Over the years, we'd only ever heard a track or two from these UK post punks, a band whose members would eventually go on to play in more high profile groups like Maximum Joy and The Pop Group, which should definitely give you an idea of where the Glaxo Babies were coming from. Local reissue label Superior Viaduct continues their idiosyncratic reissue campaign, which has included Devo, the Solaris soundtrack, 100 Flowers, Factrix, Henry Flynt, Phill Niblock, and now Brigitte Fontaine (reviews coming soon) and these two from the Glaxo Babies. The sound will definitely be familiar to fans of post punk of that era, angular metallic guitars, dubby rhythms grooves, repetitive almost chanted vocals, horns, all locked into cyclical, hypnotic grooves. Some tracks frantic and frenetic, others laid back and dreamily druggy. Both of these records were originally released in 1980. Put Me On The Guest List is a collection of the group's demos, recorded live with no overdubs, never intended to be released, but so glad they were, kinetic, almost power poppy, sinewy basslines and simple solid drumming, all in service of some killer guitar work, crunchy jangly riffs, and angular crunch, not to mention some super dramatic vocals, some tracks slipping into near doominess, others tense and intense, angular and atonal, check out "This Is Your Life", all minor key moodiness and heady post punk brood. A few tracks get all reggae / dubby, others skronky and jazzy, and still others super abstract and experimental, but most of Put Me On The Guest List is just primo UK post punk, and essential listening for fans of the Homosexuals, P.I.L., Gang Of Four, Wire and all the rest�
Nine Months To The Disco was the group's first, and only, proper full length, supposedly recorded in a single day, and it's a monster. How a record like this, and a group like this managed to remain so far under the radar is shocking after listening to Nine Months. It's funky and groovy, tense and wiry, the sound slipping easily from moody post punkiness, to downright dancey punk-funk, to super experimental krautrock style minimalism, "This Is Your Vendetta" is dark and creepy and so sinister, all spaced out and shadowy, laced with wild flurries of spastic drumming, spidery guitar melodies, and distant horn skronk, culminating in a truly harrowing sample over the brooding last minute or so. "Seven Days" is all churning jazz minimalism, sounding like a darker, dronier, post punkier Necks! The title track is all backwards rhythms, backwards basslines, and creepy droned out ambience, while "The Tea Master And The Assassin" is another abstract ambient experiment that evokes a sinister sense of dread. "Shake (The Foundations)" is the Glaxo Babies at their funkiest, a track that was often covered by the Pop Group later on, it's a dead ringer for Parliament! And the awesomely titled "Dinosaur Disco Meets The Swampsstomp" is not the funky jam you might imagine, in fact, it's something way more abstract and trippy. For all the post punk, and punk funk on Nine Months To The Disco, it's remarkable how much of the record is totally far our, psychedelic and experimental. Part of what makes it so essential. Like Put Me On The Guest List, Nine Months To The Disco is most definitely for fans of P.I.L, Wire, the Homosexuals, etc. but it's also the sort of think that might push all your This Heat buttons, plenty of kraut influenced rhythmic mesmer and FX heavy avant bunkurfunk. Needless to say WAY recommended!!
Even though he resides right here in the Bay Area we knew very little about this Brian Glaze character when we first got in this new release of his, but oh damn is that about to change, as this is becoming one of those records that we can't seem to stop listening to. Channeling so many eras of warped pop delight, Brian Glaze has made a record that's as fun as it is smart, and as catchy as it is fulfilling. There is for sure a similar aesthetic and delivery to some of our favorite warped popsmiths like John Maus and Ariel Pink, but Green Living totally has its own thing going on. '50s pop colliding with psychedelic rock that's soaked in new wave electronics. We hear a bit of what The Gris Gris might sound like if they began to pull from more varied influences. Psychedelic disco pop? Deconstructed multigenerational pop genius? We're not sure exactly what to call it but we know that we LOVE IT!
When you think of the Constellation label, warm bouncy and sunny aren't usually words that come to mind. Home to the whole Godspeed You Black Emperor family the label is most usually associated with monumental post rock with some dark flair. Glissandro 70 is a much welcome blast of washed out sunshine for the label. Incorporating blissed out melodies, tasteful lo-fi nods to world rhythms, and an overall cohesive laid back approach that quietly sucks you in. There is something about this record that sounds so totally refreshing. We listed the reissue of Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts elsewhere on this list as well and this can be added as a great example of a future generation getting so right the seeds planted by that influential recording. There's also an avant pop sensibility that will totally hit the spot for fans of Animal Collective's recent outings as well as Broken Social Scene at their most abstract. The sun has finally reappeared here in SF and this has been the perfect record to hang out with while we soak in the rays.
What do two guys from Genghis Tron do when they're not spewing metallic electronic grind pop whatthefuck? Well, they sort of do the same thing they always do. Sort of. But they do mix things up a bit by upping the pop ante, toning down the grind, and thus these Pals have come up with a NINE MINUTE burst of bubbly glistening, sludgy dirge pop that hits the spot in a similar way to the recent sludge pop of Torche. But this isn't sludgy or poppy as much as it's freaked out a furious, a poppier take on that sort of Locust / Horse The Band synthgrind. The thing that sets Glitter Pals apart for us, is a really demented use of clean harmony vocals, a moaning chanting weirdness, that Allan thought sounded like the sample from LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out". Weird and heavy and catchy and totally fucked. And you know from us that means HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
We thumbed up the spacey synthy glitter-glam garage retro not-really-metal of this SF band's Siltbreeze 7" a while back, but then somehow skipped over reviewing their subsequent full-length, and are even a little behind the times in getting to this new elope of theirs too, but that's ok 'cause the Glitter Wiz guys are also behind the times, or maybe way out futuristically in front, way out anyway, again using '60s and '70s rock inspirations like Deep Purple, Hawkwind, The Doors, Bloodrock, Black Widow, and Iron Butterfly to help formulate their super groovy, more wizardly-than-thou sound, one that's got lotsa synth, jamming electric organ, some flute and sax. Along with catchy riffs and amusing lyrics, often gleefully unserious ("I don't worship the Devil, the Devil worships me"). Our kind of entertainment!
There's one little hushed-folky-trippy-acoustic number, "Sunlit Wolves", but otherwise most of the trax are swaggering rockers, such as "Wizard Wagon" (about the singer's van, it would seem) which definitely has hit potential, in our world anyway. "Motorider" reminds us of both The Stooges and Steppenwolf, and when they get heavier on the 7+ minute "Space" it sorta sounds like an agitated Om with keyboards. Album-closer "Big Sur" also has that Om/Sleep vibe, due to the chant-like vox and slomo swinging plod. It's another long one, the longest here at close to 9 minutes, and so about half way through stops plodding and starts ripping and rollicking, reminding us more of early early Sabbath, like back when Sabbath covered Crow's "Evil Woman" on their first single. That said, though, mostly Glitter Wizard doesn't even seem all that heavy or metal or even proto-metal. They're retro-proto-proto-metal maybe? Definitely G. Wiz love their '60s sounds but do their own cool new thing with that, rather than going for some kind of Nuggets redux. For fans of Blood Ceremony (minus the female vox and much of the metal) and Danava and Mammatus when they do get heavy-ish.
Vinyl-only, goddamit. Maybe someday they'll realize that compact discs are more glittery and magical.
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Heard about this on Tom Lax's Siltblog, which is funny 'cause this band is from right here in our backyard, and are also not exactly shitgaze or whatever other noisy underground rock aesthetic we thought Siltbreeze was all about. Lax mentioned classic heavy psych/metal peeps for the ages like Deep Purple, Hawkwind, and Monster Magnet in his review and yep, all present and accounted for (if inebriated and high as fuck, no surprise) in GW's sound, to some extent. Super stoner retro rockin' here, well with retro sounds but not sounding like any actual old band that's for sure, A-side "Black Lotus" starts off all full of gobblin' space synth soundz, then begins pounding down the riffs like Sleep or something a bit later on, while on the flip, "Witch's Limbo", they keep on rockin', no not like Dokken but more like Danava (w/ all them synths) and Priestess and other current bands creating the past anew. Interestingly, the other tracks we've heard from 'em, on their MySpace, are way more overtly garagey punky, in a ? and the Mysterians, Lyres, mebbe even Stooges style, but here it seems they're heavy metalling it (the magazine and the music) a bit more. So, two cool tunes, and now we're put on notice to go see these glittering wizzes next time they play, we're especially curious to see if they get all glammed up live to go with their name. (AQ staffer Jon has seen 'em and sez they do!)
The last Glitterbug record showed up in the midst of some sort of electronica renaissance, with fantastic new records from Pantha Du Prince, Actress, Klimek, T++ (sad we haven't heard anything else from them/him) and a bunch more, so Glitterbug, the work of a German DJ/producer fit perfectly with all of those, the sound lush and layered, softly psychedelic, cosmic with a definitely Pop Ambient vibe. We played that record to death. This record looks to follow suit, but unlike that first one, which was more a full self contained sound world, woven from both studio work and live recordings, this record, Cancerboy, is a much more personal collection, focusing on Glitterbug's struggle with cancer as a boy (hence the title). The record even starts off with what sounds like the ambient sound of a hospital room, the wheezing and beeping of machines, the voices of doctors and nurses, which gives way to the opening track "To Guess", which takes some of those sounds and weaves them into a dark, droney stretch of moody electronic melancholia, a hushed rhythmic shuffle, warm shimmery drones, little flecks of glitchery here and there, a super simple kick drum pulse, tinkling chimes, and ethereal melodies, quite haunting and cinematic, and an appropriately somber opening for a record with such a dark focus. But the darkness is not all encompassing, the record slips into more sort of Kompakt style minimal techno on "Abyss", a grid of pulse and click, wreathed in dark melodic swirls and brooding low end thrum, but as the song progresses, the melodies percolate wildly, the song grows more distorted and the vibe more frantic.
"Undertow" brings it back down, another Kompakt style shuffle, a woozy moody robotic groove, laced with a spidery minor key melody, the beats and loops in constant flux, sometimes sleek and clinical, other times noisy and rough around the edges, the vibe definitely cool and late night, but seemingly always underpinned by a melancholia that infuses the whole record. Much of the record could very well pass for some modern minimal techno, not knowing the background or the source of the title, but the record is rife with tracks that are a bit more moody and brooding, tracks that peel back the skitter and stutter to reveal the darkness underneath, like on "From Here On", that loops a strange echo drenched hand clap beat, and then drapes it with thick washes of low end rumble and waves of metallic buzz, as well as some delicate chiming melodies, or on "Dragged Along", which is a hushed sprawl of super spare dubbed out ambience, that skitters amidst vast swirls of barely there sonic shimmer, only coalescing into a proper beat near the end, and even then, wreathed in wistful melodies, or on "Outside My Window", which is a lush collage of tangled beats and murky swirling melodies and blurred psychedelic textures, that seem to gradually bleed into one another.
