Looking back on reviews of other Necks records, we find ourselves either struggling to describe the Necks' unique sound, or gushing uncontrollably about how goddamn great they are. More often than not, some mix of the two. And we realized that wasn't likely to change here, with the latest record from these Australian modern jazz minimalists, who do indeed have a sound that's difficult to describe, but that is precisely why they are one of our favorite bands EVER. Jazz or otherwise. And they are most definitely jazz, drums, upright bass and piano, and many jazz music tropes are present in their music, it's just that their music takes the idea of jazz, and stretches it way out, and turns it into something much more about tension (and no release), about timbre and mood... Their songs are generally 20-60 minutes long, most of their records are in fact a single track, and they slowly build a gorgeous lush jazzscape that on the surface appears jazzy, a quick glancing listen and an unsuspecting listener might think, "oh, nice, jazzy", but had they bothered to keep listening, that wasn't just a part in a song they were hearing, it WAS the song, and the Necks masterfully take that part and nurture it, from a hushed whispery skitter, occasionally to an all out roar, but just as often, just a much more dense and intense hushed whispery skitter. The three players impossibly and organically linked, sounding less like a band, and more like pure sound. Like we said, it's hard to explain. In some ways, their music sounds like it could be the result of some sort of audio manipulation, as if some audio alchemist took jazz samples and stretched and layered them into these droned out hypnotic jazz ragas, which in itself is a testament to these guys' skill.
On Mindset, the Necks offer up two 21+ minute tracks, the first might be their darkest yet, starting out immediately with some deep low end thrum, some minimal drum skitter, the band immediately locked into a dark almost dirgey groove, and when the piano comes in, it's noisy and surprisingly atonal, the pedals depressed, the tones all bleeding into each other in a thick swirling angular sonic cloud, while the bass and drums remain locked tight. The bass gradually grows more active, and more melodic, as does the piano, the sound impossibly lush and dense, sounding like a way heavier Lubomyr Melnyk, swirling flurries of notes over layered drones, the drums subtly propulsive, it almost sounds like a jazz Godspeed You Black Emperor, so epic and majestic, and darkly moving. Eventually the drums too begin to be more active, and deviate from the groove, the sound building to a cathartic climax, before jettisoning much of the jazz, and turning into a dark droned out abstract psychedelic dirge, with what sounds like effects everywhere, although we're pretty sure they don't use much in the way of effects, there even seems to be what sounds like a guitar, offering up fuzzy squalls of high end buzz, the second half doesn't sound like jazz at all, more like some heavy droney psychedelic post rock outfit. So good. One of our favorite Necks jams for sure. And definitely a good gateway for those aQ-ers who tend toward the jazz-phobic.
The second track is a lot more subdued, starting out super abstract and spacious, tinkling melodies, mysterious sound effects, minimal percussion, spacey little glitches, streaks of high end skree, it's not until 5 or 6 minutes in when the song really starts to coalesce, the bass bowed, unfurling lush slow-mo melodies, and then finally, the drums drift in, another motorik shuffle, the sound remaining ethereal and washed out, glimmery and shimmery, very cinematic too, the drums crazy busy, but still holding things down, the track growing more and more frantic, and frenzied, while on the surface, the piano remains languid and tranquil, while beneath it, the rest of the band grows more and more agitated, the sound so dark and tense, and growing ever darker, hints of funkiness are blurred into something more abstract, the groove nearly swallowed up by the bands swirling sonic churn. Maybe THIS one is one of our favorite Necks jams ever. Hell, who needs to pick? Another Necks record that will no doubt rank as one of our forever faves, and again, Mindset definitely seems like the kind of record that could very well convince some folks out there of what we already know, that the Necks are one of thee best bands out there!
Sometimes it's a struggle to figure out what to write about a record, by a band, whose sound remains fundamentally unchanged from album to album. In many instances that would be reason enough to be patently unimpressed. But with a band like the Necks, 'change' is the last thing you want. Instead, you want their songs, and more specifically their sound, to stretch on and on and on into infinity. And we're getting close, with every release made up of one massive hour plus track. Mosquito / See Through is no different. Two discs, two tracks, an hour plus each! Gorgeous and epic, massive slowly shifting ambient jazzscapes. Drums, bass and piano circle each other warily, before finally engaging, slowly weaving and pulsing, swirling and skittering, until unexpectedly all three instruments are locked into an endlessly hypnotic groove, not like a GROOVE, but a dreamy, shuffling, on the verge of drifting into the ether sort of groove. Like Circle if you were able to slowly pull out sonic elements and distribute them spatially, creating some sort of droning ambient kraut-jazz, propulsive, but just barely, throbbing, but subtly so, ambient, but not ethereal. As always, totally brilliant!
We've been trying forever to get copies of this Necks record, recorded live in Moscow in 2002, and only now have we managed to get enough to finally list. For those of you unfamiliar with the Necks, imagine a standard jazz trio, piano, drums and double bass, now imagine that group playing a jazz that is anything but standard. Extended pieces, usually cd length, sometimes longer, motifs repeated endlessly, while the instruments circle warily, slowly building, each player adding the tiniest hint of sound, a rumbling shimmering, shuffling jazz drone, that pulses and breathes, stretches and swells, rumbles and shimmers. This is jazz for the avant drone set for sure. Chris Abrahams' piano spits out dense clouds of chords and notes, a swirling melodic sprawl, underpinned by Lloyd Swanton's rumbling droning low end and Tony Buck's ultra restrained drumming, shuffling and skittering, kicking up little percussive squalls that drift lazily into the hypnotic haze of piano chords and double bass thrum. It's like all the parts in every jazz song ever -right before- the band kicks in to the tune, all stitched together into a massive never ending free jazz drone. Feldman plays Monk, or Birchville Cat Motel covering Mingus. Dark and dreamy and totally mesmerizing. Another one of those groups who we can imagine playing a single song FOREVER! And we'd just lay there soaking it in and loving it! Actually there was a rumor of a Necks show recently, where they supposedly performed for 24 hours straight! What we wouldn't do for that to come out as a 24 cd box set!
Packaged in a jewel case with a really nice printed vellum booklet.
Hot damn. A new Necks album. They're one of our favorite bands EVER, and this is (one of the many reasons) why. Silverwater provides 67 minutes of the Necks' unique, hypnotic, keys/bass/drums bliss, all one track of course as is their wont. Over the course of those 67 minutes, though, the music made by this Australian trio varies quite a bit. Their trademark trance-iness is present, always, but at the same time this new album (their first studio record in, like, 3 years) seems more programmatic and propulsive than we're used to from these guys, taking off in directions we haven't necessarily heard from them before, but still sounding more like the Necks than anything else. Yet, parts could be mistaken for an underground ambient psychedelic jam from the likes of Sylvester Anfang, almost. And we'd say this is the Necks record to get Bohren & Der Club Of Gore fans into 'em. Other comparisons we've perhaps made before would be to Circle (in their non-metallic Miljard mode), Supersilent, Alice Coltrane, and AMM... anything that can elicit references to the likes of those is, obviously, amazing.
Eerie wavering drones delicately unfurl near the start, quiet and pretty... that gives way to a section that's almost ceremonial, like some percussive ritual. Sparse and deliberate, drums-only for a stretch, to be joined by deep, plucked bass notes... it could be some kinda krautrock jazz... and it does get "jazzier", sort of, with electric organ coloration, and cyclic piano plinkings, but also electronic-y gritty glitchiness overdubbed... Silverwater's shimmering textures and minimalist pulsations are simply beautiful, enthralling. It's a glorious 67 minutes, all right.
If you know the Necks, you know you need this. If you're new to the Necks, please do yourself a favor and check this out. Next to seeing them live (which some of us have been lucky enough to do, oh my god they were good), this will demonstrate quite effectively why we hold them in such high regard.
Could the Necks get any better? I sure hope not because we're running out of superlatives for this eminently dreamy, drone-y, hypno-jazz ensemble. This time around, they've ditched their usual MO of cd-length songs, but fear not, there's a perfectly good reason. This is a soundtrack to an Australian film called The Boys. Don't know much about the film, but judging from this disc it must be one intense, mesmerising melancholic movie. According to the liner notes this is not strictly a soundtrack, instead it incorporates the music used in the film, as well as music composed for, but not actually used. Either way, this is absolutely gorgeous. Repetitive but never boring. Sleepy but always totally engaging. Subtle drumming underscores moody melancholy piano figures, while strange outerspace synths swoop subtly in the hazy distance. And although The Boys is separated into 7 tracks, the whole thing is held together beautifully by the recurring theme "The Boys", featuring an absolutely chilling melody, with quivering theremin filligrees and funereal drumming. So recommended.
