This brand new 7" from Swedish depressive black metaller Kyla sounds exactly how you might expect, considering the man behind Kyla is also responsible for the equally black and depressive Hypothermia, as well as counting himself a member of damaged black metal pop weirdos Lifelover.
Kyla traffic in a sound we love, a woozy, super distorted, melancholic, minor key buzz, which begins all warbly and minimal before giving way to a mesmerizing trancelike not-quite-blast. The vocals are howled and anguished and echo drenched and nearly hysterical sounding at points, but they surface only here and there, leaving most of the record to pound out a hypnotic blackened dirge. The guitars are downtuned and almost sludgey sounding in tone, the drums muffled enough to blend in with the blurred guitars and rumbling low end, the B-side has a weird pop vibe running through it, and a killer main melody, reminding us big time of Lifelover, but the vocals are even more unhinged, exploding in squalls of terrifying shriek.
Pressed on ultra thick vinyl, housed in super striking black and white sleeves, and of course VERY LIMITED!
The Northwest's harshest militaristic horde returns with this cassette-only collection: five tracks (including three covers!) of hateful in-the-red black metal, grim neo-folk and crumbling black ambience. Opening ominously with an eerie choral wail, before launching into an overwhelmingly noisy cover of Emperor's "Ye Entrancemperium" (complete with an actual sample of the original's spoken word intro), dragging this classic regal monument of symphonic black metal into the realms of clattering lo-fi, taking a song that was already labyrinthian and opaque and plunging it into even murkier, more impenetrable depths. "Sleep Is The Enemy" is by contrast simpler, but that's not to imply it's any easier of a ride - opening with the foreboding ticking and chiming of some monstrous clock before emerging as a massive tuneless dirge that shifts into a wall of frantic blasts, buried subliminal growls and ghostly breathy whispers, but always returning to the dreamy surreal horror of that looming haunted chime. L'Acephale's take on Darkthrone's "As Flittermice As Satans Spys" (easily one of the best/weirdest BM song titles ever) is the biggest departure here - building this timeless piece of simplistic shadowy black metal into a grim neo-folk march, complete with the rapid strum of a mandolin, cracking militaristic thuds and inhuman howling. "Passing Into Sleep" is an atmospheric wash of moss-flecked black ambience. The single deathly groaning note of a haunted piano tolls endlessly underneath a wall of droning loneliness, creaking and shifting under the weight of its distant feedback and echo drenched operatic vocals. Closing out the proceedings is a reworking of Current 93's "Let Us Go To The Rose" (here translated into the French "Allons Vior Si La Rose"), taking the sparse folk melodies of the original and letting them drift hazily over a minimal, mid-paced, very Burzum-esque drum beat, before morphing into a churning trance of grinding tremolo guitars and furious blasts. And as this is being put out by Black Horizons it goes without saying that the packaging is minimal and beautiful, even including a miniature black and silver printed poster, incorporating the original artwork from Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger into an abstract surreal collage.
They may have taken two years between their first and second records, but here comes number three, mere months after we raved about number two, Stahlhartes Gehause. Malefeasance is another stunner, again mixing all manner of experimentation and soundscapery with a core grim black buzz, but L'Acephale move ever farther from the constricting tropes of black metal here, instead utilizing those sounds and styles to their own end, i.e. creating some of the most mysterious and darkly compelling abstract buzz drenched heaviness we've heard in ages.
Where Stahlhartes Gehause was still essentially a black metal record, Malefeasance feels like anything but, with much of the record buzz-free, and even when the band do create some seriously harrowing grimnity, it's abstract, and obtuse, avant even, bordering on a sort of sculpted noise, utilizing bits of blackness to enhance each track's mood and menace.
Album opener "Vainamoinen Nacht" is an epic 10 minute chunk of blackened drift, hushed and shimmery, laced with strange samples and nits of found sound, ominous and haunting, eventually, the song culminates in a flurry of hiss and static and crunch, leaving just some strange bit of European choral music. The following track, "Hitori Bon Odori", harkens back to L'Acephale's Mord Und Totsclag record, offering up some apocalyptic folk, replete with steel string strum and martial snares, whirling winds, and deem ominous wordless vocals. "A Burned Village" is the first time the band explore any black metal, although the track begins with a haunting funereal drum dirge and deep monk like chanting, which continues throughout the track, which consists of buzzing insectoid riffage, harsh vokills, and no traditional blasting drum beats, instead, more martial snares and that same opening percussion. Heavy for sure, and black, but not necessarily metal, more like some sort of metallic black ambience.
The last three tracks, clocking in at 18:09, 14:17 and 23:00 respectively, make up the bulk of the record, the first, "From A Miserable Abode" explodes in a squall of swirling downtuned guitars, super distorted and saturated vocals, a heaving Merzbowian freakout, tons of effects and stuttering sonic fragments, there do seem to be drums, but they're buried in the mix, instead the track seems to expand ever outwards, a huge dense cloud of frenzied sound, all underpinned by a moaning, keening high end drone, which later on reveals itself as a bagpipe or some sort of horn, the metal and noise fading out, leaving just a glorious Eastern style high end ur-drone, mesmerizing and meditative and very very mysterious. "Sleep Has His House" is another 'metal' track, but again, there seems to be very little forward momentum, very little propulsion, instead, the band whip up supercharged drifts of noise drenched high end skree, while underneath, a guitar is locked in a motorik hypnotic loop, the result a sound like some Finnish forest drone folk outfit remixed by some harsh noise combo, the two disparate elements melding into something wholly original and hauntingly listenable.
Finally, the record closes with the 23 minute "Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted", a deep drone / soft noise exploration, beginning with some subsonic rumbles, some streaks of feedback and brittle high end, and finally an extended doom folk dirge outro, a simple minor key guitar figure over a backdrop of his and whir, the whole thing strangely textural and visceral, ominous and dense with menace.
It's definitely strange that what might be the best L'Acephale record so far, also happens to be the least metal. So much so that we can only recommend this to the most adventurous of metalheads (which we like to think would be the majority of metal loving folk that read the aQ list), but fair warning to the rest, that this is not really a black metal record at all, instead, it's some gloriously abstract, blackened ritualistic collection of dark metallic drift and alchemical doom folk, of blacknoise and apocalyptic dronemusik, and thus, metal or not, is WAY recommended.
A year or so back, a strange and mysterious cd was left for us to listen to. An oversized black package adorned with a cryptic white woodcut, all sorts of strange text, in other languages. It took us forever to get around to it, but once we did we were kicking ourselves BIG time. One of the most amazing slabs of buzzing black grimness EVER. With lots of weird ambient and acoustic stuff mixed in. So we got in touch with the band to order a whole bunch, but unfortunately, it was limited to 100 copies and was gone gone gone.�
So�here we are a while later and in swoops Aurora Borealis to save the day, reissuing that very same cd-r, as an actual cd, in a a super swank dvd style case, with a printed slipcover, as well as a bunch of inserts and even a poster. But all that stuff is just extra, it's the creepy fucked up black damage inside that we're most concerned with.�
A French band name, a German album title, but the band is in fact from Portland, which is a bit unexpected once the filthy black fog of Mord Un Totschlag comes creeping out of your speakers. The guitars are harsh and buzzing, super high end, whirling and furious, with strange little epic melodies and harmonies surfacing here and there, but for the most part, each track is an extreme blast of buzzing blackness, the drums barely there, a constant pound way down in the mix, and the vocals, even more brittle and acidic than the guitars, threatening to overwhelm everything, a harsh hateful hissy howl. Repetitive and hypnotic, epic and majestic, and ultra grim and raw. Lo-fi but still heavy and relentless.�
These black blasts are separated by haunting stretches of apocalyptic folk, which makes a bit of sense when you realize the band features at least one member of Blood Axis and Waldteufel. Dark, dolorous, downtuned guitars strewn over vast expanses of murk and grime, haunting vocals, crumbling industrial ambience, tolling bells, the final track, "Euntes Ibant Et Flebant" is a black ambient epic, a spare sonic wasteland, with angelic vocals buried in the mix, what sound like bombs exploding in the distance and random low end disturbances way way off, rain, thunder, disembodied voices, simple muted percussion, angular guitars drenched in reverb, a gorgeous sprawl of wartime shimmer, of dismal desolate ambience.�
The record seems to center around the 21 minute�"Against A Weeping Sea Of Sleep" which begins as a white hot burst of hellish hateful buzz, the vocals AND guitar blown out almost to the point of becoming pure white noise, until the buzz dissipates, giving way to a simple funeral strum, over a shifting shimmering soundscape of ghostly vocals, and industrial whirs, until the buzz returns, but it's been transformed into a wispy sheet of sound which is draped over a swirling sea of mournful melodies and strummed flamenco sounding guitar, as well as that original steel string dirge, strangely lovely and haunting. The perfect combination of L'Acephale's two seemingly disparate sonic sides.�
Packaged in a dvd style case, housed in a cardstock slipcover, with a huge booklet featuring tons of intense woodcuts, random text, notes on each song, photos, diagrams and drawings, as well as a fold out black and white mini poster.�
It's taken two years, but L'Acephale have finally returned. This Northwestern black metal horde, whose debut was a massive hit around here, after it mysteriously showed up one day, has risen from the murk once again, dragging an army of deacaying flesh with them, hidden from view in the Cascadian forests, the then proceeded to conjure up all manner of sounds and spirits, capturing them only to flay them alive, spread them out beneath a black sun, guts and all, carefully and meticulously crafting the sonic abomination that is this, their second blackened gospel. Another distrubing hybrid of militaristic martial folk, and furious blasting raw blackness, four songs, long songs, the shortest 12 minutes, the longest nearly 25, the opening, a haunting bit of sampled vocals, militaristic percussion, dense drones, haunting chorales, that goes on for nearly six minutes, building the tension, sprawling out like some black military slowly moving machine like toward their next conquest, until finally, the band explode into action, a black cloud of furious buzzing riffage, blasting beats, grunting growling vocals, all wound up into a woozy dizzyingly blasting bit of lurching blackened metal. And then out of nowhere, the buzz and blast drop away, leaving some dark folk, soft strumming, crooned dramatic vocals, moaning violin, the sound definitely reminiscent of Der Blutharsch or Death In June (or perhaps Blood Axis or Waldteufel, seeing as Markus Wolff, one of the drummers, plays in both), gorgeous and languid and darkly haunting, until the rest of the band joins in, splattering the tranquility with chatoc blasts of wild drumming, and more frenetic riffing, finally dropping out, leaving just the sound of wind, and a woman, singing some sort of folks song. Really intense and mysterious. And that's just the first song!
The other three tracks are just as dense and tangled, with sampled soundtracks, to convoluted Deathspell style blackness, laced with haunting acoustic guitars, the band locking into some seriously intense bursts of mathy buzz, languid stretches of string laced dark ambient folk, simple strum, and mournful melodies, soaring epic sounding black doom, majestic and mighty, suoper chaotic black psychedelia whipped into a frenzy and wrapped around a women's chorus, like some fucked up black metal opera, deep lumbering minimal drones, sprawling out endlessly, beneath strange bits of creak and groan, and deep intoned voices, some sort of incantation, creepy bits of piano parlor music, all wrapped up in, and surrounded by, jagged shards of grim frosty blackend buzz.
A seriously twisted and magickal collection of ritualistik black art, a litany of musical blasphemies, as lovely and mysterious as they are hellish and haunting.A black covenent scrawled in flesh and blood, and rendered in pure audial evil.
Incredible packaging, 6 panel digipak, with a massive booklet, which tons of diagrams, photos, lyrics, liner notes, as well as text about the meaning behind each song.
Yet another new (to us at least) release from Northwestern apocalyptic folk / black metal horde L'Acephale, whose new record Stahlhartes we raved about on the last list. These two tracks were recorded back in 2005, when this record was actually released, predating even their first demo / full length Mord Und Totsclag.
And anyone who dug either or both L'Acephale's records will probably need this too. Both tracks unreleased, exclusive to this single, not so much folk here, instead, barring some creepy choral intros and a haunting ambient hymn like outro, this is full on raw and harsh old school black metal, furious and frenetic, pounding and thrashing and blasting, the vocals chaotic and off kilter, the riffage brittle and buzzy, the drums dense and often buried in the mix. There are some strange arrangements, some almost militaristic breakdowns, a bit of post rocky mathiness here and there, but those moments are subtle and barely discernible within L'Acephale's blown out sonic squall, a furious and relentless, grim and blackened two part plague delivered from the depths... glorious, soul shearing pestilence in sound.
