[Adopts Victorian street urchin voice]: "Hot shit warehouse find for sale here! Getch yer hot shit warehouse find!"
That's right girls and boys, we stumbled upon a few - as in, literally, like, THREE - of these rad 2007 comps from Canadian metal slangers Sepulchral Productions, who have thrown together a tasty smorgasbord of blackened bile spewing hate that goes down all harsh and spiny-like. The bands come to us from the the wilds of Europe and the great Canadian north and include heavyweights like Antaeus, Negura Bunget, and Horna in addition to lesser known bad asses like Lord Belial, Nostra Drama, Veneficium, and Azaghal. Nay, not a Yankee to be found. As these bands, even the more famous ones, dwell within the deepest depths of the underground, you can bet this shit is evil and rifftastic in all the ways you so greedily lust for. Intended as a tribute to the early age of Black Metal whose legacy has been shamelessly and successfully prostituted to consumers like you and me all across the globe, these guys are keeping the flame burning ALL.NIGHT.LONG.FOREVER - if you're looking to find cute and fashionable Black Metal, the liners politely suggest that you bear this in mind.
LAST COPIES!!!
Black and death metal bands, many from Scandinavia (how strange...) pay tribute to Brazilian metal gods Sepultura. Participating are such bands as AQ-faves the super-brutal Defleshed and keyboard-happy Children of Bodom, as well as Swordmaster, Lord Belial, Sacramentum, Brazil's Mystifier, and nine others. Songs covered range from the earliest of the Sep's death-thrash efforts to "Ratamahatta" from their last tribal-metal album.
Northern European tribute to Slayer, with ferocious covers by Dissection, At The Gates, Enslaved, Edge of Sanity and seven others.
Not one, but two cds of Iron Maiden covers! The 26 bands who took on the challenge of this tribute range from the well-known to the utterly obscure (well, ok, the most famous name on here is Sebastian Bach...you know, the former Skid Row singer, who belts out an admirable version of "Children of the Damned"). Many of the bands take a very straight approach to interpreting these metal classics but there are a few weirder ones, like the unknown (to us) Finnish band Hoyry-Kone doing "The Trooper" with trombone, cello, and saxophone; and Japanese doom metallers Eternal Elyisium's stoned, almost reggae-inflected but super heavy version of "Innocent Exile". Other participants: Solstice, Electric Frankenstein, Wardog, Crowbar, Iron Savior, Warhorse, The Quill, etc. A fun compilation that will soon have you dragging out the actual Maiden wax for sure.
Got a few copies of this cd-r compilation via our pals the Oakland band Pigs, who have a track on it taken from their album Illuminati House Party, that we know a lot of you liked. Other acts also on here, and equally AQ-approved: US Christmas, Shit And Shine, Sons Of Tonatiuh, and a bunch more (13 in all) that are all pretty great. Although it's a diverse selection of bands, somehow the tracks that appear on this comp all go pretty well together. There's a tilt towards mathiness and heaviness, and also to weirdness and psychedelia, all good things as far as we're concerned. Lots of it is instrumental, as well.
We won't bother to describe the entire disc track-by-track (especially since it's cheap enough, just buy it!!) but will mention a few things that stood out... Shane Perlowin from prog-punk outfit Ahleuchatistas starts things off with a lovely bit of solo guitar action, vaguely exotic-sounding, something that Six Organs fans should enjoy, though the hypnotically jittery track by Ahleuchatistas proper that pops up later on the disc is more in line with the technically complex, frantic rockin' we've heard from 'em before on their Cuneiform albums. Meanwhile, Russian (???) band The Grand Astoria do a pretty rad space-rockin' cover of a song by Ash Ra Tempel. And then there's the oddly monickered yellowthief (a grindy duo consisting of drummer "yellowsun" and guitarist "yellowmoon") who contribute six tracks, all but one of 'em short sharp shocks of mathy spazz (and some moody melody) barely longer than 30 seconds apiece, with gibberish song titles. Ruins and Hella fans ought to dig, and we'll definitely be on the lookout for more from yellowthief in future.
Oh, and Pigs, if you haven't heard 'em yet, do their song "Lurch" which is exemplary of their Sabbathy, Melvinsy sound. The heaviest stuff here is probably by Sons Of Tonatiuh, though, who get two feedback-laden tracks to kick out the ugly doom jams, Eyehategod style. Shit And Shine don't wimp out, either, wrapping the disc up with a crushingly distorted atmospheric soundscape of sorts. And the other bands we haven't yet mentioned (The Wayward, The Asound, Akris, Enoch, Yuugen Syndrome) are all worthy too.
Certainly a cool comp that turned us on to some neat stuff we hadn't heard before, from denizens of a particular (and somewhat peculiar) underground scene that we hadn't quite conceptualized previously, though now it makes sense that these bands would all belong together on this comp - to the extent that you could almost listen to this and pretend it was ALL by the same, really amazing band! Comes with a sticker, too, by the way.
35 current stoner rock bands, doing covers of cheesy 70's classic rock songs. 156+ minutes. The bands range from well known to not known at all. Highlights include: Raging Slab "We're An American Band", Los Natas "Brainstorm", Alabama Thunderpussy "Hymn 43", Fireball Ministry "Doctor Doctor", Spirit Caravan "Wicked World", Gideon Smith & The Dixie Damned "The Pusher" etc.
A smorgasbord of crusty Swedish grind on offer here, featuring Sayyadina, Assel, Disfear, Gadget, and AQ-faves Birdflesh. Plus the less crusty, more rock n' roll stylings of Genocide Superstar.
Writer Daniel Ekeroth really loves death metal. Specifically SWEDISH death metal. He's Swedish, yes, and plays in a Swedish death metal band, so maybe he's biased... but we DO have to agree, there's something special about the death metal scene in Sweden, particularly back in the very early '90s when it was at its fullest flower. Sweden has bestowed upon the world some of the best in guttural growling and blasting beats, crypt-rattling riffs and of course the "Sunlight sound". We reviewed Ekeroth's encyclopedic book Swedish Death Metal a while ago. Now, here's the audio companion compilation to said book. Maybe reading a 456 page tome all about the wonders of Swedish death metal is more than you're ready for. But even if you didn't read the book (and most definitely if you DID) you might still be interested in this. Either from reading the book you'll be curious to hear the obscure bands collected here, or from listening to this you too will develop an obsession with Swedish death metal and thus need to read the book... and listen to nothing else but Swedish death metal for the foreseeable future! Don't say we didn't warn you.
Lovingly put together, this triple cd set is packed with crucial examples of the SDM phenomenon. Mostly rare demo tracks, or songs taken from vinyl-only eps... There's quite a few of the big names of course (Grave, Entombed, Dismember, At The Gates, Unleashed, etc.) but also many, many more obscure but also important bands. There's pioneering early tracks from the likes of Obscurity, Merciless, and Nihilist. Forgotten and/or underrated greats like Crematory, Afflicted, and Nirvana 2002. And, keeping death alive, the set wraps up with a couple newer bands, like genius throwbacks Repugnant!
Here's some more names either to pique your curiosity, or if you know 'em, to whet your appetite: Edge Of Sanity, General Surgery, Grotesque, Desultory, Sorcery, Carbonized, Carnage, Tiamat, Furbowl, Seance... and there's tons and tons more. 52 tracks here by 48 bands!!! And we're telling you, it's quite possible, nay probable, that the heaviest, most brutal song EVER is one of the ones included on this cd. It must be.
Disc one, covering 1986-1990 is the rawest, thrashiest stuff, exploring the cult origins of the movement, some if it super lo-fi but still crushing. What's a little tape hiss and distortion when you're listening to singing that sounds like an asthmatic cookie monster anyway? Disc two, 1989-'93, includes some all time classics, in Ekeroth's book and ours, and also delves into death/black crossover with tracks from Marduk and Dissection. And then disc three celebrates some lesser known greats, mostly covering the period 1990-1994, with a track from '98 and another from 2007 just to demonstrate that true Swedish death metal will never die.
Like we said, this is clearly a labor of love, packaged in a handsome book-like package (it looks like the book, we mean). The four-panel digipack includes a thick cd booklet with notes on each and every track by author Ekeroth, who of course was one of this release's compilers. Awesome.
Wow, is this ever cool! We kinda took a chance on ordering one in, 'cause what do we know about '80s underground metal from down in Texas? Well now we know it RULES. At least, the stuff they picked to put on this cool comp sure does. So, we ordered a bunch more copies to share with y'all. 15 tracks here from 13 bands, recorded circa 1983-1987. When metal was at its zenith, really, 'cause this stuff is so killer yet so obscure - by underground, we mean, really underground. All this stuff is from self-released demo tapes, none of these bands ever got past the demo stage to get signed or make a "real" album. So, unless you're an '80s metalhead from Texas (with a good memory), or perhaps someone who was fanatically into the tape trading scene back then, you've never heard of these bands, ever.
Thus, there's no Pantera on here - though some of these tracks were recorded at the Pantera dudes' dad's studio, and one of the bands features a guy who sang for Pantera before Phil Anselmo joined 'em. Here's the lineup: Battalion, Sentinel, Valkyrie, Death Tripper, Necrovore, Baron Steele, Warlock, Heavens Force, Wicked Angel, Forced Entry, Scythian Oath, Morbid Termination, and Rotting Corpse.
You're really not metal if that list of names doesn't sound cool to you, just the names themselves, so totally typically metal aren't they??
While each band is in fact different, you can pretty much say it's all galloping old school heavy metal action, with tons of raging youthful energy, displaying then-current influences from England, Germany, and the Bay Area, some bands more melodic than others (Baron Steele and Wicked Angel ferinstance), most of 'em in the edgier thrash and speed metal style of the day, often pushing the envelope of speed and technique, and taste! Some tracks get even more extreme, witness the protogrindpunk of Death Tripper, and the early black/death belchings of Necrovore. Vocally, while there's some punkish hardcore growls here and there (courtesy of the latter two bands mentioned, mainly), most of these acts go for clean, high pitched screaming vocals, some of 'em really over the top. Countering that, the frontman of Forced Entry (the one who had the Pantera gig, briefly) has a sneering Dave Mustaine-like voice. And by the way, if you're an Absu fan, it's interesting to guess if any of these bands were an immediate (local) influence on 'em growing up, we'd imagine some might have been, we can kind of hear it.
Sound-wise, this is all pretty decent for 20+ year old demos, really. This is metal, nothin' wrong with a little distortion! The typically lo-fi production of a track like Scythian Oath's "Shadow Of The Torturer" is actually kinda cool, the way it's kind of fucked up, it almost gets weirdly psychedelic, the mixing strangely schizophrenically "active", elements fading in and out, up and down. (If you've heard that Wicked Witch record on EM, imagine them playing metal instead of funk!). Other tracks aren't necessarily so bizarre. Raw, yes, but that's nothing to complain about.
The thick, full color cd booklet contains super detailed liner notes, plenty of graphics, photos, old fliers, logos, etc. Our favorite pic has got to be the one of Morbid Termination, their singer posing in his stage regalia, modified football shoulder pads with spikes sticking out, very homemade looking gear indeed! And there's a lot of super detailed liner notes, written by compiler John Perez (Brainticket label owner and Solitude Aeturnus guitarist), who knows his '80s Texas metal for sure, having been a part of the scene back then himself. Very obviously this whole thing is a labor of love, and the packaging reflects that. Similar, really, to that excellent Swedish Death Metal collection we highlighted recently.
Heck we're not counting on selling a ton of these, but it would be cool if we did, just 'cause it you really do dig metal, we absolutely know you'll get a kick out of this! Looking forward to volume 2!! (And wondering if Texas was so special, or were there bands this rad in the places we grew up, too?)
