[ aquarius records catalogue

DRIZZOLETTOLove For You(Bluzoid Records)lp$ 14.98

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Droids is the '70s French space disco project of Fabrice Cuitade, former Barclay Records employee and founder of their Egg imprint - which released the likes of Vangelis, Conrad Schnitzler, and Heldon, among others. The back of this disc claims Droids to be "the Daft Punk of the 70's," but even a quick listen will prove that claim reductive. Neither will the typical Giorgio Moroder comparison suffice. So the story goes that Cuitade saw Star Wars for the first time, and then decided to make his own musical interpretation. As we first listened to the album, we heard something much more nuanced than some sort of filtered French House prototype. Maybe if you picture Battiato partying in the studio with Patrick Cowley then you're getting close. That's right. This is nothing short of some seriously progged-out space disco. But whereas many artists in that arena seem to be cold, calculated, and sterile, Star Peace is an album that manages to hold on to the funk that disco originated with. Cuitade even foreshadows the piano stab-driven funky house of Chicago's Traxx label, while hinting at the celestial impulses of Italian cosmic-groover Daniele Baldelli. Fans of disco, prog, new wave, house, or anything electronic, arpeggiated, or dancey will positively need this. Essential. (Note: includes a track you might have heard already on the now sadly out of print compilation So Young But So Cold that we love love loved...)

MPEG stream: Do You Have the Force (Part 1)
MPEG stream: Renaissance De L'Amour

Another blast of un-blackness from the E.E.E. camp, the home to some of the most amazing un-black metal we've ever heard. What the heck is unblack metal you ask? In a nutshell, well, it's Christian black metal. And any avid readers of the AQ list will remember us raving about pretty much everything we've heard: Light Shall Previal, Agathothodion, Glaciial and this here band, Drommer. Unlike the buzzing black hordes these guys call labelmates, Drommer is A. not buzzy, and B. not religious. So what we have is some serious secular black ambience. Or maybe still un-black ambience. Drommer unfurl two epic slabs of spaced out shimmer. The first is a gorgeously layered drone, lots of high end draped over deep resonant whirs, the sounds beating against each other like all the best minimal drone music, creating all manner of subtle tonal variations and gorgeous abstract overtones. Sixteen minutes, simple tones stretched all the way out, all the action and the color and the musical movement comes from the interaction between the various tones, subtle, but utterly hypnotic. The second track, is more in the dark ambient vein, a nearly 30 minute trawl through some haunting mysterious landscapes. There's some definite Lustmord action going on, which is always a good thing, but where Lustmord is abject and utterly desolate, Drommer lace their dour drones with shimmers of glistening melody and stray beams of sunlight. But even with these brief glimpses of blue sky, for the most part, it's a gorgeous black cloud of sound, chimes are muted and spread into dreamy blurs and laid over a sluggishly flowing stream of mumbled murk and dark dolorous glimmer. As with all E.E.E. stuff, this is ultra limited, usually only 50 copies, so once these are gone, that may very well be it.

MPEG stream: Den Lovet Fremtidig Aeons Av Evig Sporsmal
MPEG stream: For Evig Er Enna Mournful For Det Noensinne Begynt

More from the unblack camp!! E.E.E. Recordings, the Christian black metal label that brought us some of the best (un)black metal of the last few years, Light Shall Prevail, Glaciial, Agathothodion, strike again, but this time displaying a whole new side and sound. This latest release is from a band called Drommer, who the label describe as "non-religious dark ambient", and their debut Channeling Natural Forces is a "soundtrack to nature", and indeed, there is plenty of rain, thunder and found sounds, all woven into thick, reverby soundscapes, slow burning, glimmering murky crawls, stretched out melodies, some huge grinding almost industrial drones, crumbling distortion, soaring keyboards, very dramatic and super epic, but fuzzy and buzzy and lo-fi at the same time. Makes it sound very intimate and organic. The opening track sets the tone, a slowly growing ambience bathed in strange digital distortion and reverb, making what might otherwise be simply a dreamy drone, more a bizarre textured buzzy pulse, a haunting swell, that is constantly shifting and shimmering, the various overtones creating minimal murky rhythms amidst the static buzz. These effects surface throughout the record, giving those tracks a very alien vibe, but managing to remain true to their purpose, reflecting the sounds around us, and creating dramatic sounds to accompany natural events. Most of the tracks sound like the music we hear in our heads when the sun finally breaks through the clouds after weeks of rain and black skies. Not happy so much as glowing and subtly effulgent. Other tracks let nature do the talking offering a simple minimal counterpoint to the sound of the surf, or dripping water, deep dramatic rumbles, raga like buzz, way in the background, while nature performs her particular brand of music making over the top. A few of the tracks get downright heavy, one when Drommers drones are all tangled up in the sounds of a torrential downpour, which ends up sounding like a natural Sunn 0))), the other, where the tones become sharp and intense, a buzzing high end skree wrapped in hiss and static that eventually crackles and flares wildly before blinking out. Pretty amazing. Definitely a unique angle on ambient music and a cool way of incorporating field recordings, almost like a black metal Jewelled Antler!!! As with everything E.E.E., way recommended. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Winds Of The Mountain Deep
MPEG stream: Returning To Liquid Form

Still more bizarre and amazing unblackness from one of our favorite new record labels, E.E.E. Recordings. The home of the cream of the UNblack metal crop. For those of you who have yet to discover unblackness, well, quite simply, it's christian black metal, which we know, seems like it would not compute, and for lots of folks it doesn't, since black metal is predicated on the message more than the music, but fuck it, some of the best black metal we've heard in the last few years has been from un-black bands. However, we almost don't need to have this discussion here since Drommer are not Christian, and are not really black metal. The are, according to the label 'non-religious dark ambient', but the music of Drommer is way to weird and varied to be summed up that simply. It most certainyl is dark, and ambient, at least sort of, hard to gauge the religious part as they are instrumental and ambient.� But dark ambient gives the impression of swooshiness and dreaminess and drifty droniness, but this, the third disc we've reviewed from Drommer is so much more.� Our favorite track might be "Shallow Water Residence", a swirling squall of crumbling white noise chopped and layered over moody mournful piano, the two elements constantly battling, it's quite intense and dramatic. But the rest of the record is just as unexpectedly amazing. The opener, "Oceans", is a long stretch of decayed drones, wavering and beating against one another, emitting sporadic rhythms, and coalescing occasionally into fragmented melodies, all very buzzed out and fuzzy, and with a constant tense minor key quality to it, almost like a Niblock piece recorded onto some old tape in William Basinski's attic. A lot of the record sounds like the sort of ambience one might expect to find on a Wold record. All damaged and corrupted, the sound quality so degraded that the imperfections are like another part of the composition. But then all of a sudden, the band will whip out some crazy majestic slab of moody instrumentalism like on "Ashen Sea Of Grey", the beginning of which sounds like it came straight off a Daniel Higgs record, before halfway through it splinters into shortwave interference, and becomes some murky childlike lullabye. Then there's the final track, all simple percussion and dramatic acoustic strum, like the rough mix of some lost Woven Hand song or a Nick Cave outtake, albeit peppered with strange digital glitchery and buzzy reverb...� This record is just so gorgeously demented, and unpredictably intense.�Imagine if you can, Tim Hecker making (un)black ambient music, and you'd get a rough idea, but Drommer is way more schizophrenic, somehow without losing cohesiveness, every bizarre twist, or jarring shift, sounds completely natural, it's almost like Oceans is the soundtrack for the strangest film you've never seen. One of our new favorite records for sure... black, unblack or otherwise.�

