grave…Silence is a beautiful listen. It will haunt you with its melodies and plaintive singing, and it will calm you with its lightly-played arrangements. Wusz is a talented musician, and he has made wise choices in who to surround himself with. The long-form compositions he writes are outstanding, and he plays them wonderfully. His songs remind me of classical compositions, and that a record like this gets treated as metal or metal-adjacent says a lot about what makes heavy metal such a diverse musical genre. Across three records, Dolven has made clear improvements, and I have no doubt the next go around will be even better.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Winding Stairs Records
Websites: dolven.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/dolven.oregon
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025#2025 #35 #AcousticDoom #Agalloch #Aganoor #AmericanMetal #Dolven #DoomMetal #Eneferens #Folk #Hyalithe #InMyGraveSilence #Jun25 #NotMetal #Review #Reviews #Sculptured #SnaresOfSixes #WindingStairsRecords
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Carcharodon and Cherd’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Carcharodon
Carcharodon
I’ve been writing here since 2018. This has been the hardest year to date. I feel like I say this every year right around this time but, for whatever reason, I’ve really struggled this year to find the motivation and inspiration to write. Indeed, I’ve often felt that I lacked the passion for the music. Rather than exploring the murkier depths of Bandcamp, I was often to be found in the company of old, non-metal friends like Nick Cave, 16 Horsepower and Tom Waits.
Despite my disappointment with the world, most of which is on literal or metaphorical fire, and my disillusionment with people, whose choices have caused most of that, there were bright glimmers. The phenomenal response to our Gondor-esque call for aid, when Kenstrosity‘s life was ripped apart by Hurricane Helene, reassured me there are still a few good people out there, a good number of whom read this blog.
Still, I managed to turn out a few reviews this year, including my first ever 5.0—more of which below—which was worth it for the Steel Ire it evoked alone. And there was the Fifteenalia, a celebration the like of which we will not see again (for obvious reasons), which I had the honour of steering from questionable inception to creaky delivery.
Ironically, despite my struggles on the writing front, This Place has played a significant part in keeping me sane. It’s been tolerable to welcome a few new staffers—some even raised up from the awful Place Below—to our serried ranks, while the older hands feel almost like family at this point, with everything that that entails. As ever, particular thanks go to Steel Druhm for his tireless intimidation, which just about keeps us honest, while Dolph, Dear Hollow, El Cuervo, Grier, Maddog, Sentynel and Thus Spoke, among others, have proved adequate companions for banter and gigs.
And with that, I wish you all the happiest of Listurnalias.
#ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – A very late entry to this list, Pillar of Light should be a cautionary tale to bands and labels: release your shit earlier! With more time, the stunning Amenra-meets-Cult of Luna post-misery of Caldera could easily have placed in the top half of this list. While I know this is an album I will come to love and fully expect to regret not placing it higher here, the reality is that other entries have had longer to sink their hooks into me. I will just say that, for me, the apparently divisive vocals are a perfect fit for Pillar of Light’s style.
#10. Seth // La France des Maudits – Way back when,1 French black metallers Seth snuck onto my list of Honorable Mentions with La Morsure du Christ, a fantastic return to form after a lengthy absence. After a short gap, they’re back and this year’s La France des Maudits has cracked the list proper. Melodic, bordering on symphonic with the keys and choral arrangements, but also visceral and feral, Seth dropped an absolute banger. It doesn’t hurt that, as Thus Spoke pointed out in her review, it’s “downright impressive how rich and dynamic this sounds.”
#9. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – The Vision Bleak is not, to paraphrase Dr Grier, a band that has ever ‘got’ me. Or perhaps, I’ve never got them. But Weird Tales resonated with me enormously. And perhaps that’s because it’s not really like anything The Vision Bleak has done before. Structuring their gothic black metal (or should that be blackened goth metal?) into a single, flowing song (albeit one broken into parts) got my attention. But they held my attention because they actually managed to pull off this very-hard-to-execute vision. Weird Tales’ Type O Negative / Moonspell-inspired blackened sound clicked into place almost instantly for me and now I need to go back to TVB’s discography with newly-opened eyes.
#8. Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – The first 4.0 I delivered in an alarmingly high-scoring year, Necrowretch’s black-death fusion is something that I have returned to again. Hiding beneath the vicious, downright nasty surface of Swords of Dajjal, is a surprisingly subtle and well-crafted concept album. As I said in my review, there is zero bloat or filler on this record, which blazes with intensity, driven as much by the scything, razor-sharp riffs as the rasping, sepulchral vocals. The range of influences cited, both by me and by impressed commenters, shows how many different aspects there are to this killer record.
#7. Panzerfaust // The Suns of Perdition – Chapter IV: To Shadow Zion – After Chapter III: The Astral Drain, I was worried that Panzerfaust were running out of steam and inspiration to close out The Suns of Perdition saga. Thankfully, my concerns were misplaced. To Shadow Zion reeks of doom and destiny. Huge, brooding and intense, it is a captivating listen, with the stunning “The Damascene Conversions” sitting at its heart. From the sulfuric vocals to the masterful drumming, this was a worthy final chapter for The Suns of Perdition, which must go down as one of the best executed, most consistent multi-album concept pieces in metal.
