First off, if you don't know the comic Wuvable Oaf, go track down whatever you can. Right now. There's a forthcoming compendium, which should gather up most everything, but the individual issues (some of which we still have in stock, just ask) come with all kinds of extras, hand drawn covers, scratch and sniff pages, guitar picks, stickers, paper dolls and even records! By the imaginary bands in the comic!! basically, it's all about a big hairy guy named Oaf, his failed attempts at finding love, his crazy cats, and his weirdo friends, the comic is silly, and funny, and clever, and hairy and pretty gay, and has lots of music stuff in it too (our own Andee is featured in one issue, as is "Aquarium Records"!!) One of the bands in the comic is the awesomely monikered Ejaculoid, and we're obviously not the only ones a little bit obsessed with Ejaculoid, as two aQ faves, LA black metal trio Harassor and mad scientist industrial metal instrument builder Author & Punisher, have stepped up to offer their own takes on the Ejaculoid classic "Fearce" (recorded by members of Limp Wrist!), which originally accompanied the Oafanthology collection, but now available on its own...
Author & Punisher transform it into what is essentially an A&P track, a churning industrial pound, processed vocals, thick, grinding rib cage rattling bass, sounding like some weird hybrid of Nine Inch Nails, Ministry and robotic gabber, but slowed down into something malevolent, maniacal and darkly doomy. While Harassor turn the track into a lo-fi grim blast of grunted black buzz, furious blast beats and insectoid riffing, laced with some weird electronic squiggles, and breaking down part way through into a swaggery doomic stomp. So rad!
On maroon/grey swirled vinyl, with bad ass Ed Luce artwork, includes a download!
A Word From Within is the debut from this Indiana duo, just drums, guitar and vocals, these two conjure up gorgeously tranced out black metal minimalism, lengthy tracks that drift from hushed near silent drifts of ethereal guitar shimmer, to pounding, lo-fi, noise drenched black metal dirgery, a cool fusion of abstract haunting slowcore and raw blackened primitivism. The near 13 minute opener spends its first few minutes in some sort of moody musical dreamstate, the guitar weightless, swaddled in near silence, minor key melodies unfurled over long stretches of hushed murmur, before exploding into a furious chaotic onslaught of pounding caveman drums and noisy buzzy guitars, and throat shredding shrieks, the vibe is a sort of raw noise rock meets old school black metal buzz, the whole thing peppered with surprising melodies, that hint at a poppiness in the shadows, the song returning to the more contemplative strum of the opening, but this time with some distorted almost industrial percussion, the sound murky and moody and brooding, and again surprisingly melodic, before finishing off in a blaze of buzzing black frenzy.
The other two 'proper' songs offer up more of the same, what ultimately sounds like black metal played by noise rockers, or hell even the other way around, but it's awesome, dense and intense, raw and urgent and passionate, the sound lo-fi for sure, but noisy and blown out and heavy, droney and tranced out in places, almost mathy and post rocky in others, there's a brief bit of dirgey shamanistic folk, which is far too short at just two minutes, but that bleeds into the 11 minute closer, which begins much like the first track, a brooding folk flecked creep, before exploding into another chaotic sprawl of wildly pummeling noisy raw black energy.
Probably super limited, as these things usually are, so grab one before they're gone for good...
Aves are an entirely new prospect to us here at aQ HQ. Here's a quick list of things we know about Aves: 1) Aves is from Virgina. End of list! Oh, and also Aves plays glorious coming-of-age sun-dappled blackened instrumental post-gaze-punk. Is that a thing?? Well, it is now! For the first two minutes of Feather's first track you'd be forgiven for thinking you were listening to some lost Smiths instrumental, all jangling reverbed guitar, uptempo "This Charming Man" swing, shuffling drums and walking bass. But then suddenly, and really without any warning, the song lurches into a glimmering black metal crescendo. The stormclouds of Transilvanian Hunger pseudo-blasts clashing with the sunset horizon of blissed out comfort blanket post rock. The easiest comparison here is early Alcest, but Aves have a tendency to genre hop much more, leaving the black metal tendencies completely behind for extended chunks of time, only for them to barge back in again when you'd almost forgotten they were ever there. "Nest" is all four-to-the-floor disco drums accompanied by the kind of bittersweet dancefloor sway you could easily imagine Bernard Sumner singing over. But four and a half minutes in, those hazy blastbeats muscle their way in, turning the song transcendent, before morphing into a punk rock bounce, nostalgic guitar leads swarming like transparent insects. Elsewhere, the minor key post punk swivel & pulsating anxious bass work of "Nightflight" recall classic Echo & The Bunnymen (not to mention sadly defunct Alcest spin off Amesours). "Somewhere" is the closest Feathers gets to black metal in any traditional sense (although it's still a little ways off!), its plodding mid paced beat throbbing under heartrending cascading fuzz sounding something like My Bloody Valentine covering Filosofem. While conversely, "Clouds" doesn't have even a hint of metal, channeling instead the all enveloping opiate warmth of Slowdive. We're used to hearing black metal flirt with other subgenres, but it's rare to hear black metal used so sparingly by an otherwise totally non-metal entity. It's a really intriguing and effective approach, and Aves is definitely something we'll be keeping our eyes on! Highly recommended for fans of the aforementioned Alcest and Amesours, as well as Deafheaven, Sleeping Peonies, Clouds Collide and all manner of life affirming post rock, post punk and shoegaze.
Hail Sweden's own grim hate-mongers (among many), Avsky. This is a band not intimidated by fiercely calculated genre boundaries, proudly celebrating the intersection between old style black metal, blackened death metal (a la lo-fi Hypocrisy), and charred crust punk. This is their second full-length in general, but their first for Moribund, specifically. While some may feel that the relatively high production value somehow cheapens the album, those interested in music and not just being kvlt will here be rewarded. Simply soak in the maleficent hate vibes, and lose yourself in a trance. Crushing guitars, searing riffs, blasting double-bass, and tortured, howling vocals. From mid-tempo to blast beats, it's all here. The bases are covered. Think old Darkthrone demos, Bathory, and Nattefrost all laying prostrate before Baphomet's throne.
We're always on the lookout for more weird black metal. But sometimes it just finds us. We got an email from a mysterious band from Japan called Avsolutized. Like most black metal groups, they were exceedingly polite, and just very much wanted us to listen to their music. So we did, and holy shit did these guys blow us away. They've been a band for almost 12 years now, and this is their very first release, and it's only FIVE songs! But you know what, it doesn't even matter. We would gladly wait another 12 years for 5 more songs like this. It's that good. That black and freaked out and gloriously fucked up. Fans of weirdo black metal and outsider grimness NEED this.
The first track is an ambient intro, all mournful guitar, and moody drones, but with soaring operatic vocals over the top.
When the first proper song kicks in, the band buzzes and pounds, a looped repetitive riff, but then the vocals, beginning as a guttural growl and quickly sliding up to an eighties metal wail, and back again, it's dizzying. The song switches to half time, the vocals transform back into a rasp, but again, explode into falsetto shrieks. Fucking brilliant. And the music underneath is the perfect support, murky and washed out, buzzy and dense, looped and hypnotic, even without the vocals, we'd be way into it, super depressive black buzz, but the vocals just transform it into something totally unique and pretty insane sounding.
One of the 5 songs is a Setherial cover weirdly enough, and they do it pretty straight, maybe upping the buzz ante, filtering it through their own cracked sound, furious and thick and relentless, they sort of out-Setherial Setherial, and then there's those vocals, here more of a traditional black shriek, but still pretty impressive. A brief folky interlude leads to the records closer, a nearly 10 minute black blowout. Loping and buzzy, totally epic, the riffing majestic and mournful, and the vocals, growling out a low demonic rumble, spitting out hellish black rasps, and of course shrieking wildly, until the track breaks down into an ambient interlude, the vocals transformed into a throaty croon, and then quickly to a wild banshee wail. Not to make too much of the vocals, cuz the music here is excellent, some of the best grim black buzz we've heard, but when it's all tangled up with the convoluted compositions and bizarre vocals, it turns what would have been just a killer black metal record into a freaked out fucked up blackened classic.
