We never thought we'd say this, but it's been a while since we've heard from Nadja! Two whole years in fact. There is a collaborative lp we're been meaning to review, but this is the first proper new full length since 2010's Autopergamene, and even if we were inclined to dismissively think "oh, another Nadja record", we throw it on, and are immediately reminded why we remain sort of Nadja obsessed.
Another collection of super distorted, darkly blissed out metalgaze perfection, this time the guitars sound even MORE distorted, crumbling and blurring into washed out smears of chordal gristle, and if that wasn't enough to get you excited about a new Nadja, howabout the fact that in place of the usual drum machine, is none other than Jesus Lizard drummer Mac McNeilly, who adds some human heft to the equation, making Nadja sound more like a real band, a fantastically blown out dirge metal slowcore band, the opener, a lurching super dynamic slab of dream doom bliss out, with hushed vocals, pounding drums, and the aforementioned gorgeous guitar crumble, even at 11 minutes it's still not nearly long enough.
The second track almost sounds like a Jesus Lizard song, a little bit Slinty too, with its spidery minor key guitar part, you can imagine it recast as a burst of bombastic noise rock, but here, it becomes the framework for a cool, constantly shifting metallic blowout, which features some gorgeously hushed moments, but also Nadja at their most propulsive and rocking. The second half gets mathy, and again super dynamic, and it has us wishing Nadja had hooked up with McNeilly long before now. The title track is epic slow burn Neur-Isis style heaviness, a sound that Nadja borrowed, and opted to reimagine and make their own instead of returning, and they continue to do it better than almost anyone else. Soaring and majestic and crumblingly heavy! Which leads into the closer, a 14 minute sprawl of tribal drumming, smoldering drones, blown out psychedelic noise, buried vox, all smeared into a shoegazey shimmer, which fades out midsong, leaving the second half spare and spaced out, a slowcore creep, with big drums driving swirling guitars, delicate melodies, and barely there vocals. So good. And well worth the wait.
Folks who managed to catch Nadja performing live at aQuarius not too long ago, were treated to quite possibly the heaviest, catchiest, grooviest Nadja track yet. An awesome hook filled seventies rock style ultra jam, wrapped in thick clouds of billowing distortion and anchored by the crunch and pound of programmed beats, Aidan Baker's vocals a whispered croon, Leah Buckareff's bass throbbing and rumbling, but the main riff, SHIT, unbelievable, even after our ears stopped ringing, we were all humming that riff for days...
Well the funny thing we learned later, was that there song was in fact a cover. And an incredibly unlikely cover at that. The only obvious link between the original and the band covering it? Canada. The song, some of you might remember, is in fact from the Kids In The Hall movie Brain Candy, and proves that Nadja can turn hooky pop into hooky sludge-y doom. The chorus is an absolute killer, and similar to how Torche transform pop into skullcrushing hook filled heaviness, Nadja take that pop and wrap it all up in some of their distinctive blissed out fuzz and we're talking HIT. Well, a hit if there were actually some sort of blissdoomdronesludgepop chart. Which there should be. And there sort of is, in our heads, but anyway...
Even though this is one of FIVE Nadja releases on this week's list, and they're all pretty amazing, this one might just be the most essential of them all.
LIMITED of course. One sided vinyl, hand letterpressed covers, pressed on all sorts of different colors, including black, don't ask, you'll get what you get!
As much as we love Aidan Baker's solo recordings, and we most definitely do, from gorgeous expansive minimal dronescapes to haunting melodic abstracts to dreamy deconstructed pop, it's all pretty genius, we have to admit that our hearts will always belong to Nadja. Everything we love about Baker, but presented in the form of a massive buzzed out doom. Even at its heaviest and most plodding, it glistens and glimmers, the melodies shimmering and ethereal, the heaviness washed out into a metallic blur.
Radiance Of Shadows is the latest offering from Nadja, a duo featuring Baker and his partner Leah Buckareff, and is shaping up to be at once the prettiest Nadjar release so far, and the heaviest.
Three 20+ minute tracks, each perfectly balanced between suffocating crush and hazy dreamy bliss. Most folks obviously focus on the heavy crushing riffage, but the magic of Nadja happens just as much if not moreso during the quiet parts, the rhythmic parts leading up to the bombastic climaxes. The build up is just as satisfying sonically as the pay off, the musical version of the whole journey / destination thing. But that said, the pay off is a massive and gloriously impossibly heavy crush, like being beaten to death with rays of sunshine or being suffocated under layer after layer of soft fuzzy concrete slabs.
Each track while hewing close to the Nadja sound we know and live is distinctly different, exploring all the various facets of the duo's dreamy metallic dronepop.
The opening track is a glistening slowcore crawl, a lush swirl of granular textures, and lurching crumbling riffage, but suspended in wide open space, languorous and woozy, with a strange staccato riff, that gradually blossoms into a blown out slow motion dream doom supernova, continually seesawing back and forth between the soft and the heavy, a hypnotic blown out two part doom symphony, wrapped around a dreamy slow motion pop core.
The second track is even dreamier and poppier, with hushed breathless vocals, buried in a swirling soft focus My Bloody Valentine / Galaxie 500 sun dappled blur, punctuated by heaving industrial metal riffing, like a softer prettier Godflesh.
The third track is maybe the strangest of the bunch, the quiet parts near silent, the heavy parts seriously and intensely punishing. The quiet parts are all haunting high end distant drones, glitched out minimal guitar strum, soft barely audible drumming, martial and machinelike, haunting near spoken vocals. The heavy parts pummeling and downtuned, but laced with haunting pianos, and some seriously aggressive growled death metal style vocals, roiling and furious, still plodding and slow, but within that plod, the various elements careening and crashing and threatening to crumble into jagged bits. The dynamic between the loud and the soft is super dramatic, culminating in a washed out buzzscape eventually dissipating and leaving that quiet, insistent melancholy strum.
The sound is so much more epic and massive, but warm and 'live' sounding. For the first time, it actually sounds like A BAND, more than a record constructed in a room by a guy (and a girl). Not sure if it's the songs, or the arrangements, the recording or all three, but whatever it is, made a sound we already thought perfect, even more perfect.
With some bands, you want something new and different every record, strange new sounds, that confound as much as confuse, pushing boundaries, and stretching the limit of that band's 'sound'. But some groups, you don't want to ever change. You want every record to be a continuation of the one before it, you long for some way to make every song, and every record, seemingly play forever. Each release, more like a movement in a massive symphony stretched out over multiple records and multiple years.
The key though, is to somehow, within this sonic stasis, to continue to evolve, however subtly. Sure the sound remains unchanged, the tone and timbre is consistent. But within these boundaries, the songs do in fact change and shift, and offer up new ideas, new landscapes of sound, new hooks, new angles with which to hear, varied and wonderfully assorted pieces of a bigger whole.
Such is the case with dreamdoom duo Nadja, who much like their mainman Aidan Baker, release records at an alarming rate, often topping one a month, and while it's been challenging to review each and every one, we have, and we've enjoyed all of them. But listening to this latest Nadja, we began to view the band, and their record differently. There was no point in approaching this record as if it was their first, or as if it was something completely new, that we'd never heard before. Because we have. It's quite similar to past Nadja releases, the sound they've created is so much their own, the guitar impossibly full and blown out, organic, but wreathed in digital fuzz, and it's no studio trick, they played right here in aQ, and even at a less than deafening (but still plenty loud, thank you!) volume, they managed to conjure up the same heaving heaviness, the same gauzy atmospheres, the buried thump of the drum machine. In fact, as I was writing this, someone came up and asked if this was Nadja. C'mon! Most doom bands, drone bands, heck non-pop bands in general, you'd be hard pressed to immediately recognize. But Nadja have transcended all the descriptors often flung at them, doom, shoegaze, drone, metalgaze, they all apply, but none so much more than simply the name Nadja.
So why buy this one? Or the two forthcoming releases? Or the 30 or 40 past releases? Well, if you're like us, we can't get enough of the sound of Nadja. And like we mentioned above, we HAVE figured out a way to make this sound go on forever. Each record, takes the dense blissed out buzz, the lurching doomic trudge, the gloriously effulgent majesty of Nadja, and stretches it out just a little bit further. Each time adding something crucial that wasn't there before. On Skin Turns to Glass, the songs are evenmore meditative and repetitive, looped endlessly, the riffs churning mantra-like, a buzzing slow motion hynorock, separated by spaced out stretches of glimmering ambience, and deep cavernous drones. Every Nadja record we're tempted to declare it the best yet, but we'd bet you if we went back to one of the first releases, we'd immediately think that it was in fact the best one. Such is the magic of Nadja, the sound they've created, the soundworld, each piece is as important as any other, the sound wouldn't be complete, in fact can naver be truly complete, until there are no more records, no more songs, no more pieces to add to the ever expanding puzzle. Hopefully that will never happen.
Includes an unlisted bonus track, nearly thirty minutes of shimmering doomic minimalism, droning dark bliss, that explodes in the last minute or so, in a flurry of incendiary white noise, a drum damaged blown out psychguitar metallic meltdown, that ends quite abruptly, leaving us to wait patiently for the next movement, coming soon...
Yet another new Nadja, this one part of Southern's Latitudes series, where bands are given some time in Southern Studios to write, rehearse and record a new and exclusive, often improvised set of songs. The duo of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff, aka Nadja, whipped up two sprawling epics, both near 20 minutes long, and by now fans of Nadja pretty much know what they're getting into, it's gorgeously ambient, droney, blissed out and heavy, these two are after all probably the preeminent purveyors of dreamdronedoomdrift or metalgaze or whatever you want to call it, and the tracks here are as good as anything else they've done. And anyway, Nadja fans also tend to be a bit obsessive, and will probably not even read this far, but be warned, these are quite limited, and we got WAY fewer copies than we ordered, especially of the cds, so if you want one of these, you're gonna have to act fast.
For those new to the world of Nadja, or just want to know how these two jams stack up. The first, "Jaguar", is a slow smoldering ambient soundscape, all crackle and rumble and creak and groan, laced with static, and tolling bells, mysterious voices, soft chordal swells, and of course a thick swirl of crumbling distorted guitar, that takes more than half of the song to full surface, and when it does, it doesn't launch into crushing doom, instead it roils and churns, a thick undulating expanse of effects drenched guitar dronebliss, abstract and ambient, but still dark and heavy and blissfully buzz.
