Terminus Episode 54 - Maggot Crown, Ascète, Roundtable with Nick of Hessian Firm

2021-06-02

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Through sheer grit, a little luck, and an obsessive devotion to the principles of Sword Boy Summer, Terminus has reached a hefty milestone: an entire year engaged in podcast-based guerilla warfare on metal journalism. We weren't sure where this would lead in our younger, more tender years (y'know, in summer 2020)- most podcasts barely survive their first seven episodes- but one year later, we're still standing proud, tall, and unnervingly nude, determined to strike forward into yet another year with more ferocity than...

And what better way to celebrate our achievement than to bring on our very first guest host. Nick of label Hessian Firm joins us today, a longtime supporter of the podcast who assists in reviews of two new records before participating in metal's longest and most enduring tradition: drinking whiskey and talking about which bands are posers.

Maggot Crown's debut full-length is first on the crime scene with a draconian assault of churning, vicious deathgrind which most often resembles war metal. Previously featured artist Jared Moran (Evaporated Sores) is the mastermind behind this project, and he brings his idiosyncratic rhythmic ideas and gnarly sense of sandpaper timbre to bear in what may be one of his best works yet. Oldschool AND savagely technical? It's more likely than you think.

After that we sail to Nick's homeland of France where he contributes heavily to both musical and linguistic understandings of Ascète's new record. Continuing on a thread of ruralist French black metal we've been following recently through records by Hanternoz and Autarcie, the band pushes the style's drunken and wandering moods even further through brilliant guitar textures and true Full Band Playing.

The back half of this episode, though, is a more relaxed one. After a surprise premier of a track from the upcoming Polemicist record (out soon on Hessian Firm,) our regular hosts and Nick spend a chill summer afternoon wandering from topic to topic, many of which will be familiar to our longtime listeners: the primacy of French black metal, nostalgic nu-metal jamz, and arguments over In the Nightside Eclipse. It is at once every conversation you've ever had with your bandmates and a whole new frontier for the show. The Black Metal Guy even gets to play Integrity, thus dooming us to another thousand years of winter.

Thanks for listening, Terminators. This is merely the first of many years to come.

0:00 - Intro

0:06:22 - Maggot Crown - Cryptic Immoral Secure (Vargheist Records)

0:49:16 - Ascète - Calamites & les Calamités (Antiq)

1:38:59 - TRACK PREMEIRE - Polemicist - "The Way to Delphi," fr. Return of the Sophist (Hessian Firm)

1:43:14 - Roundtable with Nick of Hessian Firm Pt. 1

2:25:26 - Interlude - Integrity - "Trapped Under Silence," fr. Humanity is the Devil (Victory Records, 1996)

2:28:34 - Roundtable with Nick of Hessian Firm Pt. 2

2:55:29 - Outro - Babylon Whores - "Sol Niger," fr. King Fear (Necropolis Records, 1999)

Terminus links:

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