After a bit of a dry spell, in terms of electronic records that had us freaking out, it's been pretty much nonstop freakouts for the last little while. Pantha Du Prince's Black Noise record, the reissue of his This Bliss and Diamond Daze albums, all three records minimal and skittery, bleary and chilled out, moody and synthy and drone-y, occasionally pulsing and throbbing, a little groovy, a little pop ambient, a little techno, all wound into an ever evolving world of mysterious and magical electronic sound. Then came Actress, the new record Splazsh, not to mention his earlier Hazyville, again, both dancing on the edges of electronica, pushing the boundaries, skittery minimalism, weird playful collages, looped and hypnotic, chopped and recontextualized vocals, glitch and squelch and ambient shimmer, as well as twisted beats. And that's not even mentioning other electronica faves like T++, Vex'd, Klimek, Thomas Fehlman, Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never, but the reason we mention Actress and Pantha Du Prince, is that the music of Glitterbug seems to exist in a similar sonic continuum, melding washed out dreamlike ambient shimmer, with stripped down minimal post techno, pulsing kosmische krautrock with more earthbound stutter and skitter, and while this is in fact record number two from Glitterbug, aka Till Rohmann, a German DJ / producer / artist, we're already pretty smitten, as we imagine you might be too, especially if like us, you've been listening to the above records as much as we have.
A sprawling double disc, recorded in the studio and on tour, with field recordings from various tour stops incorporated into some of the tracks, sometimes as just another unrecognizable sample, adding rhythm and texture, but other times it's more obvious, the sounds of life and the world, only further adding energy and emotion to an already organic electronic sound. The record begins with a warm softly pulsing expanse of glimmering synths, a subtle melody, looped and hypnotic, laced with shimmering melodic counterpoint, all hazy and sun dappled and dreamlike, peppered with bits of piano, the perfect blend of abstract kosmische krautdrone and pop ambience. The second track introduces some drums, which sound real, and a bit jazzy, before a more obviously electronic beat joins in, then some thick warbly buzz, some deep low end rumble, some chiming melodies, and we're off, propulsive and mesmerizing, washed out and softly psychedelic, but super chilled out and warm and luxurious and lush. The next track slips right back into more cosmic synth space bliss, reverbed tones ring out, overlapping, layered, underpinned by awesome intense slabs of low end, more felt than heard, the result is almost like a more stripped down, more electronic Expo 70, spacey and abstract, but with some subtle momentum, less driving and more drifting, but so dreamy and divine, another track that could have filled up the whole rest of the record and we would have been perfectly happy, and there are plenty of tracks like that on these two discs.
And so it goes, for the next two hours, Glitterbug's sound slipping seamlessly from pulsing minimal skitter, to murky muted throb, to ethereal glimmering drift, to hushed crystalline shimmer, to abstract drone flecked house music, to dark, almost dirge-y Carpenter style synthscapes, more often than not, those various sounds bleeding into one another, overlapping, intertwining, the sounds lush and lustrous, rich and organic, the rhythms spare and skeletal, sometimes delicate, other times dense and dark, but always fantastic and futuristic, blissed out and beautiful.
We totally flipped for the new Glitterbug record, Privilege, reviewed a couple lists back, the work of Till Rohmann, a German DJ / producer / artist, whose Glitterbug sound was exactly what we had been hankering for, a glorious blend of processed field recordings, soft pulsing glimmering synthscapes, stripped down minimal techno, abstract kosmische krautdrone and pop ambience, so when we discovered there was another, previous Glitterbug, we knew we had to check it out. And once again, were were not disappointed. Supershelter is another heady blend of Kompakt style skeletal techno, and warm swirling synthy drones, dark ominous rumbles, and ethereal after hours party music, skittery, and stuttery, washed out and hypnotic.
After a gorgeous slow melodic intro, that sounds like it could have been plucked from a Burzum record (at least before the plink plonk piano counterpoint comes in), the next few tracks unfurl the beats, wrapped around playful keyboards, percolating clicks and chirps, some sweetly melancholy melodies, even some soaring faux strings, "The Things I Long To Do" almost sounds like a Bjork backing track. "Oh My Hick!" is another skittery techno, warm liquid ambience hybrid, while "Unforgotten" is a brief stretch of hissy static rumble, leading into "Reference System" a low slung slab of synth wrapped late night shuffle, groovy and subtly funky, which butts right up against the warped and muted "Brontohouse" which does evoke some sort of giant beast, with its muddy thumping rhythm, and warm whirring buzz. The record plays out similarly, flitting from minimal thump and pulse, to woozy washed out drift, and quite a few stops in between.
Imagine a less clinical, more playful Kompakt, this will definitely hit the spot if you've been digging any of the recent weirdo electronica from folks like Actress, Pantha Du Prince, Klimek, Vex'd, T++, Thomas Fehlman, Oneohtrix and all the rest...
I have always loved Global Goon. Rumoured to be either an Aphex Twin alter ego or Aphex's crazy flatmate, GG records have always been light and fluffy in their spazzy skitter. And it always seemd to me that Global Goon was exclusively playing Christmas
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra was a free jazz big band featuring what seems like a who's who of late '60s European improv -- Willem Breuker, Peter Brotzmann, Albert Mangelsdorf, Peter Kowald, Sven-Ake Johnasson, Evan Parker, Derek
Fans of this era/style of out-jazz, you know what to do: grab your beards and hold on! And thank Atavistic's Unheard Music Series for a continued reason to live. Go, UMS, go!
Contemporary composer Vinko Globokar began his career in Slovenia as a jazz trombone player in the '50s, and he has since worked with Luciano Berio, Stockhausen and Takemitsu. This recording consists of three pieces composed in the 1990s: one for trombone,
For whatever reason, we were expecting this to be some sort of fuzzy jangle pop, maybe it was the name? But this is in fact nothing of the sort, instead, Glochids, aka sonic mad scientist James Roemer, conjures up a seriously twisted, and gorgeously noisy collection of field recording driven, 20th century beholden, fractured avant collage soundscapery. The backdrop for most of these tracks do seem to be field recordings, gathered, we discovered via the label, from locales as diverse as South American bus stations, Wisconsin in the winter and the Sonoran desert to name just a few. But those recordings are reworked and reimagined, and while recognizable on some tracks, on others they're transformed into woozy smears, or crumbling, corrosive ambience, over which Roemer plays an assortment of instruments, piano and guitar, but also primitive computers, gamelan, even cactus quills, it could be a case where the making of is much more interesting than the actual music, but thankfully, Roemer weaves all of that random instrumentation, and the various processed field recordings into something quite mysterious and lovely. Some tracks are dark psychedelic blurs, others are chiming bell like melodies, still others seem to be formed from chopped up vocals tangled up with splattery percussion, and still others are murky staticky drones, laced with buried melodies and random rhythms, there are noisy bits for sure, but even then the sound is textured and nuanced.
Most of the record seems to exist in some weird faux early music / avant garde soundworld, as if this was some alien Folkways collection, gathered up on various trips, going door to door, or maybe planet to planet, capturing songs on porches and in fields, in spacecraft? And then sending them back via wormhole, where they get garbled and recontextualized, before they emerge here, in this time, gloriously corroded and splintered, doused in all manner of cosmic sonic detritus, the resulting abstract experimental folk music a strange strain of lovely, one that's often difficult, but deep listening is definitely rewarded.
We're actually reminded of an old aQ favorite, Brian Harnetty's American Winter, which took snippets of dialogue and oral histories, and wove them into field recordings and radio transmissions, wheezing chords and toy instruments. Glochids sounds a lot like a deconstructed, more Nurse With Wounded version of Harnetty's haunting collages. Which is a very good thing. Wonderfully weird and warped, and in its own twisted way, quite lovely as well.
Pressed on 160 gram vinyl, includes a download code and is LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!
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You know in cartoons, when you get excited or scared, and your head spins around, your eyes pop out on big long springs, smoke shoots out of your ears, the top of your head pops up like a little geyser, your mouth opens and out comes that car horn AHOOOOOOGUH!!! AHOOOOOOGUH!!! That's exactly what will happen when you have a gander at this here book of freakish Finnish art. That's right, you heard us, FINNISH. Which means, a bunch of your favorite Finnish forest folkies are present, indulging their visual side, which is as tripped out and psychedelic as their musical sides. A gorgeously massive, Technicolor, mind blowing pen and ink freakout. If you close your eyes when you listen to Avarus or Uton or Paavoharju or Islaja this is probably the sort of stuff you see. 232 pages, perfect bound, FULL color, 21 Finnish artists, including Piirustuskerho (which includes pretty much all Avarus and Kemialliset Ystavat people), Roope Eronen, Reijo Karkkainen (Le Dernier Cri), Kasper Stromman (Napa) and loads more. From creepy simple squiggles to dizzying abstract magic marker scapes to haunting water colors to amazingly strange illustrations, all of them, brief little glimpses into some beautifully mysterious and beautiful otherworld. Ghostlike little girls, bizarre creatures, crazy characters, weird warped landscapes. Wow. No, seriously we're talking WOW WOW WOW! A lot of the text is in Finnish but is translated in footnotes! It almost doesn't matter anyway, the pictures are so head spinningly beautiful they tell the stories just fine on their own.
These books had a bit of a rough trip from Finland, so the spine and the edges show some slight wear, but not so much that it really matters at all. Once inside, you'll get swallowed whole by all the pretty colors and lost forever in a swirling world of wonderful weirdness.
We're so immersed in Finnish underground music all the time, that we sometimes forget there's probably a whole lot of other amazing underground stuff going on over there as well. Like say, ART ferinstance. Well last year we got a crash course in Finnish underground art with a hefty eye popping tome called Glomp. And it happened to be the eighth Glomp, but the first one we had ever set eyes on and we were smitten, BIG TIME. So were all of you as we couldn't keep it in stock, and it ended up going out of print pretty dang fast.
Thankfully, it's time for another hair raising, eye popping, head spinning, other-body-part-doing-something-else-that-body-part-doesn't-normally-do installment of crazy, gorgeous, funny, sad, poignant, confusing, fantastical and fucked up Finnish underground art in the form of Glomp #9! And just like the first one it's amazing. And even though much of the text is in Finnish, it doesn't detract from the loveliness or far-out-ness or just plain old simple beauty of this amazing artwork. And for all you Finnish music freaks (like us), tons of the artwork here is by folks who do time in bands like Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and loads more. Just like #8, the stuff inside is all over the map, from gorgeous and bizarre photographs, to gorgeous super detailed Renee French like pencil drawings, to super abstract paintings, to garish sculptures, confusing collages, tons of comic strips, most you don't even have to understand Finnish to get (although most of the text is subtitled with English footnotes!). Our favorite is probably the recurring strip by Tommi Musturi, the trials and tribulations of a strange doughy white pill shaped being with pink lips and a tubular nose, who wanders Frank-like through strange and dangerous worlds. But all of it is just so amazing. Finnish freaks will definitely want this, but anyone into cool weird hard to find art books will definitely go crazy for this too. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES WORLDWIDE. Of that thousand we have a super limited amount, and if people go as crazy for this one as they did for the last one, they won't be around for long...