The title track begins with keening streaks of high end over a swirl of rumble and whir, some spare programmed drumming, all beneath thick clouds distorted guitar chords, left to ring out and fade away slowly, streaked with feedback, this track too forgoes the usual bombastic onslaught, and instead, offers a gradual build, and a less obvious climax, a swirling tangle of melodies and effects, the guitar and bass droned out and thick, an epic squall of murky and muddied psychedelia, all still anchored to that machine like rhythm, fantastically space-y and spaced out.
Like we've said in the past, you can fault Nadja for having an un-keep-up-with-able release schedule, but you sure as heck can't accuse them of releasing anything but gold, and these two tracks definitely rank up there with the rest of the highlights in their highlight heavy catalog.
As with all Latitudes, LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, cd and lp, the covers are the immediately recognizable brown and white origami style Latitudes sleeves (the lp sleeves are black and white, and not so origami), the Nadja one with a hand rubber stamped cover (on the cd), and a full color insert inside. And we didn't get as many as we ordered of this one, so act fast...
One of two new releases from Mr. Aidan Baker. One under his own name, a gorgeously druggy twangy slab of slowcore, and this the latest from his slow motion sludge metal doom duo Nadja.
And it's a killer. One single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel.
The disc begins with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in it's depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone.
And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering.
About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
Besides being one of FIVE, count 'em, FIVE new releases from the ever prolific Nadja on this week's list, Thaumoradiance also just so happens to be a companion to a previously released disc, Thaumogenesis, which has just been repressed and is also reviewed elsewhere on this list as part of the abovementioned four.
Being a companion release, it of course shares much sonically with its predecessor, a sound shared by most Nadja records in fact, but as we've mentioned before, Nadja have found a sound, and embodied it. Made it absolutely their own. The sound of Nadja is not something you'd easily confuse with their doombliss brethren. While they exist in a scene rife with bands creating similar music, a world of droning dirgey doomy metallic show gaze-y bliss, they also exist outside of it.
Thaumogenesis is gorgeous sounding, recorded live. Two tracks. The first, is the title track from an older Nadja record, reimagined, and begins as a slow core crawl, with hushed vocals, waaaaay off in the distance drum machine skitter, simple soft guitar strum, peppered with HUGE speaker melting walls of sound. Crumbling distortion, garbled vocals, throbbing bass, the cool thing here, is the weird digital skips and stutters, the heavy part always being preceded by some glitched out chunk chunk chunk, before the hammer falls. And the opener transforms surprisingly into a thick shimmery high end whirl, white noise washed out into dreamy feedback speckled glimmer.
The second, is an alternate version of "Thaumogenesis", and is just as gloriously blissed out and effulgent as the original version. Much of the track is spent glistening minimally, melodies and notes nothing but soft smears of sound, a washed out haze of barely there shimmer, but it's Nadja, so the heavy parts manage to be just as pretty, but suffused with blown out buzz, and a rainbow halo of crackle and buzz, whir and hum, the drums a monstrous pummel, the bass and guitar thick and superdistorted, but still shot through with dreamlike melodies, and wreathed in an warm unearthly glow. We describe the original as sounding like M83, Merzbow and Philip Jeck, if anything this version, is less Merzbow and more of the other two, eventually unwinding into a languorous fuzz infused drift, peppered with haunting FX drenched percussion, and dark whirling ambience. Haunting and lovely. Of course.
As with all aRCHIVE releases, the packaging is fantastic, similar to Thaumogenesis, a sort of 6 panel center gatefold, the cd affixed to the inner center panel, artwork by Seldon Hunt, and of course, LIMITED TO ONLY 600 COPIES!
Crashing waves of balls of yarn. That's one attempt to explain this band's sound... Along with bringing in the usual Earth, SUNNO))), and Boris comparisons. The Toronto based duo of Aidan Baker (guitars, vocals, flute, piano, drum machines) and Leah Buckareff (bass and vocals) are an "atmospheric doom" band whose slow moving, heavy and heavily distorted music definitely shares something with the likes of early Earth, but although they've done a split 3" with UK doom nasties Moss (among several previous underground releases) you can't really define them as being a "metal" band at all. Their gauzy, droney, doom-spelled-backwards music has a warm, melodic underpinning, somewhere within the billowing clouds of distortion that form the three long tracks found here. I guess it's something like the churchy, "funereal" doom of Finland's Skepticism, really, but even more calm, echoed and ambient. Melancholic but very pleasant, with both growled vocals and gentle singing hovering just beneath the surface, this music somehow suggests rays of pure white light shining down from on high to illuminate their low-end murk... and during the final third of the last track "Breakpoint" the heaviness drops away altogether for a quietly sung coda that could be from the most mellow and poetic of indie-pop albums. Nadja's music is definitely more abstract and altered than, say, Ocean (another sludge-dirge outfit reviewed elsewhere this list), and is so much more beautiful than the monochrome darkness dwelt in by many other doom bands. If you can imagine an ultra-distorted hybrid of Growing, Codeine and, uh, Ras Algethi you'd maybe come close to the sound of Nadja... Recommended!!
Brand new double disc from prolific drone doom duo Nadja, each disc a whole record unto itself one crushing and heavy, the other blissed out and shimmery, but both discs meant to be played together simultaneously, Zaireeka style, if you're so inclined (and equipped).
Both discs sound a bit clearer on their own, the doomier disc is spacious and spaced out, bass driven with simple programmed drums, hushed vocals, lots more tripped out effects than usual, a dizzying cloud of glimmers and chimes, swoops and bleeps, all wrapped around simple lumbering crush and heaving swells of lush heaviness, very Godfleshy sounding actually, pretty stripped down, long stretches of low end rumble and drum pound. One track is all ambient, washed out and hushed, some woozy slowcore drift, that gives way to a final track that is gorgeously caustic, blown and and sun baked, heavy heavy heavy, the weird thing is that without the second disc, it definitely sounds less lush, more murky, which for Nadja is not actually a bad thing. Probably most folks don't have a way of listening to both discs simultaneously, so know that the first disc is a killer blast of sludgy Nadja doomdrone that sounds great as it is.
The second disc is a much more abstract affair, obviously as it's meant to add texture and depth to the original, but it actually sounds pretty amazing on its own, all looped and hazy and gauzy, very Philip Jeck sounding in places, and in fact, this second disc has becomes a great late night drifting off record, with only one track that gets loud, and even then it's a soft cacophony of tones and blurred melodies, like a timestretched gamelan broadcast through a kaleidoscope.
So together, it's a little difficult to get the balance right, but when you do, it sounds pretty neat, the slower prettier numbers seem to work better, as the two tranquil drones have an easier time blending, the heavier jams get pretty chaotic, but listening to the final super heavy track, with both discs blasting, it is pretty transcendent, if there was some way to run both these through headphones at the same time, it might just send you spinning into some other dimension, certainly it'll probably invoke some sort of spontaneous hallucinations. Heavy, and pretty, and together, way dense and psychedelic!
And the packaging, wow! A huge hardcover book-like digipak with full color fold out panels, inside two printed inner sleeves (the only bummer being that their are no pockets, so the sleeves just sort of fall out when you open it), super striking for sure, and super limited too we're pretty sure.
Covers records can definitely be a cop out. They're easy, and fun, and who doesn't want to just jam out to their favorite tunes. But some covers records do transcend, whether it's song choice, theme, or those particular versions and interpretation, the right covers, played the right way, can be as good if not better than a band's records proper. Which makes sense as you're typically covering songs that are, at least to you, if not everyone, 'classics.'
Which brings us to When I See The Sun Always Shines On TV, which is in fact, a collection of covers, many of which might seem like super obvious choices. Which is okay, it's as if Nadja wanted to acknowledge their influences loudly and proudly in the face of folks who accuse them of ripping off some of these very same bands. And at least half of these tracks are actually by bands that we've compared Nadja to in past reviews. So we were sort of psyched to see how instead of infusing their own music with the influences of other bands, they might approach it the other way around, taking these songs and bands they love, and filtering them through their own sound. Alongside those obvious choices though are some totally out of left field choices, that on the surface seem to make no sense, but in the context of this collection fit perfectly, and when heard all buzzy and blissy and Nadja'd up, sometimes sound better than the originals.
The album opens with My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow", and Nadja make it their own, which is no small feat considering how iconic that main riff is, but heck, in the past we'v talked about how everything sounds better slower, well imagine that jam, slowed way down, and beefed WAY up, so what was already THEE shoegaze anthem of all time, is transformed into a lurching, heaving, crumbling mass of glorious blurred and blown out soft focus heaviness. Then comes Codeine's "Pea", another obvious Nadja influence, we would have gone for "Cave In", some doom band needs to cover that one, but "Pea" suits them, they don't even rock it out that much, it's a bit heavier, but not much slower, and Aidan Baker's soft tentative croon is a dead ringer for Codeine's Stephen Immerwahr. The band also tackle the Swans, and the Cure, the latter's "Faith" stretched out to almost 13 minutes, and expansive glorious woozy gloomy sprawl.
But it's the unlikely choices that seal the deal. A-Ha? It's the track that gives this comp its title, and although we're not familiar with the original, the Nadja version is gorgeous, heavy and poppy and gloriously blown out.
Then there's the Slayer cover, "Dead Skin Mask" from Seasons In The Abyss, not as obvious a choice as "Raining Blood" or "Angel Of Death", but for Nadja a much more suitable choice, that main riff, sounds soooooo good, all sludgey and washed out, that main melody even more seasick and woozy sounding, the new version somehow even creepier than the original. However our favorite two tracks here are definitely the least likely, one you may have heard, one you most likely haven't.
First, Elliott Smith's "Needle In The Hay", which of course is a fantastic song, but in Nadja's capable hands, it becomes even more harrowing, much more minor key, the vocals worn and weary, the drums a trudging death march, all beneath a thick layer of droning buzz and keening keyboards, and then that main hook, so epic and mysterious and sorrowful. You can almost imagine this is what Smith was imagining when he wrote it. And as much as we love this whole disc, this is the one we keep returning to.
And then there's "Long Dark Twenties", which was previously releases as a super limited 7", and which just happens to be a cover of a song from the Kids In The Hall movie, and yeah, that makes no sense at all, but as far as we're concerned it's become a Nadja song, we actually reviewed that song in depth when we had the 7", so let's revisit that briefly:
Folks who managed to catch Nadja performing live at aQuarius not too long ago, were treated to quite possibly the heaviest, catchiest, grooviest Nadja track yet. An awesome hook filled seventies rock style ultra jam, wrapped in thick clouds of billowing distortion and anchored by the crunch and pound of programmed beats, Aidan Baker's vocals a whispered croon, Leah Buckareff's bass throbbing and rumbling, but the main riff, SHIT, unbelievable, even after our ears stopped ringing, we were all humming that riff for days...
