The legendary UK crust/metal band Deviated Instinct recently crossed the pond for a North American tour. At least some of the Possessed (by Seitan) horde were lucky enough to see them on their West Coast dates, where we were truly NAILED after hearing such classics as ‘Rock n’ Roll Conformity’ and ‘Despair’ played live. Oooof!

A little known fact about the penners of ‘Pearls Before Swine’ – they’ll eat plenty of other things before they even think of eating swine! Our P(BS) horde auxiliary in Portland, otherwise known as Isa, cooked up a feast for the Deviated Instinct crew on their North West pit stop. Here are some pics of the mayhem that ensued!

Reborned Miscarriage or Pesto Scrambled Tofu with Walnuts? You decide

The most important part of Pumpkin French Toast is the CRUUUUSSSSTTT

The Conquest for Eternity is over and the winner is ROASTED FUCKING FINGERLINGS!!

Tony, Mid, and Alicia tuck in...

HUMAN BANQUET!!

Many thanks to Isa and the Deviated Instinct mob for giving us a glimpse through the looking glass (and letting me make a bunch of shit puns out of their hard work!) Cheers guys, and safe travels!  – pranjalistkrieg

One of the shelters is a 300-acre farm three hours north of where I live in California, and every now and then Farm Sanctuary organizes events and tours of the facility so us outsiders can see how things are run there and spend some time with a bunch of rescued cows, pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys and chickens, among others.

This in itself sounds like a pretty incredible way to spend a day, but couple of weeks ago, I got a flyer for something even more awesome – a particularly metal sounding excursion called the ‘Twilight Tour’ which promised to provide an “inside glimpse into the nocturnal lives of farm animals”.

Nocturnal wanderings through bestial realms? Needless to say, this was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I donned my Maiden shirt and made the drive singing ‘Sanctuary’ for three hours, after which I spent a (black) magickal few hours chilling with the horned ones (well, non-horned ones too, but you know what I mean…)

Pics below! If you like what you see, consider supporting the great work of Farm Sanctuary!

"Get thee behind me, Satan..."

Thanks to V from Creatures of Christ for this picture of the uber-kvlt Remy. This little guy is so necro, he was BORN with corpse paint on, and a giant tongue to boot! You can’t help but wonder whether that’s a piece of artwork on the wall or whether he just walks in the shadow of the horns.

We’d like to dedicate this little number to Remy and to metal dogs everywhere. Hails!

“Shoot me out of the sky
Slaughter me at sea
Hunt me in the fields
Why not let me be?”

Beyond the Great Vast Forest that is my garden

Aka. August in Pranjalistkrieg’s backyard! Growing things is totally metal, because you are basically in control of your vegetable plots and your fruit trees, much like the warriors of olde ran shit in their kingdoms or whatever. Also you are sorta self-sufficient and therefore prepared for the apocalypse, which is also metal. Also if your garden is green enough, it can look like some ancient forest and you can have statues of dragons and World Serpents to guard your plants against posers. Win win win!

I haven’t grown too much this year but I did get some awesome stuff come through just recently: tomatoes, peppers, and blackberries! Here are some pics for you. We also have a plum tree that delivered about a ton of sweet Santa Rosa plums, but there are no pics of those. Sorry. In any case, hail the almighty fruit and veg!

Soon these tomatoes will be as red as the Nazarene's blood

The Oath of Black Berries

I Am The Black Berries!

Hidden Gods

Hidden Dogs

I am pretty much stoked to see every band on the bill (Pestilence! Aura Noir! Atheist!) but… OH MY GOD BOLT THROWER ARE PLAYING IN THE US!!!!