Finally a new Necks record! And as usual, it's a single epic, slowly shifting jazzscape, shuffling and hypnotic, circular and completely gorgeous. Folks around here have been totally smitten by this Australian minimal jazz trio for years now. Every record another new 'song', most of their releases are one long piece, which makes sense once you understand the Necks.
If Circle are the masters of repetitive, motorik hypnorock, then the Necks are their jazz equivalent, unfurling endlessly looping, slow shifting Steve Reich-ian dark jazz epics, and like Circle, while there is a motorik element to the rhythm and the groove, it's much more fluid, almost like some strange living shape, and it seems like maybe these guys aren't playing it so much as trying to control the sound, pushing and pulling, stretching and shaping. And the songs are only limited by the length of a compact disc, they all sound like they could, nay should, go on forever (there was a rumor of a Necks 24 hour performance!!).
We sometimes joke about Necks records all sounding quite similar, and sure they sort of do, but only on the surface. Each record is a subtle and entirely unique collection of sounds. Much of it has to do with the compositions themselves, but also the fact that many of the recordings are live performances, which capture a piece, but only the way it was performed that one time. Some are more propulsive (Drive By), and some like this one, are more abstract and ambient.
On Townsville, a single 54 minute performance recorded live in Australia on February 15th 2007 (Andee's Birthday btw), the band reel in their rhythmic tendencies, instead opting to float and flutter, to drift and swirl, the drums are barely even present over the first half of the performance, offering up soft sizzles and billowing clouds of metallic shimmer, the bass too is merely support, offering up dark dense tendrils of low end sprawl and blurred low end whir. It's all about Chris Abrahams' piano, gorgeous glimmering flurries of notes, tossed in the air like confetti, or falling from the sky like snowflakes. It almost sounds like Lubomyr Melnyk is sitting in, offering up some of his swirling 'continuous music' piano. The whole track is one long slow build, the bass and the drums lurking in the background, offering a soft warm sonic bed over which the various notes and chords from the piano dance and drift, moody and melodic and so mesmerizing.
Further into the track, the bass and drums become much more animated, subtly sparring with the piano, the whole band engaged in a series of fluttery swells, but still with the piano leading the way.
Easily one of the jazziest of the Necks discs, but without losing its drone-y minimal psychedelic vibe, so much so that certain parts definitely remind us of the more ambient Circle records, like Tower, Empire or Miljard. Imagine Circle featuring Lubomyr Melnyk on the piano, performing a piece co-written by Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and you'll have an idea of what to expect from Townsville. As with all Necks records, totally divine and totally recommended.
From the same label that brought us the most recent Clair Cassis ep, and the Velvet Cacoon Dextronaut reissue, comes this, the gorgeous hazy, shoegazey depressive black drone pop debut from Pakistani one man band Necktarium, whose sound is just barely black metal, sure, there's plenty of buzz, and some hellish vokills, but those elements are buried in billowy layers of gauzey fuzz, and washed out shimmer, woozy melancholy melodies, and tinkling pianos, all cloaked in blurry Burzumic thrum, the tempos lazy and laid back and a little waltzy, the sound lush and warm and rife with clean spidery guitars, whirling chordal swells and lovely field recordings. Burbling brooks and bird calls drift beneath a haze of translucent glimmer, soon buried beneath an avalanche of blasting blackness, but that blackness is burnished and glows with a strange warmth, wrapped in tendrils of swoonsome melody, everything indistinct and otherworldly, even at its fiercest, Dreamblur manages to be both, dreamy and blurry, like an even more washed out and druggy Velvet Cacoon, Necktarium paints gorgeous landscapes of abstract sonic drift, black metal rendered in shades of blues and greys, moon lit and obscured by flickering shadows, the sound shifting from murky muddy churn, to hushed chiming ambience, from melancholy lullaby to creeping, lumbering sorrowful blackdoomdrift, from gorgeous crystalline atmospheric minimalism, to lo-fi in-the-red blackblur bliss.
Totally fantastic, and absolutely recommended for anyone into dreamy depressive blackness, washed out shoegazey buzz and dreamy droney blurred and bleary blissiness, and tragically LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!!!!
Local label Flenser is quickly becoming the Bay Area's primary bastion of blackened buzz, with a seriously stellar first batch of releases, Bosse De Nage, Ghast, Palace Of Worms, Panopticon, Skagos and now the first proper full length from West coast USBM-ers Necrite, whose sound is really only loosely black metal, instead, these guys traffic in creeping, crawling, atmospheric dirgery, as much about atmosphere and texture as blasting riffs.
The sixteen minute opener sets the stage with a haunting skeletal guitar party, all spidery and minor key, a chilling sonic refrain that sort of drifts over spaced out mathy drums and inhuman hellish shrieks, that sometimes slip into belching death metal grunts, or even now and again almost Tuvan sounding humming vocal buzz. But fear not, these guys definitely offer up some ferocious blackness, bursting into face melting stretches of woozy blurred blast beating and frenetic insectoid riffing. In the case of the first track, the blasting subsides leaving some strange abstract post rocky ambience, crumbling abject atmospheres rife with creepy vocal mewls, and all manner of buzz drenched noise, only to explode again into some seriously intricate noisy blackness, infusing it with all manner of twisted melody and gnarled rhythmic weirdness.
The next three tracks follow a similar pattern, the band deftly slipping from super abstract ultra doom creep, to soaring Norwegian style raw and primitive black buzz, to tangled mathy post rock blacknoise psychedelia, plenty of ambience, lots of intricate melodies, even some sort of guitar leads weaving lush harmonies over and within the proceedings. All of this is wound into some super twisted arrangements, and the weirdly cavernous production only adds to the fucked up feel.
Then there's the nearly half hour title track, the majority of which is hushed blackened ambience, reverbed streaks of blackened shimmer, rumbling vocal murmurs, shards of guitar melody, building to a huge almost static wall of glacial crumbling black buzz, spare doomy drumming, it's not even until more than halfway through that the band offer up some buzzing blasting blackness, and even then, it soon splinters into weirdly tangled heaviness, before fading into some gorgeous minimal droney drift.
Which leads directly into the final track, "Worship The Sunn ((O))", which as you could probably tell from the title, is a sprawling chunk of SUNNO))) worship, but Necrite make it their own, adding mysterious chant like vocals, roughing up the guitars a bit, adding church bells and other ambience, the superdistorted riffing is not as static as it would seem, constantly undulating and squirming, making for a gorgeously bleak and ultra heavy bit of blackened and tangled ambient guitardrone.
So if Eminem isn't hard enough for you, but you still like your rap white and whiney, Necro is for you. Inane, offensive, sometimes funny. Features the title track spoof of LLCoolJ's 'I Need Love'.
Way back in 2010 we made the debut from this UK outfit our Record Of The Week. This awesomely named outfit, with an equally awesomely named record (This Beat Is Necrotronic) delivered what was at the time, and really still is, one of the weirdest sonic combos we could imagine, churning downtuned drone-doom heaviness, and wild programmed electronics, a crazy collision of metal ambience and electronic beats, that had the potential to be a modern Judgment Night soundtrack (and by that we mean AMAZING, but reviled, hate mail welcomed). And while rap and metal never made the best mix to some ears, there was no arguing with Necro Deathmort's musical math, which resulted in the sort of dancefloor heaviness that just didn't exist, and perhaps some would argue shouldn't. We however flipped out, this was like dance music for metalheads, electronica for dronelords, big beats and brutal blackness fused into something spaced out, hypnotic, fucked up and seriously dementedly genius.
So after raving endlessly about three records in a row from these guys (This Beat Is Necrotronic, Music Of Bleak Origin and The Colonial Script), EP1 marks NdM's first ever vinyl release, and we're happy to report that everything we loved about these guys is still in full effect, after a creepy ominous synthed out intro that sounds like the beginning of some druggy planetarium show, the record really kicks off with "Titan", which sounds like dubstep at 16rpm, the beats doused in echo, dubbed to high heave, the tempo a lumbering, lurching lope, and all around that beat, thick swaths of gristly glitched out low end, dense swells of crumbling thrum, thick synth bass throb, we'd have been perfectly happy to just listen to that creeping droned out pound endlessly, but instead, the sound blossoms into something nearly house-y, a little bit Carpenter/Goblin too, pulsing synths, twisted minor key melodies, only to collapse into something a bit more introspective, as "Probe" starts out all kosmische and shimmery, before a driving beat surfaces, and the sound becomes more a sort of psychedelic space rock, the sort of thing you might expect to hear on Agitated or Rocket, a spacey groove, surrounded on all sides by strange electronics and atmospheric swirls.