Well the funny thing we learned later, was that there song was in fact a cover. And an incredibly unlikely cover at that. The only obvious link between the original and the band covering it? Canada. The song, some of you might remember, is in fact from the Kids In The Hall movie Brain Candy, and proves that Nadja can turn hooky pop into hooky sludge-y doom. The chorus is an absolute killer, and similar to how Torche transform pop into skullcrushing hook filled heaviness, Nadja take that pop and wrap it all up in some of their distinctive blissed out fuzz and we're talking HIT. Well, a hit if there were actually some sort of blissdoomdronesludgepop chart. Which there should be. And there sort of is, in our heads, but anyway...
So yeah, for folks who missed out on that single, or who just want to have it on cd instead of vinyl, well, it's worth the price of admission for just that jam. But thankfully, every song on here is a crushing doom drenched, pop infused, slow motion chunk of dreamy blissed out, ultra catchy heaviness. And even though it's not technically a proper Nadja record, it just may well be our favorite Nadja record yet.
Number five of five (!) on this week's list from uber prolific doomster Aidan Baker and his doombliss duo Nadja. Thankfully each release has something new to offer, so even if you have a whole shelf in your house dedicated to your Baker/Nadja collection, all four of these are definitely worth making a little extra space for.
This one especially, since if you're a fan of things dark and shimmery, dreamy and drone-y, then you're bound to be enthralled by the Netherworld tracks here, which help balance the loooong Nadja track at the end. Plus the two collaborate on a song as well, so there's lots of doomdreamdrift to be had.
The first three tracks are all Netherworld, and they do in fact sound like some strange Netherworld, all soft swells and muted chimes, gentle drifts of warm whir and distant shimmer, long slow tones, deep lush chordal smears, all very serene and sprawling, minimal, yet somehow epic and cinematic, sweeping soundscapes that evoke, wide open expanses of ice and snow, rolling hills, emptiness, an endless horizon. Soothing and meditative, a disembodied abstract new age, quite lovely for sure. And definitely reminiscent sonically of Thomas Koner, Lull, Biosphere and the like.
The Nadja track that closes the cd is a 19 minute crusher, but as heavy as it is, and as doomy, it manages to be more effulgent and incandescent, the guitars grinding and shooting off rainbow colored sparks, thick radiant swells of sound, that seem to stand still yet manage to convey inexorable forward momentum, in fact this track finds Nadja giving Sunroof! a run for their money. This is a seriously transcendent ur-drone, keening high end, sine waves, crumbling distortion, soaring, whirring, static buzz and fuzz and skree, all over a whirling undercurrent of throb and pulse. Truly one of the most intense and unique tracks we've heard from Nadja.
But before we get to this explosive coda, the two outfits team up for a transitional piece, which manages to perfectly meld the two aesthetics, and acts as a bridge between the serene contemplative drift of Netherworld, and the luminous roar of Nadja. A whirring slow building dronescape, deep resonant rumbles and soaring string like melodies, the layers of sound, thickening, gradually becoming more corrosive, more active, more volatile, until the sound is a roiling organic mass, a heaving sea of tangled tones, woven into a single whirling orb of sonic fire, threatening to engulf everything around it, which perfectly and almost seamlessly leads into Nadja's closing salvo.
Packaged in an oversized, 6 panel gatefold cardstock jacket, glossy and full color, the cd in its own plastic sleeve.
Ever wonder what it would sound like if Yoko Ono joined doomdrone duo Nadja? No? Well, we're guessing it would sound a little like this collaboration between Canadian doomgaze two piece Nadja and Italian chaotic weirdo avant punk duo OvO. The overall sound here seems to fall more toward the Nadja end of the sonic spectrum, but OvO definitely add their own twisted vibe, the result something dark, and creepy, and abstract, and occasionally very heavy and very fucked up and awesome. Separated into four movements and based on some strange concept about killing a wasp in a cup of coffee, the record begins with some loping heavy slowcore, big drums, lush clean guitar chords, and all sorts of swirling weirdness, detuned melodies, harmonics, strange FX, long stretches of ambience, buried guttural vocals, streaks of feedback, it's not until nearly the end when OvO vocalist Stefania lets loose, with her childlike Ono-ish trill, operatic and creepy as hell, sometimes slipping into a monstrous gurgle, but just as often wailing like a banshee, while the music churns underneath. Can't help but be reminded of Bloody Panda too, the same sort of weird vocal / heaviness hybrid.
The second and third movements are shorter, and continue on in the same vein as the opener, with loping post rock rhythms, swirling blackened ambience, haunting chiming melodies, thick guitar thrum, more FX, Stefania's vocals never quite getting to the maniacal shriek stage, instead, slipping from hushed whisper, to almost black metal rasp, to cookie monster gurgle, the vibe almost Goblin-ish, heavy and dark, but cinematic and really creepy, the third movement the heaviest so far, a lurching doom, trudging grimly beneath wild drumming, and even wilder vocals, until finally, the 13 minute denouement, the final movement, which begins like some horror movie soundtrack, all fragmented melancholy melody, and deep heaving low end, droney and so ominous, gradually building to a strange industrial style drone-plod, which eventually explodes into something primal and tribal, pounding drums, those trilled super dramatic vox, an intense cathartic climax, which eases back into that ominous drift, this time with the vocals in full effect, the result, dark, bizarre, intense and fantastically out there!
This long in the works split matches up doombliss duo Nadja (this is one of FIVE new Nadja releases on this week's list! Yowza!) with ambient soundscapers 5/5/2000 (featuring aQ pal Nathan, from Creation Is Crucifixion, M. Kourie, Human Quena Orchestra, and Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation) and it proves to be a pretty potent and appropriate pairing.
Nadja start things off, and waste no time, no slow builds, no pretty simmering, it's straight into a big ol' lurching doom, the drums big and reverbed, the guitar offered up in swells, and allowed to drift off, leaving just the drums to pound away between bursts of crumbling distortion. Very industrial sounding, dark ambient, the drums locked into a loop, a distant keening high end hovering just above the rumbling whir, there is a build up, but the duo begin the build already in the thick of it. The guitars grow more and more fuzzed out, the sound becomes thicker and more distorted, the background becomes more chaotic, riffs seem to coalesce out of those abstract swells, strange harmonics drift into the picture, the recording sounds decayed and damaged, as if it was some unearthed archival slab of ancient doom bliss, until the last 4 or 5 minutes, when yet more buzz and distortion enter the fray, and while the drums remain constant, they seem to sink deeper and deeper beneath the blossoming swirl of blown out noise and warm dense fuzz, all the while the sound threatening to crumble or collapse, gloriously fractured post industrial doom bliss crawl for sure.
5/5/2000 reply with what might be their heaviest recording to date. A nearly 17 minute low end sprawl, groaning, coruscating distortion, rumbling and roiling, while beneath some sort of shimmery soundscape plays out. Delicate and dreamy, abstract melodies drifting and swirling, fuzzy and gauzy and blurred into soft focus streaks, until right near the end, when the soft tranquility is overtaken by a dense swell of layered guitar, grinding and buzzing, a blissed out, blown out blackened drone.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each lp comes with a cd featuring the same music, as well as a printed cardstock insert.
You think by now, that after a million or so releases, we'd be sick of Nadja, and could nor possibly need/want another record to add to our already overflowing Nadja collection, but somehow, we just never get sick of it, and love pretty much everything we hear, and still get excited when we hear about a new record, and every one seems to sound better than the last, what's not to love? Heavy, spacey, doomy, droney, shoegazey...
This latest sonic missive is another gem, a sidelong epic of hazy, druggy, rhythmic, almost krautrocky minimal post rock doom drift, but the thing is, it never gets loud, or heavy, whereas most Nadja jams eventually explode into a roiling crushing blissed out wall of heaviness, this one refrains, instead, loping, and drifting, and shimmering, and pulsing hypnotically, while all around the main riff and the simple motorik rhythm, backwards sounds swoop and swirl, guitar drones are layered and blurred, the bass sticks close to the drum machine, a solid anchor for the various other sounds to hover and float, the whole thing an endlessly mesmerizing chunk of softly shoegazey krautdrone slowcore. So good.
Nadja get teamed up here with someone called Armchair Migraine Journey, who counter Nadja's sidelong epic with one of their own, a field of glimmering, chiming, shimmering guitars, melodies and chords and notes swirl and shift and merge and tangle, all over a bed of low end hum, peppered with occasional echo drenched, deep and dramatic vocals, giving the sound a bit of a cold wave / gothic vibe, but only briefly, as the vocals drift off, and the tangle of guitars take over again. The side finishes off with a coda of minimal metallic buzz and haunting music box melodies. Pretty great stuff, and a good match for the Nadja track, which definitely ranks among their best.
And the packaging, WOW. A super fancy, super heavy black sleeve, printed in metallic silver, with a printed insert and pressed on thick thick vinyl. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
This record was pretty much custom made for most of you. A three way split of extreme heavy bliss out dream doom, featuring the WAY too prolific Nadja, who continue to get a pass, because we STILL can't get enough of -that- sound, the not nearly prolific enough Atavist, and a new name to add to the list of bands to obsess over, Satori, a duo featuring the head honcho of the always awesome Cold Spring label who made this disc happen.
Not sure if there was a reason for this three way split, a tour or something, or maybe it's just cuz the three bands fit pretty nicely together, whatever the reason for this happening, we're glad it did.
Starting with Nadja, who again offer up a gorgeously gauzy sprawl of Jesu meets M83, all super distorted crumbling melodies, lurching buried in the mix drum machine, weary ethereal vocals, melancholy minor key melodies, wrapped into an awesome chunk of doomed metallic slowcore, lots of dynamics and texture, a loooooong slow build a la Godspeed, with an epic and triumphant climax. So good. One of the best Nadja track yet maybe.
Atavist do their own sort of doom thing, this time a skeletal mathy post rock, clean guitars spread out over spare drumming, very Slint-ish, all spidery and delicate, until a minute or so in, when the hammer falls, shrieked blackened vox, super distorted crumbling guitars, pounding percussion, a strange flurry of off kilter jagged mathiness, before it's back to the moody Slinty sprawl. Eventually, the track becomes blown out and so in-the-red all the instruments seem to melt together, until the band unfurl a blackened post metal jam that might sound more at home on a Deathspell Omega record, culminating in a gorgeous almost symphonic sounding high end coda.
Finally, Satori, who have a lot to prove in such esteemed company, take an entirely different tack, with processed garbled vocals, over distant whirring drones, a creepy hellish machinelike soundscape of post industrial hiss and grind, deep rumbling swells, thick hissing walls of muted buzz, buried melodies, disembodied voices and buried melodies, all very grim and apocalyptic, think MZ412, Lustmord or Wolf Eyes, some seriously haunting and harrowing black ambience.
