Just the sight of that immediately recognizable underlined, lower case 'd' logo sends shivers up our spine. Some of you already know exactly what we're talking about, and just reading this far has probably got you all in a tizzy as well. For those of you who are new to the lower case 'd', prepare yourself for diSEMBOWELMENT!! Even the name, replete with mandatory case change, conjures up all sorts of bleak lifeforce snuffing, soul crushing sensations, at least for fans of mysterious otherworldly doom and bizarre slow motion grind!!
diSEMBOWELMENT were but a brief flash in the underground doom metal scene, existing for a scant three years in the early nineties, but in that time, they recorded one of the all time classic HEAVY records ever, Transcendence Into The Peripheral. A mind blowing record that somehow melded extreme brutality with delicate beauty, a record that totally changed the way some of us listened to heavy music. Referring to the music of diSEMBOWELMENT as doom might give folks the wrong impression. This is not regular old doom like Black Sabbath or My Dying Bride, it's not even funereal doom like Skepticism or Esoteric, although it definitely spends most of its time a lot closer to the slow motion sludge end of the spectrum. diSEMBOWELMENT most definitely inhabit their own unique sonic space. It's slow, sure, but not always, bursts of pounding blast beats will erupt from a bleak tranquil soundscape, gutteral inhuman grunts, machine like percussion, buzzing riffs, all intertwined into a blazing near-death metal onslaught, but it's not long before big reverb drenched guitar melodies begin to fall like some sort of black rain, the metallic pummel sort of stumbling to a seasick lumber, turning the whole thing into a creepy crawl, lurching, plodding, downtuned guitars and spare, simple rhythms, a crushing slow motion dirge, with haunting atonal clean guitar parts and moaning melodies. And even during these vast expanses of atmospheric tranquility, you can never rule out sudden blast beat, or a throat shredding vocal part, or a sudden crushing riff. The magic of diSEMBOWELMENT though is that somehow the metallic crush and the melancholic ambience are perfectly balanced. The whole thing is a dark and depressive, minor key and mournful masterpiece. But it's all so fucking heavy! Even the not-so-heavy parts manage to sound completely massive and totally crushing! So intense and emotional and just absolutely beautiful. Yep, beautiful. Lovely even. Like few records we can remember, and certainly one of the only records this heavy and brutal that manages to be absolutely beautiful. Sonically it's a bit like Napalm Death's Scum, and Carcass's Reek of Putrifaction, that classic Earache sound, a bit lo-fi, lots of reverb, big drums, buzzing guitars, all boiled down into a viscous blackened sludge, sprinkled throughout with brief melodic flares and occasional glistening guitars, like rays of sunlight just barely penetrating the suffocating atmosphere of thick low hanging riffs and bleak, brutal ambience.
Disc one contains all of Transcendence Into the Peripheral, and hell, we would have been happy with just that, a long overdue reissue of one of our all time favorite discs. But disc two contains the quite rare Dusk ep, as well as a rare compilation track and the five track Mourning September demo, all of it suitably genius! And, for a very limited time, we have managed to get a hold of the "mailorder only" version of this diSEMBOWELMENT reissue (limited to 1000 copies worldwide) that comes with a whole extra, third, disc! Disc three contains an unreleased version of "The Spirit Of The Tall Hills" (from Transcendence Into the Peripheral), as well as rehearsal versions of The Spirit Of The Tall Hills and Your Prophetic Throne Of Ivory (also from Transcendence Into the Peripheral). These versions are a lot weirder than the album versions, faster, with way more deranged and damaged vocals! Also includes a Necrovore (who we'd never heard of) cover, a murky, fuzzy, droned-out thrash workout! Wow.
Obviously totally and completely essential. Like we mentioned before, the three disc version is super limited so we're not sure how long we'll have those. Packaged in an oversized 3cd jewel case, with a booklet of photos and liner notes, including lyrics and a history of the band from drummer Paul Mazziotta. When the 3cd version is gone we will have the 2cd version, which is cheaper and comes packaged in an embossed double digipak.
