We've become a bit obsessed with French black metal. Who can blame us? France has been producing an inordinate number of furiously fucked up grim black metal outfits. Just off the top of our heads, Deathspell Omega, Spektr, Blut Aus Nord, Seth, Mutiilation, S.V.E.S.T., Eikenskaden, Ad Hominem, Glorior Belli, Arkhon Infaustus, but a quick look at Encyclopedia Metallium online shows almost 2,000 black metal hordes lurking throughout the French countryside.
And now we add to the list Wolok. Who follow in the damned and demented footsteps of their countrymen in Spektr and Blut Aus Nord, by taking a grim black metal buzz and turning it inside out, bending and distorting and tearing it apart only to put the pieces back together again, adding all sorts of non metal weirdness to come up with a truly twisted piece of black art.
The core of Wolok's sound is indeed a grim and harsh buzzing blackness. But that grimness is surrounded by a dizzying swirl of damaged drones, serene passages of dark ambience, strange choral hymns, chopped up and reassembled into stuttering vocal landscapes, everything drenched in all sorts of alien FX. But this is not just some buzzing black metal record with 'trippy' sound effects, no every single part that makes up the actual songs, is equally damaged and diseased, riffs twist and tangle, slippery and impossibly convoluted. Almost like black metal played on a slide guitar, strange notes float from within dark clouds of metallic blackness, over the top a glistening shimmer of sparkling electronics and jagged shards of feedback screech, a noisy, psychedelic sheen laid over the grim blackness below. Some riffs splinter into strange dirgey chugs, creeping doomscapes of downtuned crunch and haunting found sounds, deep drones swirl around processed vocals and mournful guitar figures. Some strange mix of Abruptum, Burzum and Blut Aus Nord, a murky, lo-fi buzzscape, peppered with cinematic ambience and caustic white noise fuzz, while buried in the mix, blurry blasting drum freakouts, and a motley collection of vocals and voices, screeching demons, gurgling monsters, rumbling spoken word, ultra distorted growls, all just more blurry swirl to mix into Wolok's chaotic black blast. Definitely a new favorite far out black metal around here.
And if the music wasn't enough, the Wolok manifesto let's you know what you're in for, in no uncertain terms:
"Wolok appeared in 2003 to unveil the truth about existence.
Wolok exclusively spreads hate and scorn towards human filth.
Wolok supports your depression and despair.
Wolok mocks your miserable way of living.
Wolok appreciates the smell of your putrefying carrion.
Wolok urges putrid scum to self-destruction.
Wolok is absurd.
Wolok never existed and will never exist.
Wolok deals with musical vermin.
Wolok is as futile as the sum of 6 billion lives.
Wolok wants you dead."
LIMITED TO 541 COPIES. Killer creepy artwork too!
Haven't heard anything from these boundary-pushing Cascadian black metallers for a few years, not since 2011's magnificent Celestial Lineage. But for those of you hankering for some more Wolves, here's the vinyl-only release of a live recording also done in 2011. That's 2011AD, not BC, they want you to know, make no mistake. And as the title also indicates, it's a BBC session, recorded in England. Two songs, one per side (WITRR have long songs, these two are over ten minutes each). You get a rendition of "Prayer Of Transformation" on the A side, and "Thuja Magus Imperium" on the flip. The studio versions of both tracks can be found on the Celestial Lineage album.
Truth be told, we haven't yet cracked one of these open to listen to it yet... but we do know from past experience that WITTR are an excellent live proposition, so we imagine true fans will find this WAY worthwhile. ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! 20 GUILDERS "New Songs And Wrong Songs For Patricia" (Gulden) cd 14.98 ABDUL-RAUF, LEILA "Cold And Cloud" (Saadi Saati / Pesanta Urfolk) lp 19.98 ALLIN, G.G. "My Prison Walls" (Aggronautix) book 54.00 ALTO! "s/t" (Raheem) lp 14.98 AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB "San Francisco" (Plain Recordings) lp 19.98 ANIMA MORTE "The Nightmare Becomes Reality" (Transubstans) cd/lp 21.00/19.98 BEGGARS "s/t" (Lotus House) 2cd 13.98 BELZEBONG "Dungeon Vultures" (Emetic) lp 16.98 BLACK FLAG "What The..." (SST) lp 23.00 BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS, THE / TEENAGE MONSTER (WALTER GREENE) "OST" (Monstrous Movie Music) cd 27.00 BRAN (...) POS "Den Of Ordure And Iridescence" (Resipiscent) lp 15.98 CAFFA "Day Of Disease" (Transylvanian Tapes) cassette 4.98 CAPTAIN TRIPS "The Dance Of Untruth" (Stormspell) cd 11.98 CARNACKI, THOMAS / VULCANUS 68 "split" (Alethiometer Records / Gigante Sound) lp 14.98 CLAYTON, JACE (DJ/ RUPTURE) "The Julius Eastman Memory Depot" (New Amsterdam) cd 11.98 CORYELL, LARRY "Barefoot Boy" (BGP) cd 11.98 DAMON "Song Of A Gypsy" (Now-Again) lp 29.00 DANTESCO "We Don't Fear Your God" (Inframundo) cd 13.98 DEAD MEADOW "Warble Womb" (Xemu) cd/2lp 15.98/32.00 DEAD MOON "Trash And Burn" (Mississippi) lp 14.98 DEAD RIVER "s/t" (self-released) cd-r 9.98 DELUXE, JEAN-EMMANUEL "Ye-Ye Girls Of '60s French Pop" (Feral House) book 25.00 DINGER, THOMAS "Fur Mich" (Bureau B) lp 23.00 DOWNES, BOB "Deep Down Heavy" (Esoteric Recordings) cd 23.00 DRIFTWOOD, JIMMIE "Sings Newly Discovered American Folk Songs & The Wilderness Road" (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 17.98 ELOY, JEAN-CLAUDE "Gaku-No-Michi" (Hors Territory) 4cd 60.00 ELOY, JEAN-CLAUDE "Shanti" (Hors Territory) 2cd 39.00 ERICKSON, ROKY "Don't Slander Me" (Light In The Attic) 2lp 28.00 FALCON (EX-CIRCLE) "Beer & Ribs b/w Sunset Street" (Full Contact) 7" 8.98 FELL VOICES "Regnum Saturni" (Antithetic) 2lp 30.00 FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC & DENIS SHAPOVALOV "Steel Glares And Night Shadows" (Obs / STILL*SLEEP) cd 12.98 FLAMIN' GROOVIES "Shake Some Action" (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98 FLESH WORLD "s/t" (La Vida En Un Mus) lp 16.98 GOBLIN "Il Fantastico Viaggio Del Bagarozzo Mark" (AMS / Cinevox) lp 34.00 GOODBYE & AMEN (GUIDO & MAURIZIO DE ANGELIS) "OST" (Intermezzo Media) cd 29.00 GRACE SINGS SLUDGE "Longshot" (self-released) 7" square lathe cut single 11.98 GRAND MAL X "Stealth Minds" (Black Horizons) cassette 8.98 GROUP RHODA "12th House" (Not Not Fun) cd 13.98 HARSH TOKE "Light Up And Live" (Tee Pee) lp 16.98 HEDERSLEBEN "1: Upgoer" (Unternarz) cd/lp 9.98/19.98 HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER "Bad Debt" (Paradise Of Bachelors) cd/lp 14.98/23.00 IKEDA, RYOJI "Supercodex" (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98 INHALT "Occupations" (Dark Entries) 12" 11.98 IRON DOGS "Free & Wild" (Dying Victims Productions) cd/lp 12.98/16.98 JACUZZI BOYS "s/t" (Hardly Art) cd/lp 12.98/13.98 JANDEK "Athens Saturday" (Corwood) 2cd 12.98 JANE POW "Love It Be It / State" (Slumberland) cd 10.98 JARRE, JEAN MICHEL "The Essential" (Disques Dreyfus) cd 16.98 JARRETT, KEITH "Mysteries / Shades" (Impulse) cd 16.98 JASMINE REEF "Wet" (self-released) magazine 9.98 JAWORZYN, STEFAN "EP 2" (Shock) 12" 17.98 JOHNSON, CHUCK "A Struggle Not A Thought" (Strange Attractors Audio House) lp 14.98 KING, PETER "Omo Lewa" (Secret Stash) lp 17.98 KIZILOK, FIKRET "Anadolu'Yum" (Pharaway Sounds) cd/lp 17.98/32.00 LANTERN "Rock 'N' Roll Rorschach (eu Edition)" (Cardinal Fuzz) lp 24.00 LAU, LEONG "Dragon Man" (Strawberry Rain) lp 26.00 LEATHER STRIP "Teenage Demos" (Dark Entries) lp 14.98 LES RALLIZES DENUDES "Maked Diza Star" (Bamboo) 3cd-r 34.00 LLUVIA "Premonicion De Guerra" (Fallen Empire Records) lp 19.98 LORD NASTY "Phuck Em And Forget Em" (self-released) cd-r 11.98 LORNA DUNE "Miamisphere" (Lo Bit Landscapes) 12" 11.98 LOW / SHEARWATER "Stay / Novacane" (Sub Pop) 7" 5.98 LUGUBRUM "De Totem" (Aphelion) lp 26.00 LUGUBRUM "Face Lion Face Oignon" (Aphelion) lp 26.00 MAGIC TRICK "River Of Souls" (Empty Cellar) lp 15.98 MALKMUS, STEPHEN & THE JICKS "Wig Out At Jagbags" (Matador) cd/lp 14.98/16.98 MERCYFUL FATE "Don't Break The Oath" (Roadrunner) lp 29.00 MERCYFUL FATE "Melissa" (Roadrunner) lp 29.00 MIMINOKOTO "Chofu, Ekoda, Koenji [Live In & Around Tokyo]" (Plunk's Plan) cd 14.98 MONOTON "Monotonproduct 07" (Desire) 2lp 30.00 MOORE, ANGELO "Sacrifice" (self-released) cd 8.98 MOORE, STEVE "Pangaea Ultima" (Spectrum Spools) cd/2lp 16.98/32.00 NEGATIVE STANDARDS "VI.VII.VIII.IX.X.XI" (Vendetta) lp 14.98 NEGATIVE STANDARDS / WHITEHORSE "split" (Vendetta) lp 14.98 NEGATIVE TREND "s/t" (Superior Viaduct) 7" 9.98 NIGROMANTE "Black Magic Night" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 12.98 NOCTOOA "Adaptation" (Owl & Troll) cd 11.98 NOSTALGIST "Monochromantic" (Nostalgium Directive) 7" 8.98 OBLITERATION "Black Death Horizon" (Relapse) cd 14.98 ORIGINAL STALAG 17-18 AND 19 "s/t" (Technique Records) lp 13.98 OVVL "s/t" (Stormspell) cd 11.98 PARADOX "The Demo Collection 1986-1987" (Stormspell) 2cd 13.98 PINHAS, RICHARD "Desolation Row" (Cuneiform) cd 17.98 POW! "Hi-Tech Boom" (Castle Face) cd 13.98 RADIOACTIVITY "s/t" (Dirtnap Records) lp 16.98 RAJATTTAJAT "Awopbopaloopop Alopbam Raja" (Ektro) cd 14.98 RANGDA "Live In Kreffeld" (Unrock) 10" 25.00 RAY, RUBY "From The Edge Of The World: California Punk, 1977-81" (Superior Viaduct) book + cd 23.00 RAZOR "Armed And Dangerous" (War On Music) lp 17.98 REGIME "Demo 1991 +3" (Stormspell) cd 11.98 ROCKEY, PALMER "Rockey's Style (Movie Album)" (Trunk) cd 16.98 RUN AFTER TO "Run After To / Gjinn And Djinn" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 12.98 SAVAGES, THE "Live In The Studios Of Columbia University's WKCR on March 21, 1974" (B13) lp 30.00 SHEARWATER "Fellow Traveller" (Sub Pop) lp 17.98 SHINE BROTHERS, THE "Hello Griefbirds!" (Cardinal Fuzz) lp 24.00 SLEAFORD MODS "Austerity Dogs" (Harbinger Sound) cd 17.98 SOULEYMAN, OMAR "Wenu Wenu" (Ribbon Music) lp 26.00 SOUNDGARDEN "Screaming Life / FOPP" (Sub Pop) cd 12.98 SOUNDS OF THE CITY EXPERIENCE "s/t" (Jazzman) cd 17.98 SPACE "Magic Fly" (Repertoire) cd 13.98 SPARKS "New Music For Amnesiacs" (Lil Beethoven) 2cd 23.00 SPINAL TAP "From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: This Is Spinal Tap" (The Control Group) lp 29.00 STEREOLAB "Sound-Dust" (1972) 2lp 25.00 STICKMEN, THE "s/t" (Homeless) lp 24.00 SUN RA "This Planet Is Doomed: The Science Fiction Poetry Of Sun Ra" (Kicks Books) book 12.95 TAIST OF IRON "Resurrection" (Skol) 2cd 16.98 TALABOT, JOHN "DJ Kicks" (K7 Records) cd 15.98 TEISCO "D.O.C." (Dual Planet) cd/lp 15.98/24.00 TINDERSTICKS "Les Salauds (OST)" (Lucky Dog) lp 29.00 TOTALLY RADD!! "Shark Attack Day Camp" (Bad Idea Graveyard) lp 19.98 TRONICS "Say! What Is This?" (M'Lady's) cd/lp 14.98/17.98 TURNER, MICK "Don't Tell The Driver" (Drag City) lp 22.00 V/A "100 Moons (Hindustani Vocal Art, 1930-55)" (Mississippi / Canary) lp 14.98 V/A "Elaste Volume 4" (Compost Medien) 2lp 23.00 V/A "German Measles: Volume 2" (Bear Family) lp 28.00 V/A "High Voltage : Giant Steps & Flashpoints In 20th Century Experimental & Electronic Sound" (Fantastic Voyage) 3cd 15.98 V/A "I Heard The Angels Singing: Electrifying Black Gospel From The Nashboro Label 1951-1983" (Tompkins Square) 4cd 42.00 V/A "Inside Llewyn Davis OST" (Nonesuch) cd/lp 17.98/28.00 V/A "New York Eye And Ear Control" (ESP-Disk) lp 26.00 V/A "Radio Niger" (Sublime Frequencies) cd 15.98 VANAY, LAURENCE "Evening Colours" (Lion) cd 16.98 VANAY, LAURENCE "Galaxies" (Lion) cd 16.98 VENOM P. STINGER "1986-1991" (Drag City) 2cd 16.98 VILE, KURT "Wakin On A Pretty Daze (Deluxe Edition)" (Matador) 2cd 16.98 VOX POPULI! "Pacific 231 (Cut Chemist Presents Funk Off)" (A Stable Sound) cd 17.98 WALKER BROTHERS, THE "Nite Flights" (Tizona) lp 23.00 WHIRR "Distressor" (Graveface) cd 12.98 WILDHONEY "Like Me" (Nostalgium Directive) 7" 5.50 WITCH "Movin' On & Kuomboka" (Now-Again) 2cd 24.00 XIAO HE "The Performance of Identity" (Maybe Mars) 2cd 14.98 YO LA TENGO "Fade (Deluxe Edition)" (Matador) 2cd 16.98 YOUNG, ROLAND "Hearsay I-Land" (Palto Flats) lp 16.98 YOUNGS, RICHARD "Calmont Breakdown" (Fourth Dimension) cd 17.98 YOUNGS, RICHARD "I Dream Of Mezzanine / Cloudplanes" (The Spring Press) lp 15.98
By now, Wolves in the Throne Room have established themselves as one of America's most gifted and awesomely dependable black metal bands, and their third long player, Black Cascade, picks up right where their recent Malevolent Grain ep left off. All the elements of their expansive, blackened psychedelic approach are here: sprawling songs with a methodical attention to song structure, relentless drumming, perfectly interlocking dual guitars, tortured raspy vocals, and an ability to seamlessly merge synthy ambience with a furious but often very melancholy black metal onslaught. There seems to be a legion of haters out there, ready to label the band as a bunch of PC hippies who aren't adhering to whatever rules they assume apply to a style of music that is pretty nihilistic and iconoclastic by nature. But fuck those people. This band is great and truly deserves whatever accolades come its way.