Packaged in a multi paneled black and white jacked and housed in a plastic sleeve. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
A match made in dreamdrone heaven, one that has now spawned a second collaboration, between two of the most prolific in their field. Swapping files back and forth to create a devastatingly potent sonic brew, Nadja and Black Boned Angel have delivered two crushing epics, heavy and blackened, a sonic representation of their combined might.
Unlike the surprisingly poppiness of their first match up, this is a much grimmer beast. Starting with an almost Xasthur-esque opening, rife with slightly sour funereal guitars, a creeping wave of distortion slowly moves in like a persistent rainstorm. After about 6 minutes, the drums kick in like the beginning of a forced march towards a very bleak end. Soon a cloak of industrial strength feedback takes over everything else with occasional pounds of a drum popping up here and there. The results are somewhat like Skullflower's recent work with pulverizing feedback and a harsh grinding feel. Eventually, the blankets of distortion subside and the song ends with a low rumbling sound and a sustained burst of high pitched skree. The second number here opens with a low hum that constantly turns on itself before a sloooooooooooow dirgey beat comes in, taking the on its strange circular path. Some heavy subsonic riffs enter the picture at the 13 minute mark, merging with the rest of the fuzzed out drones, and the song becomes so heavy that it seems like at any moment it might collapse on itself due to the sheer density of it all. Still, a discernible melody cuts through to bring the piece to its SUNNO)))-styled conclusion, 26 minutes later. Whew.
Perfect listening for anyone looking to get lost in the epic sonic sludge of these two masters.
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This band from Argentina, at times are a dead ringer for desert rockers Kyuss, while at others, they blend an unbelievably lush tapestry of hypnotic rhythms and droning tribal space rock, to make this probably the best thing Man's Ruin has released in ages.
Stoner rock split cd from these two South American bands, both falling somewhere in the Kyuss/Sabbath realm.
Another new Nebula record. Definitely their best record although not a whole lot has changed. These ex-Fu Manchu folks play fuzzed out, drugged out, groovy stoner rock and play it well. And just because this is nothing new, doesn't mean it isn't still loads
This collects the two eps (duh, dos eps) from the preeminent fuzzed out stoner rock combo, Nebula. This includes their Meteor City ep and their split with Lowrider as well as 3 brand spanking new tracks. Overblown, super fuzz guitar, drawling lazy stonerboy vocals and big b i g B I G drums. Sounds as good as ever. Cruisng through the desert with the top down kind of lazy hazy summertime RAWK.
Attention, all you stoner-rock freaks (man, we need a new name for this stuff): ex-Fu Manchu (and better-than-Fu Manchu) dudes Nebula have a new album out. Maybe this is Sub Pop's way of veering back into "the new grunge"? Anyway, just from the cover shot of the band's equipment stacked out in a desert somewhere, this looks like it'll meet your rawk requirements.
Way back in 2010 we made the debut from this UK outfit our Record Of The Week. This awesomely named outfit, with an equally awesomely named record (This Beat Is Necrotronic) delivered what was at the time, and really still is, one of the weirdest sonic combos we could imagine, churning downtuned drone-doom heaviness, and wild programmed electronics, a crazy collision of metal ambience and electronic beats, that had the potential to be a modern Judgment Night soundtrack (and by that we mean AMAZING, but reviled, hate mail welcomed). And while rap and metal never made the best mix to some ears, there was no arguing with Necro Deathmort's musical math, which resulted in the sort of dancefloor heaviness that just didn't exist, and perhaps some would argue shouldn't. We however flipped out, this was like dance music for metalheads, electronica for dronelords, big beats and brutal blackness fused into something spaced out, hypnotic, fucked up and seriously dementedly genius.
So after raving endlessly about three records in a row from these guys (This Beat Is Necrotronic, Music Of Bleak Origin and The Colonial Script), EP1 marks NdM's first ever vinyl release, and we're happy to report that everything we loved about these guys is still in full effect, after a creepy ominous synthed out intro that sounds like the beginning of some druggy planetarium show, the record really kicks off with "Titan", which sounds like dubstep at 16rpm, the beats doused in echo, dubbed to high heave, the tempo a lumbering, lurching lope, and all around that beat, thick swaths of gristly glitched out low end, dense swells of crumbling thrum, thick synth bass throb, we'd have been perfectly happy to just listen to that creeping droned out pound endlessly, but instead, the sound blossoms into something nearly house-y, a little bit Carpenter/Goblin too, pulsing synths, twisted minor key melodies, only to collapse into something a bit more introspective, as "Probe" starts out all kosmische and shimmery, before a driving beat surfaces, and the sound becomes more a sort of psychedelic space rock, the sort of thing you might expect to hear on Agitated or Rocket, a spacey groove, surrounded on all sides by strange electronics and atmospheric swirls.
"Kingdom" is where things darken again, a smoldering creep, thick washes of buzzing synth, a pulsing 4/4 throb, lots of churning, roiling low end, and then surprisingly, things get downright dance-y, sounding like some fucked up Kompakt release, maybe remixed by James Plotkin or Stephen O'Malley, the core sound skittery and electro, but the sounds themselves, thick and buzzy, blackened and crunchy, again, a seriously dancefloor darkening jam for sure. "Void" sounds like SUNNO))) run through Dom Fernow's new Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement project, spare and murky, moody and atmospheric, blackened and bleak, with buried beats barely audible through the sonic murk, while close "Scanner" finishes things off on a surprisingly upbeat note, with some blown out glitch-step, the beats super warped and fragmented, and set amidst a backdrop of billowing serene synth dreaminess, a strange juxtaposition that results in a sort of new wave draped electro-glitch, that sounds like our favorite classic IDM gone haywire. Which is most definitely a good thing.
Includes a download code as well!
We made the debut from the awesomely named Necro Deathmort our Record Of The Week way back in January of 2010. As we mentioned in that review it was pretty much a no brainer, the band name to begin with, the album title (The Beat Is Necrotonic), but then the sound, heaving walls of SUNOO))) like heaviness wedded to skittery beats, blackened drones wrapped around low slung rhythms, a sort of SUNNO)) meets Squarepusher electro-metal-blackened-dubstep, beat flecked slo-mo doom bliss wreathed in hazy spaciness, all drifty and mesmerizing, psychedelic, hypnotic and HEAVY.
If anything, this new one, record number two, even more evocatively titled Music Of Bleak Origin, is exactly what you would hope for as a follow up. In some ways, the gimmick of the first record was almost enough, sludgey metal guitars AND beats, granted, those two elements, not usually good bedfellows, were deftly woven into something special, heavy enough for the metalheads, but atmospheric and rhythmic enough for everyone else, but here, it's like that first record reimagined, and re-engineered, sonically, compositionally, it's heavier, more melodic, the songs are more catchy, more actual proper songs, the beats are bigger too, with much of the record REALLY sounding like a metal dubstep record, with the sound shifting easily from doomy skitter, to lurching electronics laced lumber, at its heaviest, definitely worthy of any self respecting metalhead's attention (adventurous metalheads we might qualify), but those heavy moments are not JUST heavy, their tangled up with squelchy synths, spaced out effects, keening vocals way down in the mix, almost like they decided to add space rock to their already eclectic palette, and when they're more concerned with beats, that heaviness, and doominess, and bleak origin, seeps into every beat, every twisted loop, or fuzzy buzzy synth.
The brief opener is the perfect intro, a stuttery beat, pelted with squelches, laid over thick undulating bass, all wrapped in thick layers of buzz and long streaks of high metallic skree, a perfect chunk of electro metallic dirgery. It's not until the second track that NdM really get to let loose, starting out with a super skeletal beat, draped with fragmented melodies, hushed muted effects, a sort of spacerock Portishead, but then the big guitars come crashing in, and then the sound becomes a churning psychedelic doom, lumbering, lurching, the thick crumbling guitars wrapped in swirling synths, the vocals heavy with effects, a sort of metalgaze spacedoom that RULES.
Which makes the next track even more of a surprise, "Temple Of Juno" is straight up dubstep, like it could have been yanked off some Hyperdub 12", until the music swings in, changing the vibe to low slung and again sorta doomy, but riff with woozy synths, wordless vocals, another dirgey bit of psychedelic electro doom, that builds and builds until again, the guitars are massive, roiling and churning, now strapped to buzzy dubsteppy synths, and so it goes swinging from dubbed out metallic lumber to spacey synthy drift and back again.
"Uberlord" is total blackened guitardrone, wall of crumbling buzz, but again, liberally does with swirls of static, fractured FX, and shinnery synths, the result way more spaced out and psychedelic that heavy, which gives way to "For Your Own Good", which starts out all murky and muted and heroin house-y, gradually getting more and more dubbed out, the beats building in intensity, more buried vocals, it's not until about halfway through that the beat splinters into a way more propulsive rhythm, still motorik but more muscly, all wreathed in a synth spacey haze, hypnotic and dreamily blissed out.
"Devastating Vector", unwinds a stuttery techno beat, and some glitchy synths, and lays them out over a dense layered sprawl of ominous low end rumble and buzz, which transforms into some undulating buzzed out bass, the song a sort of dubbed out techno flecked dirge, until it gets SERIOUSLY electro, the sound wrapped in zig zagging synth melodies, dizzying and almost housey, but still the beat and the low end churns along relentlessly, it is actually sort of funky, but in a way that manages to kick ass, not what you would expect from 'funkiness' in this context at all. And of course it's Necro Deathmort, so halfway through, the song explodes in a burst of static, only to come out the other side all thick and buzzy and sludge, the bass blown out and blackened, the beat a lumbering lurch, the whole thing oozy and melty like the whole thing is some huge black mass pouring from your speakers. "Blizzard" sounds like part two of "Devastating Vector", less funky and more plodding, the synths set on swirl, lots of crunch and distortion, moody and murky and woozily washed out, the song rife with subtle melody, the vibe sort of melancholy.
"The Heat Death Of Everything" starts out all big booming beat, and keening high end drones, sounding like Jesu or Nadja or something, and then the hammer falls, and by hammer, we mean massive, thick, sludgey downtuned riffage, about as metal as these guys get, a death march trudge, all howled distorted vocals, pounding drum pummel, squealing feedback, almost industrial / mechanical, but with a Moss / Bunkur sort of ultradoom vibe as well, the sound eventually begins to glow, with subtle color, and buried melody, eventually transforming into a swirl of washed out shimmer and gauzy droned out drift, only to lead straight into the final track, "Moon", a haunting hushed outro, all muted moaning melody, and echo drenched skeletal rhythms, like a doomdronedirge Portishead, total druggy, late night chill out minimal electro-doom slowcore drift.