The band name starts with the prefix DIS, which is your first hint that you best prepare yourself for some serious D-beat pummel. Featuring at least one member of UK black doom heavies Ghast, Disfortune offer up seven songs in a little over eight minutes, with at least two songs clocking in at less than 20 seconds, this is some seriously brootal, furious frantic grinding metallic crust, weirdly lo-fi too, the guitars buzzy and murky but way down in the mix on most of the tracks, crushing and blown out on the super short ones, the sound driven by the d-beat pound of the drums, and the raspy vokills, and of course there are plenty of samples, the sound metallic and crusty, and much beholden to Discharge (of course), Digust, Disfear, Disrupt, and all the other DIS bands, as well as Anti Cimex and Doom and well you get the drift. A short sharp blast of metallic punk heaviness, for fans of all of the above mentioned bands, as well as more recent d-beat practitioners like Acephalix, Bone Awl, Malveillance, etc...
These four Chicago ladies play garagey, rockin, catchy punk. Stooges-esqe with a snotty girl sneer. The guitars are beefy and tough. The production is clean, which gives it more of a rock feel, than lo-fi live garageness. 14 songs in 30 minutes. Wow. This is their second record. They are touring a ton and playing with a lot of girl bands throughout the country. Keep your eyes open for em'.
Let's get one thing straight, the Dishes are three gals and one guy from Chicago who'll end their trashy rock'n'roll songs when they damn well feel like it, thank you very much! As you might've guessed from the title, this is their third album and it all kicks off with the nine and a half minute "Something To Tell You" which howls with guitar feedback and barrels along relentlessly for really quite some time after the vocals stop telling you... uh, something. They're no doubt pretty rad live, but in lieu of having them trash your basement, the File 13 label have kindly captured their energy well on record. While they're certainly not doing anything you haven't heard before, they do sound like a good sweaty time! If brash garage rawk loaded with sneering female vocals and super crunchy guitars is your thing, don't miss The Dishes live or on record.
Another of the uncommonly sumptuous array of releases from the young music label Dynamophone. As we mentioned earlier in the review of labelmates Balustrade Ensemble, they've only been around since mid-2006, but already have a bountiful catalog with many more on the way. Particularly if you've been enjoying the recent aquatic drone releases on the Mystery Sea label, you might wish to check out the seemingly likeminded, but more melodically inclined Dynamophone artists. An absolute treasure trove of shimmering and dewy listening delights. Delve in immediately (also see: Balustrade Ensemble, Halou, Po, Pornopop, A Lily, Curium, and R/R Coseboom)!
Disinterested is primarily the work of one man, guitarist Matt Brown. Don't let his moniker dissuade you though. Behind Us is his second full length (and his first for this label), and an engagingly soothing listen it is. It's an album of grey skies, the anticipation of a thunderstorm. Very weighted with solemnest of moods, but not heavyhanded, these eleven post-rock instrumentals accumulate atmospheric layers of shuffling drumbeats and droning blankets of effected guitars and loops (some by Bill Frisell, by the way!). Breathy female vocals appear briefly in one track Felt (Leaves). Austere and beautiful.
You like your metal raging and misanthropic? Probably you do. After all, mellow, have-a-nice-day metal just isn't that popular, we've noticed. Well this second album from up n'coming Moonfog act Disiplin sure as heck ain't filled with a lot of love for their fellow man! Instead these Norwegians are full up with aggression and negativity. A powerful production here showcases Disiplin's violent blend of black and death and thrash metal brutality...thrash blackened thrash! But very modern and mechanized mayhem this is, and unrelenting. Maybe a song will start swith a sample, and/or a few moments of atmospheric string-scrape...however it's not long before you (or the inner demons you intend to exorcise with this particular listening regime) are being trampled by vicious riffage, blasting drums, and the throat-scorching bile-spew of the vocalist. For fans of more recent Satyricon, Myrkskog, Grimfist, Zyklon, etc. Includes bonus video clip for the title track.