MPEG stream: Oceans
MPEG stream: Black Moon Float
MPEG stream: Alive In Tears

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MPEG stream: The Quest To Find Utter Nothingness
MPEG stream: Vanished From This Place
MPEG stream: Night Terror: Another Entrence Into

Beautifully packaged in Independent Project Press styled letterpress sleeve and dedicated to "Popul Vuh," this split release between Drona Parva and Ultrasound exists within the bleary eyed drone end of the post-rock spectrum. Ultrasound -- a collective

MPEG stream: Organ I
MPEG stream: Organ II
MPEG stream: Organ III

MPEG stream: Para Puri
MPEG stream: Fields

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SORRY. Richard Harrison (who spends the majority of his time as the drummer for the Spaceheads) went to drone hill (its actual name!) to collect field recordings of the telephone wires that converge there. Hints of Alan Lamb's wind organs can be heard in these drones, as well as a variety of clangs, haunting moans, thunderous rumbles, and microscopic chatter. An exceptional record that succeeds not only in concept but also in execution. It goes without saying that, we all dig this!

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If an argument had to be made for greatest modern American hardcore/grindcore band, it would be pretty tough to argue with Rhode Island's Dropdead. One of the heaviest, fastest, hardest, most pissed off and politically righteous punk rock bands EVER, devastating obliticore/blistercore/fastcore/powerviolence that KILLS, total thrashing metallic punk rock fury, beholden to classic Swedish hardcore, and old school UK D-beat, British anarcho punk and of course Japanese crust, yet somehow these guys took all those influences and wove them into something singularly epic and transcendent and about a million times better than pretty much every other punk rock band we can think of. Short, sharp blasts of blasting thrashing chaotic punk rock, the guitars grinding and chugging, the drums a furious flurry of lightning fast beats, the vox howled over the churning punk fury below, the lyrics covering everything from animal rights to pacifism, racism to religion, each record an epic onslaught micro grindpunk epics, most clocking it at less than a minute, many half that, but these guys cram as much musical and lyrical vitriol in a matter of seconds than most bands manage over the course of a whole record. Even after years of listening to metal and punk and pretty much every variation and permutation of both, black metal, doom metal, grindcore, crustcore, whatever, there's still something so pure and honest and intense about Dropdead, raw and primal and at the same time impossibly epic and emotional and personal, the sort of punk rock that was as concerned with changing minds and fighting against injustices as it was with getting the pit moving, and in the process, they somehow managed to make these 30 second blasts of sonic ultraviolence, catchy as fuck. Any one into any sort of heavy music, who doesn't own these classic albums, is missing out big time. All three records have been reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages, their 1993 self titled debut, their 1998 second album (also confusingly self titled) and their insane and untouchable discography collection, which gathers up singles and comp tracks, as well as Dropdead stuff from splits with Rupture and Crossed Out. Hard to recommend one over any of the others, all three rule and are absolutely essential, if you can buy all three, you won't be sorry, but at least buy one, start with any of them, odds are you'll want the rest. One of our favorite bands EVER.

MPEG stream: Unjustified Murder
MPEG stream: Doorway To Extinction
MPEG stream: Strength In Your Conviction
MPEG stream: Protest

If an argument had to be made for greatest modern American hardcore/grindcore band, it would be pretty tough to argue with Rhode Island's Dropdead. One of the heaviest, fastest, hardest, most pissed off and politically righteous punk rock bands EVER, devastating obliticore/blistercore/fastcore/powerviolence that KILLS, total thrashing metallic punk rock fury, beholden to classic Swedish hardcore, and old school UK D-beat, British anarcho punk and of course Japanese crust, yet somehow these guys took all those influences and wove them into something singularly epic and transcendent and about a million times better than pretty much every other punk rock band we can think of. Short, sharp blasts of blasting thrashing chaotic punk rock, the guitars grinding and chugging, the drums a furious flurry of lightning fast beats, the vox howled over the churning punk fury below, the lyrics covering everything from animal rights to pacifism, racism to religion, each record an epic onslaught micro grindpunk epics, most clocking it at less than a minute, many half that, but these guys cram as much musical and lyrical vitriol in a matter of seconds than most bands manage over the course of a whole record. Even after years of listening to metal and punk and pretty much every variation and permutation of both, black metal, doom metal, grindcore, crustcore, whatever, there's still something so pure and honest and intense about Dropdead, raw and primal and at the same time impossibly epic and emotional and personal, the sort of punk rock that was as concerned with changing minds and fighting against injustices as it was with getting the pit moving, and in the process, they somehow managed to make these 30 second blasts of sonic ultraviolence, catchy as fuck. Any one into any sort of heavy music, who doesn't own these classic albums, is missing out big time. All three records have been reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages, their 1993 self titled debut, their 1998 second album (also confusingly self titled) and their insane and untouchable discography collection, which gathers up singles and comp tracks, as well as Dropdead stuff from splits with Rupture and Crossed Out. Hard to recommend one over any of the others, all three rule and are absolutely essential, if you can buy all three, you won't be sorry, but at least buy one, start with any of them, odds are you'll want the rest. One of our favorite bands EVER.