The ever-present density of WITTR's sound is further heightened on Black Cascade, their bio proudly emphasizing the old school analog sound they have achieved through vintage recording gear and classic tube amps. While we don't want to ramble on about various pieces of musical equipment, it should be noted that these devices have certainly helped the band to capture a sound music nerds might refer to as "organic". Sure, we at aQuarius love all the homemade bedroom black metal that sounds as if it was recorded in a blender during a tornado... The sound on Black Cascade, however, is clear and upfront, though hardly refined or polished. It is quite rock n' roll in a classic sense, which works great when the band breaks out some Thin Lizzy-esque guitar harmonies on the first track "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog". Mossy, ultra distorted guitars hang like a thick black cloud (or a sea of fog, if you will) in the atmosphere as the drums create the necessary propulsion that make a Wolves in the Throne Room song sound like it could, and should, carry on FOREVER. Song #2, "Ahrimanic Trance" is, true to its title, a hypnotic, trancelike black metal trip into some long forgotten wilderness. The song gives one a feeling of being transported at high speeds across the landscape while watching from the back of some primitive vehicle, a sense that is carried on in the next track, "Ex Cathedra". The final song, "Crystal Ammunition", starts life as a dizzying, hyperspeed slab of pure black metal before morphing into a beautiful lament that may (or may not) reference the melody from Malevolent Grain's "A Looming Resonance". It's seems like things will culminate in the ultimate fadeout. But, uh, what happens after the fade out? As everything gallops off into the distance, otherworldly guitar chords and tambourine are the only sounds evident. Eventually these too recede as they are overtaken by a phased out synthscape. Fucking awesome.
While this album was great from the moment we first put it on, repeated listens have been revealing more and more. To say this is a huge departure from what Wolves in the Throne Room have accomplished in the past would be inaccurate. It is, instead, the sound of a group who, with each record, becomes a more realized version of itself.
The return of Cascadian black metallers Wolves In The Throne Room, introduces us to their latest epic, Celestial Lineage, with a sound that continues to move well beyond the bounds of black metal. As it was the band never shied away from augmenting their furious Weakling-beholden buzz and frantic blasts with swaths of ethereal drift and dark hushed minimalism, but here, those non black metal elements play a much bigger role, and manage to take the sound to a whole other level, positioning those non-metallic sounds less as 'interludes' and more as fully realized elements that are woven deftly into the fabric of the songs and sound. The record even opens with a hazy bit of choral drift, all tinkling chimes, shimmery synths, stately piano, and ethereal vocals, that sound more seventies British folk than black metal. Then, instead of simply exploding into some black buzz, the riffs are introduced slowly, blending into the folky drift, transforming the 'intro' into a blackened chorale, allowing the folky flutter to fade, until finally the blackness descends, the sound impossibly lush and heavy, epic and expansive, the sound thick and more lush than ever, the riffing wild and tangled, the drums mathy and intricate, and then again, the band take this grim buzz and wreath it in soaring epic almost folky melodies, some gorgeous harmonized guitars, there are even some full on psychedelic leads, the song shifting from black churn to ephemeral shimmer and back again, even dipping into some majestic doomic dirgery, but somehow the varied parts all fit together perfectly.
After a bit of chanted field recording flecked ambience, sounding like some ancient forest ritual, the band slip right back into pure transcendental blackness, with another sprawl of epic soaring blasting buzz, but again, it manages to be lush and weirdly melodic, on the surface it's a roiling churning blackness, but somehow the sound is infused with a blurred warmth, a subtle melodic core, that elevates the sound beyond simple black buzz. The sound constantly confounding, the song splintering into wide open expanses of feedback drenched, tribal drum driven abstraction, then slipping into a sort of hazy post rocky drift, before finishing off in a blaze of frantic black ferocity, but even there, the sound is wrapped in thick soaring swirls of melody.
One of our favorite tracks might be "Woodland Cathedral" which sounds exactly like the title suggests, over a bed of what sounds like forest sounds, guitars hover and shimmer and soar, the rhythm is glacial and funeral, everything is wreathed in a patina of buzz and thrum, the sound super distorted and almost shoegazey, angelic female vocals drifting over the top, tangled into strange but lovely harmonies, a doomy choral bit of blackened loveliness, which leads directly into the final movement, two 10+ minutes epics, the first, another example of Wolves' mastery of melodic blackness, grinding black heaviness wedded to delicate folky flutter, with hints of post rock, a sound that while in the past was perhaps too obviously beholden to many, now seems to belong to no other, and finally, a sprawling buzz drenched black doomdirge that sounds like Nadja and Comus and Sunroof! and WITTR all blurred into one glorious blackbuzz ur-drone doom-bliss epic. So good.
Super swank packaging too, with some of the most gorgeous artwork/photography we've seen on a black metal record for sure. Vinyl version forthcoming as well.
We're super into this, but avant black metallers Wolves In The Throne Room have gotten a lot of flack for this new record of theirs, which seems to be more based on them as a band, than the record itself; like Deafheaven or Liturgy, the fact that they're 'hip' and 'cool' and lots of non metalheads dig them makes them ripe for criticism from the 'troo cvlt' black metal crowd. Also that they're doing something a bit different. A LOT different, here. And we applaud it! 'Cause taken objectively, as in, if you didn't even know this was WITTR, you might find yourself pretty into it.
The deal is, there's really no black metal here, just pure spaced-out synth shimmer, completely cosmic and kinda New Agey, even. It's total Tangerine Dream worship, but with plenty of dense bombast and thick layered drones. More like Emeralds than Emperor. The sort of thing some black metal bands dabble in as "intro music", taken to the full-length extreme. And it's pretty good - the first track sounds like it could be an alternate soundtrack to Bladerunner. Haunting and ominous, lush drones and buried melodies... Elsewhere, the swaths of thick synth-iness sound almost like Salem, some beatless almost witch-housiness... There's even some Carpenter-y electro beats on "Sleeping Gold Storm". The moaning horns and other elements, in the more cacophonous crescendos, builds up the drama and edginess, but it never gets metal, nope. It's the intro to itself, instead.
Thumbs up from us! And, black metal and/or WITTR fans who aren't open-minded enough to approve of this, don't fret, it's just meant as an electronic "companion" to their last album, 2011's Celestial Lineage, not a follow-up. You still gotta keep waiting for that, but in the meantime, you could try to relax and enjoy these surprisingly spaced-out sounds. Plus, it's not like there's not precedence for stuff like this in the realms of black metal, from Neptune Towers to Alturaz... And for other folks, more into synths and drones than metal, this could easily be the first (only?) WITTR you'll ever need.
We've been selling Wolves In The Throne Room cd-r demos like crazy since we first discovered these guys last year. And how could we not? You gotta love a band that unfurls massive fuzzed out epics, 10+ minute bursts of swirling droning black metal, dirging, lurching and gorgeously blown out. The obvious comparison is SF black metal legends Weakling, and you know we wouldn't make that comparison lightly. The same sort of fierce brutality and chaotic ferocity mixed with impossibly anguished emotionalism all wrapped up in a blackness that is informed as much by suffocating dark ambience and mesmerizing drones as it is grim black metal.
If you thought the WITTR demos sounded great, HOLY SHIT does this new record blow those out of the water. Which is a good thing as two of the songs here are actually from the demos, but they have been massively reworked and completely re-recorded. It's got a huge wall of guitar sound, surprisingly heavy for a black metal band, in place of more typical reedy buzzy BM mosquito guitar. There's thick snarling monster riffs, dense and multilayered, spread thick over furious pounding drumming and howled strangulated vocals (very Weakling-esque). Now you might think the world needs another Nordic style black metal band like a hole in the head, no matter how amazing they are. BUT, Wolves In The Throne Room do it SO WELL, and write amazing songs, and manage to mix it up like crazy, incorporating all sorts of un-BM elements, gorgeous folky ambience, weirdly TRUE metal riffing, even some ethereal angelic female vocals. It all somehow fits, and makes the Wolves' black metal black enough to remain true, but fucked up enough to matter. Plus they probably do think the world needs need a hole in the head...
You'd never guess from listening to this record that the WITTR are a bunch of short haired, furry vested, tight panted, scruffy indie dudes from Olympia. But don't let that put you off, impossibly true metal nerds, just close your eyes, listen close, and all you'll see are grim, 10 foot tall, spike encrusted leather clad warriors of the misty, ancient northwestern forests... Yep, we're surely excited to have their "real cd" debut, at long last!!
Anyone fortunate enough to have seen Wolves In The Throne Room in a live setting will probably tell you the same thing: the band simply KILLS. Not to say that their albums aren't totally amazing - they are - but seeing these guys live is an experience that will stay with you for a while. It's probably a safe bet to assume that for many people, especially here in the states, seeing the Wolves in concert is their first exposure to live black metal. And it would certainly stand as quite an introduction to the transcendental power of true (your goddamn right it's TRUE) black metal. While WITTR on record presents a band who really understand the importance of crafting a beautiful and well thought out collection of songs, complete with otherworldly ambience and a keen attention to production, on stage they are more inclined to rip your face off and scald your eardrums into cinders. They are unstoppable, frighteningly intense, and seriously, loud as fuck - just a few of the reasons why we are so stoked to have this new cd+dvd set chronicling the band's 2008 set at the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands. The sound here is upfront and relentless, and even though things are surprisingly clear, none of the band's power is lost, if anything, this should be a good indication of how awesome they are and why their records are so damn great; WITTR isn't some half-assed studio project by guys who are afraid or unwilling to step into the public realm, they are a REAL band, one that rocks, shreds, and destroys everything in its path. The vocals here are pretty unbelievable, maybe even better than on record, just insane throatshredding goodness and perfect for the sonic assault the band whips up. The dvd features the concert presented in an appropriately murky setting under blue light. It will probably have you longing for the actual live experience more than anything, but we certainly have no complaints. Classic stuff for sure.
Olympia, Washington's black metal titans Wolves In The Throne Room follow up their acclaimed Two Hunters album with this lengthy two song vinyl only ep, the first to feature their new lineup, and the band's most focused and hypnotic creation to date. The formula has not changed, it's just sounding, well, better than ever before. More insular. While Wolves in the Throne Room has always possessed a talent for wrapping majestic melodies within relentless black metal riffing, Malevolent Grain most successfully blurs the distinction between blissed out beauty and brutality. The band is shrouded in an ever present haze of melancholy and despair that is just so much more genuine and effective than guys prancing around in corpse paint like some sort of old school black metal tribute act. They speak as a unique voice in an international scene where so many bands are preoccupied with their bullshit fairy tale take on satanism. All the while, they are heavy as fuck. A Wolves In The Throne Room song plays out as an expansive journey of multiple chapters before fading away into eternity. There is tons of ambience and atmosphere along the way, complete with gorgeous, clearly sung female vocals (courtesy once again of Jamie Meyers, formerly of Hammers of Misfortune), somber melodies, and warm waves of creeping distortion, but ultimately this is total BLACK METAL. Yes, all caps. "METAL" being the key word, the band never falls short on the blazing riffs, unstoppable drumming, and rasping vocals that they built their name on.
In keeping with Southern Lord's reputation for visual, as well as musical, awesomeness, Malevolent Grain comes housed in an appropriately hallucinatory jacket featuring blurry images of lush forest untouched by humanity and the band's new candelabra-esque logo embossed in stunning gold foil. Those who act quickly may be of the lucky few (er, lucky thousand, apparently) to receive the ep on cool "Dark Forest Green" vinyl. Oh, and a quick note, this record is to be played at 45 rpm. Considering how much we were digging it at the wrong speed for over six minutes, you know this comes to you highly recommended.
Southern Lord snagged 'em. Good call, since Olympia, WA's Wolves In The Throne Room are one of the absolute best things that US Black Metal has got going right now. Sure there's lots of awesome, oxymoronically one-man "hordes" (Leviathan, Xasthur, Draugar) but no offense meant, this is an actual band, one that you can go see live, y'know? And they slay. Firmly (and intentionally and worshipfully) in the tradition of the now legendary San Francisco epic black metal act Weakling, WITTR build the same sort of trance-inducing, technically tight, extended compositions (here, up to over 18 minutes in length) of unending grimness and sheer majestic, melancholic beauty.