It's almost enough for us just to say "new on Moonfog", isn't it? That label, run by Satyr of Satyricon, has definitely become synonymous with quality Norwegian black metal, bringing us both experimental stuff like Dodheimsgard/DHG and the current work of pioneers Darkthrone, with the likes of Thorns and Satyricon themselves bridging the old and new schools. So any new release on Moonfog is certainly worthy of our -- and your -- attention. Disiplin don't fail to meet our expectations. Fierce and raging yet, well, disciplined, Disiplin play black metal heavily infused with the energy and chops of thrash and death metal. Classy and kick-ass. But with just enough strange ambient/industrial/folky weirdness to keep things interesting. This is the band's first release, with guitarist/bassist "General K" having served time in Myrkskog. Guests include ex-Emperors Bard Faust and Zamoth. Folks in desperate need of a Satyricon fix will find everything they've been hankering for on Disiplin's crushing debut.
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UK import. "For some people, stacking boxes into crates is a career; working their way up from stacking boxes to watch other people stacking them. Not all boxes are square, though most are."
Disjecta is the electronic alter-ego of Mark Clifford, who is best known as the glide guitar sculptor from Seefeel back in the early '90s. As Disjecta he has attempted to bridge the gap between the dreamy, electronically tinged shoegazerism of Seefeel and the emotionally sympathetic sounds of IDM electronica. On this short EP which marks his first recordings in five or six years, Clifford dabbles in similar procedures as Stefan Mathieu and Oval by enshrouding samples of organ and guitar in the finely crushed mist of Max/MSP pixellation. In augmenting many of these sounds with cascades of delay patterns, the resulting abstractions come across as rougher mixes of Keith Fullerton Whitman's epic Playthroughs album. Pretty nice, if no Clean Pit & Lid.
Not an actual orchestra, but yet another creative persona for Mr. Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart, Atom�, Senor Coconut, et al.). Plunderphonics are alive and kicking shins as Disk Orchestra takes absolutely anything in its path and renders them completely
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From Shiggerfraggar and Invisibl Skratch Piklz fame! Currently DJing for Primus, MCM and the Monster and GR2, Disk has finally released his solo debut album on the friendly Bomb label, based in Noe Valley believe it or not. This is not nearly as hyper as the Mixmaster Mike record, preferring mellow and subtle trickery that just begs for a club DJ to mess with.
Eww.
Wow, what a change of direction for this long underrated electronic music maker. While past outings by Diskjokke were great examples of left-field beat driven techno, this outing finds Diskjokke exploring totally different territory. Commissioned by Norway's Oye's Festival, he packed his bags and headed to Indonesia to collaborate with Gamalan musicians and make not only the most ambitious record of his career, but his most satisfying and rewarding.
It would have been more expected and easy for Diskjokke to use the more rhythmic and percussive elements of Gamelan to make electro-dance-gamelan jams. But he didn't go the expected route, instead he flipped his entire music making past upside down, trading beats for drones and dance floors for bliss out sessions. There is a patience, subtly and warmth in these sounds that has made it one of our favorite languid explorations of the year. Such an awesome surprise!
Active, uptempo instrumental electronica action outta Sweden on the Smalltown Supersound label (home to the likes of Hans-Peter Lindstrom and Bjorn Torske). It starts off with some pretty piano, but soon breaks into the bouncy, percolating danceparty stuff. Diskjokke mixes it up nicely, never getting too stuck in one set of sounds... "The Dinner That Never Happened" could be a chill-out echo of the Star Wars Death Star music, while elsewhere some possibly African drumming gets mixed in with the squelchin' distorted beats. The disc also takes some purely atmospheric detours as well.
Geographically, they're from the land of skweee, and Diskjokke have some of that funky skweee playfulness, but this is not quite skweee, being more techno, but close.
