NOW ON VINYL!!
The first proper full length from this Midwestern black metal trio. We missed seeing them live unfortunately when they were here recently, but they did drop off their new record, and it's pretty great.�
Just like the demo we listed way back, these guys traffic in a classic black metal sound, old Emperor, old Ulver, Darkthrone, they're obviously channeling the Norwegian elite, but their take on it is definitely their own. Where before there seemed to be a lot of eighties style riffing mixed in, here the vibe seems to be much doomier, and there's still a definite Opeth vibe with all the more tranquil clean guitar stretches. But they also do some weird, distinctly not very black metal shit. One prime example is the end of the second track (all the songs are 12+ minutes), after a majestic / epic coda, the song devolves into a gloriously abstract drum heavy jam, the guitar ringing out, a single chord, static and droney and hypnotic, while the drums get all chaotic. We sort of wished that it would on like that for another 5 or 6 minutes. Maybe live. And the band definitely get into a sort of trancey thing, which is not that uncommon for black metal, but they manage to make it sound all murky and mysterious instead of just buzzy.
But beyond the various weird bits here and there, those almost-folky interludes, and various textural experiments, the band offer up a pretty solid take on classic raw old school black metal, lacing it heavily with doom, and, perhaps inadvertently, some serious math/post rock, the arrangements, and the riffs betray some Slint or something similar in their past, or it could just be that Slint's guitarists were closet metalheads. Either way, it keeps their sound unique, and has definitely helped keep this record on constant repeat around here.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
Originally released as a super limited tour only ep, sold on their most recent US tour, we convinced the band to make another batch, exclusively for aQ, which they agreed to do, so we have the final copies of this, a dozen to be exact, not sure if we're able to get more, but probably safe to assume this could be the last we see of these. I Have Seen The Substance Of Your Earth... It Is Gray And Dying is a single epic 22 minute track, that displays all that we dig about this Midwestern horde, slow build doomy ambience, post rockish atmospheres, clean guitars spread out over an expanse of abstract shimmer, the drums massive, a haunting deathmarch plod for nearly 3 minutes before the song proper begins to coalesce, in a squall of wild drumming and swirling blackened guitars, the song transformed into a slightly more propuslive dirge, the vibe haunting and melancholy, the sound eventually building to a churning midtempo crush, all howled vox, murky blown out riffage, the song never quite exploding into full on blast, but then blasting is not what these guys are about, it's more about mood and atmosphere, tension and release, with the brooding slow builds playing out like a black metal Godspeed, and the heavy parts more Neurosis-y really than strictly black metal, but these guys have always drifted more in that direction anyway. This track is epic, slipping constantly from moody churn, to dreamy drift and back again, injecting plenty of melody to go with the mood, with the last eight minutes or so left for some seriously gorgeous abstract drift, all layered feedback, and slowly decaying buzz, mysterious tones and streaks of feedback, a serious slab of experimental guitarscapery finishing off with a brief folky acoustic guitar coda.
CRAZY LIMITED! As in we only have 12 copies! Housed in wax sealed black sleeves.
It takes a lot to be "controversial" these days, even if you are a black metal band, and it's unlikely at this point that we would have to be the ones to tell you about all the craziness that has shrouded Velvet Cacoon since God knows when, so we're just not going to bother. What we can tell you is this: Atropine actually does exist, we got it, and while it may not be exactly what anyone was prepared for, it is no doubt an intense piece of work, one that cannot be listened to as mere background noise and instead requires lots of focus and patience for the full, um, "experience". The biggest surprise here is the absolute, 100 percent absence of any actual metal, with Velvet Cacoon's droning ambient side taking over for a colossal two hour suite of dissociative, druggy as fuck BLISS. Atropine's subtleties are also its greatest qualities (though to be fair, they are its only qualities), because this is only going to make even the slightest amount of sense if you stick around for the whole trip, and there's no way that will happen if you're blasting it in your car on the way to work. You're probably gonna want to turn off the lights, break out some sort of mind altering substance, close your eyes, let the tones take over, and contemplate your complete nothingness in the universe. It's difficult to imagine what exactly is influencing Velvet Cacoon (other than a whole lot of drugs), because this stuff is clearly coming from somewhere else, and whatever bullshit may or may not be true, at the end of the day it only really makes sense to judge them by their music, which is powerful and evocative in ways so many other bands will never achieve. Then you realize that the mysteries surrounding the duo are pretty much legitimized by the strangeness of their music alone.
"To find out how, insert." With these words printed on disc 1, we did just that, and we were off. Opener "Candlesmoke" kicks off the long journey, beginning with a low rumbling and semi-rhythmic white noise followed by a slowly creeping spectral ambience. Things are calm, but dark, and possibly a bit sinister. Your mind conjures thoughts perfectly captured in Velvet Cacoon's artwork: hazy images of lonely trees in unfathomable wildernesses, bits of nature peering out of grey expanses. It's hard to discern what instruments are actually making the noise, but none of that really matters, because before long it's like your floating in a mountain lake looking up at the stars. The piece is murky and majestic, and just as you begin to detect a pattern resembling an actual "song", things simply fade away into eternity. With "Funeral Noir," we were expecting Velvet Cacoon to rip our faces off like in the good old days, but nope. The song begins to bloom out of the cavernous ambience with static-y background crackles and super slow fuzzed out heaviness way off in the distance. The emphasis, however, is on the blankets of atmosphere, and though the song is pretty much formless, it manages to sound incredibly sad and evoke feelings of loneliness and separation from the world. "Graveside Sonnet," writhes with movement, but definitely not within the traditional methods of songcraft. Rather than trying to control the music and color it with any traces of human personality, the band instead appears to accept the will of its subconscious and let the song simply go where it will. The first disc closes with "Dreaming In A Hemlock Patch," which begins the first moments of its 37 minute (damn!) existence with almost total silence. Then, true to its title, you fall into a trance and journey deep into thought, as stuttering sounds, uh, stutter about, moving you forward and sending you way off into the atmosphere. A barely noticeable pulsing rhythm comes in around the six minute mark, but you are now totally lost and removed from time and location. And guess what? No one else exists. Crackling sounds continue, and a foggy drone takes over everything in its path. The song is a bit reminiscent of the minimalism of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas, but even more minimal. Even so, it's scope is massive and sleep inducing, and if for some reason you wanted to stop a 37 minute track, say, 20 minutes in, you can't, you can only accept it. The noises change shape and shift to other directions, and an undefinable but very psychedelic sound takes over, moving like a heartbeat before slipping away. Pretty cosmic stuff. And, holy fuck, that's only disc 1!
The second disc begins with "Nightvines," which perfectly exhibits Velvet Cacoon's ability to establish a sound that would best be described as "nautical." With a vaguely bell like drone and a sound that seems to emerge out of a thick mist, you get the feeling of drifting evenly along in unknown waters. A definite coldness prevails, and the sound has a quality that is almost like breathing. "Nocturnal Carriage" is the sound of being lost, its catatonic drones sounding like a ghostly choir buried deep under layers of fog. It brings to mind Popul Vuh's "Aguirre," only stripped of all its melodic definition with just the ambience intact. It's like that last moment of consciousness before sleep sets in, with that last moment being prolonged for 27 minutes, like walking around in total blackness, and it fades out like a dream that will continue forever. The shortest track, "Earth And Dark Petals," makes you think of forces from within the earth trying to make their way out of the ground and into the world, struggling to define themselves within the overwhelming hugeness of nature, only briefly before the final track, "Autumn Burial Victoria," which seeks to sustain the drones all the way to infinity. At around the 10:30 mark, there is a muted percussive crash, just once, but that's really the only other thing that manages to seep out. The album concludes very softly with sounds that are almost not there. When it ends, maybe you'll wake up, or maybe you won't.
Whew. Listening to Atropine, as in "really" listening to it, takes some dedication, but the results are rewarding enough for anyone up to the task. There will most likely be a serious bitchfest in the works from those expecting the blown out shoegazing fury Velvet Cacoon built their name on. But crying over something like that overlooks just how essential the more subdued sounds of Velvet Cacoon have been since the beginning, and in the event that it's not a total hoax, the band should be delivering an actual "metal" album in the near future. Until then, zone out and give yourself up to the unexplored regions of your mind with Atropine.
Very few bands have as convoluted and controversial a back story as Portland's black metal weirdos Velvet Cacoon. First the name, Velvet Cacoon. Spelled C A C O O N. According to the band "The name originated back in 1996 when we formed the band. Velvet is one of many names applied to the chemical dextromethorphan, and CACOON are the initials of a catacomb just outside Portland city limits where we usually go to write music." It also happens to be the seed from some tropical vine. But let's continue. There was also the band's political alignment, supposedly they were some sort of super reclusive, "eco-fascist" collective. Okay, sure. Then there's the sound. And it's the sound that really matters. And oh what a sound, an impossibly lush orchestra of black buzz, thick and mesmerizing and blurry, the fuzziest buzz we had ever heard. But how does a band achieve that sort of impossibly glorious buzz? Well, by inventing and playing an instrument called a "dieselharp", a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. So okay, how could we not love them, the sound was black buzz nirvana, and they were some weird eco forest freaks. Supposedly.