Post-rock dynamics, classical-sounding female vocals, newagey synth drone, acoustic intros, and other more-prog-than-metal elements are utilized with ease, while the music, in all its ambient-stormclouds-pregnant-with-ominous-doom glory, is such that would waft and wail through the tall trees of the dark forest of black metal myth exclusively... a forest that these dwellers of the Pacific Northwest can easily conjure, living amidst dark primeval woods for real.
AQ customers of the black metal persuasion won't need much persuading, WITTR's previous record Diadem Of 12 Stars is one of our biggest black metal sellers already and this new album has been eagerly anticipated. And it's good. As if there was much doubt of that.
Packaged in a handsome and very sinister looking miniature lp-style gatefold sleeve, this cd is another stellar offering showing that these Wolves are in the Throne Room not as interlopers, but by divine (or, rather, diabolical) right of rule. Along with Bay Area bands like Ludicra, Leviathan, Asunder, and Hammers Of Misfortune, WITTR are leading the pack in putting the West Coast on the map as the home of avant-metal artistry, Nordically blackened or otherwise opposed to the norm.
We've been wanting to list something from this band forever, ever since a mysterious cd-r wrapped in fur (!) arrived at our doorstep. Already thinking it might be good just 'cause of their cool name, we threw it on and were floored by the Wolves' take on grim and majestic black metal. Punk rockers embracing their darksides and spewing forth a relentless torrent of buzzing blasting blackened thrash. Wow. We pestered the band to get copies of that first demo but for some reason could never get more than a few at a time. Well, the Wolves finally showed up in the shop this last week, bearing gifts! Copies of their brand new cd-r, LOTS of copies, so we got a bunch and can finally give everyone a chance to check out Wolves In The Throne Room!
This second cd-r featues a new lineup, longer songs (three songs, 13 minute, 12 minute and 24 minutes) and a sound much closer to what the band had been shooting for all along, according to Wolves drummer Aaron. That sound is a galloping grim black metal not that unlike Leviathan, Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone and the like. In fact it sounds quite a bit like a more lo-fi version of SF black metal legends Weakling. Haunting minor key melodies, relentlessly blasting double kick drumming and repetitive riffs that become hypnotic almost-drones. The Wolves add plenty of their own flavor with plenty of weird folk interludes, creepy swirling melodies, stretches of plodding doom, mathy rhythms and moaning ambience. These guys have been playing around here this last couple weeks, and admitedly it was pretty weird seeing a bunch of raggedy indie punk rockers, curly hair, fur vests, tight pants, t-shirts and tennis shoes, blasting out such a torrent of howling blackened fury. But what these guys lack in spiked armbands, windmilling long hair, and corpsepaint, they make up for in sheer, gloriously grim black metal pummel! These are limited of course. In cool black cardboard sleeves and silkscreened in silver metallic ink. Nice.
We also have a handful of their first demo, if you want one mention it in the comments section of your order and if we have any left we'll grab you one. By the way, the band will be recording a proper cd, to be released in early 2006 on Vendlus Records!
Metatron, one of the masterminds behind UK black metal weirdos Meads Of Asphodel, strikes out on his own (sort of), to craft this twisted slab of Celtic pagan black metal, rooted in the history of the British Celtic Arthurian age, which apparently has historically been misrepresented by erroneous histories and manufactured mythologies. Probably better to let the band themselves describe the lyrical content:
"The album reflects a period around 500AD, that existed after the Romans were recalled to defend their homeland from the Barbarian migrations, the same land hungry hordes that were to engulf the warriors and tribes of Britain. This was� the era of the Germanic and British wars, and the Arthurian defence of our sacred soil that was to end in defeat at Camlan. The main essence of the lyrical concept is the great victory over the Germanic invaders, at The Battle of Baddon Hill around 500 AD, (also known as Mons Badonicus) Baddon Hill was the great Victory that this album surmounts [sic]."
Metatron has recruited a whole gaggle of musical kindred spirits, British and otherwise, including members of Hawkwind, Graveland (!!), Yggdrasil and others, to craft this pagan epic, which definitely has all the stuff you love about pagan black metal (you do love pagan BM don't you?), sure there's plenty of blast and buzz, chug and crunch, but there's even MORE flutes and fiddles, clean chanted vox, gypsy folk sounding melodies, swirling synths, long stretches of fluttery folkiness, swirling almost psychedelic post rock sounding crescendos, there's a bunch of sax too (?!), acoustic guitars, with most of the songs tending toward a seriously seventies British folk sound (albeit often with growled vokills), but all of that pagan / renn faire style swoosh and shimmer, strum and soar, is definitely somewhat balanced by occasional bursts of fantastically dramatic triumphant metal majesty and churning, chugging murky blackened buzz, which are also coincidentally infused with plenty of pomp and majesty, and still more folky flutter.
Meads fans will freak for sure, but anyone into pagan blackness, or metallic folk, or just strange high concept folk infused heaviness, would do well to dig into The Wolves Of Avalon's sonic history of olde Britain.
We made Wolvserpent's Blood Seed lp our Record Of The Week on list #358 back in November of last year, Wolvserpent being the group previously known as Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho capable of crafting grimly powerful blackened folk flecked dronescapes that defy easy categorization. And as we mentioned then, the name Pussygutt probably put off plenty of people, thus the shift to Wolvserpent, and while that name definitely better captures the group's ominous tone and black metal leanings, it still leaves much about the music, and its makers, quite mysterious.
Yet for as much as we dug Pussygutt, and love their new Wolvserpent incarnation, we somehow managed to miss completely, the Wolvserpent lp that preceded Blood Seed, a record called Gathering Strengths. Thankfully, the mighty Crucial Blast have stepped in, and combined both Blood Seed AND Gathering Strengths into a handsome double disc compendium, the first disc of which, is the first time on cd for the aforementioned Blood Seed, two epic sprawls, the first a haunting bit of dirgey folk, laid over lush shimmery drones, a gorgeous funeral lament, that only hints at the abject brutality these two are capable of, instead, simply invoking a darkly melancholic mood, eventually guitars drift in, plucking out simple sad melodies, while the strings continue to swirl and soar, gorgeously tense and intense, cinematic and soundtracky. It's not until nearly the nine minute mark that the drums come in, as do the electric guitars, laying down a sort of skeletal doom framework, a different kind of downtuned slowbuild creep, pounding drums, muted riffage, the strings and Sunroof!-like drones growing in intensity, a super intense bit of droney tribal drift, but with an odd start stop arrangement, peppering the lush droning plod with little bits of more traditionally metallic riffage. Eventually some shrieked vocals swoop in, and the song stretches out into a strangley psychedelic epic, a bastardized mix of Godspeed like post rock, avant ur-drone drift, funeral doom, and glacial black metal buzz, all muted and blurred as if mixed by Tim Hecker.
The second 'movement' takes up right where the first left off, long layered high end tones, a lush undulating upper register dronescape, haunting and hypnotically shimmery, before finally lurching into some seriously metallic crunch, a lumbering doomy dirge, buzzing riffs, caveman drums, all wrapped in swirling swaths of reverbed vocals and superdistorted streaks of ambient melody, erupting into occasional blasts of uptempo chuggery, but always slipping back into that stuttery creep, and constantly wreathed in a lush otherworldly sonic haze.
Which brings us to Gathering Strengths, originally released on lp by Olde English Spelling Bee back in 2009, like Blood Seed, a single track split into two epic parts, the first, subtitled "Silence Within", begin with the chirping of crickets, which is soon joined by some haunting distant low end thrum, a dreamlike swell, which is soon joined by a more intense layer of buzzing tones, overlapping woodwinds, rife with mysterious overtones, a creepy harmony, the buzz and shimmer drifting in and out, the minimal drift gradually coalescing into an intense bit of dronemusic, like a blackened Phil Niblock, while off in the distance, barely there percussion surfaces, fragmented slo-mo rhythms, while more and more layers are piled on top, super intense and trancelike, until the woodwinds drift off, leaving a feedback laced stretch of blackdronedrift, softly clattery and corrosive, A wolf Eyes-ian industrial sprawl, that transforms into some hauntingly lovely gypsy like folk, driven by a mournful fiddle melody, the sound swells and smolders, all lilting melodies, and cinematic atmosphere, the vibe like a doom folk Astor Piazolla, that is until a MASSIVE avalanche of washed out downtuned doomcrush rolls in, that gorgeous fiddle now all tangled up in a heaving SUNNO)))-like churn, which manages to be both brutal and blackened, dreamy and so totally lovely. Impossibly pretty heaviness, this whole double disc worth it for that 5 or 6 minute stretch alone.
But there's still the second part, that one subtitled "Spirit Walker", this one starts off in seriously gorgeous drone-folk mode, the band laying down a lush, mesmerizing, hauntingly tense layered drone backdrop, over which the violin keens and cries, accompanied by simple shamanistic drumming, the result a darkly mesmerizing glimpse into some lost forest glade, where some shadowy priest like visages are gathered around dancing black flames, conjuring up spirits from another realm, but like the first track, this one too gradually grows heavier, with the addition of a slow thick dirge-y doomy riff, not super distorted or grumbly, but more softly buzzy, the chords ringing out and fading until they seem to bleed into the sounds around them, only to have the next chord take over, what we said about the last few minutes of the first track, well, we could say it about this whole track, worth the price of admission all on its own, a hazy tranced out chunk of heavy, heady, forest folk drone drift bliss.
Both records are incredible, and work amazingly well together, and like Pussygutt before, Wolvserpent continue to hone their unclassifiable sound, a melding together of dark hushed folk, minimal drone music, and blackened dooooooom. Their name change probably won't really make 'em much more commercially appealing, but who needs that, when you're ruling the darkened otherworld of psychedelic avant heaviness???
Dark, ritualistic, blackened ambience, and experimental psychedelic black metal from members of Dead Reptile Shrine, Ride For Revenge, Will Over Matter, Blutleuchte and Cloama, all of whom we've raved about separately on the aQ list before, and who have all come together to create this hour long songsuite, that fuses twisted electronics, shimmering kosmische drift, minimal percussive post industrial murk, and tranced out hypno-psych mesmer. Separated into four movements, and given titles like "Satan Universe Moloch", "Bug Humanity", "She male Vegetarian" and "Neptunean Crystal Rain", at first blush, the sound seems to fall closest to the weirdo minimal electronics of Will Over Matter, the opener laying down a gristly sprawl of glitched out electronic buzz, but bolstered by some dreamy, almost krautrock sounding guitar, a twisted kosmische / avant electronic hybrid, those guitars soon dropping out, leaving a wild tangle of damaged FX and mutated synths, a darkly chaotic blacknoise, that eventually resolves into some dark, almost John Carpenter sounding cinematic dronemusic. Those hazy soundtracky atmospherics bleed into the second track, this time accompanied by some twisted vocalizations, wreathed in static and distortion, and drifting beneath thick undulating sheets of synth, everything peppered with bursts of glitch and crackle, moody and ominous, haunting but weirdly tranquil. Soon industrial rhythms surface and enter the fray, they remain muted and in the background, while once again, the electronics take over, this time drifting atop mutated vocals, pitch shifted and heavily effected, not to mention fluctuating fields of woozy melodies and strange, damaged samples.
It's not until track three ("She Male Vegetarian") that there's any actual black metal, and even then, there's a buzzing blackened main riff, but instead of exploding into a furious blast, that riff lumbers ominously through fields of chaotic murky drumming, the result much more trancelike and weirdly hypnotic, and quickly that riff splinters into a weird stretch of chiming distorted harmonics, and tangled sonic skree, before slipping back into the black churn, now joined by more guitars, the sound more lush and expansive, but still woozy and stumbling, you can definitely hear the Dead Reptile Shrine here, but before you know it, the sound shifts, transformed into a lovely bit of soft synth ambience, before once again, exploding into a field of blackened power electronics, smeared into something droned out and murkily mesmerizing, finishing off with what sounds like a bit of sampled Finnish folk. Finally, the close is announced by the sound of thunder, which is quickly subsumed by some bleak, blurry, tinny black metal riffage, smeared into staticky swaths of blacknoise, laced with moaning, anguished vokills, the sound growing gradually less and less noisy and buzzy, another barrage of alien electronics soon taking over, the record finishing off with a weird bit of black ambient electronic ritualism, that grows more hushed and haunting, before fading out completely.
Twisted and lovely, bleak and black, mysterious and bizarre, minimal and murky, fans of any / all of the members' other projects will no doubt dig. But best be quick, this is LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!! These are the ONLY copies we will ever be able to get, and once they're gone, they are gone for good!!!
Latest chunk of blackened whatthefuck from these Swedish weirdos, who most long time readers of the aQ list will already be familiar with. Their modus operandi is a twisted take on the sort of midtempo Burzumic buzz, flecked with bits of folks, strange carnivalesque filigree, and INSANE vocals, from croony clean singing, to throat shredding maniacal shrieking, to growled monster gurgle, all wrapped round some seriously bent black metal, loping and plodding, melancholy and mournful, miserable and doomy.
Woods Of Infinity are not super fucked up in the way a lot of the black metal we love is, retarded, damaged, stumbling, etc. They are however WEIRD AS FUCK, the music for sure, but especially the vocals, and apparently the lyrics, which according to one online source involves a serious love of young girls among other perversions, a truly twisted, surreal, abstract, their weirdness deftly woven into their folky blackened dirges.
This is definitely the best sounding WoI record, very loud and heavy and clear, with lots of acoustic guitars, strange keyboards, out of tune pianos, really bizarre samples, and some of the strangest songs we've heard from these guys yet.
