We love our doom. The slower, the doomer, the more o's the better. But it's easy to get burned out. Much like the wave of guitars-against-amps drone outfits who seemed to come out of the woodwork on the heels of the sudden popularity of Earth, SUNNO))) and other dronelords, lately it seems like everyone and their brother has a "doom band". Lots of non-metal bands suddenly seem to be sprouting doomier appendages, side projects, home recorded one offs, in part, because it's a sound that's easy to emulate. Tune your guitar really low, play really slow, and that's it. You're a doom band. But as with any other musical movement, it's not what you do, it's how you do it, and the simpler something seems, the harder it is to actually do it in a way that stands out, that separates it from the hundreds of other bands doing the same thing.
So in the world of ultra doom, or many o'd doom, or whatever, it's obvious which bands are doing something special, Boris, SUNNO))), Moss, Bunkur, and of course Finland's Fleshpress. And as much as we love all of those bands, we have a special affinity for Fleshpress, not just because they're Finnish (although there is that), but that they throw all doomic convention to the wind, and do whatever the fuck they want. Even if it's distinctly not doomy. Play fast. No problem. Blast beats, near grindcore, sure. Play soft and pretty, explore post rock, absolutely. Which is what makes them such a refreshing doom outfit. Or conversely, makes them not a doom band at all, rather a weird band that incorporates doom into their all-over-the-map sound.
Either way, Fleshpress rule, they're heavy, weird, slow (when they want to be), fast and furious (when they don't), they deftly craft mysterious soundscapes, they can also unleash huge torrents of soul crushing megadoom. And they do all of that and more on Pillars. Every record, gets a little weirder, a littler more expansive, a little less traditionally doom, and Pillars is no exception.
The first track is almost like Fleshpress's far out sound encapsulated into a single track. Beginning with minutes of spare guitar strum, lots and lots of space, ambient whir, the guitar letting loose distorted riffs, and letting them drift into the darkness. The bass comes in, and does nothing but offers a spidery framework for the seemingly abstract riffs, then the drums come in, a single crash, every few seconds, there is no real rhythm to speak of yet, finally the band lurches into a doomy plod, somewhere between Monarch slow motion sludge and Harvey Milk glacial groove, complete with weird woozy melody and strange slippery riffage, harsh vocals, drifting fields of feedback, briefly we're trudging through a wasteland populated by like minded mavens of doom. Khanate, Burning Witch, Moss� But soon, the doom recedes� leaving just soft billows of sound, when suddenly the band launch into some full on crusty metallic grooves, eventually finishing off with two minutes of grinding hyperspeed buzz. Pretty all over the place, but the parts are all so deftly arranged that it doesn't sound like a bunch of random bits thrown together, it sounds like small varied pieces of the far out whole. That track is quickly followed by 5 minutes of soft flutter and whir, a detuned guitar plucking out a stumbling rhythm, all around, bits of hiss and hum, the sound of rain and wind maybe, all washed out and soft focus.
Then it's the record's massive two song one two punch, two tracks, both about twenty minutes, back to back, the first, begins all grim black metal buzz, furious fuzzed out riffage and harsh hellish vocals, before slipping into a brief mathy groove and then shifting into a midtempo Burzumic black trudge, which of course partway through gives way to more massive and epic and wide open dooooooooom, plodding drums, crushing sludgy dynamics, and a fluttering guitar melody droning along underneath, eventually building to an epic minor key psychedelic crescendo. The second track, is more of a post rocky drift, with clean guitar and a shuffling rhythm, the vocals still howled and harsh, but the main riff, warm and fuzzy, and subtly propulsive, the tempo a bit warbly and seasick, very hypnotic and repetitive, eventually slowing down, but not into a crushing doom plod, but instead, a sprawling space rock sludge, the drums slow and insistent, the guitars building into squalls of psychedelic freakout, like the outro to a Hawkwind track, before the band launches into a super metallic mathy jam, the FX getting thicker and more dense, the band playing harder and faster, the last 5 minutes or so sounding more like the Heads or White Hills, a gorgeous outer space trip through throbbing bass lines, clouds of spacepsych guitar, and killer chaotic drumming.
The final two tracks both clock in at about nine minutes each, and again, demonstrate some totally other side of Fleshpress' doomworld. The first, is a loping post rock dirge, the guitars ringing out, the rhythm more like the Slintish blackness of Ved Buens Ende, a head nodding mathy groove peppered with vocal howls and an awesome epic buzz drenched coda. The final track is all drone, a murky subterranean trawl, all slow building sludgy swells, dense metallic shimmer, strange bits of industrial sonic detritus and some mysterious backwards percussion right at the end.
Seriously mind blowing. It almost does it a disservice to call Fleshpress a doom band anymore, although those are the folks who will be most inclined to love this. But fans of weird black metal and freaky outsider heaviness might also have found one of their records of the year.
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Is there no end to the doom and sludge in sight? We sure as hell hope not. We raved about the newest record from these Finnish sludge lords a while back and were super psyched to discover their first record Worm Dirges was getting reissued on cd. Unlike their newer one, III, which we described as clean and spacious and open (not words you'd expect to find in a review of a sludgy doom record) Worm Dirges is much less polished, much more primitive and primal, and not nearly as slow, but still plenty sludgy and heavy. Plenty of Eyehategod-isms for sure, but these two extended mostly instrumental jams don't sound metal as much as they sound sort of krautrocky, or post rocky or even post punky in a weird way. Very reminiscent of Dutch hypno metallers Gore, a simple riff repeated over and over and over and over. Completely and utterly hypnotic. Both tracks devolve into dreamy drones here and there before lurching back into sludge mode, but the interesting thing is that the main riffs in each track (two tracks, two riffs!) don't sound metal so much as they sort of sound like Black Flag. Seriously. Maybe Black Flag at 16rpm. You can -almost- imagine them sped up with Rollins ranting over the top. But c'mon, Black Flag at 16rpm?!?! If that doesn't sound like the best fucking thing ever to you, there's something seriously wrong.
Obviously this is essential for the drone doom dirge faithful, SUNNO))), Earth, Boris, Corrupted, etc. as well as fans of the new post rock/metal hybrids (Isis, Conifer, Tides, Baroness, Buried At Sea, Pelican) But other folks into stuff like Circle or Salvatore or the more extreme end of the post rock spectrum might really dig this too.
Packaged in a cool tri-fold printed cardstock sleeve.
Freaky early '70s psych rock from Japan here folks, as you may know already on account of how we highlighted the reissue of this band's second album on our last list. This one, with a truly hard-to-beat title, was Flied [sic] Egg's debut, released originally in 1972, on Vertigo -- with Flied Egg one of the few, if not only, Japanese acts to appear on the roster of that legendary UK-based label known for proto-metal, jazz-prog and other "hairy funk" delights. This album dishes such delights all over the place, ranging from the Blue Cheer meets Uriah Heep heaviness of "Rolling Down The Broadway" to the weird choral interlude of "15 Seconds Of Schizophrenic Sabbath" to the classical prog flourishes of "Oke-Kus" (sounding like a warped version of ELP) to the sheer hippie psych-pop lunacy of the title track. And more! All in all, this is quite as crazy as its Dali-esque cover painting indicates. Definitely an essential for our Japanese '70s psych section, and anyone who loves them some acid rock guitar!
This Japanese psychrock reish, now available on vinyl!
Yes that's right, it's Flied not Fried Egg. Uh, 'cause they're Japanese. Think about it. Hey, it's their joke. Anyway, this one's for all you '70s heaviness lovin' proto-metal fans who may have missed it before. Good Bye was Flied Egg's second of two albums (both '72, and both on the famed Vertigo label, best known as the home of Black Sabbath). The first one, with the marvelous title of Dr. Siegel's Fried Egg Shooting Machine, is as you might guess is some pretty wild acid psych. Good Bye, however, is the heavier of the two, and we can simply say it's a no-brainer for Blue Cheer fans. Basically, this album is distinctly split between two sides, the first half recorded live, possibly at their farewell concert, we'd guess from the title. This in-concert portion is the heaviest, it's all bad ass fuzzed out blooze rawk swagger that makes us think Blue Cheer, Blue Cheer, Blue Cheer! (Also Grand Funk, Cactus, and Mountain.) Hear 'em rile up a cheering crowd with these party-pleasers: "Leave Me Woman", "Rolling Down The Broadway" (a stompin' composition that appears in a studio version on their debut), BB King's "Rock Me Baby", and the twelve-minute-plus "Five More Pennies", which includes a drum solo in addition to all the acid guitar excess. Following all that, the studio half of the album gets a bit more proggy and wigged out (ending with a multi-part piece entitled "521 Seconds Schizophrenic Symphony", wow!) while also containing a couple of mellower melodic numbers, namely the sad and gentle "Out To Sea" and finale "Goodbye My Friends". FYI, not a favorite of Julian "Japrocksampler" Cope, but WE like it. Members of Flied Egg also did time in some other hard rockin' underground Japanese psych acts whose reissues we've previously reviewed, including Strawberry Path, Brush!?, and Food Brain... if you dig those, or the likes of Flower Travellin' Band, Blues Creation, Speed Glue & Shinki, or Too Much, then Flied Egg is for you too.
More crushing slo-mo heaviness from right here in SF... For a while it seemed like most of the bands we were hearing ooze out of the Bay Area tended toward the psychedelic (Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun, etc), or at the the other end of the spectrum, the abstract and avant, but SF has a rich history of extreme heaviness as most music obsessives are well aware, and recently, there seems to be yet another heaving, pummeling wave of misanthropic metallic crush burbling to the surface, Prizehog for one, a killer 3 piece, drums guitar and synth, who we dug so much we had play our South By Southwest showcase, and they did in fact lay waste. And now Flood, another band that seem to have a little Harvey Milk in 'em, which is NEVER a bad thing. A sludgey, doomy, lugubrious crawl, lots of space, chords sprawling and ringing out, the drums a sporadic pound, the song almost skeletal, until the band lock in and PULVERIZE.
The weird thing about Flood, is that even at their heaviest, they still sound a little dreamy, a little blissed out, the sound more woozy and washed out and warm than jagged and sharp, but somehow that doesn't at all take away from their power. What it does more than anything, is add a space rocky psychedelic element, sometimes subtle, other times more overt, but always seemingly present.
The vocals bellow, wreathed in clouds of reverb and delay, the songs groove, but slowly, dizzily, the band tight, but able to sound loose. There are long stretches of blissed out minimal shimmer, some cool, moody mathy breakdowns, even some abstract ambience with waves crashing, wind, bird call, but all woven into Flood's tripped out, doom-ed stoner space sludge. Killer stuff. For anyone who digs, Sleep, Om, Harvey Milk, Prizehog, Melvins, Wildildlife, Like A Kind Of Matador, Zoroaster, Electric Wizard and all those sorts of spaced out heavies.