Right from the beginning, the second recording from Avsolutized to make the list, this time an earlier demo tape, limited to 99 copies, of which we got the last dozen, so these will no doubt go FAST.
Right out of the gate, these Japanese black metal weirdos demonstrate exactly why we've barely been able to keep their cd in stock, with some haunting clean guitar and some INSANE falsetto vocals, like an unhinged hair metal howl, that slips from guttural grunt to warbly croon all the way back up to that freaky falsetto, in a single stretch, and then the band kicks in, exploding in a frenzy of beautifully blown out black buzz, and chaotic drumming, and those vocals continuously slipping and sliding and soaring all over the place.
The buzz slips dramatically into some woozy more midtempo Burzumic lopes, with the guitars unfurling soaring melodies and haunting atmospherics, always grounded by a sudden burst of howling screeches or a burst of off kilter rhythms and machine like flurries of blast beat mayhem. Weird to think we might not have ever heard these guys if they hadn't just emailed us out of the blue. Even weirder is that we just discovered there may be some link between Avsolutized, and their equally demented black metal countrymen Arkha Sva, especially considering the distinctive Arkha calligraphy that adorns the tape cover. But none of that matters once you're immersed in the swirling black world of Avsolutized, furious and blackened and heavy, all twisted into strange shapes and tangled up with those insane and impossible vocals, and some seriously inhuman lightspeed drumming. And again, LIMITED TO 99 COPIES! We have less than 15. Each one housed in a cool extra paneled tape cover, and each one hand numbered.
Yet another reissue from the illustrious Southern California black metal collective known as the Black Twilight Circle, this one from the oddly monikered Axeman, whose lone 2010 demo was previously only available as a super limited cassette, but is now available again, as a slightly less limited lp.
As we mentioned in our reviews of some other recent Black Twilight reissues (Odz Manouk, Tuukaria), the Black Twilight Circle is modeled after the infamous French Black Legions, which included bands like Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, with just a small handful of members, each playing in different groups in different arrangements. Volahn, the man behind Axeman, also performs under his own name, as well as in a number of other lesser known projects, and at one time played both in Bone Awl (live) and Ashdautus. In Axeman, though, Volahn mixes his old school crusty black thrash with classic eighties style metal, at least on the opener "Metnal", with its synth laden, spidery minor key opener, that sounds like some lost metal ballad, before kicking into full on rocking, rife with wild shredding leads, and chaotic drumming, we'd have ben happy if that was the total of Axeman's sound, but instead, the sound shifts to a more chugging dirgemetal, with raspy vokills, before finally exploding into some blasting thrashing metallic mayhem, raw, primitive, chaotic and loose, the shredding leads returning, and the sound shifting back to that classic metal sound that opened the track. "Kosmic Death" is a much black beast, frantic and frenzied, way more black metal, a murky lo-fi onslaught that is as filthy and buzzy as anything else we've heard from the Black Twilight bands, with some awesome King Diamond like falsetto wails. And finally, "Attestor of Doom And Birth" is a wild blast of old school black thrash, the sound so blown out and distorted, it often turns into a dense wall of droned out buzz, but when the buzz is dialed back a a bit, a tangle of buried melody is revealed, and soon the leads return, which definitely add something special, as most black metal seems to have dispensed with guitar solos entirely. Here it just gives the sound a classic speed/thrash metal vibe, which is a cool match with Axeman's more grim sinister murky leanings. The production is awesomely lo-fi too, with the tape hiss sometimes so loud it's like another instrument, which again, just adds to the atmosphere, and if you're like us, make it sounds even cooler.
Full color printed inner sleeves and nice thick black and red jackets.
[note: The sound is a bit less lo-fi on the lp, these samples were made from the tape version]
So, do you really need another hole in the head, I mean black metal album? Well, yes you do, you just might want this one, it's a bit different and certainly on the extreme of extreme. On the other hand, Ayat could easily be too scary for some. We were intrigued with Ayat for several reasons. 1) It's on the Moribund label, and we always at least check out their releases, 2) the band hails from of all places, BEIRUT, and 3) we read an interesting interview with them recently in the venerable Metal Maniacs magazine (which, by the way, we're sad to hear is soon to cease publication, a seriously severe loss to the metal scene we grew up with).
In their interview, Ayat make some seemingly hyperbolic statements ("Moribund couldn't refuse this; they had no choice"), but also also sound like they have intelligent reason to believe them, and express some ideas that we don't think we've ever heard a band say, such as the notion that their listeners "are the people who don't give two shits about Ayat but have a life of their own. Every now and then, we give them a gift. The musician/listener relationship should not go beyond that." They also discuss what real war is like (something they know about, that most black metal bands don't), explaining "it's getting your hands dirty, and screwing everyone around you until you convince yourself you're not such an asshole after all". Their atypical background and evident intelligence already set Ayat apart. Then you should note that the guy quoted above calls himself Filthy Fuck. And the other guy in the band is named Sadogoat. Reconciling that, taking them seriously, definitely made us want to hear their music.
And of course, what really matters IS the music. And the music here, or should we say "music", is REALLY distorted and deranged and blasting and brutal. Up there with early Anaal Nathrakh and Revenge. It almost makes you wonder, why they don't just go all the way into Merzbow or Incapacitants style total noise? But then this would lose the frantic headbanging catchiness that underpins all the blurred, buzzing, screaming chaos. Ayat's relentless raw, rawarrrrghhh sound is really kind of punk rock (like Pissed Jeans x 666!!!), but the attentive listener will also realize there's quite a bit of artistry to how these tracks are constructed. It's a complex thing cramming all this craziness and violence into what are actual, rockin' songs. Considering that the band -sounds- like they'd rather be slitting their wrists or gargling alcohol or beating you up rather than doing anything constructive.
Ayat's song titles are just lovely, like "Puking Under Radiant Moonlight (Followed By A Century Long Ejaculation)" and "Thousands Of Pissed Motherfuckers". Filthy Fuck's vocals are often barked, rasped and sputtered like a hardcore Donald Duck and it's not always possible to tell what he's singing about (which may be just as well) but we get the idea it's nihilistic, not nice.
We were -really- worried about the singer towards the climax of the first track "Ilahiya Khinzir! (All Hail Allah The Swine)", but then realized what we were hearing was a recording of pigs squealing. The album is littered with tons of weird, disturbing samples, which sometimes extend into sinister soundscapey passages... but then it's back to the blasting, soon enough. There's actually lots of surprises within these tracks. Snippets of old timey music. The occasional perfunctory guitar solo surfacing. Once in a while, there's even some clean, chantlike singing (a la Root's Big Boss), most notably on the downtempo album closer "Such A Beautiful Day! (The Exaltation Of Saint Francis)" which combines plodding, morose melody with a subtle sheen of electronic drone. Whew! Many methods to their madness here.
Be warned, as you've undoubtedly already surmised, there's religious intolerance, heck, HATRED expressed (not entirely a surprise, as they are a black metal band, usually not known as fans of organized religion, or terribly concerned about offending anyone). This band, based in Lebanon as we mentioned, is avowedly anti-Islamic. Wonder how that works out for them?
Just how far into the shadows can you go? Avantgarde US black metal band Azrael attempt to answer that question by unleashing this double disc, comprising Acts III ("Self") and IV ("Goat") of their on-going journey into the void of unlight. As we've noted before, these guys are willing to wander outside of the typical black metal template, sounding much more like a moody post-rock band at times... grimly melodic, droned-out, rhythmic and spare. Elsewhere, they cough up the black metal bonafides, rasping vokills and frosty riffage and all. But still they sound something like a necro Neurosis. As longtime fans of the original nordic black metal post-rockers, Ved Buens Ende, we love this. Azrael, at home in the shadows, appreciate that darkness is often quiet, and that the seasick tension produced by repetition and dynamics can be as creepily effective as the most overtly brutal guitars and screams. Awesome!
