We were totally blown away by the Light Of Shipwreck cd-r released on Crucial Bliss a while back, and have been anxiously waiting for more. That disc was compared to Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Can and Earth by the label, but we were hearing Wolf Eyes, This Heat and The Necks.
We still hear all of that here to a certain degree, but LoS's whole sound has been reimagined and the results are pretty mindblowing. The record begins with a swirling sea of shimmering tones, of deep resonant rumbles and skittery processed rhythms, more textural really than rhythmic, melodies drawn out into long streaks of sound, a strange whirring slow motion driftscape, wrapped around a stuttering almost-rhythm, which eventually explodes into a dubbed out brittle beat, the beat heavily effected and allowed to slip into a sea of churning guitar growl and blurred soft noise, until those dubbed out drums return, and the track is transformed into some off kilter post rock, free noise, free jazz krautrock jam. But even that doesn't last, as the track quickly shifts into something much more tranquil, a haunting confluence of various layers and textures, the tones seem to glow and pulse, overlapping and intermingling, a less digital more lo-fi Oval perhaps, a Tim Hecker-ish dronescape, all bleary and blurry and washed out and dreamlike, but rough around the edges, a bit raw, the sounds organic and deep, woven into creeping minor key melodies and long expanses of crumbling shimmer. So awesome.
Packaged in a full color cover, housed in a mini vinyl sleeve, with a full color printed insert, each copy hand numbered. Pressed on cool blue cd-r's. And LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!!!
Who would have thought that there was a world of black metallers out there bowing before the Lord, and no, not the Dark Lord, the, um LORD Lord. You know... Jesus Christ. God. It's true, there's a whole world of UN-black metal out there, white metal, with all the buzz and blast and then some, but none of the evil. Up until now, the spirit of these bands while not a secret, tended to be more subtle. With titles like "Goatcrush", "To The Unholy", "Unblackened", still sounded pretty evil, and band names like Agathothodion, Glaciial, Flaskavsae, if one weren't paying attention, one might be forgiven for thinking these bands were indeed true grim black metal.
But now we have the latest from Light Shall Prevail (get it?), whose new cd-r pulls no punches, especially with the title: "Defeat The Reign Of The Horned One Through The Light Of Christ." Okay. This is some seriously, spiritual, totally positive, but still extremely harsh and buzzing and ultra fucked up Un-black metal. Those of you who remember our review of Light Shall Prevail's last ep, might just remember us hailing the song "Goatcrush" as maybe the best black metal song EVER!!! And this disc has about ten contenders for the very same honor.
When you actually think about it, these bands are indeed true, and not even just in a religious sense, they are true to their vision, and their ideals. Although we're not exactly sure what it is exactly that makes white metal so completely and amazingly twisted and tweaked. But we like it! As grim as any black metal band you can name, in fact, if anything the sound of these bands, Light Shall Prevail especially, is more grim and true, unique and fucked up, way more individual and out there than the majority of the cookie cutter black metal bands we hear every day. Light Shall Prevail is the work of E.H. who also runs the mighty E.E.E. label and who has been releasing amazing and totally brilliant unblack metal for a decade now. We've reviewed records by Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, but there's tons of other amazing white metal bands, Bedeiah, Whispers From A Dead World, Drommer, Offerblod, Dark Procession, Wrathful Plague, Aristaeus, Nahum, Flaskavsae, With Fire, Elgibbor, Moiriah, we can't keep up. We've discovered this whole new trove of mind blowing (un)black metal and we can not get enough!
Light Shall Prevail might be the closest to sounding like a classic Norwegian style black metal band, however, there are plenty of elements that will have you alternating between scratching your head, banging it wildly and bowing it in reverence. The drums are a machine, and thus do some fucked up things no human drummer could (or would) do, whether its' stuttering impossible fast and machinelike, or sounding processed and overblown way down in the murky buzz, then there's the recording, super lo-fi, so much so that the blown out in the red distortion and tape hiss and all the various recording inconsistencies are as much a part of the sound as the riffs or the vocals, and holy shit, the vocals, from alien sleestak garble to weird anguished howl to demonic shriek. And the songs just rule. killer riffs, convoluted arrangements, trippy psychedelic breakdowns, fucked up dubbed out drum parts, guitars that go from weird processed stutter, to insectoid buzz to reverb drenched twang, usually within the same song.
A couple of our customers absolutely refused to pick up any of these unblack records, they were seemingly offended by the idea of unblack black metal, but ultimately it's their loss. We'd venture to guess that 99% of black metal fans (and probably bands for that matter), aren't actually Satanists anyway and very probably like the music FOR the music, not for the corpse paint or the spikes or the faux scary grimness, and as cool and fun as it is to get into the whole theater of it, the mysterious forest born black metal, the corpse-painted wraiths spewing hateful sounds direct from the depths of hell... ultimately, this is MUSIC, pure and simple, dark, mysterious, fucked up, passionate, buzzing, brutal, grim, blackened, brilliant music, and Light Shall Prevail are most definitely all of those things and more....
We talk about black metal all the time. Cuz, we love it. A lot. The blacker and more evil the better. Harsh and hateful, nihilistic and brutal, true evil rendered in sound!
But why exactly are the black metal hordes so angry? What exactly are they fighting against? God? The Christians? The powers of Good? Themselves? Well if we've learned anything, it's that good can not exist without evil. Dark can not exist without light, and black metal can not exist without white metal.
What?
That's right, it's time for the darkness to be pushed back a bit. It's time for that age old battle to be fought with buzzing riffs and thrashing blast beats, howled anguished vocals and rumbling low end. And at the front lines are Light Shall Prevail, masters of their own bizarre black metal buzz. That's right, it's still black metal, in fact, this white metal is more black and fucked up and awesomely weird than most of the more 'true' and 'grim' stuff we hear all the time.
