Metallic Falcons is the collaborative project of Cocorosie's Bianca Cassidy and Voodoo-Eros label boss Matteh Baim. Their debut is a bewildering yet utterly beguiling amalgam of neo-folk's earthen weavings, rock's electricity, cathedral-reverbed choral vocals and some as yet unpinpointables. At times Desert Doughnuts is quite reminiscent of reverential to Jarboe-era Swans in its broken beauty and spiralling dark dreams. However there's much more that rings familiar here than that aspect. Could it be the additional contributing efforts from the likes of Antony, Jana Hunter and Devendra Banhart? Why yes, it definitely could! Together they've crafted a most hauntingly beautiful patchwork tapestry that -- dare we say? -- on a few passages surpasses the individuals' solo missions.
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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The pros and cons of Metallica's new album, pretty much off the top of our heads:
Pro - It's literally AT LEAST a million times better than their last album, St. Anger.
Con - Of course, that might not be saying that much, since St. Anger was absolutely one of the worst albums ever made.
Pro - It's also much better than Load/Reload/whatever else they've done since the Black Album.
Con - That also didn't take much.
Pro - It's actually metal, which is what a Metallica album should be!
Con - James' singing is still still pretty 'chain wallet' though.
Pro - There's guitar solos this time around, they actually let Kirk play his guitar!
Con - They're still letting Lars play drums. And boy does he sound tired on some of this.
Pro - Produced by Rick Rubin.
Con - Rick Rubin producing Slayer in 1986 is not the same as Rick Rubin producing Metallica in 2008.
Pro - Definitely some decent riffs here. Parts of "The End Of The Line" are pretty badass ferinstance. We're also digging how chunky and speedy and thrashy the likes of "My Apocalypse" and "All Nightmare Long" get, amongst others.
Con - Lots of 'meh', sensitive dude parts too.
Pro - The digipack packaging is really nifty, with a die cut cover and cd booklet that gives a 3-D effect to the coffin shape depicted in the cover art.
Con - "The Unforgiven III". That's right. III.
Pro - Like old Metallica, most of the songs are at least 7 minutes long.
Con - Most of the songs are at least 7 minutes long.
Ok, enough. We were just trying to be funny with the last one.
Lots of pros, cons too. And maybe Metallica, with Napster and Some Kind Of Monster and Load and St. Anger and haircuts and everything, have made it impossible to be objective about them at all.
Basically, one reaction is that, hey it sounds something like old Metallica, and at this point, that's something to be thankful for! Of course, also at this point, if you want to listen to old Metallica, chances are you're gonna just put on Master Of Puppets or Kill 'Em All, or one of their other albums that are all pros, pretty much no cons...
Basically, the diehard '80s Metallica fans here at AQ are never gonna truly be happy with these guys again, unless Cliff comes back from the dead, but heck at least the average radio-listener, record-buyer is getting something fairly metal out of the deal, more metal than Metallica has been in a looooong time. If we're gonna get a new Metallica shoved down our throats, it could have been a whole lot worse. (They've proved it in the past.) Now, if they'd have done another Diamond Head cover on here, we really might be calling it a comeback. That would have been sweet. In the meantime, we WILL be spinning Death Magnetic, mentally weighing record review pros and cons but also unconsciously air guitaring and headbanging... whoops, were we doing that? To the new Metallica?? Shit, maybe we DO like this!
Oh and here's another pro: it's cool that Kirk is still rockin' the long hair, like he's still in Exodus or something, even though maybe he shouldn't. Getting close to the dreaded "Gallagher!"
Well, easily the best Metallica record of the last decade or so...of course, it's all covers, one disc of old stuff (including, the classic Garage Days Revisted and Re-Revisted eps) and another disc of newly-recorded cover versions, everything from Sabbath to Nick Cave, from Misfits to Mercyful Fate.
Seems like a bad idea, sure (the band playing with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra). But surprisingly some of this actually works. They start off with a Morricone cover which segues perfectly into their instrumental opus "Call of Ktulu." The slow ones work best seeing as they are basically slowed down Wagner played on guitar. The fast ones are a mess. I (Andee speaking here) was there, and I can tell you it was worth it just to see a shirtless metalhead ejected for stage diving at the symphony.