Here's part two of Azrael's Into Shadows and on it they've veered even further away from typical grim black metal into melodic avant weirdness. The first clue is the sleeve, a gorgeously stark series of photos of snowy lanscapes, snow covered trees, and leafless branches. No band info to be found anywhere. The second clue is the first two minutes of the first song, delicately strummed acoustic guitars and reverb heavy drums, eventually joined by droning keyboards, or maybe they're cellos. Either way, it's a weirdly spare sort of rhythmic post-rockish workout. Eventually this pastoral tranquility bursts into buzzing necro black metal hell, all high-end mosquito guitars, howled vocals and simple programmed drum beats, but still over a throbbing, swooning bed of those same droning cellos. Really cool. The record sort of seesaws back and forth between grim howling buzz and sleepy doomy low end rumble. Maybe a little like a black metal Old Man Gloom. Dark and hypnotic, grim and necro, and with some surprising, almost indie sounding melodic jangle thrown into the already unlikely mix!
More grim buzzing black metal from Finland! For some of us, that's all we need to know, but then, go ahead and check inside and discover that the lyrics were "written and stolen from various sources", by someone called Ancient Fisherman, who just so happens to be Albert Witchfinder of the mighty Reverend Bizarre!! Fuck yeah!
So in addition to digging through the RB archives and releasing almost as many records posthumously as when they were actually a band, Mr. Witchfinder indulges his glacial ultra doom side as The Puritan, and offers up musical black masses in both Armanenschaft, and now Azrael Rising.
Relentless and furious, buzzing and black, the Ancient Fisherman's partner Vitutor lays down some serious grimness, channeling the Nordic elite, but also countrymen like Horna, Ajattara, Beherit, Sargeist, the Finnish elite, and Azrael sounds right at home. Long epic stretches of sweeping keyboards, give way to loping sprawls of midtempo Burzumic buzz, before slipping into lightning fast blasts of blown out blackness. One track stands out, as it harkens back to Reverend Bizarre, a seriously doomy trudge, the vocals slipping from harsh and screechy to bellowy and demonic, while the riffs churn and the tempos lurch, before the last song crashes in, a blown out hiss drenched burst of midtempo drumming, washed out blurred buzzing guitars, and vocals that are wild and gloriously unhinged.
So there you go... Black metal. Finnish. Albert Witchfinder. Buzz. Blast. Grim. What else do you need?
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Okay doomlords and dronelords, it's been a while since we got something in this heavy and grim and bleak and doomic. Something so blackened and crushing, but also so dark and droney, so blissed out and blurry.
The mysterious B.Baphomet, utilizing a strange collection of sound making devices, including bass guitars, Moogs, FX, vocals, Rhodes, percussion, oscillators, seat creaking, vibraphone and of course "knocking something over", has concocted this haunting mysterious collection of blackdrones and downtuned ambient doom, of shimmering whispers and washed out electronic landscapes. Weirdly, two of the tracks here are credited to B.Baphomet, while two of them are credited to M. Colby, who IS B.Baphomet.
Regardless, the opener is for the doomlords, a near black metal crawl, huge guitar chords poured out like black tar, super processed vocals howl and growl, streaks of feedback and long stretches of crumbling rumble, like a black metal version of that Vulture Club record we love so much. This is ultra-ultra-megadoom, an impossibly thick wall of black buzz, of low end sludge, creeping and seeping, the vocals buried in the mix, crushing and pummeling, a slow motion sonic flaying. The track eventually morphs into something much more static, the guitars spread out into throbbing drone, layered with fuzzy synths, and tons of low end, occasionally peppered with barely audible vocals, strange short wave interference, damaged FX,13 minutes of utter and glorious aural punishment.
But from that point on, the other three tracks, are for the dronelords (and hell, by now most aQ customers should count themselves as both, doomlord and dronelord), something much more abstract and minimal, the second track, is a strange swirl of muted melodies, buried rhythms, swells of processed guitar, all smeared into a blurry glimmering dronescape. The third track is similarly minimal and drone-y but much more gritty, the various tones crumbly and distorted, crackle, hiss, whir wrapped around decaying sound, the track slipping from warm alien glow, to subterranean industrial grind, but always stretched into long drawn out alien sounding sonic expanses.
The final track is the prettiest of the bunch, a sort of lullaby, drifting bell like tones, glimmering chimes, muted delicate melodies, warm soft chords, all so soft and shimmery and so unlike the rest of the disc, especially the blackened opener.
SUPER LIMITED!! Only 111 copies! Each disc comes in a super swank hand screened brown on brown cardstock sleeve, with a printed red Japanese style obi, inside, a printed color insert, each one hand numbered.
Okay drug rock freeks, space rock explorers, doomlords, sludge demons, prog obsessives, metal maniacs, stoner dudes, noise nerds, and basically most of the other folks who read this here aQ list, Bad Acid is the magazine for you. And calling Bad Acid a magazine is a bit of a misnomer. It's more of a multimedia spacemetaldoomprogsludgenoise experience. You think we're exaggerating? A seventy minute dvd, an ELEVEN HOUR mp3 audio disc, a nearly two hour long label sampler, AND a 60 page booklet/magazine packed with liner notes, articles and interviews.
Packed with SO many aQ favorites, but just as many new bands we'd never heard, a bunch who could very well turn into new favorites. We've barely scratched the surface, since if we spent 14 hours on each review, the list would be, oh, about 5 items long. But from what we've heard / seen / watched so far, this latest issue of Bad Acid is pretty essential.
The dvd first, a series of music videos, film excerpts and slide shows, we were mostly excited about the scenes from an Antonius Rex movie, Antonius Rex being the dude from JACULA!! Tripped out and satanic and appropriately what-the-fuck. Some killer live footage of doom mongers Ogre, a killer art gallery slide show from the Malleus artist collective, featuring an awesome soundtrack from Morkobot, a Northwinds video, and then some more obscure stuff, Manatees tour video, Wicked Minds video, King Suffy Generator video, Lento live footage and tons more. All woven together by some super creepy animated menus.
Then there's the cd-r, featuring 11 hours of mp3's from Moss, Danava, White Hills, Barbara, Hey Colossus, Orange Sunshine, Capricorns, Khlyst, Acid King, Heresi, Raw Radar War, Fire Witch, Taint, Orange Goblin, Shinjuku Thief, Litmus and those are just the bands we know and already dig. 57 bands total, 102 tracks, tons of new bands to check out and discover. Also included is a label sampler focusing on the Bone Structure cd-r label, whose releases run the gamut from raw black metal, to buzzing industrial noise, to black ambient to grinding industrial weirdness. We actually have some BS stuff on the way, to be reviewed on the list soon, but this is a killer way to check out tons of stuff on the label.
And then there's the actual magazine component, with notes on each of the bands on the cd-r, a feature on each of the bands on the dvd, tons of info about Bone Structure and the bands on the label, as well as interviews with Fire Witch, Taint, Orange Goblin, and probably most exciting of all Alan Dubin, formerly of Khanate, talking about his new band Gnaw, which features folks from Burning Witch, Thorr's Hammer, Atavist, Enos Slaughter and Ike Yard(!). Man, we can't wait to hear that.
All of the above packaged in a standard dvd style case, with killer cover art from the Malleus Rock Art Lab. A bit pricey due to the weak dollar and the expensive overseas shipping, but pretty well worth it.