"Lakttagen" begins with some gauzy ambient piano, the guitars come in all filthy and crumbling and gritty, the vocals a raspy cackle, that gets more and more hysterical as the track progresses, the piano plinking out a sad melody, over a buzzy wash of guitar grit. "Avgrund" is a gorgeous epic mournful doomic dirge, but the vocals are some sort of twisted dramatic top 40 croon, all soulful and emotional, almost cringeworthy, but somehow it works. How about "Stilla", another killer doomy din, with strangely orchestral flourishes, choir like background vocals, but then the main vocals join in, a sort of drunken howling, like Lemmy on a bender, caterwauling in Swedish over the dark doleful melancholia underneath.
Then there's "Forsta Augusti", maybe the weirdest of all, a strange sort of shuffling metal calypso, with still more tortured vocal mewlings, over a groovy exotic melody, and a cha cha cha sort of beat. And it just keeps getting weirder and weirder, if that were even possible, more strange fucked up vocal stylings, long stretches of creepy ambience, blasts of almost buzzing black metal, long haunting samples, epic majestic stein hoisting metal sea shanties, shimmering dark folk, and more that we could possibly list in a single review. Remember these are the guys who covered Barry Manilow on another record, so most of this madness should come as no surprise.
Definitely way too weird for the average black metaller. But metal fans into the freaky and the bizarre, the confusing and completely fucked will dig this big time, and quite possibly non metal folks might too, as long as they possess a distinct penchant for weird shit, and have no aversion to some buzzing blackness in their strange sounds...
More black metal madness, in cassette form of course, this time from Brazilian one man band Woodsmarch, a buzzing, stumbling black beast, who owes much to Burzum, but makes this loping buzzing blackness his very own. Simple guitar parts, seemingly played on not entirely distorted guitars, very epic and majestic, but always seeming to struggle, the drums also simple, a midtempo pound, lurching chaotically alongside the strange gnarled guitar lines, the vocals a strangled harsh howl, the tempo very seasick and warbly, to the point that even though the sound is buzzy and black, it still feels ambient. Hypnotic and droning, the guitars smeared and blurry, black clouds of buzzing sound, the drums sprawled out over the black backdrop, with plenty of strange arrangements, acoustic interludes, bizarre moaning keyboard like low end drones, the whole thing sort of mesmerizing and dreamlike. Pretty amazing actually. Fans of off kilter black buzz like Draugurz, Varghkoghargasmal and the like will definitely dig.
Eastern European evil rears its horned head once again, this time in the guise of the evocatively monickered Woodtemple. Occupying a suitably satanic space alongside the black metal elite (Graveland, Nargaroth, Burzum), Woodtemple do dabble in buzzing blazing plague of locusts riffery like their blackened brethren, but spend most of their time loping malevolently at a slow to midpaced clip, dirge-y and fuzzy, hypnotically static, stumblingly midtempo with struggling double kick drums and super simple, heavy handed buzzsaw riffs, pounding and sawing away, with distant keyboards picking out some ancient rhythm, while the drone-metal crush powers relentlessly hellward. Woodtemple are not about virtuosity or musical agility, they are all raw feeling and dark emotion, communicated through brutal and incessant metallic forcefulness, and that means it's not always smooth and slick. In fact sometimes it's just the opposite. Some of the drumming is so bad it's downright laughable, but in the context of the record it just becomes a swaying, stumbling stuttering piece of the already fuzzy, rough and damaged whole. This is one of those records that really straddles the line between brilliant ineptitude and inspired brutality. Which of course makes it one of our favorite black metal records of the year.
Ahhh, the return of the Austrian black metal demons Woodtemple. Their last release was definitely one of our favorites, a blackened hornet's nest of spikey guitars, throbbing hypnotic rhythms, stumbling chaotic drumming, and fuzzy forest atmosphere. Thankfully, very little has changed in Woodtemple's black sonic world, it's still a perfectly damaged and confusional black metal thicket. Three lengthy tracks of plodding, mesmerising midtempo buzz, dirge-y and relentless, with completely arbitrary shifts in tempo and riffing. Almost like completely random parts were just butted up to each other with no regard for whether they fit together at all. The drummer is obviously struggling desperately to catch the changes but that's part of what makes this so good. It's like Black Flag or early Black Sabbath, in that it's always on the edge of collapse, stumbling and lumbering, only seconds away from letting the riff get away from them or watching the rhythm crumble before their very eyes.
Obvious reference points would be Nargaroth, Burzum and especially Graveland, but Woodtemple, whether through sheer ineptitutde, or some sort of unholy inspiration, manage to create a totally unique hypnotic black metal space, keyboards way up in the mix, over fuzzy crumbly riffs, barely held together by the drums, which seem to be marching to their own demonic rhythm, all woven together into a pulsing, throbbing, mesmerising blackened metal drone, that finds you entranced, laying on the moist leaves on the forest floor, looking at the moonlit sky through the dense canopy of trees, waiting for the end. So gorgeously bleak and brilliant.
We've been dying for this new release forever, the latest from Austrian one man black metal horde Woodtemple for ages, from the moment we first heard whispers of a new full length. Faithful AQ-ers will no doubt be well aware of our infatuation with Woodtemple. A stumbling buzzing midtempo black metal unlike any other. Well, except maybe Graveland, who Woodtemple sound A LOT like. But they manage to be way more damaged sounding and thus somehow just that much more mysterious. They sound a little bit like Graveland's fucked up younger brother, spewing a similar buzzy droney blackness, but with more melody, more jangle, and way more weirdness.
As everyone knows by now, we're huge fans of damaged and demented, super fucked up black metal, from Benighted Leams to Dead Reptile Shrine to Furze, the weirder and the more unexplainable the better. But there's something special, and maybe even more fucked up about a band that is not so obviously and blatantly weird. A band that on first listen sound like good, somewhat traditional black metal, but closer listening reveals all sorts of subtle details and freaky fucked up sonic irregularities that lurk right there under the surface. Such is the case with Woodtemple. Whose weirdness originally stemmed mostly from a certain amount of ineptness. His insistence on playing drums, even though you could here him struggling through every track. But that uneven tempo worked to Woodtemple's favor, giving those old records a woozy, stumbling almost seasick feel. Those old records were obviously the work of someone with grand aspirations of maybe -being- a Graveland, but who fell a bit short, but in doing so, created something so much more original and appealing. Well, a strange thing happened in the years since the last Woodtemple, Aramath, the man who IS Woodtemple, has gotten a whole lot better, and a lot more creative, and more importantly has gotten himself a session drummer. Our first thought was "oh crap" thinking that this new tighter, more competent outfit wouldn't be nearly as appealing, but the exact opposite is true. Now the weirdness is part and parcel of Aramath's vision, and this new Woodtemple is fast becoming our favorite new black metal record.
The basic blueprint is the same, a loping midtempo Burzumic buzz, lurching, seasick, sort of waltzy at times, some blastbeats, but even those stretches are not all that fast, it's mostly about mood and atmosphere and texture, a grim, melancholic world of doom, death and depression, rendered in droned out black metal dirges and buzzing riffage. In addition to the new more competent drumming, the songs have gotten more complex, with plenty of keyboards, strange rhythmic breakdowns and a surprising amount of 'jangle', some of the tracks almost sound like blackened post rock, moping and moody without being ultra harsh and hateful. And there are several super dreamy (for black metal at least) loooooong stretches of repeated riffing, building into a trance like mesmer, all looped sounding and minor key, almost a little like Slint, but all under a whooshy wash of high end keyboards. Beyond that, it's just a function of WT's killer songs, and these songs are killer, catchy riffs, weird obfuscated hooks, and a thick dense ultra heavy sound. The perfect blend of head banging blackness, trippy whatthefuckness, and blissed out dronebuzz. In fact, the new Woodtemple is so fierce and so moody and so epic and so heavy and so fucking good we actually find ourselves not missing the Woodtemple of old one bit!
While they last, we have the super limited (500 copies) hand numbered digipak version, once these are gone, you'll get the normal jewelcase version.
When we first heard about Worms Of Sabnock, a grim TRUE black metal band from the UK, they were being touted as sounding exactly like Nattens Madrigal-era Ulver, which it ended up was not actually all that accurate, but what they did end up sounding like was even more exciting. There are definitely some of those elements present, super brittle buzzing insect-like riffing, thrashing broken bone blast beats, but the vocals are much more over the top, a growly shriek much closer to Cradle Of Filth's Dani Filth. In fact the band has quite a bit of overblown instrumental bombast also quite reminiscent of the Filthies. Big washes of keyboards, weird haunting clean vocal croon, and angelic female choral parts. But the best part would have to be the flute. That's right, the FLUTE. We almost fell out of our chairs when this flute came swooping in, fluttering and flitting over a grinding blasting black buzz, so totally unlikely, but so fucking perfect.
Farther into the record it gets even stranger, with several lilting tranquil folk interludes, rife with dreamy flute and softly strummed acoustic guitar, some blown out droney murky sort-of-post-rock with sweetly crooned clean vocals, almost chant like, mixed in with streaks of utter grim blackness. Definitely a confusional mix, but it somehow works. A tripped out, grim and frosty, psychedelic black metal journey through a world of Worms and Dark Harmonies. With flutes!!
Super over the top packaging, with the band sporting seriously gruesome corpsepaint, splattered with blood and festering wounds, one band member is even sporting horns that appear to have pushed messily through the front of his head, streams of blood pouring into his eyes. Cool.
It doesn't really get any more METAL than this. Wormsblood. Killer name. Wicked illegible logo, the band name written out in the black roots of some hellish plant. Over a black and white photocopied canyonscape. Epic and windswept, snow covered and GRIM. The man behind Wormsblood is Wyrdskull, and to the black cause he contributes "common ritual tools, heavy-handed electro-overblood, vibrations of the unsilent dark tomes and the crossing of song and siege." Guests include Crimson Maaritkitaka who delivers "cryptwyrm bloodlet and akashic magnet", Vragknacht The Two-Handed, who offers up "battle-ready bloodsong", then the song titles: "Thundercall", "The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken", "Ritual Of Bone And Horn", "Tolling Beyond Our Lunar Trance", plus they do a Manilla Road cover, "Street Jammer" and they even offer up a hearty "Hails to the fucking Mad Street Hammers".
But for all the pure troo metal action, the sound is anything but, which is most likely due to the fact that Wormsblood is very likely made up of folks from the free noise / freak folk scene, who in Wormsblood finally get the opportunity to indulge in their darker musical side, to touch that blackened part of their music soul, to unleash all those pent up demonic forces, and the result is a dizzying confusional blast of chaotic, lo-fi, muddled and muddy, freaked out and blown out, damaged what-the-fuck blackened METAL.
The closest comparison we could come up with is probably a black metal Faxed Head, which is pretty much all we'd need to hear. The vibe is definitely similar, the riffs a garbled buzzing mess, thick swaths of weird keyboard, the drums splattery and stumbling and blasting, the tape hiss, and random instrument buzz as much a part of the sound as the bands damaged black roar, then there are the vocals, hysterical shrieks, rumbling grunting moans, haunted howling, the tracks often crumbling into utter disarray, or coalescing into epic doomy pound, everything drenched in malfunctioning electronics and fried FX.
An absolutely dementedly genius fucked up black metal noiserock melt down. Packaged in a super strange fold over plastic sleeve, with multiple printed inserts, and most likely crazy limited...
A couple years ago we reviewed an obscure, DIY cd-r release, In The Stars, by this band Wormsblood. As you might guess from their name, they're an underground black metal free noise new weird America psych folk cd-r band... oh wait you might not guess that. But you'd get the idea this is something dark and strange and evil, right? Not some normal indie rock band that's for sure. And you know this, if you remember our review of that previous release. So, band leader Wyrdskull (an alter ego of Clay Ruby from freak folksters Davenport and psych doomsters Jex Thoth, we have reason to believe) and cohorts are back with a new release, an actual cd this time, though the music is still way DIY and lo-fi (like we like it!), consisting of three "demo" sessions recorded between 2004 and 2008. Though without that info you wouldn't know this wasn't conceived as all one album. Ten tracks total, about 38 minutes of very, very fucked up "metal". Like, if Ariel Pink did even -more- drugs and then tried to produce a black metal album. Or, imagine a black metal Faxed Head (as we said about 'em before). It's that weird, that WRONG. And thus damn right in our ears. 'Cause if we know anything, we know our fucked up black metal. Dead Reptile Shrine, Varghkogargasmal, Vorak, Dead Raven Choir's Cask Strength stuff, old Necrofrost, Wold, etc., this fits right in, not that it really fits in anywhere.
The disc starts off with the amazing/retarded "Fragments Of The Witch" which will either convince you this is the best thing you've heard since you played the Weakling album backwards through a malfunctioning Kaoss pad while screaming at the top of your lungs, or convince you to turn it off. Obviously, we're part of the former camp. A murky, palpitating admixture of primitive, clanking rhythms, truly over-the-top gargled and anguished kokills, dim distorted guitar riffs and woozy synths dealing out Skeptical doom plod. All of it mired in an echoey, almost dubby "production". The next track, "Hollow Cost Nothing", ups the ante with even more majestic, messed up melodies. It dawns on us that whomever is on guitar can really play. Somehow this makes Wormsblood sound even more insane. It also suggests that maybe one way to look at this isn't as an attempt at making tr00 cvlt black metal primitivism, but rather as simply a very, very, VERY damaged version of traditional '80s heavy metal (and we recall they did do a Manilla Road cover on the In The Stars cd-r)...
Then, there's a track that also appeared on that cd-r,"The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken)", which takes a turn into ritualistic ancient folk musick, with a military snare and Muppet-on-meth vocals. It's like Ghost meets Abruptum. Or ESP-Disk's Cromagnon gone metal. That's followed by "Sig Bind", which begins with abstract, Jewelled Antler-y atmospheres before erupting with high-end guitar neck strangle, kind of like a Kemialliset Ystavat meets Krallice mashup. By the end of this track, it's a madhouse of maniacal voices, harshing the mellow with which it began. And on it goes, this disc of demos delving backwards in time, the recordings getting boombox-ier and buzzier, the songs even less songlike and more soundscapey if possible. "Goodnight" opens a can of that Striborg-style aersol spray, a grim sonic mist of vibrating electric strings and hissing exhalations. "Obsessed By The Bloodstone" (is that shout-out to cult pulp fantasist Karl Edward Wagner?) is an ambient piece for keyboard - and barking dog! And then sometimes, they get it together for an extended spasm of, uh, song, full of high pitched singing/shrieking and chaotic drums/guitars.