We knew that we had to take the "return to Master of Puppets thrash" hype about this record with a massive grain of salt, but it kinda does sound like they were making an effort to be especially heavy and aggro and thrashy. Unfortunately they forgot that along with the chugga chugga guitars and violent drumming, you need to write songs! After six years (and at least two disappointing albums previous), it's pretty clear that the emperor has no clothes -- and some major complexes. Did they really have to bump the release date of this up a few days just to thwart bootleggers? Is the 22 million Metallica albums sold between 1995 and 2000 not enough? Lars bashing aside, this really is weak. I mean, it sounds like a mediocre local band (actually, they ARE a local band, but what we mean is that the production and songwriting are not up to snuff). There's a Metallica *influence* (especially in the vocals!) but it doesn't really sound like the "real" Metallica. Apparently they wrote this in the studio with the tape rolling, in an attempt to capture a raw hardcore immediacy, which instead seems to have resulted in an unfinished and almost demo-like album. Did anyone hear any guitar solos? And what about those lyrics? Sounds like James took a semester of Rhyming 101. Ugh. Sorry we have to slag this off so heavily, but man it sucks. Jason did the right thing. Comes with bonus DVD of live in the studio performances, while supplies last (which they probably will).
Dethklok is back!!! Our favorite animated purveyors of apocalyptic metal destruction have returned to face their demons both mighty and petty. In season two, they venture into the horrors of fashion, P.R., detox, the dating scene, state politics, as well as staging the largest public criminal execution of all time and of course botching it big time. This season they are faced with new mortal enemies from the Tribunal (one voiced by Malcolm McDowell), as well as an army of disfigured and damaged former fans called The Revengencers. Can Dethklok finally release their new record to save the World Economy, or will they be crippled by their childish infighting and developmentally challenged destructive behaviors? We never listed the first season, but we were all pretty much OBSESSED. The music is amazing, so good it's hard to believe they're not a real band, and the band members various accents are SO impossible to understand which almost makes it funnier and will probably have you turning on the subtitles, and the carnage, oh the carnage, so much blood...
Brutal!
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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You have to be pretty darn metal to get into this band, and that's as it should be: no poseurs allowed!! Metalucifer are Japanese metalheads (some from the cult black metal combo Sabbat) paying tribute to the glory days of '80s true metal, a la Maiden and
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This Japanese metal band should win some sort of award for their name, not to mention their song titles: "Heavy Metal Is My Way", "Heavy Metal Drill", "Heavy Metal Hunter"...you get the idea. '80s leather & shades speed metal worship with all the Maidenesque guitar leads you could desire, topped off with charmingly warped English language lyrics/vocal delivery. Metalucifer is a side project of cult black metal band Sabbat, if that means anything to you. Fun stuff.
As you might guess after seeing 'em posing for pictures in front of a wall of vintage metal vinyl, these Japanese nutjobs are bigger metal maniacs than almost anyone else on the planet. And, they manage to do justice to their obssession with the music they make. This here disc is metal proof: the "ultimate US edition" of their debut album Heavy Metal Hunter, augmented by English language-tracks taken from their hard to find Heavy Metal Drill disc. Thus this includes 2 versions of title track "Heavy Metal Hunter pt.1" (one with extra solos) and a take of "Heavy Metal Hunter pt. 2" along with such songs as "Wolf Man" (both Japanese and English versions), "Bloody Countess" (likewise), "Headbanging" (ditto), and more. Totally old school, NWOBHM worship goin' on, delivered in a delightful tongue-in-cheek fashion -- we think. If you've ever seen local San Francisco metallers The Lord Weird Slough Feg end a live set with their raging cover of "Heavy Metal Hunter" you'll probably want this disc (and as it happens we have just enough copies to provide for the needs of all three of you).
OMG! An awesome concept for a single. It helps if you already know this - there's a ridiculous but fun old school style cult metal band called Metalucifer, a side project of Japan's Sabbat. They are pretty much the most metal thing ever. Most of Metalucifer's album and song titles have the words "Heavy Metal" in them, like "Heavy Metal Bulldozer" and "Heavy Metal Hunter". If you're a true metalhead, to know them is to love them. So, uber-talented metalhead Chris Black, of Dawnbringer and High Spirits fame, decided to write and record a tribute 7" to Metalucifer, probably entirely because he had thought up a silly name for the project, MetalUSAfer. Get it? Chris is American, you see.