#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Spectral Wound just can’t miss. For a band that, superficially at least, plays fairly old school black metal, songwriting chops paired with brilliant execution mean these guys are anything but derivative. My favourite album of theirs to date, Songs of Blood and Mire is just tons of wicked, nasty fun. It’s hard to say exactly why, but I feel like everything Spectral Wound does has a slight knowing wink to it, which suggests that the band doesn’t take itself too seriously. For me, this is a huge positive, as a lot of black metal is so tediously earnest, where this is unflinchingly harsh, surprisingly melodic and drowning in swaggering groove. Great stuff.
#5. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – I’m a sucker for death doom. And The Periapt of Absence is some fucking great death doom. Mother of Graves were unknown to me before I stumbled across this album but their blending of old school Opeth (think somewhere between Morningrise and Orchid) with early Katatonia and Paradise Lost, plus a sprinkling of Clouds is stunning. All wrapped up in a pleasingly tight package, Mother of Graves smother the listener in unflinching, heartwrenching misery. And I love every minute of it. It’s that Peaceville Three sound we love, but feeling fresh, vibrant and vital.
#4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – Me and death metal don’t always see eye to eye, and the last Devenial Verdict left only a passing impression. But Thus Spoke‘s tireless tongue-bathing promotion of Blessing of Despair convinced me to give it a chance. While I enjoy the stomping thuggery of Devenial Verdict’s dissonant death well enough, it’s the sudden mood swings into what TS described as “lethally graceful restraint” that really hooked me. Although worlds apart stylistically, on Blessing of Despair DV achieved what Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean did on Obsession Destruction: knowing precisely how far to push the suffocating, claustrophobic heaviness, before taking their foot off your throat for a minute. Then stamping on it again.
#3. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – Maddog predicted that I would lambast him as an underrating bastard for the 3.5 he deigned to award Ms Christmas. And he was quite correct. He’s a charlatan of the highest order. However, even I’m surprised by how high Ridiculous and Full of Blood has landed here. But, as someone not given to overly emotional reactions to music, I’m continually stunned by the reactions Julie—Can I call you Julie? No? Ok—extracts from me. I’m often on the edge of tears by the end of “The Lighthouse,” just like that cad Maddog, while the likes of “Not Enough” and “End of the World” (the latter with CoL’s Johannes Persson) have a scary edge to them, with Christmas at her maniacal, crooning, possessed, unpredictable best.
#2. A Swarm of the Sun // An Empire – Speaking of emotional responses, A Swarm of the Sun’s stripped back melancholy is right up there. If I say that An Empire is brighter and more uplifting than previous efforts The Rifts and The Woods, understand that this is a very relative statement. An Empire is drowning in sorrow and misery, and yet there is just a hint of brightness that shimmers and hovers around the edges, like a lunar halo. Slow and deliberate, haunting and cathartic, A Swarm of the Sun’s latest outing is just beautiful. End of. No discussion.2
#1. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Y’all know I dropped a 5.0 on Die Urkatastophe, so it’s no surprise to find it here, sitting pretty, atop my list. There’s not much more praise that I can heap on Kanonenfieber’s sophomore record than I already did in my review. For me, it has everything and is more than I dared hope for as a follow up to my beloved Menschenmühle (my album of the year for 2021). It is brutal and vicious (“Panzerhenker” and “Ausblutingsschlacht”), anthemic (“Der Maulwurf” and “Menschenmühle”) and more. Crafted—and yes, that is the correct word—with huge skill and attention to detail, it is the storytelling, based on original source materials, that elevates this record to the next level for me. And if you don’t speak German, or are simply not into narrative in your metal, just go bang your fucking head to “Gott mit der Kavallerie”!
Honorable mentions In alphabetical order by band:
- 40 Watt Sun // Little Weight – Little Weight actually carries a lot of emotional weight. Melancholic, beautiful post-doom and shoegaze, rife with a rough honesty.
- Anciients // Beyond the Reach of the Sun – Long-form (arguably too-long-form in some respects) progressive death, which is wonderfully ambitious and overblown in its scale and delivery.
- Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Fantastic trad doom, channeling heavy doses of Candlemass. Early in the year, I thought this was top-5 material but it’s uneven, with the back half much stronger than the front, and I’ve cooled on it a touch.
- Nyktophobia // To the Stars – Just great, stomping melodeath. As I said in my review, it’s not massively original but it’s tight and well written, and easy to just kick back to. Sometimes, I don’t need more.
- Silhouette // Les Dires de l’Âme – This fantastic post-black album had a place on the list proper until Pillar of Light bulldozed its way in there very late in the day. Haunting, harrowing and beautiful, Silhouette’s debut is Great!
- Sumac // The Healer – Nothing about The Healer makes it an easy listen but Sumac’s fifth record is curiously beautiful for all its wandering, free-form abrasiveness.
- Vorga // Beyond the Palest Star – While it’s hard to disagree with Kenstrosity‘s criticism of the production on Beyond the Palest Star, what can I say? I still love it. It’s chunky, well written, well paced and powerful.
Surprises o’ the Year Ordered by most astounding first:
- Opeth // The Last Will and Testament – It’s been a long time since I was last genuinely interested in an Opeth album (2005’s Ghost Reveries, in case you were wondering). But, wouldn’t you just know it, Mikael Åkerfeldt and co are back (roars and all). I’m not ready to commit to a score for The Last Will (though I think El Cuervo‘s was possibly a smidge high) as I’ve not been able to spend enough time with it. But the fact I want to spend more time with it is, after 19 years of having no interest in Opeth’s output, a surprise. And a welcome one.