Beautiful packaging, a black and red gatefold sleeve, with lyrics, credits, some amazing black and white photos of skulls and catacombs, also a printed insert, pressed on red vinyl, and limited to 1000 copies, each one hand numbered (and the numbers are getting up there, so odds are these are almost gone).
We loved 2010's Evoking The Multiverse debut from this Philly one man band so much, raving about that record's space out buzz drenched blackness, and epic, cosmic majesty, and we were beginning to think that might be all we'd hear from Labyrinthine, when out of the blue, this new one showed up. We're happy to report, it's just as good as the first, but pretty different sonically, where as that first one spent much of its time in ambient mode, sprawling fields of celestial shimmer and woozy, doom drift, this record gets right to it, with an opening track that's definitely blackish, but much more doomy, with some classic metal riffing, in fact, minus the raspy vokills, this borders on seriously true doom, and it sounds killer, even on the second track, the 'band' return to something much more properly blackened, but only just, the sound still infused with plenty of doominess, after a dense double kick opening, the sound slips back into a languorous lope, the fast picked guitar trills, and vocal rasps adding all the blackness to an otherwise mournful, melancholic doom. And so it goes for the first half of the record, the band unfurling, gorgeously melodic, and lushly produced blackened doom that doesn't really truly explode into black fury until track 5, which is truly black metal, furious and frenzied, soaring and majestic, the cool part being that many of the melodies and much of the guitar tone from the doomed first half remain, making even this frantic blackness feel depressive and a little bit doomy, which then leads directly back into, yep, more gorgeously plodding doominess, with tangled harmonized guitar melodies and woozy, almost psychedelic riffage. There's at least one more burst of furious blackness over the next few tracks, but really, most of the rest of the record is spent in full on mournful, majestic doom mode. And while maybe in the beginning, we were missing the Labyrinthine of old, this new record, once we acclimated to the new sound, and vibe, is still pretty fucking great...
First full length from this East Coast one man black metal band, who trafficks in some awesomely epic spaced out buzz drenched cosmic atmospheric symphonic blackness, a sound that falls somewhere between Velvet Cacoon, Wolves In The Throne Room, and Paysage D'Hiver. Six looooong buzzscapes, that drift from midtempo lope, to blurred black blast, the programmed drums skeletal and buried in the mix, a murky throb in a swirling sea of dizzying layered woozy riffage, washed out and psychedelic, the guitar parts spidery and minor key, the sound super atmospheric and depressive, haunting and otherworldly.
Much of Evoking The Multiverse is spent drifting through the sonic aether, the black metal barely black at all, instead, the sound seems to manifest itself as a streaked field of kosmische shimmer, lush layers of warm whirring buzz and smeared soft focus dreambuzz, "The Planetary Dream Of Infinity" most notably, seems to eschew the traditional tropes of black metal entirely (minus the vocals) offering up slow smoldering streaks of prismatic doomic drift, unfurling long burnished tones, sprawling chordal streaks, the entire track, bathed in some sort of soft celestial light, so melodic, and drifty and soft focus, if it weren't for the vocals, it could almost be some sort of blissed out blackened psychedelia, and much of the record exists in this black metal limbo, slipping just as easily into the heaven of warm otherworldly melodicism, as the hell of grim blasting black buzz, but more often then not, situating itself somewhere right in between, the heavy fast black metal parts rife with strange psychedelic filigree and subtle melodic shadings, and the pretty parts occasionally swallowed up by harrowing bursts of pounding frantic heaviness.
We first heard LA black metal horde Lake Of Blood on a split with aQ black metal faves Panopticon, but sadly, that split was so limited we were never able to get enough copies to list/review. So here it is two years later, and Lake Of Blood return with their first proper full length, in the form of a two song, 32 minute lp on local label The Flenser, where LoB prove to be a good fit, their epic slowburn doom flecked post black metal sounding right at home amidst other Flenser outfits like Panopticon, Bosse-De-Nage, Ghast, Necrite, Palace Of Worms, and Seidr.
The A side begins with the sound of surf, the soft white noise of crashing waves, which leads directly into a very wavelike progression of crashing lurching doom, plenty of lumbering stop/starts, angular riffage, crashing staccato heaviness, that almost sounds more like noise rock than black metal (we're hearing Dazzling Killmen for sure), it's not until about 4 minutes in that the band launch into some serious blackness, but even then, it's not the typical buzz and blast we were expecting, instead, the guitars are super bright sounding, and there's loads of melody, and even some acoustic guitars strumming away below the surface, and they pepper their blackened blasting with returns to the opening lurch and lumber. The song gets dense and mathy and pretty complex and proggy, with some seriously kick ass drumming, and over the course of the 17 minutes, the band slip easily from mathy blasting blackness, to stuttery abstract doom, to super melodic drift, to noise rocky crunch and to classic metal churn. All the while the strange production, and those mysterious buried acoustic guitars transforming the song into something all its own.
The flipside offers up more of the same, if a bit more straight ahead, less mathiness, and less of that doomy vibe, and more blasting and thrashing, with the first 5 or 6 minutes veering into almost classic black metal territory, until the band change gears again, and unfurl a droned out bit of almost psychedelic sounding post rockiness, laced with spoken word, and long stretches of droned out buzz, and when the band slip back into some more black buzz, the sound seems to shift dramatically, that mysterious acoustic guitar returns, and the sound is suddenly way more progressive, the sound flitting from dirgey and doomy, to buzzy and mathy, to noisy and chaotic, to super melodic and almost poppy, finally slipping into another bout of classic metal riffing before finally fading out into the surf sounds that opened the record.
Record number three from these German post black metallers, the first we've reviewed on the aQ list, although they did merit mentions in our reviews of records by Alcest and Amesoeurs, which makes sense since that's usually who they get lumped in with (along with Farsot, whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this weeks list), which to a certain degree makes sense, like those groups, Lantlos have more in common with the new strains of black metal, but unlike the sort of shimmery ethereal pop of those groups, Lantlos is simultaneously much heavier, and even LESS black metal. To our ears, Lantlos at this point sounds like a post rock band, albeit a very heavy one, and one with a distinctly black metal pedigree, but there are very few instances of blasting or buzzing, the vocals are definitely one the vokills side of the spectrum, but the music, is quite removed from black metal, slipping easily from abstract doomy plod, to dreamy, droney drift, from Neurosisy churn to soaring Godspeed like majesty, from moody, melodic almost Katatonia like doom pop, to skittery almost jazziness and back again. There's also the fact, that many of those sounds coexist in the same song, the lengthy tracks shifting constantly. And while here and there a bit of blasting buzz does pop up, in most cases it's in conjunction with some other sound that is distinctly NOT black metal, which if anything only makes it that much cooler.
These guys definitely get pegged as 'post black metal' but it might be more accurate to describe them as blackened post rock, or simple post metal, cuz they definitely sound like the sort of band that would find themselves sonically more at home alongside groups like Angel Eyes, the Ocean, Snowblood, Baroness, and all the other brooding slow build epic heavy post metal combos we dig so much. And hell, mixing in a little vokill rasp and some extra buzz, maybe a little bit of blast, can't hurt either.
We've been meaning to review something from this SF duo for a while now, the mysteriously monickered Z.V.H. and V.J.C, who make up the equally mysterious Lascoviec (formerly Angkor Vat). But their demos disappeared before we had the chance, and we've yet to receive the forthcoming split with Hungarian black metal masters Marblebog, but thankfully, Dark Hidden Productions has compiled their first two demos, Gesamkunstwerk and Gunshots Ring Out Over Vinland Streets, both originally released in 2006, onto one cd, and added a few bonus tracks to sweeten the deal.
Lascoviec traffic in droning, hypnotic, trance like black metal buzz, the guitars long washed out streaks, the vocals a distorted croak, often sounding like another layer of static, the melodies are melancholy and sorrowful, some tracks have programmed drums, pounding away machine like under a buzzy blurry blanket of epic majestic chordal whir, others are harsh and chaotic, with the drums lost int he mix, leaving just a thick undulating sheet of acid riffing and tortured vokills. There are plenty of clean guitars, and tranquil folky interludes, but just as many grinding ultra raw blackened dirges, the guitars thick and viscous, the vocals more of a animalistic hiss, the drums a buried throb, here and there dreamy washes of synth surface, but far from being tranquil, they're fuzzy and distorted, and slightly ominous, with a definite Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck vibe. Elsewhere the band craft weird sort of new wave sounding reverbed guitar jam, but still subtly creepy and haunting. Swirls of strings build ominous tension before exploding into super sharp jagged shards of weirdly blown out clean guitar riffing over relentless blastbeats.
And that's sort of what's so amazing about these guys, their sound varies so dramatically, from record to record, but even from song to song, sort of like the EEE stuff, the texture and the production are as critical as the songs and the riff, some are muted and murky and bassy and lo fi, others are sharp and angular, the guitars sonically are all over the place, sometimes soft and subtle, sometimes downtuned and sludgy, sometimes buzzy and brittle, the drums more often than not are buried WAY down in the mix, but that just makes the songs sound freer, as if they could fall apart or drift away at any moment.
Grim and gorgeous, twisted and intense, dramatic and a bit fucked up, long sheets of buzzed out bliss butted up against short sharp raw blasts of true blurred blackness, often getting all tangled up within the same song. What's not to like, this is some seriously amazing shit. Buzzy and black enough for the grimmest of warriors, but tripped out enough for folks into freaky outsider blackness.
Fair warning: Lasoviec are on Dark Hidden Productions, a label with dubious political leanings, and with definite ties to the Pagan Front, the hub for all things NSBM, aka National Socialist Black Metal. Although the band seem to be more concerned with themes cosmic and spiritual, nature and mythology, there are definite racist implications, the link is undeniable, so regardless of the band's stance, the label's is clear, and thus, another instance where the listener has to decide if the music trumps the possible unpleasant politics.
Frostwinds Of The Apocalypse is the latest full length from SF black metal duo Lascowiec, and is introduced by a strangely martial bit of medieval sounding synth and drum machine driven fanfare, which sounds more like it should be the beginning of some power metal record, but instead ushers in another blast of frenzied grim black buzz from these aQ faves, the sound lo-fi, warm and washed out, the guitars a dense insectoid swirl, the drums buried in the mix, more a pulse than a blast, and the vocals a deep demonic rasp. The sound furious, epic, majestic, melodic. Minus the vocals, the sound is super tranced out and mesmerizing, almost shoegazey in places, as is the second track, the vocals here echo-drenched and weirdly psychedelic, the tempo slowed down, making the sound even more trancey, the blown out buzz utterly mesmerizing, the overall effect less headbanging and more hypnotic. And while most of the record is spent it black buzz mode, there are of course random bits of non metallic sound, the most interesting being the epic 6+ minute sort of title track closer, which essentially sounds like a black metal song proper, but played on a clean guitar with no distortion, wreathed in echo and reverb, the result surprisingly lovely, still totally recognizable as black metal, but in a wholly different form, one that's darkly dreamlike, and has us hankering for a whole record of stuff like this! As always, essential Bay Area USBM!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been trying to get our hands on enough of these to list for ages, a killer 3 way split of obscure strangely melodic blackness, released on Hungarian label Turanian Honour, featuring long time aQ faves Marblebog, Bay Area depressive black metal duo Lascowiec and Verzivatar, another Hungarian horde we had never heard until now.
Lascowiec, whose killer demo compilation we raved about a while back (which we still have a small handful left), returns with four more tracks of washed out black beauty, darkly depressive and beautifully buzzy, the music of Lascowiec is a blurred and smeared minor key mystery, remove the distorted vokill croak, and you'd be left with a deep swirling shoegazey bit of soft focus buzz. The riffs are muted and muddy, lo-fi but still lush, locked into trancelike loops, woozy and warbly and hypnotic, about as pretty as black metal can sound without ceasing to be black or metal. Spidery tangled little melodies, wreathed in otherworldly effects, distorted but not harsh or jagged, more smoothed out and blissy, the vocals the grimmest element, but for the most part, it's the music that carries Lascowiec, gorgeously mournful, and hauntingly lovely buzzy blackness.
Marblebog offer up two songs, epic and majestic, melodic too, but with some super twisted way UP in the mix vocals, that transform an otherwise loping mysterious minor key dirge into something creeped out and harrowing. The main melody is gorgeous, almost power metal sounding, albeit slowed down and draped over a monotonous doomy drum plod, but those vocals, the perfect blend of harsh and hellish, brooding and pretty. Their second track is another strange blend, this time the guitars and drums are buried beneath thick swirling keyboards, and some fucked up demonic gurgled croaking vocals. Again, the effect is the same, a sort of woozy softly buzzing prettiness transformed into a fractured, Burzumic, off kilter depressive black dirge.
Finally Verzivatar deliver two tracks of fierce and frantic blasting blackness, but like the other two bands on the split, their sound is marked by an unlikely melodiousness, the riffs, frenetic and buzzy are also soaring and majestic, the vocals here too are weird, but less black metal, or really metal at all, more like a raspy punkish howl, or a strangled mewl. Gives Verzivatar a sort of crusty punkish vibe, reminding us a bit of French faerical black metal punks Nuit Noire. Definitely need to hear more from these guys.
All three bands offer up some seriously gorgeous melodic grimness, some surprisingly blissed out black metal buzz, unfortunately this is LIMITED TO 666 COPIES, and has been out for a while, so not sure we can get more. Each one is hand numbered, with a big full color booklet, liner notes, lyrics and the works.
Some may scoff at the idea of our black metal cassette grab bag. A random selection of wonderful blackened obscurities, all grim and mysterious, abstract and kvlt, offered in bunched of 3, 6,10 or 20. You never know what you'll get, but invariably, every grab bag offers up at least one remarkable gem, one instant classic, and usually more than that. In fact, a close look at some of last year's best of lists, reveals at least a handful of tapes from the grab bags in folks' top tens, which is tough to argue with.
One of the tapes, in one of those grab bags was from this band right here, Leaden, from Italy, who we were immediately smitten with, if one can actually be 'smitten' by something this creepy and bizarre and haunting and confusional. But we were, and still are.
Leaden, with their mysterious logo, the band name in a very classical looking cursive, the amazing album title: Monotonous Foghorns Of Molesting Department, song titles like "Black Apartment Of Depression", "I'm The Filth" and "When Out Seems To Vanish", it seems just too good, like the music couldn't possibly live up to the mystery and magic promised by the packaging, but if anything, the music is stranger, and darker, murkier and WAY more mysterious.
On the surface, Leaden are purveyors of doomy suicidal black metal, but their sound, and their songs bear only a passing resemblance to their brothers in abject buzz.
From the first few seconds of the opening track, a skipping delicate piano figure, peppered with stuttery bursts of static (and no it's not your cd player), the record immediately reveals itself as well out of the ordinary. Even when the band join in, the sound is not heavy and buzzy, instead it's washed out and muddy, weary and worn, the guitars a fuzzy gauzy blur, the drums muted thumps, the vocals harsh, but again smeared into something less jagged and more drone-y and monotonous, the whole vibe dark and dejected, the bass surprisingly active, pulsing and throbbing beneath the streaks of guitar buzz, almost like some sort of Burzum / Joy Division hybrid. At some points, the song stumbles to an even slower doom-ed pace, the guitars transformed into keening soaring tones, while the bass rumbles beneath, the drums even more skeletal. And that song pretty much defines Leaden's sound, the rest of the record following suit. It's definitely black metal, but only barely, instead, it sounds like some sort of blackened goth, or doomy slowcore, all the elements are definitely there, the riffs, the pounding drums, the harsh vocals, but the way they're recorded, arranged, the production, the ambience, the mood, it's all very dark and depressive, but with a distinct doom-pop element running through all of it. Strip away much of the buzz, and you might be hearing something more like Bedhead, or maybe Codeine, it's that sort of timeless musical misery, just rendered in shades of black, and degrees of buzz.
In fact almost every song at one point or another, shifts into some gothy groove, all simple propulsive drumming and doo-doo-doo-doo basslines, drifting above a swirling morass of reverbed guitars and disembodied riffs and croaked growls, and imbued with a surprising amount of pop, not hooks per se, but the melodies are indeed catchy, in their own grim way. Somehow heavy enough to still be black metal, but muted and murky and lilting and drone-y enough become some sort of black buzz pop, some slowcoredoom, a gorgeous moody melancholy collection of dreamy drone-y doompop drift.
Urgh!! It's the debut full-length of brutal, blackened, industrial death metal churn n' clank from this Tokyo based duo of Italian expats, consisting of M on "axe/machinery" and R on "vokills". This band's brutish, minimal, monolithic music certainly isn't for everybody, no sir, but those it IS for will love it. You might know if that applies to you already, as a couple years back we rave-reviewed Legion Of Andromeda's self-titled, self-released cd ep, essentially a demo. New recordings of three of those tracks are featured here ("Cosmo Hammer", "Overlord Of Thunder", and "Sociopathic Infestation"), alongside four new compositions. Here's some of we said about the ep, all of which surely still applies here of course: "Each track mostly a single riff, hell, at times it sounds like a single chord, chugging hypnotically, driven by a programmed robotic rhythm, occasionally shifting into a sort-of-chorus, but really it's just a noisier version of THAT ONE riff. All the while, some seriously throat shredding demon grunt, grindcore style belched vokills gurgle and growl over the top. Total knuckle dragging blackened bliss out of the highest order." (Well, that's a bliss out for people like us� we suppose others may find bliss in turning it off!).
This album was recorded by none other than Steve Albini (chances are, these guys like Big Black a lot), and compared to the demo ep, Albini cleans their sound up somewhat, just a bit, it's slightly less fuzzed and blown out, more clinical and precise perhaps. But still plenty brootal indeed. 'Tis truly a massive beatdown of heaving bowels-of-hell vocals, oppressive drum machine battery, and wall-of-static axe distortion, all layered and endlessly looping in what becomes delirious, distorted, deathly dementia, like someone took the entire early Earache catalog and reduced it all it down into some of the most psychedelically primitive, monotonously mesmerizing, mechanical heaviness possible. If you liked the Sewer Goddess we reviewed last time, but want something even more sick and EXTREME, then check this out!! In closing, we can't help but quote what the band says about this release themselves: "No filler tracks, no fade-outs, no avant-garde intellectual scum: just 7 slabs of inhuman heaviness fueled by total hate. The world is dead and mankind is shit. LIVE TO HATE. COSMO HAMMER MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE."
Cool b&w teeth/fangs cover art, which also incorporates the band's nifty axehammer logo...
Dig this killer blast of blackened slo-mo industrial death metal, from these Italians by way of Japan. We were pretty much sold already, they're called Legion Of Andromeda, they have song titles like "Cosmo Hammer", "Overlord Of Thunder" and "Fist Of The Galaxy", and the cover's a grim black on black band logo, a giant axehammer, and goddamn if the music doesn't live up to all the nonmusical promise. Four tracks of minimal, reductionist blackdeath brutality, almost like a black death version of Dutch instrumetallers Gore, each track mostly a single riff, hell, at times it sounds like a single chord, chugging hypnotically, driven by a programmed robotic rhythm, occasionally shifting into a sort-of-chorus, but really it's just a noisier version of THAT ONE riff. All the while, some seriously throat shredding demon grunt, grindcore style belched vokills, gurgle and growl over the top. Total knuckle dragging blackened bliss out of the highest order. Opener "Cosmo Hammer" is definitely the dirgiest of the bunch, just total slo-mo headbanging chug and churn that could (and should, and sort of DOES) go on forever. "Overlord Of Thunder", stretches out a bit, but just a bit, with a kick ass main riff, that's sort of like a stoner rock riff but way more blackened, the distortion crumbling and blown out, and while it seems like it's setting things up for some proper black buzz and blast, it's NOT, instead, LoA just lock it down, loop that riff, and unfurl a tranced out sprawl of motorik riffage, that in different hands could probably be a Pharaoh Overlord song, but here, becomes some sort of blackdeath musical mantra, modern minimalism by way of hair spinning, amp worshipping neanderthals and we LOVE it. And so it goes, the other two tracks delivering still more of that monstrously monotonous riffing, head caving, soul shearing, one-riff, drone-dirge heaviness that is totally mesmerizing, absolute hypno-death, industrial, black buzz trance out genius.
And yeah, it's a REAL cd, and it's only five bux, and it totally fucking RULES.
Latest from these French post black metal shoegazers, who seem forever doomed to live in the shadow of their countrymen Alcest and Amesoeurs, which makes sense, cuz most folks might in fact have a little trouble telling them apart. It's a shame though, because removed from the whole 'post black metal' equation (like really, all three of these band should be at this point), Les Discrets are masterful practitioners of fuzzed out, distortion drenched shoegaze dreampop heaviness. While they have essentially given up any pretense of being a black metal band of any stripe, their are some hints of blackness here, mostly in the occasional atonal riffage, and the brief stretch of guitar buzz and blast beat, but if anything, they definitely have more in common with the soaring dramatic metallic gloom pop of Katatonia, or the shoegaze blissiness of 4AD and Creation. There's plenty of buzz and pound, big soaring guitars, epic riffage, but even at their heaviest, Les Discrets are still a pop band, which is really what makes this stuff so great, every song here, gorgeously melancholic, epic and hook filled, maybe not necessarily in the classic verse chorus verse sense, but their knack for unforgettable melodies, for lush enveloping textures, for hypnorock mesmer, are unmatched, and yeah, we'll say it, even by their more famous countrymen. And when they slow it down, LD are capable of great beauty, of hushed crystalline mystery that sounds even more dramatic in the midst of a sprawling progged out black pop shoegaze epic. And all that said, of the three flagship post BM shoegaze combos, at this point we'd have to say LD might be out favorites. It could be simply because this is new, and these songs are fresh, but we're thinking it's much more than that.
The easiest way to describe Les Discrets is thus: anyone who loves Alcest or Amesouers, is gonna love these guys too. Which makes perfect sense, they're French, their sound is a blissed out shoegazey post-black metal pop, and heck they even share members with Alcest.
But unlike Alcest, whom these guys shared a split release with not too long ago, Les Discrets have pretty much eliminated all and any blackness from their sound. Only the barest traces, only shadowy vestiges remain, no harsh vocals, no blast beats, no frenzied riffing, no Les Discrets is like an even more poppy blissed out Alcest, all jangle and chime and soar and shimmer. And as we mentioned in the Alcest review elsewhere on this week's list, these guys are inexplicably beloved by black metallers. With Alcest it makes a bit more sense, as there is actually some blackness, but the blackness in Les Discrets has been infused with sunlight, transforming black into bursts of greys and blues, hazy and gauzy, a sound more akin to Katatonia really, majestic and epic and heartfelt and emotional, still heavy for sure, even a little mathy, but more than anything, lush and dreamy and shimmery, shoegazey and softly fuzzy, lots of clean guitars, acoustic jangle, crooned vocals, warm whirling effects, all mixed into the woozy distorted crunch and softly blown out buzz, the result, while not remotely black metal, is turning out to be one of our favorite shoegaze gloom pop records ever!
Er, we've never been sure that Lesbian was such a good name for this all-dude band from up north Seattle way. Unfortunately not an easily Googleable choice either, if you're just trying to find the band. But in its seeming inappropriateness, it does at least represent the "not quite what you expected" nature of their sound. And we HAVE always liked 'em; their debut for Holy Mountain, Power Hor, was a bit of a heavy fave here when it came out in 2007, we compared it to both Pelican and Wolves In The Throne Room! Now moved over to the Important imprint (they have good taste in labels, and vice versa), Lesbian present a solid follow-up in the form of Stratospheria Cubensis. Giving off a serious, melancholic vibe, this new opus, resplendent in Seldon Hunt artwork, should meet all your epic prog-doom-stoner-psych-metal needs quite handily.
The disc starts off with a great song, with a great title: "Poisonous Witchball", full of proggy angular riffs, and very metal ones too. It's the shortest song on the album, but still manages to fit in a great number of shifts and surprises, foreshadowing what's in store on the rest of the disc, which consists of looooong songs, five of 'em, that shortest one a relatively brief 8'28", the others in the double digits, up to 22'31", which gives them plenty of space to stretch out and psychedelicize... rather than go track by track, let's just say you get a smorgasbord of avant-metal mayhem and majesty, with repetitive sludge-bludgeon, speedy attacks, postrock soft-loud dynamics, sharp shredding guitar shards of quirky math metal, mammoth doom riffage, shoegazing melodic pretty parts, and more. It flows, though, how it flows. From ripping it up like Darkthrone one minute to crushing like Conifer or Samothrace another, there's no false steps, and no boring (but many beautiful) moments. We note that the "Lesbros" thanks list does not omit drugs, and likewise *your* thanks list should not omit Lesbian!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
These warnings are beginning to sound like mantras: THIS IS VERY LIMITED. THIS WILL MOST LIKELY ALREADY BE OUT OF PRINT BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS. WE GOT THE LAST 50 COPIES AND WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO GET MORE!! LIMITED LIMITED LIMITED!!! But like all good mantras, it pays to heed the sage advice contained within, and in this case the advice would be pick one of these up quick like before they're gone for good. A Silhouette In Splinters is the long in the works "ambient" record from Leviathan, released on Canadian label Profound Lore, lp only, pressed on thick red vinyl and as you may have surmised EXTREMELY LIMITED. Part of what makes Leviathan records so powerful and mesmerizing is Wrest's mastery of mood and ambience, so here he gets to explore an entire album of bleak and depressive atmospheres. But this is not pure ambient music, its ambience is only obvious when compared to the dense complex sound world of other Leviathan releases. This is not static ambience, not in the least, these are actual songs, not just creepy swooshings and simple drones. Silhouette is like an entire record made up of the best black metal intros ever, but here, each one is fleshed out into actual musical narratives. Skeletal guitar figures, drift and shimmer darkly over ominous swells of mournful minor key lament. What little percussion there is, hovers ghostlike beneath a wash of blackened swirl. The entire record is wrapped in a foggy cloak of starlit skies and murky underground passages. A haunting soundtrack to misery and horror, death and dying.
Now available on vinyl for a super limited time. Only 500 copies made so act fast (and be aware that the vinyl contains 2 less tracks than the cd)!
Everyone wants a glimpse into the blackened Leviathan vaults, containing the legendary 20 or so cd-r's and cassettes recorded and released during the years 2000-2002, early demos that played more like full-on proper albums, hell they WERE full-on albums, highlights of which were released as the two disc Verrater (soon to be repressed!) on tUMULt a few years back. But Wrest from Leviathan has made it clear that those were then, and averaging a new release every few months, including full lengths and splits, is now. Well, that is, except for this. Probably your only chance, outside Verrater, to hear where it all began. Howl Mockery At The Cross is an essential shard of the mysterious obscured blackened history of Leviathan, and while sonically a bit rougher than the more recent records, it's still a dark and twisting, buzzing and howling serpentine trip through the black, bleak and brutal sonic world of Wrest and Leviathan. Some of these tracks were actually first choices to be included on Verrater, but at the time Wrest had planned on re-recording them. But with each new record, and after a few aborted attempts, the idea of going back to old songs seemed less and less appealing. So this is now the only place to hear those amazing tracks. Lots of that blackened buzz we love so much, but as with all Leviathan records, there are plenty of distinctly un-BM parts all over the place: dense mathrockisms, blissed out droning breakdowns, sludgy doom, bizarre times signatures, impossibly complex drumming, mournful minor key melodies, that immediately recognizable heavily affected demonic howl, all twisted into a gorgeously dark and demented, moody and murky blackened squall. Even includes a Death In June cover, properly drenched in buzz and blackness, so much so that it sounds like it could have been penned by Wrest himself. Striking metallic silver cover with the Leviathan upside down cross and dripping moon logo.
We talk about 'long awaited' releases all the time, records we hear about well before their actual release date, forcing us to wait and wait and wait, but few records have been as eagerly anticipated, or generated so many emails from customers as this, the latest from SF black metal behemoth Leviathan. Especially considering the rumors circulating that this may indeed be the final recording from Wrest and his one man band, Leviathan. If it is indeed a swansong, it's hard to imagine a more fitting or more powerful farewell-and-fuck-off.
Even being a huge fan and voracious devourer of black metal, we would be hard pressed to tell lots of BM bands apart. It's the nature of the beast in some ways. But the second we threw this on, even if we hadn't known what was playing, there's no mistaking the sound of Leviathan, the guitar tone, those demonic croaked vocals, the dizzying lush black buzzscapes, the convoluted song structures, the weird mathy rhythms and the incredible riffs.
Massive Conspiracy is not a huge departure from the sound of Tentacles Of Whorror, if anything, it just takes all the elements of that record and pushes them just that much further out. The sound is a bit more dense, more epic, the drumming is amazing (especially after the switch from electronic drums to real drums) the compositions more sprawling and expansive in scope. Which is saying a lot since past Leviathan records were pretty dang epic and sprawling already.
The sheer hatred of the titles is certainly expressed in the music as well, this is some scathing, hateful furious sound.
The record begins with some strange static, hissing drone-like buzz, ominous ambience beneath it, a haunting melody, then Wrest's howl and the record explodes in a flurry of rapid fire riffing and relentless blasting, but only briefly, the song immediately switches gear into a lurching lope, then right back into the blast. The song is peppered with super dense squalls of high end buzz, streaks of ultradistorted skree, while beneath all sorts of murky melodies lurk, almost like some old 78 was left playing in the background, giving the track an incredible creepy vibe, the last half of the song wraps itself around a slithery downtuned staccato riff, a gorgeously grim dirge that pounds its way to a burst of black chaos at the finish.
The second track is all whirring synths, loping drums, and Wrest's gurgling growl, a weird skeletal ambient dirge that is soon swallowed up by keening high end guitars, crunching downtuned churn, and some super freaky almost operatic vocals, the middle of the song is all full speed freaked out intensity, before again, the song locks into a super riffy groove, much like the opener, before finishing off in another black blaze.
The rest of the record follows suit, weaving super elaborate soundscapes of black metal buzz, and moody mathy meandering, dense black ambience, and swirling low end drones, the tracks rife with parts and bridges and confusional changes, all masterfully wound up into dense convoluted blackened, that while on their own are strange enough, are also peppered will all manner of sonic weirdness, be it slippery peals of woozy, dizzying melody, garbled vocal fragments, soaring harmony guitar melodies, super obtuse dynamics,
All culminating in the final two tracks. "Vulgar Asceticism" is definitely the most fucked, and maybe most amazing song Wrest has ever recorded. Even the opening, with its muted riffing and murky bass throb, staccato riff, and weird Greg Ginn-ish scrape and grind, before the song takes off. And the main riff is super warbly, almost sounding like he's playing with a slide, the notes wavering and detuning, only to be yanked back in line, and then bent way out of tune again, the result a blurry seasick lurch, exacerbated by the dynamics, the riffs often slipping into strange start stop stutters, until the song reaches it's middle stretch, the bass and drums locked into a relentless midtempo blast, while layers of guitars, and various riffs slip and slide, waver and warble, a super dizzy expanse of funhouse mirror blackness that is as fucked up and far out as it is amazing and masterful.
The closer, "Noisome Ash Crown" is an appropriately somber end to Massive Conspiracy, maybe even Leviathan itself. The whole first half a funereal crawl, a bleak grim landscape of whirring thick black ambience, and strange squalls of processed vocals, squiggles of distorted guitar, the drums a solid framework for the drifting abyss above. A strange washed out, gauzy black ambient bridge, gives way to a crushing almost industrial dirge, the melodies majestic and sorrowful, the vocals harrowing and harsh, the drums furiously flailing before transforming into muted little tangles, the rest of the song following suit, a dark minor key outro that gives way to the same black static that started the record.
The first limited pressing comes in a red digipak, featuring some seriously twisted original artwork from Wrest on the cover. Inside lurks a 12 page full color booklet, with more freaky drawings, lyrics and no liner notes.
NB. this officially comes out on Tuesday (3/25) so we can't sell any in the store 'til then, but of course mailorder folks can go ahead and order it now, to get in the mailorder queue...
Back in 2011 when we reviewed Leviathan's last full length, True Traitor, True Whore, we called it one of the meanest, darkest, heaviest Leviathan albums yet. We don't want to get lazy with our reviews but we'll just go ahead and repeat that line for Scar Sighted: THIS is one of the meanest, darkest, heaviest Leviathan records yet. Anyone who reads our lists or follows extreme metal in any way is surely familiar with most of the Jef Whitehead discography, right? Tons of demos, EPs, and splits, a few full lengths, some controversy, but always dedicated to making some of the most heavy, crushing, bleak, twisted black metal in the U.S. and perhaps the world. Scar Sighted is a absolutely massive record - both in sound and atmosphere. When it's not crushing you with absolute freight-train force from the riffs, its somber, bleak atmosphere takes over, reminding us of our favorite Whitehead side project, Lurker of Chalice. The first track, "The Smoke of Their Torment", is maybe the most death metal sounding Leviathan track ever recorded. Pitch-shifted growls over chunky, chuggy riffs, but still an atmosphere and twisted approach that makes it so uniquely Leviathan. Like Deathspell Omega covering Incantation (or the other way around?). From there, the album, somehow, only gets better, twisting and turning through labyrinthian riffs, rain-soaked doom trudges, and industrial wastelands. The climax of the album is surely the title track; nearly seven minutes of slow, wall of sound madness before the blast beats come back and the song falls apart into a somber outro. Seriously, going through these tracks one-by-one won't even do it justice!
Comes in a beautiful oversized cardboard cd box with tons of Whitehead's twisted artwork, as if you needed another reason to buy this. Whether you buy one metal album or hundred this year, this one is not to be missed. No-shit contender for black metal album of the year.
Now on limited edition import double vinyl (blood red vinyl too!) -- with a vinyl-only BONUS TRACK! What we said when the cd version came out:
Summer may just have begun here in San Francisco, but with the release of this new album from local one-man black metal act Leviathan, it sure seems like winter time (plus you all know what Mark Twain said about summer in San Francisco anyway). Brrr. The frosty riffs and blood freezing atmospheres are warmed only by the blasting drums... But you know what, Leviathan hardly needs our attempts at cliched black metal hyperbole to stand proud amid the clutter of corpse-painted pretenders. Leave aside all that and listen: this is keenly crafted, weirdly artful, utterly uncompromising metal. From mathy mayhem to slow, doomy dirge, Leviathan displays unfettered creativity, immense musical skill, and intense emotional involvement in his art (those being dark emotions, if you have to ask). In the evolution of Leviathan, this brings in a torrent of old-school riffage (i.e. Celtic Frost and Slayer) and wired-for-Destruction song constructs while also slowing down more than even before to bathe in ambient weirdness and melody. Vocally, Leviathan's exhalations are like exhumations, the bringing forth of seemingly wordless death (though in fact, Leviathan has lyrics and they're so interestingly twisted). More proof, if any was needed, why Leviathan is in absolute fact one of not only our favorite black metal acts (enough so that Andee released the debut Verratter on his tUMULt label) but also considered so by many others across the globe. And is that some amazing Comus-ish cover art or what? Its stark, disturbed violence and eccentricity perfectly captures this album's whorror.
Summer may just have begun here in San Francisco, but with the release of this new album from local one-man black metal act Leviathan, it sure seems like winter time (plus you all know what Mark Twain said about summer in San Francisco anyway). Brrr. The frosty riffs and blood freezing atmospheres are warmed only by the blasting drums... But you know what, Leviathan hardly needs our attempts at cliched black metal hyperbole to stand proud amid the clutter of corpse-painted pretenders. Leave aside all that and listen: this is keenly crafted, weirdly artful, utterly uncompromising metal. From mathy mayhem to slow, doomy dirge, Leviathan displays unfettered creativity, immense musical skill, and intense emotional involvement in his art (those being dark emotions, if you have to ask). In the evolution of Leviathan, this brings in a torrent of old-school riffage (i.e. Celtic Frost and Slayer) and wired-for-Destruction song constructs while also slowing down more than even before to bathe in ambient weirdness and melody. Vocally, Leviathan's exhalations are like exhumations, the bringing forth of seemingly wordless death (though in fact, Leviathan has lyrics and they're so interestingly twisted). More proof, if any was needed, why Leviathan is in absolute fact one of not only our favorite black metal acts (enough so that Andee released the debut Verratter on his tUMULt label) but also considered so by many others across the globe. And is that some amazing Comus-ish cover art or what? It's by Dan Higgs of Lungfish, and its stark, disturbed violence and eccentricity perfectly captures this album's whorror.
Before everybody has a big ol' black metal meltdown, this is NOT a brand new Leviathan record (although there is a new one coming soon). This is in fact the Leviathan half of the recent split with Sapthuran released on Battle Kommand Records a little while back. However, it is the first (and only) time these songs will be available all by themselves, and on vinyl! And what a gorgeous slab of vinyl it is. A brand new painting by Wrest, the man behind Leviathan, adorns the cover, and it is truly gorgeous and horrifying, some sort of shadowy horned thing, a nice thick sleeve with the text printed in reflective gloss over the image. Very striking. The vinyl is either half red / half green, or half green / half black, and no you can't specify which color you want. It's random. Which means DO NOT ASK for a specific color, you will get whichever one gets grabbed at random, and of course, it's super limited, so only one per customer. So now that that's all out of the way we can explain just why you absolutely NEED this record:
The mighty Wrest and his black metal behemoth Leviathan resurfaces once again, and once again Wrest does not disappoint. In fact if anything (and if it's even possible at this point) the Leviathan material on The Blind Wound is even more fucked up and out there than ever. That Leviathan sound is present and in full effect, a blurry swirling buzz of crazy riffs, impossible drumming, those insane vocals, and completely bizarre song structures, almost proggy at points, never hesitating to stop and start, stutter through some improbably complex series of time signatures or bliss out into some strange ambient soundscape. And as if Wrest's compositional style and playing weren't unique enough, every track is rife with all manner of weird parts, bizarre sounds and fucked up sonic detritus. From strange tripped out drone-ambience, angular almost Greg Ginnish guitar freakouts, impossibly tortured and affected vocals that go from guttural rumble to hellish howl, to creepy otherworldly keyboard like backgrounds, to sludgy almost doomlike breakdowns to full on krautrock / mathrock workouts, albeit slathered in plenty of buzz and fuzz. The final track finishes things off in a completely unexpected way, with a warm and fuzzy slow motion smear of gauzy muted My Bloody Valentine / M83 guitars and simple blown out drumming. As always, amazing!
A long while back we reviewed a split cd by SF black metal legend Leviathan and the Bathory worshipping Polish horde Iuvenes. As much as we may have dug the Iuvenes stuff, the Leviathan material was the real reason we all tuned in. So now Viva Hate have gone and taken just Wrest's half of the split and released it on vinyl (this is either the second or third, and supposedly final pressing), with all new art, printed inner sleeves, and pressed on INSANELY thick clear vinyl. Here's what we had to say about this stuff first time around:
Finally a little more Leviathan to hold us over until his next forthcoming full length, Tentacles of Whorror! This time around it's a split with European old schoolers Iuvenes who traffic in buzzy blurry black metal, Bathory style. But let's not kid ourselves, Leviathan is why we're here and Wrest does not disappoint. Grinding suffocating swarms of buzzing guitars, ultra creepy, deeply depressing ambience, completely and brilliantly fucked drumming, haunting Burzum-y keyboards, and that inhuman bowels-of-hell rasp that occasionally erupts into an utterly terrifying demonic shriek. But it's the songs, the songs are just so fucking good. So many black metal bands make all the right sounds, but can't actually write real songs. Wrest continues to explore and push the boundaries of black metal with Leviathan, exploring distinctly non-black metal sounds and ideas, but manages to stay grim and true the whole time. The songs here are punishing and crushingly dense, disturbing and evil as fuck, but days later, you'll find these riffs stuck in your head like a crown of thorns! Essential!
Wrest and his one-man-black-metal-band Leviathan return, with the corpses of Christians and poseurs littering the bleak landscape evoked by his sonic barrage of inhuman vokills, majestic riffing, and punishing drums. Pure misanthropic musical mayhem. Surely you remember Leviathan -- Andee put out the debut double cd Verrater on tUMULt only nine months ago, and that's been a very successful release. But Verrater was only the tip of the blackened iceberg that is Wrest/Leviathan's ability and need to make intelligent and emotional extreme rock music. Hence, this suicidal statement spawned so soon. At AQ, we fancy ourselves connoisseurs of this kind of stuff, and believe us -- this guy is good (and evil)!! What we mean is, as raw as it gets, there's some intense talent on display here. Lots of San Francisco bands have gotten hyped recently, but here's one that really deserves worship. Chaotically complex, pitilessly crafted tracks like the nine-minute long "Sardoniscorn" somehow maintain this music's one-foot-in-the-grave old school spikes n' corpsepaint directive while simultaneously getting totally arty and out there with epic, prog, avant-garde elements. Doomy drone, weird downtempo percussive interludes, atonal piano, ambient psychedelia, extreme vocal unpleasantness, lots of distortion and feedback. Yes! So it's no surprise that tUMULt and Aquarius (and our customers) weren't the only entities to appreciate the grim genius of Leviathan, as Wrest's project has now been signed to multi-album deals with two black metal specialists, Moribund in the States and Drakkar over in Europe, this album being the first fruit of that deal. We even recently discovered that none other than pagan pop star and psych/krautrock maniac Julian Cope is a big Leviathan fan, recommending Verrater on his website! So, this is another one for both black metal freaks (who will find this worthy of keeping company with your Burzum, Satyricon, Immortal, etc. records) as well as any other adventurous music-lovers unafraid of dabbling in the weird and wretched...
For a while it seemed like West Coast one man black metal horde Leviathan was no more. More and more disillusioned with the modern black metal scene, an ongoing dispute with his label, a seemingly constant battle with personal demons (which no doubt inspired the sounds of Leviathan), 2008's Massive Conspiracy Against All Life was seemingly to be Leviathan's swan song, and it was a pretty epic finish to an already epic career. Then it seemed the whole world was talking about Leviathan again, or specifically the man behind Leviathan, Wrest, aka Jef Whitehead, but the focus wasn't musical, it was personal, as Whitehead was involved in a high profile series of disturbing allegations, which for now remain unresolved, legally and otherwise, and definitely had many fans writing Leviathan off completely. And as if testament to the fact that demons drive the music of Leviathan, this recent experience, and its ongoing ramifications, seemingly inspired Leviathan to start back up, and to record again, creating art from pain, and ultimately making one of the meanest, darkest, heaviest Leviathan records yet, no doubt reflecting the anger and confusion that has consumed Whithead's life over this last year. One need look no further than the album title, or the track titles, it's definitely not subtle, but then black metal never really was. And if singing about Satan was considered grim and kvlt, we can only imagine what folks will make of True Traitor, True Whore, where as the subject matter is indeed grim, the spirit hateful and brutal, TTTW is a musical venting like no one has seen before. Sure the histories of rock music, and metal music are littered with angry missives to ex-lovers, to enemies, hell, even to friends, but rarely has that anger been so fully rendered as pure black sound.
And while much of what we loved about Leviathan remains, we had mentioned in a previous review that while we might have trouble telling much black metal apart, Leviathan was, and seemingly always will be immediately recognizable, but, a lot has changed, in the last three years, that disillusionment with black metal has resulted in much of TTTW moving away from the black buzz, and the production too, handled by Sanford Parker, who also had a hand in Nachtmystium's transformation into something much more psychedelic than black, but the opening track, "True Whorror", at least for the first two minutes, are definitely as grim and black and buzzy as ever, Whitehead's demonic croak in full effect, the guitars insectoid and wildly frenzied, plenty of gnarled atonal melody, and some wild chaotic drumming, but then at about two minutes, we get our first hint of what is to come, a lilting surprisingly melodic bridge, with some cool almost sitar sounding guitars, some strange industrial sounds in the background, a weird creepy sample, and then it's back to the buzz and blast, but the sound flits constantly from grim to melodic, from frantic and twisted, to woozy and almost psychedelic.
"Her Circle Is The Noose" is almost like nineties post rock, blackened, with weird reverbed vox, plenty of clean layered guitars, loping rhythm, the main riff, more of a haunting arpeggiated melody, the Slint vibe is huge, it's not until about 3 minutes in, that the song launches into a blurry blast, but the guitars spitting out wild upper register skree, only to slip right back into that blackened post rock lope. "Brought Up To This Bottom" is a bit more black, but it's also even more tripped out, with some strange sonar like pings, a super dynamic stop/start arrangement, the sound definitely much more lush and psychedelic than past releases, the recording epic and massive, with some of the sounds so in-the-red they seem to be crumbling from the speakers, the drums sounding better than ever, definitely the most live, reminding us at times of Don Caballero's Damon Che. "Contrary Pulse", is all echoey and reverby and strangely murky, a washed out droney chunk of hypnorock, that occasionally splinters into something more black and buzzy, but even then, the sound is much less about buzz and blast, and when the song is creeping and droning, the vibe is weirdly industrial and seriously sinister.
A couple old tracks from the early demos (and later compiled on the tUMULt double disc Verrater) get redone here, the first is "Shed This Skin", which works surprisingly well in this new context, and benefits from the modern overhaul / reinterpretation, Whitehead's cool sinister croon, and with an added lushness that was only hinted at on the original, not to mention more clean guitars, and a way more psychedelic vibe. "Every Orifice Yawning Her Price", is another one that bucks black metal convention, minus Whitehead's inhuman howl, the music is weirdly post rocky, and almost sea shanty-ish, with some cool bits of warm psychedelic clean guitar swirl, as well as a cool tripped out, droney second half, where the drums continue to pound away, beneath a wild tangle of spidery melody and garbled vox, as well as thick chordal swells that swirl and pulse. Which leads right into the way more metal "Harlot Rises [Mesmerized Again]", that adds some Kiss-like flange to the drums to great effect, and after a pounding almost doomy into, switches gear, and becomes almost poppy, still blackened and post rocky, but definitely with a pop vibe. And this track might be the weirdest of all, splintering partway through into a sort of spaced out breakdown, that shifts from twisted dramatic synth/drum workouts to woozy psych trip-out, and a seriously dreamy droney outro.
Finally, the record finishes off with another old demo track, "Blood Red And True", which was definitely one of our favorite classic Leviathan jams, and like "Shed This Skin", ends up sounding amazing in its new form, the guitars impossibly thick and chunky, the vocals sick as ever, a churning chugging blackened melodic doom, the heavy parts epic and majestic, the tripped out parts, way more psychedelic, layered and lysergic, the sound impossibly lush and evocative, about as close to soaring epic Godspeed style post rock as Leviathan has ever gotten, a super dramatic finish for sure.
Yet again, Whitehead continues to push the limits of black metal with Leviathan, even moreso now that he seems to have abandoned any bonds to the scene that claimed him, and while this is definitely the most bitter and angry Leviathan record yet, it's also probably the strangest, and most progressive, and our favorite in a while, managing to keep the true core of Leviathan's sound while moving well past the tired tropes of the grim and the black, and here's hoping that this is not the last we hear from Leviathan.
Packaged in a super striking digipak, with reflective ink printing, and cyrillic style type.
Those of you who live in San Francisco may have seen or even bought some of the many self released casettes by the mysterious one man black metal band called Leviathan. Or some of you may have seen Andee or Allan sporting their Leviathan shirts, or you may have even seen Wrest, the man behind Leviathan lurking around AQ...regardless, Leviathan is the latest and certainly one of the greatest of the Bay Area black metal bands (Ludicra, Sangre Amado, the godlike Weakling [also on tUMULt], etc...) who seem to exist in some sort of vacuum here while elsewhere, band after unoriginal band keep getting signed to huge labels and hyped to death even though most of them suck.
For this release Andee and Wrest went through the 13 full length Leviathan cassettes/cd-r's (as of today that number has leapt to 15!) Leviathan had recorded since 1998 to compile a good overview. But they couldn't whittle it down enough so one disc became two, with the first disc being the newer stuff, and disc two being the older, raw-er material.
Verrater is pure, primitive, cult, home recorded evil. Two discs, twenty two tracks, one hundred and forty three minutes of buzzing, howling, pummelling, black metal. Think Burzum, Darkthrone, Immortal, that sort of thing, but with all sorts of weird twists and sonic surprises. Yes, Leviathan is grimmer than grim metal that the frost & forest lords of Norway should bow down to, but it's also pure expression unfettered by genre restraints, although informed and inspired by them. Like Weakling, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Caacrinolas, Ludicra, Potentiam, Enslaved, and some other AQ-championed black metal acts, this is not just one for fans of black metal only! It's dark, weird, noisy, disturbing art embodying one man's vision that should be heard by anyone into avantgarde, experimental, psycically and physically powerful rock music. From blasting howling fury to moody ambient blackness to off kilter weirdness to droning riffery to soul crushing heaviness. What's truly remarkable is that one man, playing all the instruments himself, and recording at home, can evoke such strong emotions and invoke such musical demons. Original, evil, hateful, misanthropic, bizarre and truly black metal.
Seems like rumors regarding the end of Leviathan were greatly exaggerated. Not only is Leviathan still a going concern, but then out of nowhere pops this brand new, bad ass split, with a Greek band called Achernotas, who we knew by name but had never heard until now.
Needless to say, most aQ metalheads won't need much more prodding than the words "new Leviathan record", then there's the fact that the cd AND vinyl version of this split are both insanely limited, which means once we sell out of these, odds are we won't be able to get more, which is a huge bummer, because not only are the Leviathan tracks awesome (obviously), but we're pretty psyched on Acherontas as well.
The Leviathan tracks sound like maybe they're a bit older, perhaps before the shift from electronic drums to acoustic drums, the sound is murky, but still gnarled and chaotic and dense, the arrangements furious and frenzied, the drumming insane, and that unmistakable demonic croak. Lots of glitch and buzz, tangled atonal melodies, a heaving wall of blackened chaos, but it is Leviathan, so there's plenty of dark brooding ambience, some classic metal sounding chug, some spaced out almost doomy sounding blackness, the sound here falls somewhere right between classic Leviathan and the more twisted sonic soundscapes of Lurker Of Chalice.
The Acherontas tracks start off with haunting reverb drenched piano, creating a creepy otherworldly vibe, before the band launches into some super grim sounding black pound, the drums simple but intense, the guitars super distorted, the riffs woozy and minor key, the sound slipping easily from loping Burzumic plod, to proggy almost folky swirl, with clean guitars and strangely complex drumming, smothered in ethereal effects, the vocals especially harsh, dripping with demonic intensity, then suddenly transforming into deep haunting croon, the guitars following suit, growing more and more melodic and lovely, still all wrapped in a haze of distorted buzz, eventually fading out in a blur of minor key miserablism. Really awesome stuff. Definitely need to hear more from these guys.
But for now, if you do want one of these, cd OR lp, act fast, these have been selling like crazy and we're down to about half of what we started with. The cds come in a nice digipak (although be warned, some of the edges are a little worn in shipping, nothing we can do about it, these are probably all we're gonna get), and the lp is a super striking pictured disc, that comes in a heavy sleeve with a printed 12" x 12" insert.
We only have a dozen of these. We will NEVER get more. So this is one of those first come first served deals, quick on the buzzer, don't delay or you're shit out of luck. SERIOUSLY. Four black metal bands from all over the world. One 7". One track each. Grim and evil and cult and gone before you know it. Leviathan, Ad Hominem, Funeral Winds, Eternity. In a gorgous black on black gatefold sleeve. And as it says on the back of the record: "This piece of hate is limited." Indeed...but only in number.
Managed to get just a few more of these in stock! Direct from Wrest of Leviathan. And we are told these will be the last copies ever so don't miss out AGAIN. Here's what we had to say about this split when we first got it in:
Finally a little more Leviathan to hold us over until his next forthcoming full length, Tentacles of Whorror! This time a round it's a split with European old schoolers Iuvenes who traffic in buzzy blurry black metal, Bathory style. Really simple blast beats over superdistrorted riffs and growled gutteral vocals with squiggly leads buried waaaay doooown in the mix. Droning and repetetive and very hypontic. But let's not kid ourselves, Leviathan is why we're here and Wrest does not diappoint. Grinding suffocating swarms of buzzing guitars, ultra creepy, deeply depressing ambience, completely and brilliantly fucked drumming, haunting Burzum-y keyboards, and that inhuman bowels-of-hell rasp that occasionally erupts into an utterly terrifying demonic shriek. But it's the songs, the songs are just so fucking good. So many black metal bands make all the right sounds, but can't actually write real songs. Wrest continues to explore and push the boundaries of black metal with Leviathan, exploring distinctly non-black metal sounds and ideas, but manages to stay grim and true the whole time. The songs here are punishing and crushingly dense, disturbing and evil as fuck, but days later, you'll find these riffs stuck in your head like a crown of thorns! Essential!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The mighty Wrest and his black metal behemoth Leviathan resurfaces once again, this time teamed up with fellow USBM outift Sapthuran. It's a good matchup in so much as Sapthuran sounds quite a bit like the current crop of West Coast black metal (Xasthur, Crebain, Draugar, etc.) which is definitely a good thing. Midtempo buzz and blur, with haunting clean guitar melodies in the background, that come to the forefront briefly on the second folky ambient track, only to be summarily obliterated by Sapthuran's closer, a dizzying blurry buzz of droning riffs buried vocal howl and splattery blast beats. Definitly need to hear more from these guys (we actually have Sapthuran's full length in stock, just ask).
But as always, Leviathan is the main event, the reason we all showed up, and once again Wrest does not disappoint. In fact if anything (and if it's even possible at this point) the Leviathan material on this split is even more fucked up and out there than ever. That Leviathan sound is present and in full effect, a blurry swirling buzz of crazy riffs, impossible drumming, those insane vocals, and completely bizarre song structures, almost proggy at points, never hesitating to stop and start, stutter through some improbably complex series of time signatures or bliss out into some strange ambient soundscape. And as if Wrest's compositional style and playing weren't unique enough, every track is rife with all manner of weird parts, bizarre sounds and fucked up sonic detritus. From strange tripped out drone-ambience, angular almost Greg Ginnish guitar freakouts, impossibly tortured and affected vocals that go from gutteral rumble to hellish howl, to creepy otherworldly keyboard like backgrounds, to sludgy almost doomlike breakdowns to full on krautrock / mathrock workouts, albeit slathered in plenty of buzz and fuzz. The final track finishes things off in a completely unexpected way, with a warm and fuzzy slow motion smear of gauzy muted My Bloody Valentine / M83 guitars and simple blown out drumming. As always, amazing!
Another awesome discovery from Chinese black metal label Pest Productions. A few lists back we reviewed the bafflingly brilliant depressive black metal outfit Heartless, with its over the top vocals, and surprisingly twisted blackened sound, as well as the killer outsider blackness of Icelandic horde Dysthymia, and now we have the oddly named Liam, a German post rock / black metal outfit whose washed out shoegazey depressive drift should definitely hit the spot for anyone into Alcest, Ameseours, Les Discrets, Lifelover and other pop minded blackened outfits.
Journey... Two Years and a Fragment collects two long out of print eps, 2007's My Journey To The Sky and 2008's Two Years And A Fragment. My Journey To The Sky is all instrumental, and plays out much more like a metallic post rock record, the blackness mostly implied, the chords ring out, the arrangements are epic and slow building, the crescendos massive, the sound mathy and mesmerizing, the vibe melancholy, washed out and dreamy, definitely super shoegazey, more Mogwai than Mutiilation for sure, the songs are so majestic and melodic, in fact, if these guys didn't simply consider themselves a black metal band, odds are no one would even know.
Two Years And A Fragment is a very slightly blacker beast, kicking off with some harsh vokills, but they quickly fade into the background, leaving just a darkly buzzy gloom pop, the vocals WAY down in the mix, the sound lush, and buzzy, but so melodic and minor key, and with plenty of clean vocals, definitely reminding us of a more depressive Lifelover, or a way less melodic Katatonia. The arrangements are awesome though, the stop start chug, the clean vocal harmonies, and the swoonsome melodic miserablism. Long stretches of buzzy prettiness, three songs clocking in at about 28 minutes, but it sort of sounds like three movements of one single epic track, heavy for sure, and there are harsh vox, but overall this is just some fantastically melodic, hook filled epic shoegazey gloom pop, and we love it. Definitely not heavy enough for the grim throng, but fans of this sort of thing will maybe have a new favorite band, and all you metallic post rock obsessives, here's your chance to dabble in something a bit blacker. But only a bit.
Most of you have yet to hear the mighty Solar Anus, Japan's masters of stumbling psychedelic doom (although thanks to tUMULt's forthcoming double cd collection of the first three SA albums, you soon will -- beware!), but in the mean time, Solar Anus mainman
Latest from Swedish blackened doom pop weirdos Lifelover, which we have been trying to get for a while, and it's a doozy, melding the twisted demented depressive black metal strangeness of their early records, with the more streamlined, lush heaviness of their most recent recordings, resulting in what might be their most full realized release yet.
Featuring members of Ondskapt, Hypothermia, Dimhymn and IXXI, one could be forgiven for expecting something much more grim and black, hateful and harrowing, but instead, the band have been moving more toward a sound much more akin to groups like Katatonia, epic, lush, depressive doom pop, the guitars and drums massive, the melodies melancholy and mournful, but with the unhinged maniacal vocals that defined the first few records. Live videos display the group's incredible (and incredibly bloody) stage presence, with the vocalist, wearing a white long sleeve dress shirt, and doing some strange herky jerky dances, but within a few songs, things get decidedly darker, that white shirt soaked through with blood, the band locked into a frenzied fierce assault, but STILL, the music manages to be lush and sprawling and epic and weirdly impossibly poppy. Not sure why it works, or even how, but Lifelover are not only master showmen, but masters of crafting off kilter blackened pop. And Dekadens is most definitely testament to that. Not nearly as weird or experimental as past records, the first four tracks are a practically flawless explosion of the sound these guys have seemed to master, the production loud and lush, the riffing incredible, the drums not blasting, but pounding, the vocals a shrieking caterwaul, all wound into some incredible heavy pop music, still with hints of blackness, some double kick drumming, chugging guitars, those vocals, but however much of that there is, this still is ultimately pop music.
The second half of the record, things get a bit weirder; "Androider" almost sounds like some sort of alien modern rock, if it weren't for those unhinged vocals, it's not hard to imagine a song like this ending up on MTV, with some woozy clean guitar breaks, a soaring chorus, and some clean crooning vox, eventually slipping into a gorgeous minor key lament. "Visomdsord" is all clean guitar and skeletal drumming, soaring melancholy melodies, weirdly processed spoken vocals, gloomy Joy Divisiony basslines, and a second half that gets more and more dreamy and abstract. And then finally "Destination: Ingenstans" has possibly the poppiest main riff of the bunch, total sugary sweet, still distorted and crunchy, but majestic and major key, before a brief hushed drifty interlude, and then a burst of mathy proggy blackened heaviness, maybe the heaviest thing on the record, before the song chills out again, returning to something much more meditative, clean guitars, jangly and shimmery, the only vestige of blackened weirdness, a still tortured hellish howl, creating something at once dreamlike and melodic, haunting and harrowing.
So goddamn good. Lifelover are probably one of the most original 'black metal' bands around. And one of our favorites, and it's hard for us to imagine anyone listening to Dekadens not agreeing wholeheartedly...
We first discovered the band Lifelover a year or two back and were kind of knocked for a loop. Their first record (which we have yet to list) was on the same label as Bone Awl, Urfaust, Planet Aids, Vrolok, Emit, Gauhaert, so we were sort of expecting some bizarre black metal, and while it was indeed sort of black metal, it was most definitely bizarre. Album art featuring multiple photos of a naked young Scandinavian woman, covered in blood and laying in the grass in the middle of a bright summer day, the music inside was just as unexpected. A sort of dark metallic pop. A buzzing blasting mournful melancholy sound that reminded us mostly of Katatonia, albeit a bit more damaged and demented.
The new record, Erotik, is even stranger, and sounds even MORE like some strange variation of Katatonia. Again the root of the sound is a dark loping minor key melancholia, buzzing guitars, not so much black as grey, monotone vocals way down in the mix, simple drumming, bits of extra percussion, but most notably, lots of piano, a sparse minor key plinking spread across most of the songs, or strange chordal clusters, WAY up in the mix surfacing within driving riffs or amidst droning spacious shimmer. It's definitely that more-metal Cure sound, also a bit like Beyond Dawn, that sort of gloomy eighties vibe, gothy and depressive, moody and dark and spacious, with super catchy and epic melodies. But, and this is a very big BUT, Lifelover are SOOOOOO much more fucked up.
Some songs begin as droning doleful midtempo rockers, but then the vocals begin to come unhinged, more manic, more on-the-verge, soon the singing has transformed into hysterical shrieks and maniacal howls. Sometimes the band will drop out and all there will be left are swoonsome strings, with some strange muttering over the top, sometimes the muttering is backwards. Once in a while there is straight up indie rock jangly guitar, often paired with double kick drums??! And piano too. And did we mention harmonica? Strange samples too, people talking, and children... weird synths, muted almost techno-like rhythms, reverb drenched pianos drifting in space. And then there are handclaps. Yep, handclaps, in songs that are so dour and dark, handclaps are the last thing you expect. But they work. In some really strange way, they sound perfect. Every song is sort of like that, 'normal' on the surface, but always slightly twisted. So yeah, simple moody midtempo blackened pop, but with piano, and demented vocals and handclaps... and lots of um... backwards stuff... especially...
In the 11 minute final track, the amazing "Nitlott", which begins with almost cheerful sounding piano, simple soaring strings, an almost straight up ballad, with hushed vocals, spoken in Swedish, that get more agitated but never quite flip out like elsewhere. This goes on for nearly 5 minutes before the metal kicks in, but it's not any old metal, it's backwards, the guitars being sucked backwards with that distinct sssshhhhhwwwooo before each note, the reversed decay now transformed into the note's attack. A chugging riff turned into a smeared metal blur, the drums a weird backwards sssffft sssffft sssffft, with occasional stretches where the riff is flipped forward briefly, before the band launches back into its strange backwards march. The whole thing ending with a delicate minor key guitar melody hovering and then dreamily drifting off. So awesome. And so weird. Maybe our new favorite black metal record. Then again, this is barely even a black metal record... maybe it would be a bit more accurate to call Erotik our new favorite black-depressive-backwards-piano-jangle-bliss-drone-techno-pop-experi-metal record... Absolutely!
For a band that counts among its lineup, members of suicidal black metallers Hypothermia, satanic black blasters Ondskapt, weirdo blackened doomsters Dimhymn, and buzzing black and rollers IXXI,
Lifelover still manage to confound, somehow creating music at once the sum of all those parts, and at the same time a sound completely cracked, totally damaged, and gleefully bizarre, to the point of seemingly alienating all but the most broadminded of listeners. But if you're like us, and were crazy obsessed with Lifelover's last two discs, Pulver and Erotik, both confusional mixes of downtuned depressive black buzz, haunting epic minor key sadcore, and a plenty of sonic whatthefuck, then Konkurs should hit the spot big time. But even if you've yet to hear Lifelover before now, you still might fight yourself ensorcelled, as have many of the less metal minded folks around here. Lifelover occupy some strange space, not quite pop, not quite black metal. The guitars are distorted, but they don't quite buzz, the melodies are grim and depressive, but more gloomy and melancholic than hateful and harsh. Fans of groups like Alcest, Amesoeurs and especially Katatonia, at least those who aren't averse to some serious weirdness, could very well discover a whole new, darker and more demented side to their musical taste, courtesy of these freaked out Swedes.
Konkurs manages to expand on the sonic universe explored over the course of the two prior discs, while taking the sound even further, better production, more diverse and expansive instrumentation, better songs, and while bizarre, not nearly as schizophrenic, with a much better flow, like a proper album, as opposed to a collection of strange songs, but it's all still laced with plenty of gorgeously gloomy melodies, awesome metallic crunch, all sorts of tortured maniacal vocals, the tracks are peppered with skittery drum machines, bizarre feedbacked melodies, plaintive piano, swoonsome crooned vocals, all wrapped around gloriously miserable and epic minor key dirges, and super catchy twisted blackened doom pop.
From the very first moment, a strange echo drenched metallic clang, the band swoops in cloaked in a warm haze of black buzz, draped over a time keeping trash can lid cymbal, the vocals anguished and tortured, the guitars woven into soaring majestic melodies, while a piano plinks out its own sad melody right alongside. It really does sound like some Katatonia B-side, but filtered through some sort of cracked black lens. And from there, the record swoons and swirls, the tracks unfurling woozily, the second track has a killer main hook, a murky piano / fuzzy guitar harmony, blurred and smeared beneath simple motorik drumming, while the track after that borrows a little groove from Norwegian Nirvana worshipping black metallers Khold, but add a whole 'nother dimension of soft focus miserablism. Every track, no matter how normal, or how fucked up, is impossibly catchy, hooks galore, but also rife with elements that in any other band would stick out like a blackened and bloodied sore thumb. Whether it's some grinding muted chunk chunk chunk guitar, a recording of some polka-like accordion music, or a shimmery stretch of detuned piano, or perhaps some ominous spoken word, a bit of folky guitar strum, recordings of waves lapping on the shore, Sunn 0)))-like slow motion black guitar buzz, or lots of piano, almost always wreathed in tons of effects making it ethereal and shimmery, those elements seem to melt into the sounds around them, and after a few listens it's almost impossible to imagine the songs without them.
Not really heavy, not really all that black, but then that doesn't seem to be at all the point when it comes to Lifelover. Instead, the sounds here are a mysterious strain of outsider pop music, infused with elements of black metal and doom and slowcore and all sorts of other things, but those remain just elements, and become harder and harder to discern within the swirling jangly grinding blasting buzzing droney drifty twisted catchy and creepy whole that is Konkurs. Brilliant. And baffling. And beautiful. And absolutely recommended.
Finally, the debut from these Swedish twisted doom pop black metal freeks is available once again. We listed record number two, Erotik, a while back, and like us, everybody freaked out, digging these guys' strangely off kilter black melancholia, so much that we had trouble keeping it in stock. Like a damaged, blackened Katatonia, Lifelover are creating some of the most original and not entirely black, black metal we've heard in ages.�
On the same label that brought us discs from�Bone Awl, Urfaust, Planet Aids, Vrolok, Emit, Gauhaert, Lifelover's sound couldn't have been further from what we were expecting. Our first clue should have been the cover art. A series of photos of a nude blonde woman, covered in blood, reclining in lush grass and blossoming wildflowers. Inside, old woodcuts, photos of boats, apartment buildings, and then the creepy band photos, featuring all four members, the strangely named (), B, LR and 1853.
But what exactly does it sound like? Well, Katatonia is definitely a good starting point, super moody and melancholic, soaring and dramatic, guitars that do almost everything else but buzz, jangle, strum, shimmer, keen, roar, and ok, maybe they buzz a bit, but they tend to be much more melodic than textural, although the sounds is definitely lush and layered. The arrangements are simple, but never straight forward, there is piano all over the place, the vocals are wild and unkempt, howling and hysterical,� sometimes haunting and spoken, drenched in reverb, the drums go from simple time keeping to strange stumble to thunderous pound usually during the same song, and amidst and within the music are all manner of samples and found sounds, Swedish folk songs, panicked crowds, weird voices, record crackle, amp buzz, and lots of other indescribably sonic events.�
It's easy to hear some Factory records here, some Joy Division for sure, definitely a bit of the Fall, Gang Of Four. Minus the metallic buzz and the unhinged vocals, these guys might even be entering Interpol / Editors territory. A sort of modern moody new wave. Downcast and introspective, but with Lifelover, it all ends up completely twisted and damaged and a bit buzzy. In a very very good way. There's been much discussion here about which Lifelover record is better, Pulver or Erotik, and the split is pretty even, but no matter which side anyone falls on, they definitely agree that BOTH are absolutely essential.
From its humble beginnings as a genre, black metal has changed dramatically, transformed into something style and sound based rather than belief based. And where black metal was once strictly the province of the grim and kvlt, and yes, the actual metalheads, it's now gained a certain cache, a definite hip factor, where any band, metal or not, is likely to feature one member with his or her own solo black metal project. We're not complaining, not in the least, it's these fresh injections into black metal's sonic gene pool that keep it interesting, that produce more and more strange and wonderful variations, a great many perpetrated by folks new to metal completely, who were lured to the darkside by black metal specifically, its mystery and unique sound, the sonic possibilities offered by its murky symphony of buzz and blast, rumble and shriek, sounds easily twisted into all manner of shapes.
We got this particular cd-r in the mail a few weeks ago, and as we've mentioned before we do get quite a few. Our first impression was that it would most likely be some sort of minimal drone record, very stark white packaging, hand made, the band is called Light, with song titles like "When The Green Midwestern Sky Comes Crashing Down", and "When The Flood Waters Come Rushing In", the packaging unfolds to reveal nothing but the song titles, rendered in a flowery script, but on the disc, there was what appears to be a smear of actual blood (which we later discovered was in fact menstrual blood!). The first clue as to what sort of mysterious darkness lurked inside...
Once we threw it on, we knew this was something else entirely, there is plenty of drone indeed, but the drone is only one element of Light's mysterious lugubrious buzz drenched blackened crawl. Almost like a more lo-fi Skepticism, Light trudge along at tarpit tempos, the guitars not so much riffing as unfurling thick swirls of soft fuzz, the vocals howled and wailed, but way off in the distance, the drums strangely un-drumlike, more like pots and pans, a clattery, skeletal percussion, the whole thing held together by the warm dramatic keyboards, that sound like the Haunted Mansion soundtrack played at 16rpm, all smeared and blurred together into something only barely black metal, only barely doom, a thick lurching slow motion black doomdrone, evocative and cinematic, at once epic and sprawling, lo-fi and ultra personal. Creepy and haunting, but strangely melodic and beautiful. Think Trollmann, Abruptum, Celestiial, Catacombs, Monument of Urns and again Skepticism, but filtered through the cracked lo-fi filter of underground cd-r dronemusic. If one was unfamiliar with black metal, one might be reminded of Lustmord, or some other sort of deathambient, but with the confusional addition of actual riffs, and those hellish vox, and the strange primitive percussion, the end result a sort of metallicized slowcore, or a washed out ultradoom, or a blurred bleary black metal, however you describe it, Light have crafted some truly original, gorgeously bleak, warm and almost dreamy, slow motion buzzing black beauty.
Hand folded, hand assembled, stark white sleeves, with a Japanese style obi, and an extra inner sleeve, crazy limited to maybe 50 copies or so.
Earlier this year, we reviewed a super limited avant outsider blackened doom record called A Million Dead Beneath The Ice, by a duo called Light. Which was anything but light, in fact, it was one of the darkest and most harrowing discs we'd heard in a long time, a slow motion drone drenched funereal crawl, with a lush almost orchestrated feel that definitely reminded us of Skepticism. And if anything, record number two, the awesomely titled Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever is even more! More black, more doomy, more droney, more beautiful, more harsh and more bizarre.
One long hour long track, which begins with a slowly cycling piano figure, draped over a wash of reverbed tones, distant rumbles, the sound gorgeous, slightly atonal, ominous and sinister, and then there are the vocals, a nearly impossible to describe high pitched shriek, that almost sounds like someone screaming as they breathe in, a twisted strangled howl, totally at odds with the music underneath, reminding us a bit of Tomb Of..., who also paired up piano and black metal vokills, but Light seems borne more of a free noise aesthetic. Minus the vocals, the sound on Life Is Meaningless, is a sort of abstract slowcore crawl, a little post rocky, a little doomy, a bit of black ambient drift, but the vocals are just SOOOO creepy, it definitely pushes it into a whole other realm. And suddenly what could have been something darkly pretty, becomes something fucked up and grimly gorgeous.
Like the first release (which is long out of print so don't ask), the packaging is a hand folded, hand assembled, plain grey origami style sleeve, with a Japanese style obi, and an extra inner sleeve, as well as a hand written insert, and again crazy limited to less than 50 COPIES!!
Third and final release from this depressive black doom duo, and it's a fitting epitaph to a short but brilliant streak. Three super limited cd-r's, less than 200 all told, each one overflowing with blackened misery and gorgeous harrowing sonic blackness, the first, titled A Million Dead Beneath The Ice, gave way to the second, titled Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever, which brings us to Worse Than Anyone Would Have Expected, which should give you a decent impression of the overall vibe and tone of Light's distinctly UN-light sound.
Three looooooong tracks, thick caustic layers of buzzing low end drone, sparsely strummed acoustic guitar, shrieked vocals way down in the mix, funereal, glacial, miserable, not even plodding as there seems to be no drums, or if they are there, they're practically inaudible. The melodies are lilting and melancholic, there's some piano, the rumbling buzzing backdrop seems to coalesce into some sort of melody, the whole thing lurching in slow motion, grim, and dense, and miserably and mournfully lovely. Totally hypnotic .
The second track offers up more of the same, another lovely black expanse of pointillist piano, harrowing screams, and slow swells of black buzz, before finally segueing into the epic closing track, a formula similar to the first two, but somehow even slower, more abject, more ambient, so slow and spaced out and minimal, that it nearly ceases being metal or doom and is transformed into some sort of black ambient slowcore, a haunting doomic creep, that to these ears is as pretty as it is grim and harsh.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES. Gorgeous packaging, black on black, black disc, elaborately folded sleeve with a black on black printed obi, super fancy, and most likely gone before you know it...
Who would have thought that there was a world of black metallers out there bowing before the Lord, and no, not the Dark Lord, the, um LORD Lord. You know... Jesus Christ. God. It's true, there's a whole world of UN-black metal out there, white metal, with all the buzz and blast and then some, but none of the evil. Up until now, the spirit of these bands while not a secret, tended to be more subtle. With titles like "Goatcrush", "To The Unholy", "Unblackened", still sounded pretty evil, and band names like Agathothodion, Glaciial, Flaskavsae, if one weren't paying attention, one might be forgiven for thinking these bands were indeed true grim black metal.
But now we have the latest from Light Shall Prevail (get it?), whose new cd-r pulls no punches, especially with the title: "Defeat The Reign Of The Horned One Through The Light Of Christ." Okay. This is some seriously, spiritual, totally positive, but still extremely harsh and buzzing and ultra fucked up Un-black metal. Those of you who remember our review of Light Shall Prevail's last ep, might just remember us hailing the song "Goatcrush" as maybe the best black metal song EVER!!! And this disc has about ten contenders for the very same honor.
When you actually think about it, these bands are indeed true, and not even just in a religious sense, they are true to their vision, and their ideals. Although we're not exactly sure what it is exactly that makes white metal so completely and amazingly twisted and tweaked. But we like it! As grim as any black metal band you can name, in fact, if anything the sound of these bands, Light Shall Prevail especially, is more grim and true, unique and fucked up, way more individual and out there than the majority of the cookie cutter black metal bands we hear every day. Light Shall Prevail is the work of E.H. who also runs the mighty E.E.E. label and who has been releasing amazing and totally brilliant unblack metal for a decade now. We've reviewed records by Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, but there's tons of other amazing white metal bands, Bedeiah, Whispers From A Dead World, Drommer, Offerblod, Dark Procession, Wrathful Plague, Aristaeus, Nahum, Flaskavsae, With Fire, Elgibbor, Moiriah, we can't keep up. We've discovered this whole new trove of mind blowing (un)black metal and we can not get enough!
Light Shall Prevail might be the closest to sounding like a classic Norwegian style black metal band, however, there are plenty of elements that will have you alternating between scratching your head, banging it wildly and bowing it in reverence. The drums are a machine, and thus do some fucked up things no human drummer could (or would) do, whether its' stuttering impossible fast and machinelike, or sounding processed and overblown way down in the murky buzz, then there's the recording, super lo-fi, so much so that the blown out in the red distortion and tape hiss and all the various recording inconsistencies are as much a part of the sound as the riffs or the vocals, and holy shit, the vocals, from alien sleestak garble to weird anguished howl to demonic shriek. And the songs just rule. killer riffs, convoluted arrangements, trippy psychedelic breakdowns, fucked up dubbed out drum parts, guitars that go from weird processed stutter, to insectoid buzz to reverb drenched twang, usually within the same song.
A couple of our customers absolutely refused to pick up any of these unblack records, they were seemingly offended by the idea of unblack black metal, but ultimately it's their loss. We'd venture to guess that 99% of black metal fans (and probably bands for that matter), aren't actually Satanists anyway and very probably like the music FOR the music, not for the corpse paint or the spikes or the faux scary grimness, and as cool and fun as it is to get into the whole theater of it, the mysterious forest born black metal, the corpse-painted wraiths spewing hateful sounds direct from the depths of hell... ultimately, this is MUSIC, pure and simple, dark, mysterious, fucked up, passionate, buzzing, brutal, grim, blackened, brilliant music, and Light Shall Prevail are most definitely all of those things and more....
We talk about black metal all the time. Cuz, we love it. A lot. The blacker and more evil the better. Harsh and hateful, nihilistic and brutal, true evil rendered in sound!
But why exactly are the black metal hordes so angry? What exactly are they fighting against? God? The Christians? The powers of Good? Themselves? Well if we've learned anything, it's that good can not exist without evil. Dark can not exist without light, and black metal can not exist without white metal.
What?
That's right, it's time for the darkness to be pushed back a bit. It's time for that age old battle to be fought with buzzing riffs and thrashing blast beats, howled anguished vocals and rumbling low end. And at the front lines are Light Shall Prevail, masters of their own bizarre black metal buzz. That's right, it's still black metal, in fact, this white metal is more black and fucked up and awesomely weird than most of the more 'true' and 'grim' stuff we hear all the time.
Strange off kilter riffing, insanely fast blasts (either a drum machine, or an unbelievable drummer), super damaged start stop arrangements, weirdly catchy melodies, all prickly and tangled up in the fuzzy black ambience. A super heavy, but still lo-fi production. And the vocals. SO nuts, From monstrous growls, to Urfaust like croon, to shrieked howl. Such an awesome combination. Lots of midtempo chug mixed in with the buzzing blasts too. In fact just listen to the title track, probably the weirdest, catchiest black metal song EVER, with it's convoluted stop start gallop. So fucking cool.
Absolutely essential black metal listening. Even for the grim and evil amongst you. Once you hear this buzzing brilliance you won't be able to resist the power of the light. Just don't get too close, lest your black soul be cleansed and redeemed!
This whole unblack metal movement is still relatively new for us, having only discovered this burgeoning scene within the last year, but we've become sort of obsessed, going totally nuts for records from Drommer (reviewed elsewhere on this list), Glaciial, Agathothodion, and the band that seems to sort of rule and define the scene, Light Shall Prevail, whose main man also runs the mighty E.E.E. label, home to pretty much all our favorite unblack artists.
We've reviewed two LSP discs, the Goatcrush ep (featuring what Andee considers to be maybe one of the greatest black metal songs of all time, the stuttering convoluted title track) and the most recent full length Defeat The Reign Of The Horned One Through The Light Of Christ. Both completely mindblowing, buzzy and blasting but super strange and not at all like the rest of the black metal we hear. Well, apparently, LSP has been recording like crazy for the last few years and I Long To Destroy The Darkness Forever contains every bit of recorded material to date, excluding the two proper releases. And while there's plenty of blasting buzz and epic un-blackness, it's the early lo-fi stuff that is totally blowing our mind. It's easy to see why the newer more polished stuff is still so weird, cuz the early stuff is so completely damaged and bizarrely brilliant.
Going all the way back to 2003, the majority of the first disc is culled from one of the first LSP recording and goes from ultra lo-fi grim buzz, to strange mechanical, almost industrial buzz and stutter, at times almost sounding like a skipping cd, or some 4 tracked industrial house music, but with creepy keyboards and growled vocals, the drums and guitar so distorted that a few tracks almost sound like some sort of weird fuzz collage, underpinned by impossibly quiet beats, and creepy gurgles, but sometimes blissing out into what almost sounds like some weird jangly buzz pop. The last three tracks on the first disc are the earliest, and are pretty killer too, not quite as fucked up sounding, more like a killer grim practice space recording, all blown out cymbals and muted insectoid buzz, but as with future E.E.E. productions, completely unhinged vocals, impossible low vomitous growls that spill over the rest of the music like some spewed black bile. So good.
Disc two jumps ahead 2 or 3 years, and things are still pretty weird, fuzzed out indie jangle, lots of tape hiss, but the metal is much heavier, with louder guitar, weird programmed drums, and another bizarre vocal inflection, a screeched anguished mewl that sometimes dips into a growly grunt. The riffs totally slay and the groundwork is being set for future LSP aktions. Some track still veer into some serious fucked up sonic territory, cymbals so hot and sizzling they swallow up everything around them, long expanses of Skaters' style lo-fi murk, and a few moments of strange black balladry.
Finally, disc three, culled from two split releases from last year, finds LSP sounding pretty much like they do now, a confusionally brilliant and baffling black metal buzz, from furious thrashing blasts, to loping midtempo lurch, to strange ambient strum and shuffle, to doomy trudge, to blissy drift and back again, with fucked up vocals, amazingly convoluted drum machine programming, incredible riffs, all sorts of fuzzy and buzzy ambience, just absolutely some of the most original and intense (un) black metal we've ever heard.
Packaged in a slim triple jewel case with NO tray card, so don't panic, that's the way they come. A photocopied cd booklet with all the track info and liner notes inside.
And of course, this is ULTRA LIMITED! And ALREADY OUT OF PRINT! We took more than half of the pressing, but even so, these won't be around long...
We're not sure which is more amazing, the brilliant hypnotic blackness that is the damaged unblack metal of Light Shall Prevail, or the impossibly varied sound quality each track displays. Granted these were all recorded at various times, and in various places, but most bands tend to use the same 4 track or 8 track, so the variances are slight, but these tracks are all over the map, from blasting ear splitting drums and barely audible guitars, to blown out in the red speaker frying fury, to muddy murky fuzzy blur, to damaged tape dropout buzz, but the thing is, it's like having another instrument. It's almost as if instead of using a different effect, or some strange instrument, the studio became the instrument, as if some songs required crazy ultra distorted production, while others needed to be super clean, same with the guitars, they go from brittle jangle to muddy buzz, all of it fucking gorgeous and demented.
Let's back up a few steps. Light Shall Prevail is spearheading an ever growing movement of un-black metal, white metal, Christian metal, and in doing so creating some of the most original, most damage, most fucked up, and most brilliant (un)black metal we've heard in forever. Not only that, but he also runs the E.E.E. label who seem to single handedly be spreading the word, unleashing cd-r after cd-r of amazing and perplexing unblackness on the world. By now avid readers of the AQ list should have already been exposed to some of our favorite unblack metal bands: the "non-religious dark ambient" of Drommer, the white metal super group Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail obviously, and the bizarre un-blackness of Agathothodion. There's so much good stuff we can barely keep up. A bunch of the best tracks will be compiled for a future double disc un-black compilation on Andee's tUMULt label, but for now we whole heartedly recommend tracking down every single E.E.E. release you can. They're all heavy and weird and fucked up and amazing. None maybe more than this one, another collection of unreleased tracks from unblack flagship outfit Light Shall Prevail.
Beginning with a 38 second track of nothing but tape buzz sort of sets the mood, with "The Dark Dark Fortress" following up right afterwards, a moody looping riff, simple blasting drums, and a demonic throat shredding shriek that pins the needles, sends everything in the red and swallows all the other instruments whole. There seems to be only one part, but it's a good one, with the vocals doing impossible and harsh things, soaring and shrieking and adding a whole layer of distorted damage to the buzzing droning blackness. "There Is Something In The Trees" is next, with a killer super poppy riff, very Nirvana-esque, with drums buried WAY down in the mix, almost like a super rapid heartbeat, all except for the high-hat, and the vocals are a slowed down gargle, dripping over everything like melting black tar, and again, it a single mesmerizing riff looped over and over and over until we're totally mesmerized and under its spell. "One Thousand Winters, is ultra lo-fi, the guitars a mere whisper, the drums a relentless machine, sounding not unlike a typewriter gone haywire.
"Stuck In The Black Ice" might bee one of our favorites, beginning with muted muddy jangle guitar, before the drums (and the distortion kick in) and suddenly everything is ultra distorted, totally saturated, crumbling and blown out, the vocals and the guitar both competing for midrange space, the drums a throbbing blast of muddy hiss, so completely fierce and furious and so goddamn great. "Lay Flowers On My Grave" is doomy and midtempo, the guitars barely audible, bathed in flanger, slowly whirring through its cycle, the drums relentless, a simple click-click-click, the vocals, sung-spoken, in a demented drawl, everything distant and washed out sounding, adding even more melancholia to the depressive despondent vibe, and the breakdown where the main guitar drops out, leaving a faraway clean guitar, the haunting vocals and that never ending single beat rhythm, is ultra creepy indeed.
The rest of the collection continues in the same gloriously haphazard trajectory. Every track simple and buzzing, the guitars a veritable spectrum of various shades of buzz and murk and mud and blur and blow out, the vocals too, from hysterical shriek to maniacal mumble to super distorted cookie monster to growled guttural grunt, the drums a constant mesmerizing pulse, at times it's almost like some experimental noise rock record, incorporating black metal elements, but at other times, it's still some of the most raw and intensely personal metal we've heard. EVER.