MPEG stream: At The Cost Of An Animal
MPEG stream: Hopeless
MPEG stream: Bullshit Tradition
MPEG stream: Sheep
MPEG stream: A Nation Sleeps

If an argument had to be made for greatest modern American hardcore/grindcore band, it would be pretty tough to argue with Rhode Island's Dropdead. One of the heaviest, fastest, hardest, most pissed off and politically righteous punk rock bands EVER, devastating obliticore/blistercore/fastcore/powerviolence that KILLS, total thrashing metallic punk rock fury, beholden to classic Swedish hardcore, and old school UK D-beat, British anarcho punk and of course Japanese crust, yet somehow these guys took all those influences and wove them into something singularly epic and transcendent and about a million times better than pretty much every other punk rock band we can think of. Short, sharp blasts of blasting thrashing chaotic punk rock, the guitars grinding and chugging, the drums a furious flurry of lightning fast beats, the vox howled over the churning punk fury below, the lyrics covering everything from animal rights to pacifism, racism to religion, each record an epic onslaught micro grindpunk epics, most clocking it at less than a minute, many half that, but these guys cram as much musical and lyrical vitriol in a matter of seconds than most bands manage over the course of a whole record. Even after years of listening to metal and punk and pretty much every variation and permutation of both, black metal, doom metal, grindcore, crustcore, whatever, there's still something so pure and honest and intense about Dropdead, raw and primal and at the same time impossibly epic and emotional and personal, the sort of punk rock that was as concerned with changing minds and fighting against injustices as it was with getting the pit moving, and in the process, they somehow managed to make these 30 second blasts of sonic ultraviolence, catchy as fuck. Any one into any sort of heavy music, who doesn't own these classic albums, is missing out big time. All three records have been reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages, their 1993 self titled debut, their 1998 second album (also confusingly self titled) and their insane and untouchable discography collection, which gathers up singles and comp tracks, as well as Dropdead stuff from splits with Rupture and Crossed Out. Hard to recommend one over any of the others, all three rule and are absolutely essential, if you can buy all three, you won't be sorry, but at least buy one, start with any of them, odds are you'll want the rest. One of our favorite bands EVER.

MPEG stream: Superior
MPEG stream: Bitter Fruit (The Seed)
MPEG stream: Those Who We Deny
MPEG stream: Tied Down For Survival

Nine minutes of raging grinding mayhem from two of the fiercest bands in the land. You heard me, 9 MINUTES! Nine tracks. 6 tracks from Rhode Island's kings of crusty grind, Drop Dead, sounding as brutal as ever. And 3 tracks from Totalitar from Sweden, thrashing garage-y hardcore. Only nine minutes but it's only $4.50. Worth every penny.

RealAudio clip: A Disease Called Man
RealAudio clip: Hur Orkar Vi

Had this come out some 20 years ago, the Dropp Ensemble would have only been able to pull this off by the slow process of tape exchanges through the post, in other word: mail art. But through FTP and hefty upload sites, the principle authors / engineers for the Dropp Ensemble can be a bit more nimble and not have to wait for the mailman to deliver that tape from halfway 'round the world. Those two farflung protagonists in the project are Salvatore Dellaria and Adam Sonderberg. The former, we're not all that familiar with his work although he's stated that he's retired from the realm of sound art; and the latter has produced a handful of exceptional tactile-minded drone records under his own name and in the ensemble Haptic. The two had managed to rope together a world class collection of experimental musicians: avant-percussionist Jon Muller, former Anomalous Records bossman Eric Lanzillotta, feedback drone specialist Jason Kahn, the concrete / field recordist Olivia Block, one-time Andrew Chalk collaborator Brendan Walls, prepared guitarist Thomas Korber, and seven others. For such a huge cast of characters, each with their own particular take on the drone, the composition, the noise, the sound, whatever, Dellaria and Sonderberg had proven to be deft not only in coalescing all of these sounds into an exceptional composition but also coaxing sympathetic sounds from all of the contributors. Heavy subharmonic plods and scraping gestures open the album gradually harmonizing into a thrumming arc of sustained rumblings that bellow with the toxicity and pressurization of deep sea vents, accentuated by an agitated motorik clicktrack. Glistening tones emerge out of controlled feedback, and softened textures undulate in what sound like sand pushed around a surface to allude to wind, tidal flow, or any number of hypnotizing forms of white noise. Muted drones from what we're guessing is Olivia Block's trumpet elegantly wrap around some of the found object manipulation to offer somber melodic interludes to these already impressive compositions. If this seems not all dissimilar to the non-Jewelled Antler work of Loren Chasse or field recording manipulation of Tarab and Eric La Casa, those are pretty apt references. And considering how much we love all of those artists, Safety certainly gets a thumbs up here at Aquarius.

MPEG stream: Everywhere Present And Nowhere Visible
MPEG stream: The Vernacular Rooms

The venerable Bay Area independent hip hop / electronic collective Entartete Kunst keep the socio/politically charged sounds comin' as they welcome the debut full length from Drowning Dog into their fold (you might recall her from a split 7" with The Deletist released back in 2003). Her sample-heavy music comes in short uncompromising agitated and empassioned lunges. Much like many of her labelmates (such as Malatesta and Phantom Patient) there's a heady dankness that seeps into every nook and cranny fusing her vocals, collaged dialogue shards and angular rhythm tracks into solid masses of grit both in word and texture.

A mysterious new release from Goat Eater Recordings, who in the past have brought us exclusively recordings from ambient drone technicians Hoor-Paar-Kraat. But this one comes from one man band Drowning The Virgin Silence. Like all the Goat Eater stuff we've seen, this too is presented in a beautifully hand crafted artful sleeve, and the music inside is not all that far removed from the sounds of Hoor-Paar-Kraat, but where HPK is dark and desolate, heavy and often on the verge of being abrasive, the music of DTVS is much more soft and shimmery, the opening track almost sounds like it could have come straight off a Pop Ambient collection. Looped murky melodies, set adrift on a rippling sea of whir and rumble, drowsy and hypnotic.� None of the rest of the record is nearly so poppy or melodic, but it is all super engaging and mysterious, each song, a strange and haunting assemblage of voices and unnamable instruments, snippets of sound, looped samples and all sorts of subtle effects. "Hummingbird" is a disembodied conversation all tangled up in dark swirls of echoey sound, the 10+ minute "Untitled" is a long stretch of mumbled ambience, dotted with cricket like skitter and haunting melodic shadows. "A Pair Of Scales Stripped Bare, Even" is a dense blur of industrial sound, high end scrape and skree blended into a churning low end undercurrent, static but somehow with a bit of forward momentum at the same time. The record finishes with the epic "Phaedra", a gorgeous smear of chordal whir and shimmery drone, all washed out and indistinct, melodies buried beneath the murky surface, all occasionally coalescing into soft swells and long stretches of blurred fuzz. So nice.� Packaged in a beautiful hand screened cardstock sleeve, super minimal and striking.� LIMITED TO ONLY 70 COPIES! Each one hand numbered of course...

