Mainstream label music is almost entirely so awful that it drives me to despair to hear most popular music these days - let alone realize it is willingly consumed by anyone. Here I offer three bands that are both a complete "fuck you" to popular music in form and function, but tie into something deep within the American cultural dna that makes them something special:
1 Grave Pilgrim, The Bigotry of Purpose. Raw riffing rock, barked vocals meditating on American and European history (plus other stuff). Tagline: chivalric violence and hideous cruelty. Best rock album of 2023 in my opinion. Best song, Rhiannon's Wake.
Their prior EP Molten Hands Reach West was just as good.
2 Panopticon, ...And Again, into the Light. Bluegrass meets atmospheric black metal on a journey through American geographies, old style anarchist complaints and the trials of life. Austin Lunn, the one man genius behind Panopticon, definitely uses music to exorcise his inner daemons (come to Divine Liturgy my friend to really get them out...). I have a lot of time for this guy. My favorite parts are the gravelly bluegrass ones, like....
Special mention for Panopticon's Kentucky. My forebears were coal miners.
3 Pan-Amerikan Native Front, Little Turtle's War. Indigenous metal meditating on past battles in the bloody unfolding of the American nation. We probably can stop screwing over natives in this country now.
Also, their split Immortal Ceremonies: someone must have thought "go hard or go home" on that one.
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