Strange off kilter riffing, insanely fast blasts (either a drum machine, or an unbelievable drummer), super damaged start stop arrangements, weirdly catchy melodies, all prickly and tangled up in the fuzzy black ambience. A super heavy, but still lo-fi production. And the vocals. SO nuts, From monstrous growls, to Urfaust like croon, to shrieked howl. Such an awesome combination. Lots of midtempo chug mixed in with the buzzing blasts too. In fact just listen to the title track, probably the weirdest, catchiest black metal song EVER, with it's convoluted stop start gallop. So fucking cool.
Absolutely essential black metal listening. Even for the grim and evil amongst you. Once you hear this buzzing brilliance you won't be able to resist the power of the light. Just don't get too close, lest your black soul be cleansed and redeemed!
This whole unblack metal movement is still relatively new for us, having only discovered this burgeoning scene within the last year, but we've become sort of obsessed, going totally nuts for records from Drommer (reviewed elsewhere on this list), Glaciial, Agathothodion, and the band that seems to sort of rule and define the scene, Light Shall Prevail, whose main man also runs the mighty E.E.E. label, home to pretty much all our favorite unblack artists.
We've reviewed two LSP discs, the Goatcrush ep (featuring what Andee considers to be maybe one of the greatest black metal songs of all time, the stuttering convoluted title track) and the most recent full length Defeat The Reign Of The Horned One Through The Light Of Christ. Both completely mindblowing, buzzy and blasting but super strange and not at all like the rest of the black metal we hear. Well, apparently, LSP has been recording like crazy for the last few years and I Long To Destroy The Darkness Forever contains every bit of recorded material to date, excluding the two proper releases. And while there's plenty of blasting buzz and epic un-blackness, it's the early lo-fi stuff that is totally blowing our mind. It's easy to see why the newer more polished stuff is still so weird, cuz the early stuff is so completely damaged and bizarrely brilliant.
Going all the way back to 2003, the majority of the first disc is culled from one of the first LSP recording and goes from ultra lo-fi grim buzz, to strange mechanical, almost industrial buzz and stutter, at times almost sounding like a skipping cd, or some 4 tracked industrial house music, but with creepy keyboards and growled vocals, the drums and guitar so distorted that a few tracks almost sound like some sort of weird fuzz collage, underpinned by impossibly quiet beats, and creepy gurgles, but sometimes blissing out into what almost sounds like some weird jangly buzz pop. The last three tracks on the first disc are the earliest, and are pretty killer too, not quite as fucked up sounding, more like a killer grim practice space recording, all blown out cymbals and muted insectoid buzz, but as with future E.E.E. productions, completely unhinged vocals, impossible low vomitous growls that spill over the rest of the music like some spewed black bile. So good.
Disc two jumps ahead 2 or 3 years, and things are still pretty weird, fuzzed out indie jangle, lots of tape hiss, but the metal is much heavier, with louder guitar, weird programmed drums, and another bizarre vocal inflection, a screeched anguished mewl that sometimes dips into a growly grunt. The riffs totally slay and the groundwork is being set for future LSP aktions. Some track still veer into some serious fucked up sonic territory, cymbals so hot and sizzling they swallow up everything around them, long expanses of Skaters' style lo-fi murk, and a few moments of strange black balladry.
Finally, disc three, culled from two split releases from last year, finds LSP sounding pretty much like they do now, a confusionally brilliant and baffling black metal buzz, from furious thrashing blasts, to loping midtempo lurch, to strange ambient strum and shuffle, to doomy trudge, to blissy drift and back again, with fucked up vocals, amazingly convoluted drum machine programming, incredible riffs, all sorts of fuzzy and buzzy ambience, just absolutely some of the most original and intense (un) black metal we've ever heard.
Packaged in a slim triple jewel case with NO tray card, so don't panic, that's the way they come. A photocopied cd booklet with all the track info and liner notes inside.
And of course, this is ULTRA LIMITED! And ALREADY OUT OF PRINT! We took more than half of the pressing, but even so, these won't be around long...
We're not sure which is more amazing, the brilliant hypnotic blackness that is the damaged unblack metal of Light Shall Prevail, or the impossibly varied sound quality each track displays. Granted these were all recorded at various times, and in various places, but most bands tend to use the same 4 track or 8 track, so the variances are slight, but these tracks are all over the map, from blasting ear splitting drums and barely audible guitars, to blown out in the red speaker frying fury, to muddy murky fuzzy blur, to damaged tape dropout buzz, but the thing is, it's like having another instrument. It's almost as if instead of using a different effect, or some strange instrument, the studio became the instrument, as if some songs required crazy ultra distorted production, while others needed to be super clean, same with the guitars, they go from brittle jangle to muddy buzz, all of it fucking gorgeous and demented.
Let's back up a few steps. Light Shall Prevail is spearheading an ever growing movement of un-black metal, white metal, Christian metal, and in doing so creating some of the most original, most damage, most fucked up, and most brilliant (un)black metal we've heard in forever. Not only that, but he also runs the E.E.E. label who seem to single handedly be spreading the word, unleashing cd-r after cd-r of amazing and perplexing unblackness on the world. By now avid readers of the AQ list should have already been exposed to some of our favorite unblack metal bands: the "non-religious dark ambient" of Drommer, the white metal super group Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail obviously, and the bizarre un-blackness of Agathothodion. There's so much good stuff we can barely keep up. A bunch of the best tracks will be compiled for a future double disc un-black compilation on Andee's tUMULt label, but for now we whole heartedly recommend tracking down every single E.E.E. release you can. They're all heavy and weird and fucked up and amazing. None maybe more than this one, another collection of unreleased tracks from unblack flagship outfit Light Shall Prevail.
Beginning with a 38 second track of nothing but tape buzz sort of sets the mood, with "The Dark Dark Fortress" following up right afterwards, a moody looping riff, simple blasting drums, and a demonic throat shredding shriek that pins the needles, sends everything in the red and swallows all the other instruments whole. There seems to be only one part, but it's a good one, with the vocals doing impossible and harsh things, soaring and shrieking and adding a whole layer of distorted damage to the buzzing droning blackness. "There Is Something In The Trees" is next, with a killer super poppy riff, very Nirvana-esque, with drums buried WAY down in the mix, almost like a super rapid heartbeat, all except for the high-hat, and the vocals are a slowed down gargle, dripping over everything like melting black tar, and again, it a single mesmerizing riff looped over and over and over until we're totally mesmerized and under its spell. "One Thousand Winters, is ultra lo-fi, the guitars a mere whisper, the drums a relentless machine, sounding not unlike a typewriter gone haywire.
"Stuck In The Black Ice" might bee one of our favorites, beginning with muted muddy jangle guitar, before the drums (and the distortion kick in) and suddenly everything is ultra distorted, totally saturated, crumbling and blown out, the vocals and the guitar both competing for midrange space, the drums a throbbing blast of muddy hiss, so completely fierce and furious and so goddamn great. "Lay Flowers On My Grave" is doomy and midtempo, the guitars barely audible, bathed in flanger, slowly whirring through its cycle, the drums relentless, a simple click-click-click, the vocals, sung-spoken, in a demented drawl, everything distant and washed out sounding, adding even more melancholia to the depressive despondent vibe, and the breakdown where the main guitar drops out, leaving a faraway clean guitar, the haunting vocals and that never ending single beat rhythm, is ultra creepy indeed.
The rest of the collection continues in the same gloriously haphazard trajectory. Every track simple and buzzing, the guitars a veritable spectrum of various shades of buzz and murk and mud and blur and blow out, the vocals too, from hysterical shriek to maniacal mumble to super distorted cookie monster to growled guttural grunt, the drums a constant mesmerizing pulse, at times it's almost like some experimental noise rock record, incorporating black metal elements, but at other times, it's still some of the most raw and intensely personal metal we've heard. EVER.
By now, it should be painfully obvious, that around these parts we seriously love our damaged and demented, fucked up and freaky music. The weirder the better, be it strange production, inept playing, shoddy recording, or truly inspired madness, we can't get enough strange sounds. The sad thing is that many of our favorite strange sound makers, gradually evolve, which is not always bad thing, but often means as bands get�better, as the recordings get tighter, the production more polished, the songwriting less haphazard, well, often a band begins to sound more and more like the rest of the regular bands, and less like all the things that made them so unique and special.�
Thankfully, such is not the case with king of the unblack scene, Light Shall Prevail. This is the fifth or sixth release so far from this one man Christian black metal band, and most definitely the tightest and most polished, but just as far out, fucked up, brilliant and blackened as any records past. Sure some of the older stuff benefited from insane production, turning black blasts into buzzing smears of what the fuck, or making blurred frosty riffage sound like alien house music, and on Goatcrush, he may have crafted the greatest chunk of buzzing blackness EVER, in the title track, be it black, unblack or whatever... But�Unearthen Hymns Of Revolt is another glorious step in his songwriting evolution, and a definite step up in production and we're loving it. No matter how much we dug all the fucked up weirdness in the past, at the heart of all of those tracks, every one, was an amazing riff, and a killer song. Now it's just easier to hear them.�
Three songs may seem like an ep, but these three looong tracks add up to almost thirty minutes. And as usual, every inch is packed with roiling buzzing fuzzed out blasts, insane programmed drums, bizarre super effected vocals, all tangled up into super complex and convoluted arrangements that manage to be trancelike and droney at the same time. We've gushed like crazy about LSP, the E.E.E. label, all the other unblack bands, check the AQ site for more words and sounds testifying as to the baffling brilliance of this stuff. Needless to say, if you're already a convert, you need this one too, and if you've yet to be baptized in the unblack waters of Light Shall Prevail, this is as good a place to start as any. In fact, it might be the best place to start, as these three tracks sound the most like classic grim black metal out of any of the previously released LSP stuff. But what makes it all so great, is that the weirdness, the fucked up-ness still lurks right below the surface, revealing themselves more and more on subsequent listens. Trust us, some of the best (un)black metal you'll ever hear. Check out the last few minutes of the 15+ minute closer, as the guitars begin to digitally crumble, the drums splintering into clouds of sizzle and skitter, a weird blackened meltdown, so bizarre and so fucking awesome. And how about the best (un)black metal song title ever: "Bonded By (His) Blood". Needless to say SO RECOMMENDED.�
And while you're at it, order ALL the E.E.E. stuff, not only is it all amazing, but the label recently had their headquarters broken into and burgled, losing tons of money and equipment, instruments and computers, they're amazing folks, making amazing music and could use the support!!
Back in the day, when we would scour thrift stores for weird easy listening and exotica records, albums by Enoch Light (and His Light Brigade), were at the top of the heap! The sound sitting comfortably alongside Esquivel, Les Baxter, Martin Denny and all the rest, yet somehow, Light was always our favorite. Not sure if it was the super striking minimal album art (which is how we first discovered them/him), or the fact that most of the records had titles like Persuasive Percussion or Provocative Percussion, or that, as those titles suggested, Light was big on percussion, and stereo. He was an early adopter, obsessed with the possibilities of stereo, the sound on his records careening wildly from speaker to speaker, so much so, that initially his records were not played on the radio, since radio was monaural! Every album was equal parts jazz, exotica, easy listening and weird demonstration record. The bulk of the records made up of covers of popular songs, or new versions of standards, but given super drum heavy, and very rhythmic arrangements, wildly percussive (obviously!) and playful, groovy, exotic and jazzy. In our imaginations, Enoch Light looked like the Heatmiser from those old Christmas claymation specials, wild haired, maniac bandleader, gesticulating wildly before a motley crew of musicians, effortlessly whipping up wild blasts of sixties big band jazz, and playful percussive frivolity.
This super bargain priced collection gathers up EIGHT classic Enoch Light records on 4 cds!!! You get: Persuasive Percussion Vol. 1 (1959), Persuasive Percussion Vol. 2 (1960), Persuasive Percussion Vol. 3 (1960), Provocative Percussion Vol. 1 (1960), Provocative Percussion Vol. 2 (1960), Grand Award All Stars - Percussion And Brass (1960), Stereo 35mm Vol. 1 (1961), and Stereo 35mm Vol. 2 (1961).
It's hard to believe it's been almost 4 years since the last Lightning Bolt record. It does seem like they've been touring pretty much nonstop for the last decade, and nothing compares to seeing these guys live, set up on the floor, right in the middle of the pit, the volume deafening, the energy contagious, the playing frantic and furious, these guys are pretty untouchable live, and the way they make such a din with just bass and drums, makes all other rhythm section duos sound sad in comparison. And while records rarely capture the intensity of live performances, LB records have been pretty consistently kick ass, heavy and complex, a bit murky and lo-fi. but if you've ever seen the band, their equipment looks like they built it from scraps, so one might imagine the recordings would be similarly haphazard.
Earthly Delights picks up pretty much right where Hypermagic Mountain left off. The bass buzzes and sings, somehow filling up the low end, while spitting out squiggly melodies, the drums galloping wildly, explosive fills, jumbled math melting rhythms, the vocals super distorted yelps, the songs weirdly catchy, or if not specifically catchy in the traditional sense, the repeated riffs and motifs get lodged in your head, and you pretty much want them to go on forever, and they sort of do. And the thing is, not a whole lot has changed in the ensuing years since the last record, but why should anything have changed? You don't fix what ain't broke, and anyway, NO ONE sounds like Lightning Bolt, and they were already insanely tight, so not sure things could get any tighter, if anything, it's just another batch of bad ass LB jams, which is more then enough. Of course there's the very metal 12 minute closing track, that will have you wondering how the fuck any one can play like that non stop for 12 whole minutes, which will then lead you to wonder how they play like that for a WHOLE SET. Better not to wonder, just let them do their superhuman noise rock thing, you just sit back and enjoy it, or better yet jump around like crazy and try to keep up.
When Lightning Bolt first emerged from a warehouse in Providence, it seemed like the initial impression was that the Brian's were some kind of snooty art-school rockers and that we just didn't "get it". Here's the thing, though: there's nothing highbrow about this shit. Fantasy Empire straight up rocks. There was a time when Lightning Bolt may have preferred the Ruins/Boredoms approach of chaos, noise, and silliness, and don't get us wrong, we love those albums, but now Brian (G, not C) is writing some of the chunkiest, heaviest RIFFS he ever has, and Brian (C, not G) is playing his most straightforward drums he ever has. That's not to say the Brian's have fully distanced themselves from their early sound - you'll still hear the absolutely one-of-kind, balls-to-the-wall drumming, wall-of-amp bass sound, and tripped out chanting/Boredoms-esque vocal work. It's just that now, these songs are stuff you can headband to, and we dare you to try not to.
There was something about the last Lightning Bolt album that fell a little flat - the production, especially, didn't give those songs the justice they deserved. That problem is long gone on Fantasy Empire. The sound is crystal clear; (or, as crystal clear as you can given what they are actually playing) in fact, this record almost has a live vibe to it (By the way, we all know at this point you HAVE to see this band live, right?). "Horsepower," especially, has this almost sped-up stoner rock jam quality to it, kinda like if you played a Sleep record at 45 RPM, right down to the wah-wah bass sound. "King Of My World" and "Mythmaster" both have a building, krautrock vibe to them that sounds like totally new ground for the 'Bolt, but totally works in a weird, fucked up way. The closing track is as straightforward as these guys will probably get, almost a punkish 4-chord vibe that builds and twists into a huge bombastic conclusion.
If you were like us and thought the last couple 'Bolt albums kinda missed the mark of earlier albums like Hypermagic Mountain or Wonderful Rainbow, don't sleep on Fantasy Empire. The Brians are back and in top form.
Hypermagic Mountain leaves the popular Rhode Island spazz-core duo Lightning Bolt's other records huffing glue and passed out in the dust, believe it or not. On the bass, Brian Gibson covers some of the same wandering scale build-up stuff he's always done, but with so much more intensity and concentration... and needless to say SO MUCH FASTER!! Hard to believe a bass can produce riffs and licks as insane as these. In fact, when the drums drop out and the bass is left to go nuts, it almost sounds like Van Halen's "Eruption". Woah. And drummer Brian Chippendale is as impenetrable as he's been in the past but again, SO MUCH FASTER. WTF?! Did they take some sort of vegan super-power pills? There's also a healthy smathering (a slathering? a lathering? more than a smattering) of hard-rock riffage all over the place that in conjunction with endless super-speed drum insanity (note drumnerds: only one kick drum), create an amazing and noise-manic rockin' sound.
And was ist dat? Woah again! Some choicest moments indeed start to reference a sense of "song", moreso than we've ever heard from them before. We're damn impressed! In so many different ways, this album is incredibly surprising. As mind-numbingly stand-alone awesome as they were before, they are so much more now somehow. LB records have always been a strange beast in terms of production, c'mon, how would YOU record a wall of ear melting bass and non stop spastic drum splatter? But it was never really about sound quality, the production was an afterthought really, who cares when you're soaked in sweat and pinballing around a dayglo pit. The recording quality here is a bit muddier than their previous, already sort of a little muddy sounding albums Wonderful Rainbow and Ride The Skies, but it suits this ultra riffy LB of new for sure. Longtime 'Bolt fans have probably been hankering for greater levels of grit and distortion anyway, like in the old days, so it makes perfect sense that their new sound only adds to their spiffy new riffier hard-rocking maelstrom!
We'd been wanting to list this new Lightning Bolt for ages now, their first since 2009's Earthly Delights, it actually came out on vinyl last year, but sold out before we could get enough to list. Well, the vinyl remains unavailable, but we do now finally have the cd, and as you might expect, it's a doozy, Oblivion Hunter showing no signs of the group mellowing with age, in fact, there seems to be a lot of sonic experimentation going on. And folks (like us) who dug the recent Black Pus record on Thrill Jockey, Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale's solo project, will find much of Oblivion Hunter to be quite similar: murky and muddy, but poppy and weirdly hooky. Not that that doesn't describe LB in general, but really, just give opener "King Kandy" a listen, classic Lightning Bolt for sure, but in places it's SUPER melodic, and Chippendale's weirdly tuned snare, makes the drumming sound like there's all kinds of strange percussion happening, and much of the track is spent churning murkily, the drums a tribal flurry, the bass grinding malevolently, while the vocals soar over the top. Great stuff for sure, not too far removed from the sound we love, but pushing their sound enough so that the new LB is definitely different and exciting. Most of the rest of the record seems to veer a bit more into classic LB territory, although things stay pretty strange, tracks like "Oblivion Balloon" are crazy melodic and catchy, and tracks like "Fly Fucker Fly", sound almost like fuzzy garage rock sped up and super charged, while "Salamander" is a super progged out 'Bolt, frenzied and melodic, but sounding like it could almost be some classic psych/prog jam re-done, and finally, the record ends with the 13+ minute "World Wobbly Wide", which is easily the trippiest of the bunch, a sprawling psychedelic freakout, wild tangles of distorted melody, sounding almost like a raga or alien snake charmer music at times, while the drums explode wildly underneath, the second half of the track getting way more blown out, blasting, super distorted psych-noise trippiness, that reminds us just why we loved these guys so much in the first place!
This is the long-awaited, highly anticipated full length release from Providence, RI's amazing bass and drums duo LIGHTNING BOLT! Imagine Tokyo drums/bass duo Ruins in their early years: way obvious prog influence and heavy as fuck, then subtract the zeuhl
Holy shit! The Bolt get a proper visual document for those of you who missed out on the live action! Or if you were there and couldn't see past the rabid flurry of sweat and flesh of the adrenalin charged audiences! Or if you did see everything and now you want to see yourself on film, you narcissistic bastard! Speaking of which, camera whore and AQ doorman John Dwyer makes his international film debut as himself and as Pink of Pink and Brown, he's all over this thing like flies on shit, relaxing in someone's backyard completely in costume or just bobbing along to the live action!! Anyway, the film takes us across America with one of the loudest bands on the planet. Join Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson as they whip unsuspecting crowds into disco frenzied mosh pits. Rarely does a band make the audience bang their heads *and* shake their booties -- these kids do it right. Watch indie rock nerds get knocked over as they're trapped in the Bolt's surprise attack from the back of the room, opposite the stage. See scenesters get ridiculously stupid as Gibson's 3800 watt tower scrapes earwax outta their pretty little heads! If you couldn't really get into their records (since their music certainly has a physical element which could only be imagined whether you've seen them or not), this will definitely knock you on your ass! Bonus features include two hilariously animated music videos, a remix video by Libythth, a gallery of Brian Chippendale's wonderfully screenprinted poster art and a humorous clip of the duo rehearsing and discussing the relevance of their art. Very well done.
Delightfully distorted and happily hectic, everyone's favorite Rhode Island bass/drums duo, the incredible Lightning Bolt, strike again with "Wonderful Rainbow", inflicting more of their maddeningly mathy, colorfully chaotic, utterly infectious, riotously weird, stripped-down and amped-up rawk on the world! Sounds a lot like the previous Lightning Bolt opus "Ride The Skies" -- they still love that "Frere Jacques" progression -- and thus should not disappoint their legions of fans. Not much more to say, really -- if you like them already, or Hella, or Ruins, we're pretty sure you'll dig this. Old old Bolt fans should be aware, they have NOT gone back to the totally wrecked recording quality of their earliest efforts, a criticism (of sorts) that some also leveled against "Ride The Skies", but I think the dextrous spazz vs. sheer noise balance here is just right.
Finally, the debut LP from Providence, RI's Lightning Bolt gets reissued! Now on cd for the first time, with over forty minutes of bonus live material! When this record first hit the streets a couple of years ago, people either instantly fell in love with or
For those of you who enjoyed Bay Area band The Speakers' cd tribute to W.B. Yeats (Yeats Is Greats: The Speakers Sing The Poems of W.B. Yeats), here's something new from one half of that duo.
This cd is an audio family album or scrapbook of sorts, drifting through scenes and memories with recordings of family members speaking interwoven with collaged soundscapes. The liner notes focus on the recent birth of the artist's first child, and the impact of this new presence is palpable throughout the album. While we're sure this'll particularly be appealing to his friends and relatives, it makes for an offkilter warm fuzzy listen for absolute strangers too.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Full length number three from these LA black thrashers, and easily their most ambitious. Just check out the opener, which weaves a dark spell that's simultaneously harrowing and hellish, melodic and psychedelic, the drums a tribal churn, the vokills a sick rasp, but its most notable element is the use of the bass as lead instrument, the guitars swirling and indistinct, while the bass picks out the moody melody. It's only an intro but it definitely sets the stage for some interesting sonic elements to pop up throughout, but once the song proper kicks in, the bass returns to it's typical black metal role sadly, as being mostly inaudible, but the band lay down a fierce sprawl of Scandinavian buzz and blast, with some awesome classic metal leads, some cool dynamic stop starts and a pretty progged out arrangement, and when the song shifts gears again near the end, the sound seem to ooze and melt and slither psychedelically before finishing off more metallically.
The band mix it up throughout, though, clean chantlike vocals, distorted and weirdly processed, droned out ambience, warped soundscaping, super cinematic ambience, that sounds almost sampled, churning dirgelike doom, and that bass does surface elsewhere, adding extra melody, more layers, plenty of heft throughout, there's definitely a late period Marduk vibe to much of the record, due in no small part to the doomy dirginess, but the band spend most of the time spewing some seriously sick black death heaviness, roiling riffage wrapped around insane torrential drumming, tranced out and super hypnotic, in fact, much of the record seems more hypnotic than heavy, which is not a bad thing, but definitely positions this outside of most black/thrash metal, the production not massive as much as it is textured and tripped out, strap on some headphones and you can hear all sorts of aktion in the background, that at times sounds almost like some demonic symphony weaving a tense minor key backdrop.
Check out the extremely badass video as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXZKxu9Zcx0 (we've never seen the drummer do the twirling hair thing, WHILE playing!)
Another crushing blizzard of blackened metallic might from LA's Lightning Swords Of Death, who besides having perhaps the most bad ass moniker, also have the metal to back it up. A churning. roiling black frenzy of thrashing blasting heaviness, that at its core, is a raw, primitive stripped down orthodox black metal, but these guys make it sound SO MASSIVE, black metal doesn't ever sound heavier than this, a dense black wall of sound, tangled guitars and pounding drum pummel, sick vokills, all wound into a seriously menacing, and speaker shredding black beast. Minus a few droned out interludes and some stretches of lumbering black doom, The Extra Dimensional Wound is relentless, a nonstop onslaught of fierce frosty blackness, culminating in the sprawling multidimensional closer "Paths To Chaos", with its gnarled riffage, avalanches of tangled black buzz, insane insectoid guitars, cool classic eighties metal style harmony leads, throbbing crumbling distorted bass buzz, but most strikingly, its long stretches of haunting ambient shimmer, hushed streaks of metallic thrum, creepy atmospheres, muted mechanical rumbles, all blurred into a creeping black fog. AWESOME.
What's in a name? Pretty much everything when the name is LIGHTNING SWORDS OF DEATH. Really, fuck all these bands called Sword something or other, how can they not be completely and utterly slain by a horde with a name like LSOD!? They can't, and they shall!
We reviewed the new record by Endless Blizzard last time around, a black hole heavy platter packed with furious frenzied wintry blackened old school black metal, well, EB guitarist, Roskva, was wielding his axe in LSOD before the Endless Blizzard even began. As you might imagine, the sounds are similar, a definite nod to classic old school metal, a bit of death, a bit of thrash, raw and filthy, but still plenty mathy and complex, the drums manic, with impossible flurries of lightning fast blasts, the guitars thick and downtuned, snarling and buzzing, the vokills a guttural caterwaul, the songs veering from black thrash into pounding blackened doom to almost crusty grindy thrash. Plenty of nods to Celtic Frost and Hellhammer, as well as the Nordic BM aristocracy, with a SUPER heavy production, that manages to make the whole thing crushing and brutal, without losing any of its raw grimness. Way recommended. Especially if you dug the Endless Blizzard. Yet another horde to perhaps be considered for inclusion in the rarified ranks of the West Coast USBM elite.
Sorry Lightspeed Champion, but we had to check and doublecheck that your new album wasn't a new one by '90s college radio darlings Versus or Whysall Lane! Your boy/girl vocals are a deadringer for theirs -- so very very Balayut/Toups-esque. However, it's not just in the singing department that we hear the similarities. Hey, we're not complaining. Check out those intelligent, sensitive, heartfelt lyrics, finely crafted tunes!
Though Lightspeed Champion is primarily the work of one Londoner named Dev Hynes (formerly of Test Icicles) and this album was released by Domino Records, he is joined by many luminaries from the Saddle Creek label because the album was recorded in Omaha, Nebraska. Lending a welcome hand are Mike Mogis, Nate Walcott, Emmy The Great (hers is the sweet female vocal counterpart to Hynes') and members of The Faint, Cursive, and Tilly And The Wall. They finish off the album off with a lovely chamber string outro. This here's some really good indie pop, sure to become a college radio staple!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Licensed from Bad Vugum in Finland.
Super funky, awesome Afrobeat full of psychedelic fuzz guitar and female empowerment here, folks! Identical twin sisters Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu (second cousins to Fela Kuti), were among the few ladies who managed to make it big in the otherwise male-dominated Nigerian music scene back in the '70s. It's no surprise they did, 'cause besides their good looks, they also had singing talent, positive energy, and an ear for a badass groove! All of which is evident here, on Knitting Factory's welcome reissue of their first album, originally released in 1976 via Decca's Afrodisia imprint.
Danger is aptly named, in the sense that even the most rhythmically challenged among us will be in danger of dancing when this electrifying, hypnotic record is playing. Also, the Sisters didn't shy away from socio-political themes in their music, overt and otherwise.
There's six killer jams here, including one rocksteady reggae number, all guaranteed to bring some sunshine into your life. The last one on side two, the 7+ minute "Lord Have Mercy" slows things down a bit, and weaves in some soothing surf sound effects, to make for a seriously soulful finale for the record.
Although we recommend this to EVERYBODY, it's definitely for anyone who liked Academy's Lagos Disco Inferno comp, and Soundway's The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970's Nigeria (The Lijadu Sisters' "Life's Gone Down Low" from this album appeared there too), along with bands like Blo and Tirogo that we've had full reissues of before. And happily, this is but the first in a series of four Lijadu Sisters reissues circa 1976-1979 coming from Knitting Factory!
Third and last album from this now defunct, Swedish one-man band (hey how can a one man band "split up"?). It's one of those wonderfully weird black metal records where the usual tropes -- grim, dark, buzzing -- while applicable, don't fully describe it. A lot of this IS buzzy and fuzzy and dirgey and doomy, but also has a finger-snapping folkiness to it, almost jaunty. Deep voiced Viking vocals range over the midpaced, heavy, riff-centric compositions, in which we sense a strange stiffness of rhythm, unsteady at the busier margins of the beat, a seasick slowingdown and speedingup, that gives this some of its unusual feel / amateur charm. As this short-but-epic disc (four songs, 24 and a half minutes) progresses, Lik's atmospheric moodiness increases, the tempos slow, guitar licks (liks?) stretch out gorgeously to psych proportions. There's an almost pop undercurrent here, an emotional sweetness... it's not standard black metal nor is it a lesson in chops. But WE like it a lot. If you read some other online reviews we've found, though, apparently that makes us "retards". Want to join us in the special ed class at black metal high school? Then put Lik (and some Benighted Leams, and of course some Striborg!) in your shopping cart...