- Grand Magus // Sunraven – Another Swedish favourite of old, which I’d all but given up on, Grand Magus roared back this year with Sunraven. As an equally surprised Steel Druhm said in his review, this was the album he “feverishly hoped to get from Grand Magus … a grand return to prime form with the fire firmly back in the Balrog … the best Magus outing since 2012’s The Hunt”.
Disappointment o’ the Year Limited to a single musical disappointment, to avoid submitting a lengthy thesis:
- Zeal & Ardor // GREIF – I’m not angry, or even very surprised, just disappointed.3 While I accept that this is the album of a band in transition, there’s no getting away from the fact that it was a hugely disappointing album from a band that has abandoned the sound that made it what it was. And for what? They have not transitioned to something new and exciting, but with kinks to be worked out. Rather, on this record, Zeal & Ardor became something so pedestrian that any number of post-rock bands could’ve written it and, probably, done a better job. I may have overrated it.
Songs o’ the Year
- Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
- Kanonenfieber – “Der Maulwurf”
- Selbst – “The Stench of a Dead Spirit”
- Panzerfaust – “The Damascene Conversions”
- Kanonenfieber – “Gott mit der Kavallerie”
- Devenial Verdict – “Garden of Eyes”
- Spectral Wound – “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal”
- Silhouette – “Les Dires de l’Âme”
- Blue Heron – “Everything Fades”
- Zeal & Ardor – “Hide in Shade”
- Glare of the Sun – “Rain”
Cherd
Twenty-twenty-four was certainly a year that followed previous years and will precede still others. When I look back, I’ll likely remember it as the year I discovered the wonders of ADHD medication after decades of non-treatment, the difficult transition my poor Cherdlet experienced from kindergarten to first grade, and the incredible bucket list trip my wife and I took to Toronto to watch our favorite TV franchise filming new content courtesy of my very important Hollywood connections. No, not Robert Downey Jr. Much more important and better-looking. Hmm? Margot Robbie? She wishes. I also had the pleasure of meeting several of my fellow writers in person, and they are all much homelier than they let on with the exception of Madam X, who is a goddamned ray of sunshine.
On the musical front, I was able to check two bands off my “need to see live” list in Judas Priest and Archspire, whereby I discovered that Halford does exactly zero audience banter, and Archspire do nothing but. Fun shows, both. I didn’t listen to as much new music by volume this year than I have in previous years when I’d log between 200 and 400 releases, and that was largely due to my kid’s age and the level of interaction he needs. I have a feeling, however, that 2025 will see an uptick thanks to the new Heavys headphones I got for Christmas this year. As always, I want to thank the editors, particularly Steel Druhm and Doc Grier, for not sending me a mailbomb after all the late reviews I turned in (I’ll work on that in 2025), and the man himself, AMG, for building this community and for agreeing that Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek show.4
(ish) Chat Pile // Cool World – This is what it sounds like when Chat Pile make a “mature” record. As I noted in my October review, some of the most glaring weirdness and black humor the band is known for is missing in Cool World, which is why it’s here on my list instead of matching the lofty heights of my 2022 AOTY God’s Country. That said, this is consistently bleak in a way I like, and it boasts what are in my opinion the two best–if not most memorable–songs the band have written to date in “New World” and “Masc.” I’m a sucker for these Oklahomans and look forward to how their sound evolves from here.
#10. Glacial Tomb // Lightless Expanse – I’ve had an up and down journey with Glacial Tomb’s sophomore record, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still view this as one of the best things I’ve listened to this year. To consider a record this closely means you have to listen to it a lot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I logged more hours with Lightless Expanse than with any other album. I’ve made a big deal about the one-three punch of “Voidwomb/Enshrined in Concrete/Abyssal Host”, but it bears repeating since it’s my favorite consecutive stretch of death metal in 2024.
#9. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – If you peel back the veneer of disso-death and blackened blasts on Infinite Mortality, you’ll find a pounding hardcore heart comprised of equal parts beatdown and Converge. As technical as this music gets, and there is a lot going on here, Replicant never forget their primary duty as a metal band: snapping necks. On their third album, they’ve exquisitely composed a missive to unbridled aggression. I completely missed their previous albums, so I’m glad our Kenfren wouldn’t shut his excitable yap about this one.
#8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – “Alright skaters! This is the end of our free skate period. We’d like to once again thank you for spending your Saturday with us here at Family Fun Roller Rink and Arcade. It’s time to slow things down, down, way down, and you know what that means. That’s right, it’s couples’ skate. So, find that special someone you want to be interred on a cold stone slab with, gaze into each other’s empty eye sockets, and make your way around the rink as wave after wave of Spectral Voice’s death/funeral doom forcefully separates you from any light, hope, or happiness this wretched world might have accidentally given you. Remember, those who survive the next 45 minutes of tectonic plates colliding will get the chance to compete in roller limbo!”