MPEG stream: Thread
MPEG stream: Untitled

The metalcore onslaught just won't let up. Drowningman traffic in the same sort of howling and chugging as Coalesce, Converge, etc. However instead of hyper-virtuosity (that's not to say they aren't dynamic and complex, because they are) they temper their metal with some melodic pop punk. And the harsh screeched vocals are balanced by some emo style broken-harted-boy vocals. But

RealAudio clip: The More I Get To Know You, The Less I Like You

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Quite possibly our favorite Ukrainian black metal band. And before you scoff, there's plenty of competition, Hate Forest, Nokturnal Mortum, Astrofaes, Lucifugum (and about 200 more according to the Encyclopaedia Metallum), but Drudkh somehow manage to prevail. Drudkh's particular brand of black grimness, is of the midtempo Burzumic variety, but they infuse their buzz with a surprising amount of epic majesty, mournful melody and strange chords and phrasings that lend all their riffs a strangely haunting gravity. It's kind of hard to explain actually, but every Drudkh song is just so intense, so emotional and so full of mystery. A few things have changed on Blood In Our Wells though, the first is all the Ukrainian folk music and random dialogue purloined from some Ukrainian film, that really adds another strange layer to Drudkh's already dense sonic world, the other thing that's different, is the surprising amount of guitar leads, not the squiggly lightning fast black leads you might expect, but some super melodic strangely glam rock leads. Really! Sounds strange, but it totally works. And just manages to make Drudkh even weirder and cooler. There's plenty of buzzing blackness for the true and grim and black hearted, but folks who dig Godspeed and Isis, and that whole slow build, explosive climax, quiet-loud-quiet thing might find this Drudkh to be their gateway drug. The perfect moody blackness to drag all those indie rockers to the dark side. TOTALLY RECOMMENDED!!!

MPEG stream: Furrows Of Gods
MPEG stream: When The Flame Turns To Ashes

Lots of folks have been pretty down on the last few releases from Ukrainian black metal horde Drudkh, as their sound moved further and further away from the classic grim blackness, toward something very post black metal, and downright poppy and jangly. So while some of you out there were steeling yourself for what a new Drudkh might bring, you'll have to wait a bit longer to find out, as this is actually a compilation, gathering up several super rare eps, most of which were only available in fancy boxsets or in extremely limited vinyl editions. The Anti Urban ep from 2006 is classic Drudkh, mournful and melancholic, the guitars jagged and brittle with buzz, the first track a doomy midtempo lope, aching sonic miserablism, all instrumental, and weirdly lovely. The second track cranks up the tempo a bit, but doesn't add much in the way of blackened heft, the main riff is still more jangly then buzzy, but harsh vokills, and creepy minor key melodies, keep this firmly rooted in blackness, the whole thing mostly one part, trances out and mesmerizing, droney, and blackly hypnotic. Slavonic Chronicles was released in 2010 and features two covers, the first, Drudkh's version of a Sacrilegium track, which begins all blissed out and jangly, before exploding into some seriously blackened Viking classic metal chug, the sound grimey and distorted, and super heavy, this time, plenty of blast beats and swirling synths. Finally, from last year, three tracks from the Thousands Of Moons Ago ep, a split with Winterfylleth. Again, all covers, the first, a Hefeystos cover, which could easily be a Drudkh original, grim and black, epic and majestic, replete with soaring synths, and some seriously heavy black buzz, blast beats, and furious riffing. Which leads directly into an Unclean cover, all dirgey and murky, laced with acoustic guitars, and booming percussion, before launching into some epic classic metal crush, with a wild outro, mathed out drumming, more of that strange percussion, and cool droned out guitar buzz, sorta wished that end portion stretched out for another 10 minutes. Finally, another Sacrilegium cover, a brutal blast for furious buzzing classic blackness, but laced with some gloomy midtempo dirgery part way through, and wreathed in still more shimmery synth swirl. Killer stuff, and plenty to tide you over until the (hopefully) forthcoming full length...

MPEG stream: Fallen Into Oblivion
MPEG stream: Indianska Pisen Hruzy
MPEG stream: Ten, Ktery Se Vyhyba Svetlu

After the gorgeous dark folk of Songs Of Grief And Solitude, Ukrainian black metallers Drudkh return to their roots, offering up a 5 song ep, with four looooong tracks of sprawling, epic, depressive, nature obsessed, foresty blackness. Definitely the best sounding Drudkh yet, the drums are awesome, way up in the mix, the guitars soar and ring out, so mournful and majestic, the vocals too are much more intense than in the past, a raw feral roar, passionate and emotional and surprisingly musical for BM vocals. And then there's the bass, a whole new addition to Drudkh's sound, not that there wasn't bass before, but now the basslines are as crucial to the sound as the guitar parts, not just a simple thump thump thump, the bass is slippery and intricate, unfurling dense webs of complex low end, creating a thick black backdrop, so the guitars can buzz and howl, and the drums can blast wildly. The core of the record are the first three songs, each 10+ minutes, and each a stirring sonic journey. This is the sound of dark forests, and windswept peaks, of rushing rivers and snow cloaked mountaintops, full moons and firelight. The tracks vary greatly, often in the same song, the tempos shifting effortlessly from doomy plod, to midtempo lope to furious blast, but the riffs this time, wow, so totally catchy and melodic, without losing any of the grim fury, powerful and hauntingly heartbreaking, soaring in long drawn out melodies as often as buzzing maniacally. In fact more often. The drums are way different too, sort of sloppy and chaotic, but it suits the sound, no clinical super tight blasting, but instead, the rhythms have feeling, some swing to them, letting them lurch and stumble, and work in perfect concert with the ever shifting riffage. The sound is definitely reminiscent of classic Drudkh discs like Forgotten Legends and Autumn Aurora, but revamped, and recharged, imbued with a surprising amount of drama and moodiness and emotional intensity. No more so than in the last track, the briefest of the bunch, but what a grandiose blast of epic black beauty. Beginning with acoustic guitar, it soon launches into a glorious blissy midtempo blow out, that would sound pretty good right next to some Alcest. It even has a super intense guitar lead, that wails wildly over the roiling black bliss beneath. Woah. So fucking awesome, and so recommended. And of course, a review of Drudkh is never complete without a mention of the bands problematic politics. While they do seem somewhat removed from all that, at least musically and lyrically, focusing instead more on nature, it is worth mentioning as it is a distinct part of what they're about. We talked about it in a past review, and since we don't think we could write about it again as eloquently, here it is again. We've been through this before with Burzum and Graveland and umpteen others, we love the music, but abhor the message. In some cases, like with Drudkh, it's easy to just enjoy the music and ignore the problematic politics, there are no printed lyrics, no fucked up song titles, just images of forests and sky and rain and darkness, a mysterious booklet with more images of trees and forests and the sky and rivers, all very mysterious and evocative. For some though, there is no ignoring the message, no matter how subtle or indirect, and the thought of giving any sort of support is unacceptable. That's perfectly fine. But for us, the music -can- transcend the message, and does at least in this case.

MPEG stream: Solitary Endless Path
MPEG stream: Skies At Our Feet

The last record from these long time aQ faves, Ukrainian black metal horde Drudkh, was a polarizing record for sure, one that found the band injecting their sound with much more melody, and a distinct poppiness, pushing them in surprisingly black pop direction, the new sound more akin to something we might have expected from Lifelover or Hypothermia. Plenty of jangle, and again poppy melodies all over the place. Sure there was plenty of buzz and blast, but that poppiness also seemed to supplant the band's folky side was well, which was another big change to contend with. And while some of us still dug the new sound, we had made peace and were ready to bid farewell to the Drudkh of old. But their latest, Eternal Turn Of The Wheel, finds the band once again in classic form, gone is the overt poppiness of Handful of Stars, and in it's place, the soaring majestic blackness of old, the thick crunchy riffage, the howled vokills, the bursts of frenzied blasting buzz, the stretches of haunting folkiness, but most importantly, the mood and atmosphere that only Drudkh can conjure up. The sound shifting easily from dirgey almost doomy crush, to loping folk flecked blackness, to full on blasting black crush, still plenty of melody for sure, but the sort we were more accustomed too, minor key and melancholic, folky and blackened, the sound at times downright pretty, at others mournful and moody, at others fierce and furious and malevolently majestic. Folks who jumped ship with Handful Of Stars, it's time to climb back on board, cuz Eternal Turn Of The Wheel is another classic Drudkh record for sure...

MPEG stream: Breath of Cold Black Soil
MPEG stream: Night Woven of Snow, Winds and Grey-Haired Stars

We've gone on and on in the past about Ukranian black metallers Nokturnal Mortum and the NM side project Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra. Bands that perfecty straddle the line between true grim blackness and total what-the-fuck weirdness. But the Ukraine has a load of other bands who are just as buzzy and brilliantly black and fucked up. And it just so happens that they all seem to share at least one (the same?) member. Astrofaes, Hate Forest, Lucifugum, and of course Drudkh. All of these projects traffic in the same sort of buzzed out atmospheric blackness that we can't get enough of. Loping stumbling midtempo folk flecked blasts of Burzumic fuzz, long LONG tracks, melancholy melodies swathed in buzzing guitars and anguished vocals, with brief bursts of blast beats and mosquito buzz riffing. Very droney and atmospheric as well as fiercely fuzzy blackly brutal. Fans of Burzum (obviously) and bands like Graveland, Woodtemple and the like definitely need everything by any of these bands they can get their hands on. This is the first Drudkh record from a few years back, we'll be listing the others soon (inlcuding a brand new album for 2006) but we figured we might as well start at the beginning. Forgotten Legends (and all the Drudkh records for that matter) is so good. Dark and bleak and depressive, droney and dirgey and black, but weirdly lovely as well. Unfortunately, no discussion of any of these bands is complete without a brief look at their politics, always a troublesome sore spot with most black metal. Drudkh focus on 'Slavonic pride, culture and mythology', an ideology only slightly removed from the full on racism of Nastional Socialist black metal bands. Their name in fact means wood in Sanskrit, "the first language of the Aryan race." Oof. We've been through this before with Burzum and Graveland and umpteen others, we love the music, but abhor the message. In some cases, like with Drudkh, it's easy to just enjoy the music and ignore the problematic politics, there are no printed lyrics, no fucked up song titles, just images of forests and sky and rain and darkness, a mysterious booklet with no information but for the words: "sadness, bitterness, pain, despair, loss, agony, solitude, betrayal, melancholy, sorrow," all very mysterious and evocative. For some though, there is no ignoring the message, no matter how subtle or indirect, and the thought of giving any sort of support is unacceptable. That's perfectly fine. But for us, the music -can- transcend the message, and does at least in this case, and the sound of Forgotten Legends is nebulous enough that each listener can take whatever they want from this music, a series of totally mesmerizing, gorgeously depressive black buzzing drone metal epics.

MPEG stream: False Dawn
MPEG stream: Forests In Fire And Gold

Latest from these Ukrainian black metal masters, and by now faithful readers of the aQ list most likely know how much we love Ukrainian black metal: Hate Forest, Nokturnal Mortum, Lucifugum, Astrofaes, and of course Drudkh, and while there is much of the old Drudkh present, there have been some seriously dramatic sonic and stylistic shifts which somehow manage to change the sound completely without losing the essence of what makes Drudkh so great. After a dark brooding piano intro, the first proper song kicks in and the first thing you notice is the almost jangly guitar tone, and the busy almost mathy drumming, and suddenly, the sound is more Katatonia / Alcest than anything we might have expected from Drudkh, there are still harsh vocals, and blasting double kick drumming, but combined with the almost clean guitars, it sounds more like Lifelover. It's a little jarring for sure, but the new sound definitely suits them, and over the course of that first track, there are cool stop / start arrangements, midtempo drifts of post rock that build to super tangled complex mathy blowouts, verging on black blasts, but more blissed out and shoegazey almost. The second track begins similarly, with lightly flanged clean guitar, a strummed minor key melody, with a second guitar adding Smiths-y shimmer, and then again, the song kicks in and it's super melodic, the only true element of blackness the vox. It's at this point that something else becomes noticeable for its absence, no synths, and no folky interludes, for years an integral part of Drudkh's sound, but seemingly ditched in favor of melody, and harmony, and a definite pop element. All that said, the songs are still pretty fantastic, the drumming, super original and complex, often adding strange rhythmic filigree to a part that is seemingly simple on the surface, the guitars too are lush and layered and offer all sorts of melodic shadings, the final track offers up the final word on this sonic shift with a long stretch of bass driven lope, spidery guitars, thick low end pulses and simple solid drumming which gives way, peppered with bursts of Godspeedy crescendos, and a super melodic classic rock sounding lead, only to finish off in a tangle of howled vokills, intricate drumming, and lush layered guitars. We were definitely thrown for a loop at first, but after a few listens, it's easy to hear Drudkh in these seemingly UN-Drudkh like songs, and we love the soaring heavy black pop sound, and hell, this might be the gateway record for the black metal shy to give this Ukrainian thing a try, it only gets blacker and grimmer from here...