One of six records which were originally part of a multi part release from local label Time Released Sound, whose releases are initially presented as deluxe hand crafted art editions, which we carry when we can, but in the case of this series, dubbed the 'chocolate box' series, which found each record pressed onto 3" cd-r's and packaged in a mini chocolate box, every box hand assembled, and every one different, the set had a seriously hefty price tag, and sold out super quick anyway, so while we weren't able to get our hands on the deluxe versions, thankfully the records were also available as proper cds in more modest packaging. We already reviewed the first two installments on the last New Arrivals List, Taskerlands and David Newlyn, and this week, we have the other four.
One of which is this one, from Rezo Glonti, a Georgian sound artist (as in the republic of Georgia, not GEORGIA), whose sound is a lush and lovely hybrid of warm washed out swells and mysterious electronic glitchery. Hazy dreamlike shimmers wreathed in swirls of static give way to hushed delicate ambient folk peppered with lush textures, buried field recordings surface and fade away, the vibe is almost choral, the sounds stately and serene, the strange clouds of electronics transforming a muted minimalism into something much more abstract and mysterious, as if they were lost broadcasts, being intercepted from some alternate universe or being sent forward from the past. The gauzy patina that surrounds most of these songs give them the feel of an antiquated unearthed recording, we hear shades of TIm Hecker and Philip Jeck, the same sort of soft focus staticky shimmer and woozy warbled melodies, all smeared into a bleary bit of electronic ambient drift, that is quite entrancing and mesmerizing.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
French black metallers Glorior Belli continue down the lefthand path, moving ever further away from the Deathspell style angular black buzz that defined their early sound toward something that sounds more, well, like Pantera maybe, or Down? Crazy we know, but their last record, The Great Southern Darkness paired the aforementioned black buzz, with some serious rocking, as in Southern rock, as in shit kicking, skull stomping, BIG riff, hard RAWKing heaviness. And c'mon, this new one is called, Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls, how can you not expect more of that blackened heavy rock? Which is precisely what you get on opener "Blackpowder Roars", with a killer main riff, totally Sabbathy, spidery stoner rock leads, bellowed vox, that veer dangerously close to Phil Anselmo territory, there's even some total wailing super rock clean vocals, that get a little Alice In Chains, and this is all fucking awesome, imagine those bands but heavier and blacker, and this is IT, and it sounds killer. But maybe it seems like they've yet to commit wholly to this new sound, cuz the second track slips right back into gnarled black metal buzz, and these guys are still masters, the sound fierce and fucked up and furious, fans of DSO, Katharsis, Funeral Mist, this is your shit, oh wait, at least until the swinging kick ass Southern rock breakdown a minute or so in, and then it's right back into more atonal black buzz. What the fuck! So killer. The new sound so much more seemingly integrated into their old sound, the shift between the two, as natural as anything, the songs eminently more headbangable, the grooviness not at all taking away anything from the black fury, if anything, it seriously just makes it that much more ROCKING. And then they go whole hog balls out stoner groove, like on "Ain't No Pit Deep Enough", it's like the heaviest stoner rock EVER. And so it goes for the rest of the record, with the blackness more serving the stoner rock than the other way around, check out "A Hoax, A Croc" - a jam later day Corrosion Of Conformity would have killed for, like a supercharged ultra heavy Allman Brothers blowout, that eventually erupts into something blacker and buzzier, only to slip right back into that main riff. Holy fuck, this is fast becoming our new favorite records. Troo grim hordes be damned, this shit KILLS, so catchy, so heavy, so groovy, stoner metallers who never gave black metal a second glance, this is THEE record that will change your mind. And if you like the idea of blackened groovy stoner metal heaviness, this might be your new favorite too.
France pretty much has the market cornered on modern progressive black metal. Deathspell Omega obviously, Hell Militia, Amesoeurs, Alcest, Peste Noire, Mutiilation, Blut Aus Nord, Aluk Todolo, Spektr, Angmar, Wolfe, and now you can add Glorior Belli to the list.
Deathspell fans will go apeshit for these guys, their buzzing blackness is all mathy and post rocky, songs lurch and sway, some songs are thick furious blasts, relentless and dense with black grit, the sound massive and crushing, while others are sprawling post black doomscapes, the guitars unwinding into fractured melodies, the drums stuttering through convoluted tempos, and even the blasting black numbers, more often than not splinter into super angular blackmath workouts.
Manifesting The Raging Beast somehow manages to be raw and grim, but simultaneously super dense and incredibly heavy, the production is incredible, the guitars are thick streaks of luminous melody, wound into black thunderbolts, the drums sound like sticking your head in a cement mixer full of anvils, as much as we love us some super lo-fi tinny 4-track buzz, it's kind of awesome to have a record sound this powerful, especially a black metal record. The riffs are kick ass, and catchy, and the band are not afraid of a groove, so much of the record is spent lurching through weird black waltzes or swinging in strange time signatures before exploding back into soul shearing blasts. And it's that balance between relentless black onslaught, and strange tangled weirdness that keeps this record sounding so amazing.
Definitely for fans of DSO, Funeral Mist, Katharsis and other like minded progressive black metal hordes...
What is it about France? For years now, this unsuspecting nation has been churning out some of the most vile, merciless, and best black metal on the planet. Groups like Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord have set a new standard that expertly blends bizarre, progressive experimentation with a blackened attack that only a fool would criticize for not being "true". The results are undeniable, and it should be clear that among those redefining black metal for a new age, the French are at the top of the heap. For some reason, Glorior Belli has yet to receive the attention bestowed on many of their countrymen, but, Satan willing, things will definitely change with the arrival of Meet Us At The Southern Sign, the band's third album.
Glorior Belli may not be the weirdest of the bunch, but FUCK do these guys know how to conjure up the perfect blend of crushing brutality with a well defined sense of off kilter, seasick melodies and an overall approach that simply rocks. With that said, this album does come across as something different, but not in a "listen to my oscillator" kind of way. Maybe the weirdness here is relative, since we're talking about a band that is relentlessly metal at the heart of it all, but Glorior Belli's more lumbering numbers, such as opener "Once In A Blood Red Moon" almost come across as what present day Earth might sound like if they gave it all up to the dark side. It's hard to come out and say this, surely many will disagree, but some of this *almost* moves with the flow of the blues. It's doomy. It's dirgey. It sounds like the black metal version of waking up in your trailer with a horrible hangover after a night of intense drinking at the local shithole. Mainman Infestvvs's guttural croak is surprisingly similar to the legendary bark of John Brannon, most famous for his work with hardcore gods Negative Approach, but ALSO revered as the crooner for bluesy post-punk crew the Laughing Hyenas. Of course, the artwork could also confirm this bluesy presence, as could the song titles themselves. And then, holy shit, without even looking beforehand, we notice a peculiar song title... "In Every Grief Stricken Blues", another behemoth of mid-tempo, down and out goodness. Fuck, first Diamatragon's Crossroad, now this. Maybe we're in the early stages of a new sub-genre?
With all that said, it is certainly impossible to ignore how insanely, overwhelmingly METAL this is. Fear not, for there are plenty of lightspeed blast beats, grinding dual guitars, and heavy as fuck winding bass grooves, which add a weird mathy element to the maelstrom. All contribute equally to the potent, concentrated assault of Glorior Belli, making this one of the best metal albums of the year. So unbelievably, incomprehensibly awesome, we're stilll trying to wrap our heads around it all...
We've been trying to track this down for ages after reading about Glorior Belli in Terrorizer. Assorted comparisons to Dissection and Watain and Deathspell Omega and the like had us practically foaming at the mouth. Finally after months of searching we finally managed to get a bunch of these in. The first thing we noticed was how much it looks like the Watain records, or any of the releases on N.E.D. (home to DSO, Ondskapt, Funeral Mist, etc), with a cool woodcut on the cover, arcane black and grey graphics, vaguely religious imagery, everything sort of distressed looking, as if it was taken from some long buried parchment. But what the hell, this band probably -should- be on N.E.D., it would be a perfect fit. Buzzing super technical, ultra raw blackened thrash, with darkly melodic breakdowns verging on post rock, lots of majestic riffing, and stretches of super blasting buzz! The whole thing though has a strangely melodic bent that helps it stand out from other black metal records, an almost indie-rock quality to the melodies, somehow super catchy while at the same time being suffocatingly black and grim. Quite a feat indeed. Anyone who has been digging Watain, Deathspell Omega (especially the newest one), Funeral Mist, or any of that stuff NEEDS this for sure!
We've mentioned it before, but it seems like few can touch French black metal when it comes to originally and innovation, whether it's the gnarled twisted post rock flecked ritualistic blackness of Deathspell Omega, or the industrial drone drenched black buzz of Blut Aus Nord, and on past records, French horde Glorior Belli seemed to hew close to DSO's sound, the same sort of mysterious progressive blackness, that was until their 2009 record Meet Us At The Southern Sign, where GB established themselves as perhaps the strangest of the French BM bunch, infusing the usual black blasts and grim buzz with all manner of not-specifically-black-metal elements, whether it's sort of a twangy bit of moody meander, or punkish vocal howls, or some downright nearly blues sounding moments, not to mention a penchant for rocking, and we're not talking buzzing and blasting, we're talking rocking as in rock music, like shredding leads, classic (even Southern at moments) ROCK, which was a subtle element way back when, but recently, especially on this new one, has come to play a bigger and bigger part in GB's sound. In fact much of The Great Southern Darkness is spent rocking and not blasting or buzzing, the opening one two punch of "Dark Gnosis" and "Secret Ride To Rebellion", includes very little of what one might describe as buzzing black metal, instead, there's lots of midtempo rocking, even some doomy dirgery, with slippery seasick riffage and classic metal melodies. And then check out "They Call Me Black Devil", which starts off with some Joy Division / Earth like low slung twang, before launching into what sounds like some post metal Neur-Isis-y groove, the harsh demonic vokills, the only thing really defining the song as black metal, and then the track shifts into a killer mathy super melodic breakdown, hell, pretty much any band on Relapse would kill for a part like that, which speaks to how good these guys have gotten musically, as they toss off parts like that constantly, without batting an eye. And while you're at it, there's also "Negative Incarnate", which indeed has an appropriately EVIL title, but is almost total classic rock, complete with super melodic leads, and a groove that won't quit. But then the second that song ends, comes the band's harshest blast, the furious opening to "Bring Down The Cosmic Scheme", but that grim buzz doesn't last long, as the track shifts gears into something totally melodic and totally crazy catchy, lurching back and forth between blackbuzz and melodic blackened rock. And not to overly stress the lack of actual black metal, the band do offer up plenty of grim blackness, like on the aforementioned track, but more often then not, even at their blackest and buzziest, the sound is infused with something distinctly not black, or there's inevitably some crazy poppy / proggy / ROCKING part is right around the corner. And to be honest, in a world of buzzing and blasting black metal clones, it's records like this that end up sticking the most. And while it took a few listens to really get into what these guys were doing, once we did, we began to have trouble understanding why more bands didn't actually do something similar. Might not be black metal record of the year, but just might have to make up a blackened heavy rock category, cuz we're digging this like crazy.