#7. Crypt Sermon // The Stygian Rose – Despite being one of the biggest doom apologists on this site, Crypt Sermon failed to grab me with their highly acclaimed debut nearly ten years ago. I chalk this up to my unfamiliarity with the traditional doom style at the time. In recent years, I’ve binged large amounts of Candlemass, Saint Vitus, Cathedral, Solitude Aeturnus et al., so I finally have the frame of reference to see just how well Crypt Sermon’s third LP captures the swagger, majesty, and grit of a style few contemporary bands seem interested in playing. After the growing pains displayed on The Ruins of Fading Light, these Philly natives have worked out the kinks and delivered an air-tight slab of doomy goodness.
#6. Full of Hell // Coagulated Bliss – I regret waiving my seniority claim to Full of Hell releases, thus allowing Dolph to snap up review duties for Coagulated Bliss. It’s not that he did a bad job of reviewing the prolific experimental grind outfit’s latest. He did great, and he awarded it a deserved 4.0. But then he had the cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity, and the gumption to incorrectly lower his score. To make matters worse, it appeared nowhere on his year-end list. Not even a goll dern honorable mention. I’ve told him to his cetacean face that he’s wrong and I’m likely to do so again because this is Full of Hell’s best work since Trumpeting Ecstasy. In fact, it might be better.
#5. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – For most of their existence, Ulcerate was a highly acclaimed band that I just couldn’t get into. That changed four years ago with the release of Stare into Death and Be Still. Little changed in their intricate approach to dissonant death metal, but there was something warmer and more human to what I had previously considered a rather detached style. That trend continues with Cutting the Throat of God. I find this record best when taken as a whole, letting the experience unfold over the full runtime, like dream-walking through a hedge maze or being trapped in a velvet sack and discovering it’s much larger on the inside.5
#4. Thou // Umbilical – I waited a long time for a chance to review a new record by Thou, and when it finally came, they did not disappoint. As I said in my June review, “Like their chimerical American metal brethren Inter Arma, it doesn’t matter how many influences the band stuff into one album. They are all unified in sound under Thou’s banner. Bryan Funck’s acid-bit vocals are unmistakable and apparently unchangeable after 20 throat-shredding years. Also unchangeable? Thou’s ability to craft the most metallic-sounding guitar tone out there. As the standard bearer for…hell, as the entire sum of the second generation of Louisiana sludge, the sound they’ve forged isn’t the kind of sloppy muck you may associate with the term. It’s certainly thick, but it has a quality like two enormous steel I-beams violently striking each other.” If that doesn’t sell Umbilical for you, then here is where our paths diverge.
#3. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I didn’t listen to Blessing of Despair for several weeks after it came out in October despite the fact Devenial Verdict’s previous record, Ash Blind, made my year-end list in 2022. When I finally got around to it earlier in December, it threatened to blow the doors right off my still nebulous list, climbing fast and high until ultimately landing here at number three. There is more immediacy than on Ash Blind, which took me a while to warm up to. That doesn’t mean the band skimps on the kind of thoughtful transitions and atmospherics they’ve come to be known for. It’s just that Blessing of Despair HAZ THE RIFFS, including my favorite death metal riff of the year in “Solus.”
#2. Void Witch // Horripilating Presence – When I revisited Horripilating Presence with the purpose of sorting out this list’s pecking order, I expected death-doomers Void Witch to fall mid-to-late top 10. Obviously, the opposite happened. For the life of me I don’t understand how this album didn’t gain more traction amongst the other writers and you, the unwashed commentariat. As I said back in July, “…the material on Horripilating Presence is Mohamed Ali levels of confident. The editing of ideas in each song and across the album’s taut 39 minutes is masterful, especially for a debut. No song hews too closely to any of the others, but all are of a piece, locking comfortably into place like an intricate puzzle box, and Void Witch have such sights to show you.”
#1. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Inter Arma never miss. Aside from being one of the best live acts in metal, every album they’ve released going back to 2013’s Sky Burial has been one successful evolution after another. As a very wise reviewer once said, “They’re the same shaggy beast as ever, but beneath that matted, coarse coat is a rippling form mid-shape shift, stretching, pulling, and crossing back on itself constantly over the course of New Heaven’s shockingly concise 42 minutes…If being all over the musical map sounds like a negative, you’ve probably never heard an Inter Arma record before. It seems whatever they throw at the wall sticks, and the listening experience across their (usually much longer) records never feels uneven. This is because they play everything with the same smoldering intensity and volatile mean streak.” What a record.
Honorable Mentions:
- Convulsing // Perdurance – I like this quote from Dear Hollow‘s review, so I’ll let him do the talking: “…Convulsing explores every nook and twist of a rhythm and melody until its inevitable conclusion is happened upon in tragic and fatal fashion.”
- Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – Pound for pound, Spectral Wound are probably the most consistent no-frills black metal band currently in operation. Songs of Blood and Mire is another rager that’s as melodic as it is acidic.
- Lord Buffalo // Holus Bolus – This record was one redundant instrumental away from landing higher on this list. Looking forward to where these gothic country rockers go next.
