#sorcerer — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sorcerer, aggregated by home.social.
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Illwind – The Unfolding at the End of Light Review By ClarkKentSometimes a new band starts up and chooses a godawful name—like Illwind. I’m not just referring to associations with flatulence either—though that certainly doesn’t help. It’s just a difficult name to research, especially for a band with such a small web presence. Google will direct you to the Radiohead song, “Ill Wind,” or a 1960s psychedelic band from Boston called Ill Wind, among other surprisingly numerous use cases for the term “ill wind.” In fact, I began to have some doubts the band was real, but further research shows they do have a label (Personal Records) as well as a list of band members who have a history in Peruvian bands like Arcada, Argul, and Cobra.1 Having established this as a legitimate act with some experienced musicians, the final piece of the puzzle to solve is whether Illwind’s debut album, The Unfolding at the End of Light, is any good.
Illwind is a stoner doom outfit that creatively blends genres in some pretty groovy ways. Epic opener “Crimson Skies” gives you the first hint that things aren’t what they seem on the surface. After the song opens with the slow, plodding pace of funeral doom, vocalist Marcos Coifman’s baritone upends expectations by calling to mind the epic tones of Sorcerer and Visigoth. The funeral doom transforms into classic stoner doom with hints of Black Sabbath before ending on a series of elaborate guitar solos that have the spirit of ’70s rock acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the psychedelia of Pink Floyd and Blood Incantation. That The Unfolding at the End of Light ends on a cover by The Stooges, “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” tells us that Illwind doesn’t exactly have modernity in mind, and yet what they have crafted sounds fresh and sometimes exciting.
At heart, this is a work of stoner doom, with a plodding, relaxed pace and enough reverb on the guitar to give off the genre’s usual chill vibes. Illwind aims for exploration, falling securely in the school of Windhand, YOB, and Black Sabbath. They’re in no hurry, but they also don’t hold back the hooks. The guitars from Mauricio Guerrero hit all the right notes, providing distinctive stoner riffs from one song to another. And just when the tracks are about to hit their quota of stoner, he and fellow guitarist Andrés Rhor get creative with solos that transport you to another time and place like Bill and Ted stepping into a magic phone booth. It’s no hallucination if you see their solos come to life—they breathe and grow and take over a tune in a way that can be exhilarating.
How much you enjoy this depends on your level of tolerance of the stoner doom genre itself. Illwind are at their best when they go off the stoner script. The main issue is their stoner stuff can be a bit generic. This is especially true of some of the longer songs, like “God of Sleep” and the thirteen-minute “Lucifer’s Mule,” which grow repetitive. It works best in smaller doses: “Portal” and “Wanderer,” both around five minutes, provide the perfect amount of stoner riffs before breaking into the classic-sounding solos. Coifman’s voice, similarly, is good in doses, but over time his monotonous delivery adds to a feeling of stagnancy. Admittedly, though, when he opens up “Lucifer’s Mule” by singing “Tell me Lucifer” in his best impression of Ozzy, it’s a highlight of the record.
The Unfolding at the End of Light proves a good debut for a band whose members have experience in a mix of genres, from black metal to heavy metal to stoner doom. As innovative as Illwind proves to be in blending several old school genres, they’re not quite so innovative in their base genre of stoner doom. They write and play some good stuff, and with some refined songwriting, they could perfect their blend of genres or even give their stoner riffs a little more pizzazz. In the end, though, I think Illwind achieve success. This is a chill record with some outstanding moments that will have you stop and just say, “Whoa.”
Rating: 3.0/5.0
#2026 #30 #Arcada #Argul #BlackSabbath #BloodIncantation #Cobra #DoomMetal #EpicMetal #IllWind #Illwind #Jul26 #LynyrdSkynyrd #PersonalRecords #PeruvianMetal #PinkFloyd #Radiohead #Review #Reviews #Sorcerer #StonerDoom #StonerMetal #TheStooges #TheUnfoldingAtTheEndOfLight #Visigoth #Windhand #YOB
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Personal Records
Website: Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: July 3rd 2026 -
Meet Zagrea Afxbis.
Six generations ago, a young Tiefling named Urxikas Afxbis was playing dice in a loud bar and caught another player cheating. He called it out. There was a scuffle. The scuffle became a brawl. The brawl became a full-room catastrophe -- everyone involved, furniture flying, chaos wall to wall.
Everyone except the Green Hag sitting alone in the far corner.
Urxikas got thrown across the room and landed near her. Scrambling up, he stepped on her pack. Something inside shattered. She screamed. The whole bar went quiet.
She walked up to him slowly. Got close. And in a voice barely above a whisper, she told him exactly what she thought of him and every red-blooded, tail-dragging devilspawn that would come after him. Then she blew a handful of sand in his eyes and walked out.
That was six Afxbisses ago. The curse has been passed down faithfully through every generation. Uncontrollable magic. Skin that changes color every time a spell fires -- bright green after poison, bright red after fire, eight colors counted so far, possibly more to come. The Afxbis line has learned, generation to generation, how to ride the magic, how to keep it from swallowing them whole. The skin, they never figured out.
Somehow, Zagrea is a happy guy. Charismatic, warm, a little prone to exaggeration when he's telling stories. He finds joy in most things. Most people like him immediately.
But spend enough time with him and you'll see it -- something behind the eyes. Something that doesn't quite rest. He keeps moving because standing still was never really an option. He wasn't welcome most places, growing up. So he kept walking, kept adventuring, and somewhere along the way started looking for something that resembles peace.
He hasn't found it yet. His powers are getting stronger by the day.
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Zagrea Afxbis is a tall Tiefling Sorcerer with almost no muscle to speak of, wearing colorful striped overalls and a cape long enough to wrap himself in -- both striped vertically in white, red, vermillion, orange, amber, yellow, chartreuse, green, teal, blue, violet, purple, magenta, and black. He attacks from range and relies on his arcane knowledge when his spells don't cooperate. He can will his bare hands to strike like a club, dagger, or handaxe, and can summon a vibrant shield of light from his own arms when pressed. He is a lifelong adventurer, a walking folk legend, and arguably the most colorful person in the room -- sometimes literally.
#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #Homebrew #CharacterIntro #Sorcerer #Tiefling
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William Friedkin: "A close-up of Steve McQueen was worth much more than any landscape in the world"
TAGS: #WiliamFriedkin #Sorcerer #SteveMcQueen #RobertMitchum #Interview #FilmInterview #FilmDirector #FilmMaker #FilmTalk #MovieTalk #TheFrenchConnection #Oscar #AcademyAward #FilmNews #FilmIndustry #Filmbuzz #Cinemabuzz #FilmCommunity #MovieCommunity #Filmbuff #Moviebuff #Filmmaking #Moviemaking #Storytelling #BehindTheScenes #Hollywood #Film #Movies #Cinema
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Yes source based distro's have been around since the very beginning - in fact, MCC Interim Linux and #SLS weren't far from that mark, except that they merely tried to make it a bit more convenient by packaging up tarballs to be exploded during installation. And there's always #LFS.
If you think about Slackpkg - and you consider that you can actually re-install the entire system by compiling every single component of the default (full) install with the evocation of a single command, followed by the customization of your entire system by installing every kind of software imaginable through the use of #sbopkg or some other automated, dependency resolving package manager that uses #SlackBuilds (which are downloaded, then exectuted, and subsequently download the latest release of he software package desired, which is in turn compiled, packaged, and exploded) - you actually have a fully source based distro installed on your box.
That's right - Slackware is (can be forced to be) an entirely source based distro installed on your device.
And choosing to convert from a point release to Slackware -current switches you from a point release to a #Rolling_Release distro.
*Debian Testing, aka at this time, Trixie is a rolling release. #Arch_Linux is a rolling release, SourceMage and Lunar Linux are source based distros based on #Sorcerer_Linux, the original fully source based Linux distro released when Linux was only about 8yrs old in 2000, and the #Gentoo or #Funtoo source based Linux distros.
SystemD my ass. That has nothing to do with nothing in that conversation - it's completely non-sequitur and truth be told, most source based distros (Arch, Gentoo) support the type of init system that *YOU CHOOSE. For Debiantards such as myself, well..... There's #Devuan - and that's very refreshing to actually have control over your system again with true init scripts. But I rarely use Devuan, even though I've been associated with the initiative since its inception, after leaving the #Mageia team several years ago.
As I state in almost all of my profiles, I'm a Slacker, since 1993 (Slackware Linux), and I'm also a bit of a #Debiantard. On the BSD side, after leaving #Jolix (386BSD) for Slackware, I've pretty much settled on either #OpenBSD or #Dragonfly_BSD, w/the awesome #HAMMER2 FS. I still have a lot of love for #FreeBSD and of course #NetBSD - where I spend a lot of time in my proper #Korn Shell....
But what the heck does any of this have to do with a comparison of using Gentoo Linux being akin to using SystemD?
I don't like SystemD - but if you're a realist, that doesn't mean you forgo using distros that only have that init tooling. You just roll with the punches and keep following the innovations that support you - NO ONE STILL RUNS WINDOWS XP in production - at least, no one outside of state mental hospitals, that's just insane to do in a forward facing business environment.
But a lot of companies do leverage OpenRC, SysVinit, etc., instead of SystemD - that's not going away, and SystemD itself and Poetering have their own up and coming challengers.
SystemD is (supposed to be, originally) a way to boot your box. Yes, it's indeed encroached upon other landscapes since, but not all of those constructs are even considered by many mainstream distros - it's not a fact of life. Other init systems thrive in the UNIX world to this day and will continue to do so.
Likewise, Source based Linux distros are just one among many distros that exist, and may or may not leverage SystemD as their init systems - to really get a good grasp of this, I recommend doing a few Arch Linux installs - with and without SystemD as the base init system. Heck, even Debian still supports your regular, good old #syslog, and at every turn during your updates, reminds you how to keep it enabled since the whole journalctl crap just isn't as elegant, IMO.
Personally, I think more concurrent options are usually better - space is cheap. Storage no longer costs a dollar a meg. or worse, like it was when I was a kid, a few thousand dollars a meg. That's right... MegaByte - Not TB for penny's!
Okay so now I'm waiting to hear back from the OP and see just what the heck they meant when I got triggered. In the meantime....
Enjoy installing and using #Sorcerer_Linux, or the subesquent forks of it's surviving lineage like #SourceMage and #Lunar_Linux - you're now a part of mainstream source-basedLinux History once you do 🤘 💀 🤘
#tallship #Linux #FOSS #distros #Sorcerer
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RE: https://social.sdf.org/users/tallship/statuses/111957857148746923
