Another reissue from this legendary Finnish black metal horde, Womb Of Pestilence was their second and final record, and is another frosty blast of buzzing black malevolence, sonically similar to The First Possession, in that it's murky and muddy and the drums are way too loud, and the riffs bleed into one another, but it's actually a bit more melodic, while remaining seriously necro. Warloghe are one of the few non French bands that truly sounds like they could have been a member of the Black Legions, think Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, Belketre, Torgeist, the same sort of atmosphere, the same sort of raw primitive vibe, the feral lo-fi fury, the hellish ambience, in fact, unlike the relentless blasting of their debut, things get weird and creepy and downright experimental once in a while, like on the freaky creepy "Monolith Clad In Fog", a twisted drift of guitar harmonics, black drones, pulsing rhythms and raspy incantations, or the strange crooned almost operatic vocals on "Corpse-Altar-Light", but those moments are indeed brief, only serving to enhance the already grim atmosphere of Warloghe's "Pure Unholy Black Metal".
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Would you happen to be seeking some really epic, catchy, melodic, complex, amazing music that just happened to encorporate elements of Black Metal before Black Metal even existed? That sounds like an impossible request to fill, doesn't it? But we've got it! Look no further than this ultra obscure, short-lived California band's groundbreaking debut mini-album from 1983. Seriously, Black Metal historians know that a lot of the BM touchstones Warlord practiced predated genre titans Celtic Frost and Mercyful Fate by years. A little aQ back story, once upon a time many moons ago, it seemed that only our own Mr. Connors and his friend Dustin Donaldson (of I Am Spoonbender and co-founder of tech-prog-math-metallists Thought Industry) knew about (let alone loved!) the band Warlord. Through proximity to their gushing, Cup got to hear Warlord a whole bunch, but it only took a couple of listens to get her hooked too. So much so that she's been known to burst out singing "Winter Tears" without warning!
Proto Metal, Power Metal, call it what you will, Warlord's music embodies epic European melodicism, veiled mysticism and a haunted romanticism. It sweeps the listener up in its neo-classical movements, each one possessed with an almost medieval feel and an ever present doomed, tragic tone. The band members fearlessly tread in flamboyant theatrics, assuming mighty pseudonyms (such as Destroyer, Damian King and Thunder Child) and suitably audacious stage garb.
So how did this band fall through the proverbial cracks? Well, keep in mind that this was back in the olden days (when there were truly underground music scenes, before the age of mp3s, cdrs and the internet... alright, 'nuf jokes about us being grannies and gramps!). Beloved as they are, cassettes and vinyl lps were inarguably more labor intensive and cumbersome vehicles to spread the word about a band you loved. It was even harder once said releases vanished into the record label's out-of-print bin. So needless to say, all of the abovementioned individuals were quite elated when this mysterious reissue appeared before them.
Most of these songs are from their long-gone first mini-album, but there's a few extra fan pleasers such as the non-album single "Mrs. Victoria" plus lyrics (so that we can all sing along accurately). Unfortunately this reissue does suffer from a few disappointments -- namely rather flimsy digipak packaging and a not so hot mastering job (there's occasional slight distortion of the bad kind). Not complaining tho', the original was a less than stellar production unto itself, suffering from among other things a less than impactful final mix. And yet, all in all, the greatness of the songs still shines through!!
Brand new ultra limited full length from Warmth, who really couldn't have chosen a more appropriate monicker, as the sounds here are indeed warm, dark, swirly, humid, shimmery, a drifting blackened dronescape of elongated tones, blurred melody, and smoldering low end. Not really dense or heavy or blown out, instead, the sounds are hushed, muted, dense and deep, barely there, a whirring whispery smear of sound, industrial but only slightly, machinelike, but simultaneously organic, a haunting otherworld of looped rumbles and layered clouds and swirls of melodic fragments, and constantly shifting textures, a warm, lush, soft noise, rife with what sound like field recordings, but could also be mechanical detritus, creaks, groans, clicks, even those sounds dialed way back, just another bit of hazy grit added to the already washed out sprawl of dreamlike ambient dronedrift.
Privacy From God is a strange hybrid of sounds that in other hands would be cranked up, doused in distortion and spewed from massive speakers, but Warmth take those same sounds and pull them apart into microscopic clusters of dreamy ambient minutae, soothing, surreal, softly undulating, hushed and looped expanses of near static, frozen in time, dreamdrone minimalism. So nice.
