new sufjan stevens ep leaks!

[A brief word of advice: if you’re going to listen to Light­ning Bolt side project Wizzardz’s debut album, and if you’re wearing head­phones, please make sure the source volume is not maxed out. Failure to comply with this warning might result in total head­phone destruc­tion and might per­ma­nently cripple your eardrums, too. Hard lessons learned at 3am, folks.]

I’d really been putting those head­phones through their paces lately, too. They’ll be missed.

Yeah. I know I said in my last post that this whole noise/punk/metal phase would soon pass, but, well, it’s not passing yet. Thanks to some good rec­om­men­da­tions from some good internet pals, this might be the year that I become an unabashed metal fan. I’ve already posted about Wolves in the Throne Room, but there have also been great releases from Enslaved (Norway, black/viking metal), Drudkh (Ukraine, black metal), Taint (Wales, post-rock/post-hardcore/southern metal), Keep of Kalessin (Norway, blast­beat black metal), Jesu (Eng­land, drone/stoner/doom metal), Decap­i­tated (Poland, death metal), Yakuza (USA, weird/jazz metal).

I don’t really have the energy to try and describe each of the albums with my lim­ited metal vocab­u­lary, so I’m gonna puss out and give y’all sam­pler tracks from most of them. Hope someone out there digs it:

• Enslaved — “Heir to the Cosmic Seed”, from RUUN (buy)
• Drudkh — “Ukrainian Insur­gent Army”, from Blood in Our Wells (buy)
• Taint — “The Sound-Out Com­pe­ti­tion”, from The Ruin of Nova Roma (buy)
• Keep of Kalessin — “The Black Uncharted”, from Armada (buy)
• Jesu — “Silver”, from Silver EP (buy)

I promise I’ll be back to normal in a few days, guys. Promise.