Songs o’ the Year:
In alphabetical order by band:
Show 5 footnotes
- Apparently it was only 2021 but my goodness that feels a lifetime ago. ↩
- Regrettably, I suspect this may be the perfect way to start a discussion. Sigh. ↩
- Can you tell I’m a parent? ↩
- How could anyone disagree? – AMG ↩
- Like a TARDIS. ↩
#2024 #40WattSun #ASwarmOfTheSun #Anciients #BlogPosts #BlueHeron #CarcharodonAndCherdSTopTenIshOf2024 #ChatPile #Convulsing #CryptSermon #DevenialVerdict #FullOfHell #GlareOfTheSun #GrandMagus #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kanonenfieber #Listurnalia #LordBuffalo #MotherOfGraves #Necrowretch #Nyktophobia #Opeth #Panzerfaust #PillarOfLight #Replicant #Selbst #Seth #Silhouette #SpectralVoice #SpectralWound #Sumac #TheVisionBleak #Thou #Ulcerate #VoidWitch #Vorga #ZealArdor
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The Final Witness – Beneath the Altar Review
By Angry Metal Guy
By: Nameless_n00b_607
In a genre long since matured, a common way to avoid retreads is to combine multiple subgenres.1 Contemporary thrash in particular is difficult to get right without the proper guitar assault required to break necks. Hence, many opt to go for one of its offshoots instead. One newcomer looking to explore the avenue of genre blending is The Final Witness, the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Josh Henderson. Debut Beneath the Altar promises to deliver death and thrash in progressive form to the unwashed masses. I dove into Beneath the Altar with caution, having seen how often this combination of terms gets misused, but hoping The Final Witness would fulfill its promise.
Inspired guitar work and appropriate variety are the main strengths of The Final Witness. The majority of Beneath the Altar involves two core components: progressive thrash (“Coronation,” “The Blood”) and death/thrash (“Sanctum of the Holy”). Plentiful melodic leads further color the album, with “Testimony” even evoking the Gothenburg sound. Lastly, quieter semi-acoustic passages bridge these individual pieces together with varied levels of success. The compositions are vivid and frenetic, alternating between traditional breakneck drumming and rhythmic trickery. Henderson’s distorted vocals lack a bit of thrash attitude, but they do a fine job of punctuating the compositions with barks and snarls. Beneath the Altar’s best moments take inspiration from Coroner and Vader, and I wish those moments were much more frequent, because the sound leans a bit too close towards the groove school of guitar chugging on occasion (“Negative World,” “Principalities”). Nevertheless, the foundation of the album holds, and Henderson’s performances are impressive.
Beneath the Altar’s experimental side comes at the expense of its strengths. On top of the album’s bread and butter, most tracks differentiate themselves with eccentricities. For example, the title track’s electronic break with an almost hip-hop-like beat is memorable and surprisingly well-made, but it doesn’t exactly fit. “Testimony” ends with a dramatic organ layer that could sound excellent if the mix didn’t turn it into an ear-piercing inconvenience. Many of these one-off gimmicks are fun, but they are either misused or discarded before leaving an impact. Worse, they are a distraction. Beneath the Altar really shines when exploring the rhythmic and melodic sides of death/thrash. Diverging from this path trades depth for breadth; a tighter track like “Sanctum of the Holy” proves that The Final Witness would only benefit from holding onto a theme for longer.
The disparate ideas of Beneath the Altar are greater than the sum of their parts. Its foundational pillars work wonders individually, but interact too infrequently, and one-off experimental touches are fun but out of place. The somber semi-acoustic parts—while well done—hinder song flow when utilized too frequently (“Principalities”) and blend together after multiple listens. Good ideas feel haphazardly assembled. The foregoing is exacerbated by its production, overseen by Jason Wisdom of Becoming the Archetype. The sound is both sterile and rough, with Wisdom prioritizing guitars over vocals and drums—both of which are loud and distracting. Its qualities conjure a strange illusion of metalcore adjacency, further contributing to the album’s incoherent identity. All that being said, I don’t mind listening to Beneath the Altar again. There’s a lot to like, and a brief 36-minute runtime makes sure the record doesn’t overstay its welcome. Yet I feel more compelled to revisit individual parts of songs rather than any particular song in full.
Beneath the Altar is an interesting but unfocused prototype. Getting a solo project this far is already respectable, but I reckon Mr. Henderson is still capable of much more. With more coherent composition and a unified vision, the ideas on this record could form a powerful message. There are exciting bits and pieces here to digest, even if they don’t necessarily form a cohesive whole, and the result is that Beneath the Altar feels like a starting point for better things to come. But for the time being, The Final Witness is still trying to find its sound—and I find myself craving some Coroner instead.
Rating: Mixed
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s CBR MP3
Label: Rottweiler Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Release Date: August 15th, 2025#25 #2025 #AmericanMetal #Aug25 #BecomingTheArchetype #BeneathTheAltar #Coroner #DeathThrash #ProgressiveThrashMetal #Review #RottweilerRecords #TheFinalWitness #ThrashMetal #Vader
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„Stimmen der Geister, der Halbtoten erklingen. Was tut man damit? Fast geht man unter.“ [Ulrike Draesner]
Ich habe verlernt, wie man Gespräche führt. Ich höre zu und nicke, ich vergesse sofort, was der andere gesagt hat. Die Stimmen der Geister sind das einzige, das mich erreicht. Mit ihnen führe ich auch keine Gespräche. Aber ich höre ihnen zu. Der Versuch, sie zu ignorieren, sie mit anderen Dingen zu übertönen ist gescheitert. Also höre ich zu. Was merkwürdig ist, unheimlich und tröstend zugleich, ist die Tatsache, dass ich kein Wort von dem verstehe, was sie sagen. Ich höre die einzelnen Worte. Vollkommen klar, auch die Sätze ergeben scheinbar und oberflächlich einen Sinn. Aber sobald ich versuche, wirklich darüber nachzudenken, in so etwas wie ein Gespräch einzutreten, stelle ich fest, dass ich wirklich überhaupt nichts verstanden habe. Dann stelle ich mir vor, wie die Geister schmunzeln, wie sie einander zuflüstern und noch ein wenig breiter grinsen. Aber auch diese Mimik kann ich nicht deuten.