"Kingdom" is where things darken again, a smoldering creep, thick washes of buzzing synth, a pulsing 4/4 throb, lots of churning, roiling low end, and then surprisingly, things get downright dance-y, sounding like some fucked up Kompakt release, maybe remixed by James Plotkin or Stephen O'Malley, the core sound skittery and electro, but the sounds themselves, thick and buzzy, blackened and crunchy, again, a seriously dancefloor darkening jam for sure. "Void" sounds like SUNNO))) run through Dom Fernow's new Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement project, spare and murky, moody and atmospheric, blackened and bleak, with buried beats barely audible through the sonic murk, while close "Scanner" finishes things off on a surprisingly upbeat note, with some blown out glitch-step, the beats super warped and fragmented, and set amidst a backdrop of billowing serene synth dreaminess, a strange juxtaposition that results in a sort of new wave draped electro-glitch, that sounds like our favorite classic IDM gone haywire. Which is most definitely a good thing.
Includes a download code as well!
The second installment in a proposed trilogy of 12"s from one of our favorite weirdo electronic outfits, UK duo Necro Deathmort, who besides having a grim and brootal, almost metallic sounding moniker, kick up a sound that's seriously warped, an atmospheric, blackened electronica, with the early records sounding a bit like SUNNO))) meets Squarepusher, the sound seems to be delving deeper and deeper into texture and nuance, beat driven moodiness, and almost cinematic sounding, tripped out psychedelic dub.
Still plenty ominous and sinister, EP2 opens with "Sundive", a droned out, industrial sprawl, that sounds more like the minimal techno murk of Silent Servant crossed with the grim-goth rhythms of Vatican Shadow, the pulsing echo drenched beat draped over a thick backdrop of ominous, rumbling thrum. "Mirus" begins life as a hushed swirl of low end pulsations, and gauzy synthesizer squelch, but before too long, the song explodes into some full on metal, a lumbering droney doom, thick down tuned riffage, minimal metallic drum pound, some serious metalgaze style hypno-dirgery, but the whole thing is wreathed in thick swirls of synth shimmer, and more droniness, the vibe almost like John Carpenter by way of Godspeed by way of Neurosis or Nadja. "Channel Fever" lays down a framework of gated beats woven into a skittery eighties sounding rhythm, again, drifting atop undulating waves of synthdrone and atmospheric shimmer, all spacey and washed out, still a bit ominous, but even more so in the last coupe minutes with some ribcage rattling bass, and some slowbuild atmospherics.
The second half of EP2 delivers more of the same. "Bleeding" sounding like it could have been borne of some obscure Justin Broadrick project, or perhaps a remix of Moss or The Body, a churning blackened doomic riffscape spread out over a sea of squelch and a backdrop of crumbling distortion, harsh metallic vokills, a lurching slab of electro-doom, swaddled in arcs of blurred melody, adding a strangely melancholic vibe to the proceedings, but for all the little electronic bits this is some straight up metal crush, that should have doooooooomlords digging it big time, but also probably a little confused, especially when that track bleeds directly into "Deadlight", which sounds like some creepy Carpenter soundtrack, all woozy synths and sinister minor key melody, kosmische drift meets eighties horror VHS ambience, sounding like it could easily have been an alternate soundtrack for recent dystopian seventies style sci-fi art flick, Beyond The Black Rainbow. That sound continues right into the closer "Are", all pulsing synths, and swirling cinematic ambience, unfurling like more soundtrack drift, before the drums come swooping in, transforming the sound into something weirder and heavier, a spaced out doom-psych maybe, or some cinematic psychedelic synth doom, not sure what to call it, but it's pretty fantastic, a lumbering landscape of rumbling, atmospheric drones, swirling synth shimmer, moody melodies, and minimal drum pound, all brooding and tense, super atmospheric, haunting and heavy, again sounding like the score to some lost avant / arthouse sci-fi epic.
LIMITED TO 333 COPIES!!
We made the debut from the awesomely named Necro Deathmort our Record Of The Week way back in January of 2010. As we mentioned in that review it was pretty much a no brainer, the band name to begin with, the album title (The Beat Is Necrotonic), but then the sound, heaving walls of SUNOO))) like heaviness wedded to skittery beats, blackened drones wrapped around low slung rhythms, a sort of SUNNO)) meets Squarepusher electro-metal-blackened-dubstep, beat flecked slo-mo doom bliss wreathed in hazy spaciness, all drifty and mesmerizing, psychedelic, hypnotic and HEAVY.
If anything, this new one, record number two, even more evocatively titled Music Of Bleak Origin, is exactly what you would hope for as a follow up. In some ways, the gimmick of the first record was almost enough, sludgey metal guitars AND beats, granted, those two elements, not usually good bedfellows, were deftly woven into something special, heavy enough for the metalheads, but atmospheric and rhythmic enough for everyone else, but here, it's like that first record reimagined, and re-engineered, sonically, compositionally, it's heavier, more melodic, the songs are more catchy, more actual proper songs, the beats are bigger too, with much of the record REALLY sounding like a metal dubstep record, with the sound shifting easily from doomy skitter, to lurching electronics laced lumber, at its heaviest, definitely worthy of any self respecting metalhead's attention (adventurous metalheads we might qualify), but those heavy moments are not JUST heavy, their tangled up with squelchy synths, spaced out effects, keening vocals way down in the mix, almost like they decided to add space rock to their already eclectic palette, and when they're more concerned with beats, that heaviness, and doominess, and bleak origin, seeps into every beat, every twisted loop, or fuzzy buzzy synth.
The brief opener is the perfect intro, a stuttery beat, pelted with squelches, laid over thick undulating bass, all wrapped in thick layers of buzz and long streaks of high metallic skree, a perfect chunk of electro metallic dirgery. It's not until the second track that NdM really get to let loose, starting out with a super skeletal beat, draped with fragmented melodies, hushed muted effects, a sort of spacerock Portishead, but then the big guitars come crashing in, and then the sound becomes a churning psychedelic doom, lumbering, lurching, the thick crumbling guitars wrapped in swirling synths, the vocals heavy with effects, a sort of metalgaze spacedoom that RULES.
Which makes the next track even more of a surprise, "Temple Of Juno" is straight up dubstep, like it could have been yanked off some Hyperdub 12", until the music swings in, changing the vibe to low slung and again sorta doomy, but riff with woozy synths, wordless vocals, another dirgey bit of psychedelic electro doom, that builds and builds until again, the guitars are massive, roiling and churning, now strapped to buzzy dubsteppy synths, and so it goes swinging from dubbed out metallic lumber to spacey synthy drift and back again.
"Uberlord" is total blackened guitardrone, wall of crumbling buzz, but again, liberally does with swirls of static, fractured FX, and shinnery synths, the result way more spaced out and psychedelic that heavy, which gives way to "For Your Own Good", which starts out all murky and muted and heroin house-y, gradually getting more and more dubbed out, the beats building in intensity, more buried vocals, it's not until about halfway through that the beat splinters into a way more propulsive rhythm, still motorik but more muscly, all wreathed in a synth spacey haze, hypnotic and dreamily blissed out.
"Devastating Vector", unwinds a stuttery techno beat, and some glitchy synths, and lays them out over a dense layered sprawl of ominous low end rumble and buzz, which transforms into some undulating buzzed out bass, the song a sort of dubbed out techno flecked dirge, until it gets SERIOUSLY electro, the sound wrapped in zig zagging synth melodies, dizzying and almost housey, but still the beat and the low end churns along relentlessly, it is actually sort of funky, but in a way that manages to kick ass, not what you would expect from 'funkiness' in this context at all. And of course it's Necro Deathmort, so halfway through, the song explodes in a burst of static, only to come out the other side all thick and buzzy and sludge, the bass blown out and blackened, the beat a lumbering lurch, the whole thing oozy and melty like the whole thing is some huge black mass pouring from your speakers. "Blizzard" sounds like part two of "Devastating Vector", less funky and more plodding, the synths set on swirl, lots of crunch and distortion, moody and murky and woozily washed out, the song rife with subtle melody, the vibe sort of melancholy.