MPEG stream: Twilight Aureole
MPEG stream: The Day Will Come

We've proudly proclaimed Ukrainian black metal horde Drudkh to be our favorite band from that particularly kick ass region (although we pretty much love all of those bands: Hate Forest, Nokturnal Mortum, Astrofaes, Lucifugum, etc.) and we've been meaning to get some of their back catalog in after reviewing their most recent record Blood In Our Wells. Lebedynyy Shlyakh aka The Swan Road, just might be our favorite of all of their records, released barely a year before Blood In Our Wells, it's a super dark and emotional, brittle lo-fi dronelike blast of Burzumic buzz but with all sorts of strange parts and sounds, weird arrangements and very distinctly Drudkh-like elements. It definitely gets harder and harder to describe exactly what makes one frosty grim black metal record stand out, they all buzz and blast, everything is fuzzy and black, and of course grim and harsh and cult and cold and brutal and pummeling. So it usually comes down to the songwriting, the riffs, the arrangements, even some sonic subtleties that just can't be so easily put into words. With Drudkh, it's just that. They imbue their sound with all sorts of unlikely sonic elements that perfectly balance the more traditional black metal sounds. Lots of the riffs are strangely angular and distinctly un-black metal, almost like post rock parts of classic metal riffs. There are brief bits of acoustic guitar, often hovering beneath a thick swirl of blackened hiss and crumbling fuzz. Plus there are all sorts of strange folky elements, and some super emotional minor key leads, that just sort of soar and hover, all majestic and so epic. But it's not so much those parts and pieces as the way they are integrated, the way the songs exude a sort of magic and chemistry. And the thing is, Lebedynyy Shlyakh is not so hateful and grim, it's weirdly hopeful sounding, more musical than a lot of black metal. Minor key sure, but more melancholy than miserable. And the arrangements and strange melodies evoke a sort of epic loping post rock more than the bleak buzz of Burzum or Mayhem. Which definitely makes Drudkh a whole 'nother beast. Mathy and melodic, with lots of unexpected twists and turns, structural and melodic, buzzing and black, but a buzzing blackness twisted into entirely new shapes. Revisiting this disc it's easy to see why we were (and still are) so blown away. SO RECOMMENDED!

MPEG stream: Eternal Sun
MPEG stream: Blood

The return of Ukrainian black metal legends Drudkh! In the past, the Ukraine have given us Hate Forest and Nokturnal Mortum and Astrofaes and Lucifugum and so many more, but Drudkh somehow always manage to overshadow their blackened brethren, their sound transcendent and otherworldly, at once grim and frosty and black, but at the same time timeless and epic and majestic and melodic. Few black metal bands could release an all acoustic folk record, and imbue it with the same sort of intensity and emotion, but Drudkh did just that with Songs Of Grief And Solitude, a folk record that one might assume would most definitely not appeal to metalheads, but we've yet to meet a black metal freek who didn't also love that record. Definitely speaks to the band's power and originality and energy. Something strange seems to be going on currently with Drudkh and their catalog though (or maybe with Drudkh and their old label Supernal), all of their previous records are currently out of print and unavailable, which makes the arrival of Microcosmos even more timely. Continuing on from where the brilliant Estrangement left off, the sound of Drudkh is a dizzying blend of old world folk music, melodic metal, and of course grim buzzing blackness. The record begins with a brief bit of baroque court music, some old school folk, all buzzing strings and simple percussion, Eastern melodies and warm wheezing textures, before the second song kicks in with a flurry of frenetic buzz and wildly blasting drums, the main guitar immediately unfurling a totally epic and timeless sounding melody. The band establishing in a matter of seconds that they have returned, and all other black minions must bow down or be smote. The nearly ten minute epic is packed with twists and turns, as we described Drudkh songs in a past review, an epic sonic journey, from soaring washed out melodic whir, to howled blasting fury, to woozy mid tempo grooves laced with heart rending minor key melodies, stretches of Deathspell-ish gnarled riffage, even a drifty acoustic interlude, with steel string guitars, weird bits of buzz and fragmented riffage and some scraped atonal bass, before lurching back into a blown out Godspeedian majestic black coda. And so it goes for the whole record. Four songs, all hovering around ten minutes, the guitars intense and massive, the melodies and arrangements so unlikely but so perfect. Strip away the buzz and take away the vocals, and this would be some super dense tripped out folk flecked post rock epic, but as it is, Microcosmos is next level black metal, their naturalist vibe is totally present, the songs and sounds organic and lush, evocative of forests and fjords, of grey skies and snow covered mountains, but the magic most definitely lays in the songs, even the harshest heaviest parts are impossibly melodic, and even the pretty parts often splinter into total buzz drenched chaos. The bass is all over the place (a rarity in the realm of black metal), throbbing and pulsing, adding melodic counterpoint as often as it does texture and ambience, the vocals appropriately harsh and howled, but really, they seem to just merge with the music, a gorgeously blackened metal that easily slips from relentless blasting, to Burzumic plod, to seasick lurch, all blended into a sound that while on the surface is most definitely black metal, is ultimately a strain of blackness that could only be Drudkh. In the past we've mentioned the bands possibly problematic politics, but recently the band issued a statement to the effect that the absence of lyrics and information, the no photos, no interviews, no website policy is purposeful, and this dearth of information is what led some folks to posit that the band espoused ideals in line with the NSBM movement, when in fact, the band claim to be apolitical, and to promote "individualism, self-improvement and estrangement from modern values." So there.