One of our all time favorite sludge/metal/grind bands, who until now, had only released tracks on compilations and seven inches. Must be at least 7 or 8 years now that Floor have been contributing their downtuned dementia to the underground scene and they have managed to remain pretty unknown. Hopefully this full length will change that. And it really should, cause their sound has definitely changed with the times. Instead of wallowing in their underground-basement-split-seven-inch past and rehashing their slow motion grind (in the style of Cavity and Eyehategod), they've added LOTS of clean vocals and a surprising amount of melody, ending up with a sound somewhere between your favorite pop punk emo band, the Melvins, late period Fudge Tunnel, and Nirvana, but way, way heavier. Seriously. They've turned into a honest to goodness pop band, but a downtuned, amps-on-11, super-distorted, kick-in-the-guts pop band. Great production too with super distorted low end that makes their huge bursts of guitar sound like the end of the world! Way recommended.
Before we launch into what's gonna be relatively long-winded review, let's just state up front that this has the best album cover EVER: the band themselves cruising down a rural highway on choppers wearing nothing but their birthday suits!! And this version sees the orginal gatefold recreated for the cd-era, mini-LP sleeve style. But if that's not enough to get you to buy this, read on...
Not long ago we gave a big thumbs up to the album "Satori", the masterpiece from Japanese '70s psych rockers the Flower Travellin' Band (note: we're still waiting to get more of those in stock, they're backordered at our distributor!). Now, however, we've got a brand new reissue of the Flower Travellin' Band's debut album, "Anywhere". It certainly doesn't scale the heights of "Satori" but it'll help you to understand how they got there. Along with a great take on "House Of The Rising Sun" (a nod to Frijid Pink?), this album also explicitly demonstrates, via covers, these Japanese freaks' radical recognition of the genius of two of their Western contemporaries, Black Sabbath and King Crimson. Like many other great artists, with humble beginnings Japan's Flower Travellin' Band cut their teeth on the material of their mentors. Though "Anywhere" -- released in 1970 -- is primarily a covers album, it's also quite a testament to both the band's veracity in their reproductions and their creativity in realigning the building blocks of rock & roll. Their cover of Black Sabbath's self-titled track was actually recorded in the same year as the original and their version of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" only a year after its release. And they aren't merely content to play only the "Schizoid Man" opening riff, like so many other bands that have attempted to cover it, but take on the entire piece in all its schizophrenic freaked out glory, getting waaay into the improv element of the mid-section. The same is true for "Black Sabbath" and you have to appreciate singer Joe's take on the unique Ozzy voice. The most interesting track on the record though has to be their attempt at straight-up blues rock -- while their "Louisiana Blues" starts and finishes almost pedestrianly enough on the "Minglewood Blues" riff by Gus Cannon (of Cannon's Jug Stompers) that was popularized in the rock scene by the likes of The Grateful Dead and Captain Beefheart, the interior of the song is a complete departure of sorts. Not only devoid of the original progression, it's not even "bluesy" at all. Here in the extended jam that makes up the meat of this musical sandwich, the Flower Travellin' Band's Eastern roots surface a bit. It's a precursor to the sound of their later albums "Satori" and "Made In Japan" (another great one which we'll be reviewing in the future if we can ever get any stock of it in quantity).
Flower Travellin' Band mania has gripped Byram and Allan and others of us here at AQ. After the success of our review of the reissues of their masterpiece Satori and their debut Anywhere, we feel we ought to keep going through the catalog of this stellar '70s Japanese heavy psych rock outfit. Those who couldn't get enough of FTB's Satori will be pleased to know that their follow-up, third release Made In Japan is nearly every bit as good. Singer Joe's voice still rings in the creepy falsetto style like Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls singing balls out heavy metal vocals. As with their previous album, "Made In Japan" continued to fuse the heavy rock of early (contemporary, to them) Sabbath with Eastern melodies. I guess they decided after their perfect rendition of "Black Sabbath" on their first record, that such was their calling. Then again, "Heaven And Hell", the penultimate track here, is as pure a channeling of Jimi Hendrix as anything. The mellow closing track "That's All", with its koto glissandi, parallels "Part V" on Satori and like that track, it's perhaps the most overtly Eastern in tone. But it's Joe's vocal line that really kicks ass. At the end of the chorus he adds a little cadenza to his howl, extending the vocal line just beyond where one's intuitively expecting a cadence. It works so fucking well, makes me stop whatever I'm doing to listen, that I wonder why more song writers don't pull that shit more often.
This is one of those albums that's neither new, nor even a recent reissue, but that we here at Aquarius decided, heck, let's list, it deserves it! (While this disc already appears on our website, it was never actually *listed* in any of our newsletters.) So while many might already know this album backwards and forwards, it has most certainly slipped through the cracks for too many others out there. Being a Japan-only import can't help. Allan wisely reordered some copies recently (when a customer special ordered it for themselves on-line) and Byram, unwittingly playing it in the store, found himself getting progressively more obsessed with the album (and the band)! It wasn't long before Jim and Marcy were also finding themselves hooked. Now almost any day you come into the store, you'll hear the Flower Travellin' Band blaring.
This is an album (and a band) that are not celebrated nearly enough -- possibly out of misguided notions of their being another bad psych knock-off among the many crowding the record racks in the early seventies. But Japan's Flower Travellin' Band were no mere cheesy imitators of occidental rock 'n roll, they were in actual fact a full-fledged, pioneering tour de force of psychedelic progressive hard rock, equalling the krautrock heavies of the era. FTB can be compared favorably to Amon Duul's better efforts with their experimental meandering (think Yeti), and the best trancey spaceouts from Can. Yet there's never a sense that FTB lose track of their compositions no matter how far out they take a track. Perhaps because even more than these experimental Krautrockers, FTB's heavy (fucking ominously heavy) sound points to a major Sabbath, Purple, and Crimson influence. Released in 1971, Satori is the band's second and arguably best album (all but the first album Anywhere have now been reissued by Warner Japan). From the first screech/howl at the beginning of track one -- "Satori Part I" (the tracks on the album are all "Satori", parts I-V) -- from vocalist Joe, who inhabits a zone somewhere between Can's Damo Suzuki and Deep Purple's Ian Gillan, the album gets straight down to business. Joe's scream is followed by a foreboding bass, guitar and drum dirge that's straight up collision between Cream and Black Sabbath in which no one survives. It's got so much more teeth than either, it's not even funny, predating punk by a good many years. "Satori Part II" however is quintessential FTB Over a pounding tribal drumbeat, alternating between a buzzing sitar-esque guitar drone and a melody line that curls ripples and lilts like a plume of burning incense smoke, guitarist Hideki Ishima lays out one of the creepiest, coolest guitar leads ever. If that ain't enough, vocalist Joe's singing is like that of Axl Rose being channelled by the Sun City Girls! Even if the rest of the album were total shit -- which it ain't -- the cost of this cd would still be well worth it for this song alone! "Part III" -- an instrumental -- picks up where II leaves off but slows the tempo down to a deathly pace, which makes it even heavier. This is the Sabbath influence on FTB writ large. Replete with an improv freakout before returning to the original riff and building into a frenzied crescendo. Needless to say, if you weren't bobbing your head at the beginning of the song, you will be by its end. "Part IV" could be considered FTB's "blues" number, with Joe picking up the harmonica instead of singing. But instead of churning out the expected twelve bar formula, FTB truncate the form and construct a minimalist jam around a short riff instead. "Part V" shows yet another facet of FTB's seemingly infinite potential with Hideki (?) playing some kick ass, spooky koto-like guitar overdubbed on top of some heavy psych. Damn! They could have done ten fucking albums around this schtick alone and probably never lost our interest... sigh... but this (and the other two that are also available, look for reviews in future) will have to suffice for now. Absolutely, fucking recommended!!!!
MPEG Download: "Satori Part II" [/audio/flowersatori2.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part II" [/audio/flowersatori2.m3u]
Folks hankering for their seventies psychedelic biker doom fix need look no further than these Texas downer rock scuzzlords, who it seems took all the time and effort they DIDN'T put in to the cover art of this lp, and instead devoted it to maximizing the amount of FUZZ found on here. Fogg traffic in the same sort of drug fueled, garage-bound heaviness as outfits like Satan's Satyrs and Uncle Acid. The guitars appropriately fuzzy, the wailing Ozzyish vocals a perfect compliment, but unlike the punked out heaviness of the Satyrs, or the bell bottomed doominess of Uncle Acid, Fogg somehow sound more wasted and washed out, the sound less heavy, a bit brittle and tinny, extremely lo-fi, but it suits their mesmerizing heavy hippy psych punk swagger.
Opener "Time Ride" sets the scene, right down to the lurching stop start bridge, and some scuzzy guitar shred would around the murky main riff, that's as Sabbathy as can be, but decontextualized into something a bit more ramshackle and loose. And while seventies biker rock might be the core of their sound, they also get pretty sixties, "Rainbow" finds the guitar and bass playing strange harmonies, over a wildly groovy shuffle, laced with still more shred, lysergic and laid back, but on the verge of exploding into full on headbanging at any moment.
And yet for all that, when need be, these guys can conjure up the ghost of doom past, just check out the massive lumbering "Fried Cheer", which does actually sound like some especially acid fried take on Blue Cheer, the song lurching from swagger lumber to furious punky pound and back again. The more we listen to these guys, the more we hear outfits like Earthless and Hot Lunch, that sort of skate shred, woven into Fogg's Sabbathy swing.
They also stretch out (way out) on a handful of tracks, locking into almost krautrock-like stretches of hypnomesmer, as well as meandering space rock/jam rock, the song unfurling into waves of heady/heavy mesmer, tripped out and sinister, and downright sludgy, like on the appropriately titled "Sludgemother", that sounds like a downer Uncle Acid, a glorious slab of wasted skater doom, or witchy downtuned zoner psych, whatever you call it, it's heavy and tranced out and freaky as fuck (oh and there's a DRUM SOLO). Oh yeah, and of course stick around for the closer, another awesomely titled jam, "Womb To The Tomb", that sounds like a more poppy, way more brain damaged Electric Wizard, dirgey and droney and totally messed up and mesmeric, and just about the best thing we've heard in ages. This is a record that no doubt will be right at home right wedged between that played to death lp of Blood Lust, and that scratched up vinyl version of Die Screaming, or next to your copy of the Darkscorch Canticles compilation.
Vinyl-only, and sorry, no download.