"The Heat Death Of Everything" starts out all big booming beat, and keening high end drones, sounding like Jesu or Nadja or something, and then the hammer falls, and by hammer, we mean massive, thick, sludgey downtuned riffage, about as metal as these guys get, a death march trudge, all howled distorted vocals, pounding drum pummel, squealing feedback, almost industrial / mechanical, but with a Moss / Bunkur sort of ultradoom vibe as well, the sound eventually begins to glow, with subtle color, and buried melody, eventually transforming into a swirl of washed out shimmer and gauzy droned out drift, only to lead straight into the final track, "Moon", a haunting hushed outro, all muted moaning melody, and echo drenched skeletal rhythms, like a doomdronedirge Portishead, total druggy, late night chill out minimal electro-doom slowcore drift.
Fucking awesome, AGAIN. Anyone who bought the first one is DEFINITELY gonna want this one too, and anyone who somehow missed out on these guys the first time around, here's another chance. Absolutely contender for fave record of the year, metal, electronic, otherwise or BOTH.
Super swank packaging, a massive, gorgeously illustrated fold out poster sleeve, housed in a stickered PVC plastic sleeve.
When we first discovered Necro Deathmort, they were recommended to us as sounding like Squarepusher style electronica fused to SUNNO)))-like sludge, and that was actually not far off the mark, with most of the record sounding precisely like that, thick crumbling distorted guitar buzz laced with all manner of stuttery skittery beats, and then the second record, found the band seeming to focus that sound, relying less on the electronica-meets-metal thing, and instead creating songs that just happened to be both electronic AND heavy, and while it wasn't as quirky or fucked up as the debut, it was definitely a better records, with proper songs, and one that does get plenty of repeat play even still (although so does the first one, which we still love), but we were super excited to discover there was yet another NdM record, a brand new one called The Colonial Script, and we knew from the second we put it on, we were gonna dig it as much as the first two.
For folks new to NdM, just check out the first two sound samples below to get a feel for what these guys are all about, which on the Colonial Script, definitely hews closer to the second record but does feature some seriously metallic moments.
Opener "Imperial" starts of all skeletal and spaced out, and when the drums drop, it's like the heaviest, darkest dubstep you've ever heard, the beats pounding away over thick buzzing rumbles and whirring low end, all wreathed in swaths of hum and thrum, and super dynamic, with the track stopping to creep along like some industrial doom, before gradually building back up again, the second half of the track super melodic and melancholy, all minor key and midtempo, a sort of true doom electronica if that makes any sense, building and building to a final few minutes blow out of metallic industrial pummel, which leads directly into "Led To The Water", which is all blown out metallic dirgery, the guitars thick and corrosive, the beats all Godfleshy and mechanical, the vocals a howled feral wail, the vibe is somewhere between black metal, Neurosis and Godflesh or Neurosis, the churning heaviness underpinned by all sorts of subtle melodic shimmer, the metal sort of peeling away, leaving a stripped down skeletal lumber, that fades out, the sounds growing more and more brittle before disappearing in a dubbed out haze. Hard to resist, another one of those bands that we sort of always wished existed and now does. This is some dancefloor destroying heaviness, the sort of stuff that no proper DJ in their right mind would drop, but if they did, people would lose their shit.
Much of this record plays out more like some blackened industrial metalscape, not electronica so much as programmed beats driving big riffs and grim atmospheres, but that can change when you least expect it, like on "Endless Vertex", when another sprawl of downtuned lumber gradually shifts into a gorgeous glimmery bit of beat heavy skitter, or the sort of DJ Shadow-ish blackened hip hop of "Shadows of Reflections of Ghosts Past", or even the sort of droned out krautrock shuffle of "Starbeast", that track adding swirls of synth, and thick undulating low end, resulting in a fantastically broody slab of low end beat driven minimal mesmer.
But again in between those instances of overt electronica, NdM are a seriously heavy outfit, trafficking in the sort of effects drenched programmed drum driven doom, that will have Nadja obsessives losing their minds.
As always, WAY recommended! For folks into electronic music, heavy music, or obviously both, and like the other two records, a shoe in for end of year top ten lists, even though it's only May. Packaged in a cool super black 6 panel digipak.
This record seemed like it was custom made for aQ. They're called Necro Deathmort, the record is called This Beat Is Necrotronic, they've been described as SUNNO))) meets Squarepusher, it's heavy, it's skittery, it's dark, it's like a metal dubstep record, or a grim electronic laced doomdrone record, some of the tracks are stuttery and rhythmic, others are grim and ominous and intense, all of them are heavy, the sound veers from spaced out and downtuned, to skeletal and psychedelic, to thick and caustic, to big beated and bassy.
Thanks to aQ customer Mark for introducing us to these guys, we've been listening to it nonstop since we got it in. It's definitely a tough one to pin down, a little all over the map, but no matter what's going on, the various sounds and vibes and moods are definitely connected, joined by a thick grim black thread.
"Spilth (Spill Your Filth)" starts things off with a lumbering electro jam, all squiggles and squelches, glitches and buzzes, but underpinned by some serious speaker destroying bass, fuzzed out and thick and rumbling and very very prickly, like the heaviest dubstep bassline you've ever heard, cranked even higher. "Hurt Me I'm Bored" is where the band get serious, spreading out a serious chunk of smoldering electronic flecked doom, haunting and propulsive, the drums simple and stripped down, the main riff minor key and a little bit woozy, all around the main groove, clouds of static and hiss swirl and spark, the low end again thick as hell, the guitars gradually growing more and more metallic until, the track is full on doooooooom, but still peppered with little squiggles of distorted leads and various shards of electronic detritus.
"I Can See Through Time" is all washed out whir and hushed shimmer, looped and chopped sounds smoothed into a droney almost pop ambience, which quickly gives way to "Return To Planet Atlas", a sort of trip hopped slowcore jam, all big beats, and thick gnarled woofer shredding low-end, surrounded on all sides by streaks of high end, and all manner of swirling effects. The beats are definitely reminiscent of Scorn, even Bomb The Bass (remember them?), but a bit amped up and a lot heavier: "Necro Effigy" is another strange beat driven groove, with strange voices, croaking frogs, fractured glitched out crunch, and stuttery stop start beats, "Broadcast" is a dreamy interlude, sampled voices, looped bass notes and distant drone-y rumbles, dreamy and ethereal, which leads right into "I Fought The Law And The Law Won" which sounds like Portishead, all smoke-y and late night, or maybe a more beaty Bohren, creepy crawly, mysterious and weirdly pretty, "Technicolour Minstrel Show" begins with a SUNNO)))-y wall of crumbling blackened sound, only to give way to a whirring soft focus dreamscape, while "Origami Werewolf" is a dark loping jam, all throbbing beats, sheets of blown out guitar, keening feedback, and some serious industrial riffage, and finally, the record closes with the nearly 13 minute "Ultimate Testament", a gorgeous super minimal slowcore crawl, the beats skeletal and spaced out, the guitar raw and distorted, thick and noxious, but the melodies epic and majestic, it sounds like it might build to classic post rock crescendo, but instead, everything drops out except for the drums, and the last few minutes are a strange minimal beatscape, booming, pounding, crashing, but with tons of space, the beats echoing into the blackness before winking out, only to be replaced by another beat, until there's nothing left.
This shit is amazing, so dark and heavy and unlikely. Gorgeously packaged too, in a super swank fold out six panel sleeve, adorned with some garish woodcut style illustrations, and be sure and check out their Myspace page as well, tons of other music that didn't make it onto the cd, including a killer reinterpretation of an old Nirvana song, that gets all Necro'd. So Rad. And just for the record, January is in no way too soon to start picking records for your best of 2010 list... just so you know...
Does the name Hellhammer mean anything to you? The raw, Venom-worshipping, Melvins-inspiring cult metal band that later morphed into Celtic Frost? Well it meant A LOT to the guys in Necro Schizma, a Dutch doom band whose 1989 demo tape has just now been
In addition to the six tracks from Necro Schizma's demo tape that appear here, there's another seven tracks recorded at a live gig in 1990. They do a cover version of Hellhammer's classic "Triumph of Death" both live and on the demo, and it easily could be one of their tunes (except maybe it's a little *faster* than their own stuff!).
Aside from Hellhammer, they also list as inspirations Venom, Bathory, Celtic Frost, Manowar, Angel Witch, Messiah, Judas Priest, and Slaughter (we're pretty sure that'd be the Canadian thrash act, not the the American hair metallers). They don't mention Saint Vitus, but boy does the guitar sound like vintage Dave Chandler!
Doom. Pure doom. Made by fans back in the day, luckily unearthed for fans today. We only have a few copies, and may or may not be able to get more, so if you think you want one, be quick. Thanks to Greg Anderson (Southern Lord/Goatsnake/SUNNO)))) for turning us on to this!
Holy shit is this amazing. Everything ever recorded by this eighties Brazilian blacknoize / thrashgrind / primitive death metal horde, whose sound was a sick hybrid of downtuned doom filth, blurts of caustic grinding noise, swaths of blackened buzz, and hyperspeed blackened grind, all of which is gloriously lo-fi, blown out, totally in the red, the production as warped as the sounds, plenty of tape drop outs, weird shifts in tone and timbre, the drums super loud, sounding like a primitive drum machine gone haywire one second, some strange industrial jackhammer the next, but always sounding as if they're being transmitted through a transistor radio, the bass is tangly and detuned, the guitars a smeary blur, a chugging droned out churn, everything wreathed in a thick gauze of crumbling distortion, the vocals for the most parts, almost white noise shrieks, staccato bleats that sound equal part demonic and animalistic.
The whole sound stumbling and damaged, lurching from wild chaotic blasts, to drunken doomic lumber, peppered with blurts of trash can cymbal clatter and noise guitar freakouts, the sound often blurring into almost pure noise, but just as often coalescing into some raw primitivistic punk bashing, or knuckle dragging metallic crush. Most of the songs are less than a minute long, some a mere matter of seconds, although the band do lock into some serious riffing, and some kick ass head shearing blasts of black metal like noise, but it always seems to devolve into some sort of glorious, strangely psychedelic, ear shredding, Satanic metal noise chaos. Fans of outfits like Anal Cunt, Sore Throat and other noisecore killers will flip, as will metalheads who like their metal raw, and primitive, noise drenched and seriously fucking twisted and tweaked. If the late great Faxed Head were not a joke band (wait, what?!??!?), they might have ended up sounding a lot like this...
It's been 8 long years, but German black metal weirdoes Necrofrost have resurfaced with a brand new record. Their 2000 / 2001 one two punch: In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor and Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrungas' Dunkle Necrotoner, pretty much set the bar around here for fucked up freaked out supremely damaged and fractured outsider black metal. There's probably not an aQ favorite black metal record that didn't get compared to Necrofrost. And until very recently we just assumed that Necrofrost were indeed dead and gone, laying forever dormant beneath that swampy floor where dead things go to rot and fade away.
But Blackeon Lightharvest proves otherwise, finding the dreadful duo of Seirim and Fimbulraven offering up another glorious collection of sick, murky black filth. Not too much has changed soundwise since the last bit of necro frost, the songs are still woozy and midtempo, stumbling and buzzy, the vocals harsh and hellish, the songs simple and stripped down, locked into long stretched of furious blurred blackness, with the occasional chunk of more lurching doominess.
If anything, the band sound better. More polished, but not obviously so, unless you're super familiar with the other two records. Where those records sounded fucked up, and almost retarded at times (a compliment btw), here the weirdness seems more an organic part of the whole. The songs are simple, but dense and textured and layered, the recording is still bizarre, some songs super in-the-red, others muddy and muted sounding, and all kinds of tape drop outs and blasts of too-much-distortion that cause the levels to fluctuate, but much like Faxed Head, those bits of fucked up production only add to the mood and vibe, making a weird record sound even more weird.
Some might be disappointed by the inclusion of a band photo, showing Fumbulraven as a normal looking sideburned guy wearing a knit cap and Seirim as a pretty average looking metal dude, but the band photo is labeled "The Checkered Forest Sofa", um, okay, and the guys are credited with "space signals and vector echoes" as well as guitars and drums, and there are still awesome song titles like "Your Flesh Is My Convenience", "Steel Forests Of My Deserted Dreams", and in a bid to describe their sound, "Ugly Misanthropic Metal". Plus Sin Nanna of Striborg contributed to the record's intro somehow, supposedly. Needless to say, this all adds up to some good old Necrofrostian weirdness, and thankfully, the record lives up to all that, a seriously skewed chunk of surprisingly melodic, but WAY damaged black buzz.
First there's the intro, which does indeed remind us of Striborg, trash can drumming, over blurred sheets of mournful minor key guitars, and a super harsh rasped vocal, but that quickly gives way to a dirgey, almost punky bit of raw midtempo old school black metal. Definitely melodic, and sort of loping and lumbering tempo wise, but with some fractured more frenetic breaks, and some wild squiggly guitar bits, all very cyclical and hypnotic, and the sound very muddy and lo-fi, which leaves you pretty unprepared for "Steel Forests" which just might be our favorite track on the disc, a furious blast of super charged buzz drenched guitars, a wild insectoid main riff, wild blasting drums all but buried in the mix, the vocals also pretty buried, all wound into a tight, seriously blistering black metal frenzy, and hooks galore, too, that main riff will stick in your had like mad, and then when the track shifts gears, and gets all dynamic, that's when the levels go haywire, the sound shifting from overblown saturated tape blur, to muted underwater thrum, with some awesome off kilter edits and breaks, might just be BM jam of the year.
And of course the next track switched gears again, with a cool almost post rock crunch chug, with little flurries of harmonics, before lurching into and almost D-beat pound, which makes the long piano part in the middle all the more unexpected, a pretty, moody, minor key vamp, replete with shimmering dramatic strings. Huh? Well, it is Necrofrost after all.
The title track offers up so more weirdness, beginning with backwards processed guitars before launching into a plodding groove, the buzz and pound laced with tangled almost NWOBHM guitar harmonies, and then comes "Ugly Misanthropic Metal" which is indeed all those things, a raw, almost doomy blackened dirge, the vocals extra harsh, the guitars super tense and dramatic, which is followed by a weirdly keyboard heavy jam, which sounds like a Black Sabbath outtake slowed waaaaay down and smeared in black filth, before exploding into a super intense blast, complete with more of those guitar harmonies, before finishing off with a track of haunting creeped out ambience, all chittering insects, whirring New Age synths, deep ominous rumbles and soaring guitar leads.
The first few times we listened to Blackeon Lightharvest, we were convinced it was not nearly as weird as the other two records, but now we're not so sure, like we mentioned above, the weirdness seems to be just less obvious, instead, it lurks inside every note and riff and melody, so even when on the surface, it seems just like classic blasting black metal, it's really not. At all.
No surprise really, considering that Necrofrost is definitely in our black metal pantheon, but this is quickly becoming one of our new favorite BM records.
Oh, how we have been waiting for this! Finally, after years of being unavailable, both records by the mighty Necrofrost are available again. If you've been paying attention to the AQ list, you will probably recognize the name Necrofrost from citations in various reviews of damaged, demented, freaked out fucked up black metal. Striborg, Dead Reptile Shrine, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden, The One. It's pretty much impossible to talk about bizarre black metal without mentioning Necrofrost. And here's why:
Okay, we know that black metal is a serious and GRIM business. There is no place for humor or frivolity. No smiling or laughing and definitely no smirking. Just bitter bleak misanthropy. Suicidal despondency. Utter frosty misery. But absurdity is a whole 'nother story. We've championed some truly absurd/damaged/demented metal in the past, Benighted Leams, Abruptum, Vondur, and of course last week's record of the week Meads Of Asphodel. But I think Necrofrost just might take the cake. This is one of the most fucked black metal records we have ever heard. Start with the titles. The record is called Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrunghas Dunkle Necrotroner! Some of the song titles: "Carcass Carried By The Crawls Of Titanbats", "Me The Tundra", "Slaughtered In A Misanthropic Intent", "Nostalgia Freeze The Norse Reaper", and on and on and on. The record starts off with grunting and growling and mewling, like a legion of just birthed demons, struggling to awaken and crawling up through the murk and the mire, inexplicably accompanied by some jaunty renaissance faire minstrels! Weird. The band then launches into some buzzing stumbling, chaotic, ultra grim lo-fi black metal. Struggling blastbeats, caterwauling guitars, midtempo dirges and some truly necro grunts. But suddenly the song breaks into a bizarre acoustic/country tinged breakdown, complete with warbly wicked witch vocals shrieking and squealing above the din and later, creepy keyboards evoke some long lost Z grade horror movie, while out of tune guitars emulate some sort of scary circus music. Weird! While the core of Necrofrost's sound is definitely ultra frosty, uber grim, lo-fi black Black BLACK metal, even their metal is damaged and demented. Super spastic drumming, retarded guitar, ridiculous mixing, tape drop outs (a la Faxed Head?), vocals that threaten to overwhelm the mix and occasionally do, becoming a Merzbowian blur at full shriek, baritone chants weaving in and out of ear shredding high end blur, muffled blast beats underpin, pretty arpeggiated guitar melodies while the vocalist speak/sings a litany of evil, in his best grumpy grandma moan. There's just too much weirdness to really do this record justice in a review. You just gotta hear it. A frosty, hellish mud covered, grim chunk of brilliantly skewed outsider avant black metal!