Yet another incredible collection of far out sights and sounds from the folks at Bad Acid. Everything from sludge to doom to psych to stoner rock to noise to weird jazz to fractured electronics to post rock and pretty much every stop in between. Rumor is that Bad Acid might be shifting to a monthly release schedule, which is certainly fine with us, but considering how much stuff is jammed into each Tab, we have no idea how these guys will be able to pull it off. But here's hoping, cuz not only is every issue loaded with tons of mp3s and videos and live performances from bands we already love, but also included are tons of bands we'd never even heard of before, many of which end up being be big time favorites.
This time around, the audio compilation includes tracks from Gnod, Harvey Milk, Oxbow, Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg, Moss, 5ive, Berkowitz Lake & Dahmer, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Zu, Btong, Skull Defekts, Burmese, Cadaver Eyes, Pendo, L'Otracina, Enablers, Outrageous Cherry, Millions, Kenji Siratori, A Fashionable Disease, and that's just the bands we know, there are FORTY FIVE other bands!!! The dvd features Bay Area stoner stalwarts Acid King, as well as a whole mess of mostly new to us bands, offering up promo videos, live sets as well as animation and other visual weirdness. There's also a label sampler included on the disc, and then there's still the printed magazine! A thick dvd sized booklet, overflowing with interviews and articles and features and reviews, with most of the bands featured on the dvd as well all the notes for the artists included on the dvd (both the audio and video portion). Easily one of the most amazing resources for tripped out weird underground and independent music, and for discovering new bands, or even for actually finally hearing bands you'd always wondered about, it's a big ol' earful, and an eyeful, so best to set aside some serious listening / reading time, and just dive in. After all, since they might be bumping up their schedule, you might only have the next 30 days to make it through all this Bad Acid before you have Tab 9 to contend with...
All right doom / grind / stoner / sludge / heavy music obsessives, it's time for your now monthly (!) fix of extreme heaviness, in the form of the latest Tab of the Bad Acid audio/video zine, which is supposedly gonna be a monthly occurrence, which is definitely good for our ears, but makes keeping up a bit tough. But if you're into heavy sounds, then you're pretty much for sure gonna want one of these.
First there's a DVD, this time featuring a couple aQ faves, Mono, Le Ira De Dios and Blood Fountains, a few bands we'd heard of: The Atlas Moth, Seven That Spells, as well as a whole bunch of new-to-us artists: Das Bluul, El Thule, !Xazzaz! and more. And that's sort of what makes Bad Acid so awesome, a few favorites, but even more new discoveries.
Which is where the insane and epic audio compilation comes in. Check out this list: Circle, Cough, Skitliv, White Hills, Pelican, Weird Owl, Vincent Black Shadow, Poochlatz, Tusk, Grey Daturas, The Atlas Moth, Ufomammut, Sunroof!, Kemialliset Ystavat, Lords Of Bukkake, Atlas Sound, Eternal Elysium, and that's just the bands we've heard of. There are about 50 or 60 more!
Then there's a sample for the Murkhouse label, as well as an art gallery, and that's just the DVD.
There's also a huge printed magazine, with reviews of ALL the bands featured, plus interviews with Ancestors, White Hills and more. Not to mention the bad ass cover art. Housed in a dvd case, killer stuff, better grab one of these quick so you have time to digest all these heavy sights and sounds before it's time for Tab 10!!!!
Sad sad news, UK underground heavy/spacey/metallic/psychedelic magazine/compilation Bad Acid is no more. Longtime readers of the aQ list have no doubt enjoyed an issue or two (or three or four) of this sprawling publication, a combination printed zine, and computerized PDF zine, complete with an audio component that usually clocks in at at least 12 hours, sometimes twice that. It's been 10 years, and Bad Acid editor Dave Gedge has a family, and kids, has been losing money (magazines, even ones as amazing as Bad Acid are most definitely a labor of love) and furthermore is a Buddhist, so in addition to simplifying his life, Gedge has simply been burnt out, which is why this final salvo is called The Burnout Issue. And this final issue is the only bit of silver lining, but WHAT a silver lining it is. This final issue is in fact, THREE issues, #10, #11 and #12, and while the printed part might be the most minimal yet, it's more than made up for by the contents of the 3 dvd-r's. This time, the magazine itself is more of an index, as it takes EIGHT pages, in tiny text, to list all the bands and songs and videos and interviews and articles.
As usual, it's split into sections, the first is the PDF magazine, accompanied by music from each band as well as a review of the band's most recent record. Some of the bands in the magazine this time around: Carlton Melton, Aluk Todolo, Bong, Plastic Crimewave Sound, Sylvester Anfang, Residual Echoes, White Hills, Der Blutharsch, GNOD, Jazzfinger, Grey Daturas, Hooded Menace, Necro Deathmort, The Gates Of Slumber, Flood, The Wounded Kings, Full Blown Expansion, Hey Colossus, Ancestral, Isis, Pelican, Scott Kelly of Neurosis, Sutcliffe Jugend, The Accused, Inade, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Atomic Bitchwax, Snail, The Twilight Sad, Ramesses, Ufomammut, Witchsorrow, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Slomatics, Root, Nordvargr, Antonius Rex, Russian Circles, Centurions Ghost, Nebula, Freedom Hawk, Steve Von Till of Neurosis, Leeches Of Lore, Dianogah, Sardonis, Torche, Turzi, Ancestors, L'Acephale, and loads more, including TONS of bands we had never heard of.
The second section is the interviews, and features Meads Of Asphodel, Nadja, Expo 70, Centurions Ghost, Vincent Black Shadow, Gnaw, Unearthly Trance, At War With False Noise, Old Corpse Road, Alice Donut, and more! The next section features label profiles of Denovali, Rocket and Future Noise, featuring loads of recordings from lots of bands on each label.
Then there's a section of bonus audio, with still more tracks, including jams from Sundial, B*Tong, Disappears, Fire Witch, Realmbuilder, Jex Thoth, White Buzz, Rich Hoak, Loscil, Jonas Reinhardt, Fauna, Big City Orchestra, and once again, a whole mess of bands we've never heard.
There's also a bunch of videos, by Total Fucking Destruction, White Hills, Psychofagist and a bunch more, some short films as well, and finally, a section of bonus MP4's, featuring promo videos from Expo 70 and others, and more short films and live footage.
Phew! It's epic and sprawling, and is equal parts rad bands you know and new discoveries. Way recommended for anyone who likes music AT ALL. But definitely Bad Acid leans toward the heavy and the psychedelic and the left of center. So yeah, obviously WAY recommend, and while Bad Acid will continue on in a different, bloggier, form, it just won't be the same, so you best buy this final issue of Bad Acid and add it to that shelf of magazines you keep and treasure and reread...
Sure, "You don't mess with Texas" is a cliche as old as the hills, one that has lost much of its import, but those are definitely words to live by if "messing with Texas" means messing with these guys. Houston's Bahimiron return with the aptly titled Southern Nihilizm, a furious slab of blasting grim blackness, that owes no small debt to the mighty Gorgoroth, giving that classic Norwegian sound through their own cracked Texan twist, the guitars are crunchy and buzzy, the drums are buried in the mix, but are wild and frenetic, and the vocals are seriously demented, going from processed guttural growls, to monstrous roar to almost Cradle Of Filth shriek, often in the same song.
The other weird thing about Bahimiron's sound is the production, tons of effects and what sounds like reverb, so everything is dense and noisy, and the riffs sort of blend into one another, turning a black buzz into a droned out buzzing blacknoize. There are some strange moments scattered throughout the record as well, the end of "The Cauldron Born" features a bizarre, awesomely out of place chromatic sort-of-guitar solo, "Agonist The Filth" has killer squiggly leads draped all over the place, "Chambers Empty" features deep bellowing clean vocals doused in effects that transform them into confusional speaking in tongues garbled mumbles then moments later into hysterical howls. The title track has a cool melancholy breakdown in the middle with a distorted guitar playing out a mournful minor key melody, before the band explodes into another blown out black frenzy. And "War Whiskey Sodomy" closes the record with a brief lumbering sludge soaked doom outro. But all that weirdness is deftly tangled up and tucked away in and within the band's furious noisy black metal buzz, making it just weird enough for us, but just grim and true enough for everyone else.