I’m so excited I can hardly breathe. And in turn I will probably be posting here a lot more, since I can’t afford to go out anymore after buying my festival and plane tickets! Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, you’ll have to decide for yourselves…

Question is, will I also be a happy vegan in Baltimore…? Hmmmm…

Over the past few weeks I’ve been paying a lot of attention to US black metal. Not of the older, thrashing style (VON etc) or more recent Xasthur/Leviathan/Crebain-style approaches, but to bands like Fauna, Velvet Cacoon and Wolves in the Throne Room. Straying from the stereotypical depressive/satanic/nihilistic themes that most bands of the genre harness, the bands listed above are all linked by something more akin to an eco-spiritual vision. Which sounds a bit highfalutin, I know. As long as a band look and sound like they live in a cave or have recently been dug up from a graveyard I’m normally happy, but the fact that these bands are seemingly following a different path has made me pay more attention to the ‘black metal’ coming from a continent that I don’t normally pay too much attention to in relation to that style of music.

Maggie the Punk : not really feeling the frostbitten winter kingdom of London

Velvet Cacoon are a pretty mysterious band that seem to have dropped off the map and have/had a completely bizarre history that is funny, confusing and frustrating all the same time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Cacoon . One thing I am certain of is that their Genevieve album is incredible – hypnotic, droning, menacing. Wolves in the Throne Room remind me slightly of Burzum and are probably the least interesting (musically) of the three bands, although their first album Diadem of 12 Stars has really grown on me over the years – the songs flow really well and the sound is much more earthy and organic (to my ears) than the follow-up, Two Hunters. Fauna are a band that I am just discovering. I recently got hold of The Hunt and I’m keen to hear more. The album consists of one track lasting 79 minutes that is so dynamic and raw – if folk/black/forest/primitive/doom/beard/weird/trees are key words for you, I recommend checking it out.

Wolves in the Throne Room

Two bands removed from the themes of the above groups that I have been really getting into recently are lurker of Chalice and Brown Jenkins. LoC are Wrest from Leviathan’s side project, and while i never got into his main group, I really enjoy LoC; a mixture of early Christian Death, Bauhaus and black metal sounds good on paper and it sounds good in reality. Brown Jenkins are a kind of musical tribute to HP Lovecraft – really heavily distorted riffs, engulfed in feedback and mysterious muttering. Great stuff. I only have their Dagonite release but I am on the lookout for more.

Evil (but delicious!) pasties

Anyways, on to the cake. I found the recipe for this on a doom metal forum and it’s absolutely delicious. Chocolate and bananas always seem to go well and this is no different:

banana and chocolate cake
6 1/2 oz plain flour
2 tbsp cocoa
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
5 oz sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
1/4 pint veg oil
1/4 pint soy milk
2 mashed bananas

mix it all together. bake at gm3/325f/160c in a greased tin for 30-35 minutes or until it springs back when you press it down. Enjoy!

I also made some pasties, using a recipe from the fantastic ‘Another Dinner is Possible’ vegan cookbook. PeteF.

And here are some pictures from the halloween show and the L.A. (i know i’m so late with doing this.)

These aren’t all the pictures but they’re not that great, plus through out both the shows i really got over taking pictures.

I’m glad i got to see Corrupted, although i wish i would have been able to go to the Gilman show, since they played a 2hour long set, even though that wouldn of killed my legs, still would have been awesome.

Anyways i’m in the works of making a mole sauce since now i have more time since school is almost over. Oh and my boyfriend and i adopted a cat two weeks ago, her name is Aletheia, she is awesome. Oh and look at the line up for maryland deathfest next year(I want to go so bad but i doubt i can afford it.)  http://www.supremebrutality.com/

- Monica

At the end of the summer I spent some time in Ireland and was lucky enough to get to visit The Cork Donkey Sanctuary. The sanctuary has been around for 21 years and has been home to over 2,400 donkeys and was a real pleasure to experience. The terrible tales of abuse that many of the donkeys had endured was countered by the numerous stories of the mental and physical improvements that the animals made at the sanctuary. Understandably the donkeys were generally very nervous at the sight of humans, but I was able to stroke a couple of brave ones and I was touched by their gentleness (not to mention their manners in not chuckling at my awful and decidedly not ‘metal’ red jacket).