The folks at P&P know they've got a good thing going with this Electric Asylum series; appropriately monikered compiler The Psychomaniac keeps coming up with winners. In the grand tradition, here's Volume 4, and it's a relatively hard 'n heavy one, subtitled "Rock Hard British Freakrock", as if they knew that Vol. 3, fun as it was, didn't entirely deliver the dunt rock we crave. Well Vol. 4, as befits that unintentional Sabbath reference, is a lot more tough, less bubblegummy... and that even includes the band on here called Bubbles! (Whose badass glammy proto-punk strut "Zap n' Cat" reminds us of Ronno or maybe even Hard Stuff). Oh yeah, this Electric Asylum is again populated with some goofy names, most of whom we'd never heard of before. Here's the full line up: Hector, Slowload, Rog and Pip, Wolfrilla, Incredible Hog, Smoke, Spunky Spider, Ning, Quiet World, Henry Turtle, Bear Brothers, Hard Horse, Mustard, Tuesday, Godson, Bubbles, Sunshine Kid, Clutch, Jackal, and Sundance. 20 tracks in all, mostly taken from one-off, 45 rpm single only releases from flash in the pan bands we're lucky to get to hear at all, most never made an album and did just one or two 7"s... Actually, the only bands we really knew was Incredible Hog (whose entire album is great), and Wolfrilla (a fave from Vol. 2).
Coming from circa 1970-75, a lot of this can be summed up as a bit Sabbath, a bit Slade, platform boots in each camp. Though, each individual band often seems to emulate other, specific, better known acts. Like, Godson sound kinda the Rolling Stones, Hard Horse are a lot like Nazareth, and Incredible Hog come closest to Led Zep... while Ning's "Machine" is somehow part Steppenwolf, part Gary Glitter. And then there's Smoke's "That's What I Want", which is almost like The Kinks' "All Day And All Of The Night" re-written with a "Sweet Leaf" fixation.
While we're not all that surprised that nobody here really ever "made it", that doesn't mean their attempts to do so are without merit! Not if you like lotsa fuzz 'n distortion, acid guitar soloing, and grunting wailing vox! Get yer fix of obscure '70s proto-metal groovy rockin' pop here.
The booklet contains the usual detailed-as-they-can-be trainspotting liner notes on each and every track (from which we learn useful minutiae such as that Sundance featured original Judas Priest drummer Alan Moore, ferinstance) plus full color sleeve/label graphics and vintage b&w photos... too bad about the crap cover art though.
If they can keep digging up records like these, we'll keep digging these comps! After this, we halfway expect P&P to jump ahead a few years to the late '70s / early '80s and bring us the killer NWOBHM rarities comp we know ol' Psychomaniac has got in him too...
This awesomely titled compilation covers a very specific strain of metal, as in 'heavy metal from Northwest Arkansas'. Aha. Well, we were definitely intrigued. Not that we can think of any metal bands from NW Arkansas off the top of our heads (Rwake?), but we're always down for some obscure metal, and while we're often wary of comps that feature no bands we've heard of, we decided to give this one a go, and were pretty psyched we did.
Up first is Vore, who kick up some serious death metal brutality, equal parts chugging riffage, pounding pummel, churning breakdowns and mathy stop start dynamics, the song laced with some seriously shredding leads, not to mention some surprising melody, the whole thing pretty dang catchy for a DM jam. Deadeye Jack do a sort of grimy, crusty stonery sludge thing, the recording raw and rough, but it suits their sound, muddy and murky, the vocal buried in the mix, but with a pretty serious main riff. Lightbulb Detective Agency have a terrible band name, but their song has a great title ("HP Hovercraft"), the sound sort of mathy and proggy, definitely very modern, dramatic crooned vox over complex mathmetal chug and churn, reminds us of all those Norwegian black metal bands who decided to get all proggy and poppy (Borknagar, Dodheimsgard). Definitely not bad though.
The flipside starts off with Hymns, who are definitely the fiercest of the bunch so far, frenzied and furious metallic grind, mathy and relentless, shredding axe action and insanely frantic drumming, a wild chaotic grindmetal tangle that kills! Ogham offer up a brief blast of instrumental math metal, that might be our favorite of the bunch, a million parts and tempos crammed into two minutes, equal parts the Champs, Scale The Summit, Loincloth, Don Caballero, the song twisting and turning relentlessly before seeming to just stumble to a halt, definitely want to hear more from these guys. And finally some true metal / true doom to finish things off, from the questionably named Dragon Sunday, whose sound is epic and very Pentagram / St. Vitus sounding, soaring majestic guitars, dramatic vocals, classic metal harmonies, chugging riffage, total true metal radness that all you 'true metal'-heads should flip for.
Includes a download code too!
Slow. Low. Downtuned. Crushing. Heavy. Sludge. Dirge. Doom. Buzz. Rumble. Pound.
By now, the appropriate parties should be paying attention, cuz this is for anyone who uses any or all of those descriptors to talk about the music that moves them. Two sprawling discs of ultra heaviness, all weirdly based on strangling scenes from horror movies, all tending toward the slow and low, a handful of aQ faves, a bunch of groups new to us, but all purveyors of metallic crush of one form or another.
The first disc is frontloaded for aQ, beginning with an exclusive track from UK doomlords Atavist, who start things off with some pretty delicate guitar, which is just a slow build toward a heaving wall of lumbering sludge, glacial and epic, pummeling and monstrous, growled vocals, and massive drum crush, but that delicate opening guitar continues on beneath the heaviness above, adding a strange vibe to the proceedings. UK bruisers offer up 3 slabs of feedback drenched Eyehategod worship, not all that slow, but buzzy and stonery and low slung with some awesome superfuzz and wildly howled vox. French one man sludge outfit The Austrasian Goat slows it waaaaaay doooooown, to a gut wrenching crawl, channeling, classic ultra funereal doom, into some gloriously abject sludge.
Up next is The Whorehouse Massacre, a Canadian one man band who spews some sick, super distorted ultra sludge doom, awesome stuff, we definitely need to hear more from this guy.
All the bands on the second disc are new to us, beginning with Stasis, who do their own take on twisted downtuned heaviness, offering up weird acoustic interludes between the blown out bursts of howled and shrieked dirgery. Feast Of Sins are classic funeral doom, even offering up one track of grim black ambience, bookended by some glacial gloomy creeps. Ghost Empire are another rad sludge doom combo, but with a bit of groove, after some super skeletal spaced out ambience, these guys piledrive with churning riffs, big drums, and throat shredding vox. And finally, Welter In Thy Blood, who hail from LA, offer up a seriously harrowing chunk of blackened doom drenched ambience, sick inhuman vocals, super spare drums, riffs that ooze like black tar, the whole track like a Khanate jam played at 16rpm.
Lots of killer stuff, all slow and low and heavy, doom, drone, sludge, if that's your thing, then THIS is most definitely for you.
Another lovingly compiled (by Scott Hull of Agoraphobic Nosebleed and Pig Destroyer no less!) sonically hateful selection of extreme heaviness, grind metal, powerviolence, hardcore, punk rock, and pretty much everything in between, buzzing and blasting and brutal as fuck. A handful of bands we already loved, and a whole bunch we'd never heard of before, it's kinda like the metal mix tape you wish your mean metal older brother would make you.
So let's start with the we know and love. California crew Lack Of Interest spit out 7 tracks in about 4 minutes, blazing blasting punk rock, Noisear spit out insane bursts of frenzied grind, impossibly fast, super dense and twisted and complex, Drugs Of Faith do their dirgey punkish death metal, sludgey and sloppy and chaotic, the mighty Crom offer up "Hags" the longest track on the comp, a grinding, thrashing slab of whatthefuck heaviness, slipping from punkish blast to churning doomy chug, the vocals shrieking and grunting and howling, it even gets sort of pretty for a moment, but only a moment, fuck we love these guys, Ohio pigfuckers Apartment 213 spit out some serious powerviolence, a Neanderthal sonic pummeling, grunted vox, even slipping in a little groove at one point, but mostly just beating your ears bloody with their closed fist crush, Despise you kick down 50 seconds of churning, blasting grind, 2 songs blow by in a blink, but they cram some serious sonic punishment into less than a minute, Voetsek are the only female fronted outfit in this boys club, and they lay it down with some super technical grind metal, and some seriously ball melting vox....
Then there's the bands we're hearing for the first time here: Hummingbird Of Death, Marion Barry, Owen Hart, Septic Surge, Population Reduction, Superbad, Three Faces Of Eve, Idiots Parade, Triac and more, our faves being Hummingbird Of Death, not just for having the best band name ever, but for their chaotic, frenzied on the verge of collapse powerviolence freakouts, Owen Hart's metallic grinding thrash, infused with plenty of classic old school metal riffage, Septic Surge who get their drummachinegun on, a dizzying hybrid of twisted electronic glitchery and caveman heaviness... We could go on and on, a head spinning selection of audial brutality, crushing heaviness, blasting brutality, an overwhelming 74 tracks, all jammed into 78 minutes, by 19 bands, for anyone who likes it fast and heavy. Comes with a massive booklet, all old school punk rock style with each band getting a page for lyrics and photos and contact info. Awesome.
LEVIATHAN ALERT!!! EXCLUSIVE UNRELEASED LEVIATHAN TRACK ALERT!!! LEVIATHAN COVERING BLACK FLAG ALERT!!! What the fuck? It's true though. More on that in a second. We all dig skating (although most of us are not to good at it), and love to watch crazy skaters around town, often fucking themselves up in the process. Who doesn't? But typically skate rock has often been, well, not really that interesting. Okay, so maybe most skate rock sucks. But this Thrasher Skate Rock disc has a lot going for it, not the least of which is an unreleased Leviathan track, "The Third Blind Wound"! Most Leviathan obsessives will most definitely find this one track enough reason to pick this up, but there's some other killer stuff on here too. Exclusive tracks from a bunch of other bands including locals Hightower, and the always kick ass S.T.R.E.E.T.S. (an acronym for 'skating totally rules, everything else totally sucks') as well as some killer DVD footage including a documentary about skating in the 80's and 90's and a live performance from Norway's Turbonegro.
This is one of those dualdisc thingies, that won't play on some stereos so be warned!
The Black Twilight Circle is Southern California's answer to Les Legions Noires, the elite circle of French black metal groups which included Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, Torgeist, Belketre, Aakon Keetreh, Moevet and a handful of others. Like the Black Legions, the Black Twilight Circle also have a stable of different 'groups', that are made up of a small handful of artists, most of whom do time in multiple bands, an insular musical community, that manages to create a surprising varied catalog considering how much overlap there is between the bands and the various members. Tliltic Tlapoyauak is a killer collection of exclusive tracks from a handful of those bands, some we knew already: Blue Hummingbird On The Left, Volahn, Dolorvotre, Tukaaria, Arizmenda, Axeman, along with a bunch more we didn't: Cempopoloah, In Lakech Ala Kin, Kampilan, Blood Play, Acualli and lots more. And like the handful of full lengths that we've managed to hear from some of these groups, the sound of the Black Twilight Circle definitely tends toward the avant, melding classic grim buzz, with all manner of sonic experimentation, just check out the opening track from Kuxan Suum, who, after a brief bit of Native American sounding folkiness, all tribal drumming, shakers and whistles, launches into a furious bout of raw, churning, tangled black buzz, a frenzied berserker onslaught, but one rife with weird angular melodies, and twisted riffage, and then part way through, the track breaks down into a cool little stretch of clean guitar shimmer, almost a sort of alien Appalachia, before launching right back into it, this time way proggier and more angular, the sound lurching and slithering and sounding almost like a black metal Sun City Girls!
It's tempting to go through the whole record, track by track, as we are wont to do, cuz all the songs here are pretty incredible, but odds are, if you're into weird black metal, you are at least a bit familiar with these groups and this scene, but even if you're not, maybe especially if you're not, this is a killer place to start. The sound dizzyingly diverse, one second a wild wall of crumbling distortion swirling beneath super dramatic bellowed, almost go thic / post punk sounding vox, the next, total lo-fi grimnity, but even then, the sounds are twisted and obtuse, damaged and WTF, the mixes, the arrangements, the vocals especially, constantly lurching from gruff gurgle to wailing falsetto, to hellish shriek. There's very little in the way of straight ahead black metal to be found here, hell, we'd go so far as to say, maybe none at all. Even the most straight up buzz and blast, is only that way on the surface, and even then not for long, often sounds like it's melting, or collapsing, into a swirling black void. Elsewhere, the sound drifts into loping post rock territory, moody and meandering, while elsewhere the sound is some sort of twisted FX drenched noise rock, the demonic vokills the only truly black metal thing about it.
Somehow the second disc gets even weirder, starting with some detuned downer rock, a wasted zoner sprawl of woozy, melty slo-mo creep, gothic and gloomy and crazy psychedelic, before the second track explodes into totally tranced out black buzz epicry. Later, the blackness evolves into a weird sort of flute flecked, progged out post rock, only to then erupt into a barrage, of thick churning riffage, and smoldering slow build throb, and then some murky tarpit death metal, butted up against some blackened jazziness that transforms into more furious buzzing blackness, the comp finishing off with the weirdest of the bunch, from Axeman, which begins as a weird sort of over the top cabaret ballad, replete with flanged guitars, synths, and some crazy over the top vocal bombast, only to then splinter into a wild squall of tangled buzz, with some ridiculous, super distorted shreddery, and some classic metal gallop, the song lurching from sound to sound, working it's way through several shades of black only to dissolve some sort of South American / Native American outro, bookending the opener, this time though the tribal drumming, and whistles, accompanied by some inhuman shriek. So weird. And so cool! Easily some of the most adventurous weirdo blackness being made today for sure!
Killer packaging too, a full color triple digipak, with spaced out Aztec influenced cover art, and a huge booklet, printed with silver metallic ink, with a page for each of the band, including art, liner notes and lyrics.
We always love a good heavy psych/proto-metal mix, that's what you get here on this new comp, twenty tracks of fairly obscure heaviness circa 1968-1974 from the UK, USA, Holland, and elsewhere; as the subtitle says, "a lesson in devilish psychedelics", sure! Making it more of a lesson, they've thoughtfully provided some notes about each band/track in the full-color illustrated cd booklet. Now, what's interesting is that we used to get comps like this and everything was new to us, but now, we know a lot of this stuff, you might too, bands like Incredible Hog, The Way We Live, Armaggedon (the German one), Skid Row (the Irish one!), Rotomagus (with their punkiest tune, "Fightin' Cock"), Schizo (Richard Pinhas' pre-Heldon band, with 2 tracks from their rare 7", sounding like a spaced out Steppenwolf), and big aQ hits Jerusalem (represented here by their devastating "Primitive Man"). We've had full-length reissues from several of these acts, most recently the Francais Metal de Proto of Rotomagus. Great stuff, all of it, and so if you don't know 'em all, this would be a good introduction.
And then, there's actually, on the other hand, quite a few tracks here from band we DIDN'T already know, and thus are glad to hear. Seems that many of them were singles-only bands, so comps like this are one of the best ways to find out about 'em. Some names: The Hook (pretty dang wild and heavy for '68!), Sound Of Imker (both sides of their '69 single), Dickens, Spirit Of St. Louis, Bintangs, Henry Schifter, The Gallery, Inca Bullet Joe, Demian, Zendik, and Rapunzel. Some of those now we're gonna be on the lookout for more by - if there IS any more, 'cuz what's here might be all of it in some cases.
Definitely a expertly-curated dose of old school, fuzz-filled heaviness for folks who dug similar comps like Up All Night, White Lace & Strange, and Downer Rock Genocide. A good range of frantic garage, manic psych, & plodding prog, all proto-something, either metal or punk or both. And by the way, interesting to note that a good 40 percent of these tracks date specifically from 1971, once again THEE year for awesome rock music.
Super limited, ultra deluxe reissue of a compilation that came out last year, and that somehow completely slipped beneath our radar. Hard to believe considering how amazing this is. All you need to know is it's a tribute to Judas Iscariot, a USBM institution, and features the elite of what might be considered the second wave of USBM cover classic JI tracks: Xasthur, Leviathan, Nachtmystium, Krieg and more! Holy shit!
After 10 years, Judas Isacriot hung it up in 2002, but they still manage to influence countless legions of musical minions. Most of the bans here owe no small debt to Akhenaten and his Midwestern metal outfit, which is obviously why they're here paying their respects.
The mighty Xasthur covers "The Cold Earth Slept Below...", the result is an incredibly lo-fi, brittle washed out smear of fuzzy guitars, stumbling dirgelike drumming, the whole thing so hissy and buzzy it's almost dreamlike, with some gorgeously mournful melodies that would make it sound downright poppy if it weren't so frosty and harsh. So fucked and hauntingly pretty it had us digging out our old JI records to hear the original. AQ fave Leviathan takes on "Where the Weather Beats Incessant", nearly 12 minutes of moody depressive midtempo blackness, with some strange droney interludes, super harsh distorted vocals, and strange drawn out guitar parts, the whole thing epic and majestic and almost post rock sounding. Krieg cover "Babylon", a furiously fuzzy, ultra lo-fi burst of muddy murky black buzz, guttural vocals vomited up from the depths, blasting beats, amazing lightning speed riffing, but the melodies buried in the mix are haunting and again strangely lovely....
Fellow Midwesterners Nachtmystium tackle "Gaze Upon Heaven In Flames", a super loud, in the red blast of relentless buzzing black metal, the riffs and the drumming a blinding blur, until about halfway through where the song breaks down into a strange, lurching half time almost-groove with creepy melodies and a odd timed hiccuping rhythm. Frostmoon Eclipse offer up their version of "Spill The Blood Of The Lamb" the grimmest and frostiest of the bunch so far, murky and muddy, but thick with buzz and thrash, the vocals a hateful demonic gurgle, the whole thing a buzzing snarling beast. The rest of the lineup holds their own nearly as well, offering up their own varied takes on classic Judas Iscariot material. Eternity Of Darkness, Sign Of Katu, Arkenstone, Merrimack, Dead To Earth, The Black Death, Carving To Nenia, Martyr and Birkenau.
The strange thing is, that as buzzing and black, as hateful and harsh, as dreary and depressive as these tracks are, we had almost forgotten how pretty some of the Judas Iscariot stuff really was...
Comes packaged in an oversized A5 style digibook, with killer artwork, a booklet with liner notes and photos, stickers and a mini-poster. And of course, EXTREMELY LIMITED!! ONLY 150 COPIES. WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET MORE ONCE WE RUN OUT!!
From the darkest past we summon thee: early 7" vinyl releases from several of Norway's elite black metal tyrants, now collected on one handy cd. So if in 1992 you missed picking up Immortal's 7" debut, or failed to get Emperor's "As The Shadows Rise" 7" ep in '94, now's your chance to add those tracks to your collection. Rare 7" tracks by Dimmu Borgir, Arcturus, and the somewhat out-of-their-league Ancient are also found here. Far from most of those bands' current highly-polished, produced sounds, these early singles are nothing if not steeped in a raw, primitve black metal urgency and atmosphere that still makes the blood run cold. And, if these classic cuts weren't enough, this digipak also includes an amazing fold-out "map" of the Norwegian blackmetal community, a kind of convoluted family tree demonstrating the unholy links among these bands and many many others. Very cool, almost essential for true black metal fiends.
Wow. This is one amazing boxset, visually, sonically, and for a limited time we're selling em, taking preorders now in fact, so if you want one, by all means order away, cuz you are probably gonna want one. Our pal Keith Utech offered to let us sell these special fancy box sets that were otherwise only available via the Utech website; no other store has 'em! (Thanks, Keith!).
So, what's this all about? Well over the past couple of years, Utech put out a series of handsomely packaged cds featuring artwork by Stephen Kasner, discs by Skullflower, Heavensore, Runhild Gammelsaeter, The Stargazer's Assistant, Klangmutationen Schwarzhagel, RST, Final, Aluk Todolo, and Blood Fountains.
This box contains all 9 of those releases, PLUS an exclusive remix cd featuring one track apiece from each of those artists. Those ten discs, which come in a very nice custom engraved, matte black box, are accompanied by a folded booklet featuring text by Kasner and Jenks Miller. In addition, you get a folder, also black, signed and decorated in silver ink, containing nine cards of Kasner's art. Each set is numbered out of 90, signed, and no two are completely identical.
We've reviewed most, if not all of the releases within this fantastical box, so you can look elsewhere on our site for the write ups, though we imagine you probably already know if this is something you want or not. (And might be kicking yourself if you already bought all nine cds separately, yeah, we know...). Basically, very special packaging for a collection of some really great, dark, experimental, heavy, weird cds!!
If you want one, let us know, Utech will get 'em to us really quickly. But we probably won't hold your order for it, we'll either ship it separately when it comes in, or if you're a regular orderer, we can just inlcude it in your next order!!
Proto metal fiends, come get your fix! This new collection of "20 Heavy Nuggets From The Golden Age Of Hard Psych" is definitely in the tradition of other cool comps like White Lace And Strange, Downer Rock Genocide, The Electric Asylum, A Visit To The Spaceship Factory, Psychedelic Minds, etc. Just check out the lineup, names we know (and love) include the likes of Highway Robbery, Bang, Sir Lord Baltimore, Granicus, Power Of Zeus, Haystacks Balboa, Yesterday's Children, Tin House, SRC, and The Litter. Heavy hitters, all of 'em. Now you might already have some of these cuts, if you really are a hard psych / proto metal fiend, but you surely don't have 'em all. And even though we were familiar with a bunch of these bands, there's plenty more here we'd never had the pleasure of hearing before, and these obscurities fit right in with such illustrious company. Most of these tracks are taken from LPs, not singles, usually the band's one and only album, many of which have never been properly reissued or even if they have been, aren't in print anymore anyway.
So what we've got here is a deep survey of vintage late '60s, early '70s North American hard rock action, (proto) metallic, garagey, and psychedelic, chock full of crunching riffs, wild wailing guitars, and rough n' tough vocals. It's all pretty darn heavy for the era, if not quite to the extreme reached across the pond by heavy metal progenitors Black Sabbath (though Bang comes quite close - and hey look there's a song titled "Wrought Iron Man" by a band called Steeplechase). This comp includes the the most fuzzed out and stompin' version of frat rock chestnut "Gimme Some Lovin'" you've ever heard (by Euclid, from their album Heavy Machinery). Of course, fuzz is in copious supply all across this disc, erupting perhaps most savagely on the classic "Kingdom Come" by Sir Lord Baltimore, a majestic six and a half minute epic mixing tripped out lyrics with bursts of ultra distorted guitar. Being one of the tracks, like a few others here, that'd we'd have chosen ourselves for an all time ultimate proto metal mix.
FYI, the other bands on this disc we haven't mentioned yet are: Liquid Smoke, The Finchley Boys, Damnation Of Adam Blessing, Dragonfly, Jamul, Third Power, Head Over Heels, and Landslide. Among all 20, it's hard to pick faves, some are heavier, some are weirder/proggier, some are blusier, some are groovier, some are more melodic, you'll have to decide for yourself. But this is definitely a pretty badass acid rock comp! And thankfully the cd booklet includes informative commentary on each band/track.
Yes, a double cd tribute to black metal's most notorious one-man-band, the currently incarcerated Burzum aka Varg Vikernes. The twenty three bands on here are all mainly super underground black metallists obviously influenced (musically and perhaps in other ways, unfortunately) by Burzum to begin with and thus the cold misanthropic drone of Burzum's black metal is fully in evidence here, making it good listen for all those who appreciate Varg's music, if not his politics or actions (he's a murderer, churchburner, and a Nazi, in case you were wondering).
The liner notes are interesting, as each band gets a half page to share their thoughts on the tribute's subject. Most wax rapturously about his genius ("...Burzum's music speaks directly to the very essence of man, where dwells the truth. Burzum is like a starry, pure night sky where among light and darkness a perfect harmony reigns..." says the band Krigstrommer) but weirdly/thankfully several bands make a point of condemning (or certainly not condoning) Varg's political views even as they of course admit to their love of his music. The line-up includes Aborym, local boys Black Queen (?!), Nokturnal Mortum, Sarnath, DHR act Schizoid, Judas Iscariot, and a host of lesser-knowns (except to cult black metal followers of course) like Pagan Hellfire, Ewigkeit, Aegishjalmar, Fornost, etc. As we said, it's all very Burzumic indeed, with our favorite tracks being Aboryms twisted (but still true) dayglo machinelike blast of Varg worship and Schizoid's DHR-via-the-frosty-north industrial hyper-distorted droning buzz-take. Although all the tracks are pretty great!