With a title like Dark Fog Hovers Near The Wooden Caves Of Aldrakkiian Bloodforest, it's gotta be Necrofrost, easily one of our favorite fucked up outsider black metal hordes. Quite possibly THE favorite. They might just be one of the most referenced bands on the aQ site, since whenever we need to describe a band that is warped and confusional and baffling and freaky and fucked up and damaged and retarded, well, Necrofrost is pretty much the gold standard.
Dark Fog Hovens Near The Wooden Caves Of Aldrakkiian Bloodforest is Necrofrost's legendary 1998 demo, so limited we had never even heard of it until we heard about this reissue, available on vinyl for the first time ever, and of course crazy limited. And while most of the songs here were re-recorded later for the albums proper, here, they are, and we never thought it could be possible, EVEN MORE fucked up and amazing.
Beginning with some strange synth and strings and tympanis sort of classical intro, the band launch into some of the sickest, most frenzied and furious black buzz EVER. Super blown out and in the red, the guitars so distorted they threaten to crumble into pieces, the drums a relentless pound, and the vocals, you thought they were sick before, here they're super high in the mix, LOUD, and inhuman, and super effected, the howls and screams nearly swallowing up the rest of the music. And that music, weirdly melodic, but plenty buzzy and black, with woozy super alien sounding tinny leads all over the place, the overall sound so distorted and weirdly recorded that it almost sounds avant, especially when the guitars and vocals lock into weirdly convoluted lurching bursts of fragmented buzz. So goddamn good. Anyone who owns the other Necrofrost records NEEDS this, and if you've never heard these guys before, then this will either blow your mind completely, or send you running off in terror. Either way, this fucking RULES.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
We love Necrofrost. The ultimate in damaged weirdo outsider black metal. Managing to be completely bafflingly bizarre but still grim and cult and black and heavy as fuck. This is one of two long overdue reissues, this one from 1999, and still sounding as amazing and as fucked as ever. It's called In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor after all, and features some of the best black metal song titles EVER: "Slaughtered With Misanthropic Intent", "Rapacious Forests In Ultimate Sleep", "The Return Of Animalian Bloodlust", "Bloodthrones And Legionwoods"...
And while the sound is appropriately black and buzzy, it's ultimately filtered through Necrofrost's cracked and distorted metal sensibility and ends up being some of the coolest weirdest black metal you will ever heard. At it's core, this is a loping midtempo, slightly doomy, buzz drenched black metal. But Necrofrost take that sound and drag it kicking and screaming, bloody and battered through some haunted forest, into a cave and down into the pits of hell. While not as completely wacked as their other record Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrunghas Dunkle Necrotroner, In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor is more subtly fucked, its dementedness demonstrated less by bursts of renaissance faire folly or country banjos and more by some inherent, intangible what the fuck vibe that seems ooze from every recorded second.
After a weird, horror movie piano intro, with minor key strings, sounding like some Morricone spy thriller, the band lurch into black action. Sheets of blasting buzz, howled demonic shrieks, over a stumbling chaotic blast beat, the tempos ever shifting, bizarre atonal Greg Ginn guitars playing tangled angular leads, strange doom breakdowns, almost jaunty polka style rhythms, twisted and tweaked circusy guitar melodies, albeit all doused in grim blackness, thick washes of medieval keyboards, haunting minor key arpeggiated guitars, these are all part of Necrofrost's sinister sonic world, but ultimately, their grim black blasts are fucked enough, the perfect black metal gateway, luring you with blast and buzz, grimly sucking you into their strange sonic underworld, and maybe once you have successfully traversed Necrofrost's Misty Soar and Swampy Floor, you'll be ready to brave their Bloodstorms...
Essential for all fans of Striborg, Dead Reptile Shrine, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden, Benighted Leams, Furze, Urfaust, The One and other practitioners of the dark and damaged black arts...
Another labor of proto-metal love reissue here from the folks at Rise Above, who brought us the Steel Mill listed last list, and the Bang box before that. If you liked Steel Mill in particular, Necromandus is worth checking out too. Like Steel Mill, it's got a bit of left-field progginess mixed in with its proto-metal heaviness... or maybe the other way around. Really, on paper, you'd think this would be super heavy. First off, the name Necromandus sounds rather metal and evil doesn't it? As does the album title, and songs with names like "Homicidal Psychopath" and "A Black Solitude". And, this album, recorded in 1973 and intended for release on Vertigo (which ultimately didn't happen), was in fact produced by none other than Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi! He even contributes a guitar solo on the title track.
The album starts off with the striking of a gong, followed by a brief atmospheric instrumental intro, then, wham, does indeed get pretty darn Sabbathy with the galloping "Night Jar", a definite proto-metal classic as good ('n heavy) as anything by Jerusalem, Bang, Dust, Lucifer's Friend, Night Sun, May Blitz, Leaf Hound, etc. But after that, Necromandus suddenly take a turn and get all jazzy/proggy on us for the rest of the record, sounding more like Yes than Sabbath, really, which is ok by us as well. Good stuff, and definitely not altogether mellow! In fact, a lot of it is rather ripping. You'll still hear echoes of Sabbath, who had their proggy side too, after all. But folks looking for pure proto-metal / doom might be confused. Although we'd say "Night Jar" alone is worth the price of admission for them, anyway!
Plus, for this deluxe reissue (which comes in a slipcase, with lavish booklet, like the Steel Mill), Rise Above have added 9 bonus tracks, a good, raw recording of the band kicking ass at a live show from '73, featuring a bunch of the album tracks and more.
Too band Necromandus didn't "make it", hard to understand why not, they were definitely a talented group and you'd think their connection with Sabbath would have helped (they even momentarily formed Ozzy Osbourne's original solo band when he first left Sabbath in '77, before returning to do Never Say Die). Probably had they actually been more metal... but we like what they got up to here, regardless.
Greek black metal classic reissued w/ bonus track.
Allan's favorite Greek black metal band.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
While we wait for the cd to be restocked (hopefully, soon, maybe today!), we just got a few copies of a new VINYL reissue of this krautrock classic. It's an import, expensive and limited of course, but you're probably never ever gonna find an original LP at any price...not sure if it has the bonus tracks that the cd had, but it does have the liner notes. And more importantly, it's in packaging that folds out into a giant cross, just like the original LP sleeve apparently did!! Wow. Here's a portion of our review of this album from when we listed the Garden Of Delights cd version:
A masterpiece of suicidal, political Krautrock heaviosity from 1972. NECRONOMICON. Freaky then, freaky now. Psychedelic hard rock that was about as 'extreme' as it got at the time...definitely if Terrorizer magazine had existed back then, these Germans would have made the cover. Not that this extreme by today's blackened metal standards, as there's enough pretty and melodic elements included amongst the fuzz riffage to satisfy the mellower hippie types in the Necronomicon freak-scene. And, they're no Black Sabbath. Still, pretty far gone for '72. The title: How To Kill Yourself. Now that's a bad trip. The very first track, the seven-minute "Prolog", almost makes the remainder of this album superflous, as it's a full, epic encapsulation Necronomicon's heavy prog excess. Theirs is an album replete with stinging acid guitar, heady Hammond organ, and monkish chanting. Ecclisastical choirs wail over trudging, yearning guitar and organ -- shades of Magma and J.A. Caesar. It's like Amon Duul II murdering Pink Floyd and riding their animated corpses all the way to hell. Again, not in any way metal, but what you might call Wagnerian garage-psych... Definitely an obscure but A-list kraut/psych album for those with occult tastes...
While we wait for the cd to be restocked (hopefully, soon, maybe today!), we just got a few copies of a new VINYL reissue of this krautrock classic. It's an import, expensive and limited of course, but you're probably never ever gonna find an original LP at any price...not sure if it has the bonus tracks that the cd had, but it does have the liner notes. And more importantly, it's in packaging that folds out into a giant cross, just like the original LP sleeve apparently did!! Wow. Here's a portion of our review of this album from when we listed the Garden Of Delights cd version:
Aa masterpiece of suicidal, political Krautrock heaviosity from 1972. NECRONOMICON. Freaky then, freaky now. Psychedelic hard rock that was about as 'extreme' as it got at the time...definitely if Terrorizer magazine had existed back then, these Germans would have made the cover. Not that this extreme by today's blackened metal standards, as there's enough pretty and melodic elements included amongst the fuzz riffage to satisfy the mellower hippie types in the Necronomicon freak-scene. And, they're no Black Sabbath. Still, pretty far gone for '72. The title: How To Kill Yourself. Now that's a bad trip. The very first track, the seven-minute "Prolog", almost makes the remainder of this album superflous, as it's a full, epic encapsulation Necronomicon's heavy prog excess. Theirs is an album replete with stinging acid guitar, heady Hammond organ, and monkish chanting. Ecclisastical choirs wail over trudging, yearning guitar and organ -- shades of Magma and J.A. Caesar. It's like Amon Duul II murdering Pink Floyd and riding their animated corpses all the way to hell. Again, not in any way metal, but what you might call Wagnerian garage-psych... Definitely an obscure but A-list kraut/psych album for those with occult tastes...
Load strikes again! Amidst all the skronky arty punk costume rock bands indigenious to Rhode Island, Necronomitron rises above to play some actual honest-to-god METAL, and Providence's Load label was up to the task of bringing it to the indie-masses via this cd. Metal? Well, yeah, nasty, speedy, convoluted heaviness indeed. Besides their cool name, Necronomitron's got wretched chipmunk vocals, wheedily-wheedily guitar solos, frantic riff-mongering, and drumming that sounds like a panicked giant centipede barrelling down a particularily steep staircase. And lots of "parts". It's a bit like old Nuclear Assault or Voivod, with the treble cranked to eleven. Or imagine a Crom-Tech record that was truly heavy. Insane, punk, metal. The hectic tech-metal madness of songs like "Unscheduled Sunrise", "Incephalopod" and "Invading Assassin Is Dead" will dizzy and stupify you. After that excellent Usaisamonster record, another Load winner. Yay!
We made a huge deal out of the most recent Necrophagist, and rightly so, quite possibly the most insane ridiculous and of course great death metal record ever. But before that, came THIS. Onset Of Putrefaction, the entire thing recorded by the then one man band Muhammed Suicmez, playing all the instruments and programming the drum machine allowing for the ridiculously impossible, inhumanly fast and absurdly convoluted song structures. So finally Onset gets the reissue treatment. New artwork, remastered, two bonus tracks from the demo, but most importantly, NEW DRUM TRACKS, supposedly performed by a live drummer! Seems impossible, and many around here think it so, but who cares. This is absolutely one of the most dizzingly intense records ever. Here's what we had to say the first time around when it was a much harder record to track down. (Kudos to Willowtip for seeing exactly what we saw, twisted fucking genius!):
Putrefaction. I love that word, especially how it's spelled. Anyway, despite the generic death metal band name, album title, and lyrical content, Necrophagist is by no means your run of the mill generic death metal band!! No sir. First off, it's one guy playing the guitar, grunting the vocals, and programming the drums. Bedroom home studio metal. The main thing, tho: playing the guitar. This might be the ultimate crazy squiggly guitar lead album ever, outdoing even Morbid Angel and Krisiun in the extreme guitar soloing sweepstakes. It's insane, really. As brutal as the music gets, there's guitar shredding wedged into every available moment of music. As mentioned, this is one guy, probably recording at home. Well, I don't know about that for sure, but there must have been a long ProTools session involved in this!! 'Cause there's no way anybody could do this live. So, as a death metal record, pretty great indeed. Ignore the death metal aspect, and you've got an avant-garde guitar shred fest for John Zorn fans. It would make Buckethead weep. So just sit back and enjoy the onset of putrefaction.
Who would have thought that this little cd, an insane one-man Carcass/Morbid Angel hybrid, released on a tiny European label, would cause such a stir here at Aqaurius even among non-metalheads? And after running out of the 5 or 6 copies we were able to
Putrefaction. I love that word, especially how it's spelled. Anyway, despite the generic death metal band name, album title, and lyrical content, Necrophagist is by no means your run of the mill generic death metal band!! No sir. First off, it's one guy (German, I think) playing the guitar, grunting the vocals, and programming the drums. Bedroom home studio metal. The main thing, tho: playing the guitar. This might be the ultimate crazy squiggly guitar lead album ever, outdoing even Morbid Angel and Krisiun in the extreme guitar soloing sweepstakes. It's insane, really. As brutal as the music gets, there's guitar shredding wedged into every available moment of music. As mentioned, this is one guy, probably recording at home. Well, I don't know about that for sure, but there must have been a long ProTools session involved in this!! 'Cause there's no way anybody could do this live. So, as a death metal record, pretty great indeed. Ignore the death metal aspect (if only the dude who did this would have!) and you've got an avant-garde guitar shred fest for John Zorn fans. It would make Buckethead weep. And supposedly there IS a new record on the way, this time a FULL band, that's fully capable of pulling this stuff off live. Just hope they manage to make it over here. In the meantime, just sit back and enjoy the onset of putrefaction.
This is not a new record, but we have been dying to review something, ANYTHING, by these terrifying Swedes, and this is as good a place to start as any, their debut full length from 2002. Folks familiar with Swedish black metal will probably at least have a rough idea of what they're getting into, Watain, Marduk, Kill (in fact Kill and Necroplasma share a member or two), you know, fast and furious and frenzied and fucked up, but you'll doubtfully be prepared for just how intense and heavy and utterly soul crushing Necroplasma really are.
Beginning with a weird fuzzy Brainbombs-ish bassline, the band almost immediately launch into an impossibly blasting onslaught, lightning fast blastbeat, super blown out distorted bass (which is probably what makes this sound so fucking heavy, most black metal records have ZERO bass), wild insectoid guitar buzz, inhuman throat shredding demon vokills, only the occasional breakdown, where just the main riff is unfurled only to be obliterated seconds later by the band lurching into yet another frenzied attack.
Within all this blasting and buzzing, there is some seriously twisted shit going on too, within the title track there are some strange stretches of muddy muted tribal weirdness happening, "Heavens Above" is a fucked up lurching dirge that sounds almost like an entirely different band, until the sound suddenly launches into a hyperspeed blast, the opening riff for "Blessed By Him" is a dead ringer for Bastro's "Shoot Me A Deer", the same sort of muted damaged chug, but none of that stuff is what Necroplasma are all about, those are merely drops of black blood in NP's sonic cauldron of crusty filth and sick buzz, a fantastically fucked up and utterly relentless black metal assault that makes the music of most of their compatriots sound downright tame in comparison.
Killer reissue from Detroit via Ohio hardcore legends the Necros, who might be most famous outside of punk rock circles for counting among its membership, bassist Corey Rusk, who would go on to run the legendary Touch And Go label, and Barry Henssler who would go on to front Big Chief. But really, all you need to know was that these guys destroyed. Heavy and furiously fast, the songs feral blasts of thrashing chaotic punk rock energy, infused with plenty of melody and hooks galore, fans of classic punk rock from Die Kreuzen to Minor Threat, the Meatmen to White Flag, Black Flag to Negative Approach, Articles Of Faith to the Crucifucks, who have somehow not heard the Necros before now, holy shit are you gonna flip. And this lp is as good a place to start as any, the A side is the entirety of their 1981 self titled single, often referred to as I.Q.32, nine songs in about as many minutes, and the flipside is a whole live show from the same year!
Pressed on swirled grey vinyl. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Latest full length from this long running German black death horde, and even more than their previous outing, Doom Of The Occult is a sprawling, ambitious epic, that takes the sound of classic death metal (Autopsy, Incantation, Hellhammer, etc.) and fuses it to the gnarled blackness of newer bands like Deathspell and Katharsis, and creating a stunning songsuite of mid paced blackened death metal, that is black enough to appeal to the true grim hordes for sure, the riffing thick and twisted, the drumming intricate and powerful, the vocals a reverbed demonic bellow, verging on gurgling DM growl, perfectly matching the tenor and energy of the music.
At first glance, there seem to be an insane number of tracks, but the band has woven multiple interludes and sonic experiments into this record, and that's on top of various intro and outros, all the various non metal pieces super varied sonically, ranging from droned out ambience to hauntingly Middle Eastern sounding arrangements of choirs and synths, but it's the metal obviously that's the focal point here, and it's the sort of black death we can't get enough of, thick and cacophonous, doomier and mid paced, the sound churning and roiling more than thrashing and blasting, the sound surprisingly melodic, those melodies often very Eastern sounding, giving much of NC's sound a mystical exotic vibe, not to mention that they don't shy away from infusing their metal with chanted crooned vox, or swirling synths, the result is a surprisingly melodic, blackened death that is coming dangerously close to being one of our new favorite metal records.
As was promised late last year when she and Thom (Moore of the Moore Brothers) released their Summerland album on Kill Rock Stars, here is her second solo album. Your initial impression might be that Nedelle's intimate, mostly acoustic songs are totally off the cuff -- a few barely reach the two minute mark -- but listen further and you'll discover that they're quite deceptively so. She's cozied them up with lush strings, a little whistlin' (on the sixth song "Our Little Selves") and sweet-sweet vocal harmonies. The highlight is perhaps the most fully developed tune of her repertoire, and it surfaces mid-album. The very lush Rufus Wainwright-esque "Oh No!" is a totally rollicking number, but surprisingly it not at all jarring amid the dreamy slower songs. A definite charmer!
Miss Nedelle Torrisi has one of those sweetheart voices that rings with such an air of youth and innocence. Super pretty and soulful, and sorta like Tracy Thorn's pre-Everything But The Girl band, the breezy Marine Girls. She and bandmate/honey Thom Moore's debut album Summerland definitely harkens back a few decades. The album title's more than appropriate 'cause whenever their poppy tunes are playing it seems like it's that time of year -- all warm and bright, filled with good stuff like a pretty gingham sundress, an old wooden rowboat or a tall glass of bracing lemonade. If you dig this, you should also check out Nedelle's solo releases (she has another one due out next year) and Thom's recordings with his brother Greg as yes, the Moore Brothers!
Rising from the ashes of Philadelphia art-psych-rock combo Bent Leg Fatima comes this eccentric quintet who play a jumble of experimentations in free jazz and art rock. Sax, organ, drums and other random percussive instruments are tossed into the mix with
Are you tired of mundane, regurgitated, redundant music that seems to be the only thing available these days? Well, Need New Body is the radioactive answer to your woes of uninspirational musical blahdom.
They combine frenetic percussion using drums, handclapping and any type of instrument they can make or find with organ, keyboards, bass, banjo, sax and retarded lyricism that fluctuates from power-alto to a crunchy Carol Channing to off-key group harmonizing all throughout oft-changing time signatures. Ugh. I know it sounds like it wouldn't be good. BUT IT IS. This band is not like any other, and you gotta love them for it. The only other ensemble I could link them to would be Sun Ra's Arkestra, with whom they've played with recently. Their sound is a broken free-jazz that comes together to form different ideas here and there (i.e. the electronic-arcade house-party energy of "Who's This Dude? / Tet No Eyes / Do You Want To Party With Me / Medley", or the arty noisy kraut jam of "Badoosh + Seagull War = Die", or the Dead Milkman sillyness of "SO ST RX") Yes, this record is all over the place but in an engaging way, even if it makes you feel a little embarrassed at tiny moments. An album from NNB couldn't be anything else. These guys rule a strange and infinite gap between Styx, funk, free-jazz, Nintendo 64 music and psychotic banjo art-rock.
Where's Black Ben is the first new record from this band of Philadelphian phreaks in two years! And well, if you've seen this album in the store, you'll notice that the artwork is, um... not all that enticing garish and dayglo, but it sure catches the eye! Problematic artwork aside, these guys totally rule. For fans of Sun Ra & His Arkestra, Hella, Deerhoof and Dada-ism.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Olympia's The Need is someone named "Radio" and Rachel from Kicking Giant, this time with the addition of a DJ Zena who supplies scratching, plus Joe Preston (Melvins, Thrones, Earth) on bass and synths. Vinyl only. This is the follow-up release to their debut on Donna Dresch's Chainsaw Records.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Portland's The Need is not dead, this is their new album.
With previous collaborator Joe Preston (Thrones) adding bass and "squiggle pen" on a couple of tracks.
Yes, we've got it! And you need it too. This is Radio and Rachel's first full length from '97. And yes, it kicks just as much ass as their second album "The Need Is Dead". With songs like "Pony 4 Honey" and "Rim Me Isabella", these two women mean business... and get down to it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Beta Bodega's Needle is actually a collective of like-minded experimental electronical artists who are working under the fictional guise of being involved in the intrigue of international espionage. While a few of the pieces on this album have an interesting brooding quality to their digital clickery and post-Warp electronica, the majority of this record sounds like a less-than-successul sound design assignment made by posturing art school students who mumble about being the next Julian Schnabel between cigarette drags, while not have an ounce of creative ability in their body to actualize such bold claims. Those responsible for these bad parts (and possibly for the good) are Frank Metzger (formally of Oval), Patcha Kutek, V8, Kim Cascone, Phonem, Full Swing, Sony Mao, Andreas Berthling, Oevind Idsoe, and Random Industries.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The fourth volume released by the Skratch Piklz, more beats and breaks for scratching.
Long awaited debut from Bay Area hardcore heavies Needles, featuring members of Talk Is Poison and Limp Wrist, whose sound is a killer mix of classic punk rock pummel, old school Bay Area powerviolence and brooding, gloomy new waviness, the opening title track, starts off with a feedback drenched sprawl of new wave, bass heavy, gloom punk dirgery, before launching into a furious blast of pummeling hardcore crush, throat shredding vox, galloping drums and some fierce sinewy riffage. "Not Losing Faith" is a 30 second face melter all chaotic crumble and frenzied shred wrapped around a dense driving bassline, and then "Truth" which mixes the two, slipping easily from grinding hardcore heaviness to near metallic crunch, sounding a bit like a supercharged Rudimentary Peni. And so it goes, six songs in about eight minutes, catchy as fuck, heavy as fuck, and definitely has us hankering for a full length!
For those of you who missed out on the ultra limited Melvins A Senile Animal box set (which is probably most everybody), we managed to get a handful of these super limited comics, by aQ customer Tom Neely, which came in the box along with a belt buckle and a bunch of other stuff. The comic is amazing, inspired by the album, which means it's bizarre and twisted and fucked up and garish and beautiful. For those of you who have yet to see Neely's art (you very well might have and just not known it as he does a lot of commercial stuff too), you're in for a treat, classic and old fashioned, but just a bit tweaked and damaged.
This Melvins comic is the tale of a horse, who loses his head, some sort of spectre, plenty of gore and blood and vomiting, a bandaged worm man with a very powerful tongue, being chased by little legged dots, a bar full of vampires and historical figures, a wolf in grandma's clothing, a long journey across a black sea in a rickety rowboat, a strange mountaintop female cyborg, a giant eagle, a city wrapped in living tendrils, more removable heads and a horde of horses. Sure it sounds insane, it's a comic based on a Melvins record!!! The back cover has a funny Melvins parody ad, and the inside back cover has bios of both Neely and the Melvins.
If you love the Melvins, you'll probably want one of these, and odds are we won't be able to get more once we sell out.
Oh boy. Any Henry & Glenn fan is going to flip for this. The four issues of the Henry & Glenn Forever & Ever mini-comic, now compiled into one thick trade paperback book, with A LOT of extra material added on - over 100 pages of entirely new comics and art!! It's epic. So even if you already have each issue in the series, you might want to give those as a gift to an impressionable youngster and get this for yourself. Includes an amusing introduction by none other than Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford (!), as well as a six page essay about "The Secret History Of Henry & Glenn Comics", as if they were actual comic book heroes dating back to the WWII era.
If you AREN'T already familiar with Henry & Glenn, well, the comic chronicles the adventures of these two punk rock icons - Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig - who (in the comic) are in a loving, same-sex relationship. By turns, sweet and surreal, always quite funny (unless your name is Glenn Danzig - somehow we doubt he really approves of all this, while Rollins at least contributes a blurb to the back cover). You can find our reviews of the individual Forever & Ever issues elsewhere on the aQ site.
256 pages, mostly b&w, but there's a 30 page full-color gallery of covers and other art in the back. Wow. The ultimate H&G book for sure.
Straight up, Satan lovin' black metal here from previously obscure necro Norwegians Neetzach, who piqued our interest 'cause they've got drummer Dirge Rep in the band, he who previously pounded the skins for AQ fave Viking-prog kings Enslaved (and some other bands too, like Gehenna and Gorgoroth). That's a fair assurance of quality, and these True Servants Of Satan don't disappoint, if it's a grim and violent, raw thrashing black metal buzz (and buzzing) you're after. Blurring blasts and noxious rasps emanate from this disc like fumes from a toxic tomb, the old-school atmosphere enhanced by some slower, sea-sick riffage and the way Dirge's drums beat on your skull. Good Satanic stuff for fans of Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Darkthrone and the like.