Now, you might be thinking, there's other black metal releases on this week's AQ list. Yet this is the only one we chose as a Record Of The Week. Does that mean it's BETTER than those other black metal albums? Better than Ayat, or Moloch, or Nav, or the new Satyricon, for example? Well, no, not exactly. But we're not judging this purely as a black metal release. We figured this was something that AQ customers into any sort of bizarre, fucked up music (many of whom love black metal, to be sure) would find intriguing. 'Cause as metal as this is (and it IS, really metal, if you listen close) it's equally something else entirely. There's whole passages of "music" here that sound more like that fake field recordings disc Jurassic Soundscapes, but with lonely werewolves wandering around in the prehistoric swamps. And drugged up pterodactyls swooping about overhead. Wormsblood's sound is as much recognizable metallic instrumentation (guitars, drums, vocals) as it is wyrd sound FX and destroyed noise, rustlings and clankings and howlings.
As befits this music, this comes packaged in black and white and grey, bearing disturbing, fantastical, hellish yet cartoonish line drawings that look a bit like Mike Diana's notorious art... get the LP if you want to study the drawings in detail.
It had been ages since we last heard from these North Western crusty doomcore punx, when suddenly out of the blue, a brand new record surfaced a few months back, and completely kicked our asses. A monstrous slab of downtuned tribal sludge falling somewhere between Eyehategod and Neurosis, but with keyboards, and lots of tribal drumming.
So here we have a brief double 7" follow up to Starvation, and it's just as great, mixing heaping doses of churning low end guitar, dense tangled drumming, throbbing bass, harsh crusty vocals and of course, tons of keyboards. The result is some impossible mix of Crash Worship, Neurosis, Eyehategod and black metal. Might sound like it wouldn't work but it does. The A side here begins with a blackened drum circle, toms everywhere, swirling rhythms underpinning crumbling slabs of distortion and wild squealing feedback, all wrapped in layers of epic keyboards, a gorgeous super cinematic crusty metallic version of Godspeed maybe. The other three sides continue in a similar fashion, albeit a bit more 'rocking', with strangely mathy rhythms, simple pounding drums, some of the filthiest and sludgiest distorted guitars, and lots of creepy creepy melodies.
Packaged in a gorgeous diecut fold out thick maroon sleeve, printed in black and metallic gold ink. So nice.
The last we heard from Scottish ambient doomlords Wraiths, was their amazing full length Plaguebearer on UK label Paradigms. That disc was a caustic collection of deep ominous black ambience, light on the ambience, heavy on the, well, heavy. If anything, Oriflamme is even moreso, as it predates Plaguebearer, originally released as a super limited cd-r, now available again, however briefly, as a limited lp.
These are the roots of Plaguebearer, in fact, it sounds like it was definitely cut from the same mouldering black cloth. There is nothing serene or soothing about this sort of ambience, it's harsh and chaotic, corrosive, roiling, ominous and thick, heavy for sure, but more than anything, it's incredibly dense.
Layer upon layer upon layer. Huge chunks of industrial grind, massive pounding, and bursts of corrosive crunch, super processed vocals, synths and streaks of feedback, deep rumbling drones, whirring and hissing, it's the sound of wandering through the pits of hell. Huge demonic machinery, massive gears and pistons, caked with black soot, and unspeakable grime, churning away endlessly, shadowy figures toiling behind the flames, the sounds of hammer on stone, of gnashing teeth, and hopeless wails, all seeming to come together into some hellish symphony. A glorious and gloriously abysmal industrial black noise drone, a sound not unfamiliar to fans of MZ412, Merzbow, Wolf Eyes and other proponents of caustic low end explorations and buzzing sonic filth.
The second half of Oriflamme is much less dense, and more spacious, as if after barely making it through the industrial wasteland of part one, the listener has emerged in a massive cavern, so high, the rock walls just disappear into blackness, the only things visible are those illuminated by the guttering flame of your lantern, your mind left to decipher the strange and mysterious soundworld lurking just out of sight. Distant moans and shimmering black murmurs, bits of glitch and crunch, smeared into swirling black shadows, heaving swells of blackness, streaks of electrical interference, billows of earth shaking rumbles, hissed voices, deep creaks and monstrous gurgles, wind like whirs, wavering electrostatic buzz, all spread out into a harrowing and bleak doomscape, as disturbingly (and impossibly) beautiful, and it is absolutely grim and brutalizing.
Gorgeous super striking covers, like some old lost dust covered tome, and don't be fooled by the frayed and tattered edges, they're printed on the sleeves. And as if we even needed to tell you, EXTREMELY LIMITED!
The buzziest black metal band in the land? That's precisely how Wrath Of The Weak were described to us, and the truth wasn't all that far off. The sticker on that cd compared them to Burzum and Ildjarn as well, which was also pretty right on the money. But the buzz factor, turned WOTW into something much drone drenched and spacey, tripped out and trancey, like Velvet Cacoon before them, the buzz defined them, every note, every melody, was designed to be wreathed in buzz, to blur and smear into streaks of sound.
This is record number two from WOTW and it's just as buzzy as its predecessor, but a few things have definitely changed. The tone and timbre is different, a bit more bright and brittle, less murky and washed out, more high end, more a wall of blackened skree. And within the sound, the the songs seem to be more musical, more complex melodically, there's a whole lot more going on beneath the buzz. Blasting at full volume in headphones, this record is an epiphany, your ears grow accustomed to the relentless buzz and begin to dig out sonic subtleties, picking up on all sorts of hooks and riffs, sounds and voices, different parts flow seamlessly into each other, the drums actually seem to crystallize before your ears, instead of just another layer of buzz, they are a distinct rhythm a flurry of beats, the vocals seem to emerge from the surrounding skree, offering up another unique layer sonic fury, but everything is so intertwined with the buzz, that these occurrences shift back and forth, the drums drift in and out, the vocals buried surface briefly, sometimes everything locks together into a total static blur, other times they all swing and swirl seemingly haphazardly, before locking into step again. It's the nature of a sound this dense, of music this furious and this buzzy, so blown out, so distorted, that it require some serious alchemy to make get all the sounds to hold their own, and even then, it requires some serious listening to hear them.
And like the record before it, which ended with some weird skittery electronica, this record finishes strangely as well, with a nearly 22 minute ambient drift, all wheezing organs, and deep shimmering tones, woven into dense sonic drifts, some definite soothing aural warmth after the frosty chilly buzz of the preceding 45 minutes.
More musical manna for the buzz hungry, definitely some of the fiercest, most distorted and noise drenched black metal you'll hear. Been wallowing in the extreme buzz of Velvet Cacoon, Mausoleums, Brown Jenkins, Procer Veneficus, Animus, you might as well add Wrath Of The Weak to that list...
A two song blast of extreme noise drenched buzz to tide us over until the next Wrath Of The Weak full length (which we actually have in stock, we just haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet). When it was first suggested we check out WOTW, we were told they were the BUZZIEST black metal band around, and damn if it wasn't pretty much true. But if that first record was indeed the buzziest, not sure what this tape is all about. If anything it's even more droney and dense, whatever riffs are happening are blurred and smeared and stretched into one massive roiling buzzscape. There might be drums in there, but if they are they are buried deep beneath the churning black mass of buzz above it. Very close listening reveals some distinct riffage, and even some melody, but back away and it's like standing in a super collider, gloriously and ear splittingly, head spinningly, rib cage rattlingly LOUD. The second side is a bit more defined, but only in that the sound is a little murkier, a little more melancholy, a heaving dirge-y dismal minor key drone, that seems to shift druggily back and forth between two thick shimmering buzz drenched chords, creating a creepy, melancholy melody out of massive walls of crumbling fuzz and blasting black blur. Barely even black metal, but fucking awesome nonetheless.
Fantastic packaging, an all black tape, not even a little window in the middle. Spare black and white sleeve, white on the outside, black on the inside, minimal text, housed in a black and yellow transparent slipcover. Super striking. CRAZY LIMITED TOO. ONLY 100 COPIES. Out of print already, we got a bunch, but they won't last long...
Another way too limited release from one man blackened ultra-buzz merchant Wrath Of The Weak. As we've mentioned before in the past, before we had heard a single note, WOTW came highly recommended as perhaps THEE buzziest black metal band around, which was, and is still indeed to a certain degree the case, but as other bands are piling on the buzz, and black metal seems to be moving in a more blown out and shoegazey drone drenched direction, it's a bit tougher these days to truly be the lord of buzz.
Thankfully, WOTW is about more than just buzz, the tracks are dense and dark and thick and corrosive, often like a Wolf Eyes track transformed into black metal. Plenty of crunch, and abstract industrial whir, sheets of feedback, tracks sometimes collapsing into gorgeously grinding stretches of slow motion sprawl, haunting melodies buried beneath, everything rough and ragged and raw, but blurred into soft shapes and bleary warm sonic swells. Often not remotely black metal at all. This ep is the perfect example. The opening track is just guitars, a roiling and lush soundworld, no drums, at least none that we can hear, just a massive heaving wall of crumbling distorted crunch, wreathed in hazy clouds of buzz and hiss and whir, playing out a woozy minor key melody, but very very sloooowly, a smoldering slab of mind expanding divine and blackened space drone.
And as if to further make the case that WOTW is far from just another black metal outfit, the second track is a cover (we think) of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", less black metal, and more tripped out druggy psychedelia, those distinctive drums, long spidery streaks of sitar like buzz, all the sounds softened and smeared and stretched out into totally trippy tendrils, unfurling through swirling clouds of blissed out shimmer. A black metal band would likely be your LAST guess, we're hearing White Hills, the Heads, and other modern space psych combos. And finally, the record closes with what initially sounds like what could be the blackest track of the three, but the opening riff, instead of exploding into a frenzy of blasting and buzzing, stretches out into something much more dreamy and abstract, a sort of looped guitarscape, the initial riff becoming less and less distinct, as all sorts of other sounds and overtones surface around the main melody. WAY too brief at 2 minutes, that track definitely could have been extended to make this a full length and we would have remained happily entranced.
LIMITED TO ONLY 66 COPIES!! We got a handful, and we got every copy the label had left. The cd-r's are affixed to a block of wood, and the woods is housed in a screen printed and hand sewn fabric sleeve. So nice.
Final release from one of our favorite one man black metal bands, who if you regularly read the aQ list, you may remember us describing as possibly THEE buzziest black metal band we had heard, so buzzy in fact, that the sound actually became LESS black metal and more sorta shoegazey and tranced out and trippy, which is obviously not a bad thing at all. So here is the final missive from WOTW, and it's exactly what we wanted, a huge swirling mass of blurry buzz and buried melody. After a bit of haunting organ drift, the sound explodes into a squall of swirling white noise, beneath which, lilting melodies drift and shimmer, there are some vokills too, but it's almost like a black metal Caretaker, dreamy and drifty, all of the caustic crunch and black buzz balanced by the haunting dreaminess beneath. And so it goes, each track here is dreamy and darkly melodic, it just happens to be swathed in crumbing distortion and swirls of black buzz. We're guessing that folk into Lovesliescrushing or Leyland Kirby or Tim Hecker, who aren't averse to some buzz, might be seriously smitten. This just might be the prettiest black metal record EVER. Sad it's the last. RIP WOTW...
This band was originally touted to us as being THE buzziest black metal band. So obviously we were intrigued, and you know, that wasn't all that far from the truth.
This one man band from Buffalo, is indeed a master of the buzz, and the cool thing is, while this is indeed buzzing blown out black metal, it seems like he's coming at it from a non black metal background, which might be why this sounds so unique. Barring a few breakdowns, and various stretches of propulsive riffing, most of the record is indeed an intense wall of buzz, so thick and fuzzed out, it's almost impossible to discern anything else going on. Drums, vocals, they sort of blur into the overall buzz, turning this record into the ultimate blackbuzzdronedisc. Incredibly hypnotic and mesmerizing, so much so that when the band locks into a riff, and locks into a buzz drenched cyclical loop, it's easy to get totally lost, the various notes shift and blend into each other, almost like some Niblock piece composed with buzzing black metal riffs. Heavy on the drone, and the repetition, a few times writing this review I even found myself totally entranced and almost drifting off. Can't think of a much better recommendation than that.
The record has song titles like "The Snowstorm" and "The Thunderstorm", and that's pretty much what this sounds like, like some intense black clouded metal storm, relentless and furious. But be sure and stick around for the final 24 minute track "Cuniculean Rampage", which begins as another blurry buzzy blast, but near the end, the riff is locked and looped and suddenly it's less a black metal record and more some strange experimental droned out noisescape, all loops and skipping stuttering digital glitches, but still weirdly heavy. A brief blast of Autechre-ized blackness. Awesome.
Latest release from the crazy prolific E.E.E. Recordings label, home to all things unblack, as in Christian black metal. We've gone into the whole unblack thing at great length in the past. While it may seem antithetical to most, a music that was founded and is defined by its very anti-Christian bent, being subverted and appropriated to glorify the Lord, but we'll leave all that stuff to the chatrooms and message boards, all we know is this unblack stuff sounds amazing! In the past we've raved about Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Elgibbor, Flaskavsae, Offerblod and Njiqahdda, check any of those reviews for more on the whole unblack phenomenon, in the meantime, we'll investigate the grim buzzing soundworld of Wrathful Plague.
With a name like Wrathful Plague, and the fact that these guys are on E.E.E., you might assume that this is more unblack metal, but in fact, according to the label, the band is non-religious, not the first E.E.E. band to keep their convictions on the DL (Drommer is another), thankfully, they SOUND unblack, which by now has a definite sonic connotation. Unblack artists are definitely on the fucked and freaked out end of the BM spectrum, the sounds as much a part of their music as the songs, sure there's plenty of grim buzz, and furious blast beats and harsh hellish vocals, but all performed and recorded in such a way, that they end up smeared and blurred, murky and damaged, tape hiss offering up as much buzz as the guitars, the tone changing from muddy and muffled, to tinny and brittle, but it a way that only adds to the mood and atmosphere of the music.
Wrathful Plague, for all its claims of eschewing religion, at least in the context of their music, DOES in fact feature folks from all of the above mentioned bands, Light Shall Prevail, Glaciial, etc. so we imagine there is some pro-God action going on somewhere in there, but the more important thing is, that it -sounds- as awesomely fucked up as records by those other bands.
WP are not as mathy or complex and convoluted as a lot of E.E.E. bands, instead, they traffic in raw blasting fury, and in this case, the lo-fi recording enhances the bands washed out buzz in a big way. The guitars grind and swirl, but sound looped, often blurring into near static streaks of minor key sound, the drums, programmed it sounds like, are a chaotic framework, buried miles down in the mix, offering up another crackling layer of hiss, the vocals a distorted croak, the distortion alien sounding, and blown out, so at it's most furious, various overtones begin to surface and beat wildly against each other, creating strange subtle rhythmic variations and subtle distortions and causing the sound to become even more hazy and indistinct. A blurry blast that manages to be fierce and black and grim but also warm and dizzyingly droning and intensely hypnotic. Minus the few acoustic interludes, it's a mesmerizing chunk of relentless black drone hypno-metal. And if you can read the words "black drone hypno-metal" and not buy this record, that you are made of stronger stuff than us...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Wreck And Reference's Black Cassette record was a big hit around here, a blackened gloomy, electronic flecked sludge, that managed to infuse it's outsider metal with plenty of goth pop weirdness, haunting slowcore creep and industrial post rock churn, so much so that an argument could be made for whether it was in fact a metal record at all. And really it hardly matters to us. In fact, it was precisely, all the non metal elements that really made it so distinctive and cool. And if anything, the duo's new record No Youth moves even further from a sound that could be considered 'metal'. The opening track is the perfect example, the only bit of actual metal, a brief bout of blackened screeched vokills, but other than that, it's all creaking industrial crunch, processed FX heavy loops, psychedelic ambience, muted guitar strum, clean vocal croon, distorted buzz stretched out into pulsing drones, tribal, almost jazzy drumming and then a wild chaotic squall of noise rock freakout. Bam. That's it. And it's great! The second track too, a creepy gauzey slowcore drift, al crumbling muted thrum, and muted feedback, again some metal elements surface, this time a blast beat, but it just so happens, the blast beat is blasting away beneath a creepy crawly droned out melody, and darkly dramatic crooned vocals, the song winding down into a slow fade, before launching into another non-metal jam. A loping post/math rock lope, all snarly, gothic vox, and processed background, the final few minutes slipping into a near metallic churn, but again, it's more dark and woozy and gothic and hauntingly heavy. Okay, now that we've established that W&R are NOT a metal band, at least by any traditional definition, we can simply enjoy their wonderfully warped, super progressive, experimental avant heaviness, and wonderful and avant it is. We're most reminded of Pinkish Black, a recent aQ Record Of The Week, whose sound also took metal as their launching point, and then stopped concerning themselves with anything other than making heavy, tripped out, amazing music.
And Wreck And Reference have definitely blossomed into something special, a band that we imagine must be pretty divisive, even though they're dark and heavy, and near metallic at times, they have a pop streak a mile wide, and a similar gloomy gothy streak, not to mention a thing for electronics, and programming, and transforming perfectly serviceable riffs into stuttering progged out blurs, and they obviously like real singing, and they like that singing to be dramatic and intense and melodic most of the time, and the thing is, when the band to indulge in some pure metallic crush, they do it so convincingly, it's easy to think they were a metal band who got weird, instead of the other way around, which is how they sound to us. Even better than the Black Cassette, which we dug big time, and everyone who bought that Pinkish Black record, even though this doesn't sound at all like it, seems like something most of you could very well end up digging A LOT.
With a lineup including members of Leviathan, Twilight, Nachtmystium, Anatomy Of Habit and Yakuza, you could be forgiven for expecting this to be a buzzy blackened blast of metallic heaviness, and while there are moments of blackened heaviness here, in fact, You've Always Meant So Much To Me, is the latest composition / recording from long running experimental / ambient / avant classical project, Wreckmeister Harmonies, aka JR Robinson, who many aQ-ers might remember as the man responsible for that Vice documentary on one man black metal bands, but who has been performing and composing as Wreckmeister Harmonies since 2006, his compositions featuring an ever shifting cast of musicians and noisemakers, which in the past has included members of US Maple, the Jesus Lizard, Tortoise, and a handful of modern new jazz luminaries.
This time around, even with a heavy weight, primarily metal ensemble, You've Always Meant So Much To Me
is gorgeously minimal, a dark, droning, softly pulsing creep, something you might expect to be released on Miasmah or Type, a billowing black ambience, woven from softly layered chordal thrum, deep resonant low end rumbles, wheezing barely there horns, buried feedback, and disembodied vocalizations, all blurred into a lush expanse of slow moving sonic swells. Eventually, from within this droning drift, surfaces, little tangles of guitar melodies, sizzling arcs of keening high end, weird almost animal sounds, and then some haunting acoustic guitar, unfurling beneath the now dense ur-drone skree, before everything is enveloped in a cloud of sweeping, swirling strings, a darkly brooding, slow building majesty, that's aching and melancholic, the sound dense, and softly roiling, quickly growing darker and more dissonant, a blackness creeping in, the sounds atonal and angular, everything swaddled in a crumbling distortion, the collective's metal pedigree revealing itself as a blown out buzz, that splinters into a lurching, lumbering doom, downtuned and distorted, massive and pummeling, with harsh howled vokills, pounding and crushing and epic. But before you know it, the distortion fades, the drums disappear, leaving just swirling, buzzing sonic traces, creepy chant-like vocals, sheets of crumbling buzz, wrapped in more aching strings, blurred and bleary, a sort of black buzz drenched modern classical, all of which slowly fades, eventually leaving just a lush harmonium like drone, beneath soft spidery tendrils of acoustic guitar, the drone fading too, leaving just that lonely guitar, drift slowly and dreamily through a field of near silence.
Vinyl only, super limited (we got all we're gonna be able to get), pressed on virgin vinyl and packaged in a heavy old school tip-on style sleeve, with stunning cover art by Simon Fowler. Includes download.
The Midwest is beginning to feel like the new Norway. So is the South. Tons of fucked up grim blackness seems to be constantly seeping outward from the blackened heartland. We're gonna have to come up with some new sobriquets for these apparent movements, MWBM is now a new, more region specific USBM, or maybe ECBM, for those in the South, but the sudden onslaught from middle and Eastern America is threatening to overtake the much lauded West Coast scene, which while still represented by the few elite metal warriors (Leviathan, Xasthur, etc.), hasn't really produced the same number of outrageously creative black metal outfits lately. Much of could well have much to do with the places these guys call home. Black metal is all about isolation, looking inward, darkness and depression, and while those emotions and ideals are indeed universal, it sometimes seems more difficult to be miserable and suicidal and full of grim energy when you're wandering through green trees beneath a sunshiney Spring California day.
But whatever. All you need to know for now, is that the strangely monickered Wrnlrd (thanks to aQ pal Will for the recommendation) is from Virginia, (hail VABM!) And offers up a dense twisted blown out frenzy of utter blackness.
And it's hard to think of a better word to describe it than frenzied. The sound is so thick and gnarled, the riffs so distorted they seem to exist in a churning sonic morass, the guitars and vocals constantly on the verge of crumbling to pieces, the sound so blown out, the drums are barely audible, a flurry of beats buried way in the mix, but that drumless feel only adds to the organic sound of Wrnlrd, this epic heaving cloud of black swirling sonic mayhem, slowly and systematically engulfing everything in its path. But that's not so say the riffs here aren't amazing, they are, and the tracks are surprisingly catchy, and the overall sound is very textural, almost like someone like Christian Fennesz or Tim Hecker recorded it, and occasionally things slow down and the band lurches onto some staggering buzzy dirge, here and there the tracks spread out into near ambient drifts, the guitars ghostly and haunting, but it's all about the gorgeous wall of sound this guy can produce, managing to sound utterly frosty and grim, but also epic and majestic, woozy, drone-y, druggy and utterly and terrifyingly black.
It's been a while since we've heard from avant black metal weirdo Wrnlrd, and it seems a few things have changed since the last record. The band, formerly a mostly one man project, has expanded to include a handful of other players, contributing a strange selection of instruments (strange for black metal, but not necessarily for Wrnlrd, whose bluegrass roots managed to shine through no matter how buzzy and black proceeding got in the past), including accordion, piano, pedal steel, female vocals, and Dwid from legendary hardcore heavies Integrity even makes a guest appearance. And as we mentioned in the past, the Wrnlrd website offers very little in the way of proper info, but does feature a strange series of numerological sigils and strange diagrams, which would seem to indicate, that this just may be the second to last Wrnlrd record EVER. Which would be a shame, cuz this is definitely the most gloriously fucked up Wrnlrd yet.
Sonically, it's not all that far removed from the last few records, but it's somehow, just MORE. The guitars are filthier and crunchier and more distorted, the arrangements are more bizarre, stumbling and abstract and confusional, the instrumentation, as mentioned above, elevates this WAY beyond black metal, into some sort of tripped out blackened avant noise rock, or something.
Beginning with some gnarled detuned riffage, lumbering bass blur, and some monstrous gurgling vox, the record doesn't explode from the speakers so much as ooze, sounding like a death metal 45 at 16rpm, a furiously ominous creep, before slipping into more 'typical' Wrnlrd territory, which means gloomy low slung bass, big pounding drums, swirling electronics, super distorted buzz and chug, and of course super dramatic almost operatic female vocals, balancing more of those gurgling death metal grunts, the result is impossibly both beautiful and haunting, fucked up and grim, underpinned by super cinematic synths.
"Midnight Ride" is about as traditional as it gets, with some killer distorto riffing, pounding drums, keening guitar melodies, and those immediately recognizable Integrity style bellowed vox, it's doomy and dirgey knuckle dragging heaviness, that seems to mutate and morph growing more and more tripped out and psychedelic as it goes, finishing off in a cloud of lap steel shimmer.
After a stretched out bit of twisted piano ambience, the final track unfurls, a wheezing accordion sounding sinister and grim, soon swallowed up by a squall of atonal buzz and twisted guitar squiggle, finally coalescing into a woozy seasick bit of blackened lurch and stumble, the buzz caked on, the sound filthy and in the red, laced over super haunting blown out melodies, again managing to (im)perfectly merge melody and murk, until the track finally collapses into a chaos of colliding chugs over some darkly delicate fingerpicked guitar.
Incredible, and incredibly twisted stuff. Probably WAY too far out for the grim black hordes, but for everyone else, this is some beautiful and brilliantly baffling heaviness.
Housed in a cool diecut sleeve, comes with a poster and a patch and a digital download of the record.
aQ pal Will turned us on to the amazing Wrnlrd (not really sure how you pronounce that), a Virginia based one man black metal band whose most recent disc, reviewed here a few lists back, totally hit the spot, with its furious fuzzed out and frenzied twisted blissy blackness. There is definitely a tendency these days for black metal bands to get all shoegaze-y and we're not complaining, we totally love that stuff, but a handful of bands are doingmore than that, taking that sort of spaced out blissiness and twisting it all around into something more unique, and darker and noisier. Which is precisely what Wrnlrd's Cperadt was all about. A nearly drumless wall of buzzing blackness that reminded us as much of Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz as much as Xasthur or Paysage D'Hiver.
So we were super psyched to explore the rest of Wrnlrd's catalog, starting with this one, In From The Night Herd, also from last year. The disc begins with some seriously creepy and harrowing black ambience, all haunting windswept whirs and distant moaning rumbles, ghostlike melodies drifting throughout, wraithlike and shimmery, the opening track, obviously the intro, so as track two begins, a twelve minute epic, the record shifts gears, and offers up still more thick cavernous drone. Weird, we were thinking, to have an intro after another intro, but then Wrnlrd is nothing if not weird. Then some gauzy skeletal guitars surface, offering up fragmented bits of melancholy melody, soon swallowed up by the roiling low end whirl below, haunting and creaking, almost industrial sounding. As the second track ends and the third begins, it suddenly dawns on us that this in fact an ambient disc, perhaps, since it was released around the same time, a companion to Cperadt. Which makes a whole lot more sense, and allows us to stop waiting for the inevitable black buzzing onslaught, and to enjoy the murky mysterious atmospheres on offer.
The third track, another long one, begins with chiming guitars, looped and minor key, eventually being joined by some deep glimmering reverberations in the background, the guitars gradually growing more and more distorted. Suddenly we're thinking maybe we were wrong, that in fact there is some black metal buzz here, but instead, the guitars continue to ring out, cycling through their melancholy mantra, very soothing and hypnotic, mesmerizing and trancelike, the background whirring and rumbling and eventually overtaking the forlorn guitar melody, leaving just deep smears of blurred blackness.
That blurred blackness bleeds into the brief final track, offering up a muted coda, the slow drifting sonic clouds barely obscuring tolling bells, and shards of mournful melody, soft smeared layers of disembodied guitars woven into a strangely beautiful black lullaby.
Maybe too abstract and dreamlike for the true grim throng, but perfect for anyone else into droning dark mystery and haunting otherworldy black ambience.
When we first discovered the mysterious and impossible to pronounce Wrnlrd, on the tip from an aQ customer, this one man band was way underground, with nothing but a clutch of cd-r releases, but since then, word has spread, and besides getting written up in all sorts of magazines and blogs, he's also released a critically lauded lp on Flingco Sound System, a label run by on of the guys who used to run Kranky.
And that record is fantastic, distinctly black metal, but with Wrnlrd's country and bluegrass roots showing through, and banjo on a black metal record is not something you hear every day! But in the beginning, the sound of Wrnlrd was a furious raw black blast of programmed drums and superdistorted riffage, garbled hellish vokills and snarling, swirling blackened psychedelic metal blowouts.
Mldthr is "record number 2 (Flower of 1, Cause of 4 and 7)" in the confusingly numbered discography, see the Wrnlrd website for more on that, a strange bit of numerology that is as confounding as Wrnlrd's music, and Mldthr sounds quite a bit like In From The Night Herd and Cperadt, which makes sense as those are the two numbers that follow Mldthr. That chart actually extends into the future including albums named, but yet to be recorded.
Anyway, like Wrnlrd discs 3 and 4, Mldthr is a swirling black vortex of shimmery black ambience, mechanical blasts, grinding black crunch, creepy stretches of murky black ambience, processed gurgles and almost industrial rhythms, everything raw and gritty and lo fi, blown out and super distorted and in the red, moody and muddy, with bits of found sounds, strange samples, all sorts of weird shit lurking below the surface, but to get below the surface, you have to plow through a torrent of frenzied black industrial buzz, the sound mechanical and machinelike, but imbued with asort of dizzying swirl that mkes it all feel warped and off kilter, twisted and a bit damaged. Which, if you're anything like us, is exactly how you like your black metal.
There's weird black metal, and then there's WEIRD black metal. Generally the weird stuff tends toward either the stumbling and inept, or the super avant and ridiculously proficient, but the strangeness of Wrnlrd seems so much more organic, as if the sound of Wrnlrd was not in fact strange, but more that all the other sounds around it were way too normal. Nothing sounds forced, or ridiculous, but it all sounds twisted and freaky, and most definitely unlike any other black metal you've ever heard. Could be because the man behind Wrnlrd grew up playing bluegrass, could be these are just the sounds he hears in his head, whatever it is, we're grateful, cuz every Wrnlrd record seems to blow our mind more than the last.
Just check out the opener here, the guitars -almost- out of tune, the melody strangely atonal, the drums buried in the mix, the bass warbly and warped, and what sounds like some sort of bleating tuba supplying the low end, chugging riffage over strange snippets of found sound, tangled saxophones (?), bellowed vocals, all the sounds relentless and all tangled up in a swirling blackened mass, harmonized guitars, weird jagged shards of metallic crunch, and then the song suddenly shifts, the key changes to something slightly more melodic and major, and female vocals, soulful and almost operatic wail over the top. What? Really? How does it work? And why does it sound so goddamn amazing? You'll probably be asking yourself that over and over as you dig into Myrmidon, that is if you can stop yourself from headbanging or pry the headphones off your ears. That first track is a sort-of-template for the whole record, the soaring female vocals, the gnarled crunchy riffage, the lurching start stop arrangements, everything murky and downtuned, a bit noisy, blurred and buzzy, dense and so chaotic, but somehow it all works, and the result is some seriously transcendent black art.
Super thick vinyl, 180 gram, comes with a digital download too!!
Record number six from this far out fractured one man black metal horde hailing from Virginia. There's some serious significance to the numbers in the world of Wrnlrd. Check out his website for some truly mind bending numerology, and maybe you will understand the non musical significance of the unveiling of Oneiromancer, the first vinyl release, and sixth overall in a proposed nine part cycle. We've raved about the music of Wrnlrd on past lists, and judging by how difficult it is to keep in stock, you all feel the same. We'd been hearing about Oneiromancer for a while now, rumored to be the best and most fully realized Wrnlrd disc yet, and we're inclined to agree.
Much of Wrnlrd's sound is improvised, in the spirit of automatic writing, and most of the vocals are spontaneous wordless vocalizations, with the lyrics incorporated later, which definitely adds to the mystery and goes some way to helping explain how unlike most black metal Wrnlrd's black metal really is.
The record opens with what we can only describe as high end doom, upper register chords allowed to ring out, left hanging, abstract with tons of space, a slow churning soundscape of chiming chordal shimmer. Which quickly gives way to some old school metallic chug, peppered with ultra lo-fi buzz, the skree of feedback and simple pounding drumming. The next track explodes in a frenzied blast, machine like rhythms beneath riffs so distorted and blurred they sound like static drones, occasionally interrupted by stretches of black ambient shimmer and whirring minimal drones. There are some dark haunting doomy bluegrass hybrids too, steel string twang drifting over deep resonant rumbles and throbbing black murk.
All of side two is taken up by the epic "War", with distinct multiple movements, woven into one organic shapeshifting whole. Beginning with acoustic guitar, melancholy and slightly atonal, stumbling tribal drumming and soft static guitar buzz, interwoven with subtle backwards loops, which gives way to a dirgey blast of primitive and raw blackness, which is quickly pulled under a tripped out FX laden drift. After that it's a loooong stretch of muted buzz, all murky and muddy, buried drums, like suddenly the speakers blew, until the track shifts once again into a super distorted in-the-red blowout, finally fading out, leaving a minute or so of swirling warped backwards warble to lead us out. Schizophrenic and deliriously damaged, some of the most far out "black metal" we've heard. We can only imagine what record 7,8, and 9 hold in store!
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank gatefold sleeve, printed in metallic ink, and includes a download code to get you the whole record digitally for your iPod.
When we first discovered Wrnlrd, a mysterious one man black metal band from Virginia, we were happy enough to discover a new weird band to dig. The usual buzz and howl augmented by lots of strange ambience, plenty of noise and murk, all wrapped up in some truly unique packaging. We had no idea how weird it would, or could get.
This latest disc, at least visually is the best of the bunch, a silvery splattery logo painted right on the jewelcase, the booklet filled with strange text, images of maps and graveyards, hidden behind a gauzy vellum sheet, featuring a barely detectable image. More weirdness on the disc, and peaking out beneath the tray.
But all of that barely prepares you for the music. The fist disc we reviewed, the 4th in Wrnlrd's in-the-works 9 part series, was a dense tangle of blackened buzz and furious riffing, the next, #3 in the series, was all washed out ambience, this latest, being number 5, is in fact nothing like either. Sure it incorporates bits of buzzy blackness, and lots of strange atmospherics, but it's way more abstract, woozy, tripped out, blurry and mysterious.
21 short tracks (there's some serious number obsession going on here, check the Wrnlrd website for more) the first handful very spare, each made up of just a handful of chords, big warbly downtuned chords that strike, and then fade out sloooooooowly, leaving tons of space for stray voices, bits of country music (Wrnlrd, pre-black metal, was a serious bluegrass player), intercepted transmissions, there seem to be some drums, and even some vocals, but they're definitely indistinct, the drums a plod here, a skitter there, the vocals a buried croak, it's not really until the 6th track, that the band locks into something even remotely resembling black metal, and even then, the guitars are brittle, and seem to bend and twist like viewed through a funhouse mirror, the drums a machinelike blur buried in the mix, all beneath the same moaning doomy guitar that oozed across the first handful of tracks.
The rest of the disc staggers dizzily through all these disparate sounds, the black buzz, is peppered with Jandekian detuned guitar warble, acoustic guitars and banjos offer up little steel string tangles, beneath detuned guitar riffage, all very angular and chaotic, huge sheets of distant thunder like rumble, skittery percussion, more voices and mysterious sounds, samples, super atonal guitar weirdness, lurching deconstructed doom, thick walls of guitar buzz wreathed in tripped out FX, the whole record seemingly sounding like some black metal record left in the sun to warp and melt just a bit, and then played back on a dusty old Victrola. Like nothing we've ever heard (even on other Wrnlrd discs) but whatever it is we are digging it big time.
Some serious raw, primitive black metal buzz from this Dutch horde, released by the same label who brought us the Lord Time on last week's list. The group's two demos from 2014 are compiled on this sprawling 23 track collection, with most of the tracks clocking in at just about 90 seconds, each essentially a single riff, a single pounding drum beat, and some evil croaked vokills. In some ways, Wroth almost sound like a black metal Brainbombs - that sort of knuckle dragging noise rock vibe is huge, but cloaked in a skein of black buzz, and furious thrashing grimnity. There's also the fact that none of the songs really end, exactly, not properly - they just sort of stop, often mid-riff, as if someone just pushed stop on the recorder (which they most likely did), and almost as if the tracks here aren't songs so much as chunks of riffic sound, the band locked into a lumbering punk metal pound or exploding into a furious, blasting frenzy.
The production is gloriously murky, blown out and in the red, which also give it the feel of some damaged outsider noise rock band, which besides being black metal, they essentially are. The earlier tracks are more like a black metal pigfuck blowout, while the later tracks, get more brittle and tinny, the guitars insectoid, the production as cult as it gets, but both sonic sides share a similarly primitive approach to the black arts.
Total fucking lo-fi, outsider black-noise, punk metal genius.
We've always been huge fans of Finnish black metallers Wyrd (not sure how you pronounce it, wuurd, or weird), their blend of blasting black buzz and Finnish folk was always hard to resist. The vibe was raw and grim, but with a lilting foresty feel to the less buzzy parts. Recently, all of the old discs have been reissued, we figured we'd finally be able to review all of those, but we thought what the heck, let's review the brand new one first and maybe work our way back, and then WOAH, have these guys thrown us for a loop or what, a HUGE stylistic shift has occurred in the Wyrd camp, and while we were sort of not into it at first, the more we listen to it, the more we're digging it. A lot.
Gone is the raw and the rough, the grim and the lo-fi, and in it's place a much more polished melodic doom, sounding at times a bit like Opeth if they were Finnish, or like some Spinefarm doom outfit. And while it's not as idiosyncratic as the older Wyrd records, it's pretty damn cool. Huge thick riffs, gorgeously melancholic leads, minor key melodies, gruff growled vocals, all midtempo and super polished. Like early Katatonia or even Khold, there's a definite sort of grungy vibe, each track anchored by a super hooky riff and that soaring minor key melody. Most of the tracks have a bridge where the song breaks down, sometimes into just the lead guitar harmonies, other times, a crackly acoustic version of the main refrain, but always, the band lurches back into action in that way that makes it nearly impossible to not start head banging. This may not have been what we were expecting, but damn if we're not WAY into this. Definitely for Fans of Katatonia, Khold and other melodic modern groove and doom outfits...
Wyrd Visions as the name for a psychedelic new weird wherever folk act? Hmm, a bit overt, perhaps, like naming your metal band Brutal Riffage or something. Too much on the telling side of the showing/telling divide taught in all beginning creative writing classes. How 'bout having a wyrd vision, putting it into words, and then using THAT for the name of your band? But, then again, it did pique our interest, and we wanted to know more... Wyrd Visions appear to be Swedish (perhaps now based in Toronto, Canada?) and have some affinity to the Nordic black metal scene despite sounding (almost) nothing like a black metal band. Instead, this is simple, sparse, funeral-paced, ominous doom-folk... the genre inhabited by such singular entities as Wolfmanger, Silvester Anfang, and Greg Weeks. Songs, especially the opening track "Sigill", are loooong, repetitive, hypnotic and haunting. Voices (both male and female) are gentle and hushed, cloaked in droning atmosphere on such cuts as "Bog Lord" and "Ceremony". The instrumentation is for the most part simple, wooden, acoustic. We mentioned black metal, in part due to the presence of "Freezing Moon", originally by seminal Norwegian black metallers Mayhem (another "overt" name we suppose). Wyrd Visions' version is soooo slow and spare and cruel and, actually, lovely. Maybe more affecting than the original which appeared on Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas album back in 1994. The rest of WV's album falls into the same mode for sure. And with the final track "Air-Conditioning" they break out the fuzzed electric guitar, bringing things more and more into an abstracted, molasses-drowned black metal riffing realm for reals.
One of two new releases on the newly launched Psalm 88 label, an offshoot of local black metal cassette label Acephale Winter, and the first we've heard from Xarkrinur, a FIFTEEN YEAR OLD one man (boy?) black metal band from Bangladesh (!), whose warped, home-brewed, weirdly produced depressive black buzz immediately reminded us of late great weirdo black metal horde Benighted Leams. Similarly stumbling and damaged, the guitars brittle and buzzy, the programmed drums machinelike and robotic, the rhythms stiff and strangely static, but it's the vocals, a raspy, whispery growl, that seal the deal, WAY up in the mix, eclipsing the music with every foul utterance, we're also reminded of local lo-fi sort-of-black-metal wacko Fastest, a similarly delivered, super dramatic hushed vokill style. But Xarkrinur conjure up a seriously stunning atmosphere, the second track, slows things down, and gets super atmospheric, with some strange harmonic overtones, and a murky, melancholy main riff, the vocals shift too, becoming more hissy and feral, but the music, super emotional and darkly lovely, sans black metal affectation, could be some tripped out lo-fi post rock. The other two songs here are similarly split, the third another brittle blast of raw primitive buzz, while the closer is a smoldering doomic creep, with thick crumbling chords (that sound like an organ almost), the vocals more wasted and weary, a harrowing sprawl of depressive downer doom that we are digging a LOT. For sure need to hear more from this guy.
LIMITED TO 88 COPIES!!
Recorded back around the time of Subliminal Genocide, Xasthur's debut on Hydra Head, which was a momentous occasion in the BM underground for sure at the time, with many of the troo grim hordes crying foul, an underground black metal icon signing to a very UN-underground label, but it worked, SG was incredible, murky and intense and epic and grim as fuck and no one could really argue with the Xasthur / Hydra Head union at that point. Things quickly changed though, the next few records found Xasthur mixing it up, once again to the chagrin of the same haters whose feathers were ruffled before. Personally, we loved those records too, we even dug the eventual switch to real drums, we've yet to really hate a Xasthur disc. Although as far as we're concerned, nothing will ever touch Nocturnal Poisoning, the first and still maybe best Xasthur record, and the 3 records that preceded the Hydra Head debut are nearly as good, The Funeral Of Being, Telepathic With The Deceased and To Violate The Oblivious. So this demo comes right after those records, and just before Subliminal Genocide, and sounds like it, it may be designated a 'demo' (although with Xasthur, it's hard to really imagine there's much sonic polishing that goes on from the demo stage to the record proper stage), but essentially it's a couple unreleased Xasthur jams, vintage Xasthur, and that's all we need to know.