Fucking awesome, AGAIN. Anyone who bought the first one is DEFINITELY gonna want this one too, and anyone who somehow missed out on these guys the first time around, here's another chance. Absolutely contender for fave record of the year, metal, electronic, otherwise or BOTH.
Super swank packaging, a massive, gorgeously illustrated fold out poster sleeve, housed in a stickered PVC plastic sleeve.
Does the name Hellhammer mean anything to you? The raw, Venom-worshipping, Melvins-inspiring cult metal band that later morphed into Celtic Frost? Well it meant A LOT to the guys in Necro Schizma, a Dutch doom band whose 1989 demo tape has just now been
In addition to the six tracks from Necro Schizma's demo tape that appear here, there's another seven tracks recorded at a live gig in 1990. They do a cover version of Hellhammer's classic "Triumph of Death" both live and on the demo, and it easily could be one of their tunes (except maybe it's a little *faster* than their own stuff!).
Aside from Hellhammer, they also list as inspirations Venom, Bathory, Celtic Frost, Manowar, Angel Witch, Messiah, Judas Priest, and Slaughter (we're pretty sure that'd be the Canadian thrash act, not the the American hair metallers). They don't mention Saint Vitus, but boy does the guitar sound like vintage Dave Chandler!
Doom. Pure doom. Made by fans back in the day, luckily unearthed for fans today. We only have a few copies, and may or may not be able to get more, so if you think you want one, be quick. Thanks to Greg Anderson (Southern Lord/Goatsnake/SUNNO)))) for turning us on to this!
Another labor of proto-metal love reissue here from the folks at Rise Above, who brought us the Steel Mill listed last list, and the Bang box before that. If you liked Steel Mill in particular, Necromandus is worth checking out too. Like Steel Mill, it's got a bit of left-field progginess mixed in with its proto-metal heaviness... or maybe the other way around. Really, on paper, you'd think this would be super heavy. First off, the name Necromandus sounds rather metal and evil doesn't it? As does the album title, and songs with names like "Homicidal Psychopath" and "A Black Solitude". And, this album, recorded in 1973 and intended for release on Vertigo (which ultimately didn't happen), was in fact produced by none other than Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi! He even contributes a guitar solo on the title track.
The album starts off with the striking of a gong, followed by a brief atmospheric instrumental intro, then, wham, does indeed get pretty darn Sabbathy with the galloping "Night Jar", a definite proto-metal classic as good ('n heavy) as anything by Jerusalem, Bang, Dust, Lucifer's Friend, Night Sun, May Blitz, Leaf Hound, etc. But after that, Necromandus suddenly take a turn and get all jazzy/proggy on us for the rest of the record, sounding more like Yes than Sabbath, really, which is ok by us as well. Good stuff, and definitely not altogether mellow! In fact, a lot of it is rather ripping. You'll still hear echoes of Sabbath, who had their proggy side too, after all. But folks looking for pure proto-metal / doom might be confused. Although we'd say "Night Jar" alone is worth the price of admission for them, anyway!
Plus, for this deluxe reissue (which comes in a slipcase, with lavish booklet, like the Steel Mill), Rise Above have added 9 bonus tracks, a good, raw recording of the band kicking ass at a live show from '73, featuring a bunch of the album tracks and more.
Too band Necromandus didn't "make it", hard to understand why not, they were definitely a talented group and you'd think their connection with Sabbath would have helped (they even momentarily formed Ozzy Osbourne's original solo band when he first left Sabbath in '77, before returning to do Never Say Die). Probably had they actually been more metal... but we like what they got up to here, regardless.
Longtime readers of the aQ list might remember Myles Of Destruction, fronted by long time aQ pal Myles Donovan. A kick ass trio of drums, bass and violin, a little bit metal, a little bit grind, a little bit gypsy stomp, an unlikely cross between Amps For Christ, Warlock Pinchers, Emperor and Magnetic Fields maybe. Well Myles is back with a new band that's a bit darker and a whole lot doomier, the evocatively monikered Negative Queen, which we initially surmised came from the Pansy Division song, but according to the liner notes is actually something someone said to Donovan at one point, oh and it might be worth pointing out at this point then Negative Queen are purveyors of QUEER DOOM. And while we weren't sure what to expect sonically, would it be ultra blown out sludge, or downtuned metallic plod, we were pleasantly surprised to discover it was neither, instead, something more spare and sparse, more moody and melodic, tapping into a sort of swampy apocalyptic creep more than anything, hints of Woven Hand and Nick Cave, a sort of gothy grim moodiness that wreathes the minimal drumming, the spidery minor key guitars, the warm low slung bass, and the deep dramatic croon. And while it's definitely heavy and dark enough that metalheads should give this a chance, it definitely sounds like something that would be way more at home alongside the darkwave and slowcore in your collection. Did we mention Swans? The Swans vibe is huge too. The sound lush and layered, hauntingly atmospheric, just instead of pounding and pummeling, it creeps and slithers, drift and plods, dark and doomy for sure, but also strangely dreamy.
Slow and sludgy doom metal from New York, simple but effective. Their basic approach seems to be a repetitive riff played at an agonizingly slow pace with some throat-tearing vocals and NASA samples thrown in, plus some spacy fx. These guys seem obsessed with astronauts and outer space (the cover art features pyramids on the Moon), it's not surprising that the bonus track is a
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Negative Reaction is the New York sludge combo. Ramesses is the band formed by the (drunk, stoned) guys that quit Electric Wizard.
Been wanting to list this reissue for a while, finally got enough of a handful in stock to do so. If you're into doom metal at all, real old school doom metal, then you're familiar with Swedish legends Candlemass. The premier epic doom band of the '80s, responsible for classic albums like Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Nightfall, and Ancient Dreams, who are still at it today, most recently bringing the hammer down with Death Magic Doom reviewed here a few months ago.
Well, way way back in their misty past there lurks Nemesis. This is where Candlemass's career of doom began. Featuring future Candlemass bassist/bandleader Leif Edling, and axewielder Christian Weberyd, Nemesis recorded a 12" ep in 1984 entitled The Day Of Retribution. Here it is reissued, complete with original PINK cover art (yay! we love anything, especially anything metal, with a pink cover!). The five songs of the ep, some of them later reused in Candlemass compositions, are examples of raw, wrenching doom dirge at its most basic best. Like Black Sabbath from beyond the grave, gone even more gothic and grim. Maybe I'm just a Candlemass fanboy, but this stuff still gives me the chills. Part of Nemesis' charm belongs to the unpolished vocals, from Leif Edling himself. He's not a soaring, operatic vocalist like Candlemass's best known singer Messiah Marcolin, not at all, but he sounds like he means it, wailing like a damned soul, in a lower register. The chugging riffs and Leif's anguished vox convey a lot of emotive power, enhanced too by the rough production, making the perfect mystic music for blasphemous rites and psychological breakdowns, conjuring Satanic black shapes within one's mind...
This new reissue, with liner notes from Leif, is filled out with six bonus tracks. A prior reissue had paired the Nemesis ep with early Candlemass demos, but this includes even earlier, more cult Nemesis demos instead! Tinny and distorted, but definitely of historical, doomological interest, after you've enjoyed the main course.
Really, at this point, what else is there to say about long running epic doom/sludge outfit Neurosis that we (or someone else) hasn't already? Their sound, ever evolving, remains a template for a million bands that have and will continue to follow in their gargantuan footsteps. The arrival of each new record is an event unto itself. Their performances, increasingly rare, rival Godspeed and Phish and the Grateful Dead in terms of obsessive and slavish fan worship, with fans driving hours, even flying to see them perform. And anyone (including us) will tell you it's well worth it, their performances visceral and emotional, punishing and epic. And they continue to masterfully craft their own brand of brooding, majestic heaviness, even now, nearly THIRTY years in.
This latest full length finds them once again returning to Electrical Audio in Chicago, with Steve Albini manning the mixing board, having been recording them since 1999's Times Of Grace, and while we all have our favorite Neurosis records (Andee's is Enemy Of The Sun, Allan's is Souls At Zero), they've yet to make a bad record. And while they continue to crush and pummel, they have also mellowed with age, or maybe more accurately, gotten more comfortable expanding the group' sonic palette, and it definitely suits them, this new record might be the most varied, and in some ways the least heavy yet.
The opener almost sounds like Neurosis channeling Lungfish, the same sort of looped trancelike mesmer, with the vocals delivered in a staccato sung/spoken bark, the vibe a little bit groovy too, a strange opener for sure, but about halfway through it slips into huge heaving riffery, and yet instead of sounding crushingly heavy, it's more sort of washed out and psychedelic, the heaving riffs, laced with woozy melodies, and weary clean vox.
We can't help but think Steve Von Till's and Scott Kelly's forays into folky singer songwriter territory and their obsession with the late great Townes Van Zandt, hasn't informed the sound of Neurosis, with "At The Well" starting off with some spare guitar shimmer, and Von Till's raspy croon, and even when the hammer falls, it isn't the same sort of Neurosis pummel we would have expected, it remains mournful and melodic, and a little bit twangy, and it might just be our imagination, but we hear slivers of slide guitar drifting in the background, which gives the song even more of a melancholic vibe. "Bleeding The Pigs" too starts off a bit croony, but quickly evolves into something more fierce and feral only to lock into a long stretch of droned out psychedelia, that reimagined with different instrumentation could easily have turned into some brooding dark folk. And even in the heavy parts, that folkiness subtly surfaces again and again.
And as the record plays out, you begin to realize that in some ways, this is in fact a way different sounding group, with the churning, gnarled super distorted heaviness, relegated to a supporting role, the second half of "Casting Of The Ages", the final few minutes of "Bleeding The Pigs", sounding especially like old Neurosis with weird samples, tribal drumming, and anguished bellowed vox, but really, most of the rest of the record seems to be more contemplative, with strings surfacing here and there, acoustic guitars, long stretches of post rocky minimalism, brooding expanses of hushed drift, and then when the riffs come in, the pounding drums, they seem to be infused with a sort of mournful energy, and seem to be recorded in such a way, that the sound is more psychedelic, more lush and enveloping, a hammer wrapped in velvet, the band unfurling some of their moodiest, and most majestic material yet, which we imagine, live, could still translate into something utterly brutal and punishing, but here, exists as something much more measured and mature, a darkly melodic, occasionally metallic, moody musical fugue that is as much brooding heavy post rock and roiling psychedelic heaviness as it is doom dirge crush, and more often than not, much more so.