There really is something about music from New Zealand. We used to think it was sort of shorthand cheapshot music journalism, comparing everything to the Dead C, and lumping all these disparate sounding bands together based entirely on locale, but dammit if the more we listen to this stuff, the more it does seem to be true. Take this Glory Fckn Sun lp, the latest chunk of sweet dreamy noise from New Zealanders Antony Milton, Ben Spiers and Simon O'Rorke. As we were listening to this, all sorts of other bands came to mind, but when we thought about it more than a second, and listened really closely, we realized that this music could not have come from anywhere else. A blind listening, and we're fairly sure, even if we couldn't name the band, we would have immediately known New Zealand.
None of that is to say this record isn't unique or its own entity, or that it sounds like everything else from NZ, it most certainly doesn't, but it does share much sonically, and texturally, and there's just something ineffable that makes the music of GFS distinctly New Zealand.
Regardless, it's a big glorious fucking soft noise explosion, beginning with soft cymbal swirls and rumbling low wend, lots of effects, and deep buried melodies. Long streaks of buzzing metallic skree skitters over bits of clatter and clang, all held in place by a field of creaking metal on metal shimmer, murky vocals swimming in swirling pools of crumbling distortion. If you need references, think of some lost record on Corpus Hermeticum in the nineties, Surface Of The Earth maybe, a softened Dead C, muted and swathed in electric crackle, the whole thing a glorious whirling abyss of sound peppered with the clank and clunk of mini pipe fights, and twisted atonal chords, chiming harmonies, all layered and spread out into gritty streaks of droning abstract, slightly noisy beauty.
Pressed on clear red vinyl, housed in a striking chipboard sleeve hand screened, two color, and of course LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Latest chunk of noisy bliss from Antony Milton, head honcho of the Pseudo Arcana label, the man behind Mrtyu, the Nether Dawn and others, as well as a member of The Stumps, With Throats As Fine As Needles, Street, Claypipe and about a million others. Glory Frckn Sun finds Milton teamed up with Ben Spiers (from Empty Mirror) and�improv percussionist Simon O'Rorke. The three form a phalanx of sonic solar warriors, wielding an arsenal of noisemakers including�guitars, violins, electronics, percussion and gongs...
Beginning life in 2003, this disc has been over two years in the making, and sounds like it, in that it sounds like a super saturated slooooooooooow burn, the sound of the birth of a universe, a blinding glistening supernova of sound, the guitars are white hot, blinding sonic glares, that just drift in long solar flares, woven into huge expanses of constantly shifting soft drone, over the top, shimmering billows of reverberating melodies crash like waves, this is some impossible drift through alien skies, navigating black holes and clouds of whirring glimmering particles. Cacophonous squalls pepper the mostly tranquil stretches, with the occasional jagged streak of feedback or spatters of metallic percussion. The opening track is massive, a 30 minute trawl though the heart of the sun, everything melting into buzzing smears all around you. Imagine SUNNO))) of Fushitsusha set up on the surface of the sun, now imagine a field recording of those bands being consumed by fire, amps melting into thick viscous black puddles, guitar strings becoming strange serpentine shadows, flesh and bone fusing into twisted shapes before transforming into thick clouds of living sound.�
Track two sounds like the recording of whatever infernal machinery lies below the surface of the sun, the mysterious factory that keeps it burning, feeding the flames, a grinding cacophony laced with long low slow stretches of buzz and whir. The final track a gorgeous languorous outro, a bit of shuffling percussion strewn atop a long soft stretch of blown out ambience, minor key melodies buried in the murk, giving the strange sleepy shimmer a warm ominous glow. Epic, intense and beautiful.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Packaged in a hand screened, cd-sized, perfect bound book, the cover, thick textured paper, very spare and striking, the booklet inside, a series of photos, graphics and diagrams of the sun, from super technical to completely abstract, the cd in a sleeve affixed to the back cover, each copy hand�numbered.�
Some musical pairings just make perfect sense. Case in point, Siouxsie And The Banshees' Steve Severin and The Cure's Robert Smith. Originally released in 1983, The Glove is getting the same reissue treatment as the early Cure albums which means there is an extra disc which in this case is where the magic is hidden. On the original release there were label/legality issues which kept Smith's voice from appearing on all except two tracks so a last minute singer was needed which ended up being Jeanette Landray, who was the girlfriend of The Banshees drummer Budgie. While her vocals kind of work, it's always been the kind of record that you always pictured with Smith's vintage vocals throughout. And this reissue makes that dream come true as the bonus disc is filled with demo versions on which Smith sings those very song making this reissue even more essential. Robert Smith in 1983 singing with Severin from The Banshees playing, what more could you want?
Here's a cool new reissue from the Medical Records label, a collection of rare synth wave jams from DIY '80s musician Christof Glowalla, a young German who endeavored to create a moody swirl of haunting synthwave with just a single synth, a 4 track, and a super primitive drum machine. Eventually, he made it into a proper studio and recorded what would become a bit of synthpop coldwave history, with the track "Erde 80", a strange bit of cold synth pop, the rhythm track, sounding a bit Kraftwerky, motorik and pulsing, but overlaid with woozy dreamlike synth melodies, and most notably some intense Teutonic vocals, sounding like they were sung in a tunnel, all reverbed and metallic, only adding to the song's strange vibe. "Technik" is just as cool (and weird), the synths darker and buzzier, laced with laxer blast bleeps and FX squiggles, droney and tranced out, with yet still more twisted vocals, this time growled and distorted and transformed into something almost robotic sounding, until the chorus comes and they morph into a weird whiney croon, all over that dense somber buzz, the real surprise though, is the acoustic guitar that pops up midway through, giving the song a strange sun dappled folk vibe, only to slip right back into the dark synth buzz.
The original "Erde 80" single is joined on this 10" reissue by three tracks recorded a year later, all of which were rejected by record companies at the time, and only one that was ever released. "Smog In Der Stadt" is starts out as a grim sprawl of atmospheric buzz and creepy processed vox, before blossoming into another acoustic guitar laced bit of synth pop, the vibe still dark, but way catchier, and much more well produced, the song featuring a haunting vocal drone in the background, not to mention some super strange falsetto background vocals, and some crunchy guitar, even some leads, a weird sort of hard rocking new wave, in fact the last minute sounds way more proto-punk than synth wave! "Der Bosse" is a darkly psychedelic synth ballad, with super dramatic vocals, droned out synth tones, kosmische pulsations, and some spidery, twangy guitars, again displaying Glowalla's new direction, and it becomes more obvious why folks wanting another "Erde 80" might have been thrown off, but we're digging it big time. Finally, "Science Fiction" is a groovy sprawl of bleepy bloop sci-fi- synth pop, which at least for the few minutes sounds more like the "Erde 80" 7", but as the track progresses, the acoustic guitars drift in, and the sound once again seems to move more toward a slightly more mainstream electro pop, eighties new wave sound, which again, sounds pretty goddamn great to us!!
Housed in as super thick, full color jacket, pressed on heavy mustard colored vinyl. LIMITED TO 600 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
Swedish shit-kickin' gasoline-fueled rock action, a la slightly-better known peers The Hellacopters. Biff Malibu (yep, they all have dumb pseudonyms) does his singing in a kinda Danzig kinda way, but the music is more like Motor City 70's proto-punk via grunge city. Bonus disc with video and some other songs.
Fans of the damaged and deranged, the truly warped and mindbending, the freaky, fucked up and plain baffling, by now should be well acquainted with the mysterious master of the guitar synth, and his bevy of bewildering outfits, two of which we've reviewed on past AQ lists, this being the third, in what we can only imagine is some sort of insane trilogy. Xynfonica came first. A "classical" record, completely composed and performed on the guitar synthesizer. A tripped out, outsider slab of post Peter And The Wolf classical deconstructed, atonal and so so so difficult, oh and did we mention that the other part of the equation was seemingly incongruous raspy evil metal vocals? A totally not-right combination, but for those of us who dig that sort of stuff, it was pretty unbeatable. Then there was the HUGE booklet of lyrics, complete with FOOTNOTES!!!
Then came Shevalreq, part two in the "trilogy", his 'world music' record, where the same atonal angular tones and notes, the howled raspy vocals, were this time wrapped around faux tablas and various other ethnic percussion instruments. If anything, it was even more fucked and amazing. Not to mention the over the top cover art, with miniature jousting knights on horseback ON TOP OF various dat machines and other studio gear. WTF?
So while we anxiously awaited part three, we were fairly sure nothing could top Shevalreq. But oh were we wrong.
The new one is called Gluttony, the name of the record: Collapse Of The Roman Republic, another epic tale of war and death and love and betrayal, this one being his quote unquote jazz record, and fuck if it's not the most amazingly fucked up record EVER. Now in addition to the metallic rasp, the stumbling angular melodies, are lots of synthesized horn stabs, crooning synthesizers, faux vibes and marimbas, synth oboes, synth bassoons, all peppered with some serious twisted tangles of Greg Ginn-esque guitar squall, usually draped over some woozy, smoky dive bar synthjazz. It still sort of sounds like Peter And The Wolf, but it also sounds like the score for some mystery noir z-movie thriller, ripe for some sort of Sam Spade voice over, but instead you get a voice over from some growling bile spewing demon, and the tracks lope on endlessly, the melodies, maniacally off kilter, the whole thing so brilliantly baffling it's almost impossible to listen to the whole thing, but we've come close. Very very close.
Absolutely recommended, but ONLY for those who can handle stuff like this. You know who you are.