The first track is a pounding, super distorted murkscape, the buzzing riffage laced with arpeggiated clean guitar melodies, those anguished howls, drums BURIED in the mix, a seasick ebb and flow, woozy and warped, and gloriously low fidelity, lumbering through thick fields of haze and buzz, a weirdly washed out ambient vibe, even at it's fiercest moments. The second track is way more mellow, a dreamy blurred doomic plod, the guitars muddy and WAY out of tune, which only makes the music that much more twisted and atonal and grim, this finds Xasthur at his most Striborg, creating mournful blackened dirges behind a constant wall of smeared fuzz, lo-fi hiss, and tangled gnarled riffage, occasionally slipping into weirdly melodic interludes, only to stumble back into the buzzy fray. There are some awesome sort-of-leads, flanged and seriously psychedelic, totally druggy doomy bleak buzz. So good. Fans will want this for sure, maybe not the place to start necessarily (that would be Nocturnal Poisoning or Subliminal Genocide) although this does make a pretty tempting two song teaser of muddy murky grim black genius. If we weren't already fans, this might lure us to the dark side for sure...
By now, Xasthur is practically a household name. Assuming your house is a cave, or painted black, or lit by torches, or painted black with the blood of your enemies, or filled with bones and skulls and a stereo pumping nothing but black metal. And actually, Xasthur, maybe more than any other one-man black metal outfit, has crossed over into the sort-of mainstream. His washed out blurred blackmetalscapes, definitely predicting the so-called "metalgaze" movement to come. His strange murky buzz, as blissed out as any of the current crop, albeit much more muddy and moody and subtly fucked up.
Finally, Xasthur's debut gets the deluxe reissue treatment, via the fine black souls at Hydra Head. Now repackaged in a spiffy deluxe gatefold, with all new artwork, improved sound, and most importantly, a whole bonus disc, the legendary Darkened Winter Promo 01, which almost no one we know has ever actually heard, which makes sense as it was limited to about ten cd-r's handed out to friends.
First the record itself. A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors was not in fact our introduction to Xasthur, that honor belongs to Nocturnal Poisoning, a record we still consider to be one of the all time greatest black metal records EVER. Released in 2002, that record was nearly perfect, a buzzing melancholy epic, as much about texture and timbre as songs and riffs. Atmospheric and intense and beautifully blackened.
A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors was in fact, the first full length Xasthur recording, never properly released until much later on Total Holocaust in 2004. And while it shares sonically a lot of what we love about Nocturnal Poisoning, it's much more raw and immediate. Less cohesive maybe, more chaotic, the recording lo-fi and way more murky, this is as dark and grim and melancholy as it gets, Buzzing riffs, rumbling bass and pounding drums are all fused into one huge organic whole, a writhing, twisting black metal beast, that swings wildly from thrashing chaos, to waltzing minor key dirges, to creepy dark ambience. The vocals are so low in the mix they just sound like another layer of fuzz, adding to the swirling roiling madness. This is everything black metal is supposed to be, intensely personal, singular in vision, utterly bleak and crushingly dark, buzzing and throbbing, hypnotic and heavy as fuck. Lots of sonic weirdness and a bizarre, very lo-fi production (tape hiss, drop outs, etc...) just add to the overall madness. The extra tracks on the THR reissue (not on the original demo) are included, demo tracks, extra tracks, covers (Mutiilation, Burzum). It would be worth it already, but then there's a whole extra disc...
The bonus disc, the Darkened Winter Promo 01, is a snapshot of Xasthur's early sound, as it was developing into the expansive epic miserable bleak beauty it would eventually become. And actually hearing this now, it's almost there, structure-wise, riff-wise, it's WAY more lo-fi, muted and muddy and smeared into blurred blackness, but all the things we love about Xasthur are already present, those mournful arpeggiated melodies, the warbly black ambience, the vocals buried in the mix, the songs heaving roiling seas of bleary black misery. The fifth track, sounds like it's from a different session, the guitars much louder, a lilting clean sound, the riffs effected, the drums a muted skitter beneath the cascading minor key chords. The final track is the heaviest, and most traditionally black sounding Xasthur recording we've heard. A definite practice space sound, the drums big and boomy (and real, not a drum machine!), the guitars crunchy and thick, the song swinging from midtempo plod to brutal black bursts, with stumbling blast beats, almost sounds like a blackened noise rock band. Almost like the Dead C covering Burzum.
What else is there to say, it's Xasthur, it's a black metal classic and there's a whole disc of unreleased material. Essential and fucking awesome.
We almost sold out of these after only a few days, without even reviewing / listing it, but then it IS a new Xasthur record, and it IS a super limited (500 copies) cassette version, and cassette means cult, in a cool oversized clamshell case, with original artwork by Hildolf from Draugar, and inside, it also contains a photocopied booklet, 3 pins and a patch! So yeah, no real surprise that those flew out of here. We did manage to get a handful more of these, but seeing as how these have been selling pretty much nonstop, who knows how long they'll last.
Beyond all that stuff, we're pretty psyched for sure. Finally, a new record from Xasthur, aka Malefic, a one man doom-ed depressive black metal machine, whose last release, Defective Epitaph was a huge hit around these parts, due in no small part to the shift from drum machine to actual drums, no programmed beats, actual kit bashing rhythms courtesy of Malefic himself, and the result was pretty stellar, creating a sound even more raw and murky and lo-fi than past efforts, but no less bleak or introspective or amazing. So now comes All Reflections Drained, soon to come on double lp, and we would assume cd, but for now available only in the very old school, very metal, and very kult kassette format. And it's very much a continuation of Defective Epitaph, from moment one, the sound boomy and reverb drenched, echoey and WAY lo-fi, loping doomy guitars, stumbling midtempo drums, and then WOAH, the sound shifts, and the drums double time it under a layer of thick low end dramatic piano, creating some strange Skepticismy drift, over the relentlessly buzzing blackness below. The mix is REALLY weird, fractured and gloriously fucked up, the sounds shifting and merging into one another, the songs too, woozy and warped and seasick sounding and a bit waltzy, the drum sound super raw and distant and for the most part buried in the mix, minus some flurries of kick drum that practically explode. The guitars are washed out and melancholic, lumbering doomily through hazy clouds of muted buzz and soft focus hiss, lots of creeped out ambience, and dark soundscaping, way less of a focus on vocals, in fact several songs in, and we barely noticed any, minus some far off clean crooning and some rumbled mutterings, the usual blackened harsh rasps seemingly lost in the swirling off kilter mix.
If anything this record is a logical extension of the direction Malefic had been taking the sound of Xasthur, like a Defective Epitaph part two maybe, but somehow quite a bit doomier, and WAY weirder, more spaced out and experimental, with a serious focus on dark brooding non-metal parts, hints of slowcore and drone abound, some parts are downright orchestral, and the sound is definitely even murkier and mysterious than ever, dripping with buzz and tape hiss, blown out low end (that sounds like a tuba or something similar) and thick crumbling distortion, but fear not troo grim hordes, it's still plenty depressive and dolorous, minor key and epic, miserable and moody, gorgeously buzzy and bafflingly brilliant.
Again, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! And these will probably disappear FAST... To be sure, there will be a vinyl and perhaps cd version coming out eventually, but they won't be as kvlt as this! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
With music, as far as we're concerned, when it comes right down to it, it's all about the vocals and the drums. Sure bands have kick ass guitarists and amazing bass players, but the thing about singers and drummers, if they suck, they can drag down a band that is perfect in every other way, and if they are amazing, they can rescue an otherwise forgettable group. So many times, we've seen bands play live, only to have the drummer hit super soft, or play to slow or too fast or too sloppy, and remove any sort of energy or power the band would otherwise exude. Singers are worse. How often have you heard a band, and thought "Shit, this band is amazing" until the vocals come in and no matter how great the band was before, a shit vocalist makes all that moot.
In black metal, the vocals aren't as make or break, sure some folks prefer the classic demonic rasp, others the monstrous growl, still others the hysterical shriek, but for the most part, most BM vocalists fall somewhere between all three, and rare is the black metalhead who absolutely can't stand one of those...
Drums are a different matter. Black metal is all about the drums. As much as the buzzing riffage, it's the drums that define the sound, whether it's a the plodding beat of a midtempo Burzumic dirge or the blazing blast beats behind a burst of furious grimness. The strange thing is, at least around these parts, we have to redefine 'bad drummer' when we're talking about black metal. One man black metal bands are du rigeur these days, but its not uncommon to notice in the liner notes, that while that one man did everything else, some other person played the drums. That's because the guitar, the bass, those are related, synths and vocals are much easier to figure out or fake, but the drums, that black house of cards could easily tumble to the ground with terrible drumming as the foundation. But there are exceptions, and kudos to those one man bands who decide to tackle the drums themselves. In some cases it makes perfect sense, Leviathan for example, Wrest was a drummer first, so the drumming on Leviathan records is amazing. The more midtempo bands, well it's not nearly as hard to drum a simple 4/4 as it is some insanely complicated blast beat. But some groups, the drums struggle and stumble, the tempos waver, but as we mentioned above, in BM that's not always a bad thing, Graveland, Woodtemple�the sound of those bands for some reason is enhanced by the off kilter drumming, just like in some crazy artrock bands it's not about precision or perfection, it's about feel and emotion, and a drum part that is stumbling wildly is sometimes way more suitable than a super straight locked in rhythm.
So what the fuck does this all have to do with the new Xasthur record? Well, if you must know, it's that Defective Epitaph is the first Xasthur record to feature real drums. No more programmed drums, this is the sound of Malefic behind the kit, and while the sound is different, it's not half bad. In fact if anything it makes the sound more raw, more live, due in no small part to the murky lo-fi production. The drums definitely have that sort of rehearsal space quality to them, but they do suit Xasthur's murky muddy soundworld. And there's only one track that requires a serious blast beat and even then it's only briefly before the song reverts back to a loping dirge.
But beyond the drums, Defective Epitaph is just another step in Malefic's slowly evolving descent into darkness. All of the usual sounds are present. And a quick listen, you probably wouldn't be hard pressed to immediately pick this out as a Xasthur disc. But it's not just the drums, or the presence of real cello, also played by Malefic, the songs are generally slower, the chords more dissonant, sometimes to the point of sounding detuned. It's almost as if Xasthur is transforming from a black metal band into a funeral doom band. Which is definitely not a bad thing.
"Purgatory Spiral" on first listen was really atonal, and the most out of tune sounding of the batch, but repeated listens reveal some strange masterplan, the music becoming more twisted and gnarled, more woozy and sick than out of tune. The cello moaning way down in the mix, the drums a super simple plod. "Cemetery Of Shattered Masks" is more classically Xasthur sounding, but the recording is really strange, cavernous, very much like a rehearsal recording, not just the drums, as if everything was recorded on a single mic in the corner of the room. Once again, it's not bad, just strange, but like the rest of the disc, it grows on you, taking on a sort of washed out blurred vibe as if the record was recorded by Tim Hecker or something. Then there's "Malignant Prophecy", which launches out of the gate thick and distorted and corrosive, the guitars loud and crumbling, again slightly atonal, but heavy and thick, until about halfway through, where it reverts back to that booming practice space sound, as if two separate tracks were pasted together. Weird but still pretty cool. And actually a lot of the record sounds like that, as if maybe all the tracks were super raw and lo-fi, recorded with a few mics, but then some got guitar overdubs adding that super intense buzzing immediacy.
There are long stretches of near ambience, and moody murky interludes, and even bits of the song proper change in timbre and sound like haunting breakdowns, the cello, sounds less classical and more like an abrasive drone, but it suits the rawness of the overall sound.
This record has been pretty polarizing. Lots of folks have absolutely hated it, lots of folks love it. It seems hard to believe if you were a fan of Xasthur, that you could totally hate it, but it is weird, and definitely takes some warming up to. For us, since we're into the damaged and demented, the fucked and far out, well if anything, this Xasthur record is more of all of those things, so it's probably easier for us get into. But folks of a similar mind will most likely feel the same. Nocturnal Poisoning may still be our favorite Xasthur record ever. Subliminal Genocide might be a close second. But Defective Epitaph, while currently in third, is just fucked up and unique enough that it might move up to second any time now�
We do carry the Hydra Head version, but the Daymare Japanese import version comes with an entire extra disc of unreleased tracks, nearly 40 minutes! So we figured anyone into Xasthur would probably want the extra disc as well. So here it is, five tracks, all unreleased, a couple alternate early versions of songs on the record proper, a couple untitled tracks, a pretty cool sort of coda to the record. From a long drawn out doomy synthscape, to a classic old school buzzing Burzumic dirge, complete with chanting monk like vocals and a killer overblown riff, to an epic buzzing black doom jam, that morphs from creepy crawl to blasting buzz�It's cool to hear some of the alternate versions, with the fucked up edits, and weird segues, all left in (hence the subtitles "First Attempt", "Second Attempt").
As with all Daymare releases, the packaging is gorgeous, a miniature lp style gatefold, Japanese obi, and a foldout insert with tons of liner notes (all in Japanese).
Xasthur is a one-man, home-recorded black metal outfit delving into the distortion-washed realm of Burzumic bliss, and is a favorite of both tUMULt's black metal master Leviathan *and* the Jewelled Antler/Thuja crew, so you know it's beautifully primitive and droney stuff, with majesty undying. The music is all shades of grey, like the packaging, with strains of melody obscured in mists of mostly mid-tempo metallic mayhem a la ancients like Darkthrone and Burzum, achieving, even at speed, a trance-inducing dirge quality. It's truly "A Walk Beyond Utter Blackness" in the "Forgotten Depths Of Nowhere", as per two of the song titles. If you like cultish black metal that verges on experimental drone (or vice versa), Xasthur should please you greatly, and offers more proof (along with Weakling and the aforementioned Leviathan) that even "sunny" California can produce black metal to rival that from Nordic climes. From the same label that just brought us that Lugubrum "De Totem" reissue we recommended recently, this has been a sleeper hit here at the store, and we're happy now to have enough in stock to give it a listing.
The guy behind Xasthur goes by the name Malefic, which leads to a little Andy Rooney question I've got: why do folks need to make up two names when one would do? why not call your band (ahem) Malefic? Although, his contact address is c/o "Scott" so we can see the need for at least one pseudonym in order to maintain the aura of grim darkness that his music deserves.
MPEG Download: "Soul Abduction Ceremony" [/audio/xasthursoul.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Soul Abduction Ceremony" [/audio/xasthursoul.m3u]