MPEG stream: Distant Cries Of Cranes
MPEG stream: Decadence
MPEG stream: Ars Poetica

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

The long awaited folk record from Ukrainian black metal gods Drudkh. And it's amazing! But before we get into it, we have always wondered, what it is exactly with black metal and folk? Why does a record, that to the untrained ear, sounds like Renaissance Faire music, get lauded as still being 'grim'? And why do black metallers, one of the seemingly most close minded group of music fans in the world, deem certain sorts of folk music worthy of their adoration, when they have utter disdain for all other musicks that are not grim or true? And what makes a certain folk music grim or true? Who really know, and who really cares. What we do know is that Songs Of Grief And Solitude is gorgeous and mournful, melodic and mysterious, and you would never know this was the work of one of our favorite buzzing black hordes! Based on Ukrainian legends, traditional songs and fairy tales, Songs Of Grief And Solitude is a gorgeous folk record. Acoustic guitars and flutes, woven deftly into super moving emotional arrangements. VERY reminiscent of Comus, the Incredible String Band, and similar minded seventies folkies, haunting and minor key, dark and dreamy, unlikely melodies and unusual arrangements help avoid the usual Renn Faire vibe, although when the flutes join in, it's a bit difficult to deny. But the majority of the record is quite dark, very cinematic, moody and haunting, sounding like it could very well be the work of any number of modern day freak folk outfits, but with the added weight of the band's black background giving the music more musical heft. Each song begins with the sound of a crackling campfire or chirping crickets or tolling bells or the whir of night time nature, as if each of these songs was a tale being related around a campfire, or told to friends in the field. Normally we would suggest that maybe Drudkh fans would not necessarily dig this, but pursuant to the above black metal/folk discussion, and the fact that all the Drudkh fans we know LOVE this record, we'd have to say it's pretty damn essential. But it should also be essential listening for all the modern free folk freaks as well. Might be their black metal gateway record (even though there is NO black metal here). Songs Of Grief And Solitude would fit perfectly between your Comus record and your Vetiver record, next to your Brightblack Morning Light and Feathers records. Check it out. All hail Drudkh!

MPEG stream: Sunset In Carpathians
MPEG stream: Tears Of Gods
MPEG stream: Archaic Dance

Earlier this past year we reviewed (and Record Of The Week'd) a crushing slab of druggy psychedelic space doom sludge called Ghost In The Fire, from a band with the VERY unlikely moniker Drug Honkey. Initially we sorta assumed they must be a joke band, but there was nothing funny about the head spinning din these guys whipped up on that record. And as much as we loved Ghost In The Fire, for us it all started with this disc, Death Dub, which we had hoped would be some sort of impossible dub / death metal hybrid, and while it wasn't quite that, it was still seriously warped and fucked up, like a sludgier more metallic Butthole Surfers, sort of. Dirgey, and noisy, and crusty, sludgey and actually in fact, kinda dubbed out. We managed to get a handful of these finally (as well as DH's Hail Satan cd-r, if you want one of those too, just ask!), and now everyone can revel in Drug Honkey's glorious sonic filth, a constantly shifting metallic sound world, that's all churning riffage one second ("The Devil Lasts Forever"), tripped out dubby doom the next ("Death Threats"). The Butthole Surfers comparison is pretty apt, these guys just unfurl these sprawling epics, low slung bass throb, tribal caveman drumming, weird FX heavy vox, bellowed demonic howls that can easily transform into hysterical shrieks, everything wrapped in sheets of crumbling distortion, clouds of swirling effects, total tripped out heaviness, that as the title promises does get dubby, check out the vox on "Death Threats", throat shredding vokills disappear in a field of echo and delay, and go spinning into the blackness, while underneath the band continue to pound out a spacey psychedelic dirge. Or there's "Communion", the vocals sick and hellish, but seemingly being real time processed, so each bellow, launches little flurries of sped up shrieks or garbled grunts, all tether to the bands lumbering, monstrous, downtuned crush. The sound constantly gets super psychedelic, and sort of krautrocky and motorik, spacey and heavily tripped out, like some weird mutated hybrid of the Psychic Paramount, Terminal Cheesecake and Painkiller, some tracks almost sound like hip hop, albeit some sick, distortion drenched industrial strain (Techno Animal, Ice, God, etc.). In fact the Pathological Records vibe looms large over pretty much all of Death Dub, the whole record an electronic flecked, FX heavy, metallic mindfuck of the highest order. Which obviously means ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!!!

MPEG stream: My Sins
MPEG stream: Death Threats
MPEG stream: Communion

We first discovered the awesomely named Drug Honkey a few years back, via their 2008 record Death Dub. And at the time, before having actually heard it, or then, we figured it was probably too much to hope for, that a band called Drug Honkey would actually be good, and not some dumb bad band inside joke, and that a record by said band, called Death Dub, would and/or could actually deliver on the promise of a title like that. Dubbed out death metal? Metallic dub? Some sort of blackened dubbed out weirdness? Well, happy to say we needn't have doubted, these Chicago experimental drug doom space psych heavies did not disappoint, that record a churning morass of noise drenched, dubbed out blackened heaviness, equal parts droned out, pounding almost-industrial crush, woozy, sludge-y slo-mo creep, and crumbling distorto-dub noise rock weirdness. Imagine the Butthole Surfers via Godflesh via the Scientist via Eyehategod. Noisy, druggy, damaged, super intense, and blown out, and heavily psychedelic, the vocals only adding to the WTF level, a super harsh demonic bellow one second, a weird high pitched yelp the next, the vocals bleeding into the sounds around them, and all of those sounds then doused in FX and super processed, into some seriously heady heaviness. We were never able to get enough copies to review/list, so when we discovered there was a new Drug Honkey, full length number four if you're keeping track, we knew we had to get copies, and had a feeling it was probably gonna have to be Record Of The Week. And once again, Drug Honkey do not disappoint, if anything, Ghost In The Fire is like Death Dub part two, but if anything, everything we loved about Death Dub has been cranked up even more this time around, it's heavier, slower, dubbier, more tripped out, the production is MASSIVE, the sound filthy and crumbling and blown out, the band unfurling a loping, lumbering super psychedelic sludge-dub that once again sounds a bit like the Buttholes jamming with Godflesh, which is in fact a very very good thing. Opening with a blast of detuned guitar churn, a pounding motorik rhythm, chiming distorted guitar melodies, looped and lurching, super tranced out and hypnotic, the vocals a bellowy demonic belch, that gets doused in FX and like much of the surrounding sounds, sometimes slows down to a grunting gurgle, other times splinters into weird swirling shards of sound, the music too, subtly dubbed out, but for the most part, roiling and churning relentlessly, the sort of super heavy psych-sludge trance-out, that could easily have stretched out for another 45 minutes and made for a super sweet single track drone-sludge epic. But these guys have more sonic filth up their sleeves. The title track even slower, and dubbier, the guitars tarpit thick, the riffing spread out over a plodding death march rhythm, the vocals a throat shredding howl, and again, accompanied by various other processed voices, slowed down, sped up, doused in distortion, pitch shifted, like some sort of drugged out demonic choir, all over swirls of gristly effects, and crumbling distorted effects, and all driven by the group's impossibly dense chugging doom-sludge dirge, slipping from driving almost headbangable 16rpm demonic deathdub groove, to fractured, fucked up, psychedelic black-noise drift, but more often than not fusing the two into some seriously unholy union. Some tracks are way more 'dubby' than others, like "Weight Of The World" which creeps and slithers, the guitars pushed into the background, laying down a softly undulating backdrop of droning rumble, over which a monstrous rhythm, pounds away in slow motion, beneath streaks of soaring fragmented high end melody, and some seriously fucked up and freaky vocals, lots of space and drift, swooping backwards effects, super psychedelic, totally hypnotic and tranced out, about as dubby as these guys get, but then there's tracks like "Dead Days ("Heroin III"), where the core sound is a super downtuned ultradoom sludge, the dubbiness seeping through in the form of the Gibby Haynes like vocals, and the atmospheric swirls, at one point slowing down to a near static drift, the only thing keeping it heavy, a super blown out distorted bass riff, over which all this other tripped out shit swirls and shimmers, and when the weird guitar that sounds like a proggy synth (or maybe a sitar?) pops up, total genius WTF trip out, the song drifting even further into tripped out zoner-psych territory. They even do a Scorn cover, which makes sonic sense for sure, Drug Honkey transforming the dark electronic skitter of the original into what sounds like a spaced out psychedelic sludge metal Necks, super drone out and loop-y, a little bit jazzy, but still heavy as fuck, before finishing off with a final fierce blast of dubbed out, super aggro, speaker shredding, doom-dub psych-sludge dirgery that KILLS. Holy shit. Imagine UK psych-drone space drifters Bong jamming with Godflesh, a dizzying concoction of super tripped out heaviness, ultra abstract sludge and blackened psychedelic dub that anyone into weird heaviness / heavy weirdness will lose their shit over! WAY WAY WAY recommended!