When we first heard of the strangely monikered Gnarls Barkley, they already had a number one hit in the UK and had the biggest downloaded single ever with the track "Crazy". Normally, we don't always pay much attention to popular hit singles, but something about the name made us curious. So we checked it out and need we say it, our minds were blown!! A stab of cool, infectious, minor key, soul-pop groove that conks you over the head with an anvil or a piano until you're seeing stars and little birdies, just like in the cartoons! Of course, when we found out Gnarls Barkley was in fact Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo (ex-Goodie Mob), it all made a bit more sense. But even with such talent, we assumed the single would be a one-off and heck, we'd be fine with that, cuz that track was just so perfect. Then, lo and behold, a full length CD shows up on our counter. Would it be just as exciting and mind blowing as the single? Hells Yes!!! St. Elsewhere is a strange and often silly pastiche of soul, pop, funk, hip hop, and gospel with nods to Wilson Pickett, Undisputed Truth, Marvin Gaye, and crazily enough Violent Femmes (they cover "Gone Daddy Gone"). But even with their influences showing bright and clear, they put it all together in their own unique crazy fun and groovy way. Less sleazy than Andre 3000's Love Below, but sipping from the same funky bottle. Expect to hear this one all summer long.
We're really getting tired of this new trend of reissuing a record after it's only been out for a few months. Drives us nuts. What's worse is that they seem to always have cool stuff that we totally want. Argh. If they could just include that stuff the first time around... Anyway, THE smash hit of the year, Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo's Gnarls Barkley gets the deluxe reissue treatment and it's a doozy, so much so that we all find ourselves wanting to buy it all over again. New super swanky packaging, with a badass 3-D lenticular cover and a HUGE booklet, but more importantly, two live tracks, one from Top Of The Pops, the other from Later With Jools Holland, and 4 videos, two of which we've seen and are completely amazing. If you're a fan, it's probably sort of essential, and if you somehow managed to not buy this yet, now's the time to get it, with all the bells and whistles! In case, you've been living in a cave or under a rock, here's what we had to say about the ubiquitous St. Elsewhere:
When we first heard of the strangely monikered Gnarls Barkley, they already had a number one hit in the UK and had the biggest downloaded single ever with the track "Crazy". Normally, we don't always pay much attention to popular hit singles, but something about the name made us curious. So we checked it out and need we say it, our minds were blown!! A stab of cool, infectious, minor key, soul-pop groove that conks you over the head with an anvil or a piano until you're seeing stars and little birdies, just like in the cartoons! Of course, when we found out Gnarls Barkley was in fact Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo (ex-Goodie Mob), it all made a bit more sense. But even with such talent, we assumed the single would be a one-off and heck, we'd be fine with that, cuz that track was just so perfect. Then, lo and behold, a full length CD shows up on our counter. Would it be just as exciting and mind blowing as the single? Hells Yes!!! St. Elsewhere is a strange and often silly pastiche of soul, pop, funk, hip hop, and gospel with nods to Wilson Pickett, Undisputed Truth, Marvin Gaye, and crazily enough Violent Femmes (they cover "Gone Daddy Gone"). But even with their influences showing bright and clear, they put it all together in their own unique crazy fun and groovy way. Less sleazy than Andre 3000's Love Below, but sipping from the same funky bottle. Expect to hear this one all summer long (actually, you should probably expect to hear this one fooooooorrreeeeeeeevvvvvvveeeeeeer!).
Summer Jam lightning rarely strikes twice, and in the case of Gnarls Barkley fluke hit, "Crazy", they were lucky lightning struck at all. So instead of setting out for the impossible, they have made a more memorable full length without the erratic stylistic leaps and goofs of their debut. The tone is darker, but more soulful and while the upbeat jams are fewer, they have enough hooks to keep you listening and coming back. While St. Elsewhere was neurotic and bi-polar, The Odd Couple is addressing demons in a far more beguiling and groovy manner, one that gets better with each listen. Could this be therapy?
Okay, we listed this a while back. Sure we dug it, but then someone let us in on a little secret, which was that the vinyl version of The Odd Couple came with a second lp, which was the whole record IN REVERSE! BACKWARDS!!! Faithful readers of the aQ list know how much we love backwards music, so needless to say, the vinyl version of this is ESSENTIAL. So much so that since we got the lp we pretty much ONLY listen to the backwards disc. All dizzying and slippery and swoopy and trippy and, well, gloriously backwards! But be warned, we only have a couple copies, and have had trouble getting any more than that. We just wanted to give mailorder folks a chance to grab one of these
But just in case, some tripped out backwards Gnarls Barkley isn't enough for you, well, here's what we had to say about the UN-backwards side:
Summer Jam lightning rarely strikes twice, and in the case of Gnarls Barkley fluke hit, "Crazy", they were lucky lightning struck at all. So instead of setting out for the impossible, they have made a more memorable full length without the erratic stylistic leaps and goofs of their debut. The tone is darker, but more soulful and while the upbeat jams are fewer, they have enough hooks to keep you listening and coming back. While St. Elsewhere was neurotic and bi-polar, The Odd Couple is addressing demons in a far more beguiling and groovy manner, one that gets better with each listen. Could this be therapy?
A couple weeks ago, we reviewed the debut album by Aanipaa, a new experimental glitch-drone-doom project headed up by Mika Vainio and Stephen O'Malley. One of the most abject and significant elements of Aanipaa's sound was the vocals (or shall we use the term vokills) contributed by Alan Dubin. We've been fans of Dubin since back in the OLD days (OLD being his '90s grind/electronica/WTF? band with James Plotkin), and you probably also know him from Khanate, the doomic supergroup that also included both O'Malley and Plotkin. In the pantheon of anguished, extreme vokills, there's naught that can compare to Dubin's tortured throat - well maybe Keiji Haino, and possibly also the guy that sang on Bethlehem's Dictius Te Necare. They're sort of kokills that make the listener want to curl up in the fetal position, and it sounds like the singer already has.
Well, here's some more Dubin for you, in the form of the sophomore album from his own experimental doom band, from the bowels of NYC, known as Gnaw. It's another discomforting dose of avant-garde audio terror, the four other guys in the band making utterly harrowing, heavy music that manages to hold its own alongside Dubin's vocalizations, and it's not an easy task to be so extreme.
Track one, "Humming", eases (slightly) the listener in, Dubin quietly accompanied by a simple bell-like, plink-plonk motif on a keyboard, and background industrial atmospheres. Dubin makes use of maniacal, mantric repetition in his creepy lyrics, a method used throughout the album to suggest a sick state of psychological compulsion. Here repeated lines like "you left your window open / nice lady / nice lady / window open / open" make him sound like Jerry Lewis as a psychopathic prowler. But then on track two, "Of Embers", look out, 'cause the full band kicks in, to devastating effect, with crashing drum pummel and massive riff plod. And on and on and down and down it goes, Gnaw's hellish trudge laced with weird noise-damaged effects and other disturbing details. Basically, it's like a more twisted and occasionally ambient version of Khanate. Yikes!
Gnaw's first album was called Your Face; now they're doing their gnawing on the inside of your skull instead. If they ever were to do a remake of Gummo, we'd expect Gnaw to appear on the soundtrack. Vinly version includes download.
Thee extreme/experimental/industrial metal scene has a potential new ruler here, with the doomic and disturbing debut of Gnaw. If you put this disc in your computer's iTunes, you'll see some joker has categorized their genre as "children's music". Ha, don't think so! Unless you want your kids to grow up to be like Alan Dubin, of OLD/Khanate infamy, who provides the blood curdling vokills here, ranging from throat-shredding yowls to creepy stage whispers. He's joined by former members of doomlords Burning Witch, psychfolk weirdos Enos Slaughter and cold, early '80s NYC post-punk Factory Records band Ike Yard (!) for this new project, which seems to take up where Dubin's previous bands left off, but in a direction much more deviant & eccentric.
The claustrophobic chaos of track one, "Haven Vault", ought to determine pretty quick if this is for you or not. Imagine a sped-up Khanate struggling through a windstorm, Dubin bawling wretchedly amidst the buzzing murk and the splatter of improv percussion... then distant, pretty piano notes fade in eerily, one by one... it's like Khanate meets Hazard meets Supersilent, in a nightmare. Extreme indeed, and all right with us! That leads to the next track, one that's calmer and more song-like, yet perhaps even more sinister-sounding, with Dubin's negative vibe lyrics more intelligible, everything backed by a springy-sprongy electronic rhythm. More of a tribal drumming pattern is exhibited on the deep rumble of the third song.
Each track seems to delve further and further into weirdness and woe, with drone and distortion and feedback given free range of the album. The jittery percussion effects a trance-like vibe at times, perhaps allowing Dubin's words deeper, subliminal access to your subconscious (uh oh). But as big fans of both OLD and Khanate, we're all for it, glad to now have Gnaw to push those same buttons, along with other ones we hadn't expected, like the way the singing on "Watcher" sounds almost like Eugene from Oxbow. Or how it sounds like maybe Dubin & Co. have been into some dubstep lately. Or how Gnaw's crunching head nodding heaviness is cracked like Humpty D. Yep, if you like some strange surprises in your grim glitchtronic avant-metal music, and moreover enjoy the varied vokill stylings of Mr. Dubin, you'll want Gnaw's Your Face at your place.
The Conspiracy label has released this on cd (digipack) and of course LIMITED EDITION gatefold vinyl of various colors (we've got any color you want, as long as it's black). They had to leave 2 tracks off the vinyl version, but it does come with a free mp3 download card so you can get the entire album on your computer.
We're running out of superlatives, not to mention overly poetic descriptions of filth and blackness and depravity, to describe this one man cinematic black doom noise outfit, but with every record, Mories, the man behind the beast, offers still more glimpses into what lurks below, or within, the sound an ever evolving cloud of black energy, rendered audible in shades of pummeling drum plod, of downtuned melting riffs, of howled and shrieked vocalizations, of Bernard Hermann like strings, all stretched and blurred and smeared and tangled into a veritable symphony of black bleak heaviness.
It's difficult to classify, as every song tends to slip seamlessly from Wolf Eyes like industrial soundscapery, to Godflesh like metal machine crunch, to lurching Abruptum like black ritual, to almost classic sounding black metal buzz, to haunting cinematic dark ambience, each of those elements fully realized, but then hurled into a black sonic vortex, where along with all the various other sounds and shapes and colors it gets mangled and tangles and spewed out on the other side as some almost living thing, a music that is at once threatening and caustic, harrowing and hateful, but also weirdly melodic and almost classical sounding, a definite case of black(ened) beauty.
For those new to the filth encrusted soundworld that is Gnaw Their Tongues, a brief survey of song titles: "My Orifices Await Ravaging", "The Stench Of Dead Horses On My Breath And The Vile Of Existence In My Hands", "The Gnostic Ritual Consumption Of Semen As Embodiment Of Wounds Teared In The Soul", the album title: All The Dread Magnificence Of Perversity, the crown of thorns / blood splattered / bondage cover art, should all give hints as to what sort of sinister sound lurks inside, but again, all of that could point to something much more puerile and simplistic, the sound of Gnaw Their Tongues is something altogether more refined, if a word like that could be applied to something this hellish, but it does sound refined, and composed, epic and majestic, for every bit of sluggish heaviness, there's another part that is hauntingly beautiful, or strangely serene, it boggles the mind how someone creates music like this, it must come from some deep, dark, black part of the soul, and while we ourselves might fear such a place in ourselves, we can't help but be enthralled and obsessed with the sort of sonic darkness that lurks in others.
WAY recommended, as with past GGT releases...
You can definitely tell a lot about a band by the names of records and song titles. Case in point: Gnaw Their Tongues. Some song titles: "My Body is Not a Vessel, Nor a Temple. It's a Repulsive Pile of Sickness", "And There Will Be More of Your Children Dead Tomorrow", "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Sound the Horns, the Water is Poisoned". Some album titles: Spit at Me and Wreak Havoc on My Flesh, Preferring Human Skin Over Animal Fur, Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh, Spasming and Howling, Bowels Loosening and Bladders Emptying, Vomiting, and now this, An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood. But then what is it exactly that we can glean from these titles? That the men in Gnaw Their tongues are demented? Sick? Depraved? Probably. But where titles like this might lead one to assume the music attached to the above words would be some sort of hateful harsh white noise, or some sort of near unlistenable Whitehouse worship, the truth is, Gnaw Their Tongues is one of the few bands with an utterly distinctive and recognizable sound. There are very few bands we can think of, even amongst our favorites. You will absolutely never confuse the music of Gnaw Their Tongues with any other outfit. And conversely, you will never hear something that is not them, and assume it is, because NOTHING sounds anything like Gnaw Their Tongues.
So much so that even explaining their sound in a review is fairly difficult. The last GTT review, we resorted to a tale of hell and hellbound journeys, of total annihilation and utter destruction, of death and decay and misery, all in a bid to evoke the same sort of images and visions, thoughts and feelings that are evoked by the sounds these guys produce.
It's definitely not black metal, but it is most certainly black. If forced to describe their sound in some succinct, and non-rambling manner, it might be cinematic operatic orchestral avant industrial doom. But since we can ramble, it might be easier to dig a little deeper.
Every song is epic, like little films, sounds evoking images, evoking thoughts and emotions, horns and orchestral stabs, flutes and strings, are as much a part of the sound as guitars. Probably more so. Thick gristly slabs of buzzing low end, crawl beneath pummeling percussive plod, operatic vocals soar and wail, bits of electronic glitch and whir drift in and out, guitars are downtuned and allowed to spread like toxic oil spills, tracks are peppered with bits of dialogue, and snippets of films, found sounds and mysterious textures, occasionally, harsh hellish blackened shrieks join the fray, as do bits of dark ambience. There is plenty of space, the sound managing to be expansive and open, as well as claustrophobic and suffocating.
It's a bit like a black metal Arvo Part, scoring a lost Hitchcock thriller, so totally intense and emotional and epic, rife with nervous tension and extreme dread. Whenever the sound verges on white noise, or total implosion, the sound abates, leaving Bernard Hermann-ish strings, or some bit of cryptic dialogue, or some strange disembodied rhythm, before spilling forth again like black vomit. The layers of blasphemous sound piling up like blackened bodies, buzzy and filthy and grime-y but so composed, not really that chaotic at all, a controlled chaos perhaps, each sound painstakingly placed to help paint that blood red picture.
An impossible blend of metal, choral, industrial, electronic, ambient, drone, noise and blackness, a gorgeous, and gorgeously infernal concoction, every record, another chapter in some sick saga, hell swallowing the surface dwellers, misery and mayhem overtaking humanity, death and pestilence, the world a graveyard for humanity, such utter depravity conveyed in such epic and dementedly brilliant sounds, which is precisely why Gnaw Their Tongues is quickly becoming one of our favorite bands going�
For years now we've been singing the dark praises of this twisted one man band, whose sound is an ever-shifting
sprawl of cinematic blackened noise-doom weirdness. Delivering noxious blurts of industrial crush, wrapped around stately marches and harrowing ambience, moments of almost soundtrack-ish tranquility give away to heaving waves of crumbling power electronics or stumbling caveman pummel. As much as we love Gnaw Their Tongues, even we had trouble keeping up with his output, a barrage of singles and splits, cd-r's and cassettes, driving the obsessive completist music nerds here mad.
Well kudos to Crucial Blast for gathering up all of those odds and ends, onto one double disc, and like the releases proper, Collected Atrocities is another malevolent sonic beast, one that fits comfortable between Reeking Pained and Shuddering and An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood, which is where much of this stuff falls chronologically anyway, those familiar with either of those records no what sort of glorious epic filth is in store, those who are not, should be prepared for what is essentially a hellish soundtrack, to the most terrifying film never made. Strings shimmer amidst a cacophony of clang and clatter, loops warble and mutate, samples drift in from the ether, vokills howl and shriek behind veils of black thrum, and rib cage rattling low end threatens to turn your bones to dust, it's like a melting symphony colliding with a black metal band dosed on some seriously bad psychedelics, a harrowing sonic swirl, dizzying and darkly delightful, broodingly beautiful in places, but painfully punishing in others, Mories, the man behind GTT, conjuring up some insane alternative musical universe, one that evokes the maddest of hallucinations, and as we must have mentioned before, these SHOULD be the scores to twisted arthouse horror flicks, even though ultimately they don't need any visuals at all, it's that rare sort of sound that opens some primitive portal in your brain, unleashing your imagination, and sending it spiraling into the darkest depths of your blackened soul.
Packaged in a super swank 6 panel digipak, with some very cringeworthy artwork.
We almost missed out on this one completely. Limited to 100 copies or so, we tried to order 40 and were informed they only had a handful left. So we begged and pleaded, and the label agreed to press up 40 more copies just for us, and thus for you. Whew! Since we discovered this band we've become pretty obsessed. As have you all, judging from how quick we sell out of Gnaw records. They're heavy, they're super fucked up, it's not just black metal or sludge, it's some head spinning hybrid equal parts abstract industrial, ambient collageblasting blackness, hyperspeed grind, blackdrone, harsh and hellish, but strangely musical, their last record, the recently reviewed An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood (they have a knack for titles too) is pretty much a shoe in for record of the year. Have a look at that review for some serious gushing.
This 3 song ep, is GTT at their most black metal. The first two tracks, while laced with bits of orchestral grandeur, and blown out crumbling bliss, spend most of their time blasting away, but even then, there are bits of melodic flair here and there, the distortion is so thick and intense, the whole thing threatens to blur into some thick whirring drone, the opener has a killer breakdown groove, utterly majestic and epic, before flitting back to the black blast. The second track is another blackened monster, furiously thrashing and convulsing wildly, but it too is peppered with bits of glimmering effulgence, and a middle breakdown where distorted guitars are pitched up and allowed to shimmer ominously like some Bernard Hermann score, before the metal drops back in, transforming the track into a pummeling slow motion Godflesh style industrial dirge that eventually launches itself back into a furious burst of grim brutality.
The final track is the creepiest of the bunch, long drawn out synth drones, wavering ominously, wrapped in bis of whir and metallic buzz, samples distorted and effected drifting amidst the swirling black ambience, the moodiness eventually overtaken by a thick wave of white noise distortion and what sounds like voices screaming in terror, finally splintering into a hellish black frenzy.
Packaged in a mini 3" dvd-style case, with full color artwork, and pressed on a black cd-r. Limited to these 40 copies, once they're gone, might be tough to convince them to make us more again...
It seems almost criminal to release something so limited by a band as hyped as these guys (or this guy) are lately. But there you go. 100 copies. Already sold out. We got almost half of them, but even just in the store they've been flying out of here. So you should know what that means by now. Thankfully, all the hype is well deserved and then some. Gnaw Their Tongues is one of the grimmest, sickest, darkest, most gloriously fucked up outfits going, mixing black ambient drones, dirgey sludge, buzzing black metal, abstract industrial, even mixing in bits of dialogue and snippets of opera and random other weirdness, the result a totally baffling and bewildering headfuck, that manages to creep the shit out of us, but somehow keep us listening over and over and over and over.
Devotion though is a departure, ditching much of the metal of past releases, as well as most of the song structure, and opts for something much more static and ambient, but no less heavy, these four tracks are thick swaths of dark torturous throb and groan, creaks and shimmers, rendered in crumbling greys and hoarse ghostlike wheezes. It's like an aural tour of some mysterious catacombs, built from skulls and rotting flesh, the bleak atmosphere rife with the sounds of strange machinery, the tortured cries of the doomed, a veritable symphony of cacophonous crashes and deafening blasts of blown out buzz, boiled down into a primordial ooze and smeared into gorgeously lush waves of corrosive grinding crush, a bristly brutal blur that slithers and undulates like a pit full of black snakes.
The packaging is appropriately grim and black and bleak, and fancy, as are most At War With False Noise releases, printed cd-r's housed in a two sided washed out black and white gatefold sleeve, decorated with goats and candles and bloodshed and naked women, tucked in an oversized A5 sized black cardstock gatefold jacket, with a barely legible black on black vellum cover, all in a plastic outer sleeve.
And again, limited to 100 copies, already out of print, blah blah blah...
Not sure how we first heard about Gnaw Their Tongues, pretty sure a customer recommended them, but believe us when we say that the words Gnaw Their Tongues had barely left their lips (or maybe more accurately, the words had barely left the email and reached our cerebral cortex) and we were already smitten. How could they not rule with a name like that? The question was merely HOW they would rule, dark and creepy? Heavy and harsh? Doom? Blacknoise? Drone? Howabout all of those?! Oh yeah, it's almost like someone snuck into the AQ barracks in the middle of the night to scan our minds and see what kind of bands we dreamed about, the bands our subconscious really wished existed.�
They took all the data back to their lair, the one hidden beneath that big scary mountain, and spent years analyzing it, and creating equations, chemicals, compounds, months in an underground lab, until eventually the whole project was forgotten.�
Until years later, when a record store employee was hiking and discovered the ruins of some old, well, it looked like a fortress, maybe a lair, and decided, against all the wisdom gleaned from a million after school specials, to explore. Way down deep in the dusty recesses of this old forgotten lair, this record store feller discovered some sort of portal, rusted shut it seemed, and adorned with messages in some strange language, an alien tongue if you will, they looked like warnings, but what the heck, shit like that only happens in horror movies, so the feller went about trying to unlock the portal, and after what seemed like ages, the lock clicked, and the rusty metal swung open, and suddenly all was blackness, and dripping red, and agony and misery, and hell embodied on earth, in the form of this filthy black musick.�
That filthy black musick was this, the first recorded document by these mysterious black beasties known as Gnaw Their Tongues. Who spew forth a caustic noxious ultradoom. A black metallized lurch and stumble, harsh, hellish vocals buried beneath an avalanche of corrosive guitar, strange alien ambience, and mechanical monster drumming. Horrible and grotesque and dizzyingly brutal, but with tiny vestiges of beauty and melody, occasionally visible through the dense black sonic fog. Stretches of distorted doom verging on the beautiful, separating gut wrenching squalls of utter black chaos. And that's just the first track.�
The second is like the first, only fast. Really fast. Like sticking your head into the middle of a lightning storm. Like Velvet Caccoon and Wold and Amacoma all playing simultaneously, at full volume, broadcast through Konono's PA, untiil your ears bleed, but it's not all pain and suffering, this� whirling world of sound is again strangely melodic, twisted into some almost pop like shapes, but always quickly bathed in blackness and sent spinning� back into the fray.�
"29 Needles" is a step away from the end, and is some sort of industrial plod, a garish landscape of bleak brutality, sparse ultradistorted percussion, clouds of caustic whir, creepy ghostlike voices, the sort of sounds that make Wolf Eyes sound like the Carpenters. A musical death march through a world of fire and death and destruction, of keening musical misery and downtuned sonic punishment.�
Finally, the prophecy is complete with once the sounds of "Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen" reach the ears of mortal man. The plants wither and the sky grows dim, our hearts beat slower and our blood begins to boil, the earth begins to crack, and slowly we sink into the depths of the underworld, and this is the sound that the end of all things makes. A lonely slowed down low end caterwaul, a rumbling whir peppered with jagged streaks of harsh noise, thick swells of coruscating sonic malevolence, storm clouds of hiss and buzz, a pounding skull splitting din from the heavens, an electrical storm that singes every nerve in your body, leaving you paralyzed, supine, blind, and mute, with only your ears ringing painfully, just barely able to make out the dying gasps of life as we know it.