A little time passes, and it comes to light that it was all a scam, not the music obviously, but everything else, the politics, the dieselharp, all designed to fuck with the black metal community. The band is revealed to be one guy and his girlfriend. He's got short hair, they listen to Nina Simone and drink tea, and black metalheads are pissed. We of course think it's hilarious, and while we were duped as well, so what, it's a great joke, and fuck, the music still totally destroys. At one point if you went to the VC website, all you got was a link to an Air MP3?!? And still the only photos are of a woman in candlelight (presumably the girlfriend). And there were various reports that some of the songs were stolen from another artist who was uncredited and not compensated.
Phew! It's the sort of story that would ALWAYS be on the cover of the black metal version of US magazine!! If there was such a thing (oh why oh why is there not?!?!)
So here we are a few years down the line, the band is working on a new record, sans dieselharp of course, and while we wait, we have this massive double disc document of the band's early years, the music that started it all.
The first disc begins with a dreamy bit of pastoral ambience, before bursting into some ultra fast, blown out black buzz drenched black metal. Melancholy and moody, but swathed in super thick swirls of BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. If anything, the stuff on Dextronaut sounds a bit more traditional than either of the other two releases, but a more traditional VC is still leagues weirder than most other BM outfits. Most of the tracks are blurry smeary buzzscapes, the melodies and drums and vocals, smothered under gloriously suffocating layers of, yep, still even more BUZZ!!! The best track, and also the weirdest, is the loping midtempo "Perched On A Neverending Peak". A blast of Burzum-worthy buzz, the guitars dense squalls of blown out fuzz, and all of this buzz and fuzz wrapped around an impossibly sad melody, but with a series of strange drop outs, where all the fuzz abates, only briefly, giving us a brief glimpse behind the veil of buzz, before it's quickly swallowed up again by the black wall of fuzz.
The second disc is three loooooong tracks, epic black ambience, gorgeous and darkly mysterious. The first a lazy looped low end gurgle, very Marclay or Strotter, an hypnotic muted underwater Oval sort of drift. The second is a cavernous drone, rife with distant buzz and some weird Trollmann like melodies. the final track is a slow burning expanse of soft focus shimmer, warbling and warm, soft and serene, and it wouldn't be VC if they didn't subtly interject some strange guttural demonic vocalizations right near the end...
Our only complaint is the ultra ghetto packaging. A single square of paper in lieu of a booklet, the tray card beneath the hinged double disc tray is blank, the artwork all over is pixelated and blurry, but knowing the band it could be part of the concept, either way, for a record as massive and weird and fucking amazing, the packaging is a bit of a let down. Regardless, once these discs are in your stereo, you'll be in a buzz drenched nacoticized black haze so deep and deadly, shoddy packaging will be the least of your concerns...
Alright, this is a confusing one, but we figured that Velvet Cacoon obsessives, and we know there are lots out there (ourselves included), would definitely be into this. A reissue of the very first Velvet Cacoon record, which was already reissued on Full Moon Productions, with a bonus disc, featuring 70 minutes of extra material, all ambient. BUT, they left two tracks off the record proper. Not sure why, but there you go. So Khrysanthoney has reissued Dextronaut, sans the 'superfluous' ambient bonus disc, but with the original record restored to its proper 10 song length. In addition to that, the new version of Dextronaut is UNmastered, so while it sounds quite similar, it's definitely a bit more raw and brittle, which actually suits VC quite a bit. So yeah, if you missed this the first time around, you NEED this, and if you already have it, and LOVE it, and need those extra tracks, well, hell, $9 for 9 minutes of extra music, not a bad deal really, and the extra songs are pretty kick ass, "Starlit Seas Of Angel Blood" has some of the sickest vokills ever, over frantic buzz and wild drumming, loads of reverb and all sorts of bizarre sounds (most of them vocal we think), while "When The Purest Flesh Is Alive", is super distorted and heavy on the effects, sounding like the bands blasting through a field of glitchy electronics, the sound weirdly melodic, and those vocals, still sick and inhuman and alien, everything dripping with buzz and fuzz. Still no idea why they left them off, but here's your chance to get the 'complete' Dextronaut. But be quick, it's limited to just 150 COPIES!!! Here's what we said about the Full Moon version, which all still pretty much applies, just everything is a tad more brittle and buzzy, and there are those two extra tracks (much of this is background on VC, since it was their first record and everything)...
Very few bands have as convoluted and controversial a back story as Portland's black metal weirdos Velvet Cacoon. First the name, Velvet Cacoon. Spelled C A C O O N. According to the band "The name originated back in 1996 when we formed the band. Velvet is one of many names applied to the chemical dextromethorphan, and CACOON are the initials of a catacomb just outside Portland city limits where we usually go to write music." It also happens to be the seed from some tropical vine. But let's continue. There was also the band's political alignment, supposedly they were some sort of super reclusive, "eco-fascist" collective. Okay, sure. Then there's the sound. And it's the sound that really matters. And oh what a sound, an impossibly lush orchestra of black buzz, thick and mesmerizing and blurry, the fuzziest buzz we had ever heard. But how does a band achieve that sort of impossibly glorious buzz? Well, by inventing and playing an instrument called a "dieselharp", a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. So okay, how could we not love them, the sound was black buzz nirvana, and they were some weird eco forest freaks. Supposedly. _A little time passes, and it comes to light that it was all a scam, not the music obviously, but everything else, the politics, the dieselharp, all designed to fuck with the black metal community. The band is revealed to be one guy and his girlfriend. He's got short hair, they listen to Nina Simone and drink tea, and black metalheads are pissed. We of course think it's hilarious, and while we were duped as well, so what, it's a great joke, and fuck, the music still totally destroys. At one point if you went to the VC website, all you got was a link to an Air MP3?!? And still the only photos are of a woman in candlelight (presumably the girlfriend). And there were various reports that some of the songs were stolen from another artist who was uncredited and not compensated. Phew! It's the sort of story that would ALWAYS be on the cover of the black metal version of US magazine!! If there was such a thing (oh why oh why is there not?!?!).
The record begins with a dreamy bit of pastoral ambience, before bursting into some ultra fast, blown out black buzz drenched black metal. Melancholy and moody, but swathed in super thick swirls of BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. If anything, the stuff on Dextronaut sounds a bit more traditional than either of the other two releases, but a more traditional VC is still leagues weirder than most other BM outfits. Most of the tracks are blurry smeary buzzscapes, the melodies and drums and vocals, smothered under gloriously suffocating layers of, yep, still even more BUZZ!!! The best track, and also the weirdest, is the loping midtempo "Perched On A Neverending Peak". A blast of Burzum-worthy buzz, the guitars dense squalls of blown out fuzz, and all of this buzz and fuzz wrapped around an impossibly sad melody, but with a series of strange drop outs, where all the fuzz abates, only briefly, giving us a brief glimpse behind the veil of buzz, before it's quickly swallowed up again by the black wall of fuzz. How many times can we use 'buzz' and 'fuzz' in a single review. LOTS!
This went out of print way too fast, not long after we listed it and has finally been re-pressed. Here's what we had to say about it last time:
We were sold on this band before we even heard 'em (thanks AQ pal Drucifer for the recommendation). First off, they're called Velvet Cacoon. That's right C A C O O N. WTF? Not sure if it's just a typo that was never corrected, to maybe save face, or if it means something entirely different that we couldn't possibly understand... Second, they're a super reclusive eco-fascist (huh?) black metal horde from Oregon. Yep, OREGON. And finally they invented, designed and built an instrument they call a dieselharp, a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. Wow. So before we even threw this on, we were already pretty into it. And thankfully, the music is every bit as cool and weird and grim and haunting as we could've hoped. Massive slabs of blackened fuzz, and we mean FUZZ. Imagine the buzziest fuzziest Burzum riff, smeared and stretched into a mesmerizing black metal blur. The droning dieselharp is the key, turning what could otherwise be some straight up grim black metal, into a blown out, buzzing black drone. The drums and vocals are barely even there, satisfied to lurk under an oppressive cloak of suffocating heaviness and the seemingly endless, relentlessly hypnotic crush. Fans of the buzzy drone-y end of the black metal spectrum will be blown away. And drone freaks will luxuriate in the absolutely gorgeous final twenty minute track, a slow building lowercase shimmer, worthy of Chalk, Coleclough, Hafler Trio and the like.