While they last, we have the limited version in slightly oversized gatefold digi-packaging, after which we'll have the slipcased jewelcase edition.
Here's another new one from the ever-reliable stoner rock label MeteorCity. This interesting, oddly named Swedish outfit is a HEAVY juggernaut indeed, but also nuanced, combining chugging guitar crush with graceful twin harmonies, and switching up from shouty aggro vox to more tuneful, croon-ful melodic singing. According to the Encyclopedia Metallum, The New Keepers Of The Water Towers' typical lyrical themes pertain to "Dwelling Beasts" - whatever that means. Perhaps those beasts are the quarry of "The Calydonian Hunt". There's certainly something mythic and fabled about their songtitles ("Mankind's Fall", "Arise, The Serpent", "The Sword In The Stone"...) and the music follows suit, their surging Swedish sludge being both bombastic and more complex than you might expect. Primal prog perhaps? Mystic metal? Certainly recommended to fans of such folks as High On Fire, Mastodon, Grand Magus, The Sword, and others of that equally heavy and probably bearded ilk.
You've probably never heard of Nibiru (this Nibiru anyway, though maybe you're deep into Sumerian mythology and/or Babylonian astronomy and are familiar with the term in other contexts!), but if you're at all a fan of throbbing, spaced-out sludge psych then please pay attention. Before writing this review, we put a tag on this in the store that just said "Ritualistic Occult Italian Doom" and that managed to sell a copy or two already, but more can be said about it. To elaborate, this is the debut full-length from an esoteric Italian trio who play totally-trance inducing, heavy rhythmic ritualistic stoner sludge. UFOmammut is an obvious reference point, Nibiru are equally fuzzed-out and head-nodding, but have some characteristics unique to themselves, notably their vocal stylings, which bring in an undercurrent of 'world music', the heavily effected vocals sounding like distorted muezzin wails, or even digitized Tuvan throat singing. The electronic treatment of the vocals kind of reminds us of the nefarious Auto-Tune, but instead of making 'em sound like Cher or Britney Spears, Nibiru's hypothetical version of Auto-Tune is set on 'guttural alien shaman' or something like that! The singing is thus oddly melodic, but also otherworldly. It's definitely distinctive and effective in creating their primal, droned-out, mesmeric, magickal mood. Helping with that too, are all the thick effects-laden guitar/synth/organ textures and lumbering, staggering layers of rhythmic pound. Right from the smoothed out grind of epic 18 minute opener "Invokation I: The Acid Skull", Nibiru never really let up, the listener transported into their mystic realm of dreamtime, doomic dervish sounds for the duration. Fans of such heaviness as Gnod, Bong, OM, Zoroaster, UFOmammut, Los Natas/Ararat, and Lord Of Doubts' Eastern/Buddhist ceremonial sprawl, would do well to investigate forthwith.
Compact disc limited to 300 copies.
These occult Italian sonic shamans have returned from another extensive druggy doomy dreamtime journey into the realms of heaviness/trippiness unknown to most modern mortals, who aren't 'experienced' like these guys, and here's the recorded result to edify us all. Their 2013 debut Caosgon first turned us on to their strange ceremonial sound, improvised esoteric stoner sludge for fans of UFOmammut, OM, Orthodox, Gnod, Bong, Acid Mothers Temple, etc. Now a year or so later they're back with even longer hair, longer beards, longer songs... probably, at any rate it's a longer album, two whole sprawling discs this time, filled to the brim with freeform Moog mantras, lumbering heavy riffs, hypnotic slomo rhythms, freaky FX, and drug gobbling/gargling vocal invocations. It's a Paul Chain getting high in Nepal thing you wouldn't understand.
The music of these Mogadon monks often takes the form of buzzing droning distortion, waves of it, interwoven with weird samples and those howling electronically treated vocals - moans akin to drones themselves - with the guitars chugging away behind the synths, intensive drums and percussion too, plodding and pounding, all part of Nibiru's truly otherworldly, seemingly never-ending throb. These tracks are tumbling, pulsating things that twist and turn in slow spirals, mutating more than anything else, as new components unexpectedly appear in the sound field: some Barn Owlish twang here, some primal vocal outbursts there; squiggling shortwave electronics, wavering guitar lines, 'liturgical organ', 'mini-digeridoo', feedback tangles, and occasional oddly relaxing melodies meandering about amidst the thicker sonic sludge.
We can't always guarantee these results - but under certain circumstances, at the right volume, if you play this at home, your rooms will fill with aromatic smoke, your walls will grow ropy green vines, and the sky outside will darken, swirling with alien colors, revealing hitherto unseen and confusingly arranged constellations of stars, dimly glowing through the mists... in your imagination at least, if not in reality... but what is reality? By the time you're onto the 2nd disc here you might not be sure...
So... Paging Julian Cope, we've got your new favorite album right here! Heck, the druid-dude probably know about this already, if he knows ANYTHING about psychonautic fantasias. However, we haven't read or heard much at all about this band anywhere, really, but if they keep it up we predict they'll develop quite a cult following for themselves, this is the sort of spaced out, improv-damaged, heavier-than-thou ritual we know you all love, we do!!
Limited to 300 copies only.
Yet another amazing discovery in the realms of unheralded heaviness from the '70s. Krautrockers Night Sun released this, their only album, back in 1972, and probably the only heavier sounds produced on earth that year were produced by Black Sabbath (and,
It's hard to not love a band that sounds like some unholy spawn of Deathspell Omega and SUNNO))), a blackened ritualistic blend of furious black metal and epic doomdrone, and while that combination in and of itself is not outrageously novel, since lots of BM record incorporate ambience and drones, it's all in the execution, and Nihill have managed to spin a sinister black web of sound that while familiar in some ways, is truly unlike anything we've heard before.
The first in a supposedly already completed trilogy of albums, Krach is a droning black beast, that begins with a short intro, a barely there bit of dark ambience, before exploding into�blasting chaotic, almost industrial black metal, so intense and blown out it basically ceases being black metal and becomes some droning buzzing black noisescape, the relentless blast beats the only thing holding everything together, huge swaths of ugly buzz and furious tangled black riffing. About part�way through the brutality abates, leaving a fuzzy free floating tangle of�strange voices, and circusy guitar melodies, whirring drones and abstract ambience, before a black blast shatters the tranquility and we're sucked right back down into Nihill's fuzzed out hellish sonic abyss.
The rest of the record is primarily the epic, three part, 42 minute�Gnosis song suite. Each movement a cinematic slab of black doomdronedrift,�huge ultra distorted swells of chordal crunch, over�haunting plodding percussion that sounds like it was recorded in some massive underground cathedral, these�glacial sonic shifts lumber beastlike through sprawling black hole soundscapes, the various layers and drones shifting from hateful industrial pummel to gorgeous ambient shimmer and back again. Imagine a more druggy SUNNO))) but with actual percussion, some demonic propulsion driving this epic's 16 rpm engine. The trilogy is broken up by another burst of DSO style blackened chaos, a completely deranged off kilter sonic assault, but the last two movements follow, one right after the other, finishing off the record with a nearly half hour of glacial, suffocating, brutal black drift.�
Any one remotely into any of the following bands absolutely NEEDS this: SUNNO))), Deathspell Omega, Moss, Khanate, Bunkur, S.V.E.S.T., Trollmann, Tenhornedbeast, Monument Of Urns, Marzuraan, Black Boned Angel... we could go on and on and on. A new deathdoomdronedrift favorite, with the added bonus of some seriously buzzing blackness.�
And we're already dying for the rest of the trilogy....
Freaked out Japanese hard rock supergroup, a '70s inspired power trio featuring the talents of million-notes-per-second, whammy-bar-crazy guitarist Kawabata Makoto (of Acid Mothers Temple, Musica Transonic, Mainliner, Toho Sara, etc. etc.),
Woah. Witchcraft fans, listen up!! There's gotta be something supernatural in the water over there in Sweden, 'cause they've somehow conjured up ANOTHER band that channels the swinging riffage and occultic vibe of early '70s Sabbath (and Pentagram) so perfectly, a la Witchcraft. We had thought that Burning Saviours (RIP) were Witchcraft's closest doppelgangers, but these young guys do a damn good job of it too. Other bands in this vein include Graveyard, Horisont, Troubled Horse (well they're mostly all Witchcraft members, that one), and Dead Man... now add Noctum to that list and put 'em at the top! Not what we were expecting, with its cover art and logo, this looks a bit more like black metal, but these Swedes are definitely practicing an earlier form of witchcraft for this seance of theirs... Quite a nice surprise, if something that sounds so familiar can be called a surprise.
Probably if the singer didn't have that particular Swedish-accented lilt to his voice (all songs but one, "Den Onda Trollpackan", are sung in English), and did more of an overt Ozzy, we'd be calling 'em Sabbath clones (first 3 albums!) rather than Witchcraft ones, but the combination of Pentagram/Sabbath stylings and the emotive, melodic, sincere-sounding vocals definitely spell Witchcraft. (Though "Lucifer's Way" also reminds us of a song by heavy progressive krautrockers Dies Irae!).
We thought of trying to review this without playing up the Witchcraft-iness of it, but really, if you like Witchcraft (and who doesn't?) you'll find this a pleasure - and if you aren't yet into Witchcraft, you should probably start with one of their own albums anyway. Though this would do in a pinch! Sabbath fans, too, queue up. Noctum possess a very Iommi-ish guitar tone for sure. Goes great with their undeniably catchy, and heavy, riffs. Throw in crashing cymbals, bellbottomed lope, and urgent-sounding songwriting infused with portents of doom, and you've got something that's more authentically 1971 proto-metal than most things from 1971!
LIMITED to 500 numbered copies.
We've listed Noctum's The Seance previously, when it came out domestically on the Stormspell label, in 2010. Subsequently, the band put out a vinyl-only 12" ep on the High Roller label called The Fiddler, with two new songs and a Pentagram cover.
Unfortunately, we never were able to pick up any of those eps, but now the Swedish psych/prog label Transubstans has put out an import edition of The Seance that includes 2 of the 3 tracks from The Fiddler as a bonus! (They left off the Pentagram song.) So, if you missed this before, here's a bigger better version, and if you're a big fan, now's your chance to upgrade to this expanded edition...
What we said about the original limited edition Stormspell pressing:
Woah. Witchcraft fans, listen up!! There's gotta be something supernatural in the water over there in Sweden, 'cause they've somehow conjured up ANOTHER band that channels the swinging riffage and occultic vibe of early '70s Sabbath (and Pentagram) so perfectly, a la Witchcraft. We had thought that Burning Saviours (RIP) were Witchcraft's closest doppelgangers, but these young guys do a damn good job of it too. Other bands in this vein include Graveyard, Horisont, Troubled Horse (well they're mostly all Witchcraft members, that one), and Dead Man... now add Noctum to that list and put 'em at the top! Not what we were expecting, with its cover art and logo, this looks a bit more like black metal, but these Swedes are definitely practicing an earlier form of witchcraft for this seance of theirs... Quite a nice surprise, if something that sounds so familiar can be called a surprise.
Probably if the singer didn't have that particular Swedish-accented lilt to his voice (all songs but one, "Den Onda Trollpackan", are sung in English), and did more of an overt Ozzy, we'd be calling 'em Sabbath clones (first 3 albums!) rather than Witchcraft ones, but the combination of Pentagram/Sabbath stylings and the emotive, melodic, sincere-sounding vocals definitely spell Witchcraft. (Though "Lucifer's Way" also reminds us of a song by heavy progressive krautrockers Dies Irae!).
We thought of trying to review this without playing up the Witchcraft-iness of it, but really, if you like Witchcraft (and who doesn't?) you'll find this a pleasure - and if you aren't yet into Witchcraft, you should probably start with one of their own albums anyway. Though this would do in a pinch! Sabbath fans, too, queue up. Noctum possess a very Iommi-ish guitar tone for sure. Goes great with their undeniably catchy, and heavy, riffs. Throw in crashing cymbals, bellbottomed lope, and urgent-sounding songwriting infused with portents of doom, and you've got something that's more authentically 1971 proto-metal than most things from 1971!
...So, pretty awesome, and now even better, with bonus tracks "The Fiddler" and "The Serpent Bride" both pretty groovy, bringing the cowbell and sounding like Led Zep was as much an influence as Sabbath.
It seems like recently, the world has finally begun to openly embrace the joys of sludge-doom-death-drone or whatever you want to call it. Boris, Corrupted, SUNNO))), Earth, Marzuraan, Bunkur, Moss, Khanate, Nadja, nobody can seem to get enough downtuned sludginess, or glacial metallic pummel. And we couldn't be more thrilled. But if you were around the Bay Area way back in the late nineties, you might remember a band who were prime traffickers in such gloriously low end brutality, but who have seemed to have been completely forgotten.
That band would be Noothgrush, who back in the day, released records and toured with Corrupted, released tons of killer splits, and who were known to lay waste to tiny clubs all over SF.
Having broken up way back in 2001, and with almost their entire catalog out of print, Noothgrush seemed to be about a decade too early. If they were around now, we can guarantee people would be losing their shit (and tons of money on eBay) over this low slung, sludge rock power trio. And way before sludge nerds all over the world were smitten by the diminutive Wata wielding her mighty axe in Boris, Noothgrush were being driven by a young woman by the name of Chiyo, an equally diminutive rocker bashing the living shit out of her drums!
Sonically, there's a definite resemblance to early Corrupted. Huge plodding doom, massive downtuned guitars, riffs stretched out into near-drones, glass gargling vocals, a slow motion glacial black hole of crumbling doom destruction.
This cd collects the band's final studio recordings, all of their splits as well as a handful of unreleased material. The first half of their 'discography' was released on Slap-A-Ham and is now unfortunately out of print. But this 2nd part has most of our favorite Noothgrush material. The band really shone on their splits, and this disc collects all of their material from long out of print splits with Corrupted, Suppression, Gasp, Wellington and Carol Ann. Plus a handful of unreleased tracks. Hell yeah!
So completely and absolutely essential. Fans of SUNNO))), Boris, Corrupted and other plodding drone doom behemoths who somehow missed out on the glorious brutality that was Noothgrush can now see what they've been missing.
Includes a big booklet with liner notes, photos and lyrics.
Available again, this killer compilation of early material from legendary Bay area slo-mo sludge/doom crushers Noothgrush, who recently reformed and are about to play a show with the also together-again East Coast doomlords Winter.
Back in the nineties, Noothgrush were a ubiquitous presence, playing all the time, and releasing records at a crazy clip, splits to be precise, Noothgrush were the master of the split 7", sharing records with Corrupted, Gasp, Agents Of Satan, Deadbodieseverywhere, Black Army Jacket, Carol Ann, Wellington and more. And the interesting thing is the band never actually recorded a proper full length. In fact, the two 'albums' they released were both compilations, collecting all the comp tracks and singles. We reviewed Erode The Person, which is sadly now out of print again, which gathered up the later recordings of the band, and in the review we lamented the fact that this one was sadly out of print. Well it's available again, and is here to again remind the world, that there was some serious downtuned pummel and tarpit doomsludge creep happening LONG before Boris / SUNNO))) / Whitehorse and all the rest threw their dirge-doom hat into the ring. And like we mentioned before, Noothgrush were just about a decade too early.
So Failing Early, Failing Often, originally released on Bay Area powerviolence/fastcore label Slap A Ham, is brimming with Sabbath-at-16rpm dirgery and creeping blackened crawls, loads of feedback, the drums a glacial stumble, provided by the cute and diminutive Chiyo (she most definitely a nineties SF metalhead crush), the vocals a howled raspy bellow, lots of samples too, from movies, and politicians, the sound crusty and blackened, with many of the tracks here from the WAY early days, old demos and cassettes, which means the sound on those is even more filhty and lo-fi and raw. Punishing and heavy as fuck, droned out and dreary and druggy and so good, even all these years later.
Fans of the current crop of doomlords and dirge merchants, who somehow missed out on these guys (and gal) would do well to check this out. And if you loved Erode The Person, well this is the second part to what with EtP is essentially one massive compilation/career retrospective.
By now we shouldn't have to go into too much detail regarding or massive love of all things Nordvargr, from the militaristic folk of Folkstorm, the martial industrial sounds of Toroidh, the bleak black ambience of BM legends MZ412, to the various recordings and sounds perpetrated under his own name, pretty much everything he's touched as turned to black gold.�
But no matter how much we love everything Nordvargr, our hearts will always belong to MZ412. When we first discovered that band we were totally thrown for a loop, we were loving the sounds of black metal by then, and here was a band with a cryptic monicker, amazing album design, burning churches on their record covers and the band members in full corpse paint. We were ready to be totally blown away, and we were, just not in the way we expected. Their sound was not metal, no buzzing guitars, no shrieking vocals, no blast beats, instead, theirs was a dark world of mysterious blackness, bleak and barren, frosty and and grim, and impossible JUST AS HEAVY as any of the other black metal we had been listening to. This was ambient music, but it was intense, and brutal, and scary.
The band ceased to exist and Nordvargr moved on to the above mentioned projects as well as numerous collaborations and projects under his own name. Then a few years back, a strange thing happened, a record surfaced credited to Nordvargr and Drakh, who just so happened to be Nordvargr's partner in MZ412, and as far as we were concerned, it was the rebirth of MZ412 in everything but name. Several more releases followed, all delicately balanced between dark ambience and buzzing blackness, culminating in this, the brand new record from the duo that once was MZ412.�
The two have some dark chemistry together, weaving elaborate worlds of black sound, not just ambience, not just drone music, but songs, with parts, and riffs and melodies, lots of guitars, occasionally trudging glacially like some slow motion doom behemoth, other times buzzing like some disembodied ghost� of black metal, and at others, glistening and drifting in vast expanses of shimmer and whir.�
The Betrayal Of Light was originally meant to be releases on several well known dark ambient labels, who all rejected the record for being too heavy, and that's all we needed to hear. Nordvargr, Drakh, too heavy, too much guitar....
Thus it ended up on tUMULt (run by our very own Andee), quite possibly where it belonged all along, fitting quite comfortably amidst a roster of black metal and drone music, embodying at least a handful of descriptors that seem to apply to most tUMULt releases, dark, droney, and fucked...
The Betrayal Of Light is one massive sonic event, a black cloud of sound, separated into movements, the first, begins as a slow beautiful crawl, a murky soundfield supporting a delicate web of softly plucked guitar strings, until a wall of downtuned buzz swallows it whole, a massive mournful dirge,�stately and majestic, classic old school funereal doom, but�super dramatic, and strangely melodic, sounding a bit like Earth or SUNNO))) playing the procession at a funeral or the royal march for some ancient court. Minor key and so gorgeous, a lonely lament rendered in amp buzz and smeared riffage, but completely nestled amidst a sea of churning low end, and that ever present minor key guitar line...
Not long after, the duo explode in a frenzy of buzzguitar, moving�as close to black metal as they've ever gotten, after a slow building� shimmer, the track coalesces into a furious buzzing riff, with what sounds like some buried demonic vocals,�no drums, so it's a sort of unmoored black metal drift, the riff cycling hypnotically while all around low end roils and whirls and in the distance the landscape is peppered with�reverberant subsonic booms, and low level rumbles...
The album's centerpiece is the nearly eleven minute long "Vessel", a lengthy, meditative guitarscape, delicate minor key melodies unfurled over a web of strange whirs and buzzes, the melodies occasionally being overwhelmed by waves of oscillating industrial detritus, before drifting back to the surface where they are joined by rumbling guttural throat singing, or heavily reverbed monklike chants, all the while, a constant ominous drone, grinds and crumbles just below the surface, culminating in a bizarre symphony of processed guitars and grinding insectoid vocals, simultaneously epic and intense, and weird and disturbing.
The rest of the record is a harrowing journey through the dark woods, through a warren of underground passages, through a vast wasteland of barren frost and black sun, thick coruscating guitars buzz and howl, sheets of thick riffs one after another, create an ever shifting wall of crumbling distorted sound, voices drift ghostlike beneath a murky swirl of distant feedback and warbling whir, tones and notes and bits of muted melody are stretched out and blurred into gorgeous hazy smears, pulses and barely audible throbs shift and shimmer just below the surface... everything creeping and slithering through a constant cloud of drifting damaged drones.�
Finally, the journey comes to an end, a gorgeous low end lurch, a thick serpentine shamble with gorgeous bits of backwards guitar, and shards of minor key melody. The low end is lopped and pulses like some mysterious machine, the low end growing in intensity, like some black star about to implode, dreamy backwards vocals drift in, like some reverse angelic chorus, until a deep voice, drenched in reverb and distortion, intones a mysterious apocalyptic warning, and then suddenly... it's done.�
An intense and overwhelming sonic journey, as heavy and brutal as it is delicate and beautiful. Doomy and blackened, drifty and drone-y, soft focus and hazy, dense and devastating... and of course, so so recommended.�
Back in stock!
Doom/psych fans: a few of you might remember this eccentric, underground French band from their second album entitled Masters of Magic that we reviewed a few years back. And anyone intrigued by the rather weird and melodic psychedelic-doom-metal-folk hybrid crafted by 'em on that disc ought to be interested in hearing their out-of-print first album Great God Pan from 1998, which we intimated was the superior record. Well, maybe it got repressed or someone found a stash of 'em in a closet or crypt or somewhere, but lo and behold, we've managed to get our hands on, like, ten copies of Northwinds' debut! So, if you're both a fan of Sabbathy doom metal and '60s/'70s styled heavy progressive psychedelia, you might want to grab this now. Assuredly not to everyone's taste, as Allan (who loves 'em) will freely admit and Andee (who can't deal with the French accented vocals) will attest...as we've said previously, Northwinds might be one of the most "twee" heavy bands ever what with the folky flutes, acoustic guitars, and those French vocals...yet the unique blend of proggy Paganism, soft '60s sike-pop balladry, and of course massive Iommi-worthy doom metal guitar riffage that intermix in these looong songs could also really make this a favorite find for a freaky few of you out there! With so much feeling, solid songwriting, and unexpected elements (wiggy studio effects and tape manipulations) they truly capture the spirit of pre-metal, pro-prog Black Sabbath (in fact, they cover the Sabs "A National Acrobat" on here) and others in that vein, not far from a warped version of early Cathedral, obsessed with Sabbath *and* Comus... If you dug the two other Sabbathy bands we reviewed recently, Witchcraft and Dragonauta, there's definitely a chance you could be a Northwinds fan too!
Northwinds did a record a few years ago called "Great God Pan" that came out of nowhere (well, France, actually!) to become one of Allan's all-time favorite heavy-psych-doom-metal discs. It's out of print now but the band is back with a new, not quite as good
For some reason, cult Italian metallers Death SS provide the intro and outro tracks.
Finally available again, one of our favorite slabs of doomy black buzz. Remastered, reissued and on a new label! Here's the review from when we first got this in:
Our doomiest customer, "Rick from Thrasher", came in the other day to ask about an album he saw on www.doom-metal.com, some band called Nortt who were supposed to be amazing; so good in fact that according to that website, Nortt's label was almost justified in charging about thirty euros for their cd (an astronomical amount, like US$40)! We didn't of course have that absurdly-expensive opus, but we actually did have this, Nortt's previous album released for a much more reasonable price on a different label. And it is pretty darn good, if you're in the mood for some "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" as it says on the back cover. Nortt are a one-man band from Denmark in the black metal tradition (complete with corpse paint and everything), but their fuzzing, buzzing music is sloooowww and full of despairing piano intonations and distorted minor-key laments. The vocals and the guitars both sound like last breaths, dying gasps, exhalant spirits... It's a drone-hiss of massive, gothic proportions. Nortt definitely inhabit the same gloomy petrified forest as AQ-faves Skepticism!! Perhaps if you get this and it succeeds in bringing your most suicidal thoughts to the fore, you can make it through life a little longer by trying to search out that other incredibly expensive Nortt album... (By the way, that www.doom-metal.com website is pretty cool one, for doom-fans only of course, with info on hundreds of doom acts!)
Fresh off their killer split release with Xasthur last year, Danish black metal funereal doom lords (or lord, really, since it's just one guy) Nortt offer up a full length for your pleasure...if you can deal with the depression!! If you haven't heard Nortt before, they're a bit like Skepticism meets Burzum. SOOOO doomy and atmospheric. Ligfaerd is a sinister expanse of spooky soundtrack ambience bombarded (at relaxed intervals) with boulders... No, not boulders -- fuzz-distortion depth charges, dropped deep and echoing in the abyss, wherein dwell the cave-blind creatures that make Nortt's music... or so it would seem from this disc's raspy, weary vocal exhalations and monstrous awakenings. The thudding percussion could be gigantic footfalls amidst the droning, morose melodies, that insinuate themselves slowly into your consciousness, as there are lots of quiet passages on this depressive, lethargic record. We bet Bohren and Der Club Of Gore would love this band! We sure do. Definitely one of the exclusive several doom and/or black metal acts that we think non-habitual listeners to such musics might appreciate, if such extremes of feeling and weirdness as described above are more than tolerated.
This went out of print almost as soon as we got the original Total Holocaust import version in four or five months ago but has now been resurrected and re-pressed domestically thanks to the dark souls at Southern Lord, who apparently like this stuff as much as we do. Here's what we had to say about it first time around:
We barely even have to review this. Just the names of the two artists should be enough. Nortt, whose "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" was a massive favorite around here, and of course Xasthur, who rivals Leviathan as perhaps the most brilliant and important of the modern USBM hordes. Nortt offer up four tracks of miserable drone dirge, with mournful piano over a swirling abyss of black riffs and simple drumming, each chord slowly dissipating into nothingness before the next chord hits. Depressingly gorgeous and wrist slittingly sorrowful. Reminiscent of Corrupted's Llenandose, albeit way more grim and dismal!
Xasthur gives us three tracks, equally depressive, but here, instead of tarpit tempos and drone-like dirges, the depression and misery is communicated through creepy minor key riffing, mournful melodies and what sounds like clean chant-like singing, almost choral, but buried so low in the mix it almost sounds like just another instrument. Xasthur has totally perfected the swaying seasickly black metal waltz, with relentless double kicks, anguished vocals struggling to communicate from beyond, and warm and woozy, arpeggiated guitars. So good.
You're probably getting as tired of hearing this as we are saying it, but it has to be done. THIS IS SUPER LIMITED!! IN FACT, IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT!! (Arghhh. Why lablels just don't press more when they know they can sell them still makes no sense to us...) SO, ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!! SO ACT FAST!
Here's what we had to say about the cd version a while back:
We barely even have to review this. Just the names of the two artists should be enough. Nortt, whose "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" was a massive favorite around here, and of course Xasthur, who rivals Leviathan as perhaps the most brilliant and important of the modern USBM hordes. Nortt offer up four tracks of miserable drone dirge, with mournful piano over a swirling abyss of black riffs and simple drumming, each chord slowly dissipating into nothingness before the next chord hits. Depressingly gorgeous and wrist slittingly sorrowful. Reminiscent of Corrupted's Llenandose, albeit way more grim and dismal!
Xasthur gives us three tracks, equally depressive, but here, instead of tarpit tempos and drone-like dirges, the depression and misery is communicated through creepy minor key riffing, mournful melodies and what sounds like clean chant-like singing, almost choral, but buried so low in the mix it almost sounds like just another instrument. Xasthur has totally perfected the swaying seasickly black metal waltz, with relentless double kicks, anguished vocals struggling to communicate from beyond, and warm and woozy, arpeggiated guitars. So good.
There are those of us at this fine institution who wish to declare open season on Jim O'Rourke, and start blasting shotgun shells at him, his bunny suit, his 'post-irony' (whatever the fuck that is), and his chameleon-like approach towards all forms of music.
Promoted as his electronic glitch album, "I'm Happy, And I'm Singing, And A 1, 2, 3, 4" has been conveniently released on the Austrian electronic glitch label Mego. Just like Mego's uber talented Christian Fennesz, O'Rourke fuses elements of antique melodic signatures within a Powerbook generated disfiguration into complex networks of sound that retain the timbre and colour of the original sounds in spite of the digital glitch manifestation. Initially, this album is nothing more than another pleasantly playful recombination of the current glitch aesthetic. He applies the Supercollider treatment to an accordion to dislocate the souce material with a fluctuating system of interlocking repetitive samples sounding like a digitized update of Frippertronics or even Terry Riley's time lag generator. Nice, but is completely overwhelmed by the same idea found on the Keith Fullerton Whitman album "21:30 For Acoustic Guitar" He follows this up with some fey dinner jazz piano lines and summertime guitar picking run through gossamer digitalized syncopations. Again, nice but nothing that Stephan Mathieu, Ekkhard Ehlers, or Fennesz haven't done better.
*However* if you were to stop listening to these two tracks, before getting to the 20-plus minute finale, you would have missed one of O'Rourke's finest moments alongside the criminally overlooked "Disengage" and slowly antagonistic "Happy Days." "And A 1, 2, 3, 4" (it appears that the song titles are just fragments of the album's title) is beautiful digital threnody with sombre violins passing through a Feldman like alternation through a harmonic series of notes. While it could be said that O'Rourke is *again* mimicking another artist, he does apply an ample amount of digtal signal processing (lots of warbled tremolo, granular dispersion, etc.) offering that which I've rarely heard from Jim O'Rourke: something "new."
One of two new releases on Sige Records, the new imprint run by Aaron Turner of Hydra Head / Isis fame, the other is the formerly on cd House Of Low Culture / Mamiffer split, and this, another Mamiffer split, this time teamed up with mysterious power electronics ambient drone trio Oakeater.
Oakeater, whose Molech lp on Nihilist we dug big time, return again, with their usual UNusually arsenal of noisemaking devices: guitar, voice, percussion, tapes, modular synthesizers, feedback, electric piano and oscillators. Here they take their ritualistic dronescaping even further, ditching their noiserock background/pedigree almost entirely (Oakeater is members of the Coughs and Panicsville), to delve deeeeeeep into dark drifting drones and sprawling expanses of cinematic shift and shimmer. Slow and smoldering, lushly layered, hushed muted whirs and high end chimes, haunting melodies, all very dramatic and soundtracky sounding, before slipping into something else entirely, a long stretch of shimmering cymbals, lots of space, streaks of feedback, a weirdly meditative, subtly rhythmic, metallic dronescape, which is quickly subsumed by SUPER distorted synths, fuzzy and buzzy and blown out, the sort of low tones some dubstepper would KILL for, transforming the track completely into something way more spacey and tripped out.
Mamiffer counters with one of the heaviest, noisiest tracks we've heard from her (aka Faith Coloccia), using just guitars, pianos, tapes and apparently jars, Coloccia weaves together and chaotic but strangely lovely bit of heavy, abstract guitar noise, some strange mix of SUNNO))) and Skullflower, chugging churning looped guitars, swooping backwards production, a thick corrosive buzz, a sort of static riffage, but those stretches of glacial buzz and howl and keen are stretched out into more avant drone directions, loads of overtones, subtle rhythmic shadings, still buzzy and heavy and metallic for sure, but wrangled into something impossibly melodic and meditative and downright pretty. There's hiss and static and crunch and buzz, and on the surface it's noisy and quite chaotic, but Colaccia manages to shape it all into a soft tangled swirl of psychedelic guitar noise, that is easily as entrancing as it is abrasive.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, packaged in super swank, ultra heavy silk screened sleeves.
