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2013 is here and with it comes sonic pleasures... or something. I'd like this to be the spot for all of Giant Bomb's denizens to discuss this years' metal offerings. Here I'll keep an updated(I'm thinking every 7-10 days) list of the stuff that I like and you can put the stuff you like the comments(and after that we can go to my house and play trucks if you want). This won't be exclusive to LPs - I'll list EPs and splits if they're cool. No singles, singles are useless. OPINIONS. Anyway, here's my list:

*NEW*

Monarque - Lys Noir (black metal) CD

Church of Misery - Thy Kingdom Scum (stoner/doom metal) CD

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Černá - Restoring Life (post-black metal/instrumental) BC

Satan - Life Sentence (NWOBHM/heavy metal) CD

Warlord - The Holy Empire (heavy/power metal) Amazon MP3/CD

Lychgate - Lychgate (black metal) BC

Ade - Spartacus (death metal) BC

Necroblation - Ablation of Death (death metal/grindcore)

(EP)Riul Doamnei - A Christmas Carol (symphonic black metal) Free from their website!

Inter Arma - Sky Burial (blackened sludge/post-metal)

Steak Number Eight - The Hutch (atmospheric sludge) Amazon MP3/Klicktrack

Thorngoth - Schwarz-Karg-Kalt (black metal) Amazon MP3/CD

(EP)Pyrithion - The Burden of Sorrow (death metal) Label

Chaos Invocation - Black Mirror Hours (black metal) Label

(EP)Brutality - Ruins of Humans (death metal) Amazon MP3/CD

(EP)Arescet - The Crackling of Embers (atmospheric black metal) BC

Persefone - Spiritual Migration (progressive/melodic death metal) BC

Intronaut - Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words With Tones) (progressive metal) Amazon MP3/CD

In Vain - Ænigma (progressive death metal) Amazon MP3/Klicktrack

Entropia - Vesper (black/sludge/post-metal) BC

The Fall of Every Season - Amends (progressive death metal) Amazon MP3/iTunes

(EP)Kozeljnik - Null: The Acheron of Multiform Negation (black metal) BC

Defeated Sanity - Passages Into Deformity (brutal technical death metal) BC

Suffocation - Pinnacle of Bedlam (brutal technical death metal) Amazon MP3/iTunes

Giant Bomb user AndrewGPM is in Unsacred Seed. Check our their debut album here.

I've been waiting for The Fall of Every Season to do something new for years. His first album From Below is quite different from the new one but if you like gloomy death/doom, check it out, it's amazing.

I'd also like to highlight a band by the name of Howling. They put an album out in 2013. It's decent but not really remarkable. Why am I talking about them then? Their logo is best thing I've ever seen. Look at this fucking thing:

The album art for A Beast Conceived is pretty great too but it's NSFW. BOOBIES!

Go forth and listen!

The situation has resolved itself. I don't need any more advice, thank you.

I listen to a lot of metal. My favorite thing to do is search around for new and exciting bands to listen to. So I thought I'd help out some fellow listeners by showcasing a band for people to check out. I won't be posting these on a regular basis - it might be 2-3 in a week or 1 in 2 weeks. I'm not going to go for solely underground shit, either. Some of it will be obscure, yes, but I'll also have some more well-known stuff to give a nice mix.

Today's band is Dissection. They're perhaps most famous for guitarist/vocalist Jon Nödtveidt's suicide. It's believed he killed himself because he thought he had achieved all he could in life. Anyway, Dissection released 3 albums - The Somberlain('93), Storm of the Light's Bane('95) and Reinkaωs('06). My personal favorite is Storm of the Light's Bane. If you like black metal their first two albums are amazing. Reinkaωs is a different style - melodic death metal. Not my favorite. Here are some songs:

Black Horizons (The Somberlain)

Night's Blood (Storm of the Light's Bane)

Black Dragon (Reinkaωs)

If you have a band that you'd like me to check out go right ahead and share it. Also if you have a genre that you'd like a new band for just ask and I'll give you some recommendations. I'm most knowledgeable about doom, death and black. I don't know shit about "core" anything so don't even ask.

10. Desecravity - Implicit Obidence (technical brutal death metal)

Japan has always been an interesting place for metal. They usually have too many keyboards for my taste but there's none of that to be found here. Really good old school DM vocals.

9. Monolithe - Monolithe III (funeral doom metal)

This latest album moves away from the funeral sound a little bit but I didn't mind, it's still exceptional doom. I can't link the song(Monolithe albums are 1 song) since it isn't on Youtube but their first 2 albums are if you want to see what they're about.

8. Carach Angren - Where the Corpses Sink Forever (symphonic black metal)

There are a lot of junky bands in this genre. Carach Angren aren't one of them.

7. Hour of Penance - Sedition (technical brutal death metal)

Hide your kids and hide your wife, this shit doesn't hold any punches.

6. Napalm Death - Utilitarian (grindcore)

Yep.

5. My Dying Bride - A Map of All Our Failures (gothic doom metal)

Songs of Darkness, Words of Light is one of my favorite albums ever. This isn't as good but it's certainly better than anything they've put out since that 2004 masterpiece.

4. Evoken - Atra Mors (funeral doom metal)

Atra Mors may seem like a relatively safe album for such a veteran of the genre but whatever, it fucking owns. This album also holds the distinction of having my favorite album cover of the year.

3. Finsterforst - Rastlos (folk metal)

There's a lot of stuff going on here and it's really a testament to their musicianship that it doesn't all fall apart. Woodwinds, accordions, nature samples, brass, EVERYTHING. There's also a liberal dash of black metal that I really enjoyed.

2. Cattle Decapitation - Monolith of Inhumanity (death metal/grindcore)

I never really dug any of Cattle Decapitation's other stuff. The Harvest Floor was getting closer to something I'd really like but something was missing. This isn't missing anything. An addicting vocal diversity, crushing riffs and some of the best drumming I heard this year all combine to make a death metal masterpiece. If you like death metal at all, listen to this.

1. Bastard Sapling - Dragged From Our Restless Trance (black metal)

Hey, look at me, I picked an obscure BM album to be my AotY, aren't I cool?

There you have it. 2012 was fucking awesome, getting this down to 10 was difficult. I was going to add pictures to lessen the wall of text effect but when I tried to do this last week the pictures kept breaking the formatting, it was annoying. Feel free to share your favorites. Happy new year and shit.

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Sorry for being late this week, my internet was down for a couple days and some other stuff (DotA 2) got in the way of me watching a movie. But I watched a movie last night so here we are.

That movie was Night of the Creeps. trailer

It's about some alien stuff that gets to Earth in the 50s. The Government presumably intervenes and keeps a person infected by the alien thing in stasis until a couple decades later two kids unleash it. Oops. The aliens are like these little slugs that squirm around and try to get into your mouth and turn you into a zombie until they fully multiply - at which point they burst out of you. Pretty devious.

I liked it. It's got some tone issues. It's generally light hearted fun but there's some weird stuff with the cop's background and some character development that's gets a little grimly serious. I don't really know how to categorize it. It's got some campy fun like Return of the Living Dead and it has more serious moments like Night of the Living Dead. There's also a weird thing where all of the main characters are named after Horror icons(Well, minus Cameron, I guess.). There's a Romero, a Cronenberg, a Raimi and a Carpenter/Hooper crossbreed. Also, the University is named "Corman University" - an obvious reference to the king of B movies, Roger Corman. I don't know how I feel about it.

The actors are fine. The ever-reliable Tom Atkins (Halloween 3, The Fog) plays a cop with a dark past who has a penchant for drinking whiskey and smoking. He's the stand out. The rest are alright if a little stiff at times.

I give it 3 cats that scare you because you think there's a zombie outside your door, out of 5. Some decent action towards the end and the effects are pretty nice. Watch it. Or don't, what do I care?

Hello again, gentlemen and ladies, it's time for another horror movie. This week's movie isn't exactly scary but it does spoof some horror cliches in a fun way so I dunno. I didn't have much time to watch movies this week and this was all I watched so deal with it.

The movie was Tucker and Dale vs Evil. No trailer this week since the ones I found gave too much away.

I'm torn. The first half is amazing. The second half kinda crawls up its own ass and by the end it starts using some old horror movie cliches. It's hard to talk specifically. They spoof bad horror movies, basically. And by bad I mean formulaic. In the first 5 minutes I was strapping in for a piece of shit movie with piss poor characters, ABC plot structure and shoddy acting. It's not that at all. It has some decent laughs, nice characters and a little bit of heart. My favorite character is Tucker, played by Firefly alumni Alan Tudyk(the pilot). He's an unpretentious countryman who likes to fish, drink beer and hang out with his buddy. What's not to like? The whole cast is decent with some minor exceptions. I didn't care for the female lead much. Small complaint.

Like I said, I'm torn. I really like the first half but the second isn't quite up to that standard. One day it might be 3 and others it might be 4. It depends on which half I remember first. Today I'm thinking about how much I like the first half, so here it is:

4 hillbilly psychopaths out of 5. Check it out for some good laughs. It's especially good if you've seen a decent amount of slasher films. Enjoy!

Here we are again, boys and girls. Time to turn out the lights, turn up the volume and GET NAKED...or, at the very least, watch this movie.

The movie in question is Eden Lake. trailer

A young couple go camping at a beach. They meet a gang of young punks that play their rap music too loud, smoke and swear. Eventually things get out of hand and the couple are in mortal danger.

It's pretty good. It's a little weird how terrible things get after one accident. Shit goes from bad to worse to fucked up to what the shit is going on. It's an extremely grim movie, I felt like shit after it was over. Good acting, directing. I liked it. Check it out if you can stomach depressing horror movies. It might actually be too much for some people.

I give it 4 cars that won't start out of 5.

Side note: I watched Hunger Games yesterday. I thought that movie was supposed to be good? The only bright spot was the lead actress. She's good. The rest was blehhh.

With Screened in the shitter, I figured that this would be the best place to do this. I love horror movies, especially obscure ones. Each Tuesday I'll tell you about one and maybe you'll give it a watch. I'm completely open to suggestions too if you have a favorite you'd like me to watch. Also, if you'd like pictures to go alone with these, let me know. I lent my friend the DVD yesterday so I couldn't add pictures for this one but it's something I can do for future movies. As for the write-up, I'm lazy. All anyone looks at is the score anyway.

I watched The Gate. trailer

2 kids screw around with a hole in the back yard and accidentally summon ancient demons to take over the world. Their only help lies in a rare metal album. That's pretty much it. Pretty rad, right?

Going in I expected some cheesy monsters and passable acting/story. I got a little more. The actors do a decent job, I think. I was especially fond of the geeky character Terry. The monsters are indeed cheesy and some of them are stop motion. The effects hold up fairly well I think. There's a cool sequence where a zombie comes out of the wall, gets whacked in the head, falls over and separates into a bunch of small, stop motion creatures. It's neat. It's a kiddie horror movie in the vein of The Monster Squad so the scares aren't quite there but there's a surprising amount of gore. It's probably a little intense for youngins in parts but I suppose that would depend on the youngin.

I give it 4 faulty staircases out of 5. Check it out.

I use Vista and have a wireless connection. Thrilling. But what wasn't so thrilling was the lag I was getting when I would play any game online. Every 20-60 seconds, I would get like a 1-3 second hitch, causing my connection to basically stop working. In TF2, for example, my dude would stop running and that red text would come up in the top right saying there was something wrong with my internets. I just thought that it had something to do my hardware(router, adapter etc) BUT what is really wrong is something with Vista itself! Apparently Vista(and apparently XP too but I wouldn't know) automatically searches for available wireless access points every minute or so. This causes the current connection to freeze, thereby causing many holes in my wall. One day I was just so tired of it and dove into the internet to see what I could find. I found this lovely program called "Vista Anti-Lag". Apart from being aptly named, it does the job oh so well. Just install this gem and press the little "activate VAL" button. You can then game in blissful serenity. I hope I can save at least one person's trouble(and wall) with this post!

Edit: Here's a link http://www.codecase.de/en/software/downloads/vista-anti-lag