Packaged in a clear plastic oversized clam shell case, with silver offset printing on black vellum paper. Hi-bias chrome tapes with silver labels. And... LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
Attention hard rockers and proto-metal freaks! Finally, the self titled debut and only release from Canada's Warpig gets the deluxe reissue treatment, thanks to those rockers at Relapse. After numerous shoddy bootlegs, this is the first time this record has ever been officially available on cd, and the first time it's been available at all since the original record was released in 1970. Very much in the same vein as the recent Relapse Pentagram reissues, this is some serious stuff, heavy and psychedelic, groovy and dark, Warpig were a heavy rock outfit very much in the spirit of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, Blue Oyster Cult...
Heavy heavy riffs, thick fuzzy organ, kick ass drumming, and wild wailing vocals, lengthy extended riffing, organs atop guitars, slithery snake-like leads, throbbing sludgy bass lines, and catchy-as-fuck songs...
Every track is a killer: the wild proggy Jethro Tull-ish groove of the opener "Flaggit", the "In A Gadda Da Vida" meets Black Sabbath jam "Tough Nuts", they even had a song called "Melody With Balls" fer chrissakes!! One of the best (and strangest) tracks is the lengthy instrumental epic "Advance In A Minor", a dense moody, almost classical sounding metallic prog workout, with loping minor key stretches of muted low end guitar strum and simple piano chords, strung between killer bursts of mathy prog, staccato and dynamic, the whole track eventually twisting itself into some slow burning hard rocking blow out, propulsive and relentless. Later on in the record is another lengthy jam, the strangely titled "U.X.I.B.", rife with wild wailing leads, a groovy main riff, fuzzed out organ, and long stretches of blissed out space rock drift, with the vocals not joining in until nearly halfway through. Unlike a lot of supposedly heavy "proto-metal" records, where one or two of the tracks rock super hard and the all the rest are just bad twelve bar blues bar rock, every track here kicks ass, heavy and proggy and groovy and spacey and pretty dang metal for 1970. Quite recommended! Includes all new artwork, rare photos and brand new liner notes...
AT LAST, back in print. We haven't had this crucial black metal album for a couple years now, the original Drakkar version (reviewed on list #203) is out of print. But now Seaon Of Mist has licensed it for a domestic reissue WITH A BONUS TRACK - so if you missed it before, get it now! They just were through here on tour, bloody tour, and hopefully you didn't miss that either... (we did, we were working, it was a list night!). Here's what we said about this Satanic masterpiece originally:
Like Anaal Nathrakh's debut The Codex Necro, we first saw this release reviewed (and awarded Album of the Month honors) in the UK's monthly extreme metal bible Terrorizer, long before we were actually able to track down copies to sell. Our suppliers either didn't know what it was, or had already sold out of the few copies they possessed. But now, we have finally gotten a hold of a few and thought we ought to let you know... Basically, Sweden's Watain are a blazing raw blackened metal monster, thrashing and buzzing and blasting. Sinister melodies bleed from behind cracks in the band's armored exterior. We're strongly reminded of Immortal and especially Dissection, with "Where Dead Angels Lie" haunting these proceedings for sure. At first our reaction was, yeah, this IS pretty good...but then, an undefinable X-factor started to emerge, as the album progressed and Watain's sounds sunk in and we realized that this was more than just pretty good. There's a constantly complex and subtle "shifting" going on Watain's songwriting, a layering of riffs amid the band's blur of speed that just takes it to another level. It's fierce and exquisite black metal mastery on display here. Maybe it's easy to go a certain distance with the black metal thing, y'know initially all you need is the right distorted guitar sound and raspy vocals and occult lyrics, the image and the musical basics. But once those black metal "signifiers" are in place, and a certain standard of competence is achieved, the playing field is level. Going the extra league (with Satan) as Watain do here is rare and impressive. Nicely done (as is the packaging!).
PS there's a picture disc vinyl reissue supposedly coming too, but we haven't gotten ours yet... fingers crossed...