First and final release from this now defunct UK trio who meld crushing slow motion doomdronesludge with haunting prog and drifting abstract ambience.
A swirling, slow moving prog-doom juggernaut. Massive downtuned riffage churns around fluttery flutes, while wheezing accordions whirl beneath angelic female vox and warm whirring organs, all wound into subtly complex expanses of slow motion heaviness and epic cinematic dronemetal...almost like a magnificent, hypothetical Boris/Bardo Pond collaboration.
Three looooooong songs, the shortest just shy of ten minutes, the longest clocking in at twenty, each a slow burning slow build, layers of drones and hushed shimmer, often taking upwards of half the song before the various elements coalesce into actual riffs, the drums kicking in and the band lurching into a massive ultradoom start / stop groove, explosions of blown out buzz giving way to long stretches of hushed whisper, only to be swallowed up again by another roiling onslaught, a heaving wall of downtuned guitars, a pounding barrage of thunderous percussion.
All the while, a simple, repeating motif, hovers above, or lurks just below the caustic grinding heaviness, floating like some sonic specter, the vocals dreamy and drifty, a subtle seventies pagan folk vibe infusing the otherwise crushing doom. The flute unfurling dreamy melancholic melodies over vast expanses of crumbling distortion, laced with glistening harmonics, and warm blurred soft focus shimmer. The drums slipping from abstract minimal crush to monstrous lumbering groove. Hypnotic, repetitive, mesmerizing, trancelike.
At once familiar, and essential listening for fans of SUNNO))), Harvey Milk, Earth, Monarch and all thing slow, low and heavy. But at the same time, strangely alien, with a subtle muted beauty lurking at the heart of LAKOM's gloriously epic crumbling black mass of sound, within each song a breathless subtlety, a deep haunting otherworldliness, transforming dense low end explorations into something much more expansive and divine. Even at its very heaviest, it still manages to sound woozy and dreamlike, haunting and pretty, and utterly breathtaking.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ooh punchy pop fans, here's a new one for y'all! Don't let the solitary piano introduction fool ya! From there on it's nuthin' but big big big emotive pop with hefty guitars and snappy drums very much in the tradition of beloved popsters Weezer, The Anniversary and Superchunk. Lots of boy/girl vocal harmonies, which you know a lot of us can't resist! We haveta say tho' that this album's sound is something of a surprise coming from this married couple (or is it brother sister duo? we've heard conflicting reports) 'cause the last time we heard from them they were totally 'White Stripes'. A bit perplexing, but shucks, we like 'em now and that's all that matters. Go ahead bounce around your bedroom to this one... we'll be right there with ya!
Lots of folks out there are no doubt familiar with Oakland's Lil B, the self proclaimed "Based God", he's got about a million Myspace pages, nearly as many albums, most floating around the web as free downloads, his sound confusional and WAY brilliant, warped beats, lots of twisted synths, and his flow, totally tweaked and twisted, like a less lethargic, less mumbly Sensational, but with rhymes that are equally baffling, but no knowledge of Lil B and his other jams could have prepared us for his Weird Forest debut. Gone are the beats, as in NO beats at all, gone is the twisted buzz, the warped samples, in their place, warm liquid shimmers, sun dappled and meditative, whirring tranquil synthscapes, a sort of Tangerine Dream style drift, all muted whirring blurs and stretched out layered synth drones, all underpinning Lil B's rhythmic next level flow. Strip those rhymes away, and what are you left with? Full on NEW AGE. Yep, this is some tripped out, weirdly psychedelic NEW AGE HIP HOP. It's a seriously polarizing listen, some of us are a little obsessed and can't stop listening to it, plenty of other folks are driven INSANE by this confusional collision of unlikely sonic bedfellows. Think Sensational rapping over Ray Lynch's Deep Breakfast, or a beatless WuTang record constructed entirely from Tangerine Dream samples, that should be enough for you to decide if this is your cup of acid laced tea or not. Check out the samples, decide for yourself, but we're pretty psyched on this bizarre chunk of new age spoken word synth hop for sure...
NB. there is a cd of this, but they went fast, hopefully we'll be able to get some more of that format soon...
There was a rumor about this group a couple of years ago that went something like this: a small town parade is terrorized by a gang of punks dressed in bunny outfits, they hijack a float and frighten away confused and innocent little children. Word of this gets around and a show is booked at Berkeley's Gilman Street. Our jackass heroes show up with a bunch of stinkbombs, a riot breaks
Last year just about all of us who heard the song "Lip Gloss" were immediately smitten with what had to be one of the most fun and catchy bubble-gum-hip-hop songs ever recorded. It snapped and popped like a young Missy Elliott on the greatest high school cheerleading squad EVER. If you haven't heard it you must check it out! So undeniably catchy and irresistible! So we were almost afraid to check out this full length when it finally came out as we didn't want to find out that Lil Mama would turn out to be just another in a long line of one-hit wonders. Of course the record's first song is "Lip Gloss" and it's followed by the cleverly titled "One Hit Wonder" which is a total slammer in its own right and the next several songs prove that Lil Mama has actually got plenty of hits up in her sleeve. She really has lots of the potential to become a new Missy Elliott for the next generation. She can sound so self assured, confident and full of vibrant color. There are a handful of really great and catchy songs on here for sure. It does lose steam towards the end with some misses and a should-have-never-been bonus track featuring Avril Lavigne. But we were happy to find out that Lil Mama is not just a one-hit wonder and we'll definitely be keeping our ears open for what she does in the future.