We must have mentioned before that we're suckers for electric pink on an album cover. Dunno why, it's just a thing with us. Especially when it's a METAL album. How did Boris know? And now Diskord. The shocking pink hues on the cover of this album are part of a garish, trippy painting that's deliberately indicative of the unusual, lysergic-sounding technical death metal these Norwegian guys play. Spaced out, definitely Voivod influenced, grinding weirdness... they're an alien metal machine with lots of cold, sharp edges and many moving parts. And though they're crazy technical and blasting a lot of the time, let's not forget the album is aptly titled Doomscapes, which means they can break it down from the hyperactive heaviness to sheer crushing slabs of sludge, and ooze ambient atmospheric interludes too. Definitely for fans of fellow demented deathsters like Cephalic Carnage and Canvas Solaris, and older bands running the extreme death metal spectrum from Autopsy to Pestilence to Disharmonic Orchestra...
Basically, these guys just dropped the "L" at the end to come up with their name. Using the same method, they could have also called themselves "Bruta", but "Disma" fits better with this sort of slow, sick, sludgey death metal, done in the ancient way by those who know it well, as New Jersey's dirgey, downtuned Disma includes in their (rank) ranks none other than Craig Pillard, former throat for '90s doomdeath legends Incantation! Seeing as how Incantation has been getting a lot of love in the death metal underground lately, we expect lots of peeps to freak out over Disma, we know we were chuffed. And yeah, folks who like fellow Profound Lore low-end miasmic metallers Vasaeleth, or recent releases by such bands as Encoffination and Vastum, should definitely bow down to the insalubrious onslaught that is Disma. Their chugging crunching crushing metal of death (often in slow motion) also brings the weird with it, song structures that nail your coffin shut with sudden herks and jerks of their spiraling buzzing guitars, then pave over the gravesite with oozing ambient fuzz... the funeral eulogy delivered via Pillard's guttural vokills, intoning lyrics evocative of crypts and chasms, abyssal deeps and ancient aeons. Hellishly hypnotic stuff, well worthy of Incantation's legacy. Disma also features members of Funebrarum, another current cult DM band keeping the old school sounds alive (or should we say, undead!).
This Austrian band's earlier records on Napalm *were* truly dismal--and this (their last for the label, before being picked up by the giant Nuclear Blast conglom) may also be tough to stomach, but they're doing the combination of black metal, operatic female vocals and classical passages better than before and I'm sure somebody out there will thrill to the ludicrous bizarreness of it all.
Best of!
I dunno, I'm sitting here slowly and pleasantly realizing anew how completely and totally brilliant The Dismemberment Plan is. All the sonic elements combine so well into a singular style, immediately recognizable, always compelling and completely
Disorder is the collaboration between AQ-fave German electronica artist Panacea and his friend/alter-ego? Problem Child. More mutated drum and bass. Super distorted and noisey, just how you like it.
After a couple years of seeming hibernation (or incubation?), IDM and Drum'n'Bass appear to be flourishing again with a whole bunch of new artists.
Take for instance last week's aQ pick of the week Boxcutter (who blend IDM with dubstep) and this album from the Bay Area's Disparition. These folks are crafting some dark and heady electronic music. We're curious if mainman Jon Bernstein's decision to name his debut Permutations was inspired by the likes of Praxis and Amon Tobin -- the former (aka Bill Laswell with Buckethead) have an album by the same title, and the latter released an album titled Permutation back in 1998. Another rather appropriate point of reference might be Twilight Circus Dub Soundsystem, but considerably less densely packed and more vaporous. Cool.
Troo Cvlt types everywhere have been waiting for this, the second "demo" tape from heralded Bay Area black metal / doom artists Dispirit, the band featuring guitarist/vocalist John Gossard, previously of Asunder, The Gault, and most crucially, USBM legends WEAKLING.
The joke around here has always been, Question: Hey, have you seen Dispirit play live? Answer: Yes, well, no, not really - since you usual can't actually SEE them through all the fog they use on stage, putting even SUNNO))) to shame in fog machine abuse. They've got those suckers cranked to 11. And guess what? Their music SOUNDS foggy too.
Once again recorded live at "Oboroten" (presumably, their practice space), here's three more long lo-fi excursions into Dispirit's hazy, obscured world of blackened, doomy, slowcore infused metal. Endless depressive trudge, utterly lugubrious lumbering plodding, with Gossard's anguished vocals (excuse us, vokills) a blown-out despairing howl barely rising above the din... And boy is it mesmeric.
But then a strange thing happens. When you think you have 'em pegged, the shit gets much more metal and gallopy, the vocals more aggro, the riffs sharper, and even squiggly leads emerge (though still cutting through a dense miasmatic murk). Dispirit know how to rip, in their own way, it turns out. Whew! We're even hearing some Sabbath in there.
Side B is back to the slow, sludge trudge, with Dispirits exhalations of doom pretty soon lulling the listener into a trancelike state, the music drifting off on textural, suicidally shoegazy waves of sound, ominous and... oh wait, it's the first song again, turns out "the program is repeated on side B." Aha.
Also not sure what's up with the numbers as the tape title, oh maybe it's the date this was recorded. And the three song titles are given in a tiny, gothic blackletter font that's super hard to read (kinda like on the Weakling cd). Maybe the first song is called "All Baths End The Same"? Or probably it's "Paths" but we like "Baths". Which would go with song two, "Beneath The Waves", pretty sure we got that one right. Then there's "The Drinker" or "The Drifter" or "The Drinser"?? As you can see this music has muddled our minds.
We probably don't even need to bother with a review for this one if we start out with this detail: Dispirit is the latest project from John Gossard, best known as the mastermind behind SF black metal legends Weakling as well as gothed out metallers the Gault and doom merchants Asunder. But that wouldn't be giving something as awesome as this the respect it deserves, because this shit SLAYS. That part probably isn't too much of a surprise. What IS a surprise is how Dispirit can crank out a rehearsal tape that shames pretty much any other black metal band out there today. The lo-fi recording actually works perfectly in establishing an atmosphere that is, yes, grim, but also just HUGE and cavernous sounding, not to mention just plain eerie. The end results are the perfect soundtrack to dying in a mud pit in some war torn hell hole with flames all around. Or a score for the end of the world, civilization crumbling, the world as we know it descending into the pits of hell. We can only wonder what the future holds when this band sets out to make a record proper. No doubt the reason for this cassette's success is the fact that these guys can tear shit up like no one's business. Their use of mournful, heavily sustained guitars will certainly appeal to fans of Weakling, while the plodding doominess that leads these two songs to their furious, blast ridden midsections and majestic outros shows the link to Asunder. In a world where there is simply too much black metal, it's bands like this that make you realize why you became obsessed in the first place. Gossard possesses the perfect black metal vocal style, a terrifying banshee shriek that refuses to be buried beneath the equally impressive relentless instrumentation and blitzkrieg drumming. While retaining the essence of black metal, Dispirit also remain unique and true to themselves with a style of black metal that is distinctly American. Unbelievable stuff.
What's not to love about this debut from Disrupt (not to be confused with the metal Disrupt) aka Jan Gleichmar, a dizzying mix of early reggae dancehall, low slung dubstep, haunting cinematic moodiness and lots of 8bit Atari and Casio sounds? Nothing is the obvious answer.
On the surface, Foundation Bit is just another killer slab of electronic dub, with snares reverbed to infinity, the guitars wound tight, the rhythm loping and laid back, but closer listening reveals all sorts of strange stuff going on. The opening track, "Tubby Rom Module", is rife with ominous low end swells, mysterious minor key melodies, and subtle slivers of epic dramatic ambience. "Blast You To Bits" is peppered with Atari (or maybe Commodre 64) bleeps and bloops, snippets of computer nerd dialogue (from Tron!), "The Stars My Destination" is a dark laid back dubbed out joint, with the snares ricocheting all over the place and everything doused in alien effects. The closer, "Selassi / Continually" is a slithery groove, with fuzzy organs, and a thick guitar refrain wrapped in FX and stretched out over stuttering snares, and a classic loping reggae rhythm and some unexpected robot vocals.
