Sound Obsession

Heads up!  Skeletonwitch & Russian Circles full-album streams. Skeletonwitch & Russian Circles, two awesome metal bands from opposite ends of the sonic spectrum, with new albums dropping next week - streaming in-full now on Pitchfork Advance.  Skeletonwitch:  Serpents Unleashed - blackened thrash from Athens, Ohio, with scene titans Kurt Ballou and John Baizley together again on production and album artwork, respectively.  Not for the faint of heart.  Just in time for Halloween - this one's a killer.  Listen now   Russian Circles:  Memorial - epic post-metal (soundtrack-y instrumentals) from Chicago with crisp, spacious production by Brandon Curtis (frontman of the underrated prog/space-rock band Secret Machines).  Loving that classy album art too. Listen now

Kvelertak:   Meir Label:  Roadrunner Released:  March 26, 2013 7.5/10 Is it strange that as I hurtle through my mid-thirties, more than two decades after picking up my first "rock" album (Nirvana's Nevermind ), my taste in guitar music leans shamelessly toward "metal"?  Shouldn't I be well onto  mature fare by now - Bon Iver or Grizzly Bear perhaps?  No thanks - not quite yet.  Even Kurt Cobain, often paralyzed by the same self-conscious modesty that plagues today's wet-noodle rockers, had to admit Nirvana's primary musical influences were the Beatles and Black Sabbath.  The catchy, and the crushing.  The essence and power of rock & roll is in the primal, the untamed, and the provocative - the very name itself is a euphemism for "sex."  The sonic frenzy and unhinged antics of the genre's founders - Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many others - bares little resemblance to much of what passes for rock to...