NOW REPRESSED AND AVAILABLE AGAIN AT A CHEAPER PRICE!!
Here's our review of the Die Mutter reissue when we first listed it back in 2009:
Two long out of print cd-r's from our favorite symphonic black doom noize combo, gets the ultra deluxe reissue treatment. Both Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen, originally released on Corps-Morts (the first thing we ever heard from GTT), and Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh originally released on Universal Tongue, are both represented here in full, and on top of that, there are THREE unreleased bonus tracks, so even folks who have those original cds will probably want this, not just for the bonus tracks (although that might be enough), but to have those two out of print cd-r's on a proper cd!! Gorgeous packaging too, super striking 6 panel digipak, comes with a GTT sticker too.
Not sure how we first heard about Gnaw Their Tongues, pretty sure a customer recommended them, but believe us when we say that the words Gnaw Their Tongues had barely left their lips (or maybe more accurately, the words had barely left the email and reached our cerebral cortex) and we were already smitten. How could they not rule with a name like that? The question was merely HOW they would rule, dark and creepy? Heavy and harsh? Doom? Blacknoise? Drone? Howabout all of those?! Oh yeah, it's almost like someone snuck into the AQ barracks in the middle of the night to scan our minds and see what kind of bands we dreamed about, the bands our subconscious really wished existed.
They took all the data back to their lair, the one hidden beneath that big scary mountain, and spent years analyzing it, and creating equations, chemicals, compounds, months in an underground lab, until eventually the whole project was forgotten.
Until years later, when a record store employee was hiking and discovered the ruins of some old, well, it looked like a fortress, maybe a lair, and decided, against all the wisdom gleaned from a million after school specials, to explore. Way down deep in the dusty recesses of this old forgotten lair, this record store feller discovered some sort of portal, rusted shut it seemed, and adorned with messages in some strange language, an alien tongue if you will, they looked like warnings, but what the heck, shit like that only happens in horror movies, so the feller went about trying to unlock the portal, and after what seemed like ages, the lock clicked, and the rusty metal swung open, and suddenly all was blackness, and dripping red, and agony and misery, and hell embodied on earth, in the form of this filthy black musick.
That filthy black musick was in fact these two musical documents by these mysterious black beasties known as Gnaw Their Tongues. Who on Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen, spew forth a caustic noxious ultradoom. A black metallized lurch and stumble, harsh, hellish vocals buried beneath an avalanche of corrosive guitar, strange alien ambience, and mechanical monster drumming. Horrible and grotesque and dizzyingly brutal, but with tiny vestiges of beauty and melody, occasionally visible through the dense black sonic fog. Stretches of distorted doom verging on the beautiful, separating gut wrenching squalls of utter black chaos. And that's just the first track.
The second is like the first, only fast. Really fast. Like sticking your head into the middle of a lightning storm. Like Velvet Caccoon and Wold and AmacomA all playing simultaneously, at full volume, broadcast through Konono's PA, until your ears bleed, but it's not all pain and suffering, this whirling world of sound is again strangely melodic, twisted into some almost pop like shapes, but always quickly bathed in blackness and sent spinning back into the fray.
"29 Needles" is a step away from the end, and is some sort of industrial plod, a garish landscape of bleak brutality, sparse ultradistorted percussion, clouds of caustic whir, creepy ghostlike voices, the sort of sounds that make Wolf Eyes sound like the Carpenters. A musical death march through a world of fire and death and destruction, of keening musical misery and downtuned sonic punishment.
Finally, the prophecy is complete with once the sounds of "Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen" reach the ears of mortal man. The plants wither and the sky grows dim, our hearts beat slower and our blood begins to boil, the earth begins to crack, and slowly we sink into the depths of the underworld, and this is the sound that the end of all things makes. A lonely slowed down low end caterwaul, a rumbling whir peppered with jagged streaks of harsh noise, thick swells of coruscating sonic malevolence, storm clouds of hiss and buzz, a pounding skull splitting din from the heavens, an electrical storm that singes every nerve in your body, leaving you paralyzed, supine, blind, and mute, with only your ears ringing painfully, just barely able to make out the dying gasps of life as we know it.
Then came Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh. We almost missed out on it completely. The original version limited to 100 copies or so, we tried to order 40 and were informed they only had a handful left. So we begged and pleaded, and the label agreed to press up 40 more copies just for us, and thus for you. But those were gone before we knew it. Which is why this reissue is such a godsend (satansend?) Since we first discovered this band we had become pretty obsessed. As have the aQ blacknoize minions, judging from how quick we sell out of Gnaw records. They're heavy, they're super fucked up, it's not just black metal or sludge, it's some head spinning hybrid equal parts abstract industrial, ambient collageblasting blackness, hyperspeed grind, blackdrone, harsh and hellish, but strangely musical.
Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh finds GTT at their most black metal. The first two tracks, while laced with bits of orchestral grandeur, and blown out crumbling bliss, spend most of their time blasting away, but even then, there are bits of melodic flair here and there, the distortion is so thick and intense, the whole thing threatens to blur into some thick whirring drone, the opener has a killer breakdown groove, utterly majestic and epic, before flitting back to the black blast. The second track is another blackened monster, furiously thrashing and convulsing wildly, but it too is peppered with bits of glimmering effulgence, and a middle breakdown where distorted guitars are pitched up and allowed to shimmer ominously like some Bernard Hermann score, before the metal drops back in, transforming the track into a pummeling slow motion Godflesh style industrial dirge that eventually launches itself back into a furious burst of grim brutality.
The final track is the creepiest of the bunch, long drawn out synth drones, wavering ominously, wrapped in bis of whir and metallic buzz, samples distorted and effected drifting amidst the swirling black ambience, the moodiness eventually overtaken by a thick wave of white noise distortion and what sounds like voices screaming in terror, finally splintering into a hellish black frenzy.
As mentioned in the introduction to this review, in addition to the reissued tracks, this version of Die Mutter also includes three new, unreleased tracks. The first is a gorgeous post industrial orchestral crawl, heaving horns, crunching metallic percussion, guttural vocalizations, blasting beats, exotic strings, long stretches of haunting cinematic ambience, heavy and harrowing, the production fucked up and fractured, the sound woozy and wonderfully grim. The second is more of the same, a lumbering death march painted in broad swaths of majestic strings, buzz drenched guitars, all wrapped around a super spare machinelike pound, fuzzed out Goblin like synths, like a Bernard Hermann score gone haywire. And finally, the awesomely titled closer "I Am The Lord And There Is No Other; I Make The Light, I Create Darkness" (GTT definitely have a way with song and album titles), a slow burning bit of black ambient drift, distant drones, creepy keyboard shimmers, dark layered waves of low end rumble, epic swells of soundtracky creepiness, while all throughout, the track drifts through sprawling fields of mysterious creaks and groans, clatter and crunch. Occasional squalls of orchestral percussion tangle with blurred bits of otherworldly whir, all streaked with sweetly sorrowful strings. So good.
If you're new to Gnaw Their Tongues, and you're into sounds blackened and brutal and bizarre and fucked up and noisy and creepy and epic, then you couldn't find a better place to start than this, and yeah, GTT fanatics, you're definitely gonna want this, even if you have the cd-r's, as we mentioned above, this is some of the best GTT material, finally on a proper cd, but even more importantly, this would be well worth $10 even if it was just a 20 minute / 3 song ep containing only the bonus tracks.
Latest ep of cinematic doom dirge black ambience from this freaky one man band, and like past missives, this stuff is gorgeous, sick, confusing, heavy, fucked up, noisy, mysterious, cinematic, epic, disturbing and totally brilliant.
It's supposedly an ep, but it's almost an hour long, and for most folks an hour of this punishment is all you could take.
Check out some of our other Gnaw reviews, to read our gushing descriptions of the super evocative sound world GTT is able to conjure up, we wrote endlessly about bleak barren wastelands, charred bodies, horrific site and sounds, it's almost easier to describe the images and ideas that this music evokes that it is to describe the sounds themselves. But we'll have a go.
Imagine Abruptum scoring films and you might have a rough idea: strings soar, horns moan and bleat, industrial percussion is laced throughout, vocals are disembodied guttural howls, melodies creep through blackened soundscapes of buzz and pound, opening up into expanses of creak and clatter, laced with samples and found sounds, all floating above a sea of tense dronemusic, everything wrapped in swirling clouds of black sludge, and doomic rumbles. The clouds occasionally part, revealing some intimate moment, whether musical and dramatic, agonized wailing, or some strange dialogue, usually tangled up with some gloomy melody, some stumbling rhythm, before exploding again into a cacophonous blast of epic cinematic blacknoize.
This record doesn't deviate too much from past releases, which is just fine with us, it sounds like we're just digging deeper into the scarred psyche behind Gnaw Their Tongues, the most notable difference might be the presence of more sampled strings, and the record's closer which is a gorgeous buzzing midtempo black metal dirge, that manages to sound grim and raw, but also weirdly melodic and emotional.
GTT is one of the few bands who manages to create an absolutely unique sound, an impossible doom / black metal / ambient hybrid that fuses all of those various sounds perfectly into something that is both all and none of those. And as always, garish artwork, this time a topless woman preparing to emasculate a supine nude man, and of course song titles like "The Uncomfortable Silence In Between Beatings" and "My Womb Is Barren And I Want Revenge".
Fucked up and genius and thus absolutely recommended.