Of course, we tend to prefer tribute comps where the artists *aren't* at all similar to the tributee to begin with, but that's not likely to happen with a Burzum tribute is it? And with Varg in a Norwegian prison making bad synth albums, hearing these guys reinterpret his old classics is as close as we're gonna get to a new "real" Burzum record...
MPEG Download: SCHIZOID "En Ring Til A Herske" [/audio/schizoiden.mp3]
MPEG Stream: SCHIZOID "En Ring Til A Herske" [/audio/schizoiden.m3u]
Few could argue with the influence of Bathory on all the black metal that would follow, and this double disc compilation bears testament to that, a pretty serious lineup of groups, many of them aQ faves, some more obscure, some of them only barely black metal, but all paying tribute. Just check out the list: Sigh, Meads Of Asphodel, Nokturnal Mortum, Gods Tower, Gnaw Their Tongues, Old Corpse Road, Wolves Of Avalon, Folkvang, Koldbrann, Darkest Era, Ravens Creed, Skyforger, and the list goes on. And while the songs are all Bathory, the sounds differ dramatically, from murky raspy, black buzz, to pounding punkish thrash, and from blown out black dirgery to epic, folk flecked power metal. Gnaw Their Tongues, who might be of the most interest to non black metallers, delivers his most black metal jam yet, which you'd be hard pressed to peg as a GTT track, a churning, buzzing black frenzy, that manages to sound as troo and grim as any of the other bands here. And of course Sigh choose to confound as usual, offering up their version of "Under The Runes", that sounds like some twisted electro-new wave groove, laced with Japanese melodies, cheesy slow jam sax, weird FX, and garbled vox. The rest of the comp is much more true to the originals, and at once speaks to the power and the timelessness of Bathory's songs, but also to how their influence inspired so many disparate variations of a sound that in some ways is one of the cornerstones of modern BM.
Also included is a 30 minute interview with Bathory's Quorthon (RIP), originally recorded in 1996 for the Godreah zine, which shares its name with the label that released this, both of which were the work of one of the Meads Of Asphodel!
Documenting the sound of Middle American hippie rockers heavying it up and heading to Middle Earth, singing songs about wizards, sorcerers, Sauron, and Satan, this is just so up our alley. Heck, there are several of us here, who by virtue of our particular, peculiar subcultural enthusiasms, were primed to flip out HARD over this. So if anything was ever meant to be a Record Of The Week, this sure was! Man, those nerds over at Numero have outdone themselves. It's not like Numero hasn't brought us some great compilations of long lost gems before - heck that's what they DO - they've got a well deserved rep for digging up truly obscure vintage soul music that's also totally top notch stuff. But as you've surmised, this ain't no soul. In the past, Numero have unearthed some wonderful rarities in other genres, from folky female singer-songwriters to Southern rock to power pop. But now, with this latest entry in their Wayfaring Strangers, er, WARfaring Strangers, series of comps, entitled Darkscorch Canticles, they've entered another dimension entirely, a dark and mystical hard rockin' realm of fuzzed-out, bellbottomed, pot-scented, proggy proto-metal basement jams!!
There are 16 tracks of fantastical garage rock from the depths of the '70s to be savored here, rescued from one-off, privately pressed 45 singles done by sub-sub-sub-Sabbath acts that seriously nobody has ever heard of before. That's kind of what's most amazing about this, that these tracks are so great, and yet also so unknown. We've talked to a few friends who consider themselves proto-metal experts, some of whom were rather incredulous about this, halfway suspecting it must somehow be a fake just cuz they didn't already know of ANY of these bands! By the way, we're convinced it's not a hoax - though if it were, that would actually be even more amazing - especially considering there's a densely-packed cd booklet / lp insert filled with vintage band photos, original 45 label graphics, and in-depth, highly detailed liner notes provided about each artist in tiny, tiny print (backgrounded by graph-paper dungeon drawings).
Last year Numero put out a vinyl-only archival collection of tracks by one of the bands found here, Chicago's Medusa, that we thought was pretty cool, and really should have reviewed but for some reason never did (we do still have a copy in stock, in all its black velvet glory!). At the time, Numero told us that release was a teaser for an entire compilation of obscure "D&D" rock of the same ilk that they planned to do, and they spoke the truth. Through the mastery of the dark arts, presumably, they somehow assembled this, digging up an outrageous assortment of over-the-top tunes from all these forgotten bands, whose names alone conjure vibes of myth and magic, sword and sorcery: Wrath, Triton Warrior, Stone Axe, Stonehenge, Dark Star, Stoned Mace, Hellstorm, Wizard, Arrogance, and more - including not just the aforementioned Medusa but also another band from Chicago called Gorgon Medusa. The earliest entry is from 1970, the latest from 1980, but they're all equally ancient-sounding. More like rickety sixties-ish heavy psych really, than anything metallic from the '80s or beyond, the stress here being on the "proto" side of the proto-metal tag. Stuff in the vein of Iron Butterfly and Bloodrock and Bubble Puppy and Captain Beyond.
You get low-budget occult organ prog epicry, and uber-distorted riff-rockin', and spaced out downer rock balladry, and badass boogie in Satan's service. We won't go track-by-track, though we're tempted, but a few of the standout faves for us include Wrath's "Warlord", especially due to the zombified vocals from someone who sounds like a brainwashed adolescent girl / cult victim (the guitarist's wife, apparently) intoning the scary lyrics about "living in lust as Satan must"; Inside's "Wizzard King", a blown-out, lo-fi rocker that asks the musical question: "Don't you wanna be a wizzard king, don't you wanna be free? / Don't you wanna be a wizzard king, don't you wanna be me?"; and Stone Axe's "Slave Of Fear", which sounds like Arthur Brown fronting a very early Black Sabbath or Blues Creation. But there's so much good stuff on here, enough to require a saving throw vs. acid rock or else become completely addicted, spinning this repeatedly.
The art and design deserve a mention as well. Both formats come in slipcased cover art consisting of newly-rendered stylized logos (embossed, in metallic ink!) for each band on the comp, like some artistically-inclined burnout teen doodling on a school binder. In terms of packaging, this really couldn't be any cooler - oh, wait, well, maybe it could - we should tell you, that if you wait a couple months, Numero will be selling (direct mailorder only, not in stores, grrrr!) a special edition of this consisting of the lp, the cd, AND a vaguely D&D-esque BOARDGAME, where the players take on the roles of these rock bands competing with each other in the fantastic realm of Darkscorch. Even if you never actually play the game we're pretty sure it will be an amazing artifact just to look at. It's gonna be, like, $100 though.
Ok, to wrap up: trying to explain why this comp is so rad is kind of like trying to explain the appeal of The Lord Of The Rings to someone who hasn't read it. Or D&D to someone who hasn't played. So just trust us, and we recommend trying those two things as well if you haven't!
All kinds of crazy versions of all kinds of crazy Melvins classics, by a line-up of mostly metalcore acts, presumably all artists who've been inspired by Buzz, Dale and Co. and for whom tangling with the heaviness of the Melvins is no huge stretch. Big names include Pig Destroyer (who've covered the Melvins before, here doing "Claude"), Isis and Agoraphobic Nosebleed (doing a brutal, nine minute version of "Boris" together! which reminds us, why isn't the band Boris on here?), High On Fire and Keelhaul (another team-up track, this one sounding like it was recorded live), Eyehategod, Mastodon, Strapping Young Lad, and others. But then there's also a handful we've never heard of before, and probably never will again. Everybody gets fully into the spirit of the thing, which is basically to attest that the Melvins, in a word, RULE. Of course, like most comps, it's a mixed bag. Not everything sounds great, but there are some gems. If you're a fan you'll want to check this out.
Bewarned, the first track, Mare's amazing improv-soul version of "Nightgoat" will have you wondering if you put the correct cd in your player. But if you skip ahead to hear the Dillinger Escape Plan doing "Honey Bucket" on track two you'll realize there's been no mistake. Of course, we like it best when tributes are done by bands who don't try to sound at all like the original -- though we can understand why so many of these metallic Melvins fan-bands on here are having a ball doing their best to sound just like 'em!
This comp gets bonus points for the Derek Hess artwork and the liner notes that basically say that tribute albums suck but the Melvins are the best band ever so what the heck, but it loses points for including no information about the partipating acts -- it'd be nice to have notes from each of them about their tracks. Well I guess we don't need Blessing The Hogs to tell us why they picked "Hog Leg".
Damn. Bevis Frond fan or not, you've gotta be impressed with Bevis's Nick Saloman's new career as the curator of kick-ass comps for the Psychic Circle label. We've already highlighted one of 'em recently, the On The Brink collection of instrumental swingin' psych groovers. Also reviewed this list: the fine British popsike comp Fairytales Can Come True. But this one might just be our favorite so far, seeing as how we're all into the early proto-metal HEAVINESS thing. "Heavy Psych And Power Fuzz From The USA 68-72" is the mouth-watering subtitle here. Sounds right up our alley, and it is.
Saloman must have a heckuva record collection. Taking a look at this disc's track list, we only recognized a few of the twenty bands/songs: Thunder & Roses, The Power Of Zeus, Banchee, Road, Fields... that's about it. And we figured if the unknown others were half as good as we knew those to be, we were in for a treat. Well such is the case, for the most part!! Saloman has dug up some beauts, plenty of ultra-rare, fuzzed-out examples of greasy garage muscle, freaky hairy funk, and Purple Hazey proto-metal riff rockin' from all over the US of A that are making our day in a big way. It starts off strong (and stays that way) with the wailing acid rock guitar and equally wailing vocals of "Penetration" by Detroit outfit Third Power. Next up, this comp takes its name from the contribution by Philly's Thunder & Roses, a very Cream-y track that was later covered by Nirvana (whose punked-out version was a worthy tribute). We also hear from Detroit's The Power Of Zeus, with their stone classic "It Couldn't Be Me" that hiphop headz might recognize as having been sampled on an Obie Trice track. LA's Road, featuring former Hendrix bassist Noel Redding, sound very Captain Beyond on their "Spaceship Earth". And then there's the Zeppish "Steel Dog Man" by a Boston outfit saddled with the unfortunate name Brother Fox And The Tar Baby (can't see 'em hitting the stadiums with that handle). In fact, names might be what held a bunch of these bands back, like The Lemonade Charade and The Yellow Payges, ferinstance. Hardly indicative of the long haired biker badassitude and Hendrix/Steppenwolf/Yardbirds worship found here in abundance. This comp also proves that said badassitude can coexist with some groovy horns on occasion, no problem.
For the record, here's the names of the other bands appearing here that we don't have room to discuss individually: The Hook, Blue Mountain Eagle, Genesis, The Illinois Speed Press, Eden's Children, T.I.M.E., Underbeat, The Uniques, and The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump! And yes, the cd booklet includes notes from NS on each track. Oh and for those heavy psych devotees keeping up / keeping score, you might want to know, is this as good as that excellent Psychedelic Minds Vol. 1 comp from last year on World In Sound? Yes, yes indeed.
We'd been hearing about this lp for a while, a very unlikely gathering of four black metal or tangentially black metal outfits, including two of our favorites, alchemical post rockers Aluk Todolo, and spaced out psychedelic black metal outronauts Nightbringer, along with Nihil Nocturne and Saturnalia Temple. And while all four bands explore dramatically different sonic territories, the disparate sounds and philosophies seem to merge into one mysterious and abstract whole.
Saturnalia Temple start things off in a decidedly UN black metal fashion, thick lugubrious riffs, spacey and druggy and woozy and sprawling, laced with soft psychedelic leads, Very early Earth sounding, until the riffs begin to gather momentum and take shape, and then suddenly it sounds like Kyuss at 16 rpm, some sort of sun baked desert rock, slooowed waaaaaay doooooown, lysergic and hazy, a sort of blackened and metalized slow blues, that just crawls and creeps until the drums finally kick in, and then it's some stoner doom, but with the groove dialed way down, a trancelike churn, peppered with bits of minor key melody and deep chanted monklike vocals.
Nightbringer step up, and explode in frenzy of whirling spaced out blackness, soaring frantic riffs, blasting black beats, the sound more astral and celestial than grim and frosty, the track constantly shifting, from lightning speed blast to warped midtempo moodiness, wild leads tangled up everywhere, haunting chanted vox, totally majestic and epic, even at its doomiest, the sound transcends, the guitars stratospheric, the arrangements lush and sprawling, a total heart of the black sun blast of galactic black bliss.
Nihil Nocturne offer up yet another black facet, theirs a midtempo blackness, digey and Burzumy, with just a little groove, giving their track a very Khold like vibe, a sort of modern Moonfog band feel, but with a surprising twist, the track shifting abruptly, into something much more abstract and un-metal, with glimmering clean guitars, electronic rhythms, the stereo super panned, the sounds swooping from ear to ear, speaker to speaker, major key melodies, until a super creepy processed voice begins to intone ominously, and the track begins again, a black metal Godspeed slow build epic, finally finishing off with a frenzied chaotic climax.
And finally the mighty Aluk Todolo, who do their own thing, and manage to evoke as much mood and mystery as any of the other bands, even working with a WAY more stripped down and minimal sound, that sort of post noise dark rock kraut drone they seem to have conjured in some strange ritual, and the sounds is indeed ritualistic, but also utterly hypnotic, and mesmerizing, all motorik rhythms, simple serpentine basslines, clouds of keening feedback, and abstract guitar crunch, swirls of effects, drifting fragmented melodies, but the drums driving everything, holding it all together, loose and tight at the same time, locked in, but drifting occasionally. Can, Faust, This Heat, German Oak, not black metal, not even remotely, maybe it's the vibe, or the mood, or the band pedigree, but it hardly matters, this is blackened and heavy totally enthralling dark and mysterious minimal hypno rock and it RULES.
Gorgeous packaging, super striking artwork and a massive 12 page 12" x 12" booklet, and yeah, SUPER LIMITED.
You know every true heavy metal lyricist has an epic fantasy adventure novel in him - or at least, some strange pulpy short stories a la Weird Tales. This book is built on that concept, being a collection of horror and fantasy fiction (and a couple poems too) written by members of a bunch of underground epic heavy metal bands. Inspired by the likes of Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and H.P. Lovecraft, these are stories by guys who normally try to bring that sort of stuff to life via their music. Contributors come from bands such as Bal-Sagoth, Funeral Circle, Graven Rites, Manilla Road/Hellwell, Solstice, Twisted Tower Dire, Briton Rites, and others. We've only just begun to delve in, but the first story we read, a tale set in the 19th century, wasn't bad, and epic metal fans will be interested to learn it was the inspiration for Manilla Road's song "The Riddle Master" from their classic Crystal Logic album.
254 pages, with an introduction by professional swords & sorcery author David C. Smith, and a full color cover by Martin Hanford (who has done art for Bal-Sagoth, Slough Feg, and many others), it's a pretty decent DIY production, meant to look and feel like a paperback in the old pocket book tradition, like an anthology from the '70s.
We often lament the fact that many of our favorite bands predate the list. Bands we love and obsessed on, but whose records, and often entire careers, came well before we began our bi-weekly chronicling of musics weird and heavy, dense and brutal, lovely and catchy. Slint's Spiderland has a one line review ferchrissakes!!!
And then there's Man Is The Bastard. The supreme rulers of West Coast Power Violence. A throbbing, churning, dual bass-ed behemoth. A crushing low end onslaught, double basses, crushing drums, howled vocals, swirls of caveman electronics, amazing graphic design (that ubiquitous MITB skull!), political lyrics, challenging subject matter, intense artwork, they were the ultimate D.I.Y. punk rock dirge metal outfit. If you don't own any MITB records, stop right now, and make it happen, any one into heavy, thoughtful brutality, or into experimental and extreme outsider punk rock, needs to own every bit of Bastard they can get their hands on. It's hard to imagine a punk rock band who hasn't been influenced by MITB. In fact the crustcore back pack crowd that you most often equate with legendary epic metal lords Neurosis, you'll find are almost ALL sporting the MITB skull somewhere on their persons, back patch, button, tattoo, it's probably more ubiquitous in this generation than the Black Flag bars or the Einsturzende Neubauten figure. And for good reason. MITB were not only heavy, they were fucking weird, not metal, not punk rock, not noise, but all of those things. And not only did MITB leave an amazing musical legacy, the various members all continued on, taking various bits and pieces, vestiges of what once was Man Is The Bastard, and incorporating them into a whole new world of noise and sound.
Thus we have No Skull Left Unturned. A triple cd collection of mostly new recordings from all the various Man Is The Bastard offshoots (only the Sleestak tracks are previously released). An eclectic bunch for sure. From drone to noise, to ambient to post rock and every possible hybrid in between. Some groups we already know and love, some we're only just discovering, others we're re-discovering and digging all over again. Even if you're new to the world of Man Is The Bastard, this is a killer comp, that will definitely appeal to folks into noise, drone, punk rock, metal, but for MITB fans, this is the motherlode! About the coolest thing short of a reunion or a brand new MITB record.
Before we talk about the bands, let's discuss the packaging. HOLY SHIT. We've seen amazing packaging, but this is so deluxe, and so gorgeously and meticulously hand assembled, true to the D.I.Y spirit for sure, but so over the top. It would be worth it for the packaging alone. Let's start from the outside and work our way inwards.
An oversized grey envelope, sealed with a metallic silver wax seal, bearing the imprint of the MITB skull, affixed to one side of the envelope is a library card pocket, inside, a card with the names of each band typewritten. Flip it over, the MITB skull is printed in black metallic ink, and a clear transparency is affixed over the top. Inside, there are FOUR zines, each with a hand printed silkscreened hard cardstock cover, printed in oranges and blacks. Inside the first, Sounds, are the three cds, a track listing, liner notes, photos and track info for each band on the comp, in the back are two pages of stickers, one with stickers for the comp and all the various bands, one a whole page of MITB skull stickers, along side the cds, are an embroidered patch and a pin, both bearing the same skull image. The set is numbered on the inside of the cover. Limited of course. The second zine, also housed in a silkscreened card stock cover, Discography, is just that, a complete discography of Man Is The Bastard and MITB related bands, including tons of reviews from various zines and magazines, as well as a full color poster featuring the covers of every single MITB and related release. Zine number three, Interviews, is ultra thick, packed with tons of interviews with all the various members of MITB, discussing everything from music to politics, touring, art, reviews, Japanese fans, drugs and loads more. Also included in this zine is a hand screened MITB bookmark, no doubt to use as you work your way through all of this text. And finally, zine 4, Images, is even thicker than the Interviews zine, with tons of images, photos, posters, interviews as well as most, if not all the liner notes and inserts from all the various MITB releases. All 4 zines tied together with a piece of twine and sealed in that envelope.
Phew! And we haven't even gotten to the music yet. Which is just as intense and impressive as the packaging:
Let's start with Amps for Christ who are probably the most well known of the bunch, at least around here. Henry Barnes was the noisemaker for Man Is The Bastard, with his homemade amps (Amps For Christ!), lo-fi duct-tape electronics, screwdrivers and bastardized circuit boards, he added a weird caveman lo-tech sheen to MITB's churning bass heavy power violence, but post-Bastard, Barnes took his Amps and created a strange world of jangle gypsy folk, lilting strum and soaring joyful bagpipe like buzz. A glorious field of fuzzy sonic flowers and sparkling sunshine, all woven into bouncy jigs, doleful drones, simple strum and dreamy childlike melodies, but peppered with strange spoken word, machinelike robotic, murky loping krautrock, and raga like buzz. The tracks here run the gamut, featuring the usual Amps guests contributing dreamlike female vocals, keening violas, and extra strum and pluck, all woven into a constantly confusional world of bent circuits, blown out guitar buzz, summery afternoon folk flutter, and ominous dirgey strums.
Then there's Unicorn, who have been a big favorite around these parts, with their washed out minimal ambience, dark drones and atmospheric drift. The Unicorn tracks here are much more varied, the first a strange electro soundscape of crunchy beats and distorted vocals, feedback squiggles and damaged synths, the second more of the Unicorn we're used to, barely there drift and shimmer, a faraway pulse, then the third a murky midnight forest jam, recorded from beneath the earth, everything muffled and muddy, smeared rhythms, and mysterious insect sounds, like No Neck doing Chain Reaction.
Probably the most prolific and most direct of the MITB offshoots is Bastard Noise, whose output has been nearly impossible to keep up with, and who embraced the noise side of Man Is The Bastard (hence the new monicker) ditching most of the bass and rhythm in favor of a much more static and generally harsh sound. That said, their blend of caveman electronics and black ambience is quite compelling, from huge ambient sprawls of softly shifting black whir, to freaked out walls of pure fierce sound, a thick swirl of soft white noise and manufactured alien soundscapes, harsh and brutal, noisy and intense, but also weirdly inviting and impossibly listenable.
Bastard Noise teamed up with Japanese junk-noise unit K2, for long stretches of chaotic, kitchen sink, electronic noise freakouts: malfunctioning electronics, damaged amplifiers, squalls of loops and stuttering glitch and buzz and grinding crunch.
Antennacle are a new name to us, not sure which Bastard is involved, but they contribution to this collection is one epic 20+ minute soundscape, ominous expanses of insectlike buzz, spare percussive rattle, low end hum, blessed out shimmer, brief stretches of glimmering outer space FX, chunks of feedback, occasionally assembled into strange alien rhythms, a constantly shifting soundworld dipping into territories as far reaching as Dead C murk, Keening Sunroof!-like ur-drone, No Neck style folky clatter and Wolf Eyes-ian electronic landscapes.
Hierophant is another new name to us in the field of post Bastard offshoots, this one another American / Japanese team up, all electronics and field recordings, woven into a jagged field of low end thrum and hissing high end buzz, abstract percussion, and clouds of Merzbowian rrroooar, swirls of spaced out FX, a discordant din, the sound of a noise rock band crashing headfirst into a junkyard gamelan. Long stretches of what sound like field recordings of some alien swamp, all indescribably chirps and croaks, suspended in a muddy viscous black bog, over which thick sheets of coruscating high end feedback drift like storm clouds.
But probably the most exciting stuff here are three previously released tracks from Man Is The Bastard noiserock side project Sleestak. It exciting to hear what a more mellow MITB might have sounded like, an ominous low slung brutality, bass heavy dirges, moody malevolence, more a sort of beautiful brutal post rock. A loping bass line wanders through a field of hiss and hum and buzz, spacious and spare, almost like a meaner more malevolent Low or Bohren. Slowcore peppered with bursts of twisted noise freakouts, and distant bits of shortwave squiggle, a very Slint-like vibe, with the guitar locking into super hypnotic loops, over lurching downtuned bass, drifting detuned melodic fragments, if someone didn't know better, they could definitely mistake this stuff for some super obscure Touch And Go or AmRep noiserock band. Killer stuff. Previously released, but we'd never heard these tracks before, and will absolutely be hunting down everything we can find. In fact, this whole comp will have most of you digging for discs by all these bands. And our waning love of Bastard Noise has most definitely blossomed again after digging into these tracks. Absolutely and totally recommended. And of course the best part of a comp like this is that it got us all excited about Man Is The Bastard again, and that shit sounds as good as ever.
Man Is The Bastard! Crossed Out! Infest! Spazz! No Comment! Capitalist Casualties! All hail WEST COAST POWERVIOLENCE!! And the glorious sounds borne from their legacy...