#Geister #Gespräche #Verständnis #Zitatgeschichten -
“The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information”*…
From yesterday’s post on the possible (and promising, but also potentially painful) future of computing to a pressing predicament we face today. The estimable Anil Dash on the threats to the open web…
You must imagine Sam Altman holding a knife to Tim Berners-Lee’s throat.
It’s not a pleasant image. Sir Tim is, rightly, revered as the genial father of the World Wide Web. But, all the signs are pointing to the fact that we might be in endgame for “open” as we’ve known it on the Internet over the last few decades.
The open web is something extraordinary: anybody can use whatever tools they have, to create content following publicly documented specifications, published using completely free and open platforms, and then share that work with anyone, anywhere in the world, without asking for permission from anyone. Think about how radical that is.
Now, from content to code, communities to culture, we can see example after example of that open web under attack. Every single aspect of the radical architecture I just described is threatened, by those who have profited most from that exact system.
Today, the good people who act as thoughtful stewards of the web infrastructure are still showing the same generosity of spirit that has created opportunity for billions of people and connected society in ways too vast to count while —not incidentally— also creating trillions of dollars of value and countless jobs around the world. But the increasingly-extremist tycoons of Big Tech have decided that that’s not good enough.
Now, the hectobillionaires have begun their final assault on the last, best parts of what’s still open, and likely won’t rest until they’ve either brought all of the independent and noncommercial parts of the Internet under their control, or destroyed them. Whether or not they succeed is going to be decided by decisions that we all make as a community in the coming months. Even though there have always been threats to openness on the web, the stakes have never been higher than they are this time.
Right now, too many of the players in the open ecosystem are still carrying on with business as usual, even though those tactics have been failing to stop big tech for years. I don’t say this lightly: it looks to me like 2026 is the year that decides whether the open web as we know it will survive at all, and we have to fight like the threat is existential. Because it is…
[Dash details the treats– largely, but not entirely driven by AI and its purveyors. He concludes…]
… The threat to the open web is far more profound than just some platforms that are under siege. The most egregious harm is the way that the generosity and grace of the people who keep the web open is being abused and exploited. Those people who maintain open source software? They’re hardly getting rich — that’s thankless, costly work, which they often choose instead of cashing in at some startup. Similarly, volunteering for Wikipedia is hardly profitable. Defining super-technical open standards takes time and patience, sometimes over a period of years, and there’s no fortune or fame in it.
Creators who fight hard to stay independent are often choosing to make less money, to go without winning awards or the other trappings of big media, just in order to maintain control and authority over their content, and because they think it’s the right way to connect with an audience. Publishers who’ve survived through year after year of attacks from tech platforms get rewarded by… getting to do it again the next year. Tim Berners-Lee is no billionaire, but none of those guys with the hundreds of billions of dollars would have all of their riches without him. And the thanks he gets from them is that they’re trying to kill the beautiful gift that he gave to the world, and replace it with a tedious, extortive slop mall.
So, we’re in endgame now. They see their chance to run the playbook again, and do to Wikipedians what Uber did to cab drivers, to get users addicted to closed apps like they are to social media, to force podcasters to chase an algorithm like kids on TikTok. If everyone across the open internet can gather together, and see that we’re all in one fight together, and push back with the same ferocity with which we’re being attacked, then we do have a shot at stopping them.
At one time, it was considered impossibly unlikely that anybody would ever create open technologies that would ever succeed in being useful for people, let alone that they would become a daily part of enabling billions of people to connect and communicate and make their lives better. So I don’t think it’s any more unlikely that the same communities can summon that kind of spirit again, and beat back the wealthiest people in the world, to ensure that the next generation gets to have these same amazing resources to rely on for decades to come.
Alright, if it’s not hopeless, what are the concrete things we can do? The first thing is to directly support organizations in the fight. Either those that are at risk, or those that are protecting those at risk. You can give directly to support the Internet Archive, or volunteer to help them out. Wikipedia welcomes your donation or your community participation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is fighting for better policy and to defend your rights on virtually all of these issues, and could use your support or provides a list of ways to volunteer or take action. The Mozilla Foundation can also use your donations and is driving change. (And full disclosure — I’m involved in pretty much all of these organizations in some capacity, ranging from volunteer to advisor to board member.) That’s because I’m trying to make sure my deeds match my words! These are the people whom I’ve seen, with my own eyes, stay the hand of those who would hold the knife to the necks of the open web’s defenders. [Further full disclosure: so is your correpondent, and so have I.]
Beyond just what these organizations do, though, we can remember how much the open web matters. I know from my time on the board of Stack Overflow that we got to see the rise of an incredibly generous community built around sharing information openly, under open licenses. There are very few platforms in history that helped more people have more economic mobility than the number of people who got good-paying jobs as coders as a result of the information on that site. And then we got to see the toll that extractive LLMs had when they took advantage of that community without any consideration for the impact it would have when they trained models on the generosity of that site’s members without reciprocating in kind.
The good of the web only exists because of the openness of the web. They can’t just keep on taking and taking without expecting people to finally draw a line and saying “enough”. And interestingly, opportunities might exist where the tycoons least expect it. I saw Mike Masnick’s recent piece where he argued that one of the things that might enable a resurgence of the open web might be… AI. It would seem counterintuitive to anyone who’s read everything I’ve shared here to imagine that anything good could come of these same technologies that have caused so much harm.
But ultimately what matters is power. It is precisely because technologies like LLMs have powers that the authoritarians have rushed to try to take them over and wield them as effectively as they can. I don’t think that platforms owned and operated by those bad actors can be the tools that disrupt their agenda. I do think it might be possible that the creative communities that built the web in the first place could use their same innovative spirit to build what could be, for lack of a better term, called “good AI“. It’s going to take better policy, which may be impossible in the short term at the federal level in the U.S., but can certainly happen at more local levels and in the rest of the world. Though I’m skeptical about putting too much of the burden on individual users, we can certainly change culture and educate people so that more people feel empowered and motivated to choose alternatives to the big tech and big AI platforms that got us into this situation. And we can encourage harm reduction approaches for the people and institutions that are already locked into using these tools, because as we’ve seen, even small individual actions can get institutions to change course.
Ultimately I think, if given the choice, people will pick home-cooked, locally-grown, heart-felt digital meals over factory-farmed fast food technology every time…
Unless we act, it’s “Endgame for the Open Web,” from @anildash.com. Eminently worth reading in full.
* Tim Berners-Lee… who should know.
###
As we protect what’s precious, we might send carefully-calculated birthday greetings to a man whose work helped lay the foundation for both the promise and the peril unpacked in the article linked above above: J. Presper Eckert; he was born on this day in 1919. An electrical engineer, he co-designed (with John Mauchly) the first general purpose computer, the ENIAC (see here and here) for the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory. He and Mauchy went on to found the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, at which they designed and built the first commercial computer in the U.S., the UNIVAC.
Eckert (standing and gesturing) and Mauchy (at the console), demonstrating the UNIVAC to Walter Cronkite (source) #AI #artificialIntelligence #business #culture #ENIAC #history #Internet #JPresperEckert #openWeb #politics #PresperEckert #Technology #UNIVAC #web -
By Dr. A.N. Grier
After a much-needed vacation,1 and being sick as fuck for weeks, ole Grier is back with something you might not want in your life but you need it. In 2016, AMG Himself reviewed the third record from Bombus, a little-known Swedish outfit. Like AMG, I was surprised that something so simple could plant a seed in my ear and keep me returning for more. But, I suppose it’s no surprise when surrounded by endless extreme metal that a palate cleanser like Repeat Until Death would find a home in my regular rotation. The band basically plays metalized rock with predictable song structures and hooking choruses, where nothing overstays its welcome. Three years later, we appeared to have missed the release of Vulture Culture. But maybe that was for the best considering it only contained a handful of new ideas and struggled to come together as a complete album. I was hesitant when I saw this year’s Your Blood in the bin. Though one spin in, I knew something magical was happening to Bombus and Your Blood turned out to be their most ambitious record to date.
After spending years with Century Media Records, Bombus has penned a new deal with Black Lodge Records. Not only that but co-founding vocalist and guitarist Matte Säker left the band. In his stead, not only was another vocalist/guitarist recruited (they have two), but a third guitarist was added to the mix to bring the band from a four-piece to a five-piece. With these newfound axes, the band traveled a new road that brought soaring solos, intricate leads, and harmonizing soundscapes. Your Blood also offers the most melodic collection of pieces the band has ever accumulated. The result is far less predictable than previous albums, introducing new twists that’ll pull at your heartstrings, bob your head, and raise an eyebrow (or two). If you know the band’s previous output, nothing will prepare you for what’s to come.
While one of the more straightforward ditties on the record, “Killer” does a decent job introducing you to the new Bombus direction. After opening with all three guitars lending their strings to soaring leads, the song settles into a melodic groove. As the song builds, the passion and sadness of the track intensifies, sucking you into its mere three-and-a-half-minute runtime. With an accessible piece setting the mood, things get real weird, real fast. The follow-up track, “The One,” zaps you into a time warp that introduces a slow-moving vocal style akin to Nick Cave and a poppy drum beat that could have come from The White Stripes. I know, it’s a couple of odd descriptors, but the song is absolutely hypnotizing as it weaves in and out of intense moments and drum-led spoken-word interludes. But, the weirdest track of them all is the title track. Like so many other bands these days, Bombus reaches into Spaghetti-Western influences. With cawing crows and more sinister Ghoultown vibes, this track slithers around like a sidewinder, erupting into the catchy chorus while passing through cold, dark desert nights.
Between these oddities, Hellhammer-esque nastiness, Motörhead beauty, speed metal licks, Pain-like psychedelics, and Volbeaty clapping segments,2 a couple tracks truly crawl to the top. “Carmina” is one of the most interesting tracks on the album, showing how much time the band spent to improve and diversify their sound. Probably one of the heavier tracks on the album, much like their style of old, this track uses a combination of hammering vocals, bass, and drums to set up the chorus. The chorus is interesting because it passes through two phases: first, punching Rob Zombie-ish shouts, and then low, overlapping vocals. After passing the midway point, the band settles into Chug Land, pounding away on a riff as the guitar leads swirl around the background chants. The best song on the album immediately triggered me in the strangest way possible. The simple riff of “Take Your Down” is almost identical to the soundtrack of one of my favorite revenge scenes in television history: when Frank Castle finally gets his hands on William Rawlins. It’s a powerful song with a fantastic chorus that punches on those revenge qualities and puts goosebumps on my arms.