Here's a pretty cool, jazz-damaged, percussion-heavy Krautrock obscurity that we just got hip to, thanks to this recent cd reissue on Garden Of Delights. As you might expect from something called Drum Circus from 1971, this has a definite hippy attitude, full of Om-drones and space-jazz piano and cosmic Eastern raga moves. It's a bit like Alice Coltrane meets Lothar And The Hand People meets early (pre-robotic) Kraftwerk. On the 21+ minute title track you'll groove to martial drums, unison chanting of mystical slogans, ominous organs...what's not to like? I mean, this has got both free-jazz freakouts and ranting incantations -- with lotsa lyrics by none other than Timothy Leary! And Drum Circus then get into some '70s Miles Davis styled funk on the aptly titled "Groove Rock". There's even some nice melodic elements too -- Andee thinks the male singer on "All Things" sounds like Roger Daltrey. But overall though, this will probably appeal more to say, folks partial to recent Boredoms output than to fans of The Who...

MPEG stream: Magic Theatre
MPEG stream: Now It Hurts You

At the risk of quite possibly making our lengthy and floridly descriptive, effusive and over the top reviews totally obsolete, we can pretty much sell this one with one sentence. Grind metal, death metal, spastic drill and bass AND a marching band drum corps. And that's not even really a sentence! Drumcorps is the work of one Aaron Spectre, who not only shares a first name with the man behind Venetian Snares, he also shares a similar penchant for ultra twisted and impossibly convoluted and mind blowing rhythms. But where Venetian Snares builds elaborate rhythmic tangles out of beats, beats and more beats, Spectre, while a consummate beat maker himself, as Drumcorps, he concerns himself as much with riffs as beats. At its very heart, this is a metal record after all. A snarling, grinding crush of acidic metallic riffs and huge downtuned chunks of chugging death metal grind, with howled throat shredding vocals, buzzing squalls of metallic guitar freakout and pounding blasting drums. But as each track develops, you begin to notice something a little strange about this 'metal.' Every once in a while, here and there, the drums will skitter and splinter into little bursts of ultra complex splatter. Or vocals will get twisted and chopped up into a wildly stuttering rhythm, blast beats will get faster and faster until they're nothing but a buzzy blur. Riffs splinter into jagged digital shards which are then tossed about wildly over a skittering expanse of junglistic beats. This isn't just metal, and it's definitely not electronica. It's like some sort of fucked up avant post metal grind laid over super dense hyper programmed drill and bass. Like Pig Destroyer jamming with Shitmat, or Dillinger Escape Plan with Venetian Snares on drums! In fact a quick listen to track three, the aptly titled "Pig Destroyer Destroyer" lays it all out for you. Beginning with a killer drum corps snare workout, that builds into a mesmerizing chopped and looped vocal guitar grind, eventually building into a full on blast of metallic fury, but all tangled up with sputtering, hiccuping strands of head spinning drill and bass. The amazing thing is, that Drumcorps doesn't sound like some sort of DJ mash up, where some clever fella with a wicked record collection just assembled and sequenced. No, these are real songs, with melodies, atmosphere, riffs, parts, choruses, it seems impossible that Spectre composed and performed a whole metal record only to electronically fuck it up, but if these are all purloined riffs, which at least some of them must be, then it had all the metalheads around here completely fooled. And LOVING it. But it's not all just furious jungle metal weirdness (although most of it most definitely is!). A few tracks are droning ambient soundscapes, with huge cavernous rumbles washing over brittle complicated snare drums, others are almost funky jungle jams peppered with crunchy clipped riffs, and still others are moody midtempo jams, assembled from slowed down pitchshifted vocals and crumbling distorted guitars, sheets of feedback, and awesome Maiden-ish dual guitar leads. This is another one of those times we almost wish there were actual bands that sounded like this, as opposed to being the mad idea of a single twisted individual, crafting his dream band from a drum machine and his favorite metal records, an impossible metal / drum and bass hybrid. But who cares really, when it sounds this fucking amazing. Fans of past record of the week Drummachinegun should definitely check this out, as should folks into DHR, Venetian Snares, Shitmat and that sort of sputtering spastic drill and buzz (especially if they've got a soft spot for metal). But c'mon, this is a METAL record, so metalheads should absolutely take a chance, and give this a try, but should be well prepared to have their whole world turned upside down.

MPEG stream: Pig Destroyer Destroyer
MPEG stream: Botch Up And Die
MPEG stream: Down

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

MPEG stream: Swamp
MPEG stream: Shoes

Chicago experimentalist Kevin Drumm (and on a few tracks Jim O'Rourke) document feedback generating organs, bass rumblings, hi-end squealing, and metallic droning all set within orderly patterns. On O'Rourke's Moikai label.

[ aquarius records catalogue — D ]