As we may have mentioned before, with every Gnaw Their Tongues release, we find ourselves once again struggling to describe the blackened filth and abject cinematic doom contained within. Fans already know what they're in store for, and will most likely want more, need more even. The music of Gnaw Their Tongues is the sort of grim black sound that inspires some strange unquenchable hunger for more. A mysterious desire to fall ever deeper into the abyss, to explore GTT's hellish sonic underworld, each record a dizzying assemblage of crushing industrial dirge, of glacial black metal buzz, of clattery, chaotic blacknoize, of weirdly operatic choral music, all woven into some sort of pitch black musical ritual.
L'Arrivee De La Terne Mort Triomphante is merely the latest miserable missive from the black soul who sits on a black throne, made from charred bones, as he gnaws tongues, drinks blood, and as a choir of demons serenades him with these sick sick sounds, but in some ways, L'Arrivee does differ from past releases, in that more than most, it allows the classical element room to breathe. GTT was always some sort of demented Arvo Part / Abruptum hybrid, mixing strings and choirs into the swirling black miasma of crush and thud and buzz and howl, and on L'Arrivee, the orchestral / cinematic side for maybe the first time, does battle with the blackened heavy side, the result a surprisingly dynamic, darkly cinematic chunk of dramatic over the top blackness. One can almost envision this as some sort of crazy Hermann Nitsch style opera, flames and blood, and carcasses, everything dripping with black ichor, lit from below, the shadows like living black beasts, the sound the perfect reflection of those images, booming timpani, moaning sorrowful strings, symphonic swells, operatic voices, mournful pianos, a sort of epic bombastic chamber music, the heaviness and buzz and black occasionally pulled back, allowing the pianos and strings time to unfurl, before quickly being swallowed up again.
The sound here too seems a bit more lush, more produced, cleaner, but without losing any of the filth. We might go so far as to say this is the most accessible GTT release to date, but then it's all relative, this is still some seriously crusty, devastatingly brutal, menacing and mean black doom misery, but deftly woven into something more melodic, more emotionally charged, where past GTT records were simply hateful and hellish, pummeling and punishing, L'Arrivee De La Terne Mort Triomphante is something more, an epic, intense journey, the soundtrack element can't be understated, this totally plays out like the score to some insane, and insanely harrowing epic, a tale of death, and lost souls, and the end of humanity, and total annihilation, but as with all great epics, there continues to be hope, a glowing ember, that sits at the middle of it all, waiting to be discovered, and to perhaps eventually triumph, or perhaps to perish and disappear into utter and unending blackness. Quite possibly the most epic black doom cinematic symphonic noise metal opera EVER.
We've gotten to the point with every review of a new Gnaw Their Tongues record, where we're essentially at a loss for words, if you have a look on the aQ site at past reviews, you'll see these sprawling ultra wordy descriptions that read like some sort of sinister poetry, because really, that's the only way to describe the twisted sound world of cinematic black doom outfit Gnaw Their Tongues, the work of a single man called Mories, who as we've established in the past, must be one twisted fellow. Cuz no one that wasn't utterly demented and deranged could create sounds like this. We have the genre in iTunes for this as 'Industrial Symphonic Cinematic Black Doom', which is as succinct a descriptor as we could come up with. And is fairly accurate. Odds are if you're a fan, you can't get enough, and you're gonna want this one too, after all these sorts of sick sonics engender obsessiveness, trust us, we're totally under Mories' thrall as well, and greet every new slab of twisted genius filth, like some bowl of rotting porridge slipped between the bars of our cell. We beg for the darkness, we imbibe of the blackness, we devour the sounds we are given.
But for those new to this bleak world of chaotic sonic mystery and abject cinematic noise, have a gander at the song titles, "Human Skin For The Messenger's Robe", "Urine-Soaked Neophytes", "Fallen Deities Bathing In Gall", "Bonedust On Dead Genitals", "The Storming Heavens As A Father To All Broken Bodies", which should give you at least a rough idea of the spirit of GTT, now imagine those sentiments rendered in sound, and you have Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus, which in English translates as "with blood and whip, we worship the dark", which again, should leave no doubt as to what lies beyond the blackened gates, a world of churning black metal offal, of demonic symphonies, the sound of Gnaw Their Tongues is precisely what we would imagine Satan's symphony must sound like, epic and majestic, but utterly bleak and blackened, the sound swirling and blurred, erupting into thick gouts of black buzz, but just as often collapsing into something more akin to the score for a bloodletting. The sound does occasionally let up, but it's usually only to build tension, offer dynamics, or unveil the sound of some poor wretch retching, or the cries of people as their skins are flayed, Gnaw Their Tongues is a torture chamber in sound, but so exquisitely rendered, we often find ourselves wondering why Mories isn't scoring every twisted horror film in Hollywood, probably because these sounds are too evocative, and paint too much of a distinct picture, that the need for actual images is practically null.
The thing with GTT records, is that often, there's too much going on, and the can become a head spinning wall of sound, a swirling roiling cauldron of black noise, but more often the balance is just right, and Mories' creation is perfectly balanced, equal parts buzzing blackness, abject doom, and haunting symphonic mesmer, a melding of horror score, outsider abstract doom metal and epic classical music, and Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus seems to be maybe the most perfect specimen yet, spending less time grinding and howling and blasting and buzzing, and more time conjuring up some seriously soul stirring ambience, and some blackly symphonic sonic horror.
As always, utterly intense, ridiculously epic, and has us wondering what kind of demented mind can conjure up such glorious filth, and then actually creates it. Grim genius!
If for some reason you missed out on the last Gnaw Their Tongues release, a super limited cd-r now unfortunately out of print, and aren't yet as ridiculously obsessed with these guys as we are, we can get you up to speed pretty easily. Beyond the evocative name, there's the record title: Reeking Pained and Shuddering, and how about the song titles: "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Destroying Is Creating" or "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning". And if you still don't have even a rough idea of what you're in for, there's always the music itself, a roiling sonic cesspool of unfettered abject brutality and buzzing murky malevolence. A sort of black metal doom noise hybrid, like Abruptum jamming with Wolf Eyes but slowed way dooooooown, dipped in tar, rolled in dirt and shoved staggering and bloody out of your speakers.
But this isn't just noisy, or heavy or brutal, each song is strangely nuanced, and manages to veer wildly all over the sonic map without losing cohesiveness, each track is like a mini epic, with movements, moods, a convoluted song structure that is tangled and serpentine but that has some alien logic.
Take the 8+ minute opening track "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", which begins with a lurching industrial plod, all lo-fi Godflesh pound and pummel, in a swirling cloud of grey fog FX, but then, the riffs take on some horror movie like cinematic ambience, somehow sounding orchestral and majestic, before falling apart into some strange shuffling skittering krautdoom, peppered with what sounds like horns, snippets of dialogue, and huge booming downtuned crashes, until everything peels back, just leaving a weird smear of rumbling drones and smeared carnival music, beneath a super creepy monologue from some film, appropriately gruesome, the music in the background looping and more and more ominous, eventually building to a near static symphony of vacuum cleaner whir, above a skeletal framework of skittery percussion, and moaning creaking collapsing-building downtuned riffage. And that's just one song.
"Utter Futility Of Creation" begins with super sinister soundtracky strings, before the hammer falls and the record resumes its monstrous lurch, but the strings never go away, they trill and soar and scrape in the background, adding super dramatic tension and furthering the idea that this record might be the soundtrack to the scariest movie ever made. Here and there the band bow out, leaving the strings to weave an ominous swirl of sonic terror and panic, the band pulsing in the background, as if waiting to pounce, again what sound like horns join the fray. It's like what Goblin might have sounded like had they grown up on a steady diet of grindcore and black metal. "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning" begins as another chunk of lost cinematic black ambience with female operatic vocals over a dark black whirl of thrum and throb, before a grinding looped riff surfaces and the band launch into a blasting slab of black metal, but all tangled up with those haunting vocals, and bathed in a fuzz so thick it sounds like it was recorded by Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz, but so much more harsh and harrowing. Much of the rest of the record leans toward the ambient, with the buzzing guitars washed out into dense drones, more fucked up field recordings and samples, processed vocals, whirring alien loops, howled moaned voices, but still with the occasional stretch of pounding percussion, or wall of impossibly detuned guitar, everything crumbling and filthy, frightening and seriously fucked up. Definitely one of our new favorite bands.
Some of this stuff is previously released, mostly on outrageously limited cd-r's and cassette releases, so while some of you collector fiends might have one or two of these tracks, as far as the rest of us are concerned, this fresh musical meat!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Housed in a white dvd case, with full color artwork and printed heavy paper insert.
What might you glean from an image of a shepherd with a ram's head cradling a baby lamb, standing amidst a flock of sheep, or what appears to be an image of Jesus or a saint or angel, also with a ram's head? What if those images were accompanied by phrases like "Rend Each Other Like Wild Beasts, Till Earth Shall Reek With Midnight Massacre", or "Then Shall They Come, Oh Master, Shrieking From Red Battlefields To People Thy Dark Realms", or "In Sullen Silence Stalks Forth Pestilence"? Well if you've been reading the aQuarius list for a while, you'd no doubt realize that this must be another filthy blackened sonic missive from our favorite master of cinematic black doom, Gnaw Their Tongues.
Three new tracks, all lengthy and dense and brutal and hellishly symphonic, we've struggled to describe the sound of GTT in the past, it's not doom, or black metal, although it incorporates bits of both, it's the strings and horns and haunting ambience, the weird samples and film clips, the strange arrangements that play out more like orchestrations than jams, that make Gnaw Their Tongues so singularly fucked up and genius.
Side one is all hellish deep drones wrapped around distant foghorns, or some sort of inhuman cries, layered atop dense rumbles and muted industrial percussion, tense, ominous, harrowing, building to a crushing cacophony, like a Godflesh record played at 16 rpm, alongside a soulful strings record playing at 8 rpm, the horns bleating and skronking and moaning beneath the heaving machinelike pound. Bursts of blasting buzzing crunch pepper the doomscape, as do super distorted harsh howls, and all manner of tangled melody, like some symphony of filth and crust, a creeping lumbering abstract soundscape, with a super haunting horror movie outro.
The 2nd side is more spacious and doomy, but no less intense, bits of backwards melody lace the stumbling pound, like some Bernard Hermann horror movie score gone haywire, all screaming strings, screaming voices, mysterious samples, all gorgeously abject, but hauntingly beautiful, the mournful horns, the dramatic stings, and the crumbling black wall of sound carrying everything forward and dragging it down to hell.
Gorgeous packaging, the aforementioned ram headed figures on the cover, with a heavy printed inner sleeve, and pressed on thick vinyl. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Almost out of print, these are most likely our last copies ever...
NOTE: All jackets slightly damaged, not enough to distress most folks, but anal record collectors beware!