The weirdness is subtle, but definitely omnipresent, same with all the lo-fi 8bit filigree, which only serves to make Foundation Bit just a cool, weird, enthralling dub record and keeping it from turning into something goofy and gimmicky. Subtle enough that dubheads will still dig, but just fucked enough to keep us listening... We dig A LOT!
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As we've no doubt mentioned in the past, we're not really all that into 'noise music', especially the ultra brutal white noise face melting Merzbowian sort of noise music. But when noise is used as a tool, or as an instrument, or when it's twisted into all sorts of strange shapes and atypical sounds, well, that's when we really get interested.� So when someone takes noise and blackens it, and turns it into some super intense grinding industrial doom metal juggernaut, we're pretty much completely sold.�
Such is the case with Awake In Hell from legendary Japanese outfit Dissecting Table, aka one man noise metal machine Ichiro Tsuji, who here has unleashed four loooooooooooong, slow motion, ultra distorted jams, huge bass heavy riffs that slither and crawl over a field of broken glass production and a mine field of pounding percussion. Everything is harsh and jagged, sheets of stinging feedback and walls of crumbling distortion, maybe there are guitars, even vocals, but they're pulled apart into their constituent atomic particles and sent careening like pinballs made from liquid nitrogen and Marshall amps melted down into some caustic black buzz. Occasionally, the blown out blasts abate, leaving weird muted throbs and skittering synthesized loops, but blink and they're gone, replaced by a snarling black doom behemoth, fangs bared ready to swallow you whole.�
Holy shit this stuff is intense, it's like grindcore by way of Japanoise by way of ultradoom. Or that lost Pitchshifter record recorded by Masami Akita, of Godflesh backing up Masonna, or... oh fuck it, you know what we're getting at. This is devastatingly ultra destructive, noise drenched, grinding industrial doooooooooooooooom that KILLS. And makes bands like Bunkur and Khanate sound downright tame by comparison.�
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered and housed in a mini dvd style clamshell case with full color cover. Only got a handful of these, not sure we'll be able to get more.....
New single from post-prison Dissection line-up. We'll reserve judgement for a full-length.
Here's the new, post-incarceration Dissection "comeback" album that we sorta dissed in our review of the Storm Of The Light's Bane reissue.
Long overdue, super deluxe double disc reissue of this long-time Aquarius favorite / black metal classic. After a not-so-great past few years for Dissection, including a lengthy jail sentence for frontman Jon Nodtveidt, and a recent disappointing 'comeback/reunion' record (not yet reviewed here), this black classic returns to remind us just how mindblowingly kick ass Dissection really were. And while of course this is a fave of all the metalheads around here, and our metal-lovin' customers, it's also loved by the less metal inclined -- for instance, former AQ staffer Byram, not normally a big metal consumer, ranks this as one of his favorites amongst the Nordic hordes. In fact, it's one of the few metal cds in his collection. It's that great. It came out originally in '94, reissued as a digipak a few years back, and now sees a super duper double disc re-release with a whole disc of bonus tracks (more on those later).
With Storm of the Light's Bane, Dissection perfected their melodic, blackened Swedish death metal approach -- that means TRUE, original metal, with elements of everything from Morbid Angel to Mayhem to Iron Maiden, suped-up and super-grim, with raspy vocals, wicked drumming (the guy is AMAZING), truly memorable, majestic melodies, and tons of cold winter atmosphere. They take long breaks to let their acoustic guitars gently weep, then tear back into the brutal, razor-edged rifferama. Serious stuff, seriously great. This was to be their last album, a mighty swan song, as Dissection called it quits soon after when their frontman ended up in jail as accessory to murder -- but their -very- tangential role in any of that over-sensationalized Scandinavian black metal true crime stuff has nothing to do with why you should be interested in this band. Like we said, the band reformed last year when Nodtveidt got out of jail, and just recently released a mediocre new record, but it couldn't hold a candle to Storm Of The Light's Bane, nor could most metal records actually. Dissection was a brilliant band, and Storm of the Light's Bane is an all time classic that belongs in every metal collection. If you haven't already gotten this album, here's your chance. And even if you already have one of the previous versions, the extra disc might make it a necessary repeat purchase.