And rather than simply do Metalucifer covers, Chris wrote two brand new meat-and-potatoes (as he describes them) metal songs in the style of Metalucifer: "Heavy Metal Hammer" and "Heavy Metal Saviour"! And they're a lot of fun. Really not too far off from the NWOBHM-worship of High Spirits, 'cause that's Metalucifer's big inspiration too, but taking the overt, absurd metal-isms to another level. High Spirits would never go there. These two tracks are all about simple riffage, catchy choruses, and intentionally cliched lyrics (using the words heavy & metal as much as possible). But it's a sincere tribute (with approval from Metalucifer to use their logo), and Chris Black's distinctive, honest voice and heartfelt delivery can't help but give this material more emotional depth than you might expect at first blush.
We guess after doing that great Aktor 7" with Jussi from Circle (and btw, Chris tells us they ARE doing an Aktor full-length too), some of Jussi's trademark high-concept silliness rubbed off on Chris, and MetalUSAfer is the neat-o result.
By the way, now Harry here has a great idea: what about a band called Meta-Lucifer, that only does songs ABOUT Metalucifer? Clearly their signature song would have to be called "Heavy Metal Metalucifer"! We mentioned this to Chris Black, and he suggested that to truly be Meta-Lucifer, the Meta-Lucifer release would have to be a recording of Harry simply TALKING about doing a band called Meta-Lucifer. We'll be announcing the Kickstarter soon...
From the latest handful of releases on Ann Arbor's Hanson Records comes this Chicago trio of art twaddlers and tape manipulators, Metalux. Having been around for a few years without a record, and hearing much about their live shows, my hopes of a band over their self indulgent "experimental" beginnings - formulating a more refined and original creature- were cut short on my first
A few years back, Clear Records made a big stink about some upcoming electronica greats called Metamatics, and released some limited edition singles and an album. The key to their proclamations must have been 'upcoming', as those releases were downright dull. Three years later, District Six has released the best work from Metamatics... 4 tracks of moody, downbeat electro-jazz falling in between Boards of Canada, Spacetime Continuum, and Carl Craig. A solid release.
Unlike the majority of electronica artists who change their moniker like they change pants, Metamatics has retained their name after a number of stylistic changes. "Neo Ouija" finds the outfit embracing an essentialized drum & bass that takes the jazz infused elements of LTJ Bukem to a brittle skitterish shuffle, full of precious breakbeats and melodies.
It's a great week for Mum fans! We just got in their Nightly Cares 3"cd/7" single and this 'all ages' graphic novel which stars Louis, the dumpling-ish looking main character (he kinda looks like a crudely drawn baby turtle creature that could be from Andee's fave Homestar Runner website), as well as a supporting cast of frollicking carrots, mechanical dogs, polka-dot mushrooms, a wizard and a frumpy Hitler-looking villain. There's some great lines of dialogue (a sampling: "My eyebrows are crawling all over my face" and "Suffocating in a custard world"), but you might be wondering how is Mum involved? Well, they along with the band Hey have each contributed a wistful version of the theme song "Dreams Never Die To FC" for the accompanying cd which also contains some animated Louis flicks with Mum/Hey soundtrack music to boot.
Super limited debut release from these Quebecois funeral doomlords, whose sounds definitely hews closer to the sort of washed out dronedreamdrone doom we've been digging so much lately, that strange liturgical murk of Skepticism, mixed with the doom-ed psychedelia of Megaton Leviathan, the sound shimmery and almost shoegazey, the guitars warm and soft focus, the vocals airy and ethereal, in fact the A side is downright blissed out, and when the more metal VOKILLS finally come in, a rumbly demonic growl, even then it manages to sound sort of blurred and bleary, especially with the other more clean and chantlike vocals, a seriously dreamy chunk of downtuned dirgery that almost sounds like a doom metal Low.
The B side slows it down even further, adding some keening mournful melodies, the guitars massive and warm, lush and layered, the vocals another layer of low end, gorgeously viscous and beautifully blackened, a haunting melancholic creep, that is more tranquil and mesmerizing that pummeling or pulverizing. The second half of the song adds some extra clean guitar melodies, and what sounds like swirling synths, and in a surprising twist gets a little bit mathy, but a slow woozy mathiness, that only manages to make it sound even more strange and psychedelic.
LIMITED TO 550 COPIES!!! Pressed on green vinyl, with a printed full color cardstock insert.
