The Sabbathian – Ritual Rites (Svart)

Spenny

It is now a new decade, and the last time my Ave Noctum bio was updated, it was 2014. So much has changed since then, not least my time ravaged hulk having reached its half century. Vinyl has gone from being a thing of memory to a thing for the trendy and hip (but try going for a walk with that stereo in your pocket!), and tapes have gone from being a best forgotten “fragile”, in every sense of the word, memory, to the most kvlt of the kvlt and grimm offering! What has not changed, however, is my dedication to hard rock and heavy metal. Indeed, my formative years were saturated by the likes of Cream, Deep Purple, Queen, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Genesis, Yes, and their ilk, as well as healthy chunks of Motown on the turntable that was the pre-internet stereophonic centre for entertainment in my mother's 70's single parent household, and my first “concert of choice” (I exclude some I was taken to/performed in against my will) was Motörhead in 1984 in Manchester. However, after living through the heyday of thrash when the “Big Four” were young and hungry, I still revel in the new generations of musicians who rally against the written by committee and autotuned blandness of modern popular music. Every couple of years the popular press features articles about “the death of rock”, whilst lauding the latest autotuned flash in the pan act, and then does a volte face to promote a short lived NME bait guitar act, but the fact is that metal and hard rock lives, and indeed thrives, below the radar of popular consciousness, and I, like my fellow Ave Noctum scribes, revel in that world. So, keep reading, keep supporting the scene you love by buying the music, purchasing merch, and going to the shows, and here's to another decade of excellent music that sticks a stiffly raised middle finger in the direction of popular opinion.