We fell in love with this band before we even heard 'em! And the more we find out about this mysterious outfit the more we can't get enough! A while back an aQ customer suggested we check out this bizarre black metal band from Portland called Velvet Cacoon. Supposedly they were super reclusive eco-fascists who built their own instruments, their main home-built instrument was the diesel harp, a huge diesel powered guitar contraption that spit out impossibly fuzzy and Burzumic drones, and when we finally heard the record, we could totally tell! No guitar could sound that heavy and fuzzy! It was that fucking diesel harp! Holy shit. That record (which we still have in stock) was a dense drone-like slab of buzzing black metal like we had naver heard, heavy enough for metal heads but deep, dark and droney enough for folks into stuff like Troum and Lustmord to get into.
Well, a year or so later, another aQ customer pointed us toward a website where they had posted an interview with the band, and guess what? It was all a hoax. Well, not the music obviously, but they were not in fact eco-fascists, there was no diesel harp, they were just a couple dudes from Portland who loved black metal but were intent on pissing off the black metal community. In the interview the band went on to talk about how they had short hair, and listened to Nina Simone, and that one or both of them played music in a local wine bar. Pretty hilarious actually. And then if you went to the Velvet Cacoon website, there was a solitary link, to an Air mp3. Yep, the French electronic group Air. What the fuck? But c'mon, it just made us dig their band even more! They now have a much less mysterious website and Velvet Cacoon now apparently consists of just Josh "and his dreampop muse Angela, two souls mesmerized by chemicals and the after-hours". Woah.
So no more mysterious politics, no more homemade instruments, but the band are indeed working on a second album, but in the meantime, their first two demos have been packed up and released as a single cd. And WOW! It's just as amazing as the first one. The oldest demo, Music For Falling Bulidings, shows the band at the beginning, when they were super raw, super aggressive, total Burzum / Darkthrone worship, fierce and fuzzed out and furious, but even back then, they employed plenty of experimentalism, strange ambient interludes, studio fuckery, found sounds. The later demo, Red Steeples, finds the band much closer to where they would end up with Genevieve. A buzzing droney black metal mixed with suffocating dark ambience. Monstrous drones, rumbling minimalism, fuzzed out soundscapes, above, below, beneath and amidst thick swaths of ultra grim black metal. Considering how much we love Genevieve it's really saying something when we say that this whole disc is AS good as, if not even better, due in no small part to the fact that it's WAY more damaged and freaked out sounding, and you know how much we love that!
Two weeks ago when we made Velvet Cacoon's stellar Atropine one of our Records Of The Week, we mentioned the possibility of yet ANOTHER VC release in the not too distant future. Well here it is, way sooner than we had initially predicted.
While Atropine may have baffled some fans of this already baffling band with its total ambience and a complete absence of the blown out black metal they made their name on, it also managed to perfectly convey the drugged out isolation and dissociative bliss that has always been central to their music. Atropine is an intense piece of work, very rewarding when listened to with patience, BUT... we'd be lying if we said we didn't miss the metal. Thankfully, P aa opal poere pr.33 (good grief, what a title!) arrives right on the heels of Atropine, and more than anything, it seems to be the perfect companion piece to that previous album, delivering almost 40 minutes of murky, blissful as fuck METAL, heavy on the nautical themes that have commonly been part of Velvet Cacoon's M.O. Yet even as we write the word "METAL," we are faced with the already obvious realization that Velvet Cacoon pretty much defies any simple classification. Call it shoegaze, ambient, metal, hell, even pop... their sound is unique, and even though scores of imitators have popped up in recent years, the second we put this on we knew who we were listening to (unless they completely stole these recordings like some of their other albums supposedly...) While it does share some certain sonic similarities to the band's previous work, it would be lazy to write off P aa opal poere pr.33 as merely the successor to the band's now classic Genevieve, and here Velvet Cacoon seem to have arrived at the most realized encapsulation of their sound to date. So yes, it's REALLY fucking good. And thus also a Record Of The Week!
According to the notes, vocals here are handled by one Cain of a band called Snowfall. His style falls into a more traditional style of black metal shrieking, acting as the perfect foil to Velvet Cacoon's melodic fuzzed out dirges, but we are also fairly certain that VC mainman SGL (or "Josh" if you want to demystify things) is handling a lot of the vocal duties here. What the fuck? Whatever. The album opens with "2.", with the trademark Velvet Cacoon "dieselharp" guitar sound accompanied by a lumbering drum machine rhythm and a sound that gains momentum as it appears to bubble up from the bottom of the sea. "Claverie" is huge sounding with a nice lazy groove and a hazy narcotic feel, sort of like sleepwalking. As distant drones swirl about, the riff remains steady until changing at the 6 minute mark, with a guitar that is so sustained it almost sounds like a keyboard. The standout track here is "Marylux", with an awesome and unique riff that pretty much sounds like a psychedelic black metal sea shanty. At the same time, it gives off a sort of a '90s indie vibe. What doesn't make sense on paper, however, KILLS in reality. It's catchy, amazing, and dreamy in the sense that a band like, say, Windy and Carl is dreamy... but also "dreamy" in the way that being fucked out of your mind of psychotropic drugs is dreamy, so you really get the best of all kinds of different worlds with this song. With "Grevona", the melodies lie hidden below layers of murky guitar fuzz, everything is so hazy and distant sounding, like a slow moving ship going nowhere while the vocals float around helplessly. On "Oviamoire," a soothing riff wraps you up in its fuzzy majesty while the abject vocals croak below the surface. There is a certain spectral quality to it, all gauzy and whatnot, with krauty keyboard drones adding even more ambience to the affair. The last song on the album, "Sovarine" sways rhythmically back and forth with the vocals sounding like some sort of nefarious bottom dwelling ocean minion. Or something. While the guitars are all warm and fuzzy, the overall vibe here is of coldness and isolation. Not to belabor the point, but it's kind of like being lost at sea, though no one could have predicted it would sound this awesome. The album closes with a brief piece entitled "Flouvonne," with two voices, one male and the other female, speaking in French as the wind blows amid crackling sounds, a weird and somehow totally appropriate end to the journey.
In a music world where few mysteries truly exist, it's always nice to know that Velvet Cacoon will never be making things easy for us. Whether or not they are "true", some sort of pseudo-intellectual performance art, or maybe even a complete fucking joke, their music is never anything less than amazing. If you hated them before, it's unlikely that this album will change any of that. But for those of us who have patiently waited for the last five years wondering if P aa opal poere pr.33 would ever become a reality, you will find much to look forward to.
Retrospect, the label that put out those 3 awesome Pandemonium reissues (the '80s Alaskan rockers whose Heavy Metal Soldiers disc we made a Record Of The Week recently, the other two highlighted this list) has done a lot of other '80s metal and hard rock reissues too, many of 'em leaning towards the hair/glam/AOR side of things though. Lots and lots, it's kind of insane. Especially since, most... well... we hadn't heard of them, and probably for good reason! Atomik Cocktail? Bad Candy? Ginger Roxx? Nasty Nasty? Sidekixx? But, in scouring their catalog, we did turn up a few gems. Cubic Zirconia, perhaps, but still gems! Here's one we had to share, originally released on Epic Records in 1982, the only album ever from Detroit's Vendetta, a trio led by African-American vocalist/guitarist Niki Buzz.
Certainly it's one for all you Citay fans (sort of) - 'cause the very first song, "Night Time", goes something like this: "Night time, is the right time, in the citaaaay!" And it's damn catchy, we like how Mr. Buzz throws in a sudden little screech when he sings the word "night". Yep, totally cheesy stuff but fun fun fun. The exuberant second track is even cooler, it's called "Jet Eye Knight", and we're pretty sure that's an intentional pun (or whatever) referring to the Jedi knights from Star Wars, then a quite current pop culture reference (Return of the Jedi came out in '83). Even though the song otherwise has nothing to do with Star Wars, it's more or less nonsense. But again, good times. The other songs here follow suit, with titles like "Deadly Like A Rose", "Bite Your Lip", and "Bablyon Rocks". With powerful wailing vox, big beat '80s production, and some really rather heavy riffs & shredding leads for this sort of melodic quasi-metal stuff, this is total cruising around in the car, summertime in the citaaaay music - and we've done just that! Plus, if you're gonna listen to some '80s guilty pleasure cock rock glamminess, why not make it something super obscure like this to keep yr music nerd cred up? So you can still be all snobby with fans of Foreigner, Billy Squier, Sammy Hagar, etc.
Bottom line: we're reviewing and recommending this 'cause we can't stop listening to it, and we're not afraid to admit it!
