Durf's Weekly Workout # 22: June 25th, 2021

It is getting hot here in Idaho.  Like real hot.  Like hot enough that my work is considering having us come in super early next week in order to avoid the 108 degree highs in the afternoon.  Which on the one hand, is real nice, because super fuck that noise.  On the other, going in to work early means either waking up even earlier to work out OR working out after work in that insane heat.  Which is just as appealing as working in it.  So I'm not sure how next week is going to go, so I'm using this week's intro blurb to prepare you for the fact that there might not be a post next week.  Got it?

Durf's Weekly Workout # 20: June 11th, 2021

Things are finally, slowly starting to open back up after fifteen months of pandemic (I know, it feels like fifteen years).  The Durfette and I went golfing with her dad and his girlfriend when they were in town, and then we went to a local restaurant, sat on the patio, and had a glass of wine.  I went into the coffee shop that I stop in after grocery shopping, and didn't wear a mask as I picked up my americano to go.  We had friends over - in person - for a barbecue.  Major league sports are operating with full crowds, which may not be the best example, because they would have done that all last year if local governments hadn't forced them to put safety above profit.  We still have a ways to go (and it would certainly help if everyone got on board), but for now things are certainly trending back toward normalcy.  And the icing on that long-delayed cake has been trickling out of the baker's bag for the past couple of weeks: real, in-person, honest to Dio concert announcements.

Durf's Weekly Workout # 18: May 21st, 2021

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I've been dealing with another Crohn's flare up recently.  I wrote about my Crohn's disease in more detail a few years ago, and since that post nothing and everything has changed regarding my disease and my approach to treating it.  However, after getting out of the hospital eight weeks ago, I felt like I wasn't quite healing as fast as I had in the past, despite a pretty high dose of prednisone (and also tramadol, which I felt was highly unnecessary, and didn't really take).  So I thought about it, and did some research, and kept thinking, and kept reading, and then took some pretty drastic steps, all in the name of health. 

Durf's Weekly Workout # 17: May 14th, 2021

Next week is the Durfette's last week of maternity leave.  Aside from being amazed that it's already been almost three months since The Durfling Strikes Back was born, this means that I'm going to have to stop being a deadbeat during the week and help out when he wakes up and needs to eat.  So far, I've been taking weekends to let the Durfette get some uninterrupted sleep then, and she's been doing the week so that I can get a good night's sleep before work, but now the schedule is being upended.  And you know what that means: It's time to change up my workout routine!

Russian Circles - Blood Year

At this point, there are certain things one would expect from a new Russian Circles album upon its release. The three-headed monster that is the the thick bass tone of Brian Cook, Mike Sullivan's crunchy guitar riffs, and the continued underrated brilliance of Dave Turncrantz's drumwork is a beast that has continued to stand the test of time. This tried and true formula, while evident throughout their career, has allowed the band plenty of room to move within its parameters. Each album has carved its own niche that stands alone to anything that came before or would come after. With the newest entry in their discography, Blood Year, the band takes a straightforward approach in terms of delivery; one that is more morosely heavy than blissful but still continues to push their sound in a logical (and welcome) direction.

Pelican - Nighttime Stories

Pelican was one of the first metal bands that I really got into.  Their instrumental post-metal was a pretty easy addition/transition from the post-hardcore bands like Thrice that I was listening to in high school, and their huge riffs and intense sonic landscapes were, ahem, instrumental in getting me into other types of metal as well.  2005's The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw is in my All-Time Top Ten, and each of their albums has had some kind of effect on me upon its release.  That said, 2007's City of Echoes is the last Pelican album I unequivocally love; 2009's What We All Come to Need and 2013's Forever Becoming certainly have incredible moments ("Ephemeral" and "The Creeper" from the former are easily two of the best songs the band has written).  So when word reached that the newest Pelican album, Nighttime Stories, would be released on June 7th, I was excited, but perhaps not as excited as I would have been a decade ago.  Was I just growing apart from one of my favorite bands, one of the bands who shaped my tastes in metal, performers of some of the best concerts I've ever attended?  Or has Pelican lost a step, losing whatever alchemy the band had in the first decade of the century and replacing it with something lesser?

Squalus - The Great Fish

Jaws is an incredible movie, with some of the most iconic shots and quotes in all of American cinematic history.  Robert Shaw's Quint is an All-Time Classic movie character, and I could watch his monologue about the U.S.S. Indianapolis daily for the rest of my life.  As far as nautically-themed stories go, Jaws is second to none, and while I beseech Hollywood not to remake it, the story itself is ripe for inspiration and interpretation.  Squalus, the new band made up of 80% of the dearly departed Giant Squid, seemingly agrees, as their debut album The Great Fish... sees the band apply their post-metal sludgery to the iconic story of Chief Brody, Hooper, and Quint, and the results more than live up to the sizable expectations built by the band's pedigree and source material.

The Great Old Ones - EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy

I've been hearing about EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy, the latest release from French black metal outfit The Great Old Ones, from other metal bloggers and fans for what seems like forever.  The hype around this album is real, and while I'd never heard of the band before catching an advance track for this album, I'm a sucker for hype when I know nothing about the band.  So I decided to check it out and see if the hype was justified, or just a bunch of noise.

Russian Circles - Guidance

Chicago native instrumental act Russian Circles has always demonstrated the rare, almost contradicting dynamic of keeping their musical output interesting while keeping their formula relatively simple. Behind the thick bass grooves of Brian Cook, the varied guitar stylings of Mike Sullivan, and the stupidly-tight drum work of Dave Turncrantz, the band has managed to keep each release equally unique while also maintaining a pleasant familiarity. Guidance is certainly no exception to this trend. By dichotomizing the volumetric peaks and valleys of their sound, Guidance serves as a prime example of how seamlessly the band can weave the ominous with the tranquil and everything else in-between on the emotional spectrum.

If These Trees Could Talk - The Bones of a Dying World

If you ask a dozen different people to define instrumental post-rock/metal and give you a band that best fits that definition, chances are you'll get some different answers.  From the heavy riffs of Pelican, to the proggier leanings of Scale the Summit, to the ambient/intense duality of Explosions in the Sky, to any other band you can think of, the post- genre seems to lend itself to a litany of sounds while defining none of them.  Personally, my baseline for post-metal is ISIS, so my baseline for instrumental post-metal is "take Aaron Turner's vocals away from ISIS, and go from there."  It's a fascinating genre that allows for quite a bit of experimentation, subverted expectations, and deviation from the norm (like all music should), and I think it's cool that so many different yet similar sounds can fit under one umbrella.  Now that you know how I feel about post-metal, let's talk about If These Trees Could Talk and their new album The Bones of a Dying World.  If These Trees Could Talk hail from Akron, OH, and have been around for a little over a decade.  They first crossed my radar when I heard some songs from their second album Red Forest, all of which I enjoyed.  The Bones of a Dying World comes at a perfect time, as post-metal has seen a lull in quality releases this year compared to years past and other genres.

Sarin - Burial Dream

It seems crazy to think about, but 2015 marks five years since Isis called it quits, leaving the metal world without one of its most important and influential bands.  Just as crazy to think about is that post-metal as a genre is doing at least as well now as it was when the world lost Isis.  Part of that is due to the members of the band pursuing other projects with the same insane level of talent they brought to Isis; another is a new wave of post-metal bands following in Isis' wake.  Pelican continues to defy expectations and improve on every album they release, and I've written before about my love for Cold Blue Mountain and their phenomenal 2014 album Old Blood.  Now another disciple has stepped forward to spread the good word, in the form of Brampton, Ontario's Sarin, and their new album Burial Dream.