Here's the thing with Swedish black metaller Watain. Such a big deal is made out of their EVILness, their Satanism, their philosophy, their filthy, smelly live shows, rife with rotting animal heads and lots and lots of blood, all that stuff, there's really no way the music could live up to the hype, especially considering these guys, for as heavy and blasting and black they are, they are writing super melodic black metal, that is way too listenable and catchy really to be doused in blood and adorned with pentagrams and upsidedown crosses. If you had only seen pictures of the band, and heard about them, read interviews, you would undoubtedly expect something WAY noisier and WAY more brutal, insanely filthy and lo-fi and, well, frankly, more evil. There's been a huge backlash with this record, which seems weird to us, cuz it's not that far removed from Sworn To The Dark or Casus Luciferi, if anything it's the logical progression from those records, the sound is incredible, killer production, the guitars chaotic and crushing, everything sounds massive, the songs are a bit more complex and proggy, more parts, lots of weird tangly bits and strange time signatures, but the things is, these songs have a definite pop core, that no amount of buzz and blast can disguise. Which no doubt bugs the fuck out of the orthodox true grim kult hordes, but hell, for us, we're loving it, it's almost like these guys are taking up where Dissection's Storm Of The Light's Bane left off, total old school metal melodies mixed in with classic Scandinavian blackness, the songs epic and majestic and heavy, but hooky as fuck, crazy melodic, and WAY catchier than black metal was probably ever meant to be. What more do you need to know? If you can ignore the grim posturing and just dig into the music, this is definitely some seriously awesome shit, plus, as if to further distance themselves from the troo and grim traditionalists, they do a killer cover of "Chains Of Death" by Italian horror metallers Death SS!!!
While they last, we have the super deluxe digipaks, that are fucking amazing, all designed to look like an old woodcut, but with a diecut front panel with the third panel visible through the hole...
We saw Watain in the last issue of Oaken Throne 'zine complaining about how this, their first cd, was put out in such a limited edition that no-one could get it anymore except on eBay, and how sucky that was so they were gonna make sure that their new album (Casus Luciferi, reviewed on AQ list #203) wouldn't be at all limited. Well guess what? We actually DO have Rabid Death's Curse in stock, but haven't been able to get more Casus Luciferis for some time now. Huh, can't make sense of it. But we'd recommend you get this now, if you want one, 'cause they'll probably be gone again soon too! And you should want one if you're a true black metal fiend, Watain being one of the best bands (along with, for instance, Funeral Mist and Leviathan) truly dedicated to keeping the flickering flame of black metal burning black. Utterly cult and underground yet undeniably skilled and intelligent. And religiously Satanic.
So how does Rabid Death's Curse compare to the masterful Casus Luciferi? Watain's debut album is pretty great, and definitely an indication of even greater greatness to come. It's feral, fast, frenzied and ferocious. FFFF! Not the sound of a band you'd want to mess with. Look at 'em wrong and you can bet they'd pound the love of God out of you, literally.
You've fallen victim to Rabid Death's Curse (2000). Casus Luciferi (2004) gripped your soul. After three years, now it's time to become Sworn To The Dark, with the return of Uppsala, Sweden's mighty "black metal milita", Watain. True underground black metal KINGS. One of the few "new" (they started in '98) bands to achieve (and deserve) the same respect lent to this Nordic scene's originators, bands like Immortal, Darkthrone, Mayhem, Emperor, and Satyricon. Watain belong in such illustrious company there's no doubt, but there's one band with which they're most closely linked: Dissection. Still hugely influenced by Dissection in their prime (this is in fact dedicated to the memory of the late Jon Nodrveidt), Watain continue to earn our amazed respect with cold fierce dark riff after riff here on this headbanging storm of an album. They've upped the ante on old school art. Notorious for their blood drenched stage show, Watain's new album brings that blood to your home, spitting from your stereo speakers in an occultic frenzy. Needless to say, recommended to all Watain worshippers... and if you aren't already into Watain, but call yourself a black metal fan, you should waste no time buying this and then bowing down, as you shall.