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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What a mouthful! Metgumbnerbone was an obscure post-industrial / drone-improv project that centered around the collaboration between Richard & Philip Rupenus (better known as The New Blockaders, and often Organum partners), John Mylotte, and Sean Breadin (who with Richard Rupenus formed the oblique ritual project Masstishaddhu). From what little information is available about the group, Metgumbnerbone only had a couple releases back in the mid '80s with "Ligeliahorn" being the only recording to get beyond the short run productions of cassette culture with a vinyl release on the now defunct A Mission records. As with all of the Metgumbnerbone recordings, "Ligeliahorn" was recorded entirely in the subterranean (and potentially hazardous) confines of an abandoned factory in Newcastle, England. The collective used the ductwork of the factory and whatever else was laying around as readymade percussive and wind instruments, creating sustained rythmic clatter and acoustic dronescrapes which fluctated into recognizable cyclical patterns and out towards sparse pipe fights. Metgumbnerbone's junkyard sound was always much colder, more sedate, and more funereal than the massive apocalyptic pummel of Einsturzende Neubauten or San Francisco's Scot Jenerik, despite their similarity in instrumentation.
This cd-r redux of "Ligeliahorn" was remastered from an original demo cassette of the album, as Breadin and Myotte had lost the masters for the vinyl. In reconstructing the album, Breadin and Myotte had done away with the post-production tape speed tricks which were occasionally employed on the original LP. Somewhere down the line, Breadin will be publishing a retrospective of all of the Metgumbnerbone recordings. For me (Jim), Metgumbnerbone has been a ensemble whose recordings have become fetish objects from the most obtuse regions of Industrial Culture (like those really stupid Vagina Dentata Organ records, which I've obsessively collected). While I am pleased as punch that these recordings are available, my critical objectivity about them is admittedly lacking... I obviously recommened it, but would encourage you to check out the sound samples first.
Debut blast of noisy, filthy, swaggery, feral, gloom punk from this SF trio, who go by the lovely sobriquet Meth Sores, and these guys definitely live up (or down) to the name, spewing a seriously caustic brew of jagged, crumblingly distorted guitars, blown out bass buzz, yowled, reverbed vox buried in the mix, and a barrage of chaotic drum destruction, this raw, primitive sound only further enhanced by the medium, a hand made, one sided lathe-cut 7", which makes the sound that much more lo-fi, and in-the-red, perfectly suited to the group's vibe, but the end result is so awesomely distorted and damaged, it's hard to imagine the band sounding this good, and this utterly trashy and fucked up in the flesh. But check out the sound samples, it's the tracks before being carved into that slab of plastic, and goddamn if it doesn't sound just as good. Think Joy Division crossed with Lubricated Goat, or the Unsane covering Iceage, or something that fantastically noisy and gloriously gloomy, two totally blown out psychedelic noisepunk goth / gloomwave noiserock jams, easily some of the coolest local stuff we've heard in a while. And yeah, SUPER LIMITED too.
Never reviewed anything by these guys (this guy?) which is a shame, cuz the folks here into dark, industrial heaviness and black drone crunch are way into Methadrone, and also unfortunately, we only have TWO of these, they've been tucked away for years now, but figured a couple folks out there might just love to get their hands on this, especially considering that listening to this now, it bears a striking resemblance to everyone's fave post industrial shoegazers, JESU! Same sort of lumbering crush, but wreathed in hazy washed of buzzing crumbling melody, plenty of downtuned thrum, and keening feedback, but all woven into a thick undulating blissed out dirge. Blackened and beautiful, distorted and dark, this is some gorgeously heavy stuff. Includes a killer Swans cover, and two videos. Comes packaged in a slim dvd style case, with full color cover. Way out of print, got two copies and that is IT.
Leave it to the Russians to school us on the dark realities of existence with their relentlessly insular take on black metal. Everyone knows and loves Old Wainds and Nav, and now we have Meti Bhuvah, an intense whirlwind of blackened punk fury from the icy North that sounds like it could have easily stepped out of 1986. The abundance of stripped down thrashing punk riffs and guttural, bile spewing vocals, combined with appropriately lo-fi yet powerful recording quality, pretty much sound like the perfect balance of crusty D-Beat punk and Bathory's first record with bursts of pre-crossover American Hardcore a la Siege, COC, and SSD. The drums are generally a medium paced pound, the guitars are like napalm with occasional moments of phased out weirdness from the archaic recording devices, and the bass sounds amazing as it gurgles and distorts its way around the rest of the maelstrom. There isn't much variation to the affair, nor should there be. Instead, Meti Bhuvah stick to the basics, much in the vein of Ildjarn, and never let you forget why you relinquished your soul to the dark side in the first place. The riffs are evil yet catchy as hell and the saturation of pure metallic rage begins to take on a throb of psychedelic proportions if you just let it sink in and take over. In a little more than thirty minutes, Meti Bhuvah takes you on a blackened journey through the Russian wilderness that skews your perception and pummels your eardrums into senselessness. Just the way we like it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is the reissue of the first Schematic single. I actually got to hear this when I was working for the defunct Pulse Soniq distribution (about time) two years ago, but was burnt on electronica (being forced to buy crappy house singles because the salespeople were too lazy to sell a Sahko title can get you a little jaded). It is a good thing that Schematic reissued this as I would have missed an exceptional piece of dark arpeggiating Skam-ish IDM. Recommended.