Eight songs of '70s influenced (everything from krautrock to Budgie) progressive, psychedelic "stoner rock" from this new Spanish band. A bit odd, as they mix a lot of things together: Middle Eastern atmospheres, soft Pink Floydish mellowness, and raging hard
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Attention doomsters! Doom metal alert! From Poland, one of the doomiest of all doom magazines we've ever seen. Interviews with and articles about Esoteric, Mournful Congregation, Spiritus Mortis, Swallow The Sun, Pantheist, My Shameful, Runemagick, Nadja, Until Death Overtakes Me and loads more! The best thing about this is that there's lots of cd-r and demo reviews of bands even we have never heard of, but now have to try and track down. Thankfully this 'zine also comes with a double cd-r (packaged in a DVD style case) with tracks from Moss, Skepticism, Swallow The Sun, Mournful Congregation, Mirror Of Deception, Unsilence, Dark Embrace, Chamber Of Sorrows, Cambian Dawn, Centurions Ghost, Nadja, Dysperium, Enoch, Forever Autumn, Stone Wings, The Gates Of Slumber, Tefra, Until Death Overtakes Me, Souls Entwined, Solicide, and Troglodyte Dawn (great name!).
We listed another record by this French one man band a few lists back, sold out of them in a flash, so when we restocked, we managed to get the remaining copies of this second release, Towards The Surface, we got less than a dozen though, and once they're gone they are GONE for good, as it's out of print.
We mentioned in that other review that Fragment. (the period IS part of the name) was mining a sound not all that removed from Jesu and Nadja, but listening to this now, it's really driving home just how much this stuff sounds EXACTLY like Jesu, it's almost criminal actually, but hell, if you're hankering for some heavy blissed out dreamy chugging shoegazey post metal, and can't wait for the next Jesu record, then heck, grab one of these.
The sound is of course fantastic, epic and majestic and bleary eyed, a little bit more mellow and laid back than Jesu proper, but quite similar in most other respects, the industrial pound, the layered warm guitar shimmer, the muted metallic chug, the mumbled sad boy vocals, all woven into a gorgeously blown out drone drenched epic dream metal drift. Listening to it again right now, and it sounds so fantastic, it just also happens to sound so fantastically like Jesu.
Cool packaging too, a cd sized dvd case with the full color artwork on a narrow strip along the center of the case, leaving the rest of the case transparent and the disc revealed.
The metalheads around aQ, it seems, will always have a soft spot for stoner rock. There's just something about it that always does the trick, the Sabbathy grooves, the thick Kyuss-y sunbaked guitars, the wailing vox, that combination of heaviness and groove is pretty irresistible, but like any genre, there are way more mediocre groups than killer outfits, and in a genre that to some degree is derivative by its very nature, that makes it even harder for a band to sound original, or to at least cop from other bands and in some way make that sound their own. And as avid readers of the aQ list no doubt know by now, we have a serious thing for Freedom Hawk, whose self titled record was a runaway hit around here, one of Andee's favorite records of that year, and even though Allan tried to fight it for some reason, eventually he relented too and admitted he dug 'em too. We then had to track down their other record, the equally kick ass Sunlight - and now, after playing those to death, comes their brand new record Holding On, which as you might imagine, and as we desperately hoped, everything we loved about those other two records are present in full effect: massive riffing, wild shredding leads, killer grooves, pounding drums, epic jams, and those wailing Ozzy like vocals, sounding more like classic Ozzy than Ozzy himself has for years, and the songs, heavy, psychedelic, groovy, spaced out, slipping easily from smoldering dirges to galloping blasts of metallic heaviness, and ruling equally at both. Just check out the samples, and be prepared to dig them so much, that if you haven't already, you'll probably end up needing the other two records as well.
For all the avant weirdness and grim black heaviness we dig around aQ, we somehow find ourselves constantly returning to this lately. In fact, the second this week's list is finished and sent off, and there's no reviewing left to be done (at least for another couple days), odds are this is probably the record we're gonna throw on, which says a whole lot. Hooky and heavy, with actual songs that will get lodged in your head like crazy, the sort of hard rocking heaviness you wanna blast at ear splitting volume with the top down, and the sun dipping below the horizon, as you blast down the interstate.
Stoner record of the year without a doubt. But it might even make it out of the stoner rock ghetto and onto some top tens proper, you never know...
"Fuckin' feel good party metal. Smoking pot and surfing and skating and hanging out in the parking lot of the local 7-11, drinking beer, scamming on chicks, no future: just our friends, babes, and ALL SUMMER LONG!!! 'California Crossing' is right. This is the
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As rock heroes, Fu Manchu are hopelessly overrated, but these high-concept stoners still provide some decent summertime fun if you can get past the weak vocals. This disc is enhanced with some cd-rom videos and stuff, but unfortunately is not enhanced by their uninspired Devo cover. Buy it if you must, but also be sure to visit our new "Classic Rock" section and pick up a copy of of Nazareth's "Hair Of The Dog" or AC/DC's "For Those About To Rock". Then you'll be all right, yeah.
It's been a while since we've listed some seriously ultra sick, super abstract, funereal, hundred zeroed doooooooooooom (imagine 88 more zeroes), but here we go, the latest from French doom merchants Funeralium, via Israeli label Total Rust, who in the past gave us the epic classic doom of Mourning Dawn (who share members with Funeralium) and Midwestern doomlords Wraith Of The Ropes. And while this has everything you black hearted, cursed souled lovers of all things slow and low desire, the 1 mph drum plod, the guitar tuned so low, it's like some black sonic glacier, the vocals that sound like a slowed down demon puking his guts out. It's all here, you love Moss, Khanate, Planet Aids, Bunkur, Catacombs, Otesanek, Monarch, Monument Of Urns, Nihill, Whitehorse, Stumm... well, you might as well add Funeralium to the list. This is some devastatingly slow, crushingly brutal, ultra doom. BUT...
These guys add some of their own peculiar flavor, the hysterical hellish shrieks become downright melodic at times, strangely lovely in fact (in a horrible hellish way of course), and the guitars occasionally bliss out, clean, minor key chordal strum, still slow and spread out, the drums an occasional thud, the vocals a tortured howl, but all draped over lilting slowcore strum, making it sound like Galaxie 500 or Low covering Khanate or something, in fact, the whole first half of "Let People Die" sounds like some super sad, gorgeous chunk of creepy blackened slowcore, and the whole of record closer "Nearly The End", minus the black metal vocals, could be mistaken for some gloomy minor key late night goth moodiness, but those moments are of course balanced out by the rest of the record, a glorious black sprawl of head caving, soul splitting trudge and pummel.
First we've heard from these Seattle trippers, who may or may not have some connection to some aQ metal faves from the same region, but digging metal is most definitely not a prerequisite for getting lost in Fungal Abyss' freaky soundworld, and freaky it is. These guys couldn't really be more perfectly named. The sounds of these four epic tracks, sound exactly like the sort of brain melting abyss, one might fall into after inhaling a lungful of spores from some mysterious alien fungus found deep in the forest. Sprawling kosmische psychedelic drifts, the shortest song clocking in at 10:20, the longest 24:06 (!), all doused in FX, fields of crackle, strange samples, skeletal percussion, woozy looped guitars, skies full of tripped out squiggles, it's like an even more abstract, druggy strain of the sort of space and psych rock folks have been flipping out over the last little while. Total slo-mo Hawkwind drift, or like The Heads and White Hills, stewed to the gills on cough syrup. Woozy and droney and darkly psychedelic, epic, endless, smoldering drug-jams that seem like they could and should go on forever. But the band do ramp it up, launching into full on motorik style kraut-psych, check out the opener "Arc Of The Covenant", about halfway through, the band sounding like they should be on Cardinal Fuzz, fans of the Janitors and Hills and all the rest will be in heaven. Swirling, and tripped out, propulsive and hypnotic, the slower parts sounding a bit like a less free No Neck Blues Band, but when they get rocking, total heavy psych space rock bliss. Obviously WAY recommended!!
Furisubi is the experimental guitar drone/psych/noise project of Kris Lapke, on this release a one-man band playing guitar and (sometimes) drums. The two tracks found on this hour-long cd-r basically sound like Japanese distorto-psych rockers High Rise or Mainliner covering Black Sabbath. Actually, track two actually *is* a Black Sabbath cover -- maybe we should say 'interpretation' -- a nearly half-hour version of Vol. 4's "Snowblind"! Well, actually, perhaps inspired by Sabbath's own in-concert jams/medleys, he works "Snowblind" over for about 15 minutes, and then deviates into some other symptoms of the Sabs' universe, like "Paranoid" and what sounds like a super-sped up version of "Smoke On The Water" which isn't even a Sabbath song (though Sabbath HAS performed it) before returning to finish-up the world's most stretched-out version of "Snowblind".
That's all after the preceeding 30 minutes of the disc's first track, which borrows no Black Sabbath riffs but certainly could have! So, whether covering Sabbath or not, Lapke's modus operandi here is pretty much utter distorto guitar drone demolition, motorpsycho guitar in the Makoto Kawabata zone, but heavier, darker, dronier... yes!! Our kind of guitar hero. But he's obviously not a drummer, though, as his timekeeping skills are, shall we say, poor...but the fucked-up drumming gives this a bit more of a damaged charm anyway...and he bothers to drum only about half the time as well (so it's better than a live Electric Wizard show, who's drummer is notoriously drunk and incompetent). Lapke also allows the occasional ragged vocal to (barely) surface amid the howl of guitar and feedback, helping to place one in the flow of Sabbath tuneage. This is what "stoner rock" *should* sound like... There are other, more 'experimental' Furisubi releases, but we liked this 'rockier' one the best and so decided to feature it. Plus, who can argue with extended Sabbath-inspired jamming? We're glad of whatever possessed him to record this, in all its wonderfully blown-out and messed-up glory.
Back in the day, when we wanted to talk about the most fucked up and damaged black metal EVER, we generally reference weirdo Norwegian black metal one man band Furze, whose records were pretty much completely nuts, demented and warped, but somehow utterly genius as well. The last Furze record, Reaper Subconscious Guide, found him cranking up the weirdness, but in a truly unexpected way, offering up that record as a tribute to his favorite band, Black Sabbath. In retrospect, we really should have made that a Record Of The Week, cuz the aQ metalheads were totally obsessed with that record. And even non-metalheads found it intriguing. A twisted homage, right down to some seriously Ozzy like vox, but so warped that it was like listening to Sabbath through a funhouse mirror. We weren't really sure if that was a one-off thing, or if Furze would return to the world of buzzing blackness, until we got our hands on this, Psych Minus Space Control, the latest maniacal musical missive from Woe J Reaper, aka Furze, and it is in fact, still an homage to the classic days of heavy metal, and Sabbath in particular, with extensive notes on each song, detailing the instruments used, the inspiration behind each song, all heartfelt and totally confusional and completely genius! Opener "Occult Soul, With Mind", is some lumbering Sabbathy doom for sure, total old school doom, with Furze teaching the riffs to some other guitar player called LFM "in order to have some more dynamic guitar sound", with Reaper also playing Mini-Moog and Mellotron, and explaining in the liner notes: "Why is the soul occult? Ain't the mind just as occult? Please be my guest to let this question roll on... PolyTriad Fingerprints are tapping up! Vol. 3 of the Triad is always outside the circle - the circle..." Woah, umm, okay. The same notes also ask "Do we WORSHIP BLACK SABBATH LIKE A KNELL or do we ride out there with pride??'
"Psych Mooz Space Control" is up next, and the notes explain that "This 'mooz' word is 'zoom' read backwards. Psych Mooz Space Control means 'to zoom neither IN nor OUT' - on reality - in order to grasp and define it�" It goes on, in great detail to explain how the meaning has a lot to do with people who oppose religions, and why 'mooz' wasn't used in the album title. The first few minutes of the song are a haunting sprawl of spare solo guitar, droney riffs and spidery melodies drifting in wide open expanses of emptiness, very meditative and mesmerizing, it's not until about 5 minutes in that the song kicks in proper, this time laced with some super creepy (and cool) electric violin, another woozy druggy classic doom jam, that slips from churning murky downtuned chug, to some soaring downright poppiness that s impossibly catchy yet doesn't sound at all out of place.
We could go on, song by song, we almost want to reprint the notes in their entirety, but needless to say, they're super fun and funny, and offer a sort of twisted insight, that really actually does add to the listening experience, the rest of the record continues in a similar fashion, slipping from doomy churn, to cosmic blackened psych, no sign of black metal AT ALL (well maybe a wee bit on the last track), so fans of the old Furze, unless you have a soft spot for Sabbath, and appreciated a twisted off kilter homage, then steer clear, for the rest of us, there's all sorts of Sabbathy weirdness, some killer riffing some strange instrumentation (glockenspiel!), plenty of flanger, some seriously tripped our FX heavy vox, all woven into a seriously twisted slab of outsider psychedelic doom, that definitely does Furze's sonic forebears proud!
Awesome cover art, tons of liner notes, and a sticker on the front that reads: "Do not upload nor copy this cd. Doing so you kill what you support."
We've long loved Norwegian weirdo one man black metal horde Furze, aka Woe J. Reaper. In fact, in our love of and obsession with the most twisted, warped, fractured and fucked up black metal, we would rank Furze pretty damn close to the top. Three records in (Trident Autocrat, Necromanzee Cogent, and UTD) and few can reach the heights (depths?) of Furze's sonic dementia. Just have a look at past Furze reviews on the aQ site, to see just what sort of confusional brilliance this guy is capable of.
So when we discovered that the new, fourth Furze was meant to be an homage to seventies era Black Sabbath, a sonic tribute to the band that is, according to Woe J. Reaper himself, the reason Furze exists at all. The question really was, would the new record simply sound like a Furze record, and be dedicated to the spirit of Sabbath, or would it sound like Sabbath, with Reaper doing his best to evoke the same mood and might and majesty? Howabout a little of both?
Right off the bat, Reaper Subconscious Guide finds Furze doing his best Sabbath, but unlike the legions of Sabbath worshipping wannabes, Reaper is capable of capturing that seventies sound, the vibe, and the first track, while not sounding like Sabbath per se, it definitely sounds like it could be some demented lost seventies private press metal artifact. The riffing old school and Sabbathy, but everything else pure Furze, the drumming is super strange, mathy and stuttery and busy, the vocals, even weirder, a crooned mewl, no screeching or voKILLS, but proper (sort of proper) singing. The track is all over the map too, gongs, clean guitar strum, and finally, some black metal, but only sort of, instead, it sounds more like galloping classic metal, pounding and relentless, before the track shifts back to that Sabbath styled chug and croon, but this time lacing the sound with glockenspiel. Yep, glockenspiel. We can't think of a Furze record that would appeal to classic metal purists, and while this one might not either, it's about as close as Reaper will ever get.
The rest of the record follows a similar path, old school seventies hard rock guitar parts, wild chaotic drumming, the strange doomy croon vocals, some seriously killer riffs, twisted squiggly leads here and there, and it's Furze, so there's lots of random weird shit going on, not the least of which is the chiming bell like glockenspiel which surfaces at the oddest times.
The thing is, without the black metal baggage, if this was some recently unearthed lost doom artifact, people might be freaking out, the perfect balance of classic metal, damaged naivety, and freaked out psychedelic weirdness, makes this a twisted classic. Definitely the least black metal of all the Furze records, but just as awesomely weird and brilliantly baffling!
Lots of strange liner notes, and super swank sparkly reflective cover art/logo that ought to appeal to little girls everywhere.
Hmmm... This band should be an easy sell, really. Start with this: DOOM. A la Hellhammer (Tom G. Warrior's adolescent pre-Celtic Frost outfit that helped pioneer death/doom metal from a basement in Switzerland back in the early eighties), Eyehategod, and maybe Corrupted too. They're Japanese (so we can make more Corrupted comparisons). And this trio consists entirely of girls. One of our distros described Gallhammer thusly: "All female Japanese Hellhammer worship Band. Not ugly girls doing ugly, ugly music!". The high-contrast black and white photo on the back cover of band members Mika Penetrator (guitar/vocals), Vivian Slaughter (bass/vocals), and Risa Reaper (drums) reveals that "not ugly" comment apparently to be correct, with some vaguely corpse-paint-like mascara adding to their sex appeal. Not that that should be the selling point. After all, listening to this, you'd have *no idea* they were female. Throaty, demonic screams belch forth amidst pummelling drum battery and distorted, feedbacking guitar. Female? Male? They don't even sound human, really. Though the emotions expressed are all too human. Nihilistic bleak hateful depressive stuff. It's raw, primitive doom that captures that Hellhammer vibe by following a similar learning curve as those guys did back in the '80s -- Gallhammer's offical bio on their website states: "Feburary 2003: We start Gallhammer" followed by "Feburary 2003: Each member start to play instrument." And then Gloomy Lights was recorded in 2004. Yep, what Gallhammer does is simple and effective: heavy, plodding music and rough, croaking vocals, with plenty of ominous ambience in the breaks and build-ups. There's eight grim and spooky tracks here culminating in the 10-minute "Color Of Coma", which features a great deal of atmospheric drone. Think Hellhammer meets Angelblood, perhaps.
Look out for a new Gallhammer album this year to be released by Peaceville.
Ok, hopefully all of you into dooooooooooooooooom have heeded our recommendations in the past ("best band EVER" we may have said, in a moment of infatuation) and are already well acquainted with this cult Japanese band who exude a magnificently miserable mixture of slow, atmospheric doominess and crusty black metal thrashing, inspired by the likes of Celtic Frost/Hellhammer (natch), Amebix, and Corrupted. This is their 2nd full-length studio album, following 2004's Gloomy Lights debut and last year's The Dawn Of Gallhammer demos n' live cd+dvd collection. That's the one where we busted out the Simpsons Comic Book Guy impersonation in our review, but it's this album that really seals the deal, when it comes to Gallhammer's position in the pantheon of most depressive doom bands ever, anyway. They're up there, no doubt about it, as is proved by this collection of ten tracks, each one of 'em often (but not always) a slow-motion trudge through the depths of emotional bleakness in the form of monotonously massive low-end guitar riffage, wretched cookie monster screams, and simple, gloomy melodies. Several of the song titles are quite indicative of their sound: "Long Scary Dream", "SLOG", "Ripper In The Gloom"... Many of these varied tracks feature a dynamic combination of knock-you-over-with-a-feather soft n' sad prettiness setting you up for some smash-you-with-a-hammer heaviness, or even manage both at the same time. It's the former element, this band's almost post-rock instrumental mesmeric moodiness, for which we think Gallhammer should be best noted. Not that it has any of post-rock's usual complexity, this is raw and primal and ritualistic, perfectly encapsulated by the way the stark, repetitive slowcore acoustic guitar part at the start of "Ripper In The Gloom" suddenly, shockingly gives way to a full-on punk rock assault.
It also seems possible that Gallhammer, along with their interest in underground '80s doom-crust, also shares some of the Velvet Underground fixation displayed by their contemporaries from the Japanese psych-rock scene, like LSD-march and Doodles. Heck, track one, the nearly eight minute "At The Onset Of The Age Of Despair" seems to have echoes of VU's "Venus In Furs"... If one of Gallhammer's songs wound up on a PSF Tokyo Flashback comp someday we'd be surprised, yes, but only a little. Though it sure wouldn't be a track like "Killed By The Queen" or "Blind My Eyes", two of the punked out, filthy metal blitzes on here, the latter of which throws in some uncharacteristic Melt-Banana style yelping, dogwhistle vocals along with the usual guttural grunting and growling.
Hey, we made it all the way to the end of this review without mentioning Gallhammer's major non-musical selling point... we said they're a "cult" band above, but were tempted to say "cute", as this trio just happen to all be attractive young Japanese ladies, their looks further enhanced by the tasteful application of gothy corpsepaint makeup. No this fact doesn't make Gallhammer's music sound any better (or worse) but it's, um, interesting. Happily, though, Peaceville isn't using Gallhammer's sex appeal to sell this album, there's not even any pictures of the band at all included in the classy-lookin' white-and-silver digipack. Recommended nonetheless!
Every metalhead we know has been freaking out over Hellhammer worshipping all girl crusty black metal outfit Gallhammer. And for good reason, the dew spit up a filthy sludgey blackened pound, that pays proper homage to the 'Hammer that came before. But truth be told, there is a bit of novelty to their appeal, hard to argue with three young cute Japanese girls in bullet belts and Amebix shirts, adorned in spikes and smeared black raccoon eye makeup, making this gloriously unholy racket. And we'd be lying if we didn't admit to at least a few aQ staffers having a bit of a metal girl crush on Ms. Vivian Slaughter.
Thus, those not afforded the luxury of actually seeing Gallhammer play live, have been clamoring for a live video. The music is awesome, but somehow more awesome when that harsh hellish howl is coming out of such a diminutive frontwoman, and this din is being produced by this all female trio. So here you have it, Gallhammer, performing live, like the title says in "the ruin of a church", the band set up upon the altar, in front of glowing stained glass windows, pretty striking visually for sure, and the sound is fantastic, thick and chuggy, pounding and blackened, the vocals a blasphemous presence in this house of God. BUT, the band aren't all that exciting to watch play. They don't headbang, they don't jump around or thrash wildly, and to be fair, maybe this music doesn't lend itself to that sort of action. Instead the band sort of sway back and forth, entranced, occasionally stepping to the mic to bellow hellishly (and it's revealed that both axeslingers have wails that could peel paint!). So minus any sort of extreme action, it is mesmerizing, helped along by the massive riffs and pounding rhythms, the whole band conjuring up some early eighties demons and channeling them into filthy crusty buzz.
There are plenty of extras, two other live shows, a bunch of videos (that are mostly the band rocking out live, but they rock out WAY harder for the camera), a photo gallery (!), and a band interview, but again, it's slow going as it's subtitled, and being translated, so there's plenty of waiting for questions, answers, and nothing wild or shocking, just a mellow conversation, interesting for sure, but not mind blowing.
But so what. It's GALLHAMMER!!! And for all our minor kvetching, this disc is pretty cool, and for now, as close as we're gonna get to sweating and swaying wildly in the pit at a Gallhammer show, and certainly as close as we'll ever get to actually talking to Vivian. Swooooon. So yeah, recommended. ----* ----* 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! ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT "Absolute Magnitude" (Blossoming Noise) cd 14.98 AETHENOR "Betimes Black" (VHF) cd/lp 13.98/14.98 AIR "Moon Safari" (EMI) cd + dvd + book 26.00 ALLIEN, ELLEN "Sool" (BPitch Control) cd/lp 15.98/19.98 AMEBIX "No Sanctuary" (Alternative Tentacles) cd/lp+7" 14.98/13.98 AMON DUUL II "Hijack" (Revisited Records) cd 17.98 ANAKRID "Banishment Rituals of The Disenlightened" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 16.98 ANAKRID "s/t" (Fever Dream Fever) lp 13.98 ANAL MAGIC & REV. 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Redux Part One" (Savage Beat) 2cd 24.00 V/A "Ed Rec Vol III" (Ed Banger) 2lp 29.00 V/A "Ethiopiques 23 : Orchestra Ethiopia" (Buda Musique) cd 15.98 V/A "Japanese New Music Festival 2008" (Magaibutsu) cd 13.98 V/A "Well Hung: 20 Funk-Rock Eruptions From Beneath Communist Hungary - Vol.1" (Finders Keepers) cd 23.00 VILLALOBOS, RICARDO "Enfants (MAGMA REMIXES)" (SED) 12" 17.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "De Stijl" (Third Man / Warner) cd 12.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "Elephant" (Third Man / Warner) cd 13.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "Get Behind Me Satan" (Third Man / Warner) cd 14.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "Icky Thump" (Warner Bros.) cd 16.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "s/t" (Third Man / Warner) cd 13.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "White Blood Cells" (Third Man / Warner) cd 14.98 WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE SON GOD "Out of Body Diva" (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98 WICKHAM-SMITH, SIMON "Love & Lamentation" (Pogus Productions) cd 14.98 WICKHAM-SMITH, SIMON & RICHARD YOUNGS "Veil (For Greg)" (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98 WILSON, GARY "You Think You Really Know Me: The Gary Wilson Story" (Plexifilm) dvd 26.00 WOLF PARADE "At Mount Zoomer" (Sub Pop) cd/lp 14.98/14.98 YA HO WHA 13 "Feather Of Wisdom" (Phoenix) lp 23.00 YELLOW SWANS "Deterioration" (Modern Radio Record Label) cd 11.98 _______________________________________________________________________ ABOUT MAILORDER
In the voice of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons: "Best band EVER."
No, we're not actually implying an endorsement of Gallhammer by Comic Book Guy. But, IF Comic Book Guy was into old school death/black/doom metal and crusty punk (which, we'd imagine he probably isn't) -and- was really into cute Japanese girls (which, chances are, he is), then, well, Gallhammer would be one of his favorite bands. We can't help but like 'em lot ourselves. We reviewed their debut cd Gloomy Lights back on list 235, and pointed out then that while a trio of cute, Japanese girls with raccoon eyes playing in the style of '80s doom pioneers Hellhammer was an obvious high-concept selling point, from -listening- to it you sure couldn't tell they were cute or even female. But you could tell that their music was utterly grim and wretched and heavy as hell, which for us was enough to recommend it. Glacial riffs, pounding drums, atmospheric breaks, deathly croaks... raw and primitive and very effective!
We also reported that they'd gotten signed to Peaceville, who have cleverly determined that the best way to introduce Gallhammer to the masses isn't with a new album (still upcoming) but with this, a collection of demos and rehearsal tracks. Oh, and with a DVD disc of live performances. That's the clever part. Once you see vocalist/bassist Vivian Slaughter in her Celtic Frost t-shirt, staring blankly into space and grunting inhumanly into the microphone, you'll be smitten. Or watch drummer Risa Reaper thrash her kit, providing back-up screams too. Or witness guitarist Mika Penetrator (Amebix t-shirt for her) crank out the riffage whilst contributing blood-curdling vokills as well... it's all over. Is there a fan club? Where do we sign up? Seriously, though, the live footage is convincing. They're a killer band. And have a great sense of theatrics, looking so much like those spooky girls you always see in Japanese horror films with their long black hair and hollow eyes.
The DVD features 24 songs from six shows filmed at various venues in Japan between 2005 and 2006. Some are pro shot (the show at Okayama Pepper Land which is presented in its entirety) and others are more bootleggy lookin' but still perfectly acceptable. And there's also a photo gallery of stills to stimulate more fanboy drool.
Meanwhile, on the audio disc, you get twelve tracks including two exclusive demos of (brutal) brand new songs, along with rarities going back to before the Gloomy Lights album. If you've heard Gallhammer before, you know this is gonna be crushing. Far from cartoonish. If you haven't heard 'em, this a good place to enter their haunted world of misanthropic moody metal. Imagine if Unsane, Corrupted and Zeni Geva got together in a cave to make the soundtrack to some freaky J-horror flick, after listening to nothing but Tom G. Warrior's earliest output and the occasional Velvet Underground album for inspiration. Cool, eh?
This ultra kvlt (and, we must admit, quite kvte!) all-girl Japanese band who play the blackened "metal of death" in a most dirgey and crusty stylee, inspired by (no duh) '80s death/doom pioneers Hellhammer, have returned after 4 years with a new album - titled with some finality The End, though let's hope it ain't. If you're an AQ customer with a pulse, at all into the doomy and dank, you're probably already a Gallhammer fan and are 'adding to cart' as we speak. If at all hesitant, the abysmal buzz and clank of going nowhere not so fast opener "The End" ought to convince you! With that title track out of the way, the Gallhammer gals (now the duo of bassist/vocalist Vivian Slaughter & drummer Risa Reaper, former guitarist Mika Penetrator having left after 2007's Ill Innocence) pick up the pace a bit on the next even more brutal number "Rubbish CG202" (one of several weird, partly numeric song titles on the album, btw), and vary between a flashing stroboscopic throb and molasses creepy crawl throughout this disc, the rhythms more a function of fluctuation in the overlaying distortion field than anything else. The vokills vary too, from rasping guttural anguish to some disturbing yelps (on "Aberration") and even almost actual singing (on "Sober").
The truth is, Gallhammer aren't really so much a metal band, as they are purveyors of nihilistic noise rock, having as much or more in common with the likes of Kevin Drumm, Wolf Eyes, Prurient, Sister Iodine, Aufgehoben No Process, Brainbombs, etc. as they do with the aforementioned Hellhammer, and other old school metal/punk artists whose T-shirts they're often seen wearing, like Amebix. The final cut, the ten+ minute "108=7/T-NA" is perhaps the weirdest, most WTF?, featuring some frightening saxophone textures, played by Ms. Slaughter... but don't worry, this is neither smooth nor jazz!! Just more grinding terror, the end of The End going to the utter extreme of experimental yet primitive doomdrone metal. Damn. We're falling in love with Gallhammer all over again.
You might not know the name John Gallow. How 'bout John Gallo? Doesn't ring a bell? BLIZARO, then? Hopefully you do recognize that name. We've previously listed a bunch of Blizaro, making their cd City Of The Living Nightmare a Record Of The Week a few years ago. Blizaro's a BIG fave of ours. And multi-instrumentalist John Gallo(w), also of trad doomsters Orodruin and blackened thrashers Crucifist, is the talented/demented mind behind Blizaro! Now he offers up this solo disc, using a slight variation on his own name. Of course, we wondered immediately just what the difference would be between Blizaro and John Gallow solo; the answer is, while Blizaro plays some strains of '70s sounding psychedelic doom, as heard through the kaleidoscopic lens of proggy, electronic cult Italian horror cinema soundtracks (i.e., "Sabbath meets Goblin"), John Gallow is a bit more deliberately doom metal, sluggish and chuggish, not *quite* so bizarre as Blizaro. Definitely Gallow takes a lot of inspiration from the weird works of Italian psych/doom mastermind Paul Chain - these tracks are imbued with the maestro's preferred occult violet hues, as the disc's title indicates. And apparently a lot of it is improvised, also in the manner of Paul Chain. But additionally we're hearing A LOT of the epic doom metal of classic Candlemass - and it's not just us, Gallo says as much in his liner notes, citing Candlemass as an influence alongside "all the purple-tinged doom metal from Italy", meaning Paul Chain, Black Hole, and other obscurities.
On a few of the tracks here, Gallow even does an amazing job of emulating the haunted wail of classic Candlemass frontman Messiah Marcolin with his own melodic, mournful cries, and that can't be easy. We're impressed. Elsewhere, he sounds more like Paul Chain, or channels his inner Ozzy. His guitar playing is also, as always, impressive, often going OFF into a tripped out psychedelic blues zone, his multitracked leads conjuring multiple Iommi's jamming together. Yet this is can be a very lonely, late night, solitary sounding disc, the moodiness of the material perhaps in part due to the one-man-band factor; furthermore, the title Violet Dreams also refers to the fact that many of the songs here have lyrics drawn from the surreal contents of strange dreams and nightmares that Gallow has actually had; we suspect that if he talked in his sleep he could give Dion McGregor a run for his money. Then there's all the evocative, vintage-sounding synthesizer and droning organ that ornaments this disc as well, sometimes taking center stage, as on the somber synth interlude "Ancient Tears", quietly creepy, its atmospheric keyboard melodies straight out of an Italian horror soundtrack for sure.
This journey into John Gallow's Violet Dreams is over an hour long, an almost claustrophobic concoction of heavy doom riffery and more abstract ambience, Gallow's song structures taking some strange turns; 'tis a dense slab of what we'll call depressive progressive doom metal, indeed.
Garadama is a hitherto unknown to us, super heavy metallic rock trio from Japan, making their debut on Osaka's Alchemy label (home to albums by Hijo Kaidan, Merzbow, Masonna, Angel 'In Heavy Syrup among others). They're not unlike a more modern-sounding version
A couple years ago, all the Boris / Corrupted / Eyehategod / Zeni Geva fans here at AQ were pleased to discover the debut cd from this band Garadama, released on the Osaka based, eclectic noise/psych label Alchemy. Super heavy riffage, distorted fuzzed out walls of DOOOOM guitar, crashing into your brain with the force of a frantic fiend (as per their song "A Fiend Is Living In My Brain"). Great stuff for everyone into the HEAVY (and no surprise, seeing as how the band featured the former singer/guitarist from the very Sabbatherian outfit Subvert Blaze). So, we've been waiting, and had begun to wonder what had happened to them. Well, suddenly and thankfully, we've got import copies of their brand new second album, as you can tell by the title. Again it's an onslaught of monster dirge crunch distorto sludge, swinging from Sabbathy groove to spooky, droning ambience... plus a dose of that special Japanese weirdness we love. Tracks like "Dogma" parts 1 and 2 are ultra-spooky and almost black metal, while the band display their rockin' side on the likes of the riffy "Who Does Try To Kill A Man?".
The album is not over-long, but their doom is deep, and we're sure Garadama would hold their own in any contest with countryfolk Green Machine and Boris... We should mention also that the nasally strangled doom vocals and the twistedness of their heaviness here reminds Andee of old faves Alice Donut! Recommended, doom fanatics.
Two words: Finland, Doom. Think Reverend Bizarre style doom, specifically. That's where this Finnish band is coming from, on their debut full length for the Shadow Kingdom label (who remind us, in a handwritten note: "Shadow Kingdom always puts out unique metal"). Garden Of Worm, a trio that includes two members of post rock prog metallers Blueprint Human Being, whom you'll remember from their Paradigms release, aren't so unique that they don't remind us of those aforementioned fellow Finns Reverend Bizarre (RIP), with deep, declamatory vocals and heavy Sabbathy riffage, but they do have their own way of doing the doom thing, the guitar parts having a sometimes urgent, eerily off-kilter psychedelic post rock edge to 'em (reminding us of the genius of the late great Ved Buens Ende at times), with post rock loud-soft dynamics factoring into the songwriting as well, Garden Of Worm being blissfully dreamy and/or utterly crushing depending on just where you drop the (virtual) needle on a track like "Psychic Wolves". Elsewhere, experimental droneworks veer right into raging headbanging fare (specifically, towards the end of one of this disc's several epics, "The Black Clouds"). And one of the tracks here, "Rays Of Heaven", is entirely a placid, all-acoustic instrumental. Yet as post- and prog- as they can be, GoW are first and foremost a trudging traditional doom metal band, conjuring up the old school likes of The Obsessed (with a smidge of a Pentagram-y riff mixed in) on "The Ceremony", for instance. A band that's melodic, emotive, intelligent, maybe we'd even call them "psychological", what with some of the lyrics. But all in all to sum 'em up, with another word that's none of those, nor doom, nor Finland: there's something GLORIOUS about this band. Gloomy but grandly glorious. Recommended, especially if you like Reverend Bizarre, The Obsessed, Apostle Of Solitude, Fall Of The Idols...
Very nice b&w Justin Bartlett cover art, too, by the way! (Presumably that's a PSYCHIC wolf.)
Indiana's The Gates Of Slumber, by dint of sheer old school "trueness" are quickly becoming the most happenin' American traditional doom metal band around, with a weighty onslaught of releases, this latest coming our way via Canada's equally happenin' Profound Lore label. It's another slab of sludgy yet melodic heavy metal in the downer-psych tradition of St. Vitus and Reverend Bizarre... with all the usual ye olde cult metal and pulpy literary influences. What makes 'em so true is that they play for a very defined audience of likeminded souls, caring more about doing their doom RIGHT than any other more conventional measure of rock n' roll success (radio play? magazine covers? groupies? no, definitely not, this is way too geeky). It's almost emo that way. So serious and sincere.
Vocally this has got strains of Wino (Spirit Caravan, The Obsessed, you know), and lyrically TGOS are inspired mainly by Swords & Sorcery fiction, though topical subjects like the genocide in Darfur are also addressed. The album's grand finale is a 16 and a half minute long "Dark Valley Suite" dedicated to Conan creator Robert E. Howard, even including a section with words taken from a Howard poem... we like that the song is really more about Howard the tragically mortal human being, and is not simply another celebration of his mighty and barbaric fictional hero.
The cd booklet is interesting, in addition to lyrics for every song, a detailed track-by-track commentary is provided, almost making review-writing redundant when the band's vocalist/guitarist is describing each song as having certain influences or whatnot. For instance, talking about the track "Ice Worm", he says "the riff reminds me of Orodruin and Cirith Ungol fighting with Budgie and Quartz... Ross The Boss steps in playing a Dio hook for the chorus"... well that's all of course too good to be true but still if you know and care about the artists he mentions there, then there's a good chance you're gonna dig The Gates Of Slumber!! Likewise, if you're into R.E. Howard & Conan and stuff like that...
Now also on (import) gatefold vinyl!!
Much as their biggest literary inspiration, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian, rose from mere vagabond thief and freebooter to command armies and then become King, Midwestern underground doom sensations Gates Of Slumber seem to be set unerringly upon the path of glory, treading the jeweled thrones of Earth under their sandaled feet. Bigger labels, more press, they do seem way more popular than when we first encountered their obscure, import-only debut some years back. And while their rise in popularity is well deserved and awesome (couldn't happen to a doomier bunch of guys), it's also a bit of a surprise... who knew that there was such a healthy demand for their brand of true doom? Well there is, and The Gates Of Slumber deliver, overtly influenced as always by old school heavy metal, and metal-related things like weird pulp fiction and Frank Frazetta fantasy artwork (the song "Death Dealer" here is actually ABOUT a Frank Frazetta painting as a matter of fact).
Perhaps the sheer sincerity of these guys won people over. Plus for a heavy band into barbarian muscle-metal, they're remarkably emotional and sensitive seeming, their music often quite melodic and full of gloomy atmosphere. Also, they rock. The one-two punch of opening tracks "Chaos Calling", followed by "Death Dealer", is a bit of a shocker. Were Gates Of Slumber ever this speedy before? They almost sound like High On Fire, or Early Man. A killer NWOBHM/thrash mash. But, then, "Beneath The Eyes Of Mars" slows things down and gets way doomier, more like we were expecting, throwing in some subtle Dr. Who synths to boot, and that's when anyone new to TGOS can begin to appreciate the moody side to this band.
Their long standing allegiance to Saint Vitus is most evident on the Lovecraftian epic "Descent Into Madness" (the longest track here), while elsewhere they get into prog and folk just a bit, no really, there's even some female vocals on the penultimate track "The Mist In The Mourning", shades of Hammers Of Misfortune.
Don't worry, though this album has its acoustic interludes, and all-instrumental tangents, and sad singing and sweet soloing, they sound plenty tough too, ferinstance "The Bringer Of War" is a brute. And you gotta love "Iron Hammer", reprised from an early out of print ep, it's of those songs paying tribute to their influences with lyrics entirely composed of the titles to their favorite classic metal songs and albums.
Further pumped up with solid, Sanford Parker production, this is HEAVY metal that cannot be denied. Maybe we will see 'em on a (metal) magazine cover yet - Decibel did just make this album of the month in their new issue, with a 9/10 rating! And we can certainly see fans of High On Fire and The Sword enjoying this just as much as those into the more underground likes of Reverend Bizarre and Electric Wizard.
From Indiana, USA, here's a doom metal band for those who like their doom old school, Saint Vitus style. That is, like Black Sabbath but dragged down deeper into the mire. This ostensibly five-track ep (it's longer than that, due to several hidden bonus tracks) has got all the depressive atmosphere, widdly solos, guitar effects, anguished Wino-like vocals, and sledgehammer heaviness you desire. These guys are obviously dedicated doom fans first and foremost, and like their Finnish brethren Reverend Bizarre they do their influences proud, and they make it pretty obvious who those influences are. There's a cover of "Ask No More" by Pentagram, and one of the hidden tracks is a version of St. Vitus' "War Is Our Destiny"... And if this disc turns you into a fan of The Gates Of Slumber, they've helpfully provided a bonus embroidered TGOS patch for your denim vest! We'll be wearing ours proudly.
Axe smashing, bare chested, mega muscled, mighty thewed, old school DOOM metal here! Just take one glance at Ken Kelly's Frank Frazetta-styled cover painting and one listen to the opening attack "Angel Of Death" (no, not a Slayer cover, it's more like a Cirith Ungol track!) and you'll know this third cd from Indiana doom trio The Gates Of Slumber is one for cultish, denim n' leather garbed fans of Saint Vitus, Reverend Bizarre, Manowar, Electric Wizard, and of course ye olde Black Sabbath -- especially if you're a reader of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. If you are, perhaps you knew that "Suffer No Guilt Ye Who Wield This In The Name Of Crom" is the motto inscribed in runes on the sword that belonged to the father of Howard's famed Swords & Sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian? And Conan of Cimmeria is indeed the subject of this album's 14 minute long title track. But TGOS also take this "Suffer No Guilt" theme further elsewhere on the album, in the lyrics to the 20 minute long (!) "God Wills It" tying the idea of not suffering guilt for the sins of one's culture's past to their views on the (historical) Crusades and the current "clash of civilizations" that some see as occurring in this age of War on Terror, War in Iraq and sundry other Middle Eastern conflict. So, some deep thoughts here... but also plenty of blood and thunder entertainment, in the form of heavy riffing and psychedelic soloing, with pulpy escapism as its purpose.
By the way, Allan saw these guys this past summer at the Alehorn Of Power festival in Chicago. They were the opening band for a bill that included Bible Of The Devil, Twisted Tower Dire, The Lord Weird Slough Feg, and freakin' Manilla Road! TGOS definitely set the "heaviness bar" pretty high for the night.
Egads. What's that rumbling, lumbering sound? The Gates Of Slumber, of course. The Midwestern true doom stalwarts return with their 2nd slipcased album for Rise Above/Metal Blade, at least their fourth full-length release overall. If you like your metal HEAVY then you know these guys already. Traditionalists at heart, they don't mess much with their basic modus operandi, once more this is barbaric thud that Conan himself would enjoy blasting on his stereo, if they had such technology in the ancient Hyborian Age...
Snail's pace opening track "Bastards Born" is VERY Vitus-y, the influence of '80s Sabbath disciples Saint Vitus always having been a big part of TGOS's sound, but here really taken to an extreme of emulation, it could easily be a track left off of final (for now) Vitus masterpiece Die Healing. Except that the vocals by TGOS guitarist Karl Karl Simon aren't quite so godly as those of Scott Reagers. He's a bit more "wretched" sounding (natch, this album is titled The Wretch after all) and comes closer to sounding like the other significant Vitus vocalist, Wino.