Dust off the fine china and pop open that economy sized barrel of cow's blood you've been saving for a special occasion, because there's a strange nauseating scent arising from the gloomy forests of Uppsala, and it can only mean one thing� Watain have returned! That's right, it's been a full three years since last these odoriferous Swedes disgraced us with their presence, and The Wild Hunt shows them further honing their razor sharp brand of accessibly grandiose black metal. Watain aren't reinventing the wheel here, simply smoothing it out, and that's by no means meant as an insult. In fact, its Watain's greatest strength. It's not until you pop The Wild Hunt into your stereo that you realize just how refreshing it is to hear a band playing old fashioned melodic black metal without any frills or gimmicky genre tags, and playing it really well to boot. There's nothing "post" about this, nothing avant garde, nothing "shoegaze". There's no drum machines. It wasn't recorded on a 4 track in someone's bedroom. There are just tons of well produced, catchy tunes. Fist pumping blackened thrash riffs grind away under Erik Danielsson's commanding authoritative vocals. Frantic manic guitar leads swirl on top of punishing double bass, recalling Slayer's glory days. There's a strong lineage of Swedish extreme metal coursing through Watain's music too. The mournful yet furious melodic sense of golden age Swedish black metal bands like Dawn and especially Dissection is clearly present, while elsewhere (mostly notably on the epically plodding "They Rode On") Viking era Bathory gets a look-in. There's even some Quorthorn-esque clean singing on that track! The album is cold, calculated and pristine in a similar way to latter day Satyricon or Immortal. The band sounds like a tightly wound killing machine. Nowhere is there a moment of hesitation or remorse. And like those aforementioned bands it's infinitely accessible, but without giving into the saccharine gothic impulses of other mainstream black metal bands like Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth. Sure, there are moments of slight experimentation: there's a bit of ballady clean singing like we said before (Allan here thinks they've been listening to R.E.M. or something), some more ambient clean guitar passages, even a bit of classical guitar! But for the most part it's flawlessly played, mercilessly executed metal through and through. And would you have it any other way??
In our review of Boston metalcore outfit Watchmaker's previous album Kill.Fucking.Everyone, we stated that they were "THE MOST PISSED sounding band we've ever heard". Well, it doesn't appear that in the time elapsed since that album Watchmaker have been to anger management classes, or tried therapy, or fallen in love, or adopted puppies, or anything like that, as they certainly haven't gotten any happier!!! Erased From The Memory Of Man is as extreme and brutal and p.o.'d as ever. These sixteen tracks feature negative titles like "Lice Crawling Humanity", "Relentless Post Mortem Killing", "Theraputic Dirt Nap" and "Infidelity's Eyestabbing Unease"... and theres an epigraph of sorts in the cd booklet taken from Werner Herzog's film Grizzly Man, as follows: "The common denominator of the universe is not harmony -- it's chaos, hostility, and murder." This is definitely the disharmonic, chaotic, hostile, murderous soundtrack to Herzog's statement! Pounding drums, throat-ripped vox, gnarly guitars...sheer sonic armageddon on cd. Turn up as loud as you dare, and stand back!
But, pissed as they are, it's nice to know that they do have a sense of humor about it all, judging by how the band members are credited with such creative job descriptions as "yearning flame of drum turret" (drums), "vocal fucking sawblade terror" (vocals), "rick and fucking backer" (bass) and "ghetto fucking bee keeper" (?). Recommended.
This is punk fucking rock. Or maybe heavy fucking metal. Actually it's sort of both. This band is THE MOST PISSED sounding band I've ever heard. So intensely aggressive from their music to their lyrics to the vocals to the name of their record. Not sure what a Watchmaker is (besides one who makes watches) or what that has to do with how pissed these guys are but who cares? This is so good. Somewhere between Drop Dead and Marduk, ultra fast, with the occasional blastbeat, glass gargling vocals and buzzing sharp-as-fuck guitars. Nineteen songs and 29 minutes of seriously furious, venomously antagonistic, head smashingly heavy, mean mean music.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In a world full of tiny labels, it takes a lot to stand out, whether it's some amazing and mysterious sounds or super unique and hand made packaging. And if anything RuralFaune as shined in both respects, a crazy collection of some of the weirdest noisemakers in the world, and some seriously amazing, and in many cases, fragrant, packaging. Hand printed, painted, folded, pasted, held together with string or wire, often filled with branches or flowers, scraps of paper, seeds or bits of plant matter, many of them very strong smelling, all of them amazing.
Well, Bruno, the man behind RuralFaune, was really getting into heavy music, and decided that maybe RuralFaune was not the place for such musics, so he started FaunSabbatha, a new label dedicated to heavy, creepy, dark music, metal, metallic, or just plain evil. Four new releases, each one outrageously limited, gorgeously hand packaged, and gone before you know it.
Any band that thanks funeral doom horde Rigor Sardonicous is alright by us. Especially if RS are one of the only four entities thanked. One being the label, the other being one of the other bands featured amidst this recent spate of Faunasabbatha releases, Sorc'Henn.
