By now, it should be painfully obvious, that around these parts we seriously love our damaged and demented, fucked up and freaky music. The weirder the better, be it strange production, inept playing, shoddy recording, or truly inspired madness, we can't get enough strange sounds. The sad thing is that many of our favorite strange sound makers, gradually evolve, which is not always bad thing, but often means as bands get�better, as the recordings get tighter, the production more polished, the songwriting less haphazard, well, often a band begins to sound more and more like the rest of the regular bands, and less like all the things that made them so unique and special.�
Thankfully, such is not the case with king of the unblack scene, Light Shall Prevail. This is the fifth or sixth release so far from this one man Christian black metal band, and most definitely the tightest and most polished, but just as far out, fucked up, brilliant and blackened as any records past. Sure some of the older stuff benefited from insane production, turning black blasts into buzzing smears of what the fuck, or making blurred frosty riffage sound like alien house music, and on Goatcrush, he may have crafted the greatest chunk of buzzing blackness EVER, in the title track, be it black, unblack or whatever... But�Unearthen Hymns Of Revolt is another glorious step in his songwriting evolution, and a definite step up in production and we're loving it. No matter how much we dug all the fucked up weirdness in the past, at the heart of all of those tracks, every one, was an amazing riff, and a killer song. Now it's just easier to hear them.�
Three songs may seem like an ep, but these three looong tracks add up to almost thirty minutes. And as usual, every inch is packed with roiling buzzing fuzzed out blasts, insane programmed drums, bizarre super effected vocals, all tangled up into super complex and convoluted arrangements that manage to be trancelike and droney at the same time. We've gushed like crazy about LSP, the E.E.E. label, all the other unblack bands, check the AQ site for more words and sounds testifying as to the baffling brilliance of this stuff. Needless to say, if you're already a convert, you need this one too, and if you've yet to be baptized in the unblack waters of Light Shall Prevail, this is as good a place to start as any. In fact, it might be the best place to start, as these three tracks sound the most like classic grim black metal out of any of the previously released LSP stuff. But what makes it all so great, is that the weirdness, the fucked up-ness still lurks right below the surface, revealing themselves more and more on subsequent listens. Trust us, some of the best (un)black metal you'll ever hear. Check out the last few minutes of the 15+ minute closer, as the guitars begin to digitally crumble, the drums splintering into clouds of sizzle and skitter, a weird blackened meltdown, so bizarre and so fucking awesome. And how about the best (un)black metal song title ever: "Bonded By (His) Blood". Needless to say SO RECOMMENDED.�
And while you're at it, order ALL the E.E.E. stuff, not only is it all amazing, but the label recently had their headquarters broken into and burgled, losing tons of money and equipment, instruments and computers, they're amazing folks, making amazing music and could use the support!!
Full length number three from these LA black thrashers, and easily their most ambitious. Just check out the opener, which weaves a dark spell that's simultaneously harrowing and hellish, melodic and psychedelic, the drums a tribal churn, the vokills a sick rasp, but its most notable element is the use of the bass as lead instrument, the guitars swirling and indistinct, while the bass picks out the moody melody. It's only an intro but it definitely sets the stage for some interesting sonic elements to pop up throughout, but once the song proper kicks in, the bass returns to it's typical black metal role sadly, as being mostly inaudible, but the band lay down a fierce sprawl of Scandinavian buzz and blast, with some awesome classic metal leads, some cool dynamic stop starts and a pretty progged out arrangement, and when the song shifts gears again near the end, the sound seem to ooze and melt and slither psychedelically before finishing off more metallically.
The band mix it up throughout, though, clean chantlike vocals, distorted and weirdly processed, droned out ambience, warped soundscaping, super cinematic ambience, that sounds almost sampled, churning dirgelike doom, and that bass does surface elsewhere, adding extra melody, more layers, plenty of heft throughout, there's definitely a late period Marduk vibe to much of the record, due in no small part to the doomy dirginess, but the band spend most of the time spewing some seriously sick black death heaviness, roiling riffage wrapped around insane torrential drumming, tranced out and super hypnotic, in fact, much of the record seems more hypnotic than heavy, which is not a bad thing, but definitely positions this outside of most black/thrash metal, the production not massive as much as it is textured and tripped out, strap on some headphones and you can hear all sorts of aktion in the background, that at times sounds almost like some demonic symphony weaving a tense minor key backdrop.
Check out the extremely badass video as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXZKxu9Zcx0 (we've never seen the drummer do the twirling hair thing, WHILE playing!)
What's in a name? Pretty much everything when the name is LIGHTNING SWORDS OF DEATH. Really, fuck all these bands called Sword something or other, how can they not be completely and utterly slain by a horde with a name like LSOD!? They can't, and they shall!
We reviewed the new record by Endless Blizzard last time around, a black hole heavy platter packed with furious frenzied wintry blackened old school black metal, well, EB guitarist, Roskva, was wielding his axe in LSOD before the Endless Blizzard even began. As you might imagine, the sounds are similar, a definite nod to classic old school metal, a bit of death, a bit of thrash, raw and filthy, but still plenty mathy and complex, the drums manic, with impossible flurries of lightning fast blasts, the guitars thick and downtuned, snarling and buzzing, the vokills a guttural caterwaul, the songs veering from black thrash into pounding blackened doom to almost crusty grindy thrash. Plenty of nods to Celtic Frost and Hellhammer, as well as the Nordic BM aristocracy, with a SUPER heavy production, that manages to make the whole thing crushing and brutal, without losing any of its raw grimness. Way recommended. Especially if you dug the Endless Blizzard. Yet another horde to perhaps be considered for inclusion in the rarified ranks of the West Coast USBM elite.
Third and last album from this now defunct, Swedish one-man band (hey how can a one man band "split up"?). It's one of those wonderfully weird black metal records where the usual tropes -- grim, dark, buzzing -- while applicable, don't fully describe it. A lot of this IS buzzy and fuzzy and dirgey and doomy, but also has a finger-snapping folkiness to it, almost jaunty. Deep voiced Viking vocals range over the midpaced, heavy, riff-centric compositions, in which we sense a strange stiffness of rhythm, unsteady at the busier margins of the beat, a seasick slowingdown and speedingup, that gives this some of its unusual feel / amateur charm. As this short-but-epic disc (four songs, 24 and a half minutes) progresses, Lik's atmospheric moodiness increases, the tempos slow, guitar licks (liks?) stretch out gorgeously to psych proportions. There's an almost pop undercurrent here, an emotional sweetness... it's not standard black metal nor is it a lesson in chops. But WE like it a lot. If you read some other online reviews we've found, though, apparently that makes us "retards". Want to join us in the special ed class at black metal high school? Then put Lik (and some Benighted Leams, and of course some Striborg!) in your shopping cart...
What is it about this band that inspires such controversy? Sure, any band of short haired hipsters that decides to play black metal is bound to get some heat from the true grim hordes, but with Liturgy it's off the charts. Could be frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's diatribes on the intellectual roots of his band and music, maybe that combined with his pretty boy looks and his valley girl like diction - but hey it's all about the music, and as far as we're concerned Liturgy have definitely taken black metal and twisted it all up and made it their own. Sure we love the true grim classics, corpsepaint and raw primitive buzz, blasting necro metal, we do, and we maybe always will, but we gave up long ago on the whole 'troo' thing. If being true means only listening to one kind of music, and even then, only made by a certain approved sect of musicians, who would want that. It's a discussion that could go on for ages, and does on pretty much every metal messageboard on the web, but if you're reading this, odds are you're like us, you like cool, weird, GOOD music, and you don't care if someone thinks the music you love is 'true' or 'pure' or whatever, and odds are you don't just like black metal.
Which we think is probably a prerequisite for liking Liturgy. Because while this is most definitely black metal, all of HHH's intellectual posturing, just might not be posturing after all, cuz this stuff is WEIRD. FUCKED UP. SUPER COMPLEX. Minimal, but somehow totally maximal too. The black metal tropes are present and accounted for, super fast picking, soaring minor key melodies, insectoid buzz, frantic blast beats, howled vox, but, the arrangements, the song structure, even the sound, is far removed from Burzum and Immortal and Satyricon and Mayhem and all the rest. In the past, we've described Liturgy as sounding like a black metal Arvo Part, and that definitely still applies, it's as if these guys filter their BM through Part and Feldman and some sort of modern minimalism. The songs are rife with drones, and intricate harmonies, the rhythms complicated and convoluted, the buzz often wound up into soaring sheets of high end frenzy, the drums locked tight with the guitars, the songs often, a series of short phrases repeated over and over, very minimal and mesmerizing.
Opener "High Gold" is the perfect example, with it's soaring majestic black metallisms, arranged into seemingly brief blasts, lush high end swells, a sort of psychedelic ur-drone rendered in blasts and buzz. "True Will" is slightly more traditionally black metal, but even here, the band lock into these impossibly dense drones, where all the instruments lock onto a single high note and hold it, and keep holding it, creating so much tension, before splintering back into something more traditionally buzzy, but only slightly. The sound is ALL high end, all upper register, brittle and soaring. There did seem to be one other element in play, but on we couldn't put our finger on until
"Generation" which finds the band loosing a serious math rock onslaught, super technical, totally repetitive, the guitars churning, locking tight into these gnarled bits of crunch and chug, the drums mathy and meticulous, it's like these guys took 2 or 3 of their favorite riffs from Don Caballero songs and composed a super heavy, super minimal, almost looped sounding in places, math rock epic. It's so good. And you can hear the other element that finds it's way into the more black metal jams on the record, AND you can also observe the band's unique compositional strategy more easily in the math rock context, so when the next track begins, it's a killer mix of blasting soaring blackness, and gnarled mathiness, AND of course modern minimalism.
So yeah, the true grim corpsepainted hordes should definitely avoid this, they wouldn't enjoy it, or even get it, anyway, but for everyone else, this is some epic, majestic, and yeah, transcendental, math infused minimal black metal majesty of the highest order.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
These guys sent us an lp a long while back, and somehow we totally slept on it. Not sure why, a 12" x 12" image of a cloudy sky, the sun glinting in the background, and the words "PURE TRANSCENDENTAL BLACK METAL" writ large in big black records across the front, and inside, just what the cover promised some seriously buzzing blazing blackness. It's not surprising these guys found there way to 20 Buck Spin, a pretty good fit for sure for this NY horde.
Unlike the blissed out blackened ethereal transcendentalism of the lp, back when Liturgy was a one man bedroom black metal band, Renihilation finds Liturgy expanded to a 4 piece, and the sound is much more raw and organic, still blown out and pretty blissy, goddamn soaring and epic in fact, but it sounds more like a proper rock band, although the drumming is still inhumanly fast, and the band lock into these cool, weird, and very un-black metal sounding high end trills, that only make the sound that much more mysterious and mystical. The band claim some unlikely non-metal influences, but as you get into Renihilation, it's easy to hear that there's way more going on here than Ulver or Darkthrone worship, the band slipping into lurching, almost mathy breakdowns, incredible dynamics, that almost sounds like Harvey Milk at 78rpm, the sort of stop start, sway and lumber, that only works if the band is tight as fuck.
These songs are not super long either, but they feel majestic, and sprawling, and never ending, in a good way, the guitars are frantic, the drumming relentless, the guitars seem to exist only in the upper registers, like wild psychedelic leads transformed into some sort of blackened tremolo picking, so instead of black metal, these jams almost sound like modern classical compositions, like Arvo Part composing for black metal band, when a song ends, you feel exhausted, and drained, like at the end of a long journey, but before you can even catch your breath, the band explode into action once again. And before you know it, they're locked into another high end blast of extreme tension, no let up, no slipping into acoustic interludes, it's almost like the musical version holding your breath, soaring as high and for as long as (in)humanly possible, so when the band does pause briefly, it knocks you on your ass, of when they switch gears and get all spacious and dynamic, it nearly blows your mind.
When we first got this, we only listened to it a couple times, and thought it was pretty cool, but on repeated listens it is proving itself to be truly transcendental, and unlike almost all of the other black metal out there, and is quickly becoming a contender for black metal record of the year.
Controversial as always, Brooklyn's Liturgy, the band 'troo' black metallers love to hate, is back. And it's not just purists who have found Liturgy's self-proclaimed 'transcendental black metal' (and accompanying manifesto) to be way too pretentious, arty, overly intellectual and dare we say hipsterish. And yeah, sure, Liturgy ARE intellectual and/or pretentious, but they also make some freaking amazing, weird music. So let's get all that out of the way by saying, they can call it whatever they want, just don't expect us to read the manifesto. To us, ok, maybe we wouldn't really consider them a bonafide black metal band, but the music they make wouldn't exist (probably) if there weren't such a thing as black metal. It's a part of their sound that they, well, have transcended? They're definitely their own 'thing' whatever it might be, a thing that beyond the black metal elements also incorporates math rock and academic new music and IDM electronica and other strange stuff besides. Totally up our alley in other words - although making The Ark Work an aQ Record Of The Week was also was a wee bit controversial here, 'cause we'll admit right off the bat that this isn't an easy album to sit through all at once. It's just so tripped out and CRAZY and exhausting, as you mentally process what you're hearing. But even if you can't take it all in one sitting, it's the sort of thing where we swear you'll be compelled to play individual tracks on repeat, over and over, just to get your head around 'em, and because certain parts can be so intense and mesmerizing, you want to really try to fully absorb/understand the awesomeness of them before experiencing the next draining yet uplifting track. So Record Of The Week it is, none can deny that it's an impressive piece of work and unlike anything else really. It's gonna have you going, what IS this? Very aQ-worthy, indeed.
Liturgy's bandleader, guitarist/vocalist/composer Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (whose name is only slightly less plausible than, say, Guy Mann-Dude, anyone remember that '80s metal shredder?) is one ambitious & talented dude... man... guy. Some pretentiousness may be a side effect of that, but whatever. It's not like we're paying attention to the conceptual lyrics about who knows what (though you might, they could be worthwhile). We're just busy being blown away by all the choppy stop-start arrangements; the symphonic horn parts; the insectoid guitar buzz that sounds like a Glenn Branca guitar orchestra made up of a whole bunch tiny, tiny, pygmy-like black metal guitarists; the mesmeric, trance-inducing drumming by the inhuman Greg Fox (Guardian Alien); the glitchy digital stutter that, seizure-like, grips bits of these tracks occasionally; the post-rocky, sea-saw way these tracks can build and build; the sheer proggy/mathy grandiosity of the whole thing, and all the other surprises, including, despite this music's difficulty-factor, some really beautiful, blissful parts too.
There are bagpipes, too, along with the trumpet and trombone, all played by guest musicians, but in addition there are also synthesized MIDI horns on here, the latter giving a bit of the vibe of an outsider composer realizing his epic opus with DIY bedroom recording technology. Then there are the processed vocals, also kinda melodic, but chant-like, a mantric supplication, sorta sounding like Om, but with the tape sped up perhaps or otherwise manipulated, and still quite emotive.
Yeah, we said they sure came up with something that doesn't sound like anything else, at least not anything that exists, though we can come up with some this-meets-that, hybrid of this-and-that esoteric band math equations to try to describe it, like, um, Orthrelm doing their version of Om (if Om attended the Church Universal and Triumphant), or Phantomsmasher goes to conservatory... or how 'bout this: the track "Vel Valhaal" sounds like a song by outsider epic metallers Realmbuilder, remixed by Venetian Snares, with a gamelan thrown in for good measure, mashed up with a Herman Nitsch aktion. How's that? We're trying.
If all that's not ridiculous enough, oh then there's the fact that Liturgy recently they appeared on an episode of NBC TV show The Blacklist, with freakin' Peter Fonda behind the drum kit. WTF? If haters gonna hate anyway, you might as well cash in with surreal shit like that.
You've got your whole life to listen to this Liturgy album, so don't delay, get it now! While maybe we can't say yet for sure, we think it's one we will be coming back to when some other, more acceptably 'troo black metal' albums are long forgotten.
Oh, and 'cause we told 'em we were making it a Record Of The Week, Thrill Jockey has kindly offered a special BONUS for folks who buy it from us, and only us, this week. While they last, we'll be including a download coupon with each purchase that gets you an mp3 of the crazy remix that Soft Pink Truth (Drew from Matmos) did of the track "Vitriol", which is otherwise is only available on the version of the cd released in Japan. It's not as if Liturgy isn't already insane and fucked up enough sounding, but you can imagine what SPT does to 'em.
FYI the swank gatefold double vinyl version includes a download of the full album, too, while the gatefold cd version has no need of that.
Premonicion De Guerra is the debut release from this grim black metal horde, and it's two 20+ minute tracks of glorious, haunting, hateful black metal. There isn't a ton of information to be found on this project. Hailing from either Santa Cruz or Mexico (or both), and featuring possibly only one member, Lluvia specializes in orthodox black metal performed with utmost precision, class and respect. The record opens with a lonely torrent of rain and the crack of distant thunder whispering underneath listless clean guitars. It's a very literal calm before the storm, because before too long we're met with the foreboding buzz of a single grinding guitar that seems to exist in stasis for an unnaturally long time, lulling the listener into a false sense of calm before the blasting begins. When all of the pieces finally come together it's an overwhelming wall of sound. Pummeling blast beats and mournful, oppressive guitars give way to heart-wrenching mid-paced breakdowns. The whole record is awash in tons of reverb, soaking every moment with the cavernous atmosphere of a moss specked catacomb. The vocals are distant and echoed, like some hateful unsilent spirit craving revenge from the afterlife. The drums are enormous, every fill sounding like an avalanche. On paper it would be easy to say that Lluvia are dealing in the same traditional, Transilvanian Hunger style black metal as someone like Sargeist, but in execution the scope seems to be much larger. Instead the affect isn't far off from the hypnotic transcendence of Ash Borer or Fell Voices, but with a much more orthodox approach, which makes the results all the more impressive. The end result is overpowering yet strangely distant, sorrowful yet proud - invoking a feeling ancient and sad. It's black metal that can truly be called atmospheric in the purest sense of the word, but without one iota of the hate or the fury sacrificed.
Limited to 333 copies, on 180 gram gray/black swirl vinyl, gatefold jacket w/ inserts.
First we've heard from this local outfit, released on the Brotherhood Of Light tape label (Sunchariot, Haar, Sirius, Cosmic Breath, Surt, Uruk Hai, Domus Mactibilus, Worldscape:18), and like much of the stuff on BoL, we're assuming it's the work of the same core folks, much like the Black Legions and the BM scenes in Russia and the Ukraine, it seems like a handful of folks in multiple configurations make up the multitude of groups, but we're not complaining, in fact, as BoL continues to move away from black metal, or at least push the boundaries, we're digging their releases more and more. A couple lists back we reviewed a tape by a group/person called Worldscape:18, which was some weird sort of collaged/noisescape/electronica. And this week, we have one of several new releases from Llyr, whose tape starts out with the gentle slightly sinister lilt of drifting synths, sounding like it could explode into some serious Goblin style action at any point, but instead, sprawls out, soft billows of almost new age-y shimmer, until finally, some super distorted guitars surface, and some seriously sick, anguished vox, wouldn't say it was black metal, but it's definitely blackened, and sort of metallic. More free form and abstract, the guitars churning in thick billows over those shimmery synths, the vokills howling and rasping in the murk. Tangled melodies unwind beneath the vocals, as well as strange sci-fi electronics, maybe not sonically, but most definitely spiritually, Llyr reminds us of outsider metal acts like Circle Of Ouroborus, Tomb Of, Varghkoghargasmal and Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg.
And that pretty much sets the template for Llyr's sound, long stretches of icy synth, chiming ethereal melodies, beneath sheets of blurred guitar buzz, disembodied riffs, wraithlike rasps, and even some drums, stumbling programmed drums that bring to mind Fastest weirdly enough, and when the electronics peel back, and leave just lurching drums and woozy riffage, it's like some gloriously damaged primitive black metal ritual, that soon disappears into another cloud of dense, swirling WTF weirdness.
Second release from this mysterious outfit, their second for local black metal tape label Brotherhood Of Light, and like their previous tape, Heathen, the sound maybe be blackened, but it's definitely not black metal. At least not for much of the time... Opening with some creepy hushed barely there ambience, the sound explodes into a sprawl of crumbling distorted buzz, wrapped around what sounds like a programmed beat, the result is a sort of post industrial blackened electronica? The guitar is fuzzy and minor key, the melody melancholic and mournful, a blurry cloud of drifting buzz, driven by that beat, and draped over some buried vokills that growl and occasionally shriek in the background. For being buzzy and black, it's surprisingly washed out and softly trancey, almost dreamy at times.
The sound does drift more toward a blackness that's more traditionally depressive, but it remains kinda blissed out and shoegazey. Before drifting into an almost kosmische sounding stretch of dreamy celestial glimmer, before again exploding into some much more traditional black buzz, but even then, the sound is murky and muddy and blurred into something more tranced out and hypnotic, and the sound is shot through with some strange keening melodies, that again, add a strange avant melodic vibe to the proceedings.
And then it seems like Llyr settle into something much more straight ahead, midtempo black metal, buzz and pound, dark and sinister, when all of a sudden, BLAM, another programmed beat lurches into action, churning away beneath another sprawl of swirling hazy buzzy blackness, the sound once again a weird sort of black electronica... Cool, and darkly twisted, another weird winner from Brotherhood Of Light, and like all the previous BoL tapes, SUPER LIMITED.
Latest from these blackened doomdrone soundscapers, once again demonstrating that these guys definitely don't let any sort of genre classification define what they do, cuz what they do here is let their krautrock freak flag fly, whipping up a gorgeous chunk of hazy, rhythmic psychedelia, a reinterpretation of a classic Popol Vuh jam (from 1976), which does indeed channel the same sort of brooding, blissy mesmer, a dreamy, dark dirge, hypnotic and hazy, spidery guitar melodies over simple spare propulsive drumming, all wreathed by distant synth shimmer, the female vocals adding an ethereal angelic vibe to the proceedings. The track explodes about halfway through in a little squall of blackened psychnoise, only to slip right back into it, albeit a bit louder and heavier, some seriously mesmerizing metallic shoegaze krautrock heaviness, that had us sort of wishing these guys sounded like this all the time.
But then the B side goes ahead and reminds us why, as cool as that would be, we would most definitely miss what these guys do already. And what they do here is, lay down some frantic buzzy black metal riffing, letting the riffs unfurl into long streaks of tangled melodies and layered lush blackdronebuzz. Howled vokills come in, and the sounds drifts ever closer to pure black metal, the tension in waiting for the song to kick in, the blasting beats, the galloping crush, but instead, a sort of liquid black drone surface from below, and begins to envelop the sounds, the whole track growing darker and more dense, until finally, inexplicably, the band introduce melancholy acoustic guitar, and what sounds like piano, changing the tenor of the song completely, the buzzing riff no longer defining the sound, but instead acting as a blurred shimmery backdrop for the creeping dirgey drift that's now at the forefront, the drums minimal and spare, the sound seeming to build once again for an inevitable black metal blow out, but instead, the song shifts and fades out an soft squall of hazy shimmer and slowly dissipating psychedelia.
Maybe the best stuff we've heard from these guys, which at this point is saying a LOT.
Gorgeous packaging too, a striking black on black 4 panel sleeve, includes a sticker and a download code. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
Somehow this is exactly what we've been hankering for. A sprawling blackened songsuite, equal parts, dark ambience, dense drones, heavy electronics, buzzy lo-fi almost new wave sounding keyboards, spidery post rock guitars and soft noise. Even writing it, that seems like a pretty unworkable, or unrealistic combination, but somehow these Midwesterners make it work. Big time.
They definitely could be considered sonic brethren of bands like SUNNO))), Pussygutt, MZ412, Troum, To Blacken The Pages, Wolf Eyes, Vulture Club and the like. However, Locrian take that sound someplace all their own, creating actual SONGS, as opposed to just soundscapes or drones. And there's a definitely black metal component for sure, no matter how abstract. Guitars are everywhere, seemingly the foundation for Locrian's sound, although as often as the guitars are unfurling spidery post rocky melodies, or distant reverbed riffs, they are also smeared into warm whirling clouds, left to drift and gradually change shape, or pulled apart and allowed to crumble into jagged little shards. Noise in a big component too, often the prettiest parts are treated with a patina of grinding soft focus electronics, or groaning downtuned tones.
The record opens with a gorgeous, elegiac guitar part, simple and stripped down, like it could be a black metal intro, until the organ comes in, wheezy and warbly, giving the track a weirdly lo-fi almost industrial vibe, definitely had us wishing it was in fact more than just a two minute intro.
That is until track two, "Ghost Repeater" takes over. An epic slow motion drift, strange echoey sounds floating in a warm muted sea of buzz and drone, glitched out bits of electronics, and eventually, a very epic black metal riff, that remains off in the distance, repeated and repeated until it too simply becomes another layer of sound.
"Barren Temple Obscured By Contaminated Fogs" (another great title), begins again with some creepy spindly guitar, draped over a deep pulsing low end, before transforming into some seriously abject and WAY abstract blacknoise. Shrieked distorted vokills over that same spidery guitar, Abruptum like ambience meets warped Goblinesque synth drones, the whole track twisted and warbly, eventually the vocals dropping out, leaving the buzzing guitars and wheezing keyboards to play out a super haunting horrorscape. "Epicedium" is delicate and crystalline, noodly guitar lines looped beneath a glimmering softly throbbing drone, peppered with fragmented strums, soon the track begins to grow gradually more and more distorted, the guitars more tense and frantic, the mood so haunting and weirdly beautiful and so subtly dramatic, reminding us of a super twisted soundtrack to some lost Giallo.
The record proper ends with another awesomely titled jam: "Obsolete Elegy In Cast Concrete", tolling bells, space kraut drones, all washed out and shimmery, the bed for some seriously corrosive guitar buzz and grind, adding layer after layer of crunch and rumble, but also slipping to some seriously black chug, joined by still more harsh hellish vox, a strange combination for sure but manages to be both beautiful and brutal, until the very end, where the track shifts gears and becomes all dramatic and melodic and weirdly majestic.
The cd features a bonus track called "Greyfield Shrines", which is nearly as long as all of the other tracks combined, a sprawling slow building blackened world of sound that slithers from hushed drift, to fractured buzz, to woozy moody ambience to blown out speaker shredding crunch, absolutely epic, super cinematic, mysterious, and even at it's noisiest, still quite melodic and blackly beautiful. Most definitely a track that could have been (and we think maybe was) a record all on its own.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Cool fold over arigato-pack style sleeve, with a full color printed booklet. And for anyone going to the Matchitehew metal/noise festival in Chicago in a few weeks, you'll be able to catch these guys live.
Latest jam from these atmospheric black metal drone ambient soundscapers. Now expanded to a trio, this epic two track workout finds the band sounding better than ever. Slow burning riffs churn relentlessly over a swirl of electronics and rumbling drones, vocals drift ghostlike throughout, melodies peal amidst the crumbling low end and heaving blackness, like some epic post doom, stripped of it drums and blurred into whirling shimmering riffscapes, haunting and otherworldly, abject and post industrial, pulsing and throbbing, gradually transforming from doomdrone to dreamdrift, but remaining heavy and mysterious.
The second track begins with a buzzing black riff, but instead of exploding into a blast of black fury, the riff seems to melt into the background, the various drones and tones bleeding into the riff, all smeared into a swirling black cloud of slow burning blackness, washed out and gauzy, growing more and more abstract, the riff pulled apart, the notes left to drift amidst a vast sea of wheezing chordal shimmer and crumbling glitched out electronics. So awesome. And if that wasn't enough, the flipside features a palindromic rendering of the two songs, the whole first side played in reverse, a warped woozy, swooping bit of twisted droned out black mystery.
Super sweet packaging, silver reflective sticker on the tape, seven panel, silver ink on black matte j-card. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!
Super limited tour only 7", we got the very last handful. Unlike the blackened drones on Locrian's full length, this is way more in the realm of guitar heaviness, not quite black metal, but there is definitely some shades of black happening. A killer riff fragment, looped over and over, hypnotic and trancelike, slowly evolving in tone and timbre, getting higher and more jagged, while all around it, the ambient sounds build to a thunderous almost industrial cacophony.
The B side is a billowy bit of spaced out drift, trippy synth shimmer, another looped bit of abstract guitar, swirling effects, layered textures, erupting into a stretch of slow motion doominess right at the end. More dark heavy beauty from this Chicago duo.
All white cover, white labels, very little info, a Xeroxed insert with liner notes. 300 copies, these are the last ones ever.
The duo of Andre Foisy and Terence Hannum, aka Locrian, may have started life as purveyors of grim black ambience, and even with the addition of drummer Steven Hess, and an expanding sound that found their black buzz dronescapes blossoming into more rhythmic, and fully realized sonic sprawls, we still weren't entirely prepared for Return To Annihilation, which finds the group's crystallizing into something surprisingly melodic, what in the past might have been slow shifting fields of static rumble, and churning dark psychedelia, here has been transformed into something, dare we say poppy. Opener "Eternal Return" begins with some sinister synth buzz, darkly sci-fi and ominous, so we were prepared for more classic Locrian, but then BAM, the song explodes into some seriously prismatic, synth heavy dirge pop bliss out, think M83, Jesu, Mogwai. Minus the shrieked black metal vokills, this could be any of those groups, super melodic, dense and lush and layered, crazy melodic, epic and majestic, almost a crime it's over after less than three minutes.
But fear not, there's plenty more of this 'new' Locrian to be found. "A Visitation From The Wrath Of Heaven" begins like the opener, all crumbling, pulsing synths, woozy minor key swirls, again, seemingly setting us up for some droned out black mesmer, but instead, in come the drums, some swirly backwards melodies, and the track gradually settles into a sort of dreamy, drifting slow-core, something you might expect to be on Kranky, everything wreathed in psychedelic shimmer, but all smeared into a softly fuzzy, hypnotic rhythmic churn. Although they do drop in some harsh vox right near the end, really, again that's the only thing keeping this from being some weird minimal experimental drone pop. That and the crushing minute long doom/sludge finale, that soars majestically, the buzzing guitars wrapped around wordless vocals, and draped over some seriously crushing drum damage.
And so it goes, the record unwinding in all sorts of sonic directions. "Two Moons" is all softly tangled acoustic guitar, over a buzz drenched post rock lope, a sort of Mogwai / Tim Hecker hybrid, heavy certainly, but more heady and hypnotic than anything, then there's the title track, which begins as a brooding gloom pop, before blossoming into a freeform bit of black metal riffing, but blurred into something much more abstract, a gorgeous sprawl of minor key distorted guitar crumble, before returning to a sort of Mogwai / Godspeed style post rock slow build, albeit augmented with some extra metallic heft and more vokills. The final three tracks drift from hushed buzzy thrum, beneath soft curlicues of reverbed guitar shimmer, noisy blown out freeform guitar noise, laced with wild drum splatter, and harsh howled vox, to the final 15+ minute sprawl of "Obsolete Elegies", which begins as an acoustic guitar / piano threnody, dark, twang flecked swirls, set amidst billowing clouds of soft psychedelia, brooding and dusky, a little bit of Barn Owl maybe happening, moaned vocals, buzzing sci-fi synths, the sound transforming part way through into some strange dubbed out synth-prog, before once again launching into some epic, super distorted post rock majesty, soaring melodies, churning drum crush, all of which fades out into a field of synth swirl and disembodied sitar buzz, muted and haunting, only to eventually explode into a final blast of heaviness, of blasting black metal in fact, chugging and churning at first, before in swoops a second guitar transforming the sound into some insane and epic black prog heaviness, and suddenly we find ourselves wishing for a whole record that sounds like the last two minutes. Fingers crossed for next time.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ultra crazy limited tour only 3"cd-r from these Chicago blackened dronelords, we tried to order a ton of these, but managed to get less than a dozen. Considering it was limited to 93 copies, and most of those went on tour with the band, these are most likely the last and only copies we'll ever get.
Which is a bummer cuz this is really great. Two tracks, both the same length, the second is the exact reverse of track one - which makes this a musical palindrome. Prettier than most of the other Locrian stuff, delicate and drifty, washed out and woozy, long fuzzy layered drones, a little bit space-y, very hypnotic and trancelike, the end of the first track (and thus the beginning of the second) builds to a buzzing blown out looped sounding coda, which then follows the reverse path through the length of the second track eventually settling back down into some soft sun dappled dronebliss, before finally fading out completely. Quite lovely, even the heavy parts are more pretty than heavy. Only 10 or so of these in stock. Be quick, or be without...
LIMITED TO 93 COPIES. Housed in a mini plastic sleeve, with a cool black on black fold out insert.
Christoph Heemann (of HNAS , Mirror, and many other storied tape music/drone outfits), finds himself in yet another collaboration, this time with none other than aQ faves, Chicago's blackened doom drone duo Locrian, and the results are fruitful to say the least. Albeit a bleak and black fruit, that the shiny and happy amongst you might be hesitant to taste. But then, there's much to enjoy, even for the less adventurous, in the moody drifting darkness conjured up here.
We see Locrian dialing back the harshness in favor of a more hushed and dreary post apocalyptic soundscapery. Opener "Hecatomb" starts with a creepily stark, almost Nitschian drone, complete with what sound like a cacophony of burbling horns, with disassociated fragments of 12 string guitar floating atop a heady haze of drifting textures. Part way through a lush drift of beautiful piano harmonies intermingle with a pulsating tom tom, while scraping doom-laden electronics lie buried beneath the surface, creating a haunting whirlpool of mesmeric aphotic bliss. The proceedings take a much grimmer turn with "Loathe The Light". As the title suggests, this is a dark one. Wonderfully depressive skeletal guitars outline the overall feeling of doomed helplessness. Scraping cymbals swell and clang and hiss, tortured blacked screams reverberate inside some long forgotten cavern. The mood is tense and forlorn and beautiful. "Edgeless City" has more of a lost in the cold depths of space vibe. Writhing guitar textures seep out across a barren moonscape, buzzing and dubbed out, it builds subtly into a spacious brooding stasis. A throbbing grumbling underpins the whole thing, a moody desolate soundtrack for impending end times. The last cut "The Drowned Forest" is a deep and murky miasma of death time vocal crooning and cold twisting drone harmonics, completely enveloping and angelic, like a much bleaker depressive Tim Hecker, the track as a whole developing into a churning lush hypnotizing swirl of glacial black drone. A stunning collaboration brought to us by the always ruling Handmade Birds imprint. RECOMMENDED!
Fyi, there's a cd version too, we have a handful, waiting to get more though...
Another fantastic split, on a list jam packed with killer splits, this one featuring recent aQ Record Of The Week honorees Locrian, whose The Crystal World double disc was a big hit around here, and Century Plants, a duo we dig who are WAY under represented on the aQ site, with only a single cd-r having ever been reviewed.
Unlike the black and buzz of The Crystal World, Locrian explores a sound world more hushed and minimal, more cinematic and soundtracky, two long tracks, that flow into one another, the first beginning with streaks of shimmering buzz, over deep ominous drifts, tinkling melodies way off in the distance, soon overcome by thick swaths of swirling thrum and whir, gorgeous shards of keening high end, bits of electronics and feedback, the sounds thickening as the track progresses, sounding more like a lost John Carpenter soundtrack that some avant/post black metal thing, haunting and atmospheric and mysterious. Which leads directly into the second track, pulsing, throbbing, muted melodies, a brooding tense slow build, strangely pretty, but still dark and ominous, plenty of murky buzz and roiling blackness beneath the surface, the track never exploding into something strictly heavy, instead, drifting darkly and dreamily as a suite of mysterious cinematic dronemusic.
Century Plants dial it down even further, an ultraminimal strum and drift, whispering riffage over a cavernous low end hum, tendrils of minor key melody intertwine with smears of moaning low end, soft swoops of backwards guitars, and super subtle effects, the sound gradually becoming more insistent, the guitars subtly buzzier and blacker. The second track begins similarly, a soft hushed shimmer, but quickly blossoms into something much more sinister, a thick slab of churning black SUNNO)))-ed buzz, a glacial low end drift, that heaves and roils, but is deftly smoothed into something more tranquil and otherworldly, than heavy and harrowing.
Fantastic stuff from both bands. Definitely needing to hear more Century Plants, and of course can never get enough of Locrian.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, housed in a beautiful silkscreened blue metallic ink on matte black sleeve, with heavy printed insert.
Latest demo from Philly one man black metal band Lonesummer, and it's a doozy. Like on the last record, What We Were, Lonesummer's sound continues to confound and baffle, only black metal on the surface, there's way more going on that just blast and buzz. On what We Were it was sampled jazz records, female vocals, all kinds of backwards effects, a serious heaping helping of noise, not to mention some shoegazey poppiness, all wound up into a swirling tripped out chunk of psychedelic blackness. On this latest, if anything, both the poppiness AND the noisiness have been cranked way up, for yet another amazing blackened slab of heavy/pretty whatthefuck.
The record opens with a crumbling wall of feedback and buzz, before the song erupts in a total blast of in-the-red metalgaze, all pretty pop drift buried beneath an avalanche of distortion and Merzbowian buzz, which leads right into a track that is WAY at the other end of the spectrum, softly buzzing guitars, simple skeletal drum machine, a bit like a lo-fi bedroom brewed Cure, but with harsh demonic vox, and a weird almost new age sounding synth solo. Sounds weird, and it is, but if you didn't want weird, you would most definitely have bailed out of this review about ten sentences back.
From there on out, it's a series of schizophrenic sonic freakouts, from ultra lo-fi grim garage style raw primitive black buzz, to washed out woozy blackened melancholy drift, brittle guitars, trash can drums, shrieked vokills, but all drifting on a dreamy pure pop melody, to super blown out chaotic noise rock, but even then, shot through with some sort of unlikely melody, the entire sound threatening to collapse beneath the weight of so much distorted buzz and amp shredding crunch.
"Hyalophagia" is a blast of almost pure white noise, with some sort of thrashing blackness going on underneath, finishing off with a bizarre collage of foreign language samples and elevator music melodies. "9-25" is all dour spidery slowcore guitars, unfurling crystalline melodies in a wide open expanse of reverbed shimmer, peppered with sizzling cymbals, and chiming swaths of almost lush sounding harmonies. "Watch The Walls Instead" sounds like Casio black metal, a skittery programmed beat shuffles beneath sheets of warm muted buzz, as if there was a depressive black metal shoe gaze demo preset on those little keyboards. The final three tracks are variations on extreme black noisiness, flitting from raw primitive blast, to in the red pounding crunch, and finally back to loping minor key lo-fi blissed out blackened pop.
LIMITED TO 125 COPIES. Nicely packaged in printed envelopes with cardstock gatefold inserts...
Any band that stirs up tons of shit on the net, inspiring vitriolic tirades, definitely gets us interested, whether they can back it up sonically is another thing entirely.
Velvet Cacoon might be the best example, beginning life as a supposed Eco-Fascist black metal band, who created their dense drone-y buzz with a 'diesel harp', only later revealing that they were taking the piss. But it hardly mattered, cuz the music they made was totally transcendent, their sick sense of humor and antagonism toward the rest of the black metal scene only added to their appeal. So it should come as no surprise that Lonesummer, who share a label with Velvet Cacoon, are inspiring similarly heated reactions. In their case, it's not because of any bullshit mythmaking, it's because their sound is seriously fucked up, like nothing you've ever heard. Taking inspiration from the new wave of buzzy poppy shoegazey black metal, but twisting it all up into a noise drenched, chopped and looped. barrage of beats and riffs and damaged effects and bizarre vocals, and delicate melodies and strange samples, a dizzying jumble, that for some might be total torture, but for us, and we would guess most adventurous listeners out there, What We Were might just become a fast favorite.
Obviously if you dig bands like Alcest and Lifelover and Amesoeurs, you should for sure check this out, and while Lonesummer do share some of the same sonic elements, this is SO MUCH WEIRDER.
Best to probably just go song by song, it's too varied and all over the map to really boil it down to a single descriptor.
"The Ones Who Grab My Hand, The Lost Souls" is a crushing barrage of noise, there seems to be some metal underneath the noise, but it's so obfuscated it's more like a pulse, or another layer of static, like a more rhythmic Merzbow, but laced with some hysterical shrieking vokills, before the song fragments and begins to crumble, and gets all mathy and chaotic and industrial, while underneath, some super distorted vocal jazz surfaces, scatting female vox, skittery drums, piano and bass, but all tangled up with Lonesummer's frantic crumbling buzz, so fucked up and so weird, but super cool.
The second track is more traditionally buzzy and black, but it's all relative, 3 minutes of the same muted muddy riff, programmed drum skitter, occasional demonic growl, but all smeared with hazy soft focus melodies, the whole thing blurred into a woozy mesmer, a bit like a Pop Ambient Wold. Then there's "Long Winter Way" that fills the first half of the track with delicate chiming minor key guitar, softly swaddled in reverb and delay, only to get all bleary eyed and gauzy and soft poppy and shoegazey toward the end, sounding more like Ariel Pink or John Maus than any metal we've ever heard. Backwards drums sizzle beneath loopy flurries of notes, all swirling in a cloud of soft hushed shimmer. The rest of the record is equally disparate, from lurching crushing low, blackened and super distorted, to blasting brittle black metal, all repetitive and wrapped in still more layers of fuzz and buzz and whir, to the blown out in-the-red distorto noise bliss of the title track, to the psychedelic smoldering crumble of "We All Looked So Perfect", like a music box plugged into a million distortion pedals, to the closer, a loping, super melodic slow core depressive dirge, with lovely clean guitars, howled vokills, and a shimmery vacuum cleaner buzz wrapped around everything, simultaneously ultra melodic, warmly washed out and blissfully otherworldly.
Guaranteed to piss off purists, but so is about 90 percent of the stuff we dig, but for anyone into fucked up and freaky, baffling and bizarre blackness, this might be your new favorite band.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!! Gorgeously packaged in a full color oversized 7" style sleeve.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This awesomely confusional weirdo black metal split now available on cd (cd-r actually), in a dvd case with printed insert and black and white cover art, the digital version of the tape we listed a while back (we still have a couple of those left if anybody wants one before they're gone)...
Second missive from black metal weirdo Lonesummer, whose What We Were cd-r from last list was a huge hit around here. A twisted blend of strange samples, totally blown out black metal buzz, and weird sun dappled melodic pop, all wound into a massively confusional, incredibly fucked up bit of blackened avant noise pop, or something, tough to know exactly how to describe this. We have to imagine that most black metallers would find Lonesummer just way too damaged and freaky, but for us, it's exactly the sort of weirdness we've been dying for.
The opening track sums it up pretty nicely, beginning with some sample conversations, street noise, a hushed minimal drone, which explodes into a crumbling in-the-red almost white noise blow out, the sound so saturated, it's impossible to pick out instruments, the sound just a thick cloud of swirling buzz and skree, as the track progresses, riffs seem to materialize out of the ether, but instead of taking the form of a proper BM jam, it seems more than anything to add a sense of rhythm, creating a fucked up, looped bit of buzz drenched mesmer, before, the buzz fades out, leaving some sampled African music, which eventually fades out. Phew. The next song is just s far out, beginning with some new age swoosh, some sampled wind (or is it tape hiss?), a delicate chiming melody, before a tiny bit of drum skitter leads into another explosion of impossibly distorted, but weirdly pretty and shoegaze-y blacknoise. 4 tracks total from Lonesummer, and goddamn we already want more!!!
Lonesummer are paired up here with Marsh, a one man band from Minneapolis, whose take on black metal is much more primitive and raw, a bit punky, with a definite D-beat vibe, so folks into Akitsa, Malveillance, Bone Awl, this is definitely your cup of tea, but Marsh manage to infuse their own vibe, the repetitive almost looped sounding arrangements, the cool hazy washed out production, loads of effects and like Lonesummer, a weirdly off kilter pop element too. Need to hear more from these guys as well.
We only got about 10 of these, and sadly that's all we'll ever be able to get, a new blast of twisted what-the-fuck black medal weirdness from aQ faves Lonesummer, teamed up with new-to-us Planning For Burial.
Lonesummer are in fine form, introducing their tracks with a weird sampled TV jingles before unfurling sheets of white hot, ultra brittle blasting black metal buzz, super lo-fi, and chaotic, but shot through with strange melodies, and mysterious textures, shifting from frantic frenzied blowouts, to mournful depressive doomic crawls, the vocals a buried inhuman shriek, the guitars so caustic, the sound totally high end, as if they were being played through speakers consisting of nothing but tweeters, finishing off, with a gorgeous bit of melancholy clean jangle guitar pop, the vocals sweetly sorrowful, like a more twisted lo-fi Richard Youngs, that poppiness, no doubt present in the other songs as well, just buried under avalanches of crumbling corrosive crunch. Awesome.
Planning For Burial are not nearly so abrasive, in fact, they're barely black metal at all, instead, they craft a sort of buzz drenched dreamlike slowcore, the opening track is all creepy crawly, measured emotive vox, wheezing organs, all beneath a churning layer of crumbling distortion, the result is actually quite lovely. Then the drums come in, programmed and electronic, and it gets more dramatic and majestic, and sounds almost like some twisted, 4 track, buzz doused take on Antony And The Johnsons, which is absolutely a good thing. The second track takes a woozy, depressive Cure like drift, all tinkling minor key melodies, and shuffling rhythms, and wraps it in thick buzzing bass, and swirling ethereal synths, the beats big and electronic here too, sounding not at all unlike some of the more minimal and moody Witch House jams we've heard. Finally, PFB finish off with a gorgeous softly psychedelic guitar dronescape, all washed out, blurred and bleary, the vocals buried, the guitars lustrous and thick, total hazy shoegazey dream pop drift. So killer.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES and already out of print. We have the last 10 copies, so act fast...
We've been trying to get enough copies of anything on the amazing Sylvan Screams Analog label to review and list, but previous releases were so limited, that we were only able to get a couple. And while they're just as limited, we did now manage to get a handful of the two most recent releases, this one comes from a band from right here in the Bay Area, called Longing And Silence, whose sounds is a gorgeous depressive plod, a grim slo-mo black buzz, all mournful and melancholy, the vokills a harsh demonic rasp, but minus those vocals, it's another band whose sound found be mistaken for some weird shoegaze/slowcore outfit, the sort of avant metal weirdness you might expect to find on The Flenser, but -with-those vocals, this remains firmly in the realm of depressive black metal, remaining us a bit of a more orthodox Lifelover, the same sort of loping, minor key miserablism, but with some seriously melodic bass, notable also considering how little bass is even audible in most black metal. But it makes for some cool, woozy, downtuned blackened slowcore, with some surprisingly melodic moments, that has some of these bordering on downright poppy. Long songs, mesmerizingly miserable, and gorgeously bleak. As the label suggests, definitely for fans of Burzum, Silencer, Strid and Bethlehem.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered.
This document of raw and primitive American black metal has been resurrected and reissued on vinyl by the Dais label. An unlikely choice, considering the rest of the Dais catalog, but in its own way, this collection of outsider blackness is a pretty good fit. This Kentucky one man band recorded only two cassette demos, between 1993 and 1994, only one of which was ever released. Originally thought to be a joke, the liner notes in this new edition state explicitly that "the hatred radiating from these recordings is real!", and while the man behind these sounds was known as Roach back in the day, he now goes by the name James Brown III, and is a member of LA black metallers Harassor (and is responsible for the awesome Moon Knight tape we reviewed a while back)!
Eleven blasts of blasting, pounding blackness, primitive and raw, fierce and feral, the guitars buzz maniacally, the drums super lo-fi, boomy and rehearsal space sounding, the vokills so awesome, a sick demonic croak, all woven into short sharp bursts of true black metal grimnity, the songs slipping from mid-tempo plod to furious blast and back again, the sound fantastically lo-fi, blown out, murky and muddy, buzzy and black.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, incredible packaging, black matte finish sleeves, with red metallic foil stamped artwork, the lp is one sided, with a cool satanic etching on the B side, inside is a huge 12"x12" booklet with lyrics, photos, and two interviews with Lord Foul from way back in 1994.
Most recent solo record from the drummer of LA black metal grimlords Harassor, another collection of raw blackened primitivism, two side long songsuites, each one a constantly shifting soundworld, from droned out black buzz mesmer to something much more raw and minimal to straight up outsider experimentation. Droned out ambient murk transforms into a loping goat metal gallop, buzzing, droney-y churn blurs into wild noise drenched post rock lumber, a few parts get downright dreamy, the sounds coalescing into something bordering on blackened shoegaze, while others devolve into almost psychedelic ambience, swirling squalls of guitarnoise and stumbling drum damage and abstract vokills, all blurred into a strange sort of freeform dirgery. In fact, much of A Destiny Of Death is spent outside the confines of buzzing blackness, especially on side one, and while the second side has plenty of trippy ambience and weird psychedelic dronemusic moments, it's also heavier on the, well, heavy, with some seriously harrowing black buzz, raw metallic noise and hateful howling crush.
Every tape individually blood splattered. And yeah, also EXTREMELY LIMITED.
Another blast of nekro-black "morbid dead metal" filth from this aQ fave, the solo project of Andorkappen, the drummer of LA black metal trio Harassor. And like the previous tape on Universal Consciousness, this is some dark, sinister, hateful heaviness, the sound raw and primitive, filthy and crusty, the sound lo-fi, but still somehow weirdly lush and LOUD, buzzing guitars, pounding practice space drumming, and some seriously sick demonic croak vokills. The sound is all over the map, slipping from super brittle and tinny, to murky and muddy and sludgey, the songs too, dirgey ritualistic creeps, frantic lightning speed blasts, pounding punkish d-beat blowouts, the sounds not at all typical, with clean effects laden guitars and warped FX, wild tangled psychedelia, field recordings, all woven into this twisted black epic. 36 minutes, 20 brief blasts, plus a super creeped out almost 20th century sounding piano dirge outro, spare and abstract, percussive and darkly ominous. The whole track repeats on both sides. The label describes this as "primitive devotional caveman soul music" and who are we to argue.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in super deluxe, embossed, heavy textured metallic paper J-cards, each one hand numbered and sealed with a sticker, each copy marked with Mr. Lord Time's actual blood!
Latest blast of nekro morbid death metal primitivism from the drummer of LA black metallers Harassor, and like on previous tapes, Drink My Tears is a twisted, lo-fi, blackened, psychedelic freakout, a warped strain of primitivism, the recording this time around even shittier (read: genius), the guitars brittle and buzzy, but not black metal buzzy, more sort of tinny, the drums cardboard box thumps, everything super distorted and in the red, the vocals a raspy grumbly croak, heavily processed, and made super trippy, the sound surprisingly melodic, with what sounds like piano, the recording not so black metal as damaged lo-fi dirge pop with black metal elements? Maybe. Well, really, it IS black metal obviously, but seriously mutated, black metal the way Circle Of Ouroborus is black metal, as much the mood and atmosphere and intent as the sound, cuz really some of the tracks here are weirdly hypnotic slabs of lo-fi psychedelic weirdness, that out of context, we might not even classify as black metal. But then there are tracks that are raw as fuck, and black as fuck, but those are far outweighed by the trippy, the tranced out, the droney, the woozy and wonderfully weird. Swirls of distorted guitar melodies emulate carnival organs, a sort of blackened kosmische, others are lurching lumbering dirges that again seem too heavy on the chiming clean guitar to be truly black metal, but fuck it, not of that matters, this is some super rad, super twisted, outsider sonic weirdness, that whether it sounds psychedelic, or grim and black, or freaky and WTF?, to you, or hell even all of the above, this is some amazing, inspired, dementedly genius stuff that is KILLING us. So totally and absolutely recommended.
Comes in swank packaging, colored cases, stickered red tapes, heavy cardstock J-card, each one marked with real blood, and each one with two buttons.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
These Spanish masters of monumental ultra doom stoner sludge return, with four new tracks. And as we mentioned last time, don't confuse these guys with the Master Musicians Of Bukkake, while both take their name from a somewhat problematical source (Google it - or maybe don't), the Lords are a much heavier proposition, as becomes pretty obvious a few minutes into the first track. Although they do start out with a wild tangle of chaotic psychedelic noisemaking, a squall of swirling skree, all set to some monster drumming, but soon, the song proper kicks in, and the band lock into some groovy stoner metal, all slithery riffage, and propulsive drumming, but this is not just rehashed riffage, the band whip out some wild squiggle guitar harmonies, and the vocals, not at all what you might expect, a sort of super processed, demonic, underwater shriek/gargle, totally changes the tone of the band, especially when they kick out some stonery wah wah guitar shred, but then it's wrapped around those crazed vokills, a dizzying mix for sure. And those guitars, that's really what halls make this something else entirely, when the guitars go careening off course, and instead of churning away, the riff splinters, leaving will blasts of psychedelic freakout, or groovy shred, or just tripped out noisiness, always to eventually somehow return to the roiling riffiness. The songs are long too, so they go through all sorts of transformations/permutations, from doomy creeps and crawls, to psychedelic blooze blowouts, super stretched out slo-mo ultradooooooom to Sabbathy swing, all pocked with spacey FX, wild guitar aktion and more of those twisted alien vox. Killer!
The Italian black metal horde Lorn specialize in COLD BLACK METAL. It says so right there on the record cover. And indeed, Towards The Abyss Of Disease, their second full length, is cold. Freezing cold. Frosty and grim as all good black metal should be. But Lorn offer up something unexpected. Ridiculously catchy songs. And yeah, we talk about black metal bands being catchy all the time. Weird hooks buried under vast swaths of black fuzz. But Lorn, whether purposeful or not, outdo them all, managing to inject some impossibly catchy melodies into the chorus (and sometimes the verses too) of each of these six black hymns. And we mean stuck in your head like crazy. Humming it for the next week. That sort of thing. It doesn't really take away from the band's grim evil atmosphere, but what it does do is add a weird haunting hooky melancholy that is not often found in COLD BLACK METAL bands. The opening salvo, the title track, is a buzzing midtempo burzumic blast, but when the chorus drops, the guitars lock into a haunting minor key sing song melody that is equal parts lullaby and long lost classic pop song. Granted, it's buried under a mile of buzzing prickly spike encrusted fuzz, but that's exactly what makes these songs stand out. The impossible alliance between hooky pop catchiness and cold grim blackness. The blackness rules of course, the surface of every track is a barren wasteland of black buzz, thrashing percussive pound and growled demonic screech, but the catchiness lurks just below the surface, barely audible through a storm of swirling blackness and ultra distorted blown out fuzz. But it informs all the sounds around it, giving Lorn a truly creepy (and catchy sound) that with close listening unfolds like some hellish black flower. So awesome!
This is some truly dark and depressive doom, from the name of the band, Loss, to the cover image, a headshot of a man being hung, to the song titles like "Cut-up, Depressed And Alone" and "Conceptual Funerealism Into The FInal Act (Of Being)", to the inner sleeve image, a huge razor blade, to the lyrics: "And these wounds of mine will never fucking heal, all that's left is loneliness, there's nothing left to feel". Woah, really bleak and harsh and lonely and miserable, which is what makes the music such a strange surprise. You might expect some impossibly downtuned slow motion sludge, or some blackened midtempo buzz, but instead, what you get is closer to bands like Katatonia or Paramecium or My Dying Bride than Esoteric or Moss. Sure it's slow, and heavy, but it's also strangely melodic. VERY melodic in fact, melancholy and minor key, a plodding, miserable prettiness. Distorted melodies swirl and swoop and keen mournfully beside vocals so low and demonic they almost sound like snarling wild animal. Long stretches of clean guitar moodiness, slow and sorrowful, before the guitars creep up and launch into another melodic dirge. That's what makes Loss so compelling, the musical tug of war between the pretty sad melodies and the buzzy black sludge. The last two tracks are live, one is a 10 minute version of Katatonia's "Brave" which sounds perfect, like it could be a Loss original, and demonstrates the huge sonic influence Katatonia has obviously had on these guys, they're joined by Imperial from Krieg on vocals (with a really funny intro, in a thick Tennessee drawl, the vocalist from Loss announces: "We've got our guest vocalist, he drove all the way down here from fuckin' New Jersey, welcome to the stage, Imperial from the fucking black metal cult Krieg..."). The last track is also live (and comes complete with another goofy song introduction) and is the fastest and blackest track here, pummeling double kick, and buzzing riffs swirl into full on black metal before slowing down and spreading back out out into more of that depressive melodic doom. So fucking good...
We reviewed the self-titled demo from this Australian duo a while back, and were immediately smitten by their twisted take on black metal, which was in fact way less metal, and more a sort of shoegazey minimal post punk noise pop, that just so happened to contain some black metal elements, but whatever you call it, we dug it like crazy. That whole demo is included here as secret hidden bonus tracks, we'll include the review of that demo below, but first, the new Loss Of Self record, Twelve Minutes, which thankfully clocks in at nearly seven minutes more than that! No sprawling epics, no 30 minute megajams, nope. Ultimately, even though they're on Flenser, and are constantly described as a black metal band, they are ultimately really just a weird blackened pop band, so under 3 minute song lengths are ideal. Opener "Paradise Overgrown" is pretty much the perfect sonic representation of what these guys do, clan indie guitar jangle, soon joined by a sort-of-blastbeat, raspy vokills too, but the music, super melodic, fuzzy and shoegazey, minus those vox, this would be some seriously blissed out pop, even with the blast beats, and then midsong, when it slows down and gets even more pretty and melodic, it really is only those vokills that keep this from being pure pop. "Isolt" strives to be more black, but purposely foils that plan, adding deep dramatic clean vocals, and thick swaths of fuzzy guitar shimmer, all wrapped around more grim vox and another blast beat, but this song too, near the end this time, transforms into a weird almost new wave sounding post punk. The title track too, soaring and super melodic, total fuzzy dream pop, with weird mathy drums, and a cool super melodic bassline, this track IS peppered with some actual black buzz blasts, but they're surrounded on all sides by some seriously sun dappled shoegaze poppiness. And so it goes, the second half of the record a push and pull between melodic poppiness and blackened buzz and blast, to be fair, there are more moments on the second half that approach proper grimnity, but even then, the sound can never seem to shrug off that poppiness, although we're guessing they're not trying that hard anyway. Love this stuff, and so psyched that the insanely limited cd-r demo is included here too. Here's what we had to say about that one:
The first demo track is a sort of gloomy, dirgey creep, at least in the beginning, all chiming guitars, and woozy, moody atmospheres, sinewy basslines and crumbling distorted chords, all hanging weightless in a field of what feels and sounds like classic shoegaze, the drums super distorted and blown out, the vibe laid back and languorous, at least until the last 45 seconds (the song's only 2 minutes long after all), where the song explodes into a dense tangled blast of blackened math metal, all shrieked vokills, pounding drums, squiggly psychedelic guitars, and swirling hazy atmospheres. The second track is more of the same, starting off galloping furiously, but the sounds washed out and gauzy, yeah, there are vokills here too, but the music is downright dreamy, sans the vocals, this would be pure shoegaze pop, lots of jangle and chiming chords, which is precisely what you can expect on track three too, although everything is slowed way down, the drums a swinging shuffle, the guitars woozy and bleary, everything sun dappled and prismatic, the sound slowly building to a epic, majestic, swirling post rock style crescendo, before finishing off with a final blast of pounding black shoegaze blissout.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Caves is the latest sonic ritual from this mysterious Greek horde whose sounds is a blackened doomdrone, that seems to have more in common with the strangely hypnotic solo guitar psychedelia of aQ faves Blackwolfgoat that any of the more typical black/doom metal outfits we've reviewed in the past. No drummer, we can only assume LC is a one man band, and his M.O. is the sort of thing we love. A sort of post SUNNO))) sort of doomdronedirge, unfurling a churning slo-mo riff, and then looping it, over and over and over, a mesmerizingly cyclical core, around which various other sounds are arranged, blurred streaks of rumbling buzz, haunting chantlike vocals, clouds of FX drenched chordal whir, streaks of high end, buried melodies, bits of murk other sonic detritus, the result is indeed very ritualistic, record opener "�To Witness Under The Stars" spends a good four minutes chugging away, before the riff drops out, leaving just a strange swirl of overlapping voices, very liturgical, wreathed in crackle and hiss, before a new riff takes over, this one more brittle, wrapped in feedback, and more distinctly metal, but still essentially a slow motion bit of doom-ed riffery, one that seems to grow more downtuned as the surrounding sounds grow more horrific and blackened.
And so it goes, "Dawn Of A Dead Sun" follows a similar pattern, but wraps it's droned out feedback soaked riff in banshee wails and blackened vokills, and as the track progresses, it seems to grow more psychedelic, more raga like, inspiring a sort of trance state, a gloriously droned out blackriff ritual that is utterly entrancing. "Secret Entities" is the most 'rock' of the bunch, sounding like it might explode into proper song form at any time, but instead the chords ring out into the ether, the melodies fading into blackness, while "From The Depths" wraps the core riff in a weirdly processed almost slappy synth sound, which at first sounds odd, but soon more effects join the fray, and it becomes a strangely heady hypnotic crawl, and finally "Plutonian Funeral", finishes things off with the creepiest and most minimal sprawl of the bunch, layering a sort of creepy carnivalesque synth, beneath an oozing layer of crumbling low end, peppered with weird reverbed twang, and wrapped in distant melodic shimmers, as well as the occasional hellish shriek, a dark, occultic coda for sure.
Gorgeous haunting heaviness, that just might appeal to fans of black psychedelia and abstract guitardrones more than metalheads...
As if these guys weren't busy enough with their 'day jobs',�Stephen O'Malley (Khanate, SUNNO))), Burning Witch, KTL, Thorr's Hammer),�James Plotkin (Atomsmasher, Phantomsmasher, Khanate, OLD, Flux, Romance) and�Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, House of Low Culture) still somehow managed to find time to get together and do something a little less... heavy, or sludgy, or crushing, or even drone-y for that matter.�
Wurmwulv is the latest chunk of ambient drift, minimal clatter, and abstract soundscaping from the trio known as Lotus Eaters. Three looooong songs, 50 minutes of strange drifting sound.�
The opening track is a slowed down pipe fight. A warped wander through a sea of chimes and bells, of resonant metal and shimmering metallic drones. Avarus, Anaksimandros, have got nothing on these guys. Ominous and dark, but strangely melodic. From delicate tinkling to dense metal on metal pound, single notes fluttering in space, to flurries of clang and clatter, all the while, way in the background, a deep swirling tidal low end shifts and shimmers.�
The second track is brief, 5 minutes of high end drift, strange electronic interference, gristly rumbles and hissy whirs, while beneath it all, machines creak and groan, mysterious objects scrape and rattle until near the end, the track is suddenly overtaken by a lush wall of warm guitar whorl.
The final track, another lengthy exploration, is an effects laden trawl through a world of constantly shifting low end. Nearly static, layers of rumble and whir, gently and almost imperceptibly shuffling, while over the top, drift tiny alien sonic events and muted squiggles of FX, helicopter like whup-whup-whup's, and faux animal calls, clicks and thumps, all manner of mysterious sound. Eventually, a flurry of high end streaks takes the form of some sort of effervescent symphony, glistening in their own all high end universe, before the low end returns, bringing with it a muted folky drift, a lazy sun dappled slow burning outro...
Gorgeously�packaged in an oversized 6 panel A5 sized digibook, with paintings by Stephen Kasner, layout and design by Aaron Turner. So nice.
Another Great Love Song? Yes that's the unlikely title of this, the second album from this supremely confident and capable and sometimes confounding Bay Area black metal band. Ludicra, whose very name seems a veiled, half-ironic challenge to black metal orthodoxy, are one of several bands making a black metal name for the San Francisco scene, alongside Leviathan and Weakling (R.I.P.) and Crebain, etc. Ludicra are indeed a band (more than just one damned soul) and include members of Hammers Of Misfortune and Impaled among others. And they are just a bit different from most black metal acts, even if sonically you'd swear they were among the Norwegian elite. For one thing, their line up is 2/5ths female (including one of the most fearsome vocalists), for another, this new album sure doesn't look like your typical black metal record, and...they're now on Alternative Tentacles! Yup, Jello probably heard the tinges of Neurosis in their music we guess...indeed it's there (the two bands share some guest musicians in fact, members of Amber Asylum perform strings with Ludicra as they have on past Neurosis releases). But Ludicra is also a very very black metal entity. With keyboards and raging guitars and blasting drums and screams of triumph and despair, it's got a density of sound put to tape that incorporates both the heaviest violence and the prettiest melancholy...in fact a lot of this is really quite pretty, to our ears, when they get into a midtempo plod and let the little melodies up for air... Black metal fans will find this band bows to no one, even as it reminds us of Enslaved, old Emperor, Opeth, old Solefald, and others of their ilk. Ludicra, however, are urban not ancient, emotional not evil...musically they do conjure the wolves and longboats of Nordic black metal even though any such references (there IS a song called "1000 Wolves") are allegorical in nature. We thought their debut Hollow Psalms was great, and this is an equally fantastic follow-up.
The evil, epic sounds of San Francisco's Ludicra ooze forth once again, their third album demonstrating that they're still among the most highly emotive and intelligent masters of brutality in the business, no less despairingly obsessed with urban decay and man's inhumanity to man than on previous efforts Hollow Psalms and Another Great Love Song. Interestingly (perhaps) this album is their second for Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label, hardly a bastion of nihilistic black metal art -- indeed, they haven't signed any MORE black metal bands since Ludicra, but we'd imagine that's 'cause they rightly figure that they already have one of the best! And also one of the most unique -- how many black metal bands feature not one but two female lead vocalists (one of 'em on guitar as well), alternating demonic rasps and moaning clean singing? Not exactly typical. Something that has also been said of their sister band, the amazing Hammers Of Misfortune (both share the talents of guitarist John Cobbett). And Ludicra are in some ways a crustier, filthier, bleak black metallized version of Hammers, with similar progressive urges and social concerns...and displays of neo-classical, heavy metal guitar! Which is where the most sophisticated "beauty" is to be found amidst the midtempo grimy grim grind of these five tracks (none of 'em short -- in fact the album terminates with the twelve minute "Collapse", gripping guttural symphonic sickness with cello courtesy of one of the members of Amber Asylum).
The evil, epic sounds of San Francisco's Ludicra ooze forth once again, their third album demonstrating that they're still among the most highly emotive and intelligent masters of brutality in the business, no less despairingly obsessed with urban decay and man's inhumanity to man than on previous efforts Hollow Psalms and Another Great Love Song. Interestingly (perhaps) this album is their second for Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label, hardly a bastion of nihilistic black metal art -- indeed, they haven't signed any MORE black metal bands since Ludicra, but we'd imagine that's 'cause they rightly figure that they already have one of the best! And also one of the most unique -- how many black metal bands feature not one but two female lead vocalists (one of 'em on guitar as well), alternating demonic rasps and moaning clean singing? Not exactly typical. Something that has also been said of their sister band, the amazing Hammers Of Misfortune (both share the talents of guitarist John Cobbett). And Ludicra are in some ways a crustier, filthier, bleak black metallized version of Hammers, with similar progressive urges and social concerns...and displays of neo-classical, heavy metal guitar! Which is where the most sophisticated "beauty" is to be found amidst the midtempo grimy grim grind of these five tracks (none of 'em short -- in fact the album terminates with the twelve minute "Collapse", gripping guttural symphonic sickness with cello courtesy of one of the members of Amber Asylum).
About time! After eight years, finally the debut record from this fearsome local black metal fivesome sees the light of day ON VINYL. The cd is currently out of print too, making this all the more essential. Like the cd version did, the lp comes in a rather deluxe package. Mastered at 45 rpm for extra fidelity, it's two slabs of clear vinyl packaged in a gatefold, handbound booklet with art and handlettered lyrics, inside a thick silkscreened cover, limited to 500 copies! As impressive as the original cd's "storybook" packaging, definitely the way this deserves to be vinyl-ized, in style.
Here's what we said back when about the cd release, though by now you probably know all about this band, considering all the accolades they've garnered here and elsewhere, with their latest opus The Tenant, on Profound Lore, being highlighted here not long ago...
Ludicra is yet another project from the fertile metal mind of John Cobbett (Hammers Of Misfortune, The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Iron Cemetary, etc.), this time with the help of local rockers/scene fixtures Aesop (Hickey, Dr. Dre Del, etc.), Christy Cather (Missile Command), Ross Sewage (Impaled), and Laurie Sue Shanaman (who works at the veterinarian where Andee's girlfriend and Erik his housemate take their cats!).
Ludicra's debut reveals them to be a highly advanced black metal creation. They're complex, moody, darkly psychedelic, and 'post-rocky' like AQ-faves Enslaved - a very good thing. The droning savage trance rock of another AQ black metal fave (and fellow San Franciscans) Weakling is also evident. Maybe it's Aesop's punk-derived drumming, or the song-writing dynamics, but while this is very metal indeed it also betrays an awareness of other strands of underground rock. And of course it's heavy, textured, and exceedingly well-crafted, as you would expect from the pen/plectrum of Sir Lord John Cobbett.
Ludicra has two singers: Christy (who also plays guitar) and Laurie Sue, and while both vocalists are women, you won't hear any of the sweet singing that Hammers of Misfortune's female vocalist does. No, it's all very extreme - except for some wordless background choruses and an interlude or two of gentle chanting, they mostly deliver scary throat-shredding screams that upend gender stereotypes. But, like Hammers, having more than one vocalist allows for interesting variety and dynamics. Lots of acoustic interludes and dark and rhythmic breakdowns that hint at the band members' diverse indie rock/post punk/punk rock backgrounds. That, and Ludicra's ability to yet generate at the same time such a convincing black metal atmosphere, makes for a very satisfying and compelling listen.
Local black metal favorites Ludicra return with The Tenant, their first for the great Profound Lore label, and as always, the band delivers. Ludicra masterfully mixes majestic black metal with brooding post-rock for a formula that pretty much touches on everything we love about metal in 2010, including some of the most vile and amazing female vocals we have ever heard, not that you'd necessarily think it was a woman screaming when you first hear this. Another strength is Ludicra's awesome male/female vocal harmonies which certainly add an element of beauty often missing in this kind of music. The amazing arrangements are certainly the work of a group dedicated to forging their own blackened path. It's clear that this is a band of lifers, all of them veterans of the fertile Bay Area metal scene, having served time with the likes of Hammers Of Misfortune, Agalloch, Slough Feg, Impaled, and quite a few others.
"Stagnant Pond" opens the album with some cool acoustic flourishes before the shrieking female vocals come in, sounding a bit like a banshee clawing its way from the depths of hell, as the song builds and builds in intensity. "A Larger Silence" is a super melodic piece of baroque sounding metal with some great harmonies, while "Undercaste" rocks at a nice midtempo groove before going into a surprising outro that seems to owe just as much to British folk music as it does to metal. Throughout it all, the lengthy songs flow into one another perfectly, making for one of the most well thought out metal albums we've heard in quite some time. It's rare that a band is able to seamlessly merge a wide array of influences into something they can call their own, but Ludicra appear to be up to the task and we couldn't be more thrilled. Highly recommended.
Although Life Is Abuse is the name of the label, they want to make life easier on those of us who love the inner city black metal art of San Francisco's Ludicra by putting out this brand new EP, featuring three unreleased songs from the Billy Anderson-recorded Another Great Love Song sessions, to hold us over until the next full-length Ludicra album coming out on Alternative Tentacles in the fall. Yay! These three tracks are prime Ludicra insanity, majestic and dark and fucked up and brilliantly composed as only a band featuring members of Hammers Of Misfortune and Impaled (among others) could do it.
Actually, you get more than just those three new tracks here: the cd comes with Quicktime footage of Ludicra performing live & brutal on October 7th, 2005 (five tracks) plus a Ludicra photo slideshow!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Uh, what?? If you would have told us that our favorite Belgian carrots n' beer obsessed black metal weirdoes Lugubrum (who are also one of our favorite black metal bands, period!) would title their new album Albino de Congo and incorporate African thumb-piano music a la AQ faves Konono No.1, we'd have thought you were pulling our legs, trying to up the ante on our made-up album April Fool's jokes from a few years back.
But of course, it's no longer April, and the band being Lugubrum, we have to believe it. Heck, we're HEARING it. The new Lugubrum is here, and it does indeed take their raw black metal attack into "Extreme Music from Africa" territory, with song titles like "Lugwampinga", "Bwikalubalume" and "Kurlerha Omugongo". There's a picture of a thumb piano in the cd booklet, and they claim this album was in fact recorded in the Congo. Is it a joke? With these guys, it always is AND it always isn't, which is why we love 'em so much... also 'cause their music is invariably awesome. (And with Belgium's colonial history in the Congo, we can perhaps assume there's specific cultural/political dimensions to Lugubrum's interest in that part of the world.)
We see no reason why Conrad's Heart of Darkness can't be just as useful a black metal inspiration as Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings. So in exploring their own hearts of darkness, the metallic component here is FIERCE. But they've given it a Congolese context. Thus, for instance, they'll be tearing through the vicious riffage of "Kabondobondo, Muborobondo" and then some hand-drumming will rise to the surface. Or the sounds of the jungle at night make an appearance in the midst of "Kurlerha Omugongo". A lot of the time it seems they'll save the polyrhythmic hand drums and tinkling thumb pianos and shamanistic chanting and other ethnic instrumental elements for the beginnings and ends of songs, though maybe they're there the whole time but just can't be heard above the din of buzzing black metal guitars and blasting drum battery and Frosty death-grunts.
And, remember that Lugubrum can be (and always has been) plenty odd without the addition of this African influence. So there's some very strange beets, we mean beats, and lovely jazzy or post-rocky interludes (like the dreamy "Mushole"), and other weirdness to be heard here unrelated to the Congo concept. When this is playing, at times you could easily forget that you had a "black metal" record on, and think you were listening to, say, the krauty rhythms of Circle instead. Lugubrum have a knack for mixing all sorts of strange stuff into a cohesive whole, it all flows somehow without any jarring juxtapositions actually spoiling your, uh, suspension of disbelief.
While we don't really believe that this was recorded in the Congo, we'd like to think it was true, and can't prove otherwise. What we will assert is that this is another excellent, eccentric Lugubrum album, and quite recommended!
Oh, and another note: this is one time we're happy we DIDN'T get the limited edition, as supposedly the first 100 copies of this were "cursed and pissed on by pygmy medicine men". Believe it, or don't, but don't ask us for one of those!
A classic release of "Boersk Blek Metle" from Belgium's carrot-brandishing metal mavericks Lugubrum, one of our favorite black metal (blek metal? brown metal?) bands ever! We just listed their new one, De Ware Hond, and when re-ordering more of those direct from the band's own Old Grey Hair label, we decided to get some of Bryune Troon too 'cause we'd somehow never had this particular disc in stock before. It's a 2001 release, recorded 'round about the same time as their now out of print Al Ghemist album, which was the one that started our sick fascination with this bizarre band in the first place, and if you like Lugubrum as much as we do, you're gonna want it.
Unlike some of their more recent output, Bryune Troon strikes a balance of metal vs. not-metal weighted more towards the metal side of things. You won't hear much saxophone, for instance (though we think maybe we hear it on the track "Low Dog", is that what's credited as "Lovendegm chainsaw vomitor"??), but there certainly is plenty o' weirdness creeping in around the edges of everything here, Lugubrum's blasting, wretching black metal already twisting away from the Darkthrone/Emperor/Mayhem template into beyond-Ved-Buens-Ende madness. "Recorded...under handicapped and alcoholic conditions", this incorporates loping, lumbering low-end dirge, atmospheric drone, weird watery field recordings, banjo riffage, scatological subject matter, Viking stoner psych ("Holebeard Blues") and gypsy folk... plus gobs of fuzz and buzz in the best black metal tradition. All this and more has swirled down into the clogged-pipe-plumbing of Bryune Troon, leaking brown liquids all over "side midget" and "side dung".
As we've said before, Lugubrum MIGHT be joking around. They almost have to be. Yet when you listen, it's not silly. It's serious, even scary. Some of the songs here are sung in English and the lyrics, about "moldy cloaks" and "flab" and "red hot sauce" that we can understand...we can't understand. Any jokes they're making are the obverse of funny ha ha in -our- universe, which surely ain't where these folks dwell.
LUGUBRUM. The name belongs in all-caps cuz Allan and Andee have concluded that Lugubrum are the greatest black metal band EVER. Maybe. After becoming utterly enamoured of their split with their own side project Finsternis (reviewed on list #144), the two of us ordered some of Lugubrum's self-released cds direct from Belgium, for our own collections. Such sudden, massive Lugubrum exposure proved one thing: the totality of their music, their art, their concepts -- are all beyond normal mortal understanding. We must bow down to the totally fucked Lugubrum aesthetic. Yes, they are obsessed with drinking beer and eating carrots. (Yes, we just said eating carrots -- there's a spiked carrot in their logo, their motto is "Beer Us Or Die!!!"). Yes, they make music from the bowels of Hell. Yes, they have some seemingly silly songtitles ("Midgets of Evil"? "Beard Of Disease"?) -- but with totally grim and twisted lyrics, however. Being so paradoxically silly AND serious is the sort of weirdness we truly admire.
Eventually we'll try to stock their import cds, but we're lucky that now their hard-to-find-to-say-the-least 1999 masterpiece, "De Totem" has been reissued in the USA, remastered with 2 bonus tracks! This disc demonstrates that Lugubrum excel at slow-paced trudge-trawls through the doomy mire, changing up with trancey speed blasts. The sound -- their guitars, their vocals -- is so dirty nasty filthy. Makes Anaal Nathrakh sound like freshly scrubbed choirboys. The fuckin' fuzz...fuck. Such doomed, distorted, diseased atmosphere. Frosty string bends. Noisy feedback. Anguished howls. In a word: Beautiful.
And, if that wasn't enough, with the photo sessions for the De Totem booklet, Lugubrum have invented a whole new, hitherto untried look: hillbilly black metal!!! No corpse paint, rather corncob pipes, hoedown hats, shotguns, and beards. A pet hound dog, even. And yes, they actually take it so far as to play banjo on the album! Although, what's weirder is that one of the bonus tracks seems to incorporate a Jamaican dub influence... As we said, now our favorite black metal band in the world. LUGUBRUM.
Back in stock! A black metal highlight from a few lists back... Black metal's all right if you like saxophones. Huh? The Belgian beer-n-carrots black metallers Lugubrum, one of AQ's absolute favorite bands in the genre, are back with another diseased and disturbing album. And yes, while their general sonic mayhem is constructed (destructed?) from the usual distorted buzzing guitars, blasting drums, and vile vocalizations, there's some jazz saxophone blowin' through here too! And perhaps that's a tuba on the next song. I think maybe Lugubrum broke into the band room at their old high school... Yet for all the seemingly tongue-in-cheek silliness on display (like their avowed love of carrots, and use of banjo and alto sax) they somehow still manage to be one of the grimmest, truest, nastiest outfits out there. Really, even the saxophone on here is SCARY. And weird, they're so very weird. I don't think ordinary folks like us are really even equipped to understand music that's so primitive yet so advanced. It seems Lugubrum inhabit their own twisted, mythic world. I mean, what to make of the cover art even? There's something of the Brothers Grimm about Lugubrum. Freakish, childish yet so very dark and psychologically resonant, reaching back to ancient days and ways. Brilliant, doomy fucked up black metal that in it's own way is as avant-garde as Ved Buens Ende and as heavy and brutal as Anaal Nathrakh.
Maybe it's the name, but something about "Lugubrum" makes us think of a steaming witch's cauldron. A sinister sonic stew as it were. Nominally a black metal band, these mega AQ faves definitely blend in a lot of other things into their sound. Of course there's big orange carrots floating around in there (kinda like when cannibals are trying to entice Bugs Bunny into a stew-pot) 'cause we know that these Belgian weirdos just love carrots. But in terms of musical ingredients, the Lugubrum recipe calls for everything from troo grim black metal to avantgarde jazz, from dronological doom to hillbilly heehawin'. They're utterly mad master chefs, though, so when mixed properly and brought to a boil, Lugubrum's bubbling brown stew tastes like nothing else and is thick and heavy enough to eat with a forklift. Ok, enough with the culinary/cauldron metaphor, let's give you some specifics about De Ware Hond, Lugubrum's latest (9th) album. Following up last year's Live In Amsterdam, they bring four (long) new tracks of their "musick" on this one, all of it recorded live in the studio (no overdubs). That in part explains its organic, tranced-out vibe, these songs structured, we're assuming, with plenty of room for improvisation -- particularly sounding like it on the second half of the record, when the usual guitars and drums and organ are joined by "Funhouse" style saxophone and mellow, mesmeric tablas, for even more improv-jazz, out-there-fucked-up-Eastern-psych appeal. Not at all your usual black metal! Apparently "brown metal" as Lugubrum puts it. Loping and lurching and and lurking and blurting and rasping and wretching and roiling, this could be Abruptum jamming with Oxbow, Today Is The Day teamed up with Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Neurosis playing Pharoah Sanders, or Pan-Thy-Monium vs. Dead Raven Choir... yeah it's that weird and hard to describe. But definitely dark and, dare we say it, druggily dreamy?
This is probably their least "metal" album yet, however just as Lugubrum as ever. And we're absolutely sure they were still the most metal band to appear at the recently concluded 2007 (K-RAA-K)3 Festival in Belgium, alongside such artists as Daniel Higgs, Giuseppe Ielasi, Raccoo-oo-oon, Jozef Van Wissem, Major Stars, Sun City Girls, Phil Minton, Warmer Milks, and others! OK, Witchcraft played too, they're also sorta metal. (And we just heard that the Sun City Girls were at the last minute unable to play the festival, they had to cancel for some reason. Too bad, they definitely would have liked Lugubrum we think...a band maybe even weirder than they are...)