The second disc is crammed with bonus tracks and unreleased material. First up, the Storm Of The Light's Bane unreleased alternative mix '95, which might have been for completist nerds only, but a closer look reveals an extra track not on the album proper. Then there's two tracks from an unreleased 1994 demo. And finally the Where Dead Angels Lie ep, also remastered. Lots of liner notes and packaged in a spiffy slipcover. SO RECOMMENDED!
Reissue of a long-time Aquarius favorite. Not just of AQ metalheads Andee and Allan, or our metal-lovin' customers, but others on the staff here too -- for instance, Byram, not normally a big metal consumer, ranks this as one of his favorites amongst the Nordic hordes. In fact, it's one of the few metal cds in his collection -- it's that good (he was a music student y'know). It came out originally in '94, and now sees a digipacified re-release with bonus tracks from their out of print Where Dead Angels Lie cdep. With Storm of the Light's Bane, Dissection perfected their melodic, blackened Swedish death metal approach -- that means TRUE, original metal, with elements of everything from Morbid Angel to Mayhem to Iron Maiden, suped-up and super-grim, with raspy vocals, wicked drumming (the guy is AMAZING), truly memorable, majestic melodies, and tons of cold winter atmosphere. They take long breaks to let their acoustic guitars gently weep, then tear back into the brutal, razor-edged rifferama. Serious stuff, seriously great. This was to be their last album, and Dissection is no more -- front man John Nodtveidt ended up in jail as accessory to murder -- but their tangential role in any of that over-sensationalized Scandinavian black metal true crime stuff has nothing to do with why you should be interested in this band. No, regardless of their unfortunate history, Dissection was a brilliant band, and Storm of the Light's Bane is a classic that belongs in every metal collection. If you haven't already gotten this album, here's your chance.
2nd edition, re-designed digipak with new artwork for this collection of early demos from the infamous Swedish melodic death/black metal band. With main composer/guitarist/vocalist Jon Nordviet recently thrown in jail for an alleged murder, this may be the last Dissection release for twenty or thirty years...
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The best Swedish death/black metal band's demos and rarities, cd format soon.
A reissue of these long-defunct Swedish black/death metallers' debut long-player, recorded in 1993 at Dan Swano's studio. It's melodic, with majestic riffs and folky acoustic interludes, but also quite fast, heavy and brutal. Here Dissection established their "blackened" style of Swedish Melodic Death Metal, a sound that they perfected on their next album, the classic Storm Of The Light's Bane. That's the one to get first, and then when you're hooked on 'em, you'll want this one as well. Why is Storm Of The Light's Bane better? It's just the subjective choice of the AQ-staff. Superior songs, we feel. But this is a fine effort too. (By the way, unlike the Nuke Blast reish of Storm, there's no bonus tracks to be found here.)
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And if the Cradle of Filth's coffin box doesn't sate your need for Black Metal packaging gimmickry, how about a *shaped* cd? (Some kind of upside-down cross.) This six-song ep collects rare compilation and Japan-only bonus tracks from this truly superior Swedish death/black majestic metal band, including, guess what, a Slayer cover.
Sometimes it's easy to see an aQ Record Of The Week staring you in the face before even hearing a note. Case in point, this here album. All the indicators were immediately present: it was put out by Omni, whose masterful grasp of obscure country music is equaled only by their masterful grasp of obscure electronic awesomeness; a vague but intriguing album cover with the words "Song Of The Second Moon: The Sonic Vibrations Of Tom Dissevelt / Kid Baltan"; and, a quick glance at the back cover with song titles like "Moon Maid", "Sonik Re-Entry", "Twilight Ozone", and "Night Train Blues", recorded between 1957-1961. So yeah, we were pretty much sold, but as we read on it was clear that this would be even more rad than we could have hoped for. Before getting started on this album itself, it helps to start with some historical background, so here goes:
Holland's Phillips Research Laboratories ("Natuurkundig Laboratorium") was founded in 1914 with the goal of furthering technological innovation. To make a long story short, they did just that, having invented the first artificial reverberation, modern loudspeaker design, early attempts at surround sound, the cassette tape, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, among many other things. All very nice and essential to the way music effects our lives, for sure. But damn if the creation of this album isn't the coolest thing on that long list of achievements, leading us to wonder how exactly something this amazing could have remained such a mystery - not a soul among us was even aware of its existence, despite being great enough for Stanley Kubrick to consider using it as the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey - ironic, as 2001 was the year Natuurkundig Laboratorium would go kaput. Perhaps not surprisingly given the way things often go Songs Of The Second Moon was a commercial failure, but we are thankful to have it presented here with the "rare" stereo mix, along with some outtakes and alternate versions.
The men responsible for this album, Tom Dissevelt and Dick Raaijmakers - aka Kid Baltan - were employed by the Natuurkundig Laboratorium to research acoustics, but eventually ventured into more exotic waters with some of the earliest synthesizer experiments. Using tone generators in addition to traditional instruments like a grand piano, the time consuming process of capturing and creating these strange and wondrous sounds was carried out over a period of about 3 years, during which time the composers experimented with tape loops (often for rhythmic purposes), delays, and filters to create something that went beyond just sound experimentation. Dissevelt himself had come to the job as a highly respected musician and arranger with an interest in Stockhausen's twelve-tone and serial compositions, while Raaijmakers is recognized as a pioneer in the field of electronic and tape based music. The greatest thing about the album is just how musical it is, with songcraft never taking a back seat to the all encompassing technological aspects of the project. Soundwise, things are on par with the majesty of Delia Derbyshire and other pioneers of BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, and anyone keeping up with recent reissues from Daphne Oram, F.C. Judd, and Bruce Haack (whose Electric Lucifer masterpiece was also rescued by Omni) will find plenty to obsess over. The 1950s idea of "The Future" is exactly what this sounds like, with adventurous electronic tones for the Cold War era. As such, there are the hints of the paranoia, tension, and fear that tend to accompany widespread technological innovation and a standoff between two trigger happy superpowers, with plenty of nightmarish melodies, electronic pulsing, and harrowing white noise. Of course, there are also moments that sound happy, fun, and quirky, like strange disembodied jazz music with heavy drones. This stuff could have (and probably did) inspire the electronic pop of Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley. The results are cinematic and elegant, while standing well on their own for a unique listening experience that STILL sounds light years ahead of us.
Kudos to Omni for introducing this lost classic to an unsuspecting but eternally grateful public. Record Of The Week indeed.
Roy Montgomery & Chris Heaphy.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've long been complaining about the dearth of "grime" in the States, so we were psyched to discover that the folks at Planet Mu decided to do something about it. They've been re-issuing UK grime releases for the states, but this latest batch of 12"s offers up some grime / jungle hybrids as well as their own twisted take on dubstep and grime. And it kills!
Distance is a big name in the dubstep/grime scene finally seeing some action stateside. This is weird and abstract, definitely dubstep but with heavy metal riffs, distorted beats spaced waaaaay out, ravey synth melodies, but mostly relentless and almost rocking. Sounds a bit like a grime Circle if you can imagine that. The flipside is even more minimal and stripped down, into a late night slow motion groove, so just begging for Virus Syndicate or Lady Sovereign to drop in and start flowing madly over the top.