You might've heard of this Canadian band 'cuz of their ties to Broken Social Scene (Haines is a member), but as we've mentioned before they're nothing like that Northern indie rock dynamo (although from the sounds of the 'Scene's latest self-titled album they might be moving more in the direction of Metric - some kind of metric conversion? hahaha!). However, if you're not yet familiar with Metric, imagine a 'modern day' incarnation of punchy crunchy girl fronted pop bands such as Veruca Salt, Elastica and maybe even Transvision Vamp. Frontwoman/keyboardist Emily Haines' saucy, cooed vocals alternate between coy'n'girlish and world-weary'n'womanly. Apart from the very last year electro-clash-y coverart, this is a great follow-up to last year's Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?
Metric's frontwoman Ms Emily Haines may be a member of that fine Canadian group Broken Social Scene, but you should by no means assume that her other endeavours are going to sound anything like the Broken Social Scensters. Metric crafts sleek, revved up new wavey pop that brings to mind the mid-90s driving sounds of Elastica, Breeders and Veruca Salt. James Shaw's chunky electric guitars and Joules Scott-Key's snappy drumming propel each song while Haines' woozy keyboards and sassy, cooing vocals charm and swoon -- quite reminiscent of Cardigans' Nina Persson and Throwing Muses' Tanya Donnelly. Energetic and fun.
We had never even heard of Canadian noise rockers Metz, until this record just showed up, but holy shit is it kicking our asses. Heavy and hooky, weirdly groovy, a bit mathy, a psychedelic grinding, churning, pounding blast of drum heavy crunch, the vocals all but buried in the mix, but still an integral part of the sound. The coolest thing about the record though might have to be the production. Instead of being super blown out, or ultra heavy, the sound is weirdly abstract, murky and muddy one second, blisteringly loud the next, certain parts smoothed out into tranced out hypno-rock, others exploding into prismatic noise pop freakouts. And yet somehow every track here manages to be impossibly catchy. We've read comparisons to Jesus Lizard, which might be the most apt, but while Metz are no doubt influenced by JL, their sound is much murkier, much more minimal, with many of the songs collapsing into weird drum-centric breakdowns, a pounding rhythm surrounded by swirls of effects, or some sinewy drum and bass lope, or something similarly abstract and stripped down, only to explode right back into another bout of melody infused near metallic churn. The label talks about how these guys have one of the loudest drummers ever, and while it's usually pretty impossible to capture that sort of thing on record, the drums here are definitely a HUGE part of the sound. They always are in a trio, but the drums here pretty much define the sound, driving, powerful, not overly bombastic, but recorded in such a way that they crush, that aforementioned weird production applied heavily to the drums, causing them to be muted thumps one second, rib cage rattling booms the next, the guitar and bass treated similarly, thick, gristly buzz on some tracks, detuned murky twang on others.
The single "Wet Blanket" is the band at their most classic noise rock, sounding very much like a band you might have seen play with Jesus Lizard or Don Cabellero, and anyone who digs those kinds of outfits should definitely check these guys out too, but even at their catchiest, like on "Wet Blanket", they still seem to slip into that sort of almost krautrock like mesmer, churning looped cyclical hypno-rock sprawls that transform song into sound, reminding us of other similarly inclined combos like Psychic Paramount or recent aQ Record Of The Week-ers Aluk Todolo, but with Metz, those moments, as tranced out as they may be, invariably lead back to something more rocking and melodic.
Easily our noise rock record of the year. Folks who dug the last album from The Men, another aQ ROTW, but who might be after something a bit more fierce and feral, this might just be your new favorite record.
(FYI, there's vinyl too, but our copies got munched in transit, @#$%!, should have more early next week...)
Could be that it's a bit of an embarrassed, ironic tongue-in-cheek joke to name your solo banjo album Deliverance, but this disc by Minnesota string picker Paul Metzger seems serious enough. And is definitely far, far away from anything resembling "Dueling Banjos"! Inbred backwoods hicks won't relate to the stately and intricate raga-like sounds regally flowing from the nexus of Metzger's deft fingers and 21 banjo strings. This sounds much more East Indian than Appalachian. Stark, gentle, precise, compelling. At times you'll swear there's two players, or multitracking, but it's all Metzger, live and unaccompanied. These three long pieces (one of 'em, the title track, over a half hour) are relaxed, delicate, and entrancing... Avant garde acoustics for late night listenin', which nestles nicely next to discs in the "Wooden Guitar" series also released by the Locust label.
Apogee marks the first collaboration betweeen the veteran avant-garde improvisers Musica Elettronica Viva (Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum) and AMM (Keith Rowe, Eddie Prevost, and John Tilbury). Their collavorative set was recorded during one live session in April, 2004; and as one might imagine from their previous outings, these six men locate the immediacy of sound with various degrees of drama, inactivity, noise, and silence. There's squiggles from Keith Rowe's radio interferring with his guitar pick-ups, wooden thumps from the piano strings being tapped by hand, monopulse bleeps from digital clocks, the glistening drones from bowed cymbals, indeterminant metallic scrapings, and synthesized electronic bursts of scrambled noise. The studied clusters of notes from piano, horns, and strings that dot the Apogee sessions provide the trappings that these six are performing in a particular academic tradition of improvisation, and are the only the things that hamstring their monumentally post-modernist expressionism. Along with the three lengthy improvisations between all six improvisers, AMM and MEV both offer extended 30 minute recordings from live performances to round out this double disc set.
We've been meaning to review this for a while, the latest from Mew, another band who have gotten short shrift on the aQ list, which is a shame, cuz we dig em a lot, they're pretty hard to describe though, poppy and a little bit commercial, but also way proggy, strangely twisted, catchy, but in an oblique, WAY left of center way, gnarled guitars, skittery rhythms, gorgeous vocals... thankfully, our customer Derek was able to get a better handle on Mew than we've been able to, so take it away Derek:
The title of Mew's latest record's makes it seem a tad bit pretentious and a bit too "precious." The record is both, but still immensely enjoyable.�(Their last album, And the Glass Handed Kites, was great too - even more rocking, and with loads of low end!)�The sound is a little like late '80s Rush filtered through the Flaming Lips and played by Care Bears in a room made of sheet metal. The Mew guys (from Copenhagen) have come out and said they're a "pop" band, but their notion of what bubblegum pop should be is intricate, proggy, far out and a little spacey -loosed from many of the traditional tropes of pop music. In an alternate universe, they'd be teen idols with hordes of screaming fans and�respected 'artists' simultaneously. (Apparently, there is such an alternate universe, and it's called "Scandinavia", where they're hugely popular - sort of like that odd interval�of pop history here when the members of Yes were showing up on fluorescent Trapper Keepers.)
Outwardly uncool but accomplished�and�somewhat unhinged and really pretty fantastic -�dig the first track, which is actually two different songs played forward and in reverse!!!
Got just a handful of these tapes, from a batch of 120, from this new-ish group featuring members of several aQ faves including Pussygutt / Wolvserpent and A Story Of Rats, recorded a few years back, and sold mostly on the recent Wolvserpent / ASOR tour. And for folks who are familiar with either or both of those bands, the sound of Mezektet isn't that far removed, shimmering strings, melancholic steel string guitar, ominous percussion, all hazy and woozy and otherwordly, sounding at times like some sort of gypsy folks spinning at 16rpm, definitely a dark doomfolk vibe, but like the players' other projects it leans toward the black and the metal, and in this case, actually does spend much of it's time in metal mode, pounding drums and frenzied riffage, howled vokills, but here, those sounds are smoothed out and blurred, wreathed in high glistening crystalline tones, the sound a murky loopscape more than a proper black blast, almost as if Tim Hecker was trying his hand at black metal, needless to say, it sounds incredible, tripped out and heavy, atmospheric and darkly moody, definitely need to hear more from these guys (and gal). Hope this wasn't just a one off, cuz it's definitely as good as anything the various members have done in their other projects.
Sadly, we only have about 10 copies left, and pretty sure it's already sold out and out of print. So grab one quick before it's too late.
LIMITED TO 120, each one hand numbered, recorded on cool metallic green tapes.