Halifax may be Canadian ground zero for classic pop music (Eric's Trip, Sloan, Super Friendz, Thrush Hermit, Hardship Post, etc.) but like any city, there's a dark side of town, and if said dark side was in need of the perfect soundtrack, it might come from these grim industrial metal blackdrone heavies. Vennt are a power trio consisting of bass, drums and electronics, their sound is a doom drenched slo-mo creep, the bass unfurling massive tarpit riffs, the drums a Neanderthal pound, the two locked into a lumbering plod, while all around electronics swirl and screech, the sound very reminiscent in fact of big time aQ faves Geronimo, albeit a bit less mathy and a lot more sludge-y. The vibe is also a little shoegazey, with ethereal female vox buried in the mix, that is until the sound erupts into virulent gouts of doomdirge power violence and power electronics, the vocals transformed into dueling shrieks and bellows, while the drums crush and the bass flattens, but once the vocals drift off, the song slips back into a more meditative slab of blackened dirgery, mesmerizing and hypnotic.
And so it goes, each song an abject crawl through clouds of blackened buzz, the bass detuned and superdistorted, the vocals doused in effects and swirling around that main lurching riff, the sound seasawing back and forth between, speaker shredding fury, and low slung electronics laced blackbuzz dirge.
A stunning slab of doomsludge power electronics/violence for worshippers of the slow and low, along with similarly inclined noisemakers like Bastard Noise, Geronimo, Moss, Bunkur, Monarch, Wicked King Wicker, Whitehorse, The Body, Ultraphallus, Thou, Dead Peni, Corrupted and the rest...
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES, each one hand numbered, housed in gorgeous screen printed metallic ink sleeves.
So-called metalhead Andee says he never got into Venom 'cause they sounded too much like Bad News. But, Andee loooves Bad News. Sure, they were a joke band (Spinal Tap done by the Young Ones guys, basically) and Venom's a real band, meaning the joke's on them...but I think they had a sense of humor too. How can you not love a metal album with a song called "Aaaaaaarrghh" on it?? They knew what they were doing.
This was their third album, from 1983, and while it's got sturdy Venom compositions like "Rip Ride" and "Women, Leather And Hell", it's really essential for the plethora of bonus tracks alone, seeing as how they include two of Venom's all time best songs, "The Seven Gates Of Hell" and "Manitou" (taken from 12" vinyl eps). In addition, you get Monster Truck racing style TV adverts for the album which are of course hilarious, and a bunch of other great 12" tracks.
"Lay down your soul to the gods rock and roll!" Do it here and now, by buying the reissue of Venom's 1982 sophomore album, the timeless statement known as "Black Metal".
Super raw, heavy, and fast (for the day, anyway, back when Venom were the world's ONLY black metal band). A looser, scarier Motorhead basically. The story goes that they had to record some of these songs twice simply 'cause they got 'em RIGHT the first time... Includes faves "Countess Bathory" and the genre-defining title track, along with the Van Halen-gone-NWOBHM "Teacher's Pet", demonstrating Venom's more frivolous side. And the final track is an "At War With Satan" preview! Yes, a preview of the title track from their next album. Had (has) anyone else ever done that?
Like the other recent Venom cd reissues, the jewel case is packaged inside an embossed cardstock slipcover. The many bonus tracks include four Radio One recordings of songs from the album, some 12" versions of tracks including the classic "Die Hard", and the outtake "Hounds of Hell".
All the Venom you need, pretty much!! And you do need it.
The original black metallers are, again, back, with the follow-up to their "Cast In Stone" comeback from a few years ago. The trio now includes new drummer Antton, because former drummer Abbadon has left to pursue a metallic/industrial solo "career". Anyway, it sounds like a Venom record, with Cronos' characteristic melodic growl and lots of Satanic imagery. With better production, of course, than on their '80s classics, but without the spark of naive genius that they had back then. Still, a good bit of fun, even if they can't really compete with the likes of the Mayhem release described elsewhere on this list.
Because the domestic version is now sadly deleted, we took the trouble to track down a few more of this reasonably-priced import title, a pretty-much essential collection for any true Black Metaller! It's also a pretty ace comedy record, and in saying that I'm not trying to put down Venom. It's just that along with the re-mixes and re-edits of classic Venom tracks like "At War With Satan" and "Manitou", this disc also features over-the-top Venom TV adverts, portentous tour intro tapes, and best of all, seemingly drunken radio station ID's, in which Cronos and Co. sound exactly like the "Gumbies" from Monty Python. There's also four unreleased songs (including one called "Bitch Witch") and other treats. All hail!
"Home taping is killing music...so is Venom" so it says on the sleeve to this much needed newly remastered reissued cd edition of the debut by British black metal pioneers Venom. This was, in fact, truth in advertising, and music today needs killing as much as it did back in 1981, so thanks to Sanctuary for this reissue. Like the other two Venom reissues we now have in stock (their second album "Black Metal" and their third "At War With Satan") this comes packaged in a jewelcase w/ cardstock slipcover, with a cd booklet full of photos and liner notes. Better yet, there's eleven bonus tracks, including demos and outtakes like "Bitch Witch" that were previously available on the long out of print "Skeletons In The Closet" anthology. As debuts go, "Welcome To Hell" was a stunner, establishing Venom as THE most extreme band of their day. They were the rawest, dirtiest, most evil of the celebrated New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bunch, with, say Def Leppard at the opposite end of the spectrum. Today's black metal bands, even if they seem so much more serious and artistic than Venom, still owe these guys big time, however cartoonish Venom's Satanism seems now.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
2006 steel cage match, a brutal grind metal hardcore duel to the death between Japan's epic grindthrashers 324 and the old school Earache style supergroup Venomous Concept, feturing Shane And Danny from Napalm Death, Kevin from Brutal Truth and Buzz from the Melvins.
Cover artwork by Kevin Sharp.
We got a brief taste of USBMers Venowl on the now out of print 4 way split tape with Horseback, Njiqahdda and Cara Neir, release on Handmade Birds earlier this year. Their contribution a particularly sick slab of lo-fi doom/sludge heaviness, replete with weird oinking pig vox and terrifying crusty creep, which is precisely where the A side of this new single lands, the same sort of super low fidelity practice space sound, which perfectly suits their abject lo-fi blacknoise, here rendered into something more approaching black metal, but a mutant slo-mo strain, that seems to lurch and stumble, a blackprog variant, that finds the music slowing down and speeding up, exploding into a frenzied blast, before devolving into another monstrous creep, and those freaky vox make a return too.
The flipside, subtitled the "Iron Forest Reimagining" compacts the 7 minute A side into 3 minutes, and transforms it into a weird pulsing, processed industrial electronic dirge, the sounds crumbling and blown out, the voices weirdly robotic, the song alternately driving by metallic pound and warped electronic skitter, gradually seeming to melt and ooze into one demented black hybrid, gristly, and crusty, skeletal, eventually shedding sounds until it's just a strange spare cold wave-y creep.
LIMITED TO 220 COPIES, already sold out at the label, so these are most likely the last copies we'll be able to get. Pressed on grey vinyl too.
We've been meaning to list this record for ages, the second release from mysterious German horde Verdunkeln, a huge favorite around these parts. And while these guys are often compared to mid period Burzum, they are so much more than that.
Just take the first song, with its weird gothy into, processed Joy Division bassline, over plodding simple drum line, chanted monk like vocals, as far as we're concerned, the track could have continued on like that, a weird minimal stripped down goth doom jam, vibes of early 4AD, old militaristic industrial, but instead, the chorus offers up a thick slab of crunchy superdistorted guitar, and howled, effected shrieks, before slither back into the same gothy crawl, until it finished off with a furious freak out, all pounding drums, blown out guitars, wild leads and huge chunks of throbbing bass.
And that sort of defines their sound. It's almost like some eighties goth band, like Christian Death, the Abecedarians, or Kommunity FX, were transported to some grim black forest, where they continued to play basically the same music, but with the surroundings seeping into every note, the starlit sky, the dense canopy of trees overhead, the whipping wind, the snow capped mountains, turning them into something basically undefinable. Sure it's black metal. Sort of. And yeah, it's some kind of weird dark gothwave, but the way those two elements are incorporated transform Verdunkeln into something so bizarre, and so unique, that it's hard to really describe.
Each song begins as a lurching midtempo bass heavy crawl, the bass heavily reverbed and effected, the vocals haunting and deep, when the guitars do come in, they are massive, chugging away at one moment, soaring majestically the next.
