If you’re on board with old-school heavy fucking metal with soaring vocals, Stygian Mind is your band. One of the main men of the group is Shane Fuegel, an old bandmate of mine and interview subject more than once in Disposable Underground. He’s grown some whiskers in the D.C.-area underground music scene in bands like Bionicman, Biovore, and Deceased, and Stygian Mind is his latest.
Stygian Mind’s singer Joe Silver* often employs glass-shattering heavy metal vocals, but he shows his range three songs into The Fear Machine with “Built to Fail.” He shines on the record, in particular on “Iconoclast.”
Given there’s two guitar players from the death metal band Deceased in Stygian Mind (Matt Ibach is in the live lineup, but he also shreds in Nuclear Tomb), it’s no surprise to me that Deceased’s mid- to late-period heavy metal touches are an influence here. There’s other pieces of Stygian Mind’s riff makeup too, like Maiden, Priest, and probably other bands that are too obscure or old school for me to pick out. Along with the vocals, guitar heroics take center stage on The Fear Machine. As is the case with different groups that I listen to, I wouldn’t last five minutes as a guitar player in this band. My strengths are power chords and crunching, but just doing that doesn’t cut it in Stygian Mind; these guys employ high-level, heavy-metal melody and harmony.
There’s an element of rawness to the record: it sounds to me like the band could have polished a couple or few things in the studio and chose to leave them in. That’s another piece of the album that is part of the whole. And the album kicks all the butts that need to be kicked.
Now, I’m not a traditional heavy metal freak—I love Maiden, Priest, King Diamond, Metal Church, and all the rest of it as much as the next proper metal fan, but my tastes don’t run deep into the genre and I don’t follow the heavy metal revival that’s been going on. Still, I appreciate what these guys are doing and I actually like the band better now after hearing The Fear Machine than I did after seeing them live more than once. And I think you’ll like Stygian Mind too.
Where to Get the Record
The Fear Machine is out now on CD, cassette, and digital from Settle For It Records and Old Metal Records. Pick it up!
Further Reading
I’ve interviewed Shane for his old band Biovore and his other band Deceased.
Photos: MD/PR
*In another connection, who also crafted the artwork for one of the records of my band.
