Guest List by Matt Jarman of Void
Oh, you thought we were done with lists? Oh, buddy. Richter asked Matt Jarman to sit a spell, and he shared with us his top records (and other things) of the year. Enter within to find a menagerie of 2K18 bangers (and a handful of substances from yesteryear Void just spun a whole lot).
1. It’s tempting to say 1-10, so we’ll call it an ace, both low and high, 1 & 11. [Dødheimsgard‘s] Satanic Art, re-released by Peaceville. My only pre-order this year. It sat in their office in Norwich for ages, until my sister went and got it. I really wanted to go in person for some reason. And its out on vinyl for the first* time (* there was a bootleg), which is great, but my record player is in the living room, so I have to squeeze it in between Zara Larsson and Sigrid playlists. It’s nice my kids are listening to Scandinavian music though. Traces of reality. What can I say? I started learning the riffs from a tab I found online. I didn’t get very far committing them to memory, but it was great. Someone, it must be Yusaf [Parvez, aka Vicotnik], had made notes on the tab: “You could play it like that I suppose” was written. Yeah, that riff, & record, is a classic.
2. Ved Buens Ende – Written in Waters, was also re-released on vinyl. I haven’t got mine yet. I hope there are still some left. I’ll move my record player into the garden for that one.
3. Plague Rider – Rhizomes
This one, and the one before, Paroxysm, is good too. Really this is a band to see live. After Void played with these guys this year, I listened to their records on repeat, painting a bedroom and such. So when they came back to London and I saw them play at The Dev, a small but legendary pub in Camden Town, it was incredible to recognise those amazing drops. Plague Rider’s music is so progressive, it has the perfect balance for me, that it almost gets to be too much for your brain to take any more hammering, and then in comes this melodic walking bassline, or this amazing melody… and I’m hooked in. Which is great, because my tiny brain can only take so much hammering…
Which brings me on to…
4. Diskord – Oscillations
I don’t think they’ve actually released anything for a while, but they did a lot of touring this year, and it was certainly the first I heard of them. And it was on one of those first listening sessions, I remember I got physically sick listening to Oscillations. I was very wasted I admit, and trying to follow every note… I went a bit mad. Joe got locked in between the doors and I threw up in a wooden ambulance.
It never repeats. How is it done? But if you wait patiently, the breaks do come, and make sense of it all.
It was fantastic to see them live, in front of a whole support network of fans. I wasn’t sick once. It made my top ten.
5. Grayceon – IV
I got this after reading a review on The Toilet. Great timing as I was programming a lot of cello parts for the new Void album at the time. This one got a lot of plays in the living room, especially the track ‘Scorpion’. If this is doom metal, then maybe I actually like doom metal after all. When you find the one you love, don’t let go.
6. Entombed – Wolverine Blues
I got this on vinyl recently, not sure when it came out. [Hint: 1993] Went through a whole record store and still only came out with something I’ve already owned for over twenty years. I don’t think I’d listened to it properly since 2008, but I still knew all the words.
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7. Threatin. I love this guy. I mean, wow, that’s a real ‘what the fuck just happened’ story. I haven’t heard the music. Has anyone? They don’t include it in the stories I watched, just mute images of the dude headbanging over ominous creepy synth sounds. Such cojones hath the human ego.
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8. Mandy, the movie. This was touted as a metal release so I’m pretty sure it counts. Void were invited to watch it in the Union Chapel in London recently. The natural reverb in the church made the film even more surreal. Another visceral experience. I had to have a lie down in the pews during the post film Q&A. The Union Chapel has an amazing ceiling I discovered. I don’t think they could possibly have imagined that screening when they were sculpting it. The things we go to church for these days…
9. The Igorrr videos. OK, I’m a year late to this party as well, but what a party! In his own words… “I want to make the music which has sense to me, with no restrictions, like a big party with metalheads, electronics nerds, classical and baroque-heads and gypsy violinists getting drunk and joining together to bring the best of every genre.” Please let me know where this party is at. Hopefully we’ll pull together some good videos of our own next year. Incidentally I have a little sideline going on at the moment, introducing dancing at death metal gigs. Not dancing has ruled for far too long. Stop not doing it people. Your fear of looking stupid is holding you back.
10. DHG – A Umbra Omega
Seriously, it took me three years to get around to this. And about as many days to get to the end of it. I had to keep going back and re-listening until I was ready to go on to the next song. Look at that, I top and tailed with DHG [Dødgeimsgard] and they haven’t released anything since 2015. As you can see, I’m all about the latest releases.