So what comes of an unhealthy love/obsession with Rigor Sardonicous, how about a creepy, ultra sick, noise drenched slow motion doom crawl? Downtuned, and lurching, stumbling and heavyheavyheavy. After a brief intro, all mournful windblown twang, a spidery latticework of spare, sorrowful melodies, plucked out over a whirling expanse of emptiness, comes the filthy, crusty, noisy multiple o'd doom. But sonically, Waverly Hills don't so much resemble funereal doom, as they do, modern noise rock, or Japanese ultra psych. The guitars are caustic coruscating streaks of blurred buzz, unleashed in heaving waves, while much of the band's time is spent crawling doomlike through a field of sonic broken glass, the guitars spend most of their time erupting in squalls of near white noise that sound like Keiji Haino fronting the Dead C. Thick clouds of whirling buzz, deconstructed riffage, super abstract percussion, the vocals a subsonic rumble, a blurred low end gurgle (except when it's a haunting ghostlike falsetto!) underpinning the soaring and drifting slabs of buzz overhead. Imagine doom metal being pulled apart, the notes and chords and riffs being rent asunder, the resulting squall still dark and doomy, by way more tripped out and damaged.
So yeah, you doooooooomlords will definitely dig this, especially if you lean toward stuff like Moss and Khanate and Bunkur and of course Rigor Sardonicous, but it might be even more appealing if your cup of tea is abstract psychedelic noise a la Sunroof!, Total, Dead C, White Heaven, etc...
LIMITED TO 74 COPIES, hand numbered on a tattered, torn piece of cloth, with the Faunasabbatha logo stamped on there as well, in a paper sleeve held shut wit a piece of metal wire.
Those unintimidated by metal of the power, folk, or medieval variety, hail! Waylander are back yet again with another album of Irish folk metal, set to sharpen the listeners mental and metaphorical swords. Sometimes when we write these reviews it's hard to know what to say. It seems that there are metalheads who can vibe on flute and other folk instruments, and there are those that don't. Well, we believe that this record is one of those rare times a band can bridge the gap. While the harps and such blaze on, crunchy guitars and howling vocals keep things from ever getting too gimmicky. Basically, it stays heavy even with some unusual instrumentation, which can sometimes feel like it's softening the song. And with song titles like "Taker of Heads," or "To Dine In The Otherworld," these guys are on the path to pure metallic nirvana. Any true metalhead will easily find something to love about this record. Give it a listen, and we think you'll agree. Recommended!
The posthumous debut from (and, thus, swansong of) San Francisco's most cult black metal act, Weakling. Despite their local, non-forested, non-wintry origins, Weakling was a band capable of destroying the best Scandinavia has to offer (as we witnessed upon two occasions, when Weakling had the honor of opening the San Francisco shows by Norwegians Mayhem and Enslaved, and proceeded to make both bands look like punk rockers in comparison! Weakling were so much more epic and intense). All this without any of the ignorant posturing or hackneyed corpsepaint of their peers.
Ghastly, anguished vocals and bloodchilling keyboards combine with dual trebly buzzsaw guitars and inhuman trance inducing drumming to create an atmosphere of utter grinding grimness. Weakling draws upon '90s black metal in the Norwegian tradition (especially the raw and primitive likes of Darkthrone, Burzum and Immortal) and then creates uniquely fucked song structures of epic length (20 minutes per, in some cases).
And, like the best music, Weakling also transcends genre. In some ways, "Dead as Dreams" possesses elements that can be considered akin to the avant garde, experimental creations of the Swans, Skullflower, Steve Reich, or even Yoko Ono. Imagine an extensive, utterly mesmerizing Hermann Nitsch piece, composed for black metal band.
It's a suffocating soundscape of riffing and drone. Subterranean satanic art rock that equals metal. Nihilistic, depressive and never ending.
Featuring Josh from The (Fucking) Champs as well as drummer Lil' Sunshine from local death metallers Sangre Amado. And of course, John Gossard of...well, John Gossard. (And The Gault / Asunder / Iron Vegan.) Local black metal maniac/death rocker extraordinaire. Weakling is largely the result of his devotion to black metal dementia.
We are not engaging in baseless hyperbole when we say: this should be crowned black metal album of the year. Seriously. Essential.
We were initially intrigued by this Canadian black metal horde after discovering that they recorded their first few records in Bangladesh, of all places, before band leader Vetis Monarch returned to Canada, and the band went on to create this blackened monster, Drakonian Paradigm, which is interesting for several reasons. Besides the strange Bangladeshi angle, the fact that this was released on Ajna might have you imagining something much more buzzing and black, and while some buzz and black is definitely present, Weapon's sound is way more classic metal, a little thrash, a little death, a little NWOBHM, killer riffs, loads of melody, harmonized leads, the vocals are guttural and growly, and the band do offer up brief bursts of blast beats here and there, but just as often, the band will lock into some super melodic, but still super heavy chug fest, the drums locked in with the guitars, while over the top, leads soar and squeal, in fact guitar solos are everywhere, and they're awesome, adding all sorts of wild frenetic melody to the proceedings, and the vocals are just not grunts, there are weird chanted bits, strange almost falsetto parts, the vocals are often stereo panned super hard too, so they seem to swoop from speaker to speaker.
But when the band do decide to get all black metal, they offer up some seriously intense blasting and buzzing, the riffs gnarled and frenzied, the drums chaotic and on the verge of collapse, which only adds to the classic metal feel, no triggers or sampled drum bullshit, these guys sound like a rock band rocking out, and rocking out hard, and even at its fiercest, the band will infuse some particularly grim segment with some serious minor key melody, or they'll slow things down and get all woozy and psychedelic, adding synths, underpinning the slow building crunch, sometimes they even ditch the metal all together and weave together some almost noise rock sounding heaviness, again held together by awesomely melodic guitar leads, and some unlikely harmonies, or they might slip into some fluttery, folky psychedelia, all dreamy and acoustic, but before too long, the sound transforms into something mower power metal or Iron Maiden than Darkthrone or Beherit. At first we were a bit thrown off by Drakonian Paradigms, maybe we were expecting something more Nightbringer-y, something more overtly black, perhaps based on the Ajna connection, but after a couple listens, we forgot all about that, and just dug this more and more, for what it is, not black, not thrash, not death, just METAL, and this is in fact, fast becoming one of our new favorite metal records.
Full length number three from this black metal horde (from Canada, via Bangladesh), whose black metal is more of a sort of blackened death/classic metal, and whose sound gets more and more polished with every release, not just production wise, but songwriting too, the opening track here pretty much lays it all out, beginning with a moody atmospheric intro, before some blackened riffing rolls in, midtempo tribal drumming, some almost death metal vokills, a loping tranced out churn, and then some chugging harmonics-laced crunch, before a totally classic metal guitar melody swoops in, a gloomy almost death rocky bassline, then the song splinters into a murky sprawl of pounding furious blackened death metal, slipping from roiling murk to soaring majesty and back again, progged out and intricate, with little Eastern flourishes here and there. As always, we're reminded of Absu, Melechesh, Bathory, old Morbid Angel, the sound simultaneously modern and totally retro, some of the tracks impossibly catchy (like the bridge on "Vanguard Of The Morning Star") sounding almost like some At The Gates part, which leads to a second bridge that's even still more epic and hook heavy, others are weirdly chuggy and churny, like the awesomely titled "Crepuscular Swamp, Unhinged Swine", which unfurls like some weird swaggery slo-mo death metal stomp, and still others, like "Disavowing Each In Aum" and "Shahehshah" are super layered, and ultra melodic, the group's downtuned death metal churn, wreathed in all sorts of near psychedelia, lush textures, and impossibly lovely melodies, which are all somehow deftly fused to Weapon's classic sounding DM, creating a twisted hybrid that manages to reinvigorate the tired tropes while pushing all our classic blackened death metal buttons!
Latest blast of classic/black/death metal from this Canadian-by-way-of-Bangladesh metal horde, and as much as we loved their debut, Drakonian Paradigms, From The Devil's Tomb is even better. Heavier, better riffs, better production, more epic and intense and intricate songwriting, and most importantly, at least to us, WAY weirder. Not as in twisted damaged weird, just way more creative and strange, riffs, arrangements, the whole thing. The first song along should make things perfectly clear, after some strange tinkling chimes and swirling backwards FX, the guitars come in, filthy and distorted, and then the song proper kicks in, and the guitars are huge, a lurching, lumbering doomy plod, laced with some strange little super distorted high end squalls, until finally, the frantic black riffing swoops in, and the band explode into a blast of murky, muddy, downtuned death metal churn, that SLAYS. The song plays out, flitting back and forth between classