In which I catch up with three bands/artists I’ve previously mentioned and thank you for your continued privilege of this particular digital waste receptacle.

If brevity is the soul of wit, then I don’t want to dither on exposition lest I appear a fool. Let us dive straight into the moon-lit, wintry pools of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Good: Back in August (holy crap, where has the year gone), I lamented the demise of an incredible band called Aek Gwi. In my eulogy, I praised the band’s creative blend of black metal hysteria with doom metal terror and mourned that my own loggerheaded lack of alacrity had cursed me to an existence of never owning the digital rights to listen to Hideous Dreams whenever I damn well pleased. Well, some cosmic entity must have born witness to me throwing bitcoin into the wishing well, because Eerie Hint Productions managed to secure the rights to distribute Hideous Dreams on cassette. The band may be no more, but at least the German label has afforded you and I, the lazy, stupid dullards that we are, the chance to atone for our past transgressions by purchasing the album this time around, either digitally or on a completely useless format. You had best believe I did not miss the opportunity this time.

The Bad: Remember that grind band who wrote the unbelievably epic track “Jupiter’s Domain?” Sadly, OMAAF are no more, having announced their disbandment on Facebook and shuttering their social media accounts shortly thereafter. While they left one hell of an incredible album, it’s a shame we’ll never get to hear the band truly build upon the progressive foundation they laid.

 

The Ugly: My pal Morten Müller (relatively) recently unveiled the next Meshuggah-fied Metallica cover he had intimated at when we chatted. That cover, “Fight Fire with Fire,” lifts the ugly scrapes and distortion and groove straight from “Future Breed Machine” to make the ‘tallica classic a nasty, seething snarl of shrieks and skitters and jarring rhythms. I don’t think I like this particular cover as much as Morten’s work on “Blackened,” but it certainly scratches that itch for more and answers a lingering riddle!

 

Alright, folks. You know the drill. Gimme the good, bad, and ugly.

Thank you for your continued patronage of this particular digital waste receptacle. We’ll see you on the other side.