Hey, I did another one this year! Here are reviews for albums from Ahab, Lankum, and 100 gecs.

Ahab – The Coral Tombs
(January 13, 2023)

How can one describe a funeral doom metal band with the phrase “dreadfully boring”? How about this: “monolithically boring”. Perhaps I’m not equipped to rate funeral doom without any bias, considering I like generally like my metal fast-paced or sludgy. I decided to check out Ahab anyway, since they seem to be the cornerstone of good funeral doom these days. Let’s see how The Coral Tombs fares.

The opener, “Prof. Arronax’s Descent into the Vast Oceans” (what a name) is promising; heavy and crushing like Nibbler’s dark matter turds. Even kind of sludgy! As you already read, this ticks one of my boxes! But then that hallmark of doom metal — the slow, wailing, clean vocals and clean guitars — paves the way for the rest of the track’s seven minutes. Now, the track name is apt because Ahab is meant to conjure up being stuck in the middle of a vast, swirling ocean in the dead of night. I’m not sure that works for me. Such an image is done better by other bands, such as… The Ocean! I’m only half-kidding.

The more interesting bits are definitely when vocalist Daniel Droste sticks to harsh, guttural growls. It adds a lot more weight to the dense heaviness that the genre requires. “Colossus of the Liquid Graves”, for example, alternates between the harsh and the clean vocals and, to my ear, the switch-ups keep things from getting too drone-y and uninteresting. But then there are tracks like “The Sea as a Desert”, which conjures up images of nothingness with acoustic guitar that plods along at a steady, slow tempo. And then it switches up with electric guitar that plods along at a steady, slow tempo! See, best of both worlds!

In the end, The Coral Tombs is roughly half-and-half. The super slow, clean singing absolutely kills it for me on one hand, but when the music has more CHUTZPAH then I can groove along a little better. I just think that once you’ve heard one funeral doom album, you’ve heard them all. Better served as background music while playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Oh, and over an hour? Too long! Sorry, Ahab.

Early Verdict:

Lankum – False Lankum
(March 24, 2023)

Do I know enough about traditional Irish folk music to act as a critic for contemporary traditional Irish folk music? Hardly! But I sure do know enough about music to know that something ain’t completely right with these songs. The four-piece draw from, what I imagine to be, a rich history of unyielding Irishness spanning centuries to create a unique product that they can call their very own. The Quietus put False Lankum as the very best album released so far in 2023, and although I think that this is quite an overstatement, I can’t help but feel that I see where they’re coming from. And I don’t even really like Irish folk-influenced stuff like the Pogues or Flogging Molly. But this stuff is kinda cool!

The first thing I notice, even before anything weird happens, is the murkiness of the production. The music sounds muddy, like a medieval festival during a rainy, overcast day. Once Radie Peat finishes her compelling, lilting vocals on the opening track “Go Dig My Grave”, a take on the traditional “Butcher Boy” folk ballad, it segues into this cascading, massive drone for the rest of the song. Something monumental is happening here — larger than life — causing the listener to get fully absorbed in the music. It worked for me. Something clicked right away, like I already knew this music forever but was startled by its sudden eerie Swans-like dirge.

The muddiness of the production never goes away, but the moods and attitudes change throughout. The jaunty dance of “Newcastle”. The baleful balladry of “On a Monday Morning”. The immense twelve-minute closer “The Turn” that locks you into a hypnotic mess of mild industrial screeching and scraping. It all feels so intimate and immediate, like Lankum is using their best tricks to sweep you up into the music. And it fucking works, man. It fucking works.

Big happy smile on this one. Will it make my year end list? SPOILER ALERT: PROBABLY. THIS YEAR HAS BEEN KIND OF DISAPPOINTING SO FAR.

Early Verdict:

100 gecs – 10,000 gecs
(March 17, 2023)

As far as I can tell, 100 gecs is the band that everyone hates to love. Consisting of dynamic duo Laura Les and Dylan Brady, they represent the queer late-stage millennial’s answer to the question no one asked: “What if I wanted some extremely hyperactive glitch pop soaked to the brim in autotune and glistening with an extremely tacky sheen.”

It’s hard to peg 100 gecs because they do a lot at once. “Dumbest Girl Alive” presents thrash metal guitars and trap beats. “Hollywood Baby” sounds like your average Charli XCX pop ballad. “I Got My Tooth Removed” harkens back to the good old days of skankin’ third-wave ska. All the while Les and Brady indulge in excess, packing each minute with so much over-stimulation that it’s the musical equivalent of eating an enormous brick of fudge. And it’s so fucking fun, too. Boiled down to its essence, it’s fucking fun music. Unless you’re a boring stick in the mud who gets annoyed by the MUSIC OF KIDS TODAY (even though these two are pushing 30), I dare you to not find something to like about 10,000 gecs.

The highlights are many, but the ones that get stuck in my head the most are “Dumbest Girl Alive”, with brilliant lyrics throughout (“Text, text, text, text/Like you tryin’-na start a fight/Yeah, I’ll fuckin’ text you back/I’m the dumbest girl alive“), “Frog on the Floor”, with its hilarious ribbits on the off-beats during the chorus (“Frog on the floor/Where’d he come from?/Nobody knows/Where he’ll go“), and the best song “I Got My Tooth Removed”, with its full-brassed ska and painful, wince-inducing lyrics (“My cheek swelled up twice its size and I started attracting flies/I’m playing Operation with a safety pin and start to cry“). You can tell the duo are absolutely enjoying themselves, and listening to these songs you get a sense that there is likely a bottomless well of songwriting that is just waiting to be tapped. I, for one, am greatly looking forward to 1,000,000 gecs.

Early Verdict: