Debut full length from these French atmospheric doomlords who weave a gorgeous dreamlike doom from lumbering slo-mo heaviness, majestic gloom pop moodiness and classical bombast, heavy on the synth and mournful melody, sounding at times like a doom version of Alcest / Amesoeurs, that sort of wistful indie pop sound, but here rendered in swaths of soaring swirling atmospheric synths, delicate hushed pointilist pianos,
and crushing, classic old school style melodic doom metal a la My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost. The sound is a deft balance between the chugging churning riffs, and the hazy dramatic synthy swirl, the vocals mostly growled and demonic, but occasionally cleanly crooned, hushed and emotional, and there are even horns, which add a haunting and stately elegance to the proceedings.
While this is definitely doom, and a somewhat classic strain at that, it's so melodic and so infused with a dour depressive moodiness, that it does seem to veer into distinctly gloom pop territory, which is not a bad thing at all, in fact it kind of transforms this into something much more interesting. The tracks almost orchestral and symphonic, the sound anguished and abject one minute, dark and dreamy the next, but always epic and dramatic and cinematic, like the soundtrack for some futuristic art film about outer space, the musical vibe evoking sweeping celestial vistas and the bleak blackened landscapes below.
Sure it's lame calling bands supergroups, but we haven't really thought of another word that has the same connotations. I mean, how would -you- describe a black metal band that featured members of Dimhymn, Ondskapt and Zavorash, and was recorded by one of the guys from Marduk? Exactly. So for now, we'll have to stick with super group. But since this is evil black metal, maybe we should try something like ultra-horde, or mega-kult... ummm, well, maybe not...
Anyway, it's pretty tough to fuck with a band with this sort of pedigree, and while the label describes this disc as "a dirty piece of Black 'N Roll" which had us fearing the worst, this is actually way more fierce and buzzing and black than that description might lead you to believe. The band photos don't help much either, the band all walking along the railroad tracks, or looking all tough in front of a barbed wire topped chain link fence, tank tops, bandannas, and even a ski mask in effect! But fuck it, it's all about the music, and the music here is pretty awesome. Mostly midtempo, downtuned chug, with raspy howled BM vocals, pounding drums, occasional flurries of double kick drum, massive throbbing bass, but all with a serious streak of classic eighties metal running through it all, huge sweeping epic melodies, reminding us a bit of maybe At The Gates or Dark Tranquility, even some punky stomp a la Turbonegro. And actually, the more we listen, it definitely has that Khold vibe, sort of groovy and thick, like a pop song blackened and buzzed... Minus the occasional too obvious movie sample, or brief spoken word part, this is pretty relentless and rocking, with haunting interludes of choral cathedral keyboards and monklike chants separating crushing slabs of hooky heaviness.
Also includes a video playable on your computer, that while pretty striking, looks like it was filmed with a camcorder and s single flashlight. Pretty cool.�
Hot on the heels of the recent Black As Pitch record, one man band Jabaldav returns with a much more abstract outing... Whereas BaP, and the previous release Dead As Duck, were both homages of a sort to SF black metal legends Weakling, albeit filtered through some Black Flag damage and some fucked up black studio magic, 3K Hum sounds basically like what the title would lead you to imagine. Longform drones, drawn out expansive low end soundscapes, still black and haunting, brutal in their own way, but more hypnotic, more trancelike, owing more to SUNNO))) and Niblock than Immortal and Ildjarn.�
The opening track is nearly 15 minutes of digital burble, tape hiss and amp buzz, woven into a slow simmering stretch of glitch-pocked shimmer, like strange malfunctioning machinery, floating�along a slow flowing black river, sputtering and struggling to make more than buzzes and bzzzt's, immersed in a deep resonant sonic flow. Eventually, a riff enters the fray, but it's soooo slow, and weirdly digitized, it's more like a dense cloud of overdrive tone, thick and roiling, keening and white hot, before drifting off again, leaving nothing but a strange Morse code sort of Raster-Noton click and buzz ambience...
The second track is much more smoothed out, a gorgeous languorous sun baked crawl, long distorted notes stretched way out, flecked with sharp bits of overdriven buzz, a lazy metallic minor key threnody, burning hot but slowly, smoldering and intense, very alien, but warm and hauntingly emotional. This is followed by a brief series of Close Encounters like tones, that occasionally overheat and become super distorted swells, before reverting again to gentle drifting harmonics, before the 'bonus track' (which is NOT on the cassette), a massive 44 minute epic, a gorgeous washed out drift, shades of Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, and other masters of soft focus blur, like the soundtrack for some weightless drift through space, distant glimmers, barely there melodies, soft warm melodic swells, little shards of FX, like lost transmissions from some dying satellite, slipping effortlessly from ominous and dark, to dreamy and hopeful, this track all on its own is like an entire record in and of itself, but of course manages to be the final part in 3K Hum's multi part epic... So lovely...
And also on the cd (and not on the tape), is a brief coda, a weird robotic blur of buzzing tones and crumbling distortion, haunting and speaker shredding, but again in its own black buzzing way quite pretty...
The cd is packaged in a DVD case, with full color cover, and two full color inserts.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!!! Each one hand numbered.
As we wait for the next Jabladav full length, the ultra brutal Atta Vinter, the band have released this ambient precursor, taking it's cue from the spacier elements of Paysage D'Hiver, but also incorporating plenty of free noise drift, new age shimmer, and abstract kraut-drone.
Unlike past Jabladav ambient missives, the focus here is less on low end, on the rumble and whir and buzz, instead, it's much airier and spacier, tinkling chimes, warm swells of soft focus synths, there are some haunting things happening below, deep bellow thuds, industrial groans and creaks, but they are so far down in the mix as to just add a bit of texture and mystery. Otherwise, the sound is strangely sun dappled, glimmering, shimmering, ethereal and effervescent, and yeah, new age-y, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Popol Vuh, David Parsons, the whole first side is slow sprawling expanse of dreamy new age-y shimmer.
The second side slips a bit more into low end, but not rumbling or buzzing, not doom drone or dirge, instead, another warm whirring, lighter than air bit of sonic weightlessness, mesmerizingly tranquil, relaxingly otherworldly, this is the sound of drifting through space, or floating amongst the clouds, sun dappled or moonlit, the sounds on Ambience are a softly shifting soundtrack to leaving your body and exploring the vast expanses of inner, and outer space.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered....
It's all been leading up to this. Seven releases in less than 4 years, we now find ourselves bowing before long anticipated (at least around here) record number eight from this Weakling worshipping, Black Flag channeling one man black metal band, who as we've mentioned before, began life as nothing more than a fun fuck-around musical HAILZ to the late great Bay Area metal masters Weakling, and heck, if you're gonna pick a band to emulate and be influenced by, you could do a LOT worse. But it didn't take long for that influence to fade, and for Jabaldav to find their own voice. And that voice was indeed a twisted one, a sound that struck a chord with aQ weirdo black metal obsessives, a twisted and gnarled blackness, jagged and harsh, hooky and heavy, and plenty weird and warped.
On Atta Vinter, Jabladav expand their sound considerably, present still are the frenzied buzzing, the relentless blast beats, the grinding Greg Ginn-ish like guitars, but the songs on AV are way more epic and sprawling, weirdly haunting and majestic, long stretches of choral drift, of looped keyboard-drenched ambience, acoustic guitar flecked streaks of orchestral sounding mellotron, strange bits of abstract vocals, soaring strings, all woven seamlessly into huge crushing slabs of black brutality, of howling pounding primitive pound.
Weirdly enough, the punk element is in full effect here too, with some of the tracks sounding like slightly more metal versions of classic Midwestern punk rock, at least one is a dead ringer for Die Kreuzen, which is NEVER a bad thing. The vocals are way more varied too, from yowled bellow, to feral yelp, to hellish shriek, most of the songs are pretty short too, with more than half under 3 minutes, but plenty of wild tangled riffing and octopoidal drumming crammed into those few minutes. And even at its punkest, the sounds are a breath away from full on furious black metal blur, and that's sort of the magic of Jabladav, a careening, lurching unpredictable punkish black metal blowout that confounds and confuses, slipping from total Norwegian style icy blast, to killer loping post punk tangle, to gorgeous shimmery drone, and back again, the various elements so disparate, but so perfectly meshed, the melodies catchy as hell, the riffs super memorable, the sound still strangely sharp and lo-fi, almost lush, but the guitars ultra distorted and super saturated, the drums pounding but buried in the mix, the flow of the record a definite sonic journey, culminating in the final 3 song suite, a long-ish expanse of downtuned doominess, that gives way to mathy grinding witchiness, whose barely there drone outro leads right into a brief blast of weirdly melodic almost power-metal sounding blackness, with harmonized guitars and a super blown out in-the-red sound, which finally, leaves us battered and bruised before the epic 11 minute closer, which begins all spidery minor key guitar, and whirring warbling mellotron, before exploding into perhaps one of the most frantic bits on the record, a lurching, twisted downtuned, buzz drenched stutter, with one of the weirdest, and most KILLER riffs ever, before again slipping into that murky spidery crawl, and then back again, over and over, the heavy riffage, getting simultaneously more and more distorted and fucked up, but more and more catchy and melodic, the weird mellotron drones only adding a distinctly creepy vibe to the proceedings, the whole track impossibly complex and dizzying, before the track stumbles to a standstill, leaving a shadowy blur, a strange funereal drift, the blackened tendrils of sound gradually shriveling up and dying, leaving nothing but darkness.
Next level shit for sure, maybe too much for the grim troo old guard, but screw them, for the rest of us, this is exactly the sort of stuff we're always dying for, buzzing, blackened, outsider, otherworldly, weird as shit heaviness that defies easy categorization. WAY recommended. Maybe the best Jabladav yet, which is saying something!
And just like the other Jabladav records, limited to 100 copies, each one hand numbered and signed, most with a little something extra inside.
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Latest missive from this Weakling-worshipping one man black metal band, whose sounds has changed quite a bit since his very Dead As Dreams beholden debut Dead As Duck, with the music growing more and more varied, and the playing getting more and more polished, the recording too constantly improving or at the very least changing, even at its lowest fidelity now, it sound intentional, an integral part of the sound. What began as a rehearsal space recorded DIY project, now sound downright professional, at times, and while in many cases we'd lament that sort of 'progress', in the case of Jabladav, it really does seem to suit the sound.
Ayr begins with a gorgeous bit of acoustic guitar, before the record kicks in proper, and while it may be more polished, that doesn't mean it's not still a bit twisted and weird, clean guitars jangle over clipped drums, howled vox, it's a weird sort of blackened pop, until the buzz comes in, and then, well, it still sounds like blackened pop, reminding us of Hypothermia, that same sort of loping jangly blackness, the distortion more crumbly and blown out than the traditional black buzz. The next track too starts out all clean guitar, and crooned clean vocals, moody and swoonsome, until suddenly lurching into a chaotic black buzz, and it's definitely chaotic, a wild maelstrom of furious riffing, drums-down-the-stairs blastbeats, and of course harsh demonic vokills. The song slips right back into the clean guitar lope, the buzz swooping in again, but this time remaining a midtempo lope, this time just wreathed in a black buzz, the whole thing driven by a prominent bassline, which gives the track a distinctly gloomy gothicky feel.
But it's not all clean and croon, "Oktober" is a frenzied blast of gnarled blackness right out of the gate, raw and feral, with some awesome stop/start arrangements, the sound filthy and crusty, blown out and in the red, which helps to balance the comparatively melodic opening salvo.
The next track, even after starting out with classic black metal intro, launches into a strange hybrid, that melds black buzz to burbling basslines, strummed acoustic guitars, more of those demonic vox, the result is a strangely washed out almost shoegazey sounding blackened metal, with definite pop elements lurking beneath the surface, the vocals getting particularly creepy and unhinged. It's a cool sound, and definitely unlike any other black 'metal' we've heard. And so it goes, the record continuing to confound, as Jabladav seems to loved doing, the next track a woozy slo-mo dirge, some killer riffing wrapped around a minimal beat, mesmerizing and hypnotic, might be one of our favorite tracks on the record, the guitars thick and buzzy but still melodic, the sound harsh and heavy, but atmospheric and a bit doomy.
The title track begins with the sound of thunderstorms, beneath weirdly processed guitars, a warped shimmery guitarscape, ambient and strangely psychedelic, the song does briefly explode into some black buzz about halfway through, but the buzz is muted, and the song is driven by a lilting melody, and everything is blissed out and becomes more so as the song morphs back into that opening pulsing guitarscape. Finally the record finishes off with another bit of impossibly melodic black buzz, the first half all chiming and shimmering, the second half more of the same, but wedded to a buried blast beat, and with slightly more buzz, but still ultimately melodic and more pretty really than grim or black.
This may in fact be the least overtly black metal Jabladav record yet (barring the ambient discs), and is most definitely the strangest, but because of all that, it might just be our favorite so far�
Packaged in a purplish-pink digipak, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, each one signed and hand numbered ON THE SHRINKWRAP, which means if you open it, that number will be gone, unless you save the plastic wrap.
Record number two from this strangely monickered black metal one man outfit, borne out of a mighty love for dead and gone SF black metallers Weakling. And who can blame Mr. Jabladav? Of the modern breed of black metal, Weakling hewed closest to the spirit of the legendary Norwegian BM royalty, while still managing to create something completely unique, off kilter and beautifully and brilliantly fucked. Pity they only managed one record, but what a record it was...
Where as the first Jabladav disc, Dead As Duck (note the Dead As Dreams like title) mixed outright Weakling worship, frosty grim riffage, furious blast beats, epic arrangements, with a distinct post rock / math rock vibe and some seriously twisted and damaged Greg Ginn-ish Black Flag like gnarled guitars, the new one Black As Pitch (hmmm...) while still rooted in the epic buzz of Weakling and the bands that came before, expands the scope and the sound of the first one, in a big way. The core is still a grim black buzz, but even at its most black metal, the arrangements are completely convoluted and confusional, with long stretches of abstract riffing, bursts of chaotic free-black-metal, if there is such a thing (and if there's not there sure as hell should be), but the BM here is still troo and completely amazing, the guitars are super hot, in the red, blown out and WAY up in the mix, the drums too, loud as fuck, the double kick sounds (and feels) like someone pounding on your chest with both fists. Thick swaths of creepy alien keyboard sometimes drift over the black blasts, and often the blackness dissipates leaving gorgeous stretches of rumbling drone or shimmering ambience, the vocals are reverbed and sound like they must be samples or snippets from some movie, giving the songs an even creepier vibe.
Then there's the 14+ minute "Vinter Meditation", an extended chunk of cinematic ambience, all strange synths and creepy sounds, mysterious voices, and random abstract sonic disturbances, but the whole song is peppered with furious bursts of black metal, the engulf everything, saturating all the surrounding sounds with thick viscous blackness, before drifting off just as suddenly, leaving more haunting ambience, minor key melodies, the sounds of wind and thunder, soft billowing bits of chordal drift.... The rest of the record is filled out with more conventional length black blasts, except for the 31 minute drone epic "St. Philip Episcopal Church", which begins as a muted whir, a distant drone, layers shifting and overlapping, until thick grinding crumbling guitars swoop in, adding a caustic layer of fuzz over the top, and the track continues like that, sort of seesawing back and forth, from minimal shimmer, to corrosive drone, that distorted guitar changing shape constantly, from prickly buzz, to pulsing Spacemen 3 like whir to FX drenched outer space swirl, to brutal black drone. That piece alone would constitute a whole release on any one of our favorite modern abstract noise cd-r labels, but here it's just part of the bigger sonic picture, the songs short and long, black and beautiful, are all tangled up, sonically and thematically, the ambience balances the buzzing blackness and vice versa.
The record closes with an Ildjarn cover, a brief blown out black stomp, relentless and furious, the guitar still way blown out, the vocals louder than ever, the riff simple and almost punk rock, primitive and furious and fierce. Somehow it seems like the perfect way to finish off, after all the extended experimental ambience and super mathy black metal weirdness, a good old fashioned, primitive, old school, spiked, leather clad, corpse painted, church burning bloody axe attack!!
The cds are limited to 100 copies, each one hand numbered, the cassettes are numbered to 150 copies, each of those hand numbered as well.
LAST COPIES EVER! We had thought they were gone already, but Jabladav just sent us a final handful of this 2009 release...
Three new songs from one man black metal band Jabladav, limited to only 100 copies, so grab one while you can. Jabladav explores some different sounds on here, the opener "Coldest Last Winter" begins with just keyboards, and clean guitar before the distortion kicks in, but instead of exploding into a frenzy of black buzz, the song lopes drearily, the keyboard remaining, plinking out a sorrowful minor key melody, while the drums pound out a doomic tempo, and the guitar buzz all washed out and Striborg like. It's heavy but more sort of dreamy and ethereal, near the end things get a little more mathy and convoluted with some cool stop starts, but for the most part it's all drift and haunting and doomy.
The second track is another keyboards and guitar jam, the guitars tangled and folky, intricate and lush, the keyboards set on some strange human voice setting, so it sounds like a stuttering choir, and again, the 'band' kicks in, a trudging plod, harsh vokills over angular distorted chug, before things build to a full on black blast, the keyboards drifting creepily below the surface the whole time.
The final track is way more classic Jabladav, the guitars sharp and jagged and buzzy, the drums frenetic and blasting, the melody epic and haunting, with some cool stumbling, lurching gnarled arrangements and a cool black ambient outro. Rad stuff as always. A bit different, but still shot through with that same twisted Jabladav vibe.
Comes in a printed color sleeve, the 7"s are each numbered, there's an insert too, also numbered and signed and each with a little drawing, ALSO comes with a cd-r featuring the tracks from the 7", that too is hand numbered.
Latest from our favorite one man, Weakling by way of Black Flag styled black metal band, but don't be expecting any gnarled black blasts or pounding frenzied freakouts, Communion With Mother & Machine falls more in line with any of the various Jabaldav ambient records, but is notable for being created using mostly Buddha Machines and Black Boxes. A slow burning sonic collage, a blackened sprawling composition, that takes those prerecorded loops, as well as the process of switching from loop to loop (including any clicks or buzzes), and weaves them into a lush, densely layered dronescape, along with samples of other Jabladav recordings, field recordings of nature at night, Mellotrons, as well as some effects and feedback, the process is detailed in the liner notes, a simple technique of setting up the boxes in a circle around the microphone, with a particular box manually moved closer to increase its volume / presence, the colors of the Buddha Machines used are detailed as well (1 red, 1 orange, 1 white and 2 blue), as is the recording gear used, and various other steps of the process. And while that stuff is definitely interesting, it's the finished recording that matters, and it's incredible, a swirling, smoldering loopscape, crickets chirping over distant whirs, slowly shifting layered melodies, the glitch and grit of the tiny speakers adding more buzz and blur to the proceedings, deep melodic swells pulsing and shimmering, the loops slipping from organic and amorphous to machinelike and repetitive and back again, creaks and groans, disembodied voices, everything building to lush heaving slabs of layered density, laced with tinkling melodies, all set amidst thick clouds of muted crunch, smoothed into gorgeous expanses of blissed out lustrous mesmer. So great.
Total nirvana for dronelords, and as with all Jabalav stuff, WAY recommended, whether buzzy or beautiful, or both.
Packaged in super swank 6 panel digipaks, each one signed and hand numbered, and limited to ONLY 100 COPIES!!!
For a band that didn't exist for very long, only had one record and who have been broken up for years now, SF's mighty Weakling still cast a pretty long shadow. We still sell Dead As Dreams like crazy, more and more people are professing their undying love for Weakling's black grandeur every day, and band after band, some more subtly than others are displaying in their music, some serious Weakling worship. Wolves In The Throne Room are a recent example, they obviously expanded on the sound but there are moments where WITTR are a dead ringer for Weakling. Then there is Jabladav, who almost come off as a sort of Weakling homage, what with the very Dead As Dreams-ish title, the album artwork, and of course Weakling topping the thanks list, which also includes Burzum, Darkthrone, Black Flag, Ildjarn and Wolves In The Throne Room. But Jabladav, seem to approach metal from a distinctly non-metal background. It's subtle, but noticeable. Black Flag in the thanks list should give you some indication. Not that this isn't black and buzzy, heavy and thrashing and brutal, it is, one man, just guitar bass, mellotron and drums, but there is a distinctly post rock, punk rock vibe that permeates much of Dead As Duck. Take out some of the thick swaths of dramatic keyboards and insane bursts of double kick drumming, and sometimes you're left with some very Greg Ginn-ish angular metallic post punk. But when all is said and done, Jabladav whip up some serious black skree, with buzzy crunchy guitars dominating the mix, some murky drumming, bits of bass here and there, a little keyboards, mostly instrumental, but when there are vocals, they are a haunting croon, much like the madman in Urfaust. There are even some dreamy folky interludes. Fucking awesome stuff for sure. We've been playing this like mad since we got it. So if you dig any of the aforementioned bands (we might even include in the list Earl Shilton, Carcass, even the Champs maybe) you'll definitely love this! LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each disc hand numbered.
Not one, but TWO new releases from this one man, Weakling worshipping black metal misanthrope, known as Jabladav, but maybe this one doesn't count, as it was recorded under the influence, HEAVILY under the influence, and thus is a bit of a stumbling, lurching mess. But what a glorious mess it is. If it wasn't called Drunk As Duck (a reference to the debut Jabladav record Dead As Duck) and if it didn't have a cover image of discarded corks from (presumably) bottles drunk, and if there wasn't an apology in the liner notes asking the listener to listen with a sense of humor, if NONE of that were present, we probably would have just assumed this was some super wacked, freaked out, damaged lo-fi black metal record, and we would have loved it just as much as we do now, maybe even more.
Take the normal sound of Jabladav, lower the dexterity level, slow things down a bit, make it a bit doomier, a bit murkier, add a bit more stumble, a bit more warble, and fuck, if your not left with something truly deranged and warped.
Way less mathy and complex than Jabladav proper (due, we assume, in no small part, to inebriation), the sound on Drunk as Duck, is a lurching doomic black metal, which at times reminds us a bit of Xasthur, or more specifically, the legion of Xasthur influenced black buzzers, with it's murky miserablism, it's stumbling rhythms, but a little hooch isn't enough to remove all of Jabladav's instrumental prowess, so plenty, of that tangled riffing, and Greg Ginn like gnarled guitar freakouts still surface here and there, but they tend to be draped over murky buzzing plods, or funereal dirges. When the tracks do occasionally burst into blast mode, instead of sounding shitty, or bad, or amateur, it just sounds, well, weird, chaotic, confusional, often splintering into abstract freakouts, or meandering black jams, but that stuff sounds amazing. We wouldn't dare say we like this better than Jabladav proper, but damn if we don't like it almost as much.
There seems to be a lot more keyboards going on too, adding a definite moody creepy vibe to the proceedings, but what can we say, even wasted, this guy can craft some truly demented black brilliance.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.
Mysterious one man band Jabladav has proven that he is much more than just a Weakling tribute, offering up his admitted Weakling inspired black buzz infused with strange gnarled Greg Ginn-ish guitaring, and furiously fucked up post rock mathed out weirdness. Grim and buzzy, but also damaged and seriously and gloriously freaked out. He also proved he could drone with the best of them on the recent 3K Hum release, a slab of deep dark dense dronology that definitely holds its own amongst the legends of drone.
So in the spirit of 3K Hum comes this latest Jabladav release, limited to only 50 copies, so we won't get too in depth, needless to say, we were pretty much sold when Mr. Jabladav emailed us to tell us about this new release, and wrote "I've never heard a Buddha Machine sound so evil." Well, heck, what else did we need to hear? Nothing in fact.
So we got as many of the 50 as he could spare and here it is!
Recorded live, using a Buddha Machine, a piano, a Casio and a handful of effects, Jabladav has created a doomy and dark ominous drift. The Buddha Machine's loops transformed into creeping lowend sprawl, bits of distortion and decay lace these long tones, a subtle throb, a deep resonant pulse, murky and muddy and sinister, spaced out, but blurred and smeared into dark dreamlike drones.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! We got way less than that. Packaged in a slim dvd style case, full color artwork and booklet, each disc signed, and numbered, the booklet signed and the insert numbered too.
It's been YEARS since we last heard from weirdo black metal / ambient soundscaping one man band Jabladav, who we were first introduced to via his Dead As Duck debut, an unabashed homage to late great Bay Area black metallers Weakling, from the title (a reference to Weakling's Dead As Dreams), to the artwork, and yeah, right down to the music. But as we mentioned before, while it was plenty black, and plenty metal, it was also pretty far out, kinda post rocky and psychedelic, home brewed and pretty fantastically fucked up. Since that first release, we've reviewed a dozen plus Jabladav discs, all of them pretty great, and all of them pretty weird. Lots of black buzz, but also plenty of atmospheric ambience.
We had actually begun to think that Jabladav was no more, when what should show up in the mail, a huge box, with not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR new releases. Two Jabladav full lengths, an EP, and James Harlow's (aka Jabladav) first solo record under his own name. Phew! We'll tackle one at a time, but if you want all four the rest are to be found on the list below in the 'In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed' section, or just ask. But be warned, they are all extremely different.
Figured we'd start with the one closest to the 'classic' Jabladav sound, which is Fin, indeed the only properly black metal release of the bunch. Like past Jab jams, it's all twisted sinewy black buzz, progged out drumming, and raspy demonic vokills. That post rockiness is still present, keeping the sound from ever being truly grim, but instead, it ends up being almost avant, with burst of double kick erupting beneath woozy minor key melodies, the sound never truly dense, more spare and expansive. There are also acoustic guitars, and some seriously weird crooned vox, as well as some distorted buzz SO distorted it almost sounds like your speakers are fried. The guitar playing also displays Harlow's Black Flag obsession, with plenty of Greg Ginn-isms, and gristly, angular gnarl, the songs lurching from fractured stop/starts to furious metallic pound.
But it's Jabladav, so there's some kosmische drift at some point, all ethereal and blissed out, as well as some sitar like buzz, and one track that sounds like jazz fusion black metal, with a weird mix, that relegates most of the sounds to the background, while the guitar howls and screams and shreds. There's also some total planetarium dreamdrone synth shimmer, and one long final sprawl of rumbling thrum, that seems to be constructed from the low notes of a piano reverberating into a slow shifting black fog, before actual notes surface right near the end.
Another baffling sonic slab of avant WTF outsider metal genius from Jabladav, and we're glad to have him back. We'll review one of the other ones next time, but they are SUPER limited, and we got most of the copies. In fact, Fin is LIMITED TO JUST FIFTY COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered and signed, on the disc itself, on the booklet AND on the tray card as well!
Yet another recent release from this long time aQ fave, who after a protected period of silence, sent us a big ol' box with FOUR new releases. Two of which we've previously reviewed, this being the third, and much like Maj, which we listed last time, Hail is another ambient affair, and might be the prettiest, most tranquil thing we've heard from Jabladav yet. It's short, clocking in at just 19 minutes, but it's really beautiful. Haunting and pastoral, guitar chords ring out, smeared across a backdrop of hushed shimmer, the vibe sun dappled and dreamy, meditative and melancholy. It almost sounds like some sort of abstract twangscape, like a way more blissed out, drumless Earth, or even maybe Scenic, but super minimal. We also hear hints of Stars Of The Lid, and other guitar based soundscapers.
The sound unwinds and blossoms gradually, not building really, just sort of slowly shifting, the spaces as much a part of the proceedings as the sounds themselves. It also has a distinctly washed out, faded vibe, as if this might be something the Caretaker might whip up if his weapon of choice was the guitar.
You definitely don't have to be a metalhead to enjoy this side of Jabaladav, in fact, this is definitely something aimed more at anyone into psychedelic Krautrock, Pop Ambience, minimal dronemusic, and experimental guitar music, which we're guessing is a whole lot of folks reading this right now!
Like all Jabladav releases, super limited (just FIFTY COPIES) and obsessively numbered and personalized. Each disc is hand numbered, both on the disc itself and on the booklet, and both the disc and booklet are also signed. We got a bunch of these, but since there were only fifty made, it's a good bet that once these are gone, we won't be getting more.
We reviewed the cd-r Fin, from mysterious one man black metal band Jabladav, on last week's New Arrivals list, and in that review mentioned not only that it was the first release we'd gotten in years, from this previously impossibly prolific artist, but in keeping with that nascent prolificacy, he sent us FOUR new releases. Fin was the only strictly black metal release of the bunch, but over the myriad of previous releases, a bunch eschewed metal entirely in favor of blackened ambience and minimal atmospheric soundscapery, which is precisely what we get on the three track Maj.
The opener is a sprawling near half hour slab of smoldering drift, softly undulating synths, pulse beneath clouds of static and grit, melancholic melodies blur into impressionistic sonic smears, the bleary, faded grey ambience at times reminiscent of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops (and their most disintegrated), the recording too, muddy and murky, only adds to the vibe, somber and somnambulant, laced with some last minute gristly, before winding down into what sounds like a dying tape machine, fantastically gloomy and dreamy.
The second track is a bit less grim, almost pastoral, a haze of faded melodies slowly builds to a soft cacophony of blurred, layered thrum, before again, dissipating into a swirling, skeletal, soft focus fade out. Finally, the 12+ minute third track reveals itself as the most 'noisy' of the bunch, pairing a hushed dreaminess, with dense billows of reverbed noise, fields of sculpted static, and bursts of muted crunch, but even at its noisiest, the sounds are world smooth, and sound more dense and dynamic than caustic, and beneath these noisier bits, lurks an almost choral sounding ambience, dreamlike and prismatic, the sounds seemingly washed out and in a state of beautiful decay, and as the noise abates, they're revealed as a warm, barely-there shimmer, that gradually, and drowsily plays us out.
As with all Jabaladav releases, these are EXTREMELY LIMITED. Only FIFTY COPIES made! And a we got a good chunk of those. Each one is hand numbered, and signed by the man himself. Also includes a DVD-R which seems to contain the WAV files of the songs on the cd-r.
What began as an homage to legendary SF black metallers Weakling, and maybe even a joke (not a ha ha joke, more of a fucking around, we're bored so we might as well record some grim black metal joke) has pretty rapidly morphed into a serious black metal contender amongst weirdo black metal aficionados.
Jabladav is a one man band who owes as much to Weakling as they do to Black Flag. Their first release, Dead As Duck, was a gnarled Greg Ginn-ified blast of intense blackness, blown out guitar buzz, insane blasting drums, some killer riffing and huge heapings of black atmosphere, channeling Weakling through all sorts of random not-that-black business, drone, post rock, math rock, no wave, and yeah Black Flag. The thing was, whatever inspired it, was soon eclipsed by how fucked up and far out the finished product was. A baffling and fucking genius collection of convoluted black buzz. Hot on the heels of the debut, came a second disc, Black As Pitch, which was like part two of Dead As Duck, but expanding the sound, making it even more metal, more chaotic, the songs got longer, and way more complex, even introducing some intensely blackened ambience. Which led to the next record, 3K Hum, a mostly ambient affair, huge stretched out slabs of glacial blur, massive roiling low end rumble, shimmering black ambience, hypnotic and mesmerizing, and while ambient, still extremely dense and heavy.
As if that weren't an exhausting spurt of creativity, now, not all that much later, comes the latest from Jabladav, the even more expansive and sprawling 2 cd-r set Primland, two hours of incredibly tangled black riffing, super blown out buzz drenched production, creepy keyboards, and deep dark ambience, super mathy drums, demonic vocals, all wound into super extended black jams, shot through with head spinning Ginn-ish squiggly leads, stop start riffing, but all strangely melodic, a moody mournful undercurrent beneath the roiling black heaviness. And the drums, shit, the drumming is insane, WAY up in the mix, louder than the guitars even, mathy and calculus complicated, like the guy was sitting at the top of a concrete stairwell in a 40 story building, each landing mic-ed, and then proceeded to hurl drum kit after drum kit into the black abyss, only in such a way that the resulting crash and clatter coalesced into impossibly deranged black rhythms.
But then out of nowhere, there'll be a track, all murky and muddy, lo-fi and practice space style, that sounds like it could be some lost nineties BM demo. EXCEPT, it's Jabladav, so even those tracks, are layered with slow doomy tones, deep rumbling chimes, and raspy vocals, threatening to swallow up the thrashing blackness below.
The tracks are definitely tweaked, and damaged, and a little bit spaced out and acid fried, druggy and mathy, but at their core they are pure black, the riffs are blown out, recorded so loud and in the red, the chords threaten to crumble. The record careens wildly from stumbling doomic Burzum style lope, to manic crazed thrashing black blasts, often both in the same song, the strange production only adds to the mood and weirdness, the songs on Primland even more epic and far out and convoluted and fucked than any of the Jabladav we've heard before, which is saying a lot. WAY recommended black metal weirdness/brilliance.
While they last, we have the ULTRA LIMITED, wax sealed wooden box version. If it's too pricey for you, hold off and we'll relist the normal version once these are sold out, but c'mon, this music deserves more than a jewel case. These are hand assembled, hand stained wood boxes, with a removable lid, that slides out, inside are the two cd-rs, in jewel case, and a printed color insert. The box is sealed shut with a silver wax seal. Each box signed and numbered on the bottom. But be warned, these are not had crafted keepsakes, the kind on a glass shelf at your grandma's house, no, they look grim and ancient, like the music within, weathered and worn, they're beautiful, but they look like they were unearthed from some cursed tomb, left on a shelf in a locked room, in an abandoned house, where they were discovered years later. Meaning that they are not perfect, the coloring is different on each, as is the wax seal, and the seal is quite fragile, so no matter how carefully packaged, the seal might crumble, or come off in transit, but you have to remove the seal anyway if you want to listen to the music.
You have been warned...
Primland was originally released as a super limited (100 copies) double cd, housed in a hand painted, custom built wood box, sealed with wax, and thus had a price tag to match. The box is now out of print, but Primland is now available as two much more affordable single discs, the first of which we reviewed a few lists back, a serious slab of crushingly twisted blackness, this is the second disc, the abstract ambient accompaniment to the first disc's more furious fucked up heaviness. But in its own, way just as intense and black.
Whereas Jabladav typically sounds a bit like some gnarled tangled up hybrid of Black Flag and SF black metal legends Weakling (Jabladav began as an homage to Weakling in fact), this second Primland disc is something else all together, a collection of sprawling dronescapes, thick with crumbling drones, black ambience, abstract piano, long drawn out epics, expansive worlds of bleak and blackened mystery. Think MZ412 or the more recent Nordvargr / Drakh collaborations, this is brooding, haunting, malevolent minimalism, but shot through with plenty of texture and mood, layered sounds woven into organic slow moving black drifts, bits of percussion surface here and there, jarring amidst the bleak slow shifting backdrop, streaks of sound that resemble strings, the piano pounding out doomy almost-melodies, drones swelling and throbbing and pulsing beneath, some of the layers processed into dizzying loops, super hypnotic and truly strange.
One track does flirt with heaviness, offering up a sport of crumbling dirgedrone, but wrapped in static, and grinding electronics, oozing over deep dreamy swells, disembodied squalls of processed noise, so distorted they threaten to blow your speakers, before being reeled in, and swallowed whole by an impossibly thick wall of dense black hole low end, shot through with glimmering upper register tones and streaks of fragmented melody.
The final track is like a slow motion raga, all hypnotic buzz and slow burning minimalism, the speed shifting subtly throughout, the track oozing and swerving and slithering, playing tricks on the listeners ears, invoking a glorious disorienting sort of audio sea sickness, woozy and druggy, and strangely irresistible.
No metal to be found here, but that's not the point, taken with disc one, this completes Jabladav's high concept Primland epic, a massive chunk of confusional outsider black art, combining dense blackened minimalism with cracked and damaged black metal weirdness, the two halves somehow reflected in each other, both able to stand on their own, but together, making up a singular organic sonic entity.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
We've been sitting on a handful of these, the most recent release by Weakling worshippers Jabaladav, a ridiculously limited edition of just 50 copies, with the intention of eventually getting a bunch more to list and review. Well, we were informed recently by the man himself that The Cold Warmth was out of print, and thus we have the last handful of copies. And while there is a new full length on the horizon, this is most likely your last chance to get your grubby mitts on a copy of this, a collection of tracks recorded at the same time as Atta Vinter, but that were left off the final version. So Jabladav fans, if you dig AV, this is almost like a part two, all the usual Jabladav-isms are present, gnarled black blasts, mathy rhythms, killer riffing, the songs soaring and majestic one second, murky and dirge-y the next, the arrangements complex and almost proggy, with the sound switching from grim black, to grinding distorted churn, from strange processed vox flecked clean guitar moodiness to hazy, minor key almost post rock ambience, it's all good stuff, heavy and twisted, dark and tripped out. Apparently, according to the liner notes, Atta Vinter was meant to be 'to the point' and not at all epic, which is why these tracks were left off, but now with Atta Vinter AND The Cold Warmth in your clutches, the potential for grim black epicness is endless.
As with all Jabladav releases, the packaging is pretty deluxe, housed in a dvd case, with a cool color cover, signed by the band, there's a xeroxed insert, also signed by the band and numbered, as well as a smaller color insert, which is numbered, as is the disc. And again, this is out of print, and these are THEE last copies we will ever be able to get.
Seems like only yesterday we were listing a Jabaldav record... Well it was in fact the last list, but where that one was a Buddha Machine driven drift of dreamy dronemusic, Trostlosigkeit finds the Jabladav sound moving back to the Burzumic black buzz we love so much. And Burzumic is right, the first track begins as a sprawl of slow moving glacial buzz, laced with a haunting, very Filosefem sounding synthesizer melody, haunting and dreamy, but it's not long before Jabladav swing back into his Weakling meets Black Flag gnarled blackness. But the sound here is much more melodic, and blissful, lots of acoustic guitar woven into the proceedings, more midtempo then blast, and that synthesizer melody resurface throughout, giving the opening track a definite woozy melancholy vibe. "Loss" is similarly dark and dreary, like Jabladav got a depressive black metal makeover, spidery guitars give way to a muddy, murky dirgey doom-ed black buzz, more dreamy synth, the overall sound is way more lo-fi than usual, but it definitely suits the new mood and sound, weirdly pretty, but still grim and mysterious and heavy.
The title track is a sprawling 19 minute doomscape, all tangled glacial guitar, muted chug, hissed hellish vox, super spare drumming, lots of space, almost ambient really, peppered with bursts of insectoid riffing and buzzing black blasts, but always slipping back into that lugubrious doomdrone crawl, the guitars especially distorted, a weird warped bit of blackness that definitely ranks with the best we've heard from Jabaldav.
But if you though 19 minutes was epic and sprawling, prepare yourself for the record closer, "Reflection", clocking in at a hefty 33 minutes, no black metal to be found here, just some serene tranquil shimmering dronemusic, washed out and ethereal, a dreamlike drift, trancelike and meditative, and really quite lovely.
As always with Jabladav stuff, EXTREMELY LIMITED. This one to ONLY 50 COPIES, of which we got about half, housed in a DVD style case, with a full color cover, inside there's an elaborately folded insert, sealed with wax, the case also features a wax seal, the liner notes, case AND disc are all numbered and signed, grab one of these before they're gone, cuz these will blow out of here...
What's the scariest and creepiest of instruments? Could it be the downtuned electric guitar, that sound that marks all things dark and heavy and brutal and grim? Or could it be the cello with its soaring keening deep throated moan? Well we might posit, especially in light of this Jacula record, that the creepiest of all instruments is most certainly the church organ. Surprising that an instrument used chiefly to inspire and praise can illicit such utter unease and create such a pervasively creepy ambience. And that's pretty much what Jacula is all about, creepy ambience. Thick and haunting washes of warm rich church organ drone, resonant and reverberant, sometimes accompanied by simple pounding drums or mournful folky guitar melodies or wild psychedelic freakouts or soaring female operatic vocals or even occasional lyrics spoken ominously in Italian, but more often than not it's just the massive and ominous swells of a church organ. So effectively and utterly evil sounding. Jacula are sort of like a doom metal soundtrack to a Dario Argento movie. Goblin meets Skepticism! A Krautrock Thergothon? But is's not all mellow murky moodiness, tracks three and four, "Triumpratus Sad" and "Veneficium", both feature seriously fuzzed out, almost punk rock riffs, that sound about a decade before their time, insistent and completely heavy, even more so when they're eventually joined by a pounding one-drum beat or strident atonal piano or wild swirling progrock keyboards. Amazing! It's no wonder we sold the first couple of copies we got in of this to members of local black metal bands Ludicra and Leviathan!
In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum (literally "The Poison Is Always At The End"), which was supposedly recorded in an English castle, was originally released in an edition of only 300 copies in the late sixties and has been completely unavailable until just recently (this reissue cd is not entirely new, but it took us until now to get enough copies to list). Formed in 1968, Jacula even counted a medium as a member of their band who we assume was critical to the process of creating this record, considering that In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum was "Composed By Spiritualist Seance (1966-1969)" Woah! And for those of you well versed in sixties and seventies prog, be aware that this reissue is NOT the same as the Jacula record released in the early seventies (1972's Tardo Pede In Magiam Versus), even though for some strange reason Black Widow has given it pretty much the exact same cover.
Another three inch chunk of demented black metal weirdness from the UK. If you love the grim bizarre buzz of Old Forest, who recently returned after nearly 7 years, and whose own 3" cd-r we reviewed a few lists back, or the medieval madness of Meads Of Asphodel, then odds are you're gonna love Jaldoboath. From the same strange land, and featuring at least one dark knight who has done time in both Meads and Old Forest, Jaldoboath sound a bit like the Meads mixed with power metal thrashers Bal Sagoth, if they were a bit less serious and had recorded a holiday album. Seriously. The guitars gallop, the riffs and melodies are soaring and triumphant, the vocals are gurgly and growly, but there are horns, fanfares, fluttering flutes, jaunty little jigs, strange little sound effects, proggy organs, it's almost like listening to the strangely metal court musicians of King Arthur's court in some alternate reality.
Songs like "Bring Me The Head Of Metatron", "Seek The Grail", "Hark The Herald" and "Da Vinci's Code", each track plays like the theme music for some insane medieval Monty Python metal sitcom. On "Seek The Grail" you can almost picture the credits, the freeze frames as each character is introduced, and the horns, make it sound almost ska at times. "Jargue De Molay" is the least goofy, playing instead like some metallized Emerson Lake And Palmer, with awesome organ jams, creepy crackly breakdowns, a wicked main riff, all peppered with hand claps, blasting double kick, minor key trumpets, throbbing bass.
But then right after that comes the title track, which has a strange sing song vocal line, over a lopped trumpet fanfare, and a very holiday sounding main melody. Like a legion of musical mall Santa's gone metal and marauding through the hordes of innocent holiday shoppers. But then the last track swoops in, sounding a bit like Tool filtered through UK black metal buzz, all brooding buzz, Eastern sitar like melodies, and crooned baritone vocals. Over the top and dramatic, and weirdly hooky. WTF?
So fucking far out. But if like us, you're already a loyal knight of the Meads round table and sometime dweller in the Old Forest, well then this is just the sort of thing you can't get enough of.
WAY recommended, but only for truly twisted musical souls...
And like the Old Forest 3"cd-r also on Death To Music, SUPER LIMITED!!!
Savage Pencil cover art. Gothic font. Grim graphics. Black metal sonics. So this is the new Jazzkammer?! Metal Machine Music sees this Norwegian electronic noise duo changing their name (slightly) and suddenly adopting a black/death/doom metal sound. Maybe in this case we should say Metal, using the capital M for it like The Wire magazine does. Not sure what inspired this new direction, we'd hate to think it was just that in avant-experimental-indie circles Metal is now 'cool', and that they thought hey if SUNNO))) can do it, why not us? But chances are that being from Norway they're well aware of the black metal scene and dig a lot of the same stuff about it that we do, the perhaps unintentional avant-gardisms of bands like Abruptum for instance, and figured it was time to delve into it fully themselves. What matters, anyway, is how did Jazkamer's Metal Machine Music turn out? Well, we like it! First off, Jazkamer, as opposed to Jazzkammer, is not a duo, they've brought in some other folks to help out, including a real ringer -- Ivar Bjornson of AQ fave Viking black prog metallers Enslaved!! So we're taking it pretty seriously already.
The first track, "Friends Of Satan" is a pretty harsh intro, and should serve to weed out listeners who AREN'T in fact friends of Satan. It's a blurred, blasting battery of drums and distortion, not unlike that sampled death metal disc by Francisco Lopez, Untitled 104. Or the Dave Lombardo track on Jonathan Bepler's Cremaster 2 soundtrack. The chorus of anguished vokills at the end of the track further nail down Jazkamer's black metal ballsiness. They'd be pleased to know that someone here asked, when this was playing, "What's that? Besides headache-inducing?" Following that, we encounter one of this album's main events, the 16:51 "The Worms Will Get In", a study in slow-motion, doom-dirge minimalism a la SUNNO))), Earth, and Khanate. Simple but effective. When it ends, it's a jarring segue into the next track, the jagged "Abomination". Probably the thing on here that most sounds like it could be from a "normal" black metal album, albeit with No Wave / Voivodian influences. Next up, the title track, that's along the same lines as "Abomination" but, like, ten times noisier. And then, the finale, the 12 and a half minute "Occult Glider" that's a menacing ambient fuzzed-drone soundscape, beautiful and powerful.
We're impressed. Our doubts were quashed. Better than any Jazzkammer album we'd previously heard, as a matter of fact!
One of two new releases on this week's list from Ukrainian metal label Arx Productions, strangely both of them French, and even more strangely, both of them part of that new breed of 'post' black metal. But where the other, Smohalla, is a much weirder twisted psychedelic proposition, the sounds here are more in keeping with the sort of post rocky jangle of groups like Amesoeurs and Alcest, but there's plenty of weirdness going on with this too, especially in the arrangements. Take opener "Chute De L'Etre", which plays out all sweetly sorrowful minor key jangle, spidery melodies and meandering drumming, with some soft crescendos, a little bit Mogwai, a little Godspeed, but when the metal finally kicks in, it's not a subtle slow build, thick chugging guitars just explode, surrounded by a second guitar wrapping everything in psychedelic leads, the sound dizzying and heavy, more classic metal than black metal, but with such a twisted production, it's pretty awesome, and strange. And much of the record plays out similarly, with Je fusing hushed delicate jangle with bursts of chugging crunchy classic metal riffage, often the two combining for some super heavy melodic metal that should definitely hit the spot for fans of the above mentioned post black metal outfits. The vocals are more a sort of black metal screech / noise rock yowl hybrid, but they don't really play that big a part, the band instead weaving gorgeous brooding expanses of post rock, with distorted metal crunch, and in fact, the second half of the record definitely leans way more in the metal direction, with even a few blast beats popping up here and there, but even at it's most metal, the sound is still poppy and melodic, and will definitely leave grim true metalheads wanting, but for the rest of us, who like our black buzz with some fuzzy shoegazey melody, this will definitely hit the spot.
We listed the brand new record from the crazed Northwestern party black metallers a few lists back, and were a bit surprised that more people didn't TOTALLY FREAK OUT the way we did over these guys. Could it be describing them as "party black metal"? Not a phrase we coined, or one that's even all that applicable really, especially here. Could it be the name? JonnyX And The Groadies might be a goofy name, but these are goofy guys, the music though, ANYTHING BUT. The sound of JXATG is brutal and epic and heavy and fierce and twisted, a sort of new wave black metal hybrid, WAY heavier on the black metal. In fact, when someone was playing this up front this morning, we were all trying to figure out what black metal band it was, never occurring to us, for some reason that it could be JXATG. Which should speak to the power of this crew's black crush.
TV Party collects loads of older tracks, from various splits and demos, culled from the early days of the band, and are even more raw and fierce and furious than the new record, which is saying a lot. In fact, if these guys were called Satanic Skullfuck or something and were from Norway, people would be shitting themselves, but they're not, deal with it, they're fucking called JonnyX And The Groadies and they're from the Pacific Northwest and they slay, they destroy, they brutalize. Don't believe us? Check out the sound sample for "Organ Failure", it may only be a minute long, but it's still the soundtrack to some subterranean Teutonic march, the musical accompaniment to an army of orcs destroying some ancient civilization, pounding beats, buzzing frantic riffing, shrieked demonic vox, a killer almost industrial breakdown, with some serious chugging, and a bitchin' riff. Hell every track here could be the soundtrack for some epic battle, or you know what, some CRAZY PARTY? This is raging, blasting, crusty, pounding blackened heaviness, and it utterly rules. We'd put these guys up against any of the black metal heavies, and not only could they hold their own, they'd whip out their buzzing synths and leave the grim buzzing blasters in the dust, and would probably be having a fuckload of fun while doing it. Definitely one of our favorite bands going, they should be yours too!!
It's been a while, and we've waited patiently, but finally, it's the triumphant return of JonnyX And The Groadies, longtime aQ faves, and really, how could they not be? Self christened as the world's only "party black metal" band, these guys lay down some seriously grim black riffage, some howling hellish vox, but all wrapped around programmed beats, swirling new wave synths, howled chaotic screamo, all wound into a baffling, brilliant chaotic black synth, punk wave whatthefuck. And if anything, in the last few years, these guys have gotten even better, and WEIRDER. We described them in a past review as "Drop Dead, Arcturus, Teen Cthulhu, The Locust, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Behead The Prophet No Lord Shall Live, and Cradle Of Filth all packed into a sweaty filthy Portland Basement, playing before some strange mix of metalheads, emo kids and the walking dead!", which still pretty much applies, but these days, the blackness is way more intense, the riffing epic and frenzied, the songs super convoluted and complex, slipping from thrashing pound to inhuman blast and back again, but somehow, the new wave-ness has been cranked up too, with songs slipping into warped stretches of pulsing electronic drums, squelchy fuzzy synths, and occasional face melting blackened psychedelic blowouts of frantic guitars, screaming synths and chaotic drummachine damage, and besides all that, the songs RULE, catchy as hell, super varied and twisted and confusingly over the top. If these guys weren't from Portland, and weren't called JonnyX And The Groadies, and if they weren't one of the most awesomely motley looking crews ever, the long haired burnout glam metaller, the bearded metal lumberjack, the Dr. Jeckyll mad scientist, and of course the skeleton suited voodoo axeman, then they'd probably be oft discussed by the grim troo black metal hordes, a few championing their fucked up far out avant blackness, but most decrying their sullying of the true black traditions, so it's probably better that they exist well outside the black metal world, where they're free to twist their own peculiar brand of warped synth driven grind punk undead party synth brutal blackness into something this far out and fucked up and totally genius.
Available both as a cassette and an lp, the lp version comes with a big full color poster.
So what kind of a name is JonnyX And The Groadies anyway? Well, quite possibly the only appropriate monicker for the world's only "Party Black Metal" band. Huh? What? C'mon, you heard us. PARTY BLACK METAL. That's right. Might not sound good, at least to all you grimmer than grim blackmetalheads, but it is, in fact it's a heck of a lot more interesting than most black metal we hear these days. And actually the 'party' aspect isn't as obvious on record. Live they seem to be a serious blast, wild and goofy and explosively spastic, with pointy metal axes (as in guitars, although we imagine their might be actual axes as well) and goofy outfits and plenty of mayhem and destruction. But on record, it's all skull encrusted synths and upside down crosses, um... tight pants and foot long spikes, and, well, wild windmilling hair and white belts? The most unholy union of buzzing black metal and insanely aggro spastic screamo EVER. Grinding buzzing guitars, demonic shrieks, programmed blast beats and a thick wall of majestic keyboards. Think maybe Drop Dead, Arcturus, Teen Chtulu, The Locust, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Behead The Prophet No Lord Shall Live, and Cradle Of Filth all packed into a sweaty filthy Portland Basement, playing before some strange mix of metalheads, emo kids and the walking dead! Huge thick blasts of grim black metal segue into fuzzy squelchy ambient synth break downs and then slip into some moody midtempo near-doom, before exploding again in a blast of barbed buzz. Awesome! Nine tracks, the first eight, brief blasts of blackness, all clocking in at under two minutes, the final track, "Unmortal", a massive 14 minute blackened synth doom juggernaut.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A few years back, we became particularly obsessed with a Finnish (sort of) black metal group called Jumalhamara. Now, we know, aQ becoming obsessed with a band from Finland is hardly big news, but this was something else.
As mentioned in our old review, a friend warned us off these guys, saying they were barely black metal and were way too wussy and jangly, but everything he said just made us want to hear it more. Besides, they were from Finland, they were called Jumalhamara AND they had a song called, "Discover The Pigtail", which ended up being as good as the title might lead you to believe. Probably better to just revisit what we said about that track last time:
"Discover The Pigtail" begins with glistening harmonics, which are soon joined by some strange off kilter drumming, tangled riffing and howled vocals, and those harmonics never go away, so even as the band slithers and sprawls, spewing out a sort of buzzy blackness, the glistening shimmer totally shines through, diluting the heaviness, turning what might be something raw and heavy into something way more bizarre and trippy, at times it almost sounds like two records playing simultaneously, they drift in an out of sync, all very dizzying and gloriously tweaked."
And listening to it again recently, we realized there were horns, and all sorts of other weirdness going on. Unfortunately, that record was only a 3 song ep, so it definitely left us wanting more.
Here we are 3 years later, and the band finally deliver their first proper full length in close to 14 years of existence. And how does it stack up? Well on first listen, it doesn't sound nearly as weird, in fact it sounds way heavier, and more black metal, but it doesn't take long, in fact within a few minutes of the opening track's 10+ minutes, the song reveals itself as way more than black metal, subtly at first, the riffs atonal and sort of off kilter, that feeling of two records playing at once returns, everything a little warped and twisted, and then suddenly the song fracture, and the band gets super intense and aggro, the song lurching and starting and stopping, before launching right back into it. Buzzing blackly on the surface, but all around the main riff, other guitars are moaning and pealing, and adding that weird second melody / other record vibe. And then it just gets weirder and weirder, gnarled vocals, operatic female singing, the guitars getting more and more angular, the sound blurring and smearing and becoming more dronelike. Twisted for sure, but definitely some of the most original and warped black metal we've heard in ages.
And don't worry (or maybe do!), it gets WAY weirder, and way less black. As the record unfurls, spidery blues guitars drift underneath groaned deep dramatic vocals, before being blasted by some crumbling crushing doom, only to blossom into some propulsive industrial flecked noise rock, laced with what again sound like horns.
After that it's a sonic tug of war between a sort of swampy gothicky almost Woven Hand sort of vibe, and noise drenched back metal weirdness, doomy slithery guitars wrap around martial snares, splintering into shrieked noisy blackened chaos, only to settle down into some moody meandery reverb drenched slowcore blues, big buzzy guitars and almost Harvey Milk like crooning.
The title track is a frenzied blast of black metal riffing howled vox, and some dense intricate mathy drumming, epic and majestic but never truly slipping into 'black metal' until the last minute, a frantic blast that leads directly into the album closer, a sprawling bit of epic weirdness, a relentless pounding cymbal crash keeps the tempo, guitars howl and grind and buzz, strange melodies tinkle and drift off, like someone playing bottles, the vocals alternatingly shrieked maniacally and bellowed defiantly, a frenzied stretch of blown out psychedelic noisedrone chaos, with super intense dramatic vocals that follow the guitars and the crashing cymbals to their final termination point.
Somehow these guys have managed to make a record that's crazy fucked up and twisted, but with a sonic dementia that's just subtle enough, that some unsuspecting true grim warriors might just get suckered into listening to this chunk of blackened what the fuck genius.
Gorgeous packaging too, matte finish digipak, with super striking artwork, and a booklet filled with lyrics, and weirdly old timey imagery.
We've gotten to a really weird place in our music obsession, as evidenced by the fact that sometimes a recommendation against, is almost stronger than a recommendation FOR. Sounds weird but it's true. We have friends at other stores, who will tell us something is terrible, they hated it, but then will add "you might like it though." And the weird thing is, they're usually right (that we'll like it). We've developed such a taste for the bizarre, it's sometimes hard to tell if something is bad, or so fucked up it's genius.
However, one of those friends recommended against buying this very record, very vehemently in fact. Hard to recall, but it was something along the lines of it not being very metal and being all jangly and wussy. Fair enough. But they are from Finland, and they do have a song called "Discover The Pigtail"! Those two pieces of critical info were enough to overrule our friend's warning, and we're so glad they were.
This latest ep from Finnish black metal, psychedelic post rock horde Jumalhamara is AMAZING. Three songs, all on the long side, with a sound that is pretty difficult to pin down. It is easy to see why someone questing for serious black metal grimness might be disappointed. The record begins with the sound of children, laughing, playing, and what sounds like oinking pigs, a field recording of some village, until the band ROAR into action, pounding out a fierce blast of blackened buzz, grinding and intensely heavy, but it literally only lasts for about 10 seconds, then the band drifts off into some washed out hippy psych territory, all crooned reverbed vocals, lazy sun baked melodies, simple hand drums, slippery minimal bass, streaks of dubbed out distorted guitar, but for the most part, this is almost like some blackened Finnish Grateful Dead. Near the end there's even some fuzzy organ, the guitars get a bit heavier, the vocals moaning and chant-like, but it never really explodes, just gets thicker and more dense, while still seeming jammy and druggy. So awesome. Almost like a slightly heavier, way more fucked up black metal version of the recent Dead Man record.
"Discover The Pigtail" begins with glistening harmonics, which are soon joined by some strange off kilter drumming, tangled riffing and howled vocals, the cool thing about this track is that those harmonics never go away, so even as the band slithers and sprawls, spewing out a sort of buzzy blackness, the glistening shimmer totally shines through, diluting the heaviness, turning what might be something raw and heavy into something way more bizarre and trippy, at times it almost sounds like two records playing simultaneously, they drift in an out of sync, all very dizzying and gloriously tweaked.
The final track is the briefest of the bunch, and begins as a grinding gnarled and blackened doomic dirge, but not typically sludgy and murky, instead it's super dense and layered, the drums doing much more than pounding away, stumbling and skittering, beneath streaks of high end guitar, and chugging blown out riffage, the cymbals sizzling, the whole track recorded super hot and in the red, blasting and pounding and twisting until it fades out.
Definitely not really black metal, more like some sort of twisted doom-ed post rock avant psych, but still plenty heavy and really fucking great!
This may be only the second release from one man band Jute Gyte that we've reviewed, but it's at least his TWENTIETH in about 6 or 7 years, and thankfully it seems that his prolific nature has done nothing to dull his creativity, or the power of his sound, a dense, dizzying microtonal black metal, that spends much of it's time locked in spiraling, frenzied swirls of frenetic buzz, the sounds slippery, slithery and shimmery, those moments the closest any modern black metal band has come to creating something truly transcendental, the fact that those blasts of epic ur-drone black-buzz majesty are surrounded by all manner of woozy, warped, atonal black-prog, and lumbering almost doomic grim churn, only serves to make those moments that much more intense. And the strange sound, that microtonal tuning, gives the music a serious bent quality, everything just slightly off, and a little twisted. The sound at first seems almost out of tune, but the more you listen, the more those strange intervals begin to make sense, and wow does it add a definite alien tension to the proceedings, the vocals too, a hysterical shriek, and when all of the various twisted elements come together, it's some sort of demonic black musical magic, that is tough to beat, and honestly even tougher to describe. Those transcendental moments almost sound like a symphony of super distorted fretless guitars, the sound slipping fluidly between the chords and notes making everything super tripped out and most definitely psychedelic, and that tuning and the tension it produces, makes every song super dramatic, ratcheting up the tension, with no release, and no resolve, just building and building, the intensity of Jute Gyte's black energy of the charts. Then there's the whole avant/experimental angle, that gives the music to non-fans of black metal, check out the opener to "Night Is The Collaborator Of Torturers", it's so twisted, the notes so weird, and the arrangements so fucked, it almost makes your eyes water, and the drums too follow suit, abstract and stumbling, the vocals come in, and voila, it's some sort of avant prog, no distortion, no manic riffing, just spidery melty melodies, tangled off kilter drumming, the whole thing seemingly on the verge of total collapse. But then "Romanticism Is Ultimately Fatal", launches directly into another one of those flurries of majestic black buzz and warped detuned melody, and then somehow, even though the sound is fully cranked, they somehow push it even further, and it's the sort of sound that could make your head explode.
This stuff is incredible, and we're guessing if you're like us, you'll get an earful of this, and then have to track down the other 19 releases. Fans of Mick Barr's mutant strain of black metal will be in heaven, as will anyone into warped, outsider blackness. Packaged in a dvd case, with full color cover and color printed insert with (amazing) lyrics.
We should all be very grateful to the mailmen who serve aQ. Without them, the aQ list would be a very different beast. They come by almost every day, through sleet and rain if necessary. Usually bearing gifts of strange sounds transported from all corners of the globe. And often, some mysterious unmarked package will contain something special, a gorgeous ambient lp, or some obscure otherworldly folk record, or in many cases, some bizarre twisted chunk of black metal. And often those records will go on to be big time aQ faves, which is bound to be the case with this strange disc from a mysterious black metal horde called Jute Gyte, that just showed up one day in the mail.
The package we got was jammed with records by bands with names like Night Troll, Tremor Of The Black Manx, Pumpkin Buzzard, Testikill, but we were strangely drawn to this Jute Gyte record, weird name, cool oversized dvd style packaging, and once we threw it on we understood why. The description on the label's website introduces us to Jute Gyte with these words:
"A bipedal humanoid rat releases a sandpaper-throated screech as most of its internal organs exit through a huge hole in its furry back. Large and small intestines launch forth in whip-like arcs, briefly straightening into perfectly even ropy lines. A massive snail-demon explodes into fragments of confetti: red, green, blue."
And as weird as that reads, once you immerse yourself in the blown out crumbling ultra raw industrial tinged synth laden black metal of JG, maybe it'll make more sense. Then again, maybe not.
The guitar sound is so fierce and fucked up. Ultra distorted, super saturated and fuzz drenched, not so much chuggy or abrasive as massive and blown out, as if a tiny bit more of anything and the riffs would just crumble to pieces, the drums mechanical and machinelike, the vocals a demonic shriek, howling and anguished, everything wreathed in washed out synths and what sounds like a million layers of distortion. The melodies are super catchy, the sound is impossibly warm and lush, even though in every other way it seems harsh and heavy.
Things slow down here and there, the music transformed into a lurching industrial stomp, all gnarled guitars and new wave synths, almost like some crazy blackened Six Finger Satellite jam. There's a cool abstract mandolin interlude (apparently there's mandolin throughout the whole record too!), that's all super spare and skeletal, before a thick warped and warble synth comes in and obliterates the mandolin, leading directly into the second half of the record, the guitar comes back in and is again sop distorted and heavy, that it almost sounds like a synth, the chords ringing out crumble and distort and cause the speakers to nearly implode. Locked into a churning low end psychedelic blow out, the track just throbs and pulses, not so much metal or industrial as some sort of drone music unleashed, the various tones and notes expanding like miniature supernovas.
After a bout of woozy twisted detuned-guitar post rock drift with harsh vokills, burbling underwater synths, and tangled atonal melodies, like Khanate heard through a funhouse mirror, the record closes with another massive and epic dose of in-the-red blackdrone buzz, like Nadja, if they decided to throw in with the dark lord, another heaving wall of crumbling blackness, wrapped around a surprisingly catchy melody, the drums buried in the mix, just a distant throb, with a lurching stop start arrangement, like some sort of slowed down black metal math rock, but dripping with distortion and effects, infused with spaced out synths, and again on the verge of total implosion. And like the rest of the record, impossibly warm and fuzzy and melodic, while simultaneously being one of the most distorted and blown out things we've ever heard.
This isn't brand new, it's maybe a year old, but we only just discovered it, and figured it was something we had to share with the loyal aQ. Quickly becoming a new black metal favorite, just in time for our year end lists...
The latest from microtonal black metal master Jute Gyte, aka Adam Kalmbach, the third and final installment of a trilogy, but fear not, even if you missed the first two, you won't be too lost. But you will be sort of confused, cuz by it's very nature, the music of Jute Gyte is pretty dizzyingly demented, most folks likely don't have much experience with microtonal tuning, it's certainly rarely (read NEVER) used in popular music, and hell, even Unpopular music like black metal, but just give a listen to the first track below, and you'll understand why. Why most folks don't use it, and why Jute Gyte DOES. It's maddeningly off kilter, to untrained ears (and likely some trained ones too), it sounds out of tune, or more accurately, like it's constantly changing tuning, the first flurry finds the band seemingly slowing down, when in reality, the pitch/melody are in flux, making the whole thing sound like it's melting, it's woozy and warped and seriously WTF, but in a way, the microtonality reminds us of drum and dulcimer weirdos Botanist, who also use a tuning system well beyond the usual guitar and bass. It's even more notable during the less heavy parts, where it really sounds angular and atonal and totally UN-tuned, the whole thing a dizzying concoction of tangled melodies and impossibly obtuse harmonies. Eye watering, ear boggling, next level avant blackness for sure.
It definitely takes some getting used to, but for folks into damaged outsider heaviness, this will totally push all your WTF buttons. Otherwise, JG deliver some seriously orthodox black buzz, it's just that the black buzz here is so bizarrely tuned it sometimes makes stuff like Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord sound like AC/DC. That said, Jute Gyte still deliver some of the fiercest fucking black buzz we've heard, due in no small part to the strange overtones, furious squalls of dizzying insectoid buzz and relentless blast beats, which only make it that more dramatic when it devolves into some loped, lurching, WTF wooziness.
Heavy and damaged, tripped out, fucked up, psychedelic and extremely experimental black metal that will likely have you scratching your head while banging it like crazy. Awesome!
Housed in a dvd style case, with full color artwork and a printed insert/lyric sheet.
The return of aQ faves Jute Gyte, the world's only microtonal black metal band (that we know of). And yeah, music nerds will know what microtonal means, and we could explain it, microtones are intervals smaller than a semitone, which is different than the twelve intervals per octave typically employed in Western tunings, but you know what, why bother, just know that this peculiar/unique tuning means the music of Jute Gyte sounds totally, and geniusly, fucked up. To some ears, this will sound WAY out of tune, the sort of strange note clusters and damaged melodies that make your eyes water, and make your brain hurt, but it also invokes a kind of demonic vibe, the sounds, more than the usual black buzz, REALLY sound evil. It also helps that a lot of the sounds here are more in the doom realm, chords stretched out and seemingly melting, an when combined with the bursts and furious black buzz, Ship Of Theseus is a damaged, experimental, outsider beast of a record, on par with groups like Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord, but WAY WAY WAY weirder. For all the slippery chords, and blurry blasting, and gnarled melodies of those groups, that stuff is all magnified here, pulled apart and reassembled fantastically WRONG, into a dizzying, atonal, head caving sprawl of black psychedelia, abstract blackness, and total next level metallic genius.
Another blast of twisted microtonal black metal from this long time aQ fave, and as we mentioned in our review of the last JG, this might be his 20th record, of which we've only managed to review a handful. But like that last one, Vast Chains, takes all the tropes of black metal, and transforms them into something super psychedelic and avant, the tunings, the arrangements, the melodies, fans of groups like Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, who traffic in woozy, slippery riffage, and blurred blackness, Jute Gyte takes that experimentalism a step further, black metal fragmented, split into jagged shards, and somehow reconstituted into something at once heavy and harsh, but also weirdly melodic and mesmerizing, but also, totally batshit WTF, Ocrilim / Orthrelm worthy avant-shred, but that shred here is more about texture, as the guitar parts and riffs are so odd, so damaged and atonal, sometimes they conjure utter beauty, lush lovely sonic swells, other times, they're so warped they almost make your eyes water. Opener "Semen Dried Into The Silence Of Rock And Mineral", lays it all out, sounding a bit like a slow motion Mesuhuggah, or a super spare, 20th century Deathspell, the sound chugging and churning, creeping and slithering, the vibe more doomy really than black, the arrangement confoundingly mathy, intricate and constantly shifting, and the guitars, holy shit, even when the heaviness is peeled back, leaving just some haunting clean guitar shimmer, those parts somehow sound even MORE strange and alien.
There is definitely plenty of black buzz, the dizzying Voivod meets Deathspell fury of "Endless Moths Swarming", is so dense and droned out, it almost seems to smear into something beyond black metal, a sort of avant drone-buzz blackness. There's also weird poppiness, like the clean chiming guitar melodies woven into "The Inexpressible Loneliness Of Thinking", that at times almost sounds like some sort of blackened cold wave / gloom pop, but is laced with some impossibly catchy melodies, that seem to slip out of the microtonal tuning, just for a second, before collapsing back into a swirling black hole of avant sonics.
Holy shit this stuff is amazing and bafflingly brilliant. We're kind of shocked that this guy is still self-releasing it. It's really about time a label like Relapse, or Season Of Mist, or Profound Lore, finally step up and expose Jute Gyte's twisted blackness to the masses.
Packaged in a DVD style case with a full color cover, and a printed insert/lyric sheet.
We're always on the lookout for new weird music magazines, and we're fairly sure this might be our new favorite. To begin with, it's put out by one of the guys in weirdo black metal outfit Circle Of Ouroborus. Plus just have a gander at the contents, loads of AQ faves and a few bands we have yet to hear, but definitely sound promising. Blissy black metallers Amesoeurs and Amesoeurs offshoot Alcest, Finland's Ride For Revenge, Japanese metallic black ritualists Arkha Sva, Swedish suicidal black doomsters Hypothermia, Irish black metal cult Primordial, German black metal warriors Secrets Of The Moon, pagan folk legends Current 93, Australian one man metal horde Grippiud and Italian blackdeath warkult Blasphemophagher. As if that weren't enough, a bunch of record reviews, tons of cool photos, and every page is decorated in the margins with that cool pencil art that adorns all the Circle Of Ouroborus discs. Awesome!
Latest issue of this kick ass metal mag from long time aQ favorites, black metal geniuses (maniacs?) Circle Of Ouroborus, who, when not crafting twisted damaged folk flecked stumbling blackened buzz, put together a seriously excellent 'zine, covering a super varied selection of very AQ worthy outfits.
Number 5 features NY based primitive black metallers Ash Pool, Japanese doomsters Coffins, Danish doom combo Sol, legendary Norwegian black metallers Trelldom, German blackened death metallers Drowned, death metal legends Incantation, stoner doom trio Ramesses. And even some new-to-us stuff: Australian black thrashers Denouncement Pyre, and four super obscure black death doom bands with only demos to their names: Arvet from Finland, Ignivomous from Australia, Exorcism (we're not sure where they're from) and another Finnish band Profetus.
In addition to all that stuff, there's a bunch of reviews, as well as a killer primer on Finnish black metal, and each page has a cool hand drawn border with demons and flames and upside down crosses, skeletons, and in addition to all the various band photos, there are tons of creepy hand drawn illustrations.
Yay, more Kampfar(rrrrrr)! This Nordic horde, whose first ep came out back in 1995, was missing in action for seven long years, returning in 2006 with the frosty Kvass, and now they're back again with another icy blast of their Norwegian black metal mastery. If anything, this one's full of even folkier riffs, but stays super grim and heavy too, making for some sort of pagan ritual trudge, rolling and rasping and rollicking on and on majestically. There's something quite "classic" about the folky metal lope of tracks like "Vansinn" that's for sure. And as frozen cold as Kampar's collective heart must be, much emotion is still conveyed by the likes of "Vettekult". So, recommended obviously to any/all Kampfar fans, but also to anyone if you just like picking up a new Nordic black metal album this week - this one is the real deal like back in the '90s!
Something must also be said about vocalist and founding member Dolk (that's his name), who, in a recent band photo we've seen, displays a remarkable Kampfar logo tattoo across his stomach, gangsta-style! It looks pretty funny we must stay, but on the other hand, it's an excuse for him to show off his sixpack abs. As well as demonstrating he's serious about his band, it's no fly by night flavor of the month outfit. Indeed, though he somehow finds time for working out and getting tattooed and all that, Dolk's main priority remains channelling the wintry spirits of his Viking ancestors into metal music so powerful that even a non-band-member might consider getting the logo of inked on their body.
For some dumb reason, we love saying the name of this Norwegian black metal band... but mispronouncing it like "Campfire" with a pirate-y drawl. Campfarrr! Dunno why we enjoy that so much. It's the same with Finnish black metallers Barathrum. "BATHROOM" we call 'em, or maybe "Barthroom". And we chuckle like idiots. None of this is fair to Kampfar (or Barathrum for that matter). Kampfar are in fact very much a not-funny, totally true and serious Nordic pagan black metal proposition, having released several cultish albums in the past, efforts easily the equal of their more famous peers like Gorgoroth and Darkthrone and Enslaved in their early days. Actually we didn't even know they were still around, Kvass is their first album in SEVEN years! And thus, happily, that classic '90s style Norwegian black metal is what you get! Six long, heavy tracks with rasping vox, raw riffage, and some Viking folky bits as well. Frosty and spikey and grim, with lots of slower parts and majestic melodies underneath all the ice. Yah, Kampfarrrrr!
After making the recent domestic release of their "Tonight's Decision" opus our "record of the week" on the last AQ-L, we are now very happy to present this BRAND NEW import-only (as yet...) album from these Swedish gods of melancholy. Genius heavy downer pop
We've said it before but it bears repeating, whenever we hear metal bands cover their teenage influences, especially Depeche Mode or the Cure (why do all metal bands LOVE those two bands?), we always secretly wish there would be a band who just actually sounded like that. Not a metal band being ironic or retro, but a heavy heavy band who made incredibly dark and depressing emotional music. Ultra personal and epically miserable. Thus we are massive fans of Katatonia.
Imagine a doom metal Cure, or a metallized Depeche Mode. Katatonia may have started life as a serious doom/death metal band, channeling Paradise Lost, with thick downtuned grinding buzzing guitars, and harsh black metal vocals, but with the release of their classic Discouraged Ones record, they switched to clean vocals and the sound of the band followed suit. A massive, gloomy and dreamy doompop. Exactly what we had been wishing for. Catchy as heck, heavy as hell, but totally morose and melancholy. Since then the band has continued to polish and hone their epic commercial doom, with each record finding them moving closer and closer to MTV rock, but without losing their edge, managing to stay creepy and heavy. But shit, their songs are so good and so catchy, and intense and emotional, it was only a matter of time before these guys blew up. It hasn't happened yet, but listening to The Great Cold Distance, it can't be long now. Lots of moody expanses of bass and drum groove, sprinkled with minor key guitar jangle, bookended by massive chugging metallic choruses, hooks everywhere, gorgeous crooned vocals, dark depressing lyrics, really moody and evocative and so so heavy. There is no reason these guys shouldn't be up there with Tool and the Deftones. They definitely travel the same sonic path, although Katatonia definitely display more of a true doom heritage. But c'mon, all that moody heavy rock that the oh-so-depressed generation Z lap up like Prozac, how have they not discovered Katatonia? If we were 15 again, and hated school and just broke up with our girlfriend, and were always fighting with our parents, we can guarantee you we'd be dressed all in black, wandering around our neighborhood late at night, after everyone was asleep, with The Great Cold Distance blasting in our headphones. And pretty much every track on here would sure as hell make it on all the mix tapes we ever made. But since we're not, we'll just have to make do, luxuriating in these lush depressive epics, wallowing in each glorious wash of miserable metallic doom pop!
Very recommended!!
We listed this before when it was only available as a super-expensive, hard to get import. And even then we were like, you gotta get this, it's amazing! Now, at long last it's been issued domestically, at reasonable price -- and it's even been repackaged in a slipcase (jewelbox inside), with two previously unreleased bonus tracks! So now there's nothing to keep us from making it record of the week, which Tonight's Decision so totally deserves. It's the follow-up to 1998's Discouraged Ones, a record that threw everyone for a loop, with clean singing and an hypnotic, almost Cure-like (but ultra-heavy) sound, refining their earlier and harsher black metalish doom-death style. This time around, these Swedes are even more mellow and depressed. They even do a great Jeff Buckley cover (better than the original we think)! In fact, the more we listen to it, the harder it is to understand why they're not huge. They should be huge, but they're ghettoized as a European metal band on a metal label. Don't take this the wrong way, but if Katatonia could somehow get into heavy rotation on MTV or your local alternative rock radio station, they'd be SO popular. But never fear, it's still metal. Just artful, gloomy, doomy, post-death metal with enough melody and emotion and atmosphere to make you cry. Really, one of the best metal records of the year. Yet, one that supposed non-metal fans could easily love as well, for its gloom-pop brilliance. Highly Recommended to all!!
They actually have a new album as well, Last Fair Deal Gone Down, coming out sometime later this year (maybe even later than that in the U.S.) and we can't wait!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
If there is a black metal label these days that truly defines elite and kult and grim it's for sure gotta be Norma Evangelium Diaboli. So far they've released the utterly amazing Funeral Mist, the most recent Deathspell Omega, the Katharsis Kruzifixion album, and now this, a reissue of Katharsis' first album the appropriately titled 666. We loved Kruzifixion but were informed by Wrest from Leviathan that 666 was way better. And while it's maybe not WAY better, it is pretty fucking great and a lot weirder. Just the first song alone lets you know what sort of hellish ride you're in for, obviously there's the requisite buzzing riffs, chaotic blastbeats, demonic vocals, but there's something about it that sounds truly posessed and just a bit fucked. The vocals occasionally slip into freaky falsetto screams, the whole thing is drenched in reverb so it sounds like you're witnessing some sort of black metal ritual in a cave you stumbled upon at the base of a huge dark mountain. By the end of the track the vocals and the riffs get all tangled up and become a slowly devolving swirl of black metal chaos, splattered drums and howls of "666, 666, 666, 666" drift up from the abyss as the whole track slowly slips into some subterranean netherworld. And it goes on and on like that, brittle buzzsaw riffs are repeated mantra like over pounding thrashing drums and squiggly alien sounding leads and creepy black ambience all swaddled in massive amounts of delay. But unlike a lot of black metal, 666 is full of actual songs, catchy songs too, not just a series of BM riffs strung together. No, like Satyricon or Immortal or more appropriately in this case, Darkthrone, these are the sort of black metal invocations that actually get stuck in your head. Nothing quite like humming some little melody while you're walking down the street only to realize it's "Raped By Demons" by German "Kommando Metal" outfit Katharsis. Fuck yeah. And if somehow you forget that you are listening to transmissions from the darkest pits of BM hell, the liner notes not only advise that you "Listen in darkness and at maximum volume" but also to "burn your local church!"...
The 2009 return of Germany's completely unhinged Katharsis has proven to be one of the year's best and most evil surprises. The awesome recent split with Antaeus had metalheads wondering what Katharsis had been up to since their essential VVorld VVithout End album from 2006, but like the return of the similarly amazing Funeral Mist with Maranatha, folks everywhere were getting ready to shit all over Fourth Reich based on some vague initial responses from people who obviously have no clue what they are talking about. The big griping point seems to be that Fourth Reich is not as frantic and universe destroying as its predecessor, and there's no denying that the boys from Saxony had their work cut out for them. But after two spins of Fourth Reich it is clear that what we have here is one of the best metal records of the year, no question. Perhaps it is *slightly* less insane than VVorld, but more than anything it seems like the logical extension of that unruly beast, sounding exactly like what you would expect from something recorded at "Rape of Harmonies".
Three of the five songs here clock in at over 10 minutes, giving Katharsis plenty of time to sear your face off with their furious, unrelenting attack. Things kick off as out of control as you could ever hope for in a record with "So Nail The Hearts". In classic Katharsis fashion, the song is blazingly fast and like a tornado taking in everything in its path. And then of course there are those vocals... Try to imagine the general approximation of a demon clawing its way out of Hell, punctuated by moments that sound like a hysterical witch being tortured with some sharpened medieval object. Lyrically, the song tells a tale of blasphemous, Satanic destruction with choice couplets like "Our throats becometh an open grayve; vve'll use our sperm to deceive/the venom of asps is to be under our lipps; vve'll be armed vvith lyonne teethe." Woah. There is a brutal midtempo part halfway in, but even as the band slows for a brief moment, the super windy ambience of the recording keeps you firmly aware of Katharsis' cosmically blackened powers. Most unexpected with this song are the female vocals towards the end. STOP: we already know what you're thinking, and just be aware that this is nothing like what you generally find screwing up lots of black metal. Instead, the presence of the undeniably beautiful voice does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to change the vile tone of this number, in fact, as Katharsis buzzes their way to the song's conclusion, it almost seems like the female vocals are simply there as some sort of religious mockery. Which, you know, is totally fucking awesome.
Next up we have "Eucharistick Funereall", beginning with a punkish riff and more unbelievable shrieking. It's so rad, and impossible to ignore, as we observed with customers desperately trying to focus on which record to buy as this beast buzzed all around them. The guitars are like napalm, and things eventually lead into a super thrashy groove with an uber-heavy D-beat brutalizing your skull. There is a gloomy breakdown with surprisingly melodic guitar melodies wrapped in the non-stop riffing before an awesome rock n' roll ending.
"Reckoning" is pretty much the sound of the black metal holocaust, an unwavering, hypnotic buzz of psychedelic proportions followed by the unexpected synthscape of "Emeralde Graves". Strangely majestic, but also ominous as hell and just plain creepy, this piece is quite cinematic and plausible enough reason to believe that the dudes in Katharsis may own a Goblin record or two. It serves as a cool segue before the final song, "Sinn Koronation", a perfect closer that is slower, dirgier, and maybe even heavier than anything else on the record. Of course, things do reach lightspeed eventually with a very METAL guitar solo, but after a few minutes, Katharsis go back into their hateful lurch. Interestingly, their slower moments are incredibly powerful, not only on their own, but especially in contrast to the majority of the record. When Katharsis get all doomy toward the end of the song, it's like they've decided to just leave your mangled body in the wreckage they created, and then synths take over for a beautiful ending to an ugly, ugly record.
You get the impression that this band is unstoppable. They certainly sound like it. When one thinks about how reactionary parents have responded to metal over the past four decades, it usually turns out to be a whole lot of concern over nothing; Katharsis is exactly what they *thought* you were listening to all these years. So basically, we're giving this one our highest possible recommendation.