Our favorite song might be the second track, "Im Zwiespalt", beginning with that haunting reverbed twang, the sound of rainfall, cracks of thunder, the guitars finally come in, and the song lurches into motion, some sort of lumbering downtuned blackdoom behemoth, that plods along until a sudden break, when a delay drenched guitar offers up a strummed minor key melody, and the song explodes into a weird majestic cinematic blow out, the chords and notes soaring, until that delayed guitar break comes back in briefly, and the song resumes it's dense plod, but this time the riffing following the clean guitar, a weird post rocky, mournful vibe. Bleak and harrowing, and super epic and emotional. Midway through the track, the tempo picks up and the band begins to rock seriously for the first time, replete with tangled leads, haunting melodies, still strangely melancholy and emotional, before fading out into a drifting drone-y shimmer, peppered with huge bursts of crumbling downtuned chug, beneath a washed out smear of lonely synths, only to finish with a strange mathy outro.
And even though for right now, that might be our favorite song, this is one of those discs, that whatever song you happen to be listening to is your favorite. Next song, "oh wait, THIS one is the best song". Next song. "Actually, THIS one is way better. And so it goes. The whole record is just this impossible black metal goth, downtuned post rock doom, majestic cinematic post metal, avant metallic rock, who the fuck knows, and really who cares. There are definitely some Burzumic elements, some distinctly black metal tropes, but Verdunkeln are one of the very few, incredibly rare BM bands around who absolutely and completely sound like nothing you've ever heard.
Another unsurprisingly excellent release courtesy of San Francisco's very own Flenser Records (could we be a little biased??), this time a vinyl only split between Washington DC's Vestiges and Louisville's insanely prolific one-man band Panopticon - two artists operating within their own unique brands of crusty atmospheric post-rock tinged black metal.
Vestiges lead off the proceedings with two tracks, although it would be more accurate to describe them as one 18 minute long connected piece, with the first one serving as more of a 5 minute intro. And not a second of that 18 minutes is wasted. For the first two minutes or so you'd be forgiven for thinking someone might have swapped out that new black metal split you've been so excited about hearing with a dusty old Godspeed! You Black Emperor record, as we're first greeted with a serene warming drone cascading under the minimal pluck of gentle guitars. But then the peacefulness is sullied somewhat by a crackling distorted bass dirge - a real calm before the storm moment that wouldn't sound at all out of place on a latter day Neurosis album. Then a wash of cymbals, an almost martial military snare, then the hoarse cry of distant growls, some reverb drenched guitar wail... And finally everything boils over into a furious eruption of blast beats and gorgeous mournful melodies. It's easy to casually toss the word "epic" around these days, but the following 13 minutes more than warrant it. Within their remaining running time Vestiges flirt with the aforementioned post-rock and black metal influences - but also the melodic hardcore/screamo of Rites of Springs, monolithic funeral doom, and the droning hypnotic doom dirge of bands like Hyatari. But Vestiges are still black metal at their core, and when they're going full bore they invoke a stately and rousing melancholic grandeur usually reserved for bands like Winterfylleth or Vatnett Viskar.
Panopticon's contribution is an equally melodic and atmospheric affair, but altogether more unrefined and unrestrained - a welcome detail that has always set them apart from their more overly-polished post black metal peers. "A Letter" is classic Panopticon, showcasing everything that makes this project so great, and is a fantastic introduction for anyone uninitiated. Beautiful lamenting folk melodies are everywhere, but contrasted with some of the most hectic free-form off-kilter drum work you'll ever here. It's an effect not unlike Japanese screamo legends Envy at their best, but obviously much more black metal. The songs best moment comes 7 minutes in when the song explodes into a flurry of minimal tragic guitar harmonies airily floating over dizzying blastbeats and pummeling drum fills. Hypnotic and exhilarating! The following track "Eulogy" is an interesting contrast to this. Clocking in at a (comparatively) modest 6 minutes, it's more like mid-paced shoegazey dream pop filtered through a harsh black metal spectrum, its catchy head bobbing bassline fascinatingly at odds with the barked black metal vocals. Although after a few minutes of course, the drums can't resist bursting into center stage again as the frenzied blasts re-emerge, all the while with shiny tremolo harmonies fluttering atop with the echoey reverb drenched vocals adding a genuinely surreal dream like quality. Panopticon's side is closed out with a cover of a track by Arizona's short-lived late '90s crusty HC/black metal group Suicide Nation's "Collapse and Die" - a frenzy of whiplash hyper blasts and trampling double bass, but with moments of banjo and twangy acoustic guitar that harken back to Panopticon's recent heavily bluegrass influenced lp Kentucky (also essential listening if you haven't heard it!)
It's a rare instance indeed when a split can genuinely be called more satisfying and immersive than most proper lps out there, but this is certainly one of those exceptions. An absolute must for any open minded black metal aficionado!
This defunct Ukrainian black metal band was a collaborative effort between members of Lucifugum and Nokturnal Mortum, which sounds amazing, we were of course envisioning epic, folk flecked, nature obsessed buzzing blackness, but we DIDN'T at all expect something this fucked up and far out.
The first track is not too far off the mark, a plodding, midtempo black metal almost-dirge, tribal drumming, thick downtuned riffs, dramatic synths, tons of atmosphere, the vocals an incredible demonic croak, the whole thing droney and trancelike and mesmerizing.
The second track is where it gets really strange, whooshing swaths of synth, skittery drum machine, mournful minor key guitars, acoustic guitars, and then, out of nowhere, a truly out of place techno sounding electronic pulse, making it sound almost like a black metal Goblin or something, as the track progresses, it just gets darker and denser, the vocals wrapped in twisted effects, a dizzying chunk of whatthefuck electronic blackness for sure.
"Nearby Strange Forest For Everyone Wise Forest" is another dirgey, electronic flecked bit of doom-ed blackness, with whispering vox, the sound of rainfall, deep rumbling synths and folky melodies, before finally we get to the nearly 11 minute closer, "Pure Air Of Distant Horizons", with its click bleep electronic rhythm, big slow burning distorted guitars, cheesy almost new age sounding synths, slipping from drone-y electronic black folk, to almost Renaissance Faire flutter, to swirling space-y krautrock-y drift. Wow.
Even with the pedigree, this might be a bit too far out for the troo grim hordes, but we're digging Vetche's twisted nad unique swirling new age black gypsy doom folk weirdness.
How many metal black metal bands can you name from the Faroe Islands? How many of you even know where the Faroe Islands are?
Well, the answer to the first one as far as we can tell is exactly one. The answer to the second is somewhere between Iceland and Norway. Ehich sort of makes sense when you hear Vhernen. You can almost imagine them as the perfect mix of grim frosty Norwegian black metal (Gorgoroth, Immortal, Satryricon), and Icelandic cinematic blissrock (Sigur Ros). Although Vhernen definitely lean toward the metallic....
Self described as funeral black metal, and counting among their influences, Bethlehem, Skepticism, Deinonychus and Nortt we were expecting something a lot slower and dirgier, but Vhernen definitely have some fierce fury in them, often buzzing and blasting like a band possessed. But even when they're blasting away, the riffs sometimes smear into dense clouds of mournful guitar, barely obscuring strange super epic melodies, and thick swaths of moody ambience.
A lot of that ambience comes from the use of some distinctly un-black metal instruments, namely, the electric cello, and the orchestral harp, which add a lot of haunting texture and an extra bit of low end shimmer to the fuzzed out buzz.
In addition to the odd instrumentation, there's some seriously strange arrangements and bizarre bits of production fuckery that help this ep fall squarely into the amazing fucked up black metal category. Each track tends to break down or bliss out into strange abstract soundscapes or haunting chamber pieces. The opening track, about halfway through. suddenly switches gears, almost like someone flipped a switch, and what was moments before a thick, LOUD buzzing blackness, immediately becomes a murky subterranean drone, like some weird black metal Basinski, all muted and roiling and droning and buzzing. Track three is a long slow burning rumble, thick with slowed down guitars and moaning cello melodies over the top. The final track breaks into a super intense minor key string section, sweeping and epic, before launching back into a pounding funeral black buzz trudge.
Weird and heavy and fucking awesome!
Record number two from very probably the only band you've ever heard that hails from the Faroe Islands, which as we discovered reviewing their first record, are right between Iceland and Norway. And as we mentioned in that review, stylistically, they did seem to fit somewhere between the grim buzz of Norwegian black metal, and the soaring bliss of Icelandic rock.
But neither of those really encapsulate the strange sound of Vhernen. Definitely more on the doom side of the black spectrum, Vhernen augment the typical guitar, bass and drums with electric cello and harp, which definitely adds a super haunting vibe to the proceedings. Just take the opening track, a relentless buzzing riff, a pounding blast beat, howled vocals, but over the top a moaning mournful melody, WAY louder than any of the other instruments. The harp joins in as well, sprinkling the grim buzz with pizzicato plinks and plonks, on first listen one might chalk up the weirdness to poor mixing, a 4-track experiment gone awry, but keep listening, and the record seems to blossom, the moodiness and intensity grows and grows. After all, who decided that guitar and drums are meant to be the lead instruments, or meant to be highest in the mix. After all, most of the photos we've seen of Vhernen feature someone playing the electric cello. Which might lead one to believe that the cello is in fact the instrument that defines Vhernen's sound, and quite frankly it pretty much does.
Every song has a thick swath of blackened buzz running through it, but that sounds ends up being washed out a and blurred into almost dronelike smears, while the cello weaves lush mournful melodies over the top.
Many of the tracks end up blurring the blackness so completely that they becomes hazy greyed ambience, like the second half of "Insolstice", that sounds like a Tim Hecker track, or the 15 minute closer "Lopransfjordur-Ende" which spends most of its time as a gorgeously minimal whir, before spreading out into an almost classical sounding shimmer. In fact for what is ostensibly a black metal record, Vhernen spends much of it's time drifting and whirring, glistening and glimmering, buzzing and blurring, which helps turn simple buzz and blast into a gorgeously dreamy and blissy slab of blackness.
Record number two from this local metal supergroup. And yeah, everyone hates being described as a supergroup, but fuck it, this is a pretty super group, and it's made up of some of our favorite people and players. John Cobbett and Sigrid Sheie from Hammers Of Misfortune, Aesop Dekker from Agolloch & Worm Ouroboros, and Mike Scheidt of Yob. All bands we dig heavily, and so one can only assume that the rules of band math dictate that cramming all of them into the same studio could only result in something pretty fucking kick ass. Which was precisely the case.
But Deeper Than Sky, the follow up to their heavily-dug-by-us self-titled debut, moves even further from the supposed original concept of the band, which was to be a sort of psychedelic D-Beat crust metal combo. Even on the first record, that seemed like that idea had already been cast aside, in favor of something more classic metal, NWOBHM guitars were all over the place, and Scheidt's vocals, for all their grunting and growling, more often soared into high pitched wails. Punkish energy abounded, and it does here too, but the sound definitely leans toward something more epic and classic, with thrashing, galloping, sci-fi majesty, infused with plenty of snot and snarl, but to indulge in a little more band math, Deeper Than Sky sounds like Voivod playing power metal, which is just as goddamn good as that ought to be. Most of the tracks are dense and complex, progged out and yeah, psychedelic, all without losing any metallic heft, or punk energy, in fact, somehow that stuff is harnessed and reshaped into, well into THIS. Vhol are definitely beholden to plenty of other bands that came before, but they're also extremely original, the songs dizzying in their scope and execution, sometimes they sound like a metal Magma, other times like a more intellectual Venom, and at others, like some fucked up pop band disguised as a metal band. Even the most furious, fucked up parts tend to display some odd element that transcends its constituent parts, and pretty, melodic passages are never far from collapsing into black holes of sonic aggression.
Fans of the first record will not be disappointed, and will likely be blown away by the group's progression, and anyone who has somehow yet to delve into the dizzyingly epic, sci-fi, punk-metal, psych-shred, prog-thrash soundworld of Vhol, it's time!!!
At long last the highly anticipated debut from VHOL is here, via Profound Lore. Highly anticipated 'cause VHOL, if you don't already know, are a "supergroup" of sorts. Actually, as far as we're concerned, in more ways than one. Firstly, VHOL (dunno if the name is supposed to be in all-caps, but it looks good to us like that) is formed by members of several other groups we like, band that might not be household names required of supergroup status, but probably ARE household names where people who read the aQ-list dwell. And on top of that, they're all amazing musicians so it's "super" that way too. VHOL consists of guitarist John Cobbett (Hammers Of Misfortune, ex-Ludicra, ex-Slough Feg, etc.) and his former Ludicra bandmate, drummer Aesop Dekker (also of Agalloch, Worm Ouroboros, etc. - and a noted blogger too), plus on bass Sigrid Sheie, who is also in Hammers with John. And making this more than just a San Francisco scene thing, on vocals is Mike Scheidt from Portland's mighty sludge-space-doomsters YOB. With these individuals involved, it sounded pretty good on paper, and now the proof is here, it actually sounds extremely good for real as well!!
Prior to hearing this, we'd been informed that the concept behind VHOL was "psychedelic D-beat" music or something. Well... ok, sorta. Aesop's a punk drummer at heart, to begin with (remember Hickey?). And yeah, having Scheidt provide his unique soaring screaming vox, all spacey and wavery and effected, can't help but make this sound psychedelic, plus the preponderance of mindboggling guitar solo shred from Cobbett helps in that dep't too. Early reports that had VHOL being a full-on Dis-core Crust-Metal band were somewhat misleading, however. Just like Ludicra, Hammers, heck ALL their other bands, this is a hybrid of a whole bunch of different things. And ends up being its own special thing.
But if we had to say, sonically this perhaps aligns closest with John & Aesop's previous outfit, avant-black metallers Ludicra, and with the more black-metally side of Yob. There's some delving into doomy, post-rock depths at points, plus of course Scheidt's distinctive vocals. So a cross between Ludicra and Yob, perhaps. But with some of the grandiose artistry of Hammers too. And both hectic punkish attack and sheer rockin' NWOBHM-inspired old school metal moments as well. Lots of them. Which is really what makes this for us. What a combo - and it works. Both energetic and epic, with churning riffs, intricate soloing, pounding rhythmic chaos, and actual catchy songwriting too. Our knack for finding buried "pop" music in the most unlikely, ugly places is not to be thwarted here, especially ferinstance on track four, "Grace", where some very effective, very poppy hooks are hiding, amidst that track's dense ripping architecture that conjures the sci-fi spectre of old (and new!) Voivod - a connection also suggested by this disc's very Away-like cover artwork, done by Cobbett himself.
Crucially, Scheidt puts on quite a performance, varying his vocals in cleanliness, from clean-ish to unclean, layered over each other even, doing death grunts and blackened rasps and guttural screams as well as his trademark higher-pitched, but distorted wailings - even getting into almost '80s metal ballad territory on the album's closer, "Songs Set To Await Forever".
Favorite tracks are hard to single out, they're all good, but "Arising" really, really impresses - a rollicking tour de force that kinda reminds us of certain latter day Darkthrone efforts, a la some tracks on their recent The Underground Resistance. Some of the same influences at work perhaps.
All in all, VHOL lives up to expectations (whatever they were!), certainly quality-wise. And perhaps confounds some others. But definitely doesn't disappoint. In fact, we might be digging this more than some of the VHOL folks' "main" bands right now, and that's saying a lot.
We've gone on at great length about our love of French black metal, the more grim and gnarled and fucked up and fierce the better. And it doesn't get a whole lot better than VI, a record we got a while back, but not enough to list properly, instead, the few copies we had sat lurking in the shadows...
But since it looks like we won't actually get more, we figured at least a few of you would love to get your blackened little paws on this sonic sickness, and sick it is. About as heavy and punishing and furious as French black metal gets, definitely on par with say Deathspell Omega, maybe not quite as weird and progressive, bur easily as intense and evil, the sound supremely black and utterly grim, but the vibe, and the atmosphere... so oppressive and so so evil. The guitars are massive, and so fast and buzzy, they almost blur into trancelike drones, the whole band a blasting black beast, careening wildly, only occasionally slowing down to something less than lightning speed, mixing in haunting melodies, strange angelic voices, but focusing mostly on the sheer brutality and black ferocity of their sound. Kind of shocked actually that these guys aren't huge. Anyone into orthodox French blackness, should definitely bow down.
More from the label: "In their first gospel, French black metal devil worshipping misanthropes VI launch a ceremonious attack on the sheep-like practices of God-fearing man. Armed with dark fervor, diabolic discipline, devilish devotion, frenzied insectoid riffing and apocalyptic blasting, the deviant duo unleash their profane scriptures amid a rapturous cataclysm of scorn and disgust. Abiding by an alternate set of tenets, VI dutifully exercise their (anti-)faith, whilst exorcising the belief system of the virtuous. Espousing hedonism, individualism and overt Satanism, these prayers are composed (in the native tongue) with reverence and respect, venerating all things vile and vicious. Consecration of the depraved; sanctification of the obscene; emancipation of the human spirit. Bless them, father, for they have sinned..."
Indeed!
More Spanish stoner metal for ya! After the fucked up weirdness of Dirty Lust and the flowers and beads spaciness of Fooz, Viaje A 800's straight-forward blend of doom and groove is kinda refreshing. Super heavy, rockin' tunes with Spanish-language vocals.
Boris Vian was a French jazz musician, playwright, novelist, translator of hard-boiled American crime classics, all-around agitator and bon vivant. Serge Gainsbourg was a big fan and intended to collaborate with Vian. Unfortunately, due to Vian's untimely death in 1959, this collaboration never came to pass. This cd compiles much of Vian's work as a cabaret singer. His songs are steeped in the French chanson tradition, social poetics, and dadaist wit & wordplay. As the liner notes exclaim, "Boris Vian is one of those solitary adventurers who has discovered a new world of la chanson." (thanks to our regular customer Rael for the translation!)
We got this disc a while back, but like many things around here, it got overlooked in the day to day hustle and bustle, and we only just rediscovered them a couple days ago, and figured we should get it reviewed and up on the list. Cuz it's from a year or two ago, and cuz you know we gotta represent, this horde of black metal warriors is from right here in the Bay Area, Oakland to be exact, and have been playing around town like crazy.
This demo is super raw, practice space style, lo-fi for sure, with loud drums, loud vocals, and the guitars murky and muddy and a little lost in the mix, but the various parts tend to bleed into one another, making for a fuzzy blown out bit of blasting blackness. Chaotic and primal, noisy and almost punky at times, and weirdly enough, there seems to be some super melodic poppy elements creeping in here and there. Which gives the sound (especially the opening track) a really strange vibe.
The metal label Stormspell's motto is "Old farts stuck In the '80s and proud of it". They're the folks who have been bringing us a lot of cool cd reissues of obscure, cult metal bands from the '80s (such as Max Planck, Xinr and Detest), some of 'em as part of Stormspell's ongoing "Red White and Heavy Arcane Collector Series For The Initiated" featuring long-lost demos from bands that are SO cult and obscure they never even got signed to make a proper album.
Well, the old farts at Stormspell have now found some young bands also stuck in the '80s, and have begun a new series of releases, putting these bands' demos out on cd but this time not waiting 30 years to do it. Fantastically dubbed the "Jewels Of Gwahlur" series (the Jewels Of Gwahlur being the macguffin of a Conan story of the same name), five volumes have now been released, and we're reviewing 'em all this list. It's a bit like something else Stormspell did some years ago, the "Thrash Clash" series of splits by underground thrash acts. But these bands are even more "old school" in sound.
Each entry in the series comes in nice trifold digi-wallet packaging, the covers pretty much identical except for the band logos, with a standardized "bejewelled ancient leather tome" look, a la the 3rd Edition D&D rulebooks if you're familiar with those; doubtless some of these bands are! However, despite the uniform design, each entry in the series gets its own unique artwork on the inside, as well as credits, liner notes, etc. Most of these discs are ep-length, around 4-6 tracks, but it should be noted that they're quite cheaply priced. So even though we're reviewing each one individually you might as well buy 'em all and let your cd player sort 'em out! As for us, we're looking forward to hearing more from all these bands (pretty sure we will!), and are curious as to what further Jewels Of Gwahlur will be uncovered by Stormspell in the future.
The "occult heavy metal" of Slovenians VIGILANCE is pretty rippin', galloping NWOBHM styled stuff, kinda like a rougher, helter-skelter Iron Maiden at times. Rollickin' riffs, shredding solos, wailing vox, the works. This disc is also a bit longer than the others in this series, with the five tracks of Vigilance's Steeds Of Time ep (previously released on vinyl) included here augmented by another four demo tracks.
Apparently these guys "got signed" and have a full-length album out now too, we're not surprised. Gonna have to track it down!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It turns out that Phil "Anton Crowley" Anselmo of Pantera's primitive black metal project Viking Crown wasn't just a one-off thing, because now in addition to the "Unorthodox Steps of Ritual" cdep of material recorded in '94 that was finally released last year, comes this, Viking Crown's newly recorded debut full-length. You may remember us raving about how incredibly fucked up and amazing the ep was. Well, this album is a bit more produced, a bit less fucked up, but still an admirable effort of evil musical intent. With Killjoy (from one of Phil's other, other bands, Necrophagia) on vocals, this is also more of a real 'band' effort, not just a lone, drunk Darkthrone maniac with a home studio. The raw, blasting black metal tracks segue into spooky drone-scapes, giving dimension to Phil's true black metal art...definitely superior to anything Pantera has released in recent years.
Brutal. Beautiful. Brut-iful? it's album number two from Erie, PA's heaviest hitters Village Of Dead Roads (who are one of the "Neur-Isis" crowd's best kept secrets). We dug their debut from a few years back quite a bit, and now on this sophomore release they've unleashed another advanced lesson in sludgecore sonics. Although actually this album is a bit less "experimental" than their first one, dropping the ambient sampling stuff and maybe getting a bit MORE metal, including some rather melodic metallic guitar soloing. There's lots of cool parts, every song with something interesting/artistic to offer musically. Every song also utterly destroying you with its heaviness and aggression, via punishing drums, churning riffs, and throat-shreddingly screamed vokills. Yet, they also manage to incorporate moments of melancholic moodiness inbetwixt the crushing parts, without wimping out or being too post-rock predictable. What we're trying to say, is it doesn't get boring, the way some albums in this genre do (though it may not always fit your mood, for instance if you're, like, happy, and want to remain so).
Heartily recommended to fans of other bands from that Neur-Isis axis! And anything from Eyehategod to Samothrace, Cavity to Cult Of Luna, Black Cobra to Snowblood... Not sure why they haven't become better known, they're as good or better than most, though this might be their final release anyway, not sure, apparently the Village's population is down to just the guitarist/vocalist and the drummer now, both of whom are also in a new (two-piece) band called Cotton Candy, a name which you won't be surprised to learn does NOT describe their sound at all...
There's plenty of bands playing heavy, downtuned, post-rock, post-Isis metalcore sludge these days. But there aren't too many that can make you feel as bad and sad and downright scared as Erie PA's Village Of Dead Roads (great name!) can. They've perfected a totally doomy and diseased brand of pissed off pummel, powered by leadweight guitars and hard-hitting drums, graced with moments of fragile beauty, as they do the quiet-loud thing with surety and aplomb. Whatever primal demons being exorcised (or maybe just exercised) by the band on this debut full-length seem not to interfere with their control of this carefully-crafted, crushing music. The quiet parts are infested with disturbing samples and weird effects, mood dialed all the way negative. When the guitars get cranked, and the band churns out the loping, rumbling riff-scapes, strewn with wretched, bloody-heart-torn-from-chest vocalizations and stonery leads, that mood dial simply snaps off, unable to go that low...
VoDR nod to the melancholic majesty of Souls At Zero era Neurosis and the catchy industrial dirge of prime early Godflesh, but also make us think of the likes of Conifer, Mouth Of The Architect, and maybe a mix of Karp and Katatonia! The more melodic side of VoDR even reminds us a bit of the late, great Engine Kid (one of Greg Anderson's pre-SUNNO))) bands), especially when the clean singing comes in during epic album closer "Cold New World". All those who hunger for both doomy bludgeon and post-rock finesse should pay a visit to this Village Of Dead Roads, a twilight ghost-town being bulldozered and buried on Dwelling In Doubt.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The cover makes this look like a black metal thingie. The band name references Blue Cheer. But they're on Load and from Rhode Island and are in fact members of Olneyville Sound System and Landed, and when you actually listen to it you'll learn they're really some kind of screamo grindcore outfit, willing to stoop to juvenile fart jokes while simultanously being pretty clever with some of their musical decision-making. Yes, pounding repetition and feedback can be clever. Really raw, heavy, ugly, fierce. Clocks in at only 24 minutes, a good length for this sort of thing.
Just got a handful of these limited, lathe-cut (by Peter King in NZ, natch) seven inches directly from the now defunct Baltimore band Vincent Black Shadow, an outfit whose two full-length records we've previously raved about for bringing the Iggy-influenced, ugly ragin' raw rawk action with such authentic energy and attitude. Too bad they broke up, sadly before completing their third album which was to be called Baltamont. Some of the VBS boys are in a new band, called UNNH, and others in one called Murder, so we'll look out for those. In the meantime, we've got this final farewell 7" slab of VBS's psychotic party pleasing punk... Hear 'em kick out the jams in their usual Stooge-ly style on the A-side, "Nazi Gold". And then on the flip, you get their frantic interpretation of Queen's catchy speedster "Sheer Heart Attack", from News Of The World. With VBS singer's snotty sneering snarl, and their relentless rhythm section's careening drive, here it sounds almost like something by the Sex Pistols - more "God Save The Queen" than Queen! Well, the Sex Pistols meet The Sweet... which might have been what Queen was going for too, on the original, it came out in '77 after all.
LIMITED EDITION, clear vinyl, last copies.
Yet another warehouse find, dug up just a few of these, pretty sure these will be the last copies we can get�
We had never paid much attention to Swiss (via Germany, or is it German via Switzerland) one man ambient black metal outfit Vinterriket. Partially because he had SO many releases, we count close to SIXTY since 2000, and the ones we did hear, were more sort of swooshy ambience, and did little to distinguish them from the throngs of black ambient groups out there. Somehow we ended up with a handful of these, and we finally gave it a listen and it's actually pretty great. There's still plenty of ambience, but it's woven into long stretches of wintery black buzz (Vinterriket is after all Swedish and Norwegian for 'the winter realm'), and heck he did share a split with aQ beloved Paysage D'Hiver!!