Heck we're preaching to the choir here, making references to Die Healing and Reagers and Wino... if those names mean anything to you, you probably already know if you're interested in TGOS's latest or not. In any case, we can't imagine that TGOS weren't thinking of this as their "Die Healing" song when they were writing it.
As an statement of purpose, "Bastards Born" says: "Sludge". And sludge they do, as the rest of the album oozes forth. But some tracks ooze faster. Track two "The Scourge Of Drunkenness" is one such relatively uptempo rocker... Later on "Coven Of Cain" conjures up the high spirits of the NWOBHM, while conversely "Castle Of The Devil", another mid-album number, takes things in a relaxed, almost artily atmospheric direction, a nice breather amidst the more crushing cuts.
TGOS's true doom devotion to sheer lamentation and misery is utterly fulfilled by the end of the album, with the epic - and even more epic - tracks "The Wretch" (8:18) and "Iron And Fire" (12:14) both slo-mo, sorrowfully emo trudges to leave you suicidally spent, when all's said and doomed.
Pretty darn good, though you kinda have to be in that "doomed" mood. So if we admitted that, right at the moment, we'd rather be listening to those reissues by Alaskan '80s metal band Pandemonium that we made Record(s) Of The Week, we don't think the TGOS guys would be at all offended. After all, they're nothing if not worshipful of their heavy metal forebears themselves, the cd booklets to most previous releases usually featuring Karl Simon's analysis/admissions of each song's musical inspirations (whereas here, his liner notes are all about how this time, they got more "personal" rather than "fantastic" in terms of lyrics and mood, hence titles like "The Scourge Of Drunkenness", presumably).
Circle Of True Doom standard bearers The Gates Of Slumber just rumbled through town a couple weeks ago, on tour with Slough Feg. They stopped into the store, and we snagged a couple copies of their hard to find Villain, Villain double cd collection from 2007. Really, just a couple. So we're not gonna spend much time on this review! For those who might be interested, Villain, Villain (which of course takes its title and cover concept from Judas Priest's Hero, Hero) brings together a 16 early demo tracks, alternate versions, reedits, live songs, covers (no less than 3 of 'em songs by their heroes Saint Vitus!), etc. etc.
Obviously, this is for mega TGOS fans only, and you might already have -some- of this stuff in one form or other. But probably not all of it, especially if you missed out on some of their earlier, now out of print releases. You know how to use Encyclopedia Metallum, you can figure out what this has got that you do not, eh?
The cd booklet, in typical TGOS tradition, features notes on each and every track (except their Samhain and Manilla Road covers, for some reason) by guitarist/bandleader Karl Simon. Who, by the way, is a very cool guy, with a definite sense of humor for one so doomy.
By now everyone should be familiar with SF black metal legends Weakling. A brief existence, a handful of shows, and a single amazing record (released on Andee's tUMULt label, we should mention). Members of Weakling played in and/or went on to play in Amber Asylum, the Champs, Drunk Horse, Asunder, Sangre Amado, Saros and the short lived but now totally cult blackened gothic doom outfit The Gault. Recorded way back in 1999 by Tim Green, The Gault's Even As All Before Us languished for years before the band finally agreed on a mix and a label, and now five years later this mighty slab of depressive doom finally sees the light of day. Some of you may be wondering why we're only getting around to reviewing this now, since it was released a few months ago... and, the entire first pressing is already sold out. So what's the deal? Well, bad news for any of you who already picked up a copy somewhere else. The ENTIRE first pressing was, in fact, defective. But not defective enough apparently for the label to care, as they refused to repress it and continued to sell the defective copies anyway. To our ears though, the harsh digital glitches inadvertently inserted between every track totally detracted from the gorgeously bleak and harrowing ambience. So the band took it upon themselves to have corrected copies pressed themselves, and thus we finally have the Gault record the way it was meant to be heard. Imagine those Weakling riffs, slowed down and wrapped in dense '80s-ish reverb, smeared and stretched into serpentine minor key melodies, throbbing and pulsing and slithering through midtempo dronescapes of shimmering guitar buzz, creeping basslines, ghostlike female vocals, crashing steady drumming all cloaked in a rich blackened haze, suffocating and claustrophobic, but somehow completely epic at the same time. Think a black metal Joy Division and you might be close, due in no small part to vocalist Ed Kunakemakorn's distinctive wail. Equal parts Ian Curtis, Interpol's Paul Banks and weirdly enough, Dutch weirdo black metallers Urfaust, a soaring mournful croon, rich and velvety and quite haunting. Each track is a twisting complex doomscape of fuzzed out drones, pounding downtuned riffage, swirling psychedelic ambience, slow motion crawl and creep, building and building into massive black swells. A gorgeously creepy collection of heaving, lurching, dark and delicate, doomy and dense epics. So emotional and so totally and completely intense!
Hey, all right! This British band is back, at long last, with their 2nd album, and once again sound like a blast from the past (the past circa 1972 or so) even though they're from this day and age. We're almost sorta surprised they're not from Sweden, usually it's Swedish bands like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Horisont, and Noctum who do the bellbottomed retro-rawkin' thing this damn well, but heck the bands Gentlemans Pistols most sound like - Sabbath and Zeppelin - were from England, so it's in their blood after all. We wuz big fans of their self-titled debut a few years back, and are damn happy to hear 'em kicking out the jams once more, this time with new axe slinger the one and only Bill Steer (Carcass, Napalm Death, Firebird) on board, GP's upping the ante on all others in the realm of '70s styled stoner rock with their wailing vox, crunchy fuzz guitar riffage, and hard to beat bouncy energy. They're delivering the goods here, is what we're sayin'. A dozen new songs, all catchy and heavy and authentically '70s proto-metal sounding, they could hold their own with Pentagram and Hard Stuff and Leaf Hound and Highway Robbery, etc.... and they've got a sweaty muscularity to 'em that makes 'em more of a powerful proposition than just some kind of imitation or approximation. They're real, and rockin'. A ripping good time. Another one of those bands, in our view, that should be HUGE, and would be if we ran the rock n' roll world! F'ing recommended.
Blimey, this is our favorite pure heavy rock n' roll album in a month of Sundays, pretty much, well since the Birds Of Avalon debut a few lists back anyway. '70s stylings to the max, fully indebted to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and the MC5. And paying those debts with freshly minted $100 bills. (If only, in a perfect world these guys would be raking it in like Wolfmother.) Signed to the Rise Above label over in England, home to Electric Wizard and Witchcraft and sundry other sterling stoner/doom outfits, this British band is indeed kinda Witchcrafty, if Witchcraft were more single-mindedly concerned about kicking out the jams... like a more cock-rock Witchcraft perhaps. Certainly Gentlemans Pistols are as much convincingly "out of time" as those Swedes, a bellbottomed retro-rockin' good time that ought to get your head to banging with such should-be car stereo staples as "Just A Fraction", "Widow Maker", and the MC5-ish high energy "Out Of The Eye" amongst the ten equally rad tracks on offer here. Gentlemans Pistols win us over with confident melodic vox, an abundance of catchy riffs, and a bit of clever... what's up with the song title "Parking Banshee"? They're sly ones, these guys, even when displaying some slightly cheesy, lemon-squeezin' rawk and roll lyrics that we suspect are halfway tongue in cheek, on the track "Heavy Pettin'" in particular, which is a slower, bluesy number a la Zep's "Dazed And Confused"... Definitely an album for Pentagram and Leaf Hound and even Raging Slab fans... Recommended, rockers!!
This Ghast thing continues to confuse. There's the sick and sludgey Canadian Ghast, and then there's these guys, a Welsh blackened doom horde whose sound is similar enough to keep us constantly wondering if we've got the right Ghast. Both bands traffic in slow and low and heavy, serious doooooom for sure, but the Canadian Ghast are filthier and crustier, more a twisted sludge, like Bunkur or Moss, whereas these guys are more classically black doom, their sound melodic, but still grim and black, flitting easily from epic doomed trudge to frenzied blasting blackness. We've been digging their May The Curse Bind record A LOT (it was also just reissued as a swank double lp!) and had been DYING for more, and finally here it is, in the form of Terrible Cemetery.
First, how amazing is the name Terrible Cemetery, it almost sounds like one of the guys in the band let his kid name the record, grim and scary maybe, but also sorta dorky, which just makes it cooler. The music though does sort of evoke a scary cemetery, the opening track a haunting loping bit of midtempo minor key blackness, with a KILLER main riff, seriously harrowing, lumbering melodic doom, rife with sick guitar buzz, plodding drum pound and maniacal screeching vocals, the second half finds the sound shift into full on black metal, with still more killer riffage, weirdly melodic, wound around a relentless blast beat, and more shrieked vox, total classic (c)old school black buzz for sure, raw and filthy and EVIL.
The 20 minute title track is up next, "TERRIBLE CEMETERY", and right away it sounds like it, buzzing bass plod, spare skeletal drum pound, then clouds of frenzied buzzing guitar, howled demonic vokills, the vibe mournful and menacing, a gorgeously abject miserablist black doom death march, super emotional and intense and heavy, the track explodes in a brief stretch of gnarled black buzz, the guitars droned out and melodic, lending the blackness a strange sense of melancholy, only to shift back into a gorgeously epic plodding dirge, again epic and majestic and gloriously fraught with emotion, and like the first track, totally classic black metal flecked TRUE DOOM!! TROOOOOOOOM!!
We're pretty sure we have this Ghast thing all sorted out, there's a Ghast that's Welsh, and whose May The Curse Bind just got reissued on vinyl, who traffic in a sort of doom laced black metal, then there's this Canadian horde, whose sound is way more filthy and fucked up, a sort of glacial blackened crawl, all downtuned sludge, crumbling distortion, and harsh gurgled demonic vokills, not to mention the strange swirl of grit and grime and buzz and hiss that seems to surround everything they do like a glorious black sonic cloud of hiss and crackle. And that's precisely what you get on these two tracks, two extended filthfests, crushing, lumbering dirges, each a lurching sonic behemoth, howling and hateful and despondent and depressive and heavy and brutal as fuck. These ultradoom crawls creep malevolently along, the vocals sometimes doused in reverb, sometimes just grunting and gurgling demonically, melodies played out over minutes, buried in the murk and mire, super dynamic, and a little bit bizarre, especially the second track, the vocals sounding almost like a Muppet, the sonic death march being bombarded by strange electronics and streaks of skittery static. Pretty goddamn great. These guys should really get the same love bands like Moss and Bunkur and Corrupted do...
We'd never heard of Abandoner before, but apparently, they're a sort of blackened post industrial drone outfit made up of members of US doom sludge juggernaut Unearthly Trance. Weirdly enough, UT would have been a perfect sonic match for Ghast, maybe too perfect, so instead, we're treated to, or punished by, Abandoner's caustic soundscapes, all wild bolts of feedback, strange processed noises, loads of buzz, and rumble, guitars not so much played and allowed to spew gouts of crunch and howl and skree, everything wrapped in a hazy field of murky thrum, laced with damaged electronics, noisy, but not NOISE, more like a sort of even more twisted, less melodic Wolf Eyes? But definitely cool stuff, and an interesting foil to Ghast's monstrous downtuned black doom trudge.
Must suck to be Ghast, considering that pretty much every review has to start with "not to be confused with the OTHER Ghast", so it probably sucks for the OTHER Ghast too. But in this case, we're not talking about the Welsh black doomlords, we're talking about the Quebecois black doomdronedirge horde Ghast, with an umlaut over the 'A', whose sound is a much more raw and filthy proposition, droned out and blackened, and who strangely enough seem to only release splits. Their first with avant black metal weirdos Yoga, their second with blacknoize horde Rape-X, and now, this one, a brand new split with Japanese ultra doom sludge outfit Zombie Blasphemy.
As always, Ghast do not disappoint, offering up two lengthy slabs of abject, nihilistic slow motion creep, lumbering, lurching, troglodytic crush, the guitars massive sprawls of low end buzz, feedback everywhere, like Eyehategod doused in (more) cough syrup, a funeral crawl, a throbbing cloud of buzz and thrum, the vocals a beastly grunted howl, way off in the distance, keening high end skree plays out a melody stretched out over minutes, the riffing glacial and oozing and black, the track gathering momentum eventually, but peaking at a plod. Somehow, the other Ghast track is even MORE minimal and abstract, loose drumming laid over a haze of feedback and amp buzz, distant sirens, almost ambient, no riffs, just soft swirls of guitar noise, and some strange mewled vox, all the while the drums pounding sporadically and erratically, the last few minutes, the various strands seeming to come together to form something much more dense and droney, still black and abstract, but a strange sort of chanted sludge raga ritual. Awesome.
We had never heard Japanese sludgelords Zombie Blasphemy before, but much like their sonic compatriots in Coffins, they traffic in slow and low extreme doom, with an awesome guitar sound, so distorted it sounds like your speakers are fried, the vocals an impossibly guttural grunt, this is Moss / Corrupted style doom, but even more sludgey and crusty, the guitars occasionally offer up wild tangles of unhinged spidery melodies, almost leads, draped over the woozy warped lumbering chug and churn, the band do crank the temp here and there, but even then, the sound is SO blown out, and low fidelity and in the red, it turns everything into a glorious blackened noise drenched buzzy blur, and when they unfurl some wild psychedelic leads during the final track, it almost sounds like some sort of Tim Hecker / Merzbow mash up. So good. Total metal noise drone doom radness. For sure need to hear more from these guys. And hell, wouldn't hurt to finally get a non split Ghast full length too.
Totally recommended blast of twisted noise drenched extreme heaviness, two different, but equally twisted and genius takes on ultra slo-mo doom drone sludge...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Heard about this on Tom Lax's Siltblog, which is funny 'cause this band is from right here in our backyard, and are also not exactly shitgaze or whatever other noisy underground rock aesthetic we thought Siltbreeze was all about. Lax mentioned classic heavy psych/metal peeps for the ages like Deep Purple, Hawkwind, and Monster Magnet in his review and yep, all present and accounted for (if inebriated and high as fuck, no surprise) in GW's sound, to some extent. Super stoner retro rockin' here, well with retro sounds but not sounding like any actual old band that's for sure, A-side "Black Lotus" starts off all full of gobblin' space synth soundz, then begins pounding down the riffs like Sleep or something a bit later on, while on the flip, "Witch's Limbo", they keep on rockin', no not like Dokken but more like Danava (w/ all them synths) and Priestess and other current bands creating the past anew. Interestingly, the other tracks we've heard from 'em, on their MySpace, are way more overtly garagey punky, in a ? and the Mysterians, Lyres, mebbe even Stooges style, but here it seems they're heavy metalling it (the magazine and the music) a bit more. So, two cool tunes, and now we're put on notice to go see these glittering wizzes next time they play, we're especially curious to see if they get all glammed up live to go with their name. (AQ staffer Jon has seen 'em and sez they do!)
A couple weeks ago, we reviewed the debut album by Aanipaa, a new experimental glitch-drone-doom project headed up by Mika Vainio and Stephen O'Malley. One of the most abject and significant elements of Aanipaa's sound was the vocals (or shall we use the term vokills) contributed by Alan Dubin. We've been fans of Dubin since back in the OLD days (OLD being his '90s grind/electronica/WTF? band with James Plotkin), and you probably also know him from Khanate, the doomic supergroup that also included both O'Malley and Plotkin. In the pantheon of anguished, extreme vokills, there's naught that can compare to Dubin's tortured throat - well maybe Keiji Haino, and possibly also the guy that sang on Bethlehem's Dictius Te Necare. They're sort of kokills that make the listener want to curl up in the fetal position, and it sounds like the singer already has.
Well, here's some more Dubin for you, in the form of the sophomore album from his own experimental doom band, from the bowels of NYC, known as Gnaw. It's another discomforting dose of avant-garde audio terror, the four other guys in the band making utterly harrowing, heavy music that manages to hold its own alongside Dubin's vocalizations, and it's not an easy task to be so extreme.
Track one, "Humming", eases (slightly) the listener in, Dubin quietly accompanied by a simple bell-like, plink-plonk motif on a keyboard, and background industrial atmospheres. Dubin makes use of maniacal, mantric repetition in his creepy lyrics, a method used throughout the album to suggest a sick state of psychological compulsion. Here repeated lines like "you left your window open / nice lady / nice lady / window open / open" make him sound like Jerry Lewis as a psychopathic prowler. But then on track two, "Of Embers", look out, 'cause the full band kicks in, to devastating effect, with crashing drum pummel and massive riff plod. And on and on and down and down it goes, Gnaw's hellish trudge laced with weird noise-damaged effects and other disturbing details. Basically, it's like a more twisted and occasionally ambient version of Khanate. Yikes!
Gnaw's first album was called Your Face; now they're doing their gnawing on the inside of your skull instead. If they ever were to do a remake of Gummo, we'd expect Gnaw to appear on the soundtrack. Vinly version includes download.
Thee extreme/experimental/industrial metal scene has a potential new ruler here, with the doomic and disturbing debut of Gnaw. If you put this disc in your computer's iTunes, you'll see some joker has categorized their genre as "children's music". Ha, don't think so! Unless you want your kids to grow up to be like Alan Dubin, of OLD/Khanate infamy, who provides the blood curdling vokills here, ranging from throat-shredding yowls to creepy stage whispers. He's joined by former members of doomlords Burning Witch, psychfolk weirdos Enos Slaughter and cold, early '80s NYC post-punk Factory Records band Ike Yard (!) for this new project, which seems to take up where Dubin's previous bands left off, but in a direction much more deviant & eccentric.
The claustrophobic chaos of track one, "Haven Vault", ought to determine pretty quick if this is for you or not. Imagine a sped-up Khanate struggling through a windstorm, Dubin bawling wretchedly amidst the buzzing murk and the splatter of improv percussion... then distant, pretty piano notes fade in eerily, one by one... it's like Khanate meets Hazard meets Supersilent, in a nightmare. Extreme indeed, and all right with us! That leads to the next track, one that's calmer and more song-like, yet perhaps even more sinister-sounding, with Dubin's negative vibe lyrics more intelligible, everything backed by a springy-sprongy electronic rhythm. More of a tribal drumming pattern is exhibited on the deep rumble of the third song.
Each track seems to delve further and further into weirdness and woe, with drone and distortion and feedback given free range of the album. The jittery percussion effects a trance-like vibe at times, perhaps allowing Dubin's words deeper, subliminal access to your subconscious (uh oh). But as big fans of both OLD and Khanate, we're all for it, glad to now have Gnaw to push those same buttons, along with other ones we hadn't expected, like the way the singing on "Watcher" sounds almost like Eugene from Oxbow. Or how it sounds like maybe Dubin & Co. have been into some dubstep lately. Or how Gnaw's crunching head nodding heaviness is cracked like Humpty D. Yep, if you like some strange surprises in your grim glitchtronic avant-metal music, and moreover enjoy the varied vokill stylings of Mr. Dubin, you'll want Gnaw's Your Face at your place.
The Conspiracy label has released this on cd (digipack) and of course LIMITED EDITION gatefold vinyl of various colors (we've got any color you want, as long as it's black). They had to leave 2 tracks off the vinyl version, but it does come with a free mp3 download card so you can get the entire album on your computer.
We're running out of superlatives, not to mention overly poetic descriptions of filth and blackness and depravity, to describe this one man cinematic black doom noise outfit, but with every record, Mories, the man behind the beast, offers still more glimpses into what lurks below, or within, the sound an ever evolving cloud of black energy, rendered audible in shades of pummeling drum plod, of downtuned melting riffs, of howled and shrieked vocalizations, of Bernard Hermann like strings, all stretched and blurred and smeared and tangled into a veritable symphony of black bleak heaviness.
It's difficult to classify, as every song tends to slip seamlessly from Wolf Eyes like industrial soundscapery, to Godflesh like metal machine crunch, to lurching Abruptum like black ritual, to almost classic sounding black metal buzz, to haunting cinematic dark ambience, each of those elements fully realized, but then hurled into a black sonic vortex, where along with all the various other sounds and shapes and colors it gets mangled and tangles and spewed out on the other side as some almost living thing, a music that is at once threatening and caustic, harrowing and hateful, but also weirdly melodic and almost classical sounding, a definite case of black(ened) beauty.
For those new to the filth encrusted soundworld that is Gnaw Their Tongues, a brief survey of song titles: "My Orifices Await Ravaging", "The Stench Of Dead Horses On My Breath And The Vile Of Existence In My Hands", "The Gnostic Ritual Consumption Of Semen As Embodiment Of Wounds Teared In The Soul", the album title: All The Dread Magnificence Of Perversity, the crown of thorns / blood splattered / bondage cover art, should all give hints as to what sort of sinister sound lurks inside, but again, all of that could point to something much more puerile and simplistic, the sound of Gnaw Their Tongues is something altogether more refined, if a word like that could be applied to something this hellish, but it does sound refined, and composed, epic and majestic, for every bit of sluggish heaviness, there's another part that is hauntingly beautiful, or strangely serene, it boggles the mind how someone creates music like this, it must come from some deep, dark, black part of the soul, and while we ourselves might fear such a place in ourselves, we can't help but be enthralled and obsessed with the sort of sonic darkness that lurks in others.
WAY recommended, as with past GGT releases...