Not sure what exactly the occasion is for this black metal meeting of the minds (the liner notes claim it's bands with long histories in the metal underground), but who can argue with such a stellar line up, and the uber metal cover, a blood splattered naked woman with a severed pig's head between her legs, not to mention the legend underneath the tray: "play loud or don't fucking bother". This Meads Of Asphodel curated black metal 5 way split finds the Meads themselves teamed up with Japanese weirdos Sigh, Norwegian grimlords Taake, UKBM horde Thus Defiled, and the new to us Evo Algy (although those names might sound similar to you, cuz Evol Algy is a duo comprised of Evo, the drummer for punk legends the Angelic Upstarts, and Algy Ward who was in Tank, the Saints AND The Damned!).
Evo Algy start things off with a Status Quo cover, all sitar buzz and fluttery flute, before launching into some punky NWOBHM style metal crunch, heavy and buzzy and swaggery and total old school hard rocking heaviness. Taake offer a brief blast of furious pounding blackened punkiness, which it turns out is actually a GG Allin cover, two minutes of super distorted punkmetal buzz and pound. Next up is Sigh, who do not disappoint and unfurl some twisted cosmic space prog blackness, all thick buzzy bass, ethereal operatic vox, swooshy FX, circusy melodies, synths galore, not to mention a constantly shifting dizzying arrangement, oh and sax too of course, all woven into a fantastically twisted chunk of carnivalesque black prog.
Meads of Asphodel are up next with their awesomely titled "There's A God In My Gruel", the trio's latest blast of Christ mocking weirdness, and like their last record, they continue to craft what essentially sounds like a Satanic version of Godspell, a demonic sort of musical, with growled sinister vox over cheesy keyboards, muted fuzzy guitars, sci-fi effects, epic and majestic and dramatic, and very very weird. Not getting truly metal until the last minute or so, and even then, it's super over the top, a Broadway musical gone haywire, the performers possessed and spewing fantastically vitriolic sonic filth.
Finally UKBM crew Thus Defiled lay down an epic sprawl of melodic blackness, that slips malevolently from midtempo classic metal gallop, to furious frenzied buzz and blast, replete with killer riffing and wild shredding solos.
Fans of any / all of these outfits will most likely want this, and we'd have to concur with the liner notes: PLAY LOUD OR DON'T FUCKING BOTHER!
The tongue twistingly monickered Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere, who shell henceforth be referred to as VEGA, has been a huge favorite around these parts, ever since we first laid ears on their Cocaine album.
When we first got that record we were really expecting something fucked up and damaged and bizarre, but instead, Cocaine ended up being one of the fiercest most frenzied and fastest black metal discs we had ever heard, a total soul shearing onslaught so drenched in buzz it seems impossible that the whole thing didn't collapse under the weight of all that buzzing and blasting.
Well here we are revisiting VEGA's past, and guess what, they actually did used to be seriously fucked up and bizarre, their black metal still fierce and frenetic, but tempered by weird eighties style Goblin-y synthscapes and weirdo new wave and all sorts of other whatthefuck-ness.
The opener is appropriately black metal, an intro, but even there, the brooding synths and ominous drones are laced with processed children's voices which are FREAKY. So then, as black metal record law dictates, the next track should be a serious blast of black metal fury, but here, well, it sounds like some eighties John Carpenter soundtrack, or the chase scene in some cheesy sci-fi flick, or Goblin at their new waviest, but fuck it, who cares what the BM bylaws dictate, this stuff is awesome. Haunting and cheesy, dramatic and so over the top, and all over the place, slipping into some ominous synthy drones, before transforming into some minimal almost jungle jam, the skittery beats underneath warm woozy synths and creepy minor key melodies, and finally some harsh black metal vox over the top. And then buzzing guitars. Dropping in with about 50 seconds to go. Fuck yeah. Did we mention we love these guys? Well we love them even more now.
It's not all insane cheesy new wave weirdness, the follow up "Kill Me" explodes in a frenzy of grinding blackness, but even then, part way in, shifts gears and becomes super melodic with soaring melodies, and mathy rhythms, but you know what, by the end, the track has somehow transformed into another synth drenched skittery new wave outro.
And so it goes. Easily half the record is soundtracky new wave-y weirdness. And these guys nail it. Zombi, Proscriptor, you Carpenter / Goblin revisionists better watch your asses, cuz this takes all that stuff and gets it all tangled up with black buzz and blurred blasts. And those are definitely the best moments, when harsh vocals are laid over skittery electronic drums and whirling synths, so wrong it's right!
The band are still capable of spewing black filth with the best of them, "Insex Infect" is a solid 4 minutes of blown out in-the-red black heaviness, putting most BM bands to shame, but then moments later, they offer up a creepy bit of synthy ambience, only to lurch right back into another black frenzy.
The black metal here is top notch, so heavy and brutal and grim, incredible riffs and wild drumming, harsh vokills, and dense tangled arrangements, but the other stuff, it's not just throw away, like most bands tossing in a little keyboard interlude, it's well crafted, dark and mysterious and haunting, ominous and sinister, even without the metal, this would have been an awesome retro chunk of new wave Goblin worship, but with the metal, it's something far more fucked up and GENIUS.
Packaged in one of those oversized super jewel cases. Andee's black metal reissue of the year!!!!
We know not what "Vasaeleth" means, it sounds sinister, vaguely itchy, certainly evil and obscure enough to be a good name for this new band on Profound Lore (an adventurous metal label that manages to be both deeply cult, and fairly diverse). Although metal fans revel in the distinctions between subgenres impervious to outsiders, Vasaeleth is one of those bands that seems to cross over betwixt death and doom and black metal. If we had to choose, we'd catagorize 'em as death metal, yeah, definitely, but creepy old occultic death metal, that shares a lot of the raw Satanic spirit of the most cvlt-ish black metal. The likes of Portal and Impetuous Ritual, also with recently raved about cds on Profound Lore, come to mind (and also the disc of Cremation demos listed last time) as being the the sort of primal death that appeals to the black metal aesthetic too. Vasaeleth is further evidence that it's coming back (from the grave), that filthy festering old school death metal, the sort that possesses a sludgey doomic vibe as well, harking back to early Obituary, Autopsy, Incantation and that sort of thing.
Shrouded in excellent, arcane cover art (by the same artist, Antichrist Kramer, who did covers for black metal band Inquisition's Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer and Nefarious Dismal Orations albums) this duo's debut oozes with ancient atmosphere, each song barely emerging from the thick soupy murk, the entire album to be regarded as one crushing ritual from the bowels of hell. Oh, how we love the morbid miasmic tones of the guitar and bass, their congealed riffs shuddering over drumming that sounds like the tramping boots of the legions below! The vokills are continuous, vomitous heavings of guttural grimnity, as if another abstract instrument adding to the dirge-droneiness of this metal of death, which is also embellished by eerie synth as well. Heavy, hypnotic, haunted, so ugly that it becomes beautiful.
Recently, we've been stocking some killer old school death metal on the Razorback label, bands like Skeletal Spectre and Decrepitaph, and this fits with those, though there's a "fun factor" to those Razorback acts that Vasaeleth are just too grim to share, their brand of blackened death being so much more seemingly serious, spiritual, and dare we say it, artistic. And that's awesome as well. Wretchedly recommended!
Death metal can be a tough sell. It's not as grim and kvlt as black metal, not as melodic and catchy as true metal, not as creepy and emotive as doom metal, and as metal goes, it often seems like death metal caters to the lowest common denominator metalhead. Don't believe us? Go to a Cannibal Corpse show and then talk to us.
But c'mon, there's been some incredible death metal, Carcass, Death, Morbid Angel, Grave, Autopsy, Deicide, Suffocation, Immolation, Sinister, we could go on, but most metalheads we know, definitely have a soft spot for death metal. But like anything else, we do tend toward the weirder end of the DM spectrum, whether it's the ridiculous ultra tech silliness of Braindrill, the noodly fusion of Psyopus, or the murky noise drenched filth that is Wold or Mitochondrian, but that said, we always love us a little death metal, it's a 'sound' we love, and while there are WAY too many DM bands, you can count on a label like 20 Buck Spin to sift the wheat from the chaff.
Thus we have Vastum, who hail from right here in SF (another one of those instances where this band is popular enough to get signed to 20BS, yet some metalheads here had never even heard of them!), but they're a pretty seriously meancing death metal beast, who seem to have traded in furious speed for something much more murky and atmospheric, the guitars thick as tar, the vocals a beastly rroooooaaaar, the riffs muddy and blackened, laced with fast picked soaring epic melodies, the sound a hellish blackened miasma, churning and roiling, chugging and pounding, the band seeming to prefer the plod over the blast, which suits us just fine, giving the sound a doomy, creepy vibe, and when the band do occasionally crank up the tempo, it's only to midtempo, a weirdly galloping anti-groove, which adds another even stranger dimension to the proceedings.
Fans of all that modern death metal murk will most likely dig, as will all of you who still worship before the altar of classic DM, and heck this is plenty doomy enough that it might just tempt some of you doomlords as well...
Dragging themselves upward from the moist earth of San Francisco's most dilapidated graveyard, local filth merchants Vastum have returned to expel upon the world another pungent platter of churning decrepit death metal. There's no technical wankery to be found herein. There's no prog fusion guitar virtuosity. The approach here is strictly no frills, strictly barbaric. Snaking nauseous guitar harmonies coil around Cro-Magnon drum plods and guttural vomitous vocals. The mood is doomy and grotesque. The guitars are such a thick nebulous mass that even the album's faster moments seem mired in swamp, like an intense dreadful vertigo or the inevitable swallowing horror of sinking into quicksand. But what sets this apart from the myriad other old school death metal bands who seem to have writhed out from the woodwork these past few years is the quality of playing and the quality of the sound. As primitive as this style of pummeling death metal may be, the playing here is tight and deadly, while the production is the perfect balance between cavernous and clean - all of the atmosphere of an empty forgotten mausoleum, but with none of the details lost. If at the altars of the old gods you still worship (translation: Autopsy, Incantation, etc. etc.) then this is an absolute must have.
The label may be Bay Area Thrash, but not only is this label from the UK, not the Bay Area, but this is most certainly not thrash. Instead, it's a heaping mound of black and crusty doom sludge!!! Vat Of Fat offer up two length slabs of groovy sludgy stoner doom, huge lumbering riffs, barely audible gutteral vox, all crusty and crushing. Think Eyehategod, Electric Wizard and the like. But it's slow and sludgy enough to hit the spot for the more extreme doom fanatics out there (Khanate, Moss, Bunkur, etc...) but this is definitely more riffy. Big old downtuned riffs, almost stoner rock at points, but too caked in their own grit and filth and slow and pummeling to be anything but a gloriously punishing dose of planet crushing deathdoomdronedirgesludge!
As The Tide Consumes, are a much less sludgy proposition, but no less heavy, just a bit more chaotic and a bit less tail dragging. Fuzzy crusty riffs, howling screeched vocals and wild streaks of squealing feedback. Way more agitated and crusty sounding than the stonery doom of VoF, although that said, this is still plenty downtuned and churningly sludge soaked. Almost like someone tried to teach Esoteric to play black metal, or tried to get Eyehategod to somehow sound more like Neurosis. A grinding groovy seriously swampy and sludge-y metallic pummel.
LP only and as with lots of stuff like this, VERY LIMITED.
Wierd Records have brought us some amazing records over the last few years, from Led Er Est, Martial Canterel, Xeno & Oaklander, Staccato Du Mal and others, but this one might just be the coolest, and the weirdest (wierdest?) of the bunch. From the above mentioned bands, it's obvious that Wierd traffics in darkwave / coldwave / newwave music primarily, and this debut from Canadian outfit Vaura, definitely does fit in there, somewhere, sort of...
But unlike those bands, Vaura is HEAVY, the sound dense and epic, and times intense and downright crushing, while at others, droned out and dour. At their gloomiest, we're reminded of French retrowavers Soror Dolorosa, the sound a sort of death rock, beholden to groups like Joy Division and the Cure, but there's no denying the metal element, hinting at the likes of both Liturgy and Katatonia, which makes more sense when you know Vaura's pedigree. A group you might not expect to include members of Dysrhythmia, Kayo Dot, Secret Chiefs 3, and maybe most surprising of all Gorguts, who are responsible for what might be one of aQ's favorite death metal records of all time, Obscura. So the real question is maybe what is a death metal guy doing in a band like this, and how the heck did these weirdos and metalheads end up with a dark, gloomy, heavy record on Wierd? And really the answer is who cares. We're just happy to have this strange slab of moody heaviness, and it's quickly become the only thing we want to listen to.
The sound is a bit confusional, but only when you're trying to describe it, cuz on paper, it seems like a mess, like a weird whatthefuck that would never work, but in action, it's awesome. Hooky and heavy, brooding and moody and metallic, thick guitars, chiming and shimmering one second, churning and chugging the next, sinewy basslines, the vocals deep and dramatic, subtly processed, the songs proggy and intricate, some incredible drumming, the songs super melodic, even poppy in places, but occasionally peppered with bursts of gloom infused black metal, complete with blast beats, and deep ominous vox, atonal chords, often splintering into a grinding almost death metal, but more muddy and gothic and less distinctly metal, everything wreathed in cool textured psychedelic guitars, dense squalls of dark sonic energy, layered chordal thrum and swirls of FX and streaks of feedback. And while the sound seems to always return to a sort of dark, and heavy, gloom rock, it's what the group do to and with that sound that makes this so transcendent.
And while the record definitely works as an album, the individual songs and sound are super varied, from the washed out black metal flecked gloominess of "Obsidian Damascene Sun", with its furious double kick drumming, and swirling psychedelic guitar filigree, to the churning bombastic almost doom-ed heaviness of "Uncreated Light (Transfiguration)", to the strangely ritualistic sounding "The Column's Vein", all rumbling low end, and chanted monklike vox, to the acoustic gloom-folk of the title track, a gorgeously moving softly psychedelic steel string ballad, the record culminating in our favorite track, "The Zahir" which begins as a barely there rumbling drone, underpinning steel string guitar strum, some softly crooned vox and chiming harmonics, which disappear in a squall of massive distorted riffage and swirling feedback, the whole song transformed into a whirling propulsive sprawl of melodic drone-psych, a brooding slow build that becomes a heavy gloom pop, driving and intense, in comes some metal vokills and some tangled super catchy guitar melodies, all over tribal drumming, and thick buzzing guitars, the sound gradually falling apart, and transforming into a woozy detuned dirge, only to explode into a crushingly heavy, gloriously blown out Godspeed style epic outro, wild streaks of psych guitar, pounding chaotic drumming, clouds of swirling effects, definitely the sort of thing that should have been stretched out for another 20 minutes or so, but instead, collapses in a field of glitch and static, buzz and crumble. So fucking awesome. A practically perfect slab of heavy gloominess / gloomy heaviness. And a new aQ favorite for sure.
Emerging once more from the shadowy subterranean recesses of bleary Brooklyn, aQ's favorite misery merchants Vaura have returned with their second dose of heavy glistening gloom rock (and their first for avant-metal tastemakers Profound Lore). By definition a side project of sorts, Vaura features members of Dysrhythmia, Kayo Dot, Gorguts and Secret Chiefs 3... and sound exactly nothing like you would expect a band with that pedigree to sound. There's a myriad of influences here - all brought together with an admirable cohesion. Black metal, '80s goth, post rock, psychedelia... The elements are all there, but The Missing is at its core an atmospheric rock record. Although you wouldn't believe that from the first 30 seconds of the album. The introductory title track opens with a gorgeous wall of sound black metal tremolo grind, a pummeling frantic drum blast and a minimal spacey guitar lead, immediately bringing to mind the recent crop of euphoric black metal bands like Alcest or Deafheaven. But only half a minute later the track crumbles into a bittersweet mid paced dirge of plodding toms, shuffling militaristic snares and deep brooding vocals - much more akin to Ian McCulloch or Andrew Eldritch than any spike gauntleted shrieker. There's also a distinct similarity to mid period Katatonia in the numbed, almost frail vocal approach. Much of The Missing in fact seems to recall a very specific time in recent metal history - a period in the late '90s when extreme metal bands, usually on the doomier end of the spectrum, started experimenting with more traditional rock & roll elements. The uptempo mournful melodic rock of "Incomplete Burning", with its strummed acoustic guitar mingled with distant distorted leads and reverb washed vocals, is pure Judgement-era Anathema - invoking the same sense of wistful psychedelic melancholy. Elsewhere on songs like "Pleasure Blind" and "Putting Flesh to Bone" the slinking basslines creeping under warm ethereal strings bring to mind Beyond Dawn's subtly surreal Electric Sulking Machine. "The Things We Hide", with its dissonant plucked Eastern melodies and sinister echoed vocals, even recalls the more atmospheric moments of British avant-death weirdos Akercocke, as does the pummeling blasting, warped clean guitar and droning synths of "Passage to Vice". It's not all so wonderfully obscure though. There's plenty of Joy Division in those distinctive post-punk basslines and that disjointed repetitive drumming, and the aforementioned Sisters of Mercy are clearly a big influence. "Braced for Collapse" even brings to mind some of Sunny Day Real Estate's more downtempo moments. And could this record have come at a more perfect time? It's that time of the year... The days are getting darker, the winds are getting more bitter, and our playlists are getting even gloomier to match. If the atmospheric goth tinged heaviness of Pinkish Black - or maybe even In Solitude's latest - are your idea of a perfectly dismal night in, then you couldn't do much better than lighting those ceremonial candles, laying out your finest black velvet, and spending some quality alone time with The Missing.
As a rule, we're usually not so keen on live albums (from rock bands, that is -- jazz is another matter). Who needs to hear a bunch of crowd noise and clapping? Live albums are notorious for time-wasting drum solos, cliched stage banter, poor sound, bad mixes, and unwanted cover versions ("Hound Dog", y'know, that sort of thing). Plus half the time they're faked. Of course, that doesn't mean some aren't classics: Kick Out The Jams, Lights Out, Live At Last, Tokyo Tapes, Band Of Gypsies...
And while we're NOT suggesting that this particular recording by this late-'70s Greek hard rock outfit is as good as any of those, it is still pretty good for a live album from a band we've never even heard of before! And, it's also the only way you're gonna get to hear 'em since the Vavoura Band never made a studio album back then. And if you're into heavy '70s hard rock proto-metal action, you probably DO want to hear 'em. Heavy, bluesy, a little proggy, with some some ethnic folk influences, these guys (who were apparently famous for trashing their equipment a la The Who) manage to remind us of both Hawkwind and Black Sabbath at various points on this record. They also remind us of a really freaky longhaired '70s bar band in full guitar-splooge mode -- 'cause that's what they are, basically. Pretty cool. 12 tracks, 11 live, 1 studio, recorded mostly circa '77-'79 with one track from '81. English vocals for the most part.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ved Buens Ende is the extremely weird Scandinavian Black Metal band that has more in common sonically with Slint than Bathory. This disc (packaged in a beautiful black box) features demo and rare tracks from prior to their "Written In Waters" masterpiece. Avant garde melancholy post-Black Metal? Recommended.
Praise Odin! At long last, a reissue of the sole full-length Ved Buens Ende album, originally released in 1995 on the now defunct cult label Misanthropy. A black metal super session of sorts, this band featured past, present, and future members of Satyricon, Dodheimsgard, Aura Noir, Cadaver Inc. and Arcturus. But Ved Buens Ende ('At The End of the Rainbow' in English) hardly sounded like ANY of those black metal stalwarts -- as avant garde as any of them ever got, Ved Buens Ende went way beyond. Yes it was heavy and dark and the vocals had a unique Viking/monk chant strangeness that isn't typical of black metal but would make even less sense coming from another genre of music... but rather than black metal, Ved Buens Ende could just as easily be categorized as a post-rock or math-rock band. A really amazing math-rock band, with Don Caballero's "2" being the closest comparison! But totally sad and metallic and strange and forlorn and beautiful. Utter weird progressive instrumental genius. And the vocals, once you get used to them (and they do add to the bizarre vibe already created by the unsettling, atmospheric music) are used to deliver some mysterious, poetic lyrics as well. Overall, this is not like anything else!
It's too bad they never released another record (except for a disc of demos) but it's also unlikely that they could have surpassed this masterpiece anyway. Over the past eight years, this record has really proven itself to be a lasting classic, growing in stature, foreshadowing (but still exceeding) much of the 'post-black metal' innovations to come -- such as the most out-there psychedelic parts of recent Enslaved albums, for instance, or Opeth's epic dynamism. It's been out of print for a long time, and hopefully now will reach a whole new audience with this remixed, remastered re-release, which features brand new cover art/graphic design that's not bad at all, kind of a fancier, Ralph Steadman ink-splatter take on the original artwork. As one of our favorite so-called black metal albums EVER, this gets the highest recommendation, though the vocal style may be a test that hopefully you will pass.
MPEG Download: "I Sang For The Swans" [/audio/vedbuensendeIsang.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "I Sang For The Swans" [/audio/vedbuensendeIsang.m3u]
Yay, more primo scuzz n' swagger from Chicago punkers Vee Dee (not to be confused with another band we've listed called Veee Deee), rockin' at us from even deeper down the dark Midwestern hole of nihilism and negativity they inhabit, a place littered with cigarette butts, empty beer cans, and dogeared collectible copies of '70s punk rock fanzines. We'd been wondering when we'd hear from 'em again. Their 2004 debut Furthur was a surprise hit here at AQ, proving to be as catchy as the band's namesake. This new double vinyl gatefold lp (which comes packaged with a handy compact disc containing all the music too) maybe due to its expanse is not quite as immediately catchy, taking a few more spins before the singalong aspects start to sink in, but they do, as Vee Dee churn out 4 sides, 13 songs, of raucous psychedelic punk, heavy on the glorious guitar distortion. Perhaps imagine a cross between Pissed Jeans and Plastic Crimewave? The Heads and Mudhoney are possible references too, with Black Flag and Misfits and the Electric Eels being necessary ones, along with various and sundry obscure bands who left bloodstains across the Midwest back in the '70s... Oh and their song "Into The Void" isn't a Sabbath cover, instead it comes closer to sounding like the Stooges, obviously another big influence.
Public Health Mental System has got something of a cosmic / drug vibe, due to song titles like "Glimpses Of Another World", "Cleveland, Outerspace" and "Teens O.D." we guess, plus of course all the fuzzed out soundz. Pharoahs and pyramids are also mentioned. But there's no color, the cover art and the music too is all still in brilliant black and white, a la space and night. Inner space being the place they're really headed, on a bad trip, yet Vee Dee's psych-ological bringdown music still rocks with gleeful abandon, 'cause, fuck it.
Record number three from these American noisemakers living in Japan, who apparently have decided that while they're there, they should make the heaviest, loudest, ass kickingest RAWK possible, and hell, doesn't really seem like it could get more heavy, loud or kick ass. Or mean, it is called Listen To This 1000x Then Kill Yourself after all, and there's a note inside crediting there artwork to Stephen O'Malley, even though there's virtually no art at all, we can only assume they're taking the piss. But it's all about the sound inside, and contrary to all the above, it's actually surprisingly melodic, as well as murky, a little lo-fi, definitely super rocking. The first track is a pretty freaked out slab of cyclical hypno-noiserock, a bit like a less spazzed out Lightning Bolt, but from there on out, while still heavy and a bit noisy, it's much more melodic, the second track is all big booming guitars, chords ringing out, blurred and buzzy and droney, the drums abstract and splattery, the track after that is downright dreamy, a sort of Japanese psych take on the Necks, hypnotic, loping and washed out and dreamy, yet still distorted and in the red, just not KILL YOURSELF in the red, more like eyes closed letting the blissed out heaviness wash over you.
It might be the recording, but this new Veee Deee, for all its implied misanthropy is really listenable, heavy, and hectic, manic and a little metal sure, but really warm and psychedelic, even the last track, which is more unhinged and angular and chaotic, with wild free drumming and tangled guitar skree, it too is weirdly melodic and surprisingly not fucked up. The louder you play it, the more the heaviness and freakiness reveals itself, maybe that's true of all records, but even with headphones this is a seriously dense and heavy chunk of noisy psychedelic post rock radness. If you have the other two, definitely grab one of these while you can, but even if you missed out, this is definitely worth picking up for the heavy rhythmic psych inclined out there.
Comes in cool handmade packaging, and includes free link to what's basically another full-length: To All the Girls I've Loved Before - Which One of You Gave Me the Clap?, a hi-fi antithesis to Listen To This 1000x Then Kill Yourself.
As much as we dug the most recent record from Prurient, a seriously caustic slab of NOISE (and we're VERY picky about our noise) we're beginning to think Prurient mainman Dominick Fernow's true calling is playing in an actual band. It doesn't really matter what kind, as long as it's noisy and distorted and heavy and fucking LOUD. We've been freaking out about Fernow's black metal duo Ash Pool, a buzzing black beast as blown out as any noise combo, but here we have another of Fernow's bands, this one more rock than black metal, at least as far as we can tell. Actually for all we know the Vegas Martyrs could be black metal too, it's sort of hard to tell under all that noise and static and buzz and hiss.
There's lots of melody peeking out through the chaos which leads us to believe that somewhere in there lurks a rock band.
Like Ash Pool, Bone Awl, and Ancestors, it's all about the recording and the sound around the songs, which here means a swirling dense cloud of harsh buzz and whir, crumbling and grinding and hissing. But underneath are looped hypnotic melodies, howled vocals, pounding drums, all but completely obscured by that layer of blown out noise. It's almost like some rock band recorded by Merzbow and then mixed by Tim Hecker if that makes any sense. Or imagine the My Bloody Valentine model applied to noise rock instead of indie rock, less dreamy and blissy and more harsh and chaotic. Heavy, brutal, cacophonous, grating, in the red, overblown, ear splitting and dissonant, but at the same time, weirdly and impossibly pretty.
Packaged in a thick black and white sleeve, and pressed on super thick clear green vinyl. Limited to 750 copies, only 250 on green!
Finally available, only on cassette, the second, and final, unreleased record from East Coast black metal merchants Vegas Martyrs, featuring Dominick Fernow, he of Ash Pool, Cold Cave, Prurient and Hospital Productions.
We dug the first VM record a lot, a twisted chunk of buzz drenched heaviness that to our ears straddled the line between noise rock and black metal. Raw and pulverizing, but still weirdly melodic and subtly poppy, and while record number two seems, at least on the surface, to be a bit more grim and harsh, those elements still loom large. The opener sets the stage with some serious hateful lo-fi blackness, definitely for fans of Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Ancestors and the like, it's the next track that reveals the group's soft white underbelly, with a long sprawling bit of looped melody, wreathed in electronic crackle and laced with minimal bits of percussion, a stretch of brooding hypnorock that could have been some weird Circle outtake, that is until the song explodes in a flurry of heaving riffage, crashing drums and bellowed vokills, but that looped melody still drives the song, giving it an AmRep noise rock vibe, albeit a few shades blacker.
And so it goes, the whole record a blurred dizzying barrage of tangled melodies, of mathy rhythms, of looped riffage, of fragmented shards of pop music buried under a continuous avalanche of crumbling electronics and feedback, wreathed in reverb and echo, tense and intense, all wound into tight yet, sprawling blasts of pop flecked avant math/noise/black metal weirdness. Awesome.
Not so sure how to peg the title of this album, which is actually three horizontal lines that some have transcribed on the internet as a squiggly version of a Greek epsilon. Oh, what funny characters can be found in the nether regions of the various fonts of the world! Typographical challenges aside, this album marks the debut album for the Swiss gothgaze outfit Veil Of Light. All of the gloomy references to Joy Division, Lycia, Death In June, and Swans are present for Veil Of Light in these skeletal songs of militant march and funereal mood. The album's languid melodies are crafted almost entirely through reverb drenched synths which cling to the persistent snap of a drum machine that is pushed way forward in the mix. Vocals, guitars, and bass are all intermittently dropped within these songs though these instruments are blurred not so much by effect but in how soft these are in comparison to the drum machine's danse macabre. For all of the '80s goth ghosts haunting these songs, Veil Of Light's slippery sheen of black clad digitalia and somber electronics slip between the current crop of electro-mopists (e.g. Tropic Of Cancer, Lust For Youth, and most everything on Posh Isolation) and the whole witch house thing whose sparkle peaked a couple years back. It looks that this is already sold out at the source, we should note.
Last year we raved about the Insane Technical Sci-Fi Thrash Metal Mastery of this group's 2nd album, Outer Isolation. And, having subsequently seen 'em play n' slay live, we're even more convinced that Arizona's Vektor are one of thee very best metal bands currently going. Live, their music was complex yet ragin', these guys effortlessly, amazingly technical, but ready to party at the same time. Plus one of the guitarists has a tattoo on his arm that sez, 'Sci-fi or die', how cool is that?
Sadly, though, the record label Vektor was signed to, Heavy Artillery, has just folded. And so for the time being, the Outer Isolation cd is out of print, with its planned release on vinyl also in limbo. WTF? But, since Vektor has gotta be a hot property, we imagine they'll soon be signed to another label... However, for the time being, we can't get their newer album. But, we DID manage to grab a last few copies of this, their 2009 debut, for those that missed it. We didn't actually review it when it came out before, either, though we should have.
Utter next-level mind-boggling shred, that's heavy and hectic, and impossibly catchy too, like a brilliant mix of Voivod, Coroner, Destruction, and Megadeth. With their chugging rollercoaster riffs, exquisite neo-classical melodies, and outer space atmospherics, plus the vocalist's uncanny ability to switch from guttural tones to an inhuman shriek (they say in space, no one can hear you scream, but you'll hear this guy, and your dog will hear him better!), Vektor are one of the few 'retro-80s-thrash-revival' acts that we consider to be actually equal or superior to the best bands back then.
Basically, If you liked Outer Isolation, you'll like this too, in fact, how come you don't have it already?? And if you haven't yet heard any Vektor, well, check this out! But be quick, we only got like 5 copies, and then they're gone...
Six words: Insane Technical Sci-Fi Thrash Metal Mastery. (Or is that seven?) Two more: Dizzying Genius. Another two: Buy This!
We were terribly remiss in not ever reviewing this band's previous album and first proper full-length, Black Future, 'cause it was one of the very best metal releases of 2009. Unfortunately, we discovered it a bit after the fact. But we are gonna try to make up for that by heralding the release of this Arizona based band's new one, Outer Isolation, also mindbogglingly awesome. Though it's hard to review, 'cause listening to it we're either stupefied by the mental strafing we receive via their hyperspeed metallic acrobatics, or possessed to headbanging mania by their catchy quantum riff logic, neither state conducive to sitting at a keyboard and calmly typing out our thoughts...
Actually, this came out in December - and thus instantly found a spot in Allan's 2011 top ten - but our suppliers miscalculated the demand for this and under-ordered, so were weren't able to get more until now, direct from the label.
What's the deal? The thrash of the past meets dramatic advanced metal math, kinda like a tripped out Absu taken on a futuristic journey into the stark outer reaches of space. The vokills are a crazed dog whistle shriek, or nasty black metal rasp. The guitars rip out utter absurd flight of the bumblebee shred, and sometimes moody moments of lovely, classical melody. Their are many moving parts in Vektor's technically complex song structures.
Unlike a lot of their peers in the still burgeoning "retro-thrash" genre, youngsters Vektor aren't just all about simply being as nostalgically, generically retro-thrash as they can be, instead they're about utilizing their considerable talents to make cool music, following their own alien vision. Sure, they pay some homage to their '80s forebears - their logo looks like it was designed by Away from Voivod - and you could certainly compare 'em to such great '80s proggy tech-thrash acts as Coroner, Watchtower, Obliveon, and yep, Voivod. But, it's more than that, this is its own impressive forward-thinking thing. We highly recommend getting lost in space with Vektor.
FYI, a vinyl version, with different cover art, is forthcoming at some point later this year says the label. Also, you will find the Black Future cd elsewhere on our website, sans review, and it's quite recommended too, obviously. (And If you already have it, then you know what to expect on Outer Isolation!)
First release from this Midwest duo (now trio), who traffic in a murky buzzing old school black metal, not all that far removed from classic Darkthrone,�old Ulver or early Emperor, that immediately recognizable Norwegian sound, but with a bit of their own sound mixed in, a definite classic metal vibe in the riffs. Not sure if it's Maiden or Priest, but lots of the riffs don't sound like that same old generic black buzz, they sound classic, like they were plucked straight from the eighties, which is actually a very good thing. Those mid paced riffs slither and grind, occasionally building into furious squalls of buzzing blackness, but no straight up blasts, the music of Velnias�stays pretty midtempo, except on occasion when it slips into slowed down lurching doom, or when the band stretches out into Opeth-y stretches of folky flutter. The production is decidedly lo-fi, but instead of hindering, it only helps to add a grimy kultish sheen to the already grim buzz, making�Pacing The Cyclic Nether sound like it could actually be some lost slab of nineties Norwegian blackness. Cool stuff.
It's weird to realize that RuneEater is only the second full length record in 5 years from this black metal outfit, but not too surprising considering how much time these guys spend on tour. And all that touring has definitely paid off, as record number demonstrates a huge progression from 2008's Sovereign Nocturnal, a record we dug, but one that was more obvious with its influences, but even then demonstrating the haunting folkiness and weird experimental streak that would finally come to the fore on RuneEater. The nearly ten minute opening track here pretty much lays it all out, a weird, drum heavy tribal intro, ritualistic and mysterious, bleating horns, chantlike vocals, throat singing, a bit of spoken word, which all disappears in a cloud of feedback, before the song proper kicks in. Dirgey and murky and super distorted, midtempo, but double kicks pounding away beneath the thick fuzzed out guitars, the whole thing reminding us of obscure Sub Pop outfit Rein Sanction, due in no small part to the guitar tone, but then the vokills come in, ands the song unfurls, revealing a definitely folk underpinning, before exploding into a weird stretch of blasting, that doesn't blast ferociously as much as texturally, if that makes any sense. The sound is truly unique, where before it was post rock infused BM, has now become some weird black metal / blackened doom folk / experimental hybrid that definitely seems like that the band were shooting for all along. There's a definite prog vibe going on too, which is inevitable in long songs with lots of twists and turns, but it suits them for sure, eventually the song winding down into a weird folk flecked doom, all slithery spidery guitar melodies, howled vox, and droned out melodies. It's a gorgeous part, and ends way too soon.
"Reverend Flames Of Antiquity" spends its first three minutes weaving a dark brooding sort of psychedelia, spare and abstract, lush chords drifting through shimmering fields of warm thrum and cymbal shimmer, before launching into a doomy creep, and then a weird tangled black prog churn, a dense chaotic crush, the sound slipping easily between dreamy drift and crashing chaos, and even drifting into some soaring epic slow build heaviness (a la Sovereign Nocturnal), finishing off with a seriously heavy Neurosis style chug heavy outro.
"Reclamation Of Valour" finds the band dabbling in some Barn Owl style twang flecked psychedelic folkiness, before again unleashing their twisted progged out black doom, the band slipping into some cool stripped down, droned out stretches, and adding some very medieval sounding folk melodies, before finally getting down to some seriously black buzz, only to shed the black and the buzz, for a sprawling doom folk outro. Finally, "Iconoclast" finishes things off, easily the most overtly black metal of the bunch, with some of the fiercest buzzing and blasting, but here too, the band mix in lots of melody, more of that medieval sound, the second half transforming the black buzz into a super dynamic black prog folk doom finale.
The packaging is insanely over the top. The cd comes in a gorgeous black on black hardcover book style jacket, complete with fancy gold on black printed inner booklet, and the lp, comes in a similarly book-like jacket, and the gatefold features what has to be one of THEE best band photos ever. Assuming you can even find the band in the photo!
