13 January 2016

TRIUMPHANT


I was drinking beer in a Los Angeles record store a few weeks ago, perusing the cassettes and chatting up the store clerk about what's hip with the cool kids these days because I like to stay on top of the latest trends. I snagged a few tapes that will inevitably make their way onto TE for your ears in the coming weeks (current faves: S. MOODY and ALEXADRA ATNIF) while we discussed metal, punk, noise and the Pump Up The Volume soundtrack that he tried to give me for free (I passed - does anyone actually need circa 1989 ROLLINS and BAD BRAINS brutalizing "Kick Out The Jams" in their life? No. No one does. Ever.). At some point we started talking about NSBM creeping into good wholesome underground metal and he told me a story about a one man (boy) band from LA, they're called Satanic something or other, and the tape was pretty good (kinda funny) and he said how off-putting it was when the kid's dad came into the store and expressed pride that his 15 year old son was in a NSBM band. OK dude, that's just weird. So anyhoo, dude casually plopped the case for this TRIUMPHANT tape on the counter after I was ready to pay my money and take my tapes and leave $100 poorer (and happier), and I was all like, "yo buddy, what is THIS?!" And he was all like "damn that shit is grea.....wait a minute, I think they might be bad people." DAMMIT! Why does the meaningless racist ideology of some sweatpants wearing hillbilly who happens to be able to shred the shit out of a guitar have to keep fukking up my distant and unattached appreciation of knuckle dragging heavy metal music?!? BUT WAIT: after some internetting, Record Store Clerk Dude determined that TRIUMPHANT were NOT in fact bad people and so we plopped that shit right into the deck, both realizing that we were two (plus) hours late to meet our respective women, but nonetheless reveling in the random connection based on little more than a mutual love for getting weird and getting down. And he pressed play and those jams banged HARD so we kept listening, both pleased that bedroom nazis hadn't soiled all of the good metal. Blackened thrash soaked into our earholes, a band that seamlessly and effortlessly moved from melodic black metal to ripping speed metal to inverted claw in the air pure power heavy motherfuckkn metal with ease and grace. And they sounded evil as shit and I loved it. So I bought it, along with a bunch of noise/synth tapes and some punk shits...and I left the store two and a half hours after they "closed." What's the point? well, there are two of them:
1) This TRIUMPHANT tape is a certified banger.
2) I like telling stories.
3) Good record stores are a thing to be cherished.
4) I can't count.

These dudes like to party.

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