With a name like Hallowed Butchery, we had a good idea of what was in store. Then we saw the cover art, not necessarily metal looking if you weren't expecting such, and the touching dedication of Funeral Rites For The Living to HB overlord Ryan Fairfield's wife and daughter. That seemed to soften up our expectations. Then we actually listened to Hallowed Butchery. And, um, yeah, this is some filthy as fuck, abject, miserable, doom-laden metal, blackened for sure but not "black metal" per se, and however you want to define it, just plain VILE! The sounds are so insanely heavy that it's like things are going to be pulled into a black hole where they will remain swirling about in perpetual negativity. The vocals are a harsh, guttural gurgle, scary and forceful but buried in the mix as another layer of sound, sometimes sounding a bit like a guy getting ready to puke up his innards. At the same time, there are many moments on here that are just plain beautiful, especially when Fairfield strums out some dolorous tunes on his acoustic guitar. The sadness on display is no doubt genuine, and the lyrics follow a path of hopelessness and despair. Reading them alongside the aforementioned dedication, as well as the heartfelt thank you list, makes it clear that Fairfield is someone with a realistic view on the woes of this world, which is always a cool thing in a scene where everyone is trying to put on some phony air of being "evil". Fuck that. This stuff also has a pronounced industrial vibe, offering a sonic beatdown that will surely appeal to fans of groups like Gnaw Their Tongues, Human Quena Orchestra, and Nekrasov. The super dense, crushing doomscapes conjure up some post-industrial meltdown, and the electronic ambience gives things a very disconcerting feeling, sometimes sounding a bit like some of Current 93's more recent work actually. Then, after getting your ass handed to you on a platter, Fairfield brings things down a notch with a GORGEOUS cover of Neil Young's "After The Gold Rush," so SO awesome, not to mention pretty much completely unexpected. Things are pretty straightforward, at least until it becomes the first doom metal Neil Young cover that we know of. Suppose we shouldn't be surprised at this point, but one man projects like this always get us; how could one dude be responsible for such a thick slab of concentrated negativity? Dunno, but this is definitely hitting the spot.
Second record from these mysterious medieval liturgical soundscapers, who at one time were members of the awesomely avant black metal horde Emit. As we mentioned in the review of the first Emit record, that band was only tangentially 'black metal', choosing instead to take black metal elements and weave them into something more ritualistic and abstract. Well, Hammemit is the logical extension, ejecting all the black metal elements, minus some ominous black ambience, focusing more on mood and texture, creating a song suite that sounds like a collection of ancient hymns, the sounds of haunted cathedrals, the crumbling spires and broken stained glass, still imbued with the spirits and souls that had passed through before.
It's not hard to imagine wandering through some ruined stone church, at dusk, the moon bringing the shadows to life, the splintered pews in small bonfire ready piles, pages from hymnals scattered like dead leaves, when suddenly strange sounds come wafting down from the choir, shards of detuned guitar, deep rumbling drones, monk like chants, the occasional raspy whisper, warm whirling off kilter chordal whirs, washed out reverb drenched drifts of buzzing steel strings and moaned ghostlike voices, soft flutters of out of tune piano tumbling over soft crystalline shimmers, dark heaving slabs of ominous buzz, shot through with growled vocals and more spidery detuned warble and thick swirls of church organ. Gorgeous and ancient and haunting and mystical. Mood music for ruin'd cathedrals, a soundtrack for midnite pagan rituals, or as the legend on the cd sleeve reads: "Mediaeval Music For Modern Sensibilites"!
Emit were never really a proper black metal band, so much so that it often seemed quite curious that they were so embraced by that scene, when there sound was something much more abstract and ambient, ritualistic and distinctly not heavy, at least in the traditional sense. This UK horde trafficked in a sort of abstract ambient doom, there were riffs, to be certain, but they were not strung together into long buzzing progressions, instead they were banged out one at a time, often left to decay and sprawl into shimmering black ripples, and just as often there were no riffs at all, instead opting for some effects drenched dubbed out free blackness. Once in a while, the sounds and atmospheres would coalesce into something definitely black metal, but even then, the blast beats and buzzing riffs were stumbly and chaotic and doused in reverb and sent lurching though heaving seas of crunch and crumble, everything moaning and creaking and squealing and seeming to gradually implode. Emit were indeed one of a kind, and it's unclear what exactly caused them to hang it up, but a few of those Emitters went on to create this entity right here, now called Hammemit, a somewhat logical extension of Emit's more abstract ritualistic side, forgoing riffs and metal and buzz almost completely, opting instead for something much more primitive and minimal, haunting and spiritual.
Spires Over The Burial Womb unveils a mysterious black form of liturgical music, drawing heavily on traditional religious musics throughout the ages, wheezing church organs, chanted monklike vocals, choral voices, lots of echo and reverb as if these pieces were indeed performed in some sort of temple or church, some of the songs thick and swirling, dense and intense, others spare and spidery, with simple spidery melodies hovering in wide open expanses of shimmering reverb and deep cavernous echo. All of the sounds here are dark, haunting, creepy, mysterious, deep distant drones twist and turn like monstrous black shapes hidden in the shadows, the voices chant and invocate, offering up prayer perhaps to some other gods, the voices and the drones beneath inexorably interwoven. There is guitar, but it's often detuned, fractured, effected, smeared and blurred into another layer of creeping blackness. The most traditionally musical movements, sound a bit like Skepticism, but with all the distortion stripped away, the drums removed, slowed way down, and performed in some massive stone cathedral, every note slathered in natural reverb and dusty delay, allowed to drift ethereally until the next note emerges to follow along in it's ghostly black wake. While the rest of the tracks play out like ancient masses conducted by reanimated specters risen from the grave, primitive rituals performed in the black of night, in the dead of winter, in a church full of empty pews, with broken stained glass windows, and drifts of snow moving like a white sea across the cut stone floor, a swirling white abyss that swallows the black sounds drifting above.
A truly beautiful and haunting collection of blackened rites and rituals and mysterious nokturnal sonic ceremonies.
Ready for some harmonies and heaviness? Pure, prog-tastic METAL for the long, dark winter? We know you are, 'cause it's been a long while. But now, it's here. The Hammers come down for the second time with this long-awaited new album, the follow-up to their acclaimed (and already out-of-print, for now) debut The Bastard released on our own Andee's tUMUlt label back in 2001. Whereas The Bastard was a full-on rock opera, The August Engine only *sounds* like a rock opera, it isn't actually one. There's no narrative, unifying concept to the songs this time, which puts HoM's eclectic metal mixture in danger of losing focus, being too unpredictably psychedelic and epic for their own good. Wait, what are we saying? That's no problem! As diverse as their songwriting and sonic palette can be, everything here sounds like Hammers and nothing else (well, except Slough Feg), which can only be the mark of a brilliant band.
Bursting out of the gates with an adrenalized instrumental opener that thrashes like Megadeth while remaining as gloriously 'classical' and over the top as anything on The Bastard, we can't say The August Engine never lets up. It does, but only in the sense that some decidedly unusual, and sometimes mellow avenues are explored. But for every non-metallic moment of sweet singing and pleasant acoustic guitars, you get plenty of shredding electric ones, with pounding drums, dramatic male and female vocals on a grand scale, and headbanging riffage. Advanced metal mastery here folks. Pretentious? Indulgent? Arrogant? No, simply mighty. The 10-out-of-10 review this album has already garnered from veteran metal scribe Martin Popoff likened them to a psychedelic version of the best of Iron Maiden, who are we to argue?
Hammers still consist of John and Mike from The Lord Weird Slough Feg, plus drummer Chewy. On this recording, Janis Tanaka plays bass and sings like an angel, though when you go see Hammers live now, they have a new lineup including not only a foxy new bassist/singer but another female vocalist who plays Hammond organ as well!
The vinyl (on tUMULt) has different cover artwork than, but the same tracks as, the compact disc version, released in a black-and-silver digipak edition by upstart Italian metal label Cruz Del Sur. Both sport cool Voivod-ish liner art by mastermind John Cobbett himself. Of course, recommended.
Our own Andee proves himself, and his tUMULt label, to be truly dedicated to the Heaviest of Metal with this new release! Following on from prior tUMULt metal-oriented releases (the grim and trancelike black metal genius of Weakling, the blackened
Formerly known as Unholy Cadaver, Hammers of Misfortune is the demented brainchild of local metal master John Cobbett, who also plays guitar in the cult SF "celtic epic metal" outfit The Lord Weird Slough Feg. Mike from Slough Feg is also in Hammers, playing guitar and providing the "clean" male vox. And we must mention the contribution of Janis Tanaka (ex-Stone Fox) on bass and the exellent female vocals. "The Bastard" comes across like a mixture of Cradle of Filth and Blind Guardian, or Slough Feg and Opeth, or Satyricon and Mercyful Fate: it's that eclectic, that classic, that amazing.
People have been waiting a long time for this, the third opus from SF's own Hammers Of Misfortune, one of the most ambitious, audacious, bodacious, bombastic, maybe even slightly ludicrous bands in the metal realm...and metal this is, through and through, even as it pushes the envelope right over the edge into, I don't know, musical theater... 2003's The August Engine was pretty amazing, as was (our favorite) their year 2000 debut, The Bastard (released by Andee's tUMULt label we should note). The Locust Years has a lot to live up to.
And live it up they do here. Just check out the band photos for evidence of that (funnier if you know these folks). There's a shocking formal portrait on the back cover, everybody dressed up in tuxedos and evening gowns, hair pulled back. And then inside the cd booklet, you see 'em letting their hair down in a glammy, rock n' roll fantasy shot. It's nice to see that they don't take themselves too seriously, that should keep people guessing about this band. Not so pretentious as some might think, joking but no joke.
Quick intro first for those just tuning in/turning on to this band: Hammers is a rock-operatic heavy metal juggernaut with harmonizing lead guitars, pounding Hammond organ (new!), and majestic male and female vocal lines. The band features members of The Lord Weird Slough Feg past and present, and mainman John Cobbett is busy too with his other band black metallers Ludicra (new ep elsewhere on this list) plus he's been playing with the likes of Amber Asylum and even Jarboe of late... As you might imagine from all of this, Hammers is an especially eclectic mix of '70s prog, '80s metal, black metal (without the black metal vocals), classical music, avant-chamber-rock, Mary Poppinsy musical showtuneage, Opethian loud/soft, fast/slow dynamics...
Basically, everything (and more) that already earned mucho plaudits for the Hammers' first two albums is present here: the sweeping melodic grandeur, metallic excitement, complex arrangements, virtuoso playing, intelligent lyrics, many moods, and attention to idiosyncratic detail -- which is evident from the packaging, with its Thomas Woodruff cover painting and aforementioned photography, to the music, for instance the track "War Anthem" that features a whole hired drum line arranged by Hammers drummer Chewy. Or it's actually Chewy multitracking his own one man drum line. Either way, it's pretty darn Tusk!!
And lyrically, while it's not a storytelling narrative like The Bastard, it's somewhat more of a cohesive "concept album" than was August Engine... the concept being, near as we can tell, a very allegorical, cryptic protest against the awful person and policies of our president, George W. Bush!! Or at least that's what we get from lyrics like "Death - death to the infidels / sons of our servants shall serve and serve us well / and gifted with endless war / flags and fanatics forevermore" (from "War Anthem") or, "If people wonder at the suffering you cause / and your massive avarice has left them at a loss / if by chance they notice your bloody, snapping jaws / the blood upon your claws / your shifty eyes and laws / the nauseating flaws in all you've said / trot out the dead" (from "Trot Out The Dead") -- no that's not Satan they're singing about, not exactly. We're pretty sure that makes The Locust Years the world's first POLITICAL epic fantasy prog power metal album!!
Recommended of course.
Another release on the awesome Starlight Temple Society (which while now sadly defunct, seems to have mutated into Khrysanthoney, home to recent aQ faves Clair Cassis and Necktarium), this one from a mysterious European duo, whose sound is inspired by, according to the band themselves, Low, Labradford, Earth, Burzum, Skepticism, Nortt and Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. But imagine those influences channeled into something more medieval sounding, and WAY more post rocky, a sort of droning medieval slowcore laid beneath softly buzzing metallic rumble and shimmer, and you'll get an idea of Hamnskifte's sound.
The opening track is the perfect example, the core sound, a simple minor key guitar jangle, the drums sparse and spare, the rhythm slow and stately, all beneath a gauzy layer of slo-mo glacial riffage, that sort of Earth/SUNNO))) black buzz, smeared and blurred into something much more washed out and ethereal, while beneath, the band introduce other bits of buzz and drone, what sound like accordions or harmoniums, a gorgeously smoldering blackened slowcore, meditative and hypnotic.
The next track is even more blissed out. The metal/buzz element relegated to a more minimal bit of pulsing droniness, beneath the gorgeously skeletal arrangement, the guitars crystalline and shimmery, it's not hard to imagine this being on a label like Temporary Residence, reminding us a bit of a more minimal instrumental Pinback, or even Temporary Residence unsungs Lumen.
The rest of the record unfolds similarly, the sounds laid back and languorous, a darkened slowcore/postrock hybrid, that seems to be only slightly blackened, and instead, shuffles and meanders, the sound hypnotic and mesmerizing, the arrangements simple and cyclical, droney and dreamy and surprisingly poppy.
Odds are this might get overlooked by the folks who would dig it most, considering the label, and the other way blacker and heavier bands on the label, but anyone into dark, droney minimal, brooding and beautiful slow motion post rock, this will definitely hit the spot.
LIMITED TO 125 COPIES. Packaged in an oversized silver metallic envelope, with an 8 page booklet, a pull out poster, and recorded onto gold cd-r.
We're always up for some twisted black metal. The more twisted the better. The more fucked up and damaged the better. So on first listen this disc from Hamsoken pretty much hit the spot, beginning with some crumbling sci-fi synths, some growled demonic vox, weird throbbing Goblin like bass, all sprawling bleak industrial blackened synthscape, before lurching into some full on filthy raw blackened pound, all buzzy guitars, and buried vokills, twisted melodic leads, atonal and angular, but then a track later, the fidelity is cranked up a notch, and the band erupt in a frenzy of blasting tremolo guitared black buzz, gnarled and furious and blurry and washed out and so goddamn good.
We were so lost in Hamsoken's buzzy blasting blur that it took us a while before we even realized Hamsoken was in fact Nick Forte, who some of you might remember from hardcore legends Rorschach!! (Who reunited for a few East Coast tours recently, and if all goes well, just might make it out West!).
Even on repeated listens, we don't necessarily hear any Rorschach in the sound of Hamsoken, but like much of our favorite black metal, the fact that Forte is approaching BM from a whole different background, brings so much new to the table, the synths all over the place, the tracks that seem to crumble into slow crawls, the lurching almost SST vibe of some of the guitar parts, the vocals, going from murky garble to super distorted hissy howl, even at its blackest, the sound is weirdly melodic and hypnotic, doomy dirges give way to blazing blasts which in turn dissipate into slow blackened drifts. Unlike most black metal, the bass is huge, and melodic, way up in the mix, sometimes carrying the whole song, and those synths, makes everything sound all creepy and soundtracky and Goblin-y, the best moments are when the metal component is ditched completely in favor of some synth heavy crawl, all processed drum machine, moody moaning guitar melody, and those incredibly harsh vox, moody and melancholy and industrial and heavy, even when it's not heavy in the traditional sense. Those synth heavy tracks play out like some blackened coldwave band, a sound we had sort of been fantasizing about actually, a sort of black metal Cold Cave maybe, in fact, very little of the record is anywhere close to traditionally blasting black metal, those moments do exist, but tend to separate drastically different sonic environments, be they fuzzy and droney and spacey or murky and blown out and abstract, or punky and thrashing and pounding (like a couple tracks, the only real nods to Forte's punk past).
Definitely for folks into the strains of black metal that tend toward the avant, the drone-y, the gloomy, the fucked up, and especially the weird and melodic and new wave-y... wait, is there a strain like that? New wave-y and melodic and fucked up and industrial? Yeah, there is now.
In our review of the last Hanging Garden record, we described it as being the prettiest black metal record we've ever heard, and this latest one is more of the same. Ostensibly a depressive black metal combo (featuring aQ pal Morbid from Happy Days, another awesome depressive black metal outfit), their music is more like a gloomy melancholic pop, it's really just the vokills that cast it as black metal, delivered in a crazed falsetto shriek, which definitely adds a strange tension, and a degree of blackness, but strip the vocals away, and you'd be left with what is essentially some super melodic, gloom pop, all dirgey tempos, and fuzzy guitars, dreamy jangle and mournfully melancholic lead guitars, and of course there are plenty of samples too, intimate moments captured from various films, the music perfectly suited to the sad scenarios and heartbreak presented in those samples, the vocals anguished and dramatic, but so over the top they almost sound operatic, reminding us a bit of the more Ethel Merman-y vox in Urfaust.
But when we say pop, we mean serious pop, the songs are urgent and intense, with the guitar melodies evoking such emotion, hauntingly and miserably catchy, if the vocalist was singing in a deep dramatic baritone, it wouldn't be hard to imagine this as some sort of cold wave relic, albeit with buzzing guitars. And it's those vocals that will probably dissuade most dabblers, without them we'd be hyping this to everyone into M83 and other like minded eighties sad pop shoegazers, and heck maybe we still will, but for the black metallers out there that like their black metal melodic, and dangerously pretty, think Lifelover and Urfaust and Crooked Necks and Hypothermia but with a touch of Katatonia, and those crazed over the top vocals, then this will definitely do it for you. Needless to say, we love it, vocals and all, and we dream of a day when some modern Breakfast Club style teen drama will include songs like this, the perfect soundtrack for the breakup scene, when the couples are walking separately through the rain, thinking about what could have been...
This just might be the prettiest depressive black metal record you'll ever hear. Featuring Morbid from Happy Days on drums, this trio unfurls gorgeously melancholy soft focus landscapes of crystalline guitar chime, warm washed out distortion, simple skeletal drumming, everything super melodic and dreamy, the sound gauzy and blurred, the vocals the only thing that really make this truly black metal, without them, How Will You Live Your Life Today? would sound more like some shoegazey indie pop record, all shimmery and minor key, minimal and utterly poppy, loping, meandering, jangly softly buzzing doom pop, but the vocals, hysterically shrieking one second, growling raspily the next, definitely add some pathos to the prettiness, which is definitely the point. The band sing about love, and heartbreak, misery and abandonment, loneliness and breakups, and the music perfectly captures that feeling, the sort of hopefulness lurking behind every heartbreak, the sadness inherent in giving your heart away, thus the music is pretty and sweet and poppy, while the vocals are tortured and anguished. It's a strange combination, but after a few listens, it's hard to imagine the music without the vocals, the sweet without the sour, the light without the dark.
Should definitely appeal to folks who dig stuff like Lifelover, Toil, Hypothermia, and others who dare to infuse their black metal with jangle and hooks and heart.
The return of perhaps our favorite depressive black metal band, with what might be their best record yet. A sprawling double disc, fourteen songs, ninety minutes, the perfect balance of lilting melodic jangle and abject pounding buzz drenched blackness. The band consummate masters of balancing the two, but goddamn if this isn't simultaneously their prettiest and poppiest, AND heaviest and most brutal record so far. Just check out the album opener, "Happy Days", the perfect band theme song if we've ever heard one, starting out all muted jangled and stripped down rhythm, a second guitar offering up a gorgeous glistening melody, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was some new lo-fi bliss pop outfit, until the sound explodes into something much more fierce, but the magic of Happy Days, is that the melody and jangle of that opening bit is carried right over into the heavy part, the drums pounding, the guitars buzzing, and that glistening second guitar melody, a gorgeously distorted melancholy sort-of-lead that winds its way through the whole track. And that's exactly what makes this stuff so good, that no matter how harsh and heavy the sound is, it's infused with a haunted melancholia, and the buzz and pound is underpinned by wistful melodies, or a minor key refrain that gives the buzz some emotional resonance, this is after all depressive, dark, hopeless music, and Happy Days perfectly capture those feelings and transform them into sound.
Almost every track here is a strange fusion of grim raspy blackness, and super melodic melancholia, minus the raspy vokills, mush of this could pass for some sort of gloom pop, and even with the vocals, the production is such, that they're way less harsh than on past records, to the point that the vocals even seem to be marginally more melodic at times. To be fair, there are a few moments of fierce blackened fury, mostly sans melody, like on "No Solution", a blown out barnburner for sure, the guitars brittle and in-the-red and woozily warped, the vocals a hellish bellow, with some cool doomy chugging, but for the most part grim and harsh and harrowing, but even tracks that seem similar like "Forever Asleep (Dead)" will out of nowhere unleash some killer melody, and the whole song is transformed. So great. Fans will not be disappointed, and folks who have been a bit black metal phobic, this could very well be the sort of record that lures you over to the dark side...
The return of one of our favorite depressive black metal bands, a band we loved before we even heard them, almost entirely because of their bad ass band name, Happy Days. Yep, Happy Days. Black Metal. It does make sense, trust us. So these guys call the sunny state of Florida home, but you'd never know it from the very unhappy racket they stir up, stumbling practice space drums, dreary minor key riffage, vocals both harsh and howled, and mopey and moaned, and some truly unlikely sound samples. But these guys are WAY more than the sum of their parts, they manage to evoke so much with so little, their sound seems simple, and is to a degree, but they manage to take simple riffs, and weave mesmerizing soundscapes of moody miserablism, the repetition lending a definite gravitas to the already intense and emotional melodies and riffs, the vocals are of course anguished and tortured, but there are so many bands who do this sort of thing, that it really is something special and ineffable that makes these guys stand out so dramatically.
Whereas they sampled Fight Club (!) on the first record (and granted, we normally hate when bands use WAY too obvious samples, but there's something about the ones these guys choose and how they come across removed from the film, more on that in a second), and it was definitely funny hearing Brad Pitt on a black metal record, but also, his words recontextualized, sounded more sinister, and similarly here, Happy Days chose to sample Breakfast Club, again a weird choice, the bit where Judd Nelson is acting out a typically abusive holiday with his father, and another where the asshole principal is lecturing the students in detention, well first, what was more depressing that high school really, so in that way, it was a pretty good choice, but those two soliloquies, taken out of the context of the film, sound SO much more hateful and harsh, like scary and brutal and seriously sinister, it's really strange, and it does suit the music, and then the segue into the music, it's really dramatic, but forget about the samples, it's all about the music, and the music here is really fucked up and dark and powerful. The opening track is the same riffy lament, over and over and over for 4+ minutes, laced with a drifting minor key melody over the top, so totally mesmerizing and hypnotic, maybe our favorite part of Happy Days, when they forego proper BM tropes and just unfurl some sort of lo-fi slowcore looped dirge. The second track is another simple, gorgeously melancholic riff, this time supported by a simple plodding drum beat, the sound of thunder and pouring rain, and some super harsh bellowed vocals, but the arrangement, and the sound, makes it anything but harsh, more sort of washed out, soft edged, and miserable sounding. A lot of the songs sound a little like slowed down Katatonia songs as played by the guy in Varghkoghargasmal, a sort of epic doomy dreaminess, but all stumbly and off kilter, more about raw emotion and passion and the dark spirit than the actual execution or recording quality.
The 14+ minute title track is maybe our favorite, yet another impossibly catchy main riff, a descending melody, so depressive and mournful, the vocals a strange spoken diatribe on misery and loneliness and death, the drums again and simple plod, the guitars occasionally offering up strange little squeaks or squiggles, but for the most part locked into a never ending loop, until about halfway through, when everything shifts, leaving just some simple jangly Hypothermia-like clean guitar, over equally simple and stripped down drums, lilting and sad, before the distorted guitar kicks back in along with some harsh growled demonic vox, that just seems to up the intensity.
The final track is another brooding slow lumber through atonal misery and angular minor key miserablism, but here the vocals are unhinged and unleashed, the guitars seem slightly out of tune, the vocals following suit, slipping from screech to Muppet-y gurgle to wild whoop to raspy yowl, but still managing to evoke some sort of mysterious sorrow.
These guys are definitely far out, and their sound is an acquired taste, even for the depressive black metal inclined, and on some level, it's hard not to think maybe they're taking the piss, but it hardly matters, once you let this weirdly warped chunk of sonic misery wash over you, you sort of have to give in, it's at once soothing and enthralling, buzzy and bizarre, fractured and fucked, and is quickly becoming one of our new favorites. We might like it even more than the first Happy Days, which is saying a lot.
Definite recommended listening for the black hearted and frozen souled, released on one of our new favorite labels, Self Mutilation Services in Mexico, hopefully more depressive weirdness from them to come (and when we run out it might take a little while to get more as they're being shipped up from Mexico, so please be patient)...
The return of possibly our favorite depressive black metal band going these days, the awesomely (and ironically, obviously) monickered Happy Days, who seem to keep getting better and better, and weirder and weirder with every release, and with Happiness Stops Here... we can add poppier and poppier.
Their MO remains the same, but then why fix what ain't broke? Clean minor key guitars, simple drumming, those two elements wound into a loping post rock meander, before the buzzy blackness erupts and takes over, as well as the WAY up in the mix, harsh howled vokills. It's that weird dichotomy that makes Happy Days so compelling, the music is so pretty, so darkly melodic and weirdly poppy, and those vocals, a harsh sinister croak, constantly pulling and pushing against each other. On this record more than either of the others, the melodic component is front and center, remove the vocals, and we'd be talking some seriously dreamy buzz pop, or tweak it just a bit and we'd be in Lifelover territory, as it is, it's more like a revved up Hypothermia, or a slowed down, much more raw and ragged Katatonia, when the second clean guitar comes in, and offers a super emotional melodic counterpoint, it's some seriously intense stuff.
"My Brutus" features those dueling guitars, over some cool busy drumming, and some almost melodic vocals (still harsh and raspy), the guitars chiming, the vibe almost new wavey, the main riff looped endlessly, the whole track totally hypnotic. "Letting Go" might be our favorite though. The drums and guitar locked into a woozy downtuned lumbering groove, the vocals echo-y and reverbed, deep and near spoken, until again, a second guitar swoops in and offers up an arpeggiated minor key melody that wraps itself around that original riff, before the harsh vocals explode in a frenzy of tortured misery, until the drums bust out double time, and the guitars lock into a dizzying rapid fire harmony, which is easily the high point of the record, both emotionally and musically. Super intense and so goddamn catchy.
The thing with Happy Days, was that in the beginning, their ineptness and half assedness was a huge part of their appeal, total on the verge of falling apart chaos, strange and obvious samples, lots of drum struggle, all of which -would- occasionally coalesce into some seriously dark depressive buzz, but would inevitably splinter into chaos once again. The band now are so much tighter, which generally would turn us off, we like our fucked up black metal as inept and as damaged as possible, but it suits these guys, they're still plenty loose and rough and raw, but locked into these darkly depressive pop grooves, these guys are in their element, and seemingly have no equal. Depressive black metal record of the year? Most definitely? Buzzing blackened gloom pop record of the year, maybe that too...
Once again, we were sold before we heard even a single note. A super suicidal, ultra depressive, doomy black metal bedroom band called� Happy Days. Yep, that's right. Happy Days. Funny because the music is anything but, but also because, for a band this grim, and this miserable, it seems strange to have a name that to some will no doubt evoke the Fonz and Potsie and Richie Cunningham.
But don't let the name throw you off, Happy Days are not a joke band, they are nothing if not serious. Serious about their utter abject musical misery, from the opening few seconds, a lugubrious loop of mournful reverbed piano, set amidst a deep shimmering sea of drones, and an emotional voice, intoning a tale of personal misery. Super dramatic and powerful, and so so so so miserable.
But that track only serves as an intro. "The Beginning�" starts with a simple guitar melody, which gives way to a spare melancholy strum, peppered with samples from Fight Club oddly enough, and although Brad Pitt is probably the last person you might expect to hear on a suicidal black metal record, removed from the context of the film, those spoken word passages are indeed bleak and perfectly suit the music. That voice intones: "Our Great Depression is our lives�" and then the guitar kicks in, recorded way too hot, the distortion crumbling, a furious fuzz, the drums also distorted, wound into a simple moody crawl, the vocals totally blown out and confusional, going from maniacal shriek, to caustic growl, to strange spoken word, in what seems to be both English and Norwegian, all over a gloriously loping minor key dirge.
The final three tracks, the bulk of the record, are all extended epics, ranging from 10 minutes to nearly 20. And all three offer up more gloriously dismal Burzumic buzz, the drums a doomy plod, the riffs, thick and crunchy, existing more as a nearly static white noise whirled blur, the sound and arrangement and production, woozy and seasick, the vocals over the top, sometimes so loud and hysterical they peg the meters and drown out the rest of the music, even the spoken word parts are super distorted and strangely blown out. The riffs, seems to speed up and slow down as well, almost like the tape speed is being subtly adjusted, which only adds to the haunting otherworldiness.
The sound is ultra raw, and definitely has that bedroom 4-track vibe, giving Happy Days a sound more personal and lo-fi than heavy, but the heaviness is still masterfully conveyed in the sound, the riffing, the super saturated production, the emotion. Miserable abject hateful, but weirdly melancholy and beautiful, a few subtle changes, and this could be a blissed out slow motion sadcore record, but as it is, it's anything but.
The final track is a cover of a song by Czech black metal band Trist, whose sound easily becomes Happy Days', the recording here even more damaged, the guitar so hot and in the red, that it seems to be crumbling to pieces, or the speakers seem to be overloading, making it sound almost electronic, a chopped and clipped distorted chunk of white hot buzz, laid over a framework of equally distorted drums, a lurching slow motion buzz drenched plod, the vocals at their most anguished and miserable. The sound so fractured, that over the course of the song's 10 minutes, it almost stops sounding like black metal, and more like some experimental blackened buzzscape.
Really nice packaging, extra thick cardstock booklet and tray card, spare images, all blacks and greys, it's a real cd too, NOT a cd-r, but still strangely limited to ONLY 300 COPIES!! So odds are once we run out these will be gone for good.
By now, most aQ metalheads know all about our undying love for oddly monickered Happy Days, and most likely feel the same. But for those who might be confused by a metal band called Happy Days, let's examine this, their latest, a split with Dutch outfit Eindig. The record is called The First Step Towards Suicide, there's a photo of an oven on the cover. The Happy Days tracks have names like "Clinging Onto A Chance Of Happiness" and A Bleak Future That Awaits Us" and "Too Sick To Speak", the booklet is full of blurred photos of people hunched over, seemingly in misery, so yeah, the name Happy Days is meant ironically, cuz these sounds are the soundtrack for the unhappiest days you can imagine.
Happy Days offer up a new batch of abject audial depression, beginning with a mournful jangly guitar accompanied by an appropriately dark and hopeless sample, before launching into some buzzing midtempo depressive black metal, melodic and melancholy, after a burst of furious buzz, the record settles into a loping melodic gloom and doom, gorgeously sorrowful guitar melodies draped over pounding drums, raspy vokills and churning riffage. More dark and atmospheric than blasting and buzzing, but there's still plenty of that lurking within these tracks. Some killer riffs, some awesome hooks, buried amidst all the miserable buzz. But every time the second guitar line comes in, with some totally heartbreaking melody, it's then that Happy Days reveals itself as more than just some grim black horde. This is the best sounding Happy Days record yet, the music exuding that same dark pathos, but perfectly suited to the duo's slightly more polished black melancholic buzz.
Dutch depressive metallers Eindig are a subtly different beast, their sound thicker and more full, a bit more poppy too, their opening track, strangely melodic and 'happy' sounding, a sunshiney melody strapped to some pounding beats and some howling vox, balanced we'd imagine by some seriously bleak lyrics (can't tell for sure, as they're not in English), but the song slips from super melodic jangle to more grim minor key miserablism. Which seems to be their M.O., their music a strange mix of melody and aggression, but with a sound that shifts dramatically, from that sunshiney opener, to a more anguished and dejected traditional depressive black metal, to a downright lovely bit of big drum / clean guitar post rocky drift, the vox WAY down in the mix, super spare and skeletal and really quite pretty, to the final 9 minute epic that is similarly melodic, no distorted guitars, just drums and clean jangle, this time though the vocals a ghastly and tortured presence, jarring over the comparatively lovely melodic drift underneath, and some super intense, yet still undistorted crescendos. Incredible stuff from both bands.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another gloriously noxious dose of grim, raw blackness form LA trio Harassor, the group's newest proper full length. Like their recent split lp with Glass Coffin, and another recent split with Author & Punisher, this recent barrage of new material is some of the best stuff we've heard from these guys. And even removed from their dramatic live shows, the music here is pretty compelling, fusing the sort of raw Venomish black metal churn with something more tranced out and droney, not to mention a fair bit of melody in the mix, that makes some of this stuff surprisingly catchy. But it's all relative, and the catchiness here is subtle when compared to the groups grim black din, frenzied, furious riffing, and lose limbed rapid fire drumming, no bass, but really, you generally can't here the bass in black metal anyway, and it's not really missed here. And the vocals are a killer mix of guttural demonic grunts and hysterical shrieks, all wound up into furious, hellish heaviness, the sort of blurred blackness that's almost more trancelike than metallic, that is when not devolving into more punk metal pound, which the band do often and well, but even then, they'll lock into a looped sounding riff/blast that often into a totally mesmerizing blackblastdrone, before eventually devolving right back into that blackened punkiness. And like that split with Glass Coffin, some tracks are crazy catchy, sounding almost post rocky / shoegazey (check out "Winter's Triumph", which sounds like some sort of blackened post punk), hinting at the kind of band these guys could so easily be, but that element only adds to the groups twisted blackness, which in turn is only further enhanced by their blood soaked ritualistic live performances, which you should check out if you ever get the chance...
Includes a download code too.
Latest from these LA black metal mashers, not a proper new record, but instead a collection of tracks culled from various live practice space recording sessions with Bobb Bruno, he of Best Coast, Polar Goldie Cats, Submissions, etc. Murky and muddy and appropriately lo-fi, recorded on a 4 track, but still sounding pretty fierce and heavy as fuck, these jams find Harassor in fine form, their blackened punkish pound flitting easily from furious blackened thrash to churning chugging crush, laced with glass gargling shrieks and caveman drum pound. The sound is pretty epic and huge considering the set up here is just one guitar, drums and vox, the band make the most of it, spewing thick black gouts of black buzz, and roiling doomic crush, blasting beats driving these jams, and like the best black metal, the sound often blurring into tranced out black mesmer.
The lp version is LIMITED TO 300 COPIES and comes housed in a super swank hand silkscreened cover. Inside is a fold out poster, one side featuring the band, with Bruno, and a very black metal cat; the other side offers up tons of liner notes, the coolest part being extensive track by track notes, with each member weighing in on each track, its writing, recording, genesis, whatever, which makes for pretty fun reading. Plus all the lp sleeves are decorated with real human Harassor blood! The tape version IS LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! And comes sans blood, and liner notes/poster.
Latest from these LA black metal mashers, not a proper new record, but instead a collection of tracks culled from various live practice space recording sessions with Bobb Bruno, he of Best Coast, Polar Goldie Cats, Submissions, etc. Murky and muddy and appropriately lo-fi, recorded on a 4 track, but still sounding pretty fierce and heavy as fuck, these jams find Harassor in fine form, their blackened punkish pound flitting easily from furious blackened thrash to churning chugging crush, laced with glass gargling shrieks and caveman drum pound. The sound is pretty epic and huge considering the set up here is just one guitar, drums and vox, the band make the most of it, spewing thick black gouts of black buzz, and roiling doomic crush, blasting beats driving these jams, and like the best black metal, the sound often blurring into tranced out black mesmer.
The lp version is LIMITED TO 300 COPIES and comes housed in a super swank hand silkscreened cover. Inside is a fold out poster, one side featuring the band, with Bruno, and a very black metal cat; the other side offers up tons of liner notes, the coolest part being extensive track by track notes, with each member weighing in on each track, its writing, recording, genesis, whatever, which makes for pretty fun reading. Plus all the lp sleeves are decorated with real human Harassor blood! The tape version IS LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! And comes sans blood, and liner notes/poster.
Not a new record, but a vinyl reissue of the long out of print cassette demo debut from LA black metal trio Harassor, and actually, the first proper full length we've heard from these guys, having only ever reviewed their split 7" with SF horde Moon Dark. But for those of you who remember Harassor's side of that split, this full length is more of the same, if anything more twisted and fucked up and weirdly raw. Plenty of d-beat style raw black metal pound, the guitars filthy and crusty, the vocals an effects drenched bellow one minute, an alien garble the next, the drums a wild chaotic pummel all but buried in the noise drenched mix, the sound primitive and blown out, lo-fi, but still caustic and noisy and heavy, the songs tending toward the punkish, but slipping easily into furious buzzing blast or lumbering doomic lurch.
Two of the tracks here are modern re-recordings of tracks from the original demo, and thus, sound way more polished, but polish in black metal is really relative, so while the guitars are thicker, the drums more powerful, the vocals are still a demonic croak, and overall, the re-recorded sounds are just as buzzy and frenzied and crusty as the originals.
There's also a new song, "Killed By Inanity", which unfurls thick crumbling superdistorted riffage, pounding midtempo drum pummel, the vocals a caustic glass gargling growl, careening from tangled gnarled blast, punky gallop, to full on blown out almost noise rock, which definitely hints at the groups non-black metal roots, and perhaps points to the band's new material continuing to push the boundaries of the raw, primitive blackness they so clearly are masters of. Definitely recommended for fans of Bone Awl, Maleveillance, Akitsa, Ildjarn, and similarly grim practitioners of the primitive black arts...
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, pressed on 140 gram vinyl, comes with a sticker.
Okay, we love weirdo one man black metal band Jabladav. And have dug pretty much everything he's done, from buzzing black metal Weakling worship, to blissed out dronescapes, to grim, icy ambience. But for a while now James Harlow, aka Jabladav, had been threatening to release all kinds of other sonic weirdness, like a straight up prog record, which we're still waiting on, and an electronic record, and well, this is that electronic record. Your first clue shoulda been the title, mashing up the names of a classic Squarepusher record and a classic Aphex Twin record, and sonically, it's easy to see that's pretty much exactly what Harlow was going for. Mixing skittery beats, with a plethora of sampled voices, the occasional 'Amen' break, it's plenty glitchy, but also sorta jazzy (hence the Squarepusher nod we presume). Sonically all over the map, the record flits from goofy grooviness, to dense, programmed splutter, "Fuck You Muslimgauze" is one of our favorites, with its looped and loping industrial stutter step beat, and swirling swaths of Middle Eastern string buzz, in fact, a handful of the song titles are actually downright literal. "Ambient 12038" is indeed a hushed, wispy, ambient sprawl, while "Funky Sushi", is pretty much straight up funk, real drumming, not programmed, beneath some Funkadelic like super distorted shred. But Harlow is a weirdo, and that's reflected here big time. It's pretty schizophrenic, but all the different facets of Harlow's constantly shifting sound, are pretty bad ass. "Closed Letter Analog 7019" is a creepy, minimal drift, laced with chiming, minor key melodies, and ominous swells of chordal thrum, and "Schultz" might as well be called "Schulze", cuz it's total bloopy Tangerine Dream worship. The whole record is a trip, dizzying in its scope, and while that might be annoying in some cases, here it really just makes the record a kind of warped musical adventure, where you never know what's gonna happen next, and no matter what does, you're totally psyched. Or confused. Usually both!
Like all Jabladav related releases, this is extremely limited (just FIFTY COPIES), and each one is not only hand numbered, but also signed by the man himself!
This is volume two in God Is Myth's 3" cd-r series paying homage to the late great H.P Lovecraft. The first came courtesy of UK experimental black metal outfit Caina, this, the second comes via Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist. Based, according to the label website, on awakening/conjuring of the "Outer Gods": Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu (who is actually one of the Great Old Ones, according to our resident Lovecraft Mythos expert Allan). So what does that sound like? Well for Harvist, that sounds like relentlessly pounding black buzz, thick washes of overblown guitars, chugging downtuned riffs, killer blast beats and some seriously anguished howls. Also plenty of grunts and "uuuh"s. Wrest from Leviathan might call this "goat metal", but it's fast and black and furious, heavy and epic.
The first two tracks a straight ahead grim frosty old skool black metal. Raw and brutal. The third track adds keyboards and tolling bells, and is more melodic and moody, but it's track 4 that pushes this over the edge, an 'actual' Chaos Magic Ritual dedicated to the awakening of the essence of Cthulhu!! Lots of ambient sound, what could be surf (but also sounds like cars driving by), whispering wind, massive rumbling drones and of course, creepy processed vocals, reciting the unholy incantation to summon the mighty Cthulhu! Pretty weird. But the perfect tribute to the genius and legacy of Lovecraft.
Awesome cover painting of Cthulhu, and each disc includes an insert with information on Lovecraft as well as a killer creepy portrait.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We only got 15 and it's already out of print from the label so once these are gone we will not be able to get more.
One of the joys of metal records, black metal records in particular, is unravelling the mystery of the logo, because even the most logo savvy among us has stumbled across a label that was just too gnarled to decode. So we were pretty excited by this record, part of the mystery lay in the fact that it was a black logo, on a nearly black background, but the logo itself was also super complex, each letter, a branch spouting hundreds of tiny tendrils, the letterforms mere bulky blurs, only three letters though, so we gave it a try, and seemed to suss it out, but figured it couldn't be right. That's an H, and the next letter looks like an A, and the third and final letter is... a... T? So that spells HAT? This thrashing blackened grim horde spewing this awesome frosty Nordic buzz is called Hat? Then we were imagining a huge corpsepainted creature growling into a microphone "Weeeeeee are calllllled.... HAT". Pretty funny. We're fairly sure Hat must be Norwegian for hate or something similar, and the band probably never thought about the meaning in English, but we can't help but be ticked by a buzzing blast like this being perpetrated by a band called Hat.
Chapeau themed monicker aside, this band is seriously fierce and grim, slipping from total classic old school style Nordic blasting blackness, a la Satyricon, Immortal, Emperor, to more midtempo blackened grooves like Khold. Some of the songs are laced with recordings of clanking chains, trudging footsteps (on the way to the gallows it sounds like), explosions and gunfire, but the music is plenty violent and furious all on its own. The guitar sound is incredible, thick and ultra buzzy, the vocals are sick and harsh and hellish. the drumming simple but powerful, the melodies epic, the song structures not super complex, instead super buzzy and hypnotic. Seriously excellent classic Norwegian blackness, by the grim kvlt horde known simply as... HAT.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Not sure how it happened, but somehow we've never reviewed any Hate Forest records. Which is surprising since all of the AQ metalheads LOVE Hate Forest. How could we not? They hail from a pretty amazing Ukrainian metal scene, and feature members from a bunch of other bands we dig: Drudkh, Dark Ages, Astrofaes, Nokturnal Mortum. Got your attention now do we?! The sad thing is as of recently Hate Forest have decided to call it a day. Some of the HF folks have a new band called Blood Of Kingu which we'll of course track down as soon as it's out, but just because the band is gone, are any of their records any less amazing.
We'll try to list all of them eventually, but we'll start with Nietzscheism, which is kind of a greatest hits, a collection of 7"s, compiling material from Resistance (2004), Darkness (2000), Blood And Fire (2001) and Ritual (2001).
The disc starts off unexpectedly with a Carl Orff piece that had Kerry feeling like she just had her heart torn out in some Indiana Jones movie, which we imagine was probably the intended effect. An epic, majestic, super dramatic intro to a song cycle that is all of those things, albeit much much blacker!
Fans of Drudkh and Nokturnal Mortum will have some idea of what to expect from these Ukrainian black metal warriors, a relentless and furious blackened attack, a buzzing blackness rife with incredible riffs, simple blasting beats, deep growled demonic vocals, a weird blend of black shriek and death gurgle, all violently tangled up into a pummeling, crushing black metal majesty. There are brief stretches of midtempo Burzumic buzz, loping sea sick rhythms and mournful melodies, amidst the grim black brutality, and there's even a track that hints at the weirdness Nokturnal Mortum would later turn into entire records, simple martial percussion, sounds of the forest, crickets, owls, crackling fire, whispering wind, creepy affected spoken vocals, but those moments are merely brief respites, glimmers of false hope, single rays of light amidst a sky of roiling stormclouds, fleeting glimpses of dronelike buzz between huge swaths of hateful Satanic black brutality. So fucking awesome!!!
We realized a list or two back, that we had somehow managed to make it to list 200-and-something without ever listing any records by Ukrainian black metal horde Hate Forest. Which obviously needed to be rectified since pretty much all the metal inclined folks we know LOVE Hate Forest. So we listed Nietzscheism, a sort of greatest hits, with the intention of digging in to their catalog, and giving all the AQ list metalheads a chance to pick up some of these amazing discs.
So here we have Purity, recorded back in 2002, another perfectly frosty, relentlessly buzzing slab of intense and furious black metal. Just like all of their other records, the sound of Hate Forest here is not fancy or fucked or convoluted or complex, just simple, ultra aggressive, ultra fast, grim and chilly, the perfect sonic representation of the snow cloaked Ukrainian forest. A blast of blurry black metal that over the course of the album spreads out into a thick black drone, a bleak mesmerizing whir, thick with buried melodies and growled demonic howls. A thick squirming blackness that swallows you whole and leaves you shivering and alone, praying for death, as the oppressive black hole heaviness crushes you into the frozen ground.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We realized a list or two back, that we had somehow managed to make it to list 200-and-something without ever listing any records by Ukrainian black metal horde Hate Forest. Which obviously needed to be rectified since pretty much all the metal inclined folks we know LOVE Hate Forest. So we listed Nietzscheism, a sort of greatest hits, with the intention of digging in to their catalog, and giving all the AQ list metalheads a chance to pick up some of these amazing discs.
So here we have Sorrow, Hate Forest's most recent and final full length, and besides being a seriously dense and buzz drenched slab of blackness, it has one of the most amazing covers ever, a barren mountainside covered in leafless dead trees, the sort of photo you can stare at and get lost in, which is exactly the sort of black web these guys weave.
Sharing members with Drudkh, Dark Ages, Astrofaes, Nokturnal Mortum and probably every black metal band in the Ukraine, the now defunct Hate Forest offered up a relentless buzzsaw blast of white hot lightning fast black metal, blast beats all over the place, a near static wall of fuzz, riffs so serpentine and furiously fast, they almost become a solid black buzz. Melodies surface here and there but only briefly, quickly swallowed up by the churning downtuned whirl of whirring furious brutality.
Nothing subtle, or even that weird, no intricate tempos or convoluted song structures, this is pure cult grim blackness, a million miles an hour, a buzzing black bullet aimed straight for the depths of hell. So fast and relentless, that it becomes so hypnotic and dronelike that you almost can't help but drift into a glorious black dreamstate. Awesome.
Includes a big booklet with more breathtaking photos of snow covered mountains, rushing rivers, forests and fjords.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
What a difference a name makes, oh ok, and an extra member. The UK's Abandon, formerly a tortured suicidal black metal one man outfit, has changed their name to Hateful Abandon, added a fella called Swine to the lineup, and the result is really strange and unexpected.
Abandon, before the name change, trafficked in a super harsh and hateful black metal along the lines of Xasthur or Leviathan, buzzing riffs, deep depressive blackness, laced with hysterical shrieking vocals. But on Famine, gone is ALL of the buzz, and much of the vocal hysteria, in its place, something equally depressive, but sonically completely removed from the black metal of its former incarnation. The sound here is all clean guitars and simple loping drums, deep moody basslines, more gloom and goth than blast and buzz. Joy Division is the obvious reference. The occasional blackened shriek being the only reminder that this band was once grim and harsh. But hell, c'mon, the sound doesn't need to be grim and harsh for the vibe to be. and the vibe here is definitely grim and bleak, and sorrowful and depressive. Much like the recently reviewed Frail cassette, that matched up black metal vox with Cure-ish eighties new wave, Hateful Abandon subtly infuse a bit of blackness into what would otherwise be just a slab of gloomy miserablist gothic slowcore. Which would be fine with us of course, but the mix is pretty bizarre, and the result is pretty excellent. Guitars chime and ring out, melodies unfurl lugubriously, the bass is serpentine and soporific, the drums more keeping time than driving the songs, the vocals, lazily drawled, from soft sad boy croon, to deep gothy bellow, to demonic shriek, often in the same song, but the shrieking is in fact kept to a minimum, relying much more on the gloomier less harsh vocals, which definitely makes this something dark and brooding and moody and melancholic, not even remotely heavy, which means this is only for truly adventurous and open minded metalheads, or for the rest of you, who like it dark and creepy and haunting and hypnotic, and might not mind the occasional hellish howl with your doomy dreary dirges...
Before Hatewave became a grinding mathy metal juggernaut (with a killer record on tUMULt), they were, well, THIS. Something much more fucked up and damaged. Retarded and demented. Still sort of metal, but way more lo-fi and noisy, splattery confusional and bizarre.
Before Weasel Walter was in the band, they were fronted by the mysterious and brilliantly demented Nondor Nevai. As the liner notes to this archival release so eloquently state: "Fuck metal." And indeed, most metalheads, even ones who dug the twisted blackmathgrind of the tUMULt recording, will find this stuff too tweaked and twisted.
The guitars are muddy smears, not so much riffing as spewing gouts of buzz and fuzz, gnarled melodies and sheets of lo-fi crumbling distortion, the drums, if they are real drums, are an avalanche of thuds, of splattery skittery chaos, the vocals howled and moaned and shrieked, this is some seriously fucked up stuff.
Probably the closest comparison would be Faxed Head. In fact, twice when we were listening to this, people came up and asked us if it was Faxed Head. But even compared to Faxed Head this stuff is grimier, more mental, a sick onslaught of furious relentless pound and grind and grunt and stumble and what-the-fuck.
Definitely might be too much for all but the strangest and most adventurous metalheads, but noiseniks and grind freaks and anyone into utter aural insanity should just go ahead and dig in.
Also be warned: super gnarly, somewhat problematic cover art, inside and out, nudity, blood, violation, and some awesomely shitty layout!
Recommended, but only for the sick, chosen few.
The latest in killing technology from our very own Andee's tUMULt label! This is the first (and last) release from Chicago's metal mercenaries Hatewave. Completely crushing math/speed/avant/noise/metal/grind.
Hatewave's musical bloodbath is equal parts death metal, free jazz, grindcore, no-wave and pure noise. Furiously brutal, two guitar and drums (no bass!) attack, whirling riffs, bursts of white noise, calculus-style time changes, frantic blast beats, and a barely-under-the-surface free-jazz obsession all coalesce into some of the most insane, lightning speed, technical black metal/grind bombast ever. Featuring ex-Chicago / current SF scene fixture and metal/jazz obsessive, drummer Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers, Lake of Dracula, To Live and Shave in L.A.). Originally this was a limited LP-only release -- this cd version adds 3 bonus tracks from their 1997 demo! The LP (and at the time, soon to be released cd) was banned by some squeamish distributors for its somewhat gory cover art and controversial lyrics, all of which are still present in their throat hacked, head smashed, blood soaked glory!
Another killer release from Total Holocaust, this one from two bands we'd never heard of before, Haud Mundus from Ireland, and Wormlust from Iceland, both bands, sharing members, so while the bands definitely sound different, there's some sonic overlap for sure. Two loooong songs from each, up first is Haud Mundus, who begin with a haunting cinematic doomic plod, all choral voices, soaring synths, strange mutterings, tangled guitars, before exploding into some serious woozy, depressive mid tempo raw blackness, ultra distorted, weirdly melodic, tangled and mathy arrangements, plenty of stops and starts, hushed ambient stretches, but when the band are rocking, it's some serious tripped out gnarled post black metal radness, the drums way blown out, the vocals buried in the mix, the guitars super epic and emotional, lurching and sea sick, almost like some noise rock / black metal hybrid, dizzyingly flitting from full on black blast to lurching downtuned lumber to weird shimmery drift. The second HM track is just as cool, beginning with a sort of Viking vibe, still weirdly distorted and in the red, eventually lurching into a more traditional sounding black metal blast, but even then, the riffs are twisted and angular, keyboards soaring here and there, a strange industrial breakdown, before finishing off with some killer abstract doomgaze pound. Seriously awesome. Only recording by these guys, and we're already dying for more!
Wormlust finds the vocalist of Haud Mundus teaming up with an Icelandic partner for some more twisted blackness, similarly blown out and off kilter, but the sound of Wormlust is more machinelike, bordering on industrial, downtuned and chuggy, with bellowed vokills, and loud drums, mostly midtempo, but with some awesomely tripped out psychedelic interludes, at times sounding a bit like a slower, more freaky, more raw Marduk, the first track finishing off with a swirling chaotic spaced out coda that just rules.
The second track is tripped out black psych workout, plenty of clean guitar, woozy riffage, echo drenched howls, lurching midtempo rhythms, soaring synths, droned out buzz, some super fuzz bass chug breakdowns, some glistening clean guitar drift, and a final 30 second blowout of pounding black crush. Oblivio Appositus is also Wormlust's only proper release, just two songs, but like with Haud Mundus, we're ready from these guys as well.
Packaged in a cool 6 panel embossed digipak.
Look out! Lurching, lumbering, mesmerically repetitive & rambling, doomed-out blackened metal comin' at ya here, from Stockholm, Sweden, brought to us by a label that sure knows their hard-to-pigeonhole, psychedelic "occult rock" heaviness (The Ajna Offensive, who most recently brought us both the latest Aluk Todolo and Sabbath Assembly efforts). Head Of The Demon's debut is indeed demonic "head" music, the sort of thing meant for late night listening, with the lights low, when you're in a particularly Luciferian and/or Lovecraftian mood, doing some grim partying all by yourself, working your way through a few cans of beer, cranking tunes that aren't meant for the light of day nor the ears of the innocent.
Under such circumstances, it's easy to embrace the plodding desolate atmospherics of the 9+ minute "They Lie In Wait - Riding The Waste", for instance, and groove to the chantings of "By Titan Hand"...
Head Of The Demon's weird vibe is in part due to the guttural, slightly goofy vokills (that grew on us), channelling Tom G. Warrior deathgruntage at times, Pete Steele gothic crypt-speak at others, all echoed and effected. Even more crucial is the chiming and buzzy but still rather clean guitar, that's wielded by an ex-member of doomlords Saturnalia Temple. The guitarist plays some almost Eastern-inflected riffs, kinda coming across like dismal, doomic snake charmer music, super raw and hypnotic - with eerie organ tones and drones also adding to the effect.
A sickened Sabbath is an obvious reference, also we should cite The Wizar'd, Hellhammer, Negative Plane to explain other aspects of Head Of The Demon's sound. And the cyclic chug of "Phantasmagoria" could be a black metal incarnation of Pharoah Overlord, perhaps! Definitely not a normal "metal" album, but one that for sure fits in with the avant/extreme Ajna aesthetic of darkness and doom.
We recently discovered Pest Productions, a record label in China specializing in mysterious outsider black metal of all stripes, from black depressive black buzz, to blown out shimmery shoegaze black metal drift. Heartless are also from China, and whip up some seriously gorgeous and utterly despondent blackness, just check out the opening track here, after some minimal skeletal clean guitar strum, the song explodes in a thick washed out buzz drenched blur of mournful doom drenched black buzz trudgery, the melodies sad and bittersweet, the drums mechanical and spare, the vibe haunting and grim, dreamy and depressive, hypnotic and hellishly dreamy, the sort of sound we could listen to forever, a little bit Lifelover, with simple soaring melodies over the top, deliriously dreary. But that's just the opener.
The second track explodes in a frenzy of blast beats and insectoid buzzing, the drums buried in the mix, minus one REALLY LOUD cymbal, and that's just the first clue, that stuff is about to get really WEIRD. The second clue? The insanely hysterical falseto shrieked vocals, that are WAY up in the mix, reminding us right off the bat of the Judson Fountain radio plays, and his crazy old woman voice. It's that twisted and over the top. So much so, that we think all but the most obsessive weirdo black metallers will most likely be quite put off, cuz it is totally ridiculous, we have to admit, the first time we heard it, we were totally thrown for a loop, we definitely cracked up. But then something happened, and the more we listened to it, the more we dug it, and the more its sheer craziness made some sort of WTF sense.
The record sprawls in all sorts of different sonic directions, from churning midtempo buzz drenched chug to reverby doom pop, to warped trudging blackened slowcore, to skeletal black folk drift, to full on furious black buzz, the production changing just as much as the sound, the kick drums sometimes lost in the murk, other times a thick throbbing pulse, the guitars muted and murky one minute, sharp and jagged the next, but all that sound is just a backdrop for the insane maniacal vocals, equal parts Mr. Doctor from Devil Doll, the inhuman black shrieks of Silencer, and of course the aforementioned Judson Fountain old woman voice, it's pretty demented, totally fucking wacked, but so unique, and so weirdly intense, and the music is so dark and heavy and melodic, it all melds into something totally twisted, and for those with a taste for the TRULY bizarre, something absolutely essential.
The Last Heaven Shall Burn record was one of my favorites of last year. A metalcore band that wasn't just a bunch of punk kids trying to play metal, they kicked out the metal jams better than most 'actual' metal bands. And we wouldn't have known about them
Totally essential.
British black metal, excellent if unoriginal: they sound almost exactly like the mighty Cradle of Filth! Fans of the Filthies and their brand of gothic, epic, fast, screeching black metal will feel right at home.
Another mysterious black metal horde, this time from the Netherlands, brought to our attention by the seemingly infallible Total Holocaust, who in the past have brought us discs by Heresi, Sortsind, Malcuidant, Hell Militia, Make A Change... Kill Yourself, Blodulv, The One and of course Nortt and Xasthur. That is one seriously brilliant black elite for sure. Hekel have no problem measuring up though. They too traffic in that Burzumic buzz punctuated by EXTREMELY tortured vocals, a la Weakling, Sortsind, Bethlehem, Silencer and the like. And like those bands, we're talking -seriously- tortured. Total Holocaust's website describes the singing here as "painfully performed vocals" and that pretty much nails it. Utterly anguished, damned and tormented, howling demonic screeches, like the sound of flesh being flayed, or of being burned alive. That tortured. All sprawled bruised and bloodied over a haunting sound world of minor key buzz. Mostly midtempo, everything wreathed in suffocating doom, lots of that mournful arpeggiated guitar, huge layers of fuzz and buzz, a loping, lurching depressive blackness. And those vocals. So intense and emotional. If there was some sort of designation for 'emo' black metal, this might qualify. You hear old stories about Rites of Spring rocking out, and getting so into it, that the band members actually broke down and cried. You can almost imagine Hekel doing the same. Blasting and buzzing in utter darkness, tears streaming down their faces, corpsepaint smeared into streaks of black and grey, guitars and drums drenched in blood.
The disc starts off strangely, with simple martial drumming, haunting forest sounds, wolves, owls, wind, while a raspy voiced demonic invocation is spewed out over the top. From then on, it's a super expansive seasick swirl swinging from buzzing blasts of black blur to plodding mournful doom drenched buzz.
A harsh and harrowing, super emotional, ultra depressive exploration of a truly tortured black metal soul.
Originally released on kvlt Northwestern black/metal/doom/drone label Woodsmoke as a super limited (100 copies) cassette, this is the first release from Hell, a one man black drone sludge outfit from Salem, Oregon, now remastered, and reissued as an ultra deluxe lp by Pesanta Urfolk, and (un)holy shit, is this a monster! Massive, crushing, crumbling heaviness, heaving low end miserablism, plodding death march pound that gives way to blown out in-the-red blackened guitardrone buzz, and thence to stonery sludge groove. Hell slips from doomic and lumbering, to super intense and mesmerizing, to groovy and rocking, all in the same song. Think Khanate, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Corrupted, Moss, Bunkur, but also Eyehategod, and the legion of EHG worshipping groovesludge merchants.
Just take album opener "Brutus", which begins as a hateful sonic trudge, the drums a caveman slo-mo pound, the vocals inhuman and alien, the guitars thick and tarpit black, the sound stumbling and hellish, only to have the vocals and drums drop out leaving a dense blast of buzzing, layered guitars, a weird black harmony of heaviness, droned out and mesmerizing, like a SUNNO))) record spinning at 78rpm, wreathed in siren like feedback, and all manner of echo, until the guitars coalese into a proper groove, Sabbathy almost, and then the song explodes into some serious stoner sludge crush, the main riff MASSIVE, with a cool ascending lick at the end that seems almost at odds with Hell's extreme grimnity, the vocals heavily effected and all twisted up, eventually slipping right back into the plod and lumber of the track's opener, until it grinds to a halt, in a weird cloud of ambient room noise, cartoon music, and glitched out channel surfing. Fucking bizarre and AWESOME.
"Infernus" is much more minimal, a barely propulsive beast, the guitars stretched out into thick streaks of black blur and keening high end skree, the vocals a distant anguished wail, the riffs gnarled and atonal, seeming to come apart before your ears, when the band to lock in, it's an impossibly slow sludge, the sound thick, the chugging weirdly percussive, as if the bass was tuned so low the strings were slapping loose against the bass. "Tyranno" is similarly sludgey, but way more noisy and murky, a blurred swirl of black filth, and spaced out glacial riffage, with some cool lurching stop start dynamics, and another near groove, that dissipates before it really gets rolling.
"Deflagatio" ups the tempo a bit, but just a bit, somewhere between abject crawl, and slo-mo groove, the guitars tuned so low, the vocals a demonic glass gargling shriek, but some surprising melody tucked amidst all the buzz and crumble. "Lethe" begins with a cloud of strangled guitar buzz, which gives way to a heaving bit of monstrous plod, the vocals way up in the mix and heavily echoed, giving them a weird dubbed out feel, the sound gradually shifting from lumber to lope to full on blown out drift, hovering in a field of black psych noise, before slipping right back into it, only to almost immediately be sucked into a cloud of swirling effects, while the guitars continue to buzz and drone.
Finally, the record finishes off with the 15+ minute "Maeror", a gorgeous mostly ambient sprawl, a symphony of whirling minor key shimmer, and strange clouds of tape hiss, the notes drawn way out, haunting and ominous, the speed warbling and constantly shifting, giving the whole thing a warped warbly vibe, breifly, some guitars explode from out of the murk, unleashing gouts of super distorted buzz, and shards of jagged feedback wreathed crunch, not to mention strange keening melancholy melodies, and some tripped out FX, before drifting off, and leaving a long warped expanse of minimal creeping haze to finally lay the record to rest. So killer, and obviously essential for fans of all things slow and low, black and buzzy, glacial and grim.
LIMITED TO 322 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Pressed on nice thick black/blood red vinyl, and housed in heavy, super striking blood red/black woodcut sleeves, includes a massive poster (and we mean HUGE) of the woodcut cover art, and a printed cardstock insert. Also includes a download coupon.
Record number two from this black/doom/sludge outfit from Salem, Oregon, the second in a proposed trilogy, this one taking the already grim and abject sound of the first installment even further, dragging them even deeper into the infernal pits, the sound hellish and hateful and harrowing, the opening track beginning life as a bleak slab of churning slow motion dirgery, a filthy, crusty tarpit creep, the sound raw and blown out, the guitars tuned WAY down, the vocals a demonic hellish croak, the crushing black doom eventually swallowed up by a cloud of psychedelic guitar swirl, a sort of black metal buzz, but blurred into stasis, before the whole thing collapses into a black hole of crumbling low end and Merzbowic black noise, before briefly returning to the initial doomic plod, before spacing out completely into a hazy stretch of almost Earth like twang, although here it's wreathed in heaving black clouds of buzz, the sound constantly shifting over the course of the rest of the song, from shimmery drift, to wild tangled guitar freakout, to stumbling churn, to blurred drone. And that's just the first track. Although it does lay the groundwork for the rest of the record, the guitars seeming to grow even more blown out, the vocals more and more anguished, the downtuned riffs, even more downtuned, as if the whole thing was melting right there on your turntable. "Metnal" mixes in some actual black metal blasts, as well as some swirling ethereal ambience, "Trucid" too, unfurls some black buzz, strangely twisted and tangled, and in-the-red, so it almost sounds like the tape is malfunctioning, all woozy and warped, before slipping into the prettiest stretch on the album, a lilting clean guitar drift, that leads directly into "Umbilicus", which at nearly 8 minutes is the shortest of the bunch, but which also manages to be the heaviest, the sound so dense and blown out, it pushes the black buzz into the realms of Tim Hecker, the crumbling buzz becoming a wall of roiling texture, the track lurching into a weird convoluted noise rock groove, stonery and sludgey, eventually shedding the sludge, leaving just some muted drumming, and a brittle layer of guitar buzz, that drifts into the weirdly melodic doom-sludge coda. Epic and crushing, brutal and beautiful, we can hardly wait for part three...
LIMITED TO 646 COPIES, pressed on black/oxblood vinyl (hold it up to the light, so cool!), three sided, the fourth featuring a super detailed etching, housed in a thick black and red jacket adorned with super striking woodcuts, inside a 12" x 24" woodcut poster/insert, as well as a digital download coupon.
Just got these today, and word is we might not be able to get more. So figured we'd write a super short review and get it up on this week's list, so those of you already hip to Hell, could get your grubby mitts on a copy before they're gone. If we do manage to get more, we'll post a proper (longer) review, but for now, here's record number three from this black/doom/sludge outfit from Salem, Oregon, and like the first two, it's another fantastically, grim, hellish, hateful collection of harrowing blackened creep, blurred doom-ed buzz, and churning blacknoize crush. And as with all Pesanta Urfolk releases, deluxe packaging, including a gorgeous black and red woodcut jacket, printed on SUPER thick stock, the vinyl HEAVY and BLACK, and comes with a huge foldout poster!
Holy shit. Or maybe we should say, Unholy shit! This record scare us to death. Not just sonically, but visually as well. Hell Militia is some sort of black metal super group, can't remember the constituent parts, but the sum of those parts has somehow conjured up the fabulously foul Canonisation Of The Foul Spirit, a sick, hateful, evil and abominable blackened alchemy, equal parts grim buzz, convulsive thrash, furious blast and some of the sickest, brimstone gargling, angel crushing, fire breathing vocals EVER. A relentless musical pummeling, like laying in a shallow pool of black pitch atop a rocky crag in the middle of an endless expanse of dark water, cowering and shivering and praying for death as fallen angels beat you to within an inch of your life with spiked clubs, the whole while horned heads held aloft, burnt wings hanging useless behind them, wailing and squealing like some demonic choir, as all around you squalls of buzzing guitars and fuzzed out bass and shards of blasting beats rain down, burning jagged chunks of flesh searing black metal. So amazing and frighteningly furiously heavy, and then those inhuman vocals just push it totally and completely into the nightmarish black. The artwork is stunningly creepy as well, perfectly capturing the hateful, Christ crushing fury within, gorgeous black and white photos of clergymen, nuns, bishops, all blended with skulls, and corpses, wolves and goats, and all manner of unidentifiable beats and creatures. Like an even more damaged Joel Peter Witkin. So totally freaky but quite striking and creepily alluring at the same time. All printed on gorgeous thick paper stock, the whole thing housed in a similarly garish and striking slipcover.
Jacob's Ladder, the third full length from French black metal horde Hell Militia, continues pretty much right from where 2010's Last Station On The Road To Death left off, another dizzying concoction of creeped out ambience, dense gnarled black buzz, and lumbering doominess, a sound not that far removed from their countrymen Deathspell Omega, but Hell Militia seem more rooted in classic metal, their sound equal parts classic Scandinavian blackness, modern French BM, and some bastardized strain of blackened death metal. The tracks this time around are even more dynamic, lots of stop starts, plenty of long ambient stretches, laced with creepy samples, the songs slipping easily from blurry buzz, to doomic death march creep, even mixing in some Khold style midtempo groove. And like with past HM records, there's lots going on beyond the usual BM tropes. Cool bits of droned out almost psychedelia, thick swirls of industrial churn, murky folk flecked drift, even a haunting bit of crackly twenties style radio broadcast found sound tucked away at the end of the epic 9+ minute midtempo closer. Killer stuff as always. Most definitely for fans of DSO, Funeral Mist, Katharsis, Marduk, Antaeus...
The long awaited second album (it's been FIVE years since their debut) from this French black metal super group, featuring members of Mutiilation, Vorkreist, Antaeus, Merrimack, Malicious Secrets, Vagezaryavtre Secrets Of The Moon, we could go on, but odds are most metalheads were already dying for this, and if not, just that list of bands should have most folks reaching for the buy button. Much like the first record, Last Station On The Road To Death, is dark and grimy, grim and filthy, harrowing and heavy, a seriously scary collection of hellish black art, beginning with a short stretch of swirling black ambience, accompanied by a sample about drug addiction and the fate of addicts (which is most likely a not so subtle fuck you to the Black Legions, since Hell Militia mainman Meyhnach was purportedly kicked out for becoming a drug addict), the record lumbers into a stumbling bit of doomy filth, before exploding into frenzied blasting blackness, and over the next 45 minutes HM's sound delves into all sorts of varied directions, many of them not all the black metal, which is what makes this record so cool and weird. It spends most of its time trudging along gloomily, dark and depressive, the melodies minor key and dismal, the mood abject and melancholy, more often a sort of plodding doom than black metal, but loads of sonic surprises lurk all over the place, plenty of which will no doubt not please the true grim hordes, the strange stuttering glitched out guitars on "Unshakable Faith", the slow motion Deathspell-isms of "The Ultimate Deception", the almost industrial lumber of "Fili Diaboli", the weirdly poppy sing along punk rock feel of "Shoot Knife Strangle Beat & Crucify", the mathy, stop start riffage of "The Pig That Became A God", and the bizarre barroom cabaret of the title track, the gruff vocals delivered more like Nick Cave or the Young Gods or even the Pogues, laced over long droned out chords, but peppered with cool jagged gnarled mathy blackness, it's definitely a super weird record, but it all works, and the weird bits are definitely balanced by a true grim blackness that seems to infuse everything here. The various elements woven into a blood soaked black stained sonic tapestry, filthy and crusty, heavy and twisted, grim and black.
Comes in a cool hardcover book like digipack, and like the first record, gorgeously laid out with tons of super creepy imagery.