Fans of washed out black ambience, or maybe more accurately ambient black metal will dig this for sure. It's been growing on us too, making us think we should maybe check out some of those 59 other releases. Cuz really, who doesn't love blustery, wintery black metal buzz, although here the buzz is almost entirely overtaken by the synths, which definitely makes for a strange listen, sounding more symphonic really than anything, but when the synths are dialed back, you can finally hear the guitar although it's like a low level hum, the vocals are buried in the mix as well, almost like someone playing along to some black metal turned way down on their boombox, while blasting their synths through a cranked amp. The sound does get buzzy and black in places, but it does seem like overall Vinterriket is more about the ambience than the black buzz, and while the first few tracks do offer plenty of buzz and blast with the swoosh and swirl, the last half of the record is all ambient, even a Burzum cover, all rendered in shimmery synths, and wintery blackened ambience. Good stuff though for sure. And recommended for fans of synth heavy blackness, blackened ambiences, and black wintery grimness...
Remember how excited we were a few months back about the reissue of the album Written In Waters by 'post-black-metal' weirdos Ved Buens Ende?? VBE were one of our favorite Norwegian bands EVER, all avantgarde and sorta-metal and proggy and just plain strange. Well, at long last VBE have finally made a new record! Well, not exactly. The name is different, the lineup too -- only Carl-Michael Eide (aka Czral) remains, with we think new guys rounding out the trio, though we can't be sure 'cause they all use pseudonyms anyway. But, despite all that and some further experimentation with electronics and even pop, this really does still sound like ol' Ved Buens Ende! Oh happy day.
Their math-metal songwriting definitely will still draw comparisons to Voivod, and despite reports that there's a Talking Heads influence you'll still hear more echoes of Ulver and Satyricon than you will of David Byrne, though it's certainly art rock, of a sort. Some parts remind us of Swans, or even This Heat's Charles Hayward's solo records! Other possible comparisons: Arcturus, Don Caballero, Dodheimsgard, Guapo, Enslaved, Codeine, Ulver, Solefald... All very 'different', just like Virus, who are capable of being powerfully complex or lullingly pretty, always creating a sense of unease and disquiet. It's dismal, it's distorted, it's as sad and beautiful as a dead white swan floating on a misty lake. Carheart has perhaps added more sampling and electronics to the VBE equation, but it's still got all the stuff we liked about Written In Waters. Hectic drumming, twisting, atonal guitars, psychedelic drone, rubbery bass, swooning, dramatic vocals, monk-chant vocals, atmospheric, uh, atmosphere...including field recordings of wind and water that suggest the mysterious lake we spoke of above. Lyrically, it's equally as cryptic, and the cd graphics only spawn further confusion. Carheart? Cars? Dog-headed men? What's going on? Can't figure it out and really we don't necessarily want to. It's enough that VBE are back in the guise of Virus. It IS different (Carl's playing guitar instead of drums, though it's still his vocals and vision) enough to be considered a new band, but VBE fans will not be disappointed! Recommended.
Carl-Michael Eide, aka Czral, of the illustrious Ved Buens Ende is back, with a 2nd Virus album, the band which continues the eccentric, eerily dissonant, darkly psychedelic sound once unique to VBE. And being back is pretty big deal, 'cause Carl-Michael very nearly died three years ago from a 4-story fall! Thankfully, he's recovered enough to mastermind this excellent Virus disc and also participate (under his guise of Aggressor) in the making of a new Aura Noir album too (also reviewed this list).
The late great VBE actually only made one proper album (1995's Written In Waters, sadly again out of print) plus a demos disc. At the time, we compared 'em to Slint, Don Caballero and Voivod - but somehow also black metal. Taking up where VBE left off, Virus in 2003 released the even quirkier Carheart album, that added extra electronic elements and a more prominent role for the bass, leading some to cite Talking Heads (!) and The Birthday Party as further-from-black-metal influences on their sound. And there's no denying that this ISN'T your usual black metal, or maybe black metal at all. With 'jazzy' bits, deep voiced vocal speak-singing, no wave grooves, and some vaguely techno-ish drum beats. But we'd say this one sounds more like old VBE than Carheart did, maybe 'cause some of these songs were originally written for an abortive VBE reunion attempt, heavier and less "pop", the guitars "smeary-er".
Regardless, even if VBE means nothing to you (yet), this new Virus is highly recommended for adventurous metal and non-metal listeners both, who'll appreciate its sonic similarities to Ulver and Arcturus, This Heat and the Swans... can you imagine a mathrock Amesoeurs perhaps, with Garm or Gira on vocals? It's dark metallic art rock with weird atmospheres, redolent of claustophobia and vertigo. Twisting, seasick and sinuous - not for everyone at all - but utterly compelling if you've caught the Virus.
Get your true metal fix for this week, with the Metal Blade full-length debut of Salt Lake City's truest metal horde, Visigoth! They charge forth to do battle with a triumphant metal gallop that's both barbarically heavy and super EPICK, soaring but dark, powerfully produced. Most definitely invisible-orange-gesture worthy stuff, kind of like some unholy, brawny melding of Twisted Tower Dire and Grand Magus, it's solid, stirring, sometimes quite speedy stuff with clean, commanding vocals (hitting the highs but never sounding wimpy) and plenty of power in the guitars department, unleashing both doomy riffs and shredding solos. The lengthy but memorable opening number and title track, "The Revenant King" deserves special mention not just because it's likely get stuck in your head but also 'cause the band made a pretty impressive low-budget video clip for it, you should watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqc1yNuFrps
Not bad, eh? A lot of drama in that little one-act-play, with just three characters out in the snow someplace, like a mini-Game Of Thrones. The king in the video is played by the singer for another US underground epic metal outfit, Eternal Champion, btw, but it's the Wormtongue-like scheming adviser who steals the show, the dude who plays him is scarily great!
Anyway, there's lots of cool songs on there for anyone into true, epic, power metal that will rock yer socks off - Allan here of course especially likes the track "Dungeon Master", with the refrain "He's a dungeon master!", Visigoth clearly unashamed of their D&D habit. Oh, and props for the kickass cover of Manilla Road's classic "Necropolis", yeah we said they were epick. All in all, damn enjoyable and impressive. Visigoth could be the American answer to Falconer. Quality stuff, we can imagine a TV ad with that old guy saying "I don't always headbang, but when I do, I headbang to Visigoth."
Seems like stoner rockers still lament the passing of the late great Kyuss. And who can blame them, for all the kick ass stoner rock that surfaced in their wake, few could touch Kyuss, the blown out, distortion saturated guitar of Josh Homme, the wild wailing vocals of John Garcia, hell the whole band were practically perfect, and those records still sound as good as they ever did.
And while Homme went on to massive worldwide popularity with the much more mainstream Queens Of The Stone Age, the other ex-members of Kyuss did their own things in the underground, until finally, reconvening, sans Homme, as Kyuss Lives. A bold ballsy name choice for sure, but a single listen was all it took to convince us that, yeah, Kyuss DOES live. Homme however wasn't pleased, and sued the rest of his old band, resulting in a name change, to Vista Chino, but thankfully, the sound hasn't changed at all, and Kyuss DOES STILL LIVE, in the form of Vista Chino, and while Homme's guitar sound and playing was super distinctive, and a huge part of Kyuss' sound, VC manage to make it work with a similarly sun baked, blown out fuzz drenched sound that sound perfect with Garcia's kick ass vox, all wound up in some totally ruling songs that do remind us of classic Kyuss, which is absolutely not at all a bad thing. While every song here is a stoner rock gem, stick around for the second half of the record, which for some reason, seems jam packed with some of the best songs, especially "Barcelonian", with a killer, super hooky main guitar melody, a slinky groove, and a tripped out psychedelic chorus, or the drum heavy, crumblingly distorted "Dark And Lovely", which really is, heavy and hypnotic, spaced out, with some of the most gloriously blown out guitar on the record. We could go on, but needless to say, way recommended for Kyuss nerds and stoner rockers, but all the folks out there into heavy space-y psychedelia (Heads, White Hills, Carlton Melton, all the Cardinal Fuzz bands, etc.) who maybe missed out on this stuff, might really dig it, cuz really, it doesn't get much better than this!
In 1995, Ben Green took a sabbatical from civilization by stepping away from Godflesh's metallic pummel to return to a site of childhood wonder in the tiny cottage of Lanfawr Cwmstwyth in the Cambrian Mountains. During his twelve month stay, Green learned to coexist with his natural surroundings and transcribed his experiences through a basic 8 track, a guitar, and some microphones.