Recommended listening for leisurely walks in the woods

Whilst in Ireland I took the opportunity to go for long walks in the woods near where I was staying. I had my MP3 player to accompany me and spent a bit of time thinking about the ideal music to listen to ; living in an urban environment and being a big fan of black metal that is heavy on bucolic imagery has often felt a bit wrong. It’s pure escapism of course, but playing air drums along to Emperor’s In The Nightside Eclipse whilst on the London Undergroud has always felt a bit odd. So while in the woods I gave a spin to two albums that matched the environment perfectly – Carpathian Forest’s Through Chasm, Cave and Titan Woods and Ulver’s Kvelssanger. I’m not entirely sure what happened to Carpathian Forest after they released the aforementioned album, because they seem to have turned into some kind of joke band – the singer was on stage with no underpants on in the last pic I saw. Not good. Through Chasm…has a weird Celtic Frost/ pagan/ Edgar Allen Poe vibe going on, and in the inlay the band look like they genuinely live in a cave and survive purely on celery, which is much better (in my book, anyway). The Ulver album is incredible and has such a calm but powerful atmosphere…the a-capella singing sounds strange at first but kind of fits with the haunting tone.

So now I’m home, back to a place with no donkeys and certainly no forests to wander around in. Still, there were no places to get good vegan food or weird music nearby, and those two things go a long way in making up for the loss! PeteF.

"I thought you brought the map..."

OK, so it’s been a while since any of us have written anything. Reports are sketchy, but suffice it to say that our myriad adventures around the Planet ov Metal have left us little pause for thought, reflection, and report backs of late. In the other-worldly language of black metal, time and space have truly been devoured as one, as our tortured souls toil in the constant struggle to wrest ourselves from the nauseating whirlwinds of anti-cosmic chaos. In the more realist lingo of thrash, we’ve all just been really fucking busy with a whole lot of shit.

Unleashed. Hanging out in a forest. You know.

Tell you what, though, it does actually feel like I’ve entered some kind of wormhole through space and time and ended up in Sweden for the summer, because we’ve had a few months of shows from some of the best Swedish bands ever. I’ve already posted about the At The Gates reunion tour, but since then we’ve had the likes of Unleashed and Watain grace our shores. Unleashed played a great show with Obituary in San Francisco last month, on my birthday actually! Their set was a bit too short to do them justice, but they still kicked some ass with tunes like Midvinterblot. It was worth it just to see Johnny Hedlund shout “I only fuck the dead.” Amazing. Turns out I share my birthday with their drummer too! And fittingly enough, we share our birthdays with the day the Battle of Stamford Bridge took place in 1066, marking the end of the Viking age in England…

OK, on to other topics before I reveal yet more of the inner nerd.

Norwegian black metal is, of course, legendary, but Swedish black metal doesn’t seem to get many props, eclipsed as it is by the x number of crappy Gothenburg-sound metalcore bands out there. But just last week we had one of the best Swedish black metal bands, Watain, play in what ended up being a warehouse show in Oakland… the show was epic in the true sense of the word- we had to wait like what seemed like a starless aeon before Watain hit the stage, which turned out to be just after 1am (I won’t go into the crazy organization of the show, or ponder why the hell a band like Book of Black Earth was on this

"You've got red on you..."

US tour with them). For the 200-odd people who stuck around for their set and the encore, it was not just worth the wait, but would have been worth another 10 hours of waiting just to see them destroy Oakland with enough dark energy invoke Leviathan itself. No goblets of blood and gore poured on the audience like the pre-tour marketing was suggesting (luckily, I’d say)… though a sickly-sweet garbage like smell (Monica described it as smelling like period blood) did kind of permeate the venue, gaining in pungency as the band came on to the upside down cross, candle, skull, and spinal cord-decked stage. The set list was mainly from Sworn to the Dark, though they did play some older stuff as well. The Serpent’s Chalice was more intense live than I could ever imagine, and you could actually feel the firmaments crumble as they went into Stellarvore. Some weird vibes at the show, and it seemed the band was pretty pissed off with the audience by the end (even beyond their usual grimness), but damn their set made for an amazing night.

And hey, speaking of Swedish black metal, I’m off to LA for the weekend to see Nifelheim, among many, many others…

Rest assured, the horde has not abandoned its post! Expect more very very soon… PranjalistKrieg