Cool cover art, the band's logo and evil goat image rendered in super subtle gloss black ink on a flat matte black booklet.
Not only is this a killer split of evil black thrash, Japan's Barbatos and Finland's Incriminated, each offering up songs dealing with war and history, but it's a whole new format you've never seen before (really!), and is pretty damn out there. More on that in a second.
The music first. Barbatos from Japan, are amazing evil black thrashers, with a definite punk vibe, the guitars howling, the drums crashing, the spirit of Venom, Motorhead, but supercharged and blackened. The perfect match for Incriminated from Finland, who walk in the same bloodied footsteps as Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, a black thrash, furious and raw, primitive and black.
The Incriminated song is called "Blue Swastikas" but before you freak out, as the band states in their liner notes: "If you think Incriminated are nazis for dealing with historical topics, then you are nazi yourself!" Okay, so they're not Nazis and the song is about some classic WWII battle, maybe they could have come up with a different title since that stuff is a pretty sensitive subject in the black metal world, but whatever�
Both tracks rock furiously, heavy and primitive, buzzing and brutal. But, these aren't cds, nor are they vinyl eps. Instead they are one sided plastic discs, like cds, but each disc has record grooves pressed into the plastic. Designed to be played on record players, but due to the cd sized hole in the middle, it's tough to get it centered, and as far as we know they don't yet make an adapter for that. But it looks amazing, and everyone we show it to has to hold it and touch it and look at it to try to figure out how the heck you play something like this. Fans of raw black metal, as well as weird music, and weird packaging especially will definitely want to check this out.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
How could we not be intrigued by this? Not only is this DIY, US black metal band on the same label that recently brought us the excellent Electric Wizard worshipping doom of Windhand, but they are named after a song on the first album (the one released on our own Andee's tUMULt label) by local prog metal masters Hammers Of Misfortune! And, they have had various folks online, including the BrooklynVegan blog, raving about 'em like crazy. (In fact, via BrooklynVegan, you can listen to a full-album stream of the record here: https://soundcloud.com/brooklynvegan/sets/bastard-sapling-dragged-from, so check it out, we think you'll be convinced.)
Although named after a Hammers song, Richmond, VA's Bastard Sapling (featuring members of Cannibis Corpse and Battlemaster) would seem to have more in common with another San Francisco tUMULt metal artist, the late great Weakling. Thus the classic '90s Norwegian likes of Immortal, Darkthrone, Mayhem, and Emperor have without a doubt been a steady part of Bastard Sapling's listening diet and serve as the influences for the frosty, frozen, grim, galloping epic black metal found here on these four long tracks (with titles like "Cold Winds Howled Across The Desolation"). Blasting and buzzing, the rasping croaking shrieking vokills stabbing like icicles in your ears amidst the blizzard-like onslaught of drum battery, guitar riffage, and keyboard atmosphere. What Bastard Sapling really have going for them, besides a lock on that classic sound, is a knack for bleakly melodic, miserablist majesty. Whether blazing away at speed or slowing down for a detour into post-rock-ish moodiness (like the intro to "Beyond The Void Of Life"), Bastard Sapling's songwriting gets a serious grip on the listener and doesn't let go. Full on quality black metal, with not just a Norwegian scene vibe, but maybe a Ukrainian one as well, and definite hints of Swedish greats Dissection as well. Good thing they named themselves after that Hammers so we'd check 'em out!
Limited to 500 copies, vinyl-only as far as we can tell (on "marbled obsidian black & cocaine white vinyl" to be precise!). Gatefold, with insert and patch!
Bow down and bleed! 'Tis the punishing return of black metal upstarts Bastard Sapling, who hail from Virginia rather than the cold northern climes, though their blasting, majestically-riffed sound is so very Nordic in the grand, grim tradition. However, Bastard Sapling's take on tradition features some interesting twists, and a lot of extra oomph, no surprise 'cause most of the band are also members of a much less genre-specific metal outfit we love, Inter Arma, those ambitious masters of math-sludge-psych-post-metal.
Bastard Sapling (named after a song on the debut Hammers Of Misfortune album that Andee's tUMULt label put out, we're always amused to note) find ways to diversify their brutal blackness; for instance the album's most epic track, "Lantern At The End Of Time", features an ethereal vocal cameo from Windhand's Dorthia Cottrell, and on the likes of "The Killer in Us All", they even really 'rock out', if you will. Hail!
Just dug up a small handful of these, the only release from this killer California black metal horde who weirdly enough craft a very wintery and frosty sort of ambient technical black metal, very reminiscent of the Norwegian elite, Emperor, Immortal, Satyricon, but stripped way down, like a more raw and primitive take on that sound, trancelike and hypnotic, the tracks super repetitive and hypnotic, pounding relentless drumming, soaring epic riffage, howled hellish vokills, blurred bursts of furious buzz and blast. The sound is awesomely murky and muddy, all the various instruments smeared together into heaving black swells, the band do get super moody and depressive, and those stretches are especially compelling, dark and intense, the minor key guitars creeping through clouds of swirling black ambience, the vocals growing more and more tortured, sorrowful and miserable, the perfect downer balance to the rest of the record's frantic sonic frenzy.
According to No Colours, the strangely named Be Persecuted are in fact the first Chinese black metal band. Not sure how one determines if a band is in fact the first from a country, especially one as big as China, but Be Persecuted are certainly the first Chinese black metal band -we've- ever heard, and I.I. is really pretty fantastic.
Strange song titles like "Painful Assemble" and "Be Resented For Livelihood" barely hint at the strange mournful melancholia inside. Beginning with a very Eastern style synth intro, the band launch into some blasting buzzing super grim classic sounding black metal. But then the keyboards surface, and for the rest of the record seem to always be lurking in the background giving the sound a very creepy sorrowful vibe. And the distortion. Not sure what these guys use for distortion pedals, but holy shit, it's some of the harshest and thickest fuzzy hiss we've heard in ages. Like Darkthrone and Burzum if they ran their guitars through a thousand hair dryers set on high.
The best tracks are the more midtempo numbers, where the band totally excel in finding their own Burzumic path, like on the 13 minute "Wilderness", a slow loping buzz drenched midtempo plod, as depressive and doomy as any BM we've heard. But the track that seals the deal is "Some How", which is the only song here actually sung in Chinese, and that begins with a lovely lilting acoustic guitar, gently fingerpicking a melancholy melody, before the distortion and drums kick in, but the song doesn't really change, it's the same lilting lope, just wreathed in a dense field of crackling buzzing distortion. It's almost like some slow core rock ballad but dipped in a boiling cauldron of Burzum! Pretty weird for sure, but so fucking cool. The record winds down with a reprise of the intro, only this time the notes are dirty and distorted, grinding and buzzing through the same melody but with a completely different result...
Awesome!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Amazing Polish black/death metal. Ultra heavy and brutal with twin guitar leads, really bizarre vocals and song structure, and all sorts of digital fuckery. Any band where the main man is credited with spiritual obsession, alchemic fantasies and star devouring(!) has got to be good.
State-of-the-art black/death metal from these Polish superstars (who're apparently considered sell outs to their own scene, 'cause they're not "true black metal" anymore, but whatever, they're great). Brutality, melody, blasphemy, weirdness. A fine follow-up to their breakthrough "Satanica" opus.
It's funny that we mentioned the Dead C in describing the last blackened missive from the mysterious outfit known as Behemothaur, since we later discovered that there was in fact a definite New Zealand noise rock connection. Some very well know dudes from some very well known NZ outfits (well, at least around here) apparently spend their nights lurking in caves, and in dark woods, performing unholy blacknoise rituals, the latest of which is presented here in all it's filthy, hellish buzzing droning noisedrenched glory.
While Behmeothaur is presented as a sort of outsider black metal project, they really hew closer to good old noise rock, or some sort of post industrial freerock. The darker dronier tracks sound a lot like the various members musical day jobs, soundscapes of rumbles and whirs, shimmering and throbbing expanses of crumbling low end, the sound that has become ubiquitous among cd-r labels. That said, these guys do add some blackness, some serious grimnity, their own take on the abstract drone is appropriately dense and heavy.
Then there's the other side of the band, their more 'rock' side, more abstractly 'metal', and this is where the bands NZ noise lineage really shows. Huge grinding slabs of blown out, slightly blackened lurching noise rock, the guitars ugly filthy squalls, the bass a rib cage rattling throb, the drums blown out and chaotic, the entire sound so in the red, the production sounds like another instrument, the Dead C are of course an obvious comparison, so is Wolf Eyes, a massive crumbling noisy doomy dirge.
The band do spit out a brief blast of buzzing blackness near the end of the disc, but even then it's so doused in fuzz and hiss the fidelity is so low, that again it ends up sounding like some super obscure nineties noiserock outfit, albeit with some definite blackened tendencies.
Awesome stuff, just fair warning to black metallers to be prepared for some abstract noise, but the rest of you, who are into all that sort of cd-r style droning and bashing and buzzing, this will obviously, and summarily kick your ass.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Packaged in a cool oversized screenprinted cardstock sleeve, with creepy red ink blood splatters all over the front, inside a 12 page printed black and white booklet packed with creepy images and some liner notes.
The AQ-list has seen its share of cds from the grim Nordic corpsepainted hordes, has it not? Almost every list nowadays has some new cult attraction for those already into black metal, or who are willing to take a chance. But there's plenty of now-classic BM that we've never written about, 'cause it came out before our store stocked as much of the blackened stuff. So the occasional blast from the past, the reissue of a '90s BM must-have, is worth mentioning we think! Sure, you should get all the Marblebogs and Striborgs and Wolds and Emits and Lorns and Negative Planes, but you shouldn't miss out on their less obscure precursors, the Satyricons and Immortals and Abigors, and (to get to the point) Beherit, whose Drawing Down The Moon from 1993 is THE album to get from these Finnish black metal maniacs... it was their full-length debut after a bunch of demos and eps. (Later Beherit albums are cool too, but quite different, more like industrial/ambient solo albums from band leader Nuclear Holocausto.)
So simple and Satanic. Raw and underground. Plodding and droning. The spirit of Venom, Bathory and Hellhammer rendered even more fucked up and primitive and minimalistic by this bunch of sick Finns. It's not so much music, as it is the distorted, deviant belchings of Satan himself. If you don't 'get' Drawing Down The Moon, if songs like "Nocturnal Evil" and "Werewolf, Semen And Blood" don't speak to you... then, well, you're mom is probably happy about that. But if you really want to understand the appeal of real deal black metal, all you need is this, some beer, and no friends. Except Satan.
Actually, listening to this now, we aren't surprised at all by the 'ambient' direction taken by the later Beherit incarnation. This is ambient too... ambient evil invocation. Even moreso than Abruptum.
If you asked us at the beginning of the year what records we were anticipating the most, we wouldn't have mentioned anything from Finnish black metal pioneers Beherit, simply because their rebirth was really the last thing we expected. Following the band's super blasphemous and chaotic odes to Satan in the early '90s, leader Nuclear Holocausto took over the reigns to become Beherit's sole member, steering the project into dark ambient waters with nary a trace of metal remaining, eventually pulling the plug altogether in 1995. But here we are with Engram in 2009, and the big question is, duh, what does it sound like? After a brief glitchy noise, you are confronted by an accented voice that proclaims, "Because. I just fucking hate this world," and then we're off into the hate filled world of Beherit that we know and love best. These guys could certainly show the younger generations a thing or two, as it becomes immediately clear that Beherit has returned as a furious and totally unrelenting black metal force that retains plenty of what made the original band so great, but with enough surprises to show that there is plenty left to say.
Joined by his longtime partner in crime Sodomatic Slaughter on the skins, as well as two new members, Nuclear Holocausto has created an album that serves Beherit's legacy quite well indeed. In terms of the actual fidelity, it would appear that Beherit has embraced modern recording technology, as they sound significantly beefier than on their earlier efforts, which essential as they are, generally sound a few steps below "piss poor". This album sounds burly as hell, with thick, super heavy riffs and classic black metal blasts, all topped off with Holocausto's croaking vocals and plenty of atmospheric synths adding an exciting and unexpected element to the songs. Like the classic Drawing Down The Moon album, Engram is full of weird, spaced out keyboards that, even today, put Beherit in a realm of their own. The way the keyboards go against the main riffs really bring things into psychedelic territories, and while there are plenty of super fast numbers here, some of our favorite moments are when the band take things down a notch, like on the monolithic 15 minute closer "Demon Advance", a doomy two chord juggernaut with strange oscillating noises and some of the most vile vocals we've heard in a while.
Engram seems to have metalheads across the globe divided, but Beherit were never really an easy band to pin down. Of course, the use of synthesizers will always be an area of controversy when it comes to metal, but Beherit have always taken a unique approach with their electronics, venturing into spacey realms that most black metal bands don't even know exist. If you're willing to spit in the face of orthodoxy, and if you like hellish riffs, awesome puking vocals, and powerful drumming, Engram should be an obvious choice. It's good to have them back.
Time to right another wrong. Finnish black metal horde Behexen are woefully under represented on the aQ site. One listing, no review. Bah! That is not right. So here we have the latest blast of sickness from these legendary buzzing black legions, and they sound as fantastic as ever. We love Finnish black metal, nearly as much as we love French black metal, ditto with Norwegian, there's just something so unique about the sound of Finnish black buzz. Like most black metal, heavily indebted to the Scandinavian elite, but they Finns make that sound their own, Horna, Ajattara, Satanic Warmaster, Clandestine Blaze, Baptism, Beherit, Barathrum, Azaghal and of course Sargeist, two members of which also do time in Behexen.
The production is incredible: so heavy, the guitar so thick and dense; the riffs are amazing, buzzy and black but weirdly melodic, the band blast furiously one minute, slipping into a midtempo lope the next, the vocals a guttural howl, the arrangements cool and not at all typical, some bits of Khold-like groove here and there, deep clean vocals, almost chant-like, long drawn out sections of melancholy dirge that almost sounds like Katatonia, creepy haunting high end harmonics laced over blurred buzz beneath, all bookended by ultra sick, ultra grim blast and buzz.
"O.O.O." is the weirdest of the bunch, and maybe our favorite, with just guitar unfurling a depressive minor key melody, while a deep vocal mumbles and murmurs, and the sound of what could be a knife being sharpened surfaces throughout, but there are strange unlikely bits all over the record, making it weird enough to keep it interesting, but not so weird that it doesn't remain true and grim and KVLT.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Wow. Possibly the most fucked up, ridiculous black metal "band" ever, with their (his, actually, it's one guy) newest disc, some kind of pseudocerebral spacemetal epic with *amazing* songtitles like "Aurora of Despondence on Valles Marineris" and "Hermetically Leering As Frigid Blores Obumber" and "Sinister Demurral Estranged The Seductive Looming". Seemingly produced at home by someone probably not entirely familiar with how to work his four-track, and definitely struggling to operate his drum machine properly! Thus, so great that both Andee and Allan have purchased one. Also, recommended by Josh from the Champs.
THE RETURN OF POSSIBLY THE MOST RETARDED BLACK METAL BAND EVER!!! That may not sound like the ideal way to start a review that's goal is to convince you just how fucking crucial this record is. But then maybe you're not familiar with Benighted Leams or our absolute, possibly-misguided worship of their last two (sadly, out of print) records. Benighted Leams is another grim, cult, one man black metal band, but that's where any similarities end. Benighted Leams are so weird and so damaged and so completely fucked it boggles the mind. On past records, the rule of the day was utter chaos, levels would fluctuate EXTREMELY, with the vocals so high in the mix they threatened to blow your speakers, the drumming would wander from almost blast beats to clumsy midtempo stumbling, guitars were a murky muddy blackened beast, riffs smeared into fuzzy rooooaaaars and the whole thing a dizzingly nightmarish blackmetal soundscape and a completely baffling trip through the a dark musical minefield. We're happy to report that very little has changed. Could have something to do with the fact that the music on Ferln Centesms was composed 7+ years ago and the lyrics written over the past 4 years. Not that the lyrics matter all that much, as the vocals this time around are buried and totally indecipherable (enough so that a few people here thought it was instrumental). This is droning buzzing, stumbling mid tempo blackness. All the songs seem to almost follow some sort of template, a minute or two of blasting buzz, then a minute or two of hushed gurgling forestdrone, and then more buzzing. Very hypnotic and repetitive. And did we mention weird? The blurb we initially read about this new record compared it to Voivod and we must admit we were pretty skeptical. However, the songs are indeed surprisingly reminiscent of classic Voivod, jagged and complex, with convoluted song structures and weird arrangements. However, to be fair, it sounds much more like some random, slightly inept garage band covering Voivod's Dimension Hatross! So, to understand Benighted Leams, imagine the weirdest 4-track oustsider metal you've ever heard, mix in a stumbling, blackened Voivod, include song titles like "The Ormod Liss Of Transuranical Nortivagations" or "Sullen Slumber Of Swooning Gloom" and a record called Ferln Centesms, include gorgeous forest-y artwork and a band photo that appears to be Mr. Leams himself captured in mid stride, running through the snow, and strangely headless (?). Wow. We LOVE this band. Some (just some) of you might too...
Way back in 1999, the first time we ever heard them, we referred to Benighted Leams as "possibly the most retarded black metal band ever"! A level of dementedness and fucked up-ness by which all others would be measured. Leams mainman A.K. took umbrage, wondering why we would possibly describe his band that way, and how such a review could be expected to sell records?
Funny thing is, we sold tons and tons, Benighted Leams becoming THE sort of AQ black metal band. Gloriously damaged and demented, fucked up and oh so weird. Perhaps 'retarded' was not the ideal word choice, but we were trying to capture the essence of BL's then-sound, a sort of stumbling, struggling WTF black metal buzz. The drums were programmed and off time, often too loud, the guitars and vocals were alternately buried in the mix, and ear shreddingly loud. BUT! It was one of those perfect moments, where all of those various accidents and musical mistakes combined to create something vastly superior to its constituent parts. Still to this day, one of the greatest, weirdest, most inspired outsider bands EVER.
So here we are, almost 8 years, and a few Leams discs later, when we got word of a brand new Benighted Leams!!! Holy Shit were we excited!! A new Leams on the way. We had been hovering around the front door waiting for the mailman like kids at Christmas, when the day suddenly came and there was a big ol' package for us (and you!) from the UK, and inside we knew, lurked the new Leams!!
A lot has changed in the Benighted Leams camp -- no struggling damaged fucked up black metal stumble anymore, nope, the new Leams is thick and heavy, relentless, and HUGE sounding, like maybe it was recorded in a real studio, the guitars are massive and crunchy, the riffs killer and grim, the drums could still be programmed, but they sound much more organic, settled perfectly in the mix, a swirling, mostly midtempo blackness, with brief bursts of glorious blasting buzz. The vocals are buried, alternating with bits of found sound and purloined speeches. On first listen the untrained ear might not necessarily realize that this was Benighted Leams, but we know! There's no disguising the gloriously bizarre blackness that is Benighted leams. From the album title, Obombrid Welkins, to the song titles, "Kevin Macdonald's Theory Of Eurocentralism As A Group Evolution Strategy", "There Descends A Nauseating Dampness", "Alopaecia", to the strange but gorgeous design and layout, complete with a photo to accompany each track's lyrics (including a shot of a head obviously afflicted with "Alopaecia"), to the murky band photos (one half of BL is female apparently!), to the music! Drone drenched black metal, relentless and hypnotic, single riffs repeated over and over, simple and mournful and mesmerizing, minor key melodies tangled up in fuzzed out buzz, the vocals and samples making the songs sound ghostly and haunting.
Definitely not the weirdest Benighted Leams record, but possibly the best! As with all things Leams, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Hydra Head, the home to lots of AQ faves, from Isis to Pelican to Khanate, has gradually been dipping their toes into much blacker waters, reissuing the Heresi record in the US, and signing USBM hero Xasthur, and now offering up the latest full length from Sweden's melodic black metal weirdos Bergraven.
These guys are tough to describe. A deliriously unpredictable listen. Dodsvisioner is not thrashing blasting grimness, although it is grim in its own peculiar way. The tempos are mostly mid, the guitars soar and warble and rumble and emit damaged atonal melodies, more than they actually buzz. The vocals are appropriately raspy and demonic, but when they are draped across strange clean reverbed guitars, or weird circusy keyboards, or even -- stranger still for black metal -- pedal steel, they take on a whole different vibe.
The closest comparisons that come to mind are Lifelover and Katatonia, if you somehow mixed those two bands, Katatonia's moody melancholia, and Lifelover's strange off-kilter blackened pop sensibility, you'd be close, but the music of Bergraven is it's own dark weirdness entirely.
It's melodic for sure, but the melodies are strange, almost alien sounding. And the arrangements are full of space, whether it's stretches of ambience, or loping post rock, clean guitars and simple mathy drumming.
Everywhere there lurk strange haunting minor key chords, and when keyboards do join the fray, they're strange and almost new wave-y sounding. The main guitar parts are gnarled and detuned, often not distorted, but clean and reverbed, eventually giving way to some dense black chug but even then, a lot of the time they're drenched in whooshy chorus or shimmering delay. Often those bits sound a little like Joy Division, but on a malfunctioning turntable. Weird and woozy. Elsewhere the guitars get all 'blue' and moody and smoky and sound like they were purloined from some Chris Isaak tune. The vocals are hushed dramatic whispers as often as they are anguished howls. Bursts of double kick underpin loping darkwave jangle, beautiful post rock rhythms get all washed out and smeared with layers of indistinct blackness, there's so much going on, and so much of it is not at all metal, but manages to sound dark and black and intensely grim. A gloriously tangled blackened sonic web for sure.
This definitely pushes a lot of our 'fucked' metal buttons, as well as our demented black pop buttons (bet you didn't think we had those!) and the more we listen to it the further we get sucked into Bergraven's damaged metallic black pop universe...
After 2007's much lauded Dodsvisioner album, Sweden's Bergraven returns with another set of odd gothic-tinged post-rocking blackness. While the music of Bergraven definitely fits well within the realm of black metal with its overall mood and spirit, Till Makabert Vasen is a hard one to pin down. Things never get insanely over-the-top metal, at least not in a typical way, instead opting to create a decidedly eerie and disconcerting atmosphere with all the tension found in the build up. The instrumentation here seems to imply an expert awareness of restraint, and how effectively it can be used for achieving a certain uneasy feeling. Not that this bears any resemblance to the Doors, but think of "The Crystal Ship" to get an idea of how negative space can be used to create a powerful sense of focus without getting all aggro. The gruff vocals are upfront and strong, sounding pretty pissed, but as they are sung in Swedish we can only assume... But they are definitely very interesting, as black metal vocals are generally known for being shrieky or bellowing, often buried in the mix as just another part of the maelstrom. Here Bergraven mainman Par Gustafsson's voice retains a surprising clarity that you simply can't ignore. While the vocals never seem to get too frantic or out of control, they retain a forcefulness that, at the heart of it all, is pretty damn metal.
Another noteworthy aspect of Bergraven's approach is the seriously impressive musicianship and the overall song structures, which are just plain weird and quite unexpected. The guitars seem to have just as much to do with '90s indie rock heroes like Drive Like Jehu or Unwound as they do with black metal, while the Slinty rhythm section keeps things moving in a winding, snakelike manner with all sorts of mathy weirdness. The songs kind of swirl within their own self-contained world, never getting too expansive or wandering, but retaining a high degree of concentration. One is reminded at times of Lifelover, or even Deathspell Omega's weirder, jazzier moments from Fas, with sour, discordant guitar chords and plodding, sometimes sparse drumming helping to set the generally unwavering vibe that keeps this one flowing evenly.
Whatever it is that Bergraven sings about, one certainly detects a sense of isolation and loneliness. The artwork features strange images of an empty chair in a forest and a man, presumably Gustafsson, sitting in a cabin in front of a fireplace with his face blurred out, making it clear that you will never know too much about the mastermind behind the music.
With Dodsvisioner, everyone seemed a bit confused that Hydra Head was venturing into such dark waters, but to us, it makes total sense. That label has always championed a unique commingling of art and metal, and it is clear that Bergraven has no problems stepping outside the norms of its genre.
A little 7" blast of grim and necro, super raw, thrashing blackness. Old old old old skool brutality. As the sleeve says, Poison Of The Underground. And this is the real underground. On one side, Chilean horde Force of Darkness, on the other black thrashing Swedes Bestial Mockery. And just because this is raw and old school doesn't mean there might not be a few surprises in store.
Force Of Darkness, offer up, as the insert proclaims, an "Evil South American Black Thrash Attack", all buzzing riffs and thrashing drums, but what it doesn't tell you, is that the vocals are demented! Ultra fast tongue twisting garbled shddHSshUAHsaoaosa. Like the singer is possessed and speaking in tongues. Pretty far out. Bestial Mockery counter with, again, according to the insert, their won brand of black thrash, "Unpure, Unholy, Untight!" And it is all of those things, especially untight. A wildly thrashing slab of black brutality, wrapped in an ultra necro lo-fi production with some riffs that manage to be surprisingly catchy.
Cool, thick black and white sleeves, with printed inserts, complete with lyrics, skulls, bullet belts and more! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each sleeve hand numbered.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We only have a VERY few of these, and not sure if we can get more, so if you want one be quick or be bummed. The first full length cassette from Canadian graphic designer Joce, who has probably designed some of your favorite records, by bands like Portal, Nekrasov, Unearthly Trance, Utlagr, Abyssal and more. But in addition to crafting surreal and horrific visuals, he seems to have a knack for invoking the same sort of dread sonically. This is definitely not metal, but it is heavy, and dark, grim and bleak and brutal, blackened expanses of grinding dronemusic and abject, claustrophobic ambience, a sort of abstract death-industrial bordering on some mutant strain of black-kosmische drift. Strange sounds and mysterious voices surface amidst the stagnant sonic shimmer, electronic flecks, fractured FX, but all blunted and melted down into simply more and more blackness, like gazing into an oil slick and watching the colors, only imagine dunking your head beneath the surface, your ears filling with black, viscous murk, the murk slowly seeping into your brain, sinking ever deeper, ever darker.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Part of Crucial Blast's Infernal Machines series. Includes a download code too.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
There seems to be a trend over the last few years in Norwegian metal. A serious obsession with techno, that when combined with the distinctly Black metal notion that maturing musically means becoming LESS metal, results in all sort of new permutations, that while definitely pushing the boundaries, tend to disappoint long time fans. Look at Manes, Arcturus, Ulver, etc. So what does this have to do with Beyond Dawn? Well...they started out as a seriously grim black metal band, whose unlikely use of a trombone was the only clue to their future direction. They soon moved in a distinctly dirge-y, melancholy, gloom pop direction, sounding more like Katatonia and even the Swans (due in no small part to the vocalist's uncanny Michael Gira like croon) and less like Darkthrone of Mayhem. At the same time, they began to incorporate all sorts of electronic glitchery: drum machines, weird processing, and studio trickery. On Frysh, their latest and weirdest record to date, things have gone about as far away from metal as humanly (or inhumanly) possible. They've pretty much given up the metal ghost entirely, opting for a melancholy techno-doom-pop. Weird bleeping synth melodies hover over skittish almost-techno rhythms, shimmering washes of synthesizer hum, and even some slide guitar! The sticker on the cd calls them "Norwegian's Loungecore Kings". Not sure how accurate that really is, but this definitely has more in common sonically with Depeche Mode or the Pet Shop Boys that it does with any metal bands I can think of. But don't get the wrong impression. This record RULES! Finally a metal band, that instead of talking about how much they love Depeche Mode or some other gloomy pop bands, and maybe even covering a Depeche Mode song once in a while, actually writes gorgeously catchy and sweetly depressive songs that rival those of any of their influences. To me this sounds like a more electronic Angels Of Light, or a metal flecked Magnetic Fields, or Dntel or the Postal Service covering Katatonia with Michael Gira on vocals. So so good. Took me a while to get over the silly and garish cover and the 'loungecore kings' sticker and the goofy new band member names (Clubshoes, Tore Jazztobakk, Hi-Fi Haavik, and Espen Weltschmertz). I was smelling 'jokeband' for sure. But the more I listen to Frysh, the more it reveals itself as a decidedly rich, multi-layered tapestry of perfectly morose, exquisitely crafted, bewitchingly dreamy techno pop gems. SO recommended!
Ahhh, how nice is it to see the name Beyond Dawn again? One of the great unsung heroes of the '90s Norwegian metal scene, Beyond Dawn never quite got the accolades they deserved . Maybe because even in their early heavier days they were a hard band to pin a genre to. Maybe because they were one of the first metal bands in Norway to abandon metal altogether for more experimental territory. Maybe because every record sounded so drastically different than the last. Maybe it's because they almost never played outside of their native country. Or maybe it's just because they had, like, A TON of trombone. Whatever the reason, a band who should have enjoyed a career as illustrious and respected as their countrymates Ulver (who the band played some of their earliest shows with in 1993) instead dissolved over a decade ago with the most cult of followings. But thankfully Duplicate Records has done all fans of heavy downer weirdness a great service in releasing this retrospective. But in classically unpredictable fashion, this isn't a greatest hits package so much as it is a two cd chronological collection of odds & sods: album demos, alternate mixes, outtakes and live recordings. Despite how that may sound, it works surprisingly well as an introduction to this band's surreal shadowy world, touching neatly on everything that made them interesting. Even in their earlier days of brooding gothic doom there was a touch the modern and avant garde, a somber and mournful dirge in the tradition of early Anathema complimented perfectly by Espen Ingierd's vocals, deep and commanding but strangely emotionless and distant, at times a dead ringer for Michael Gira. And like we mentioned earlier there's that trombone, which is never far away, and man, if Beyond Dawn don't make a good argument for the trombone being the saddest sounding instrument of all time (in fact this release inspired this topic of conversation in the store the other day: Why don't more metal bands use trombones???), but at the same time it lends a certain regal timeless quality to their music that really sets it apart. The second disc tackles the 2000's when the band left metal behind entirely, and began flirting with downtempo electronics, nocturnal dub, post punk and melancholy pop. While it's aesthetically a much quieter approach, it was no less emotionally captivating, engrossing and at times devastating. And while the band certainly evolved drastically as they progressed, this collection provides a nice way to follow the threads that ran through the band's sound, especially the general mood they always seemed to conjure up no matter what genres they were experimenting with: a sort of lonely distinguished elegance. Nocturnal and shimmering, depressive yet strangely proud, like putting on your best suit in preparation for the gallows. Highly recommended for fans of Vaura, Swans, Beastmilk, Ulver, and all things strange, sad and loud.