We love twisted underground hip hop. As does our pal Jason who runs the Ormolycka tape label, which was the original home of Death Grips' Exmilitary tape (relisted elsewhere on this week's list). There's tons of weirdo hip hop on Ormolycka, including this tape, by Lil Ugly Mane, a Southern rapper, with a killer drawl and a ridiculous flow, who busts over looped jazziness, creepy horror movie clips, woozy off kilter slow-mo creeps, cinematic symphonic stabs and sped-up soul, this is the sort of shit that already sounds chopped and screwed, skittery, stuttery dopesmoke grooves, rife with saxophone (!), strings, clipped vox, all driven by some crunked out beats, but really it's all about LUM's flow, which is seriously bad ass, mush mouthed and WAY laid back, but surprisingly nimble, which manages to be the perfect match for the twisted music underneath!
More mutated musical manna from (mostly) tape label Ormolycka, after a recent barrage of cassettes. And it's an exciting one, the katest from cult rapper Lil Ugly Mane, who has somehow managed to stay deep underground, while making some of the craziest, home brewed, next level, mad scientist hip hop out there. How the world hasn't caught on yet, we'll never know. But here's yet another chance for the squares, two more sides of flipped out funkiness and kitchen sink sonic ingenuity, the A side starting out like the intro to a lo-fi 4-track Wu-Tang jam, the same sort of collaged cinematic vibe, looped vocal snippets, jazzy horns, stuttery breakbeats, the pitch constantly shifting, before slowing down to a crawl, and the song proper kicks in, a shimmering, poppy loop of ethereal female vocals and soft focus cascades of melodic glimmer, all wound around a crackly beat, a head nodding distorto-groove beneath LUM's laid back flow. The flipside is NOT more of the same, instead it's all reverb drenched rapid fire flow, murky and washed out, before the beat drops, a tinny electro groove, laced with woozy sci-fi squiggles, the sound noisy and off kilter, a little bit industrial, fractured and schizophrenic, lurching from noisy, grinding rhythmic blurts, to sprawling skeletal skitter, to weird eighties almost-electropop, the vox a distorted howl, music box melodies colliding with soundtrack synths and swaths of noisy near-psychedelia. We need a new full length BAD!
Housed in a heavy full color jacket, with a printed photocopied insert.
Cash Money releases another winner and No Limit falls farther and farther behind. Cash Money, originally an embrassing No Limit knockoff, has been spitting out hit after hit, and this one's no exception. Lil Wayne's new one 'Lights Out', is his third (fourth? Who knows? It's as hard to keep track of CM as it used to be with No Limit) and catchy as fuck, with slamming beats, amazing production and crazy flow. 'Get Off the Corner' is the best Cash Money single since 'Bling Bling'. Maybe if Master P would spend as much time working on records as he does on the stock market, and his line of clothing, and his sports management, No Limit would start to matter again.
Still nasty. And pretty good. Sisqo, Cee-Lo, Redman, Lil' Cease, Puff Daddy, Mary J. Blige and a host of others guest.
Fuzzed-out, jangly garage-pop dreaminess from SF's Lilac, new project from guitarist of local favorites Bridez. Heavy hitting distorted guitars strummed under dual male/female vocals, distant organ haze fluttering about, amp melting leads sailing over bratty lyrics and pure punk rock attitude, all thrown together into a super catchy, blurred-out rock and roll bonanza.
Originally released on cd back in 2001, An Un World was Andrew Liles' first album proper after a string of cdr releases. It has recently received the deluxe limited edition vinyl treatment - clear vinyl, only 300 pressed! The double record also features two tracks which did not appear on the previous cd incarnation. Liles, perhaps best known as a member of Nurse With Wound for the past many years, has been a prolific solo artist and multi-instrumentalist for well over two decades. His music falls under the expansive umbrella of experimental soundscaping, incorporating a myriad of processed found sounds and electronics. He ventures through the peaks and valleys of Surrealism, Dada, dark ambient and post-industrial, with a morbid black humor snaking its way throughout. These densely detailed early compositions conjure grim unravellings and profound despair. Seriously, the album envelops the listener in atmospheres that are bleaker than bleak. Not for the faint of heart! But so good...
Nursery rhymes have always had a twisted quality about them. Their stories revel in floral descriptions of magic, talking animals, and other transgressions against the laws of nature all the while articulating some morality tale or another. It's almost too perfect a medium for a surrealist sound sculptor like Andrew Liles, who has decontextualized many a nursery rhyme on Mother Goose's Melody Or Sonnets For The Cradle. With plenty of Victorian declarations from any number of nursery rhymes sprinkled between odd sound collages, creaky samples, and somnabulant drones, allusions to Nurse With Wound (whom Liles has worked with on occasion) become quite obvious.
Andrew Liles sure does like his monsters. This is part of an ongoing series dedicated, related, or inspired by the monstrous - with a vast aesthetic and conceptual swath that includes plenty of low-brow comedy situated within the sinister and the diabolical mythologies of his thematic conceits. The comical moments are mapped out most obviously on this album - which might very well be the 10th or 11th in this ongoing series - through the retardo-rock ditty "Sasquatch" with its primitive rockabilly swagger and a gravel-gargling M.S. Waldron (aka irr. app. (ext.)) doing his best / worst Tom Waits / Uncle Jim impersonation. Elsewhere, Liles' production is more in keeping with his surreal homages to Nurse With Wound's deranged take on exotica with madman bongo-beats collaged with atonal, vaudevillian piano plonkings, farmyard field recordings, disembodied screams in the night, and slack-jawed slide guitar meanderings. The Perez Prado inspired cover of "Phantom" by the Sisters Of Mercy is a nice touch with its tremolo guitar lines and beatnik bongo rhythms. Liles stomps out another cover with much less subtlty through the crunchy riffage and anti-boogie of UFO's "Natural Thing" rechristened here as "Unnatural Thing" again with vocals from Waldron. The 20 minute "Defeat Of Panga Panga" is the centerpiece of the album as a desolate collage of hand-crank machinery and cracked vocal operatics. Again, Liles owes a considerable debt to Nurse With Wound's sonic surrealism here.