Outside of the weirdly cool (but also still weird), synthy guitar work of “No Rules” and the howling wolf at the beginning of “The Beast,” which had me spitting out my coffee in laughter, Your Blood is a great new direction for Bombus. The songs are painstakingly structured for a style like this, the choruses are some of the best they’ve ever written, and the diversity makes it exciting on repeat listens. The album flow is also well done vocally. As the album plays out, the vocals get nastier and more pained. After introducing some cleans toward the beginning of the album, the back half finds them more and more raucous, concluding the record with the most desperate performance. Your Blood might not be the vicious metal record you want, but if you take a minute to explore the band’s discog, you’ll be surprised by the results of this new record. Everywhere I look on the interwebz, people ask, “Why are these guys not more popular.” And you know what? I have no idea.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 267 kb/s mp3
Label: Black Lodge Records
Websites: bombusmusic.com | facebook.com/bombusmusic
Releases Worldwide: November 1st, 2024Show 2 footnotes
- A real one. Not just a vacation from all you fuckheads. ↩
- Yeah, this album is wild. ↩
#2024 #35 #BlackLodgeRecords #Bombus #Ghoultown #HardRock #HeavyMetal #Hellhammer #Motörhead #NickCave #Nov24 #Pain #Review #Reviews #RobZombie #SwedishMetal #TheWhiteStripes #Volbeat #YourBlood
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@RuthODay @olliethewobbly @AlexanderRaine7 @APBAreplay @tabletopmania @cwgrody @YakyuNightOwl @oldladyplays @Eilistraee @WolfofWords
#NABA #NorthAmericanBaseballAssociation
Today's Match of the Day takes us to Three Rivers Park in Pittsburgh (corporate naming deals are banned in the NABA) with Sidney Zweibel pitching for the Pirates and Dantavius Bishop taking the mound for the visiting Hartford Whalers.
The Pirates opened by plating two in the 1st: Rocky Colavito's wild throw from right brought in Ron Hunt on a Chip Hinton single, followed by Roberto Clemente batting in Nick Markakis with a single past Lenn Sakata - but Roger Repoz guns down Hinton from center to stop the bleeding there. The Whales' Tails claw one back in the 2nd as Bishop helps his own cause, bringing in Colavito with a two-out single.
Zweibel runs out of gas in the 5th, but Kaneda Sato provides a lack of relief, walking Rip Kirby with the bases loaded before striking out catcher Sterling Scargill. In the bottom of the inning, Jett Indigo greets Bishop with a solo shot to break the tie, but at the top of the 6th, Casey Candaele triples with Colavito aboard to re-tie. Somehow Sato gets out of it with no further damage, enticing Sakata and Serafin Moya into pop-up outs.
Sato gets chased in the top of the 7th with two more runs from the Whalers, but Markakis blasts a two-run dinger in the bottom of that frame to knot it again at 5. No scoring in the 8th or 9th, and that means some free baseball for the fans.
Rikelven Meadows comes in and gets two quick outs in the 10th. The 1-2 pitch to Kirby, and - "My God, that ball had a family!!" Rip Kirby puts it out of reach on a rope, 431 to dead center!
Pablo Cerezo, the Venezuelan marvel leading the league with 8 saves thus far, comes in to attempt to notch a ninth for the Whalers. But Markakis greets him with his fifth hit of the day, a double down the left field line. No matter: Hinton is retired on a routine fly and Clemente strikes out, bringing up Panamanian lefty Denys Galvez. And it's a line drive into the right-center gap and we're off to the races! Markakis scores and the not-too-speedy Galvez nonetheless beats Colavito's throw to third! Bringing up...Sicnarf Loopstok? Yes, the backup catcher who entered in the 9th on a double substitution. (NOTE: I swear on all that is holy that I did not make up that name - nor did I tinker with his stats...he's a rank scrub.)
Loopstok works it to 3-1 on Cerezo, and line drive base hit to left! Galvez trots home, and that's the game! Pirates 7, Whalers 6 in 10!
Eastern League scores:
Baltimore 6, Philadelphia 3
Montreal 5, Brooklyn 3
Toronto 6, Ottawa 3
Boston 8, New York 7 (11)
Western League scores:
Hollywood 12, Vancouver 8
Portland 8, San Francisco 3
San Diego 5, Oakland 3
Los Angeles 8, Sacramento 6
Seattle 9, Honolulu 3
In other news, I was intrigued enough by something @oldladyplays said that I'm now looking into the possibility of streaming a game or two on YouTube. This will of course reveal my secret identity, but in the words of William Shatner, "I'm willing!To...take! That! Risk!"
#BaseballSim #OOTP #IfTheNHLIsntUsingTheWhalersICan -
Is it really wise to appoint a guy who gets triggered by candy #Ambassador to #Malaysia?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/donald-trump-nick-adams-malaysia-ambassador/105519888 #uspol #auspol #NickAdams #Ashfield #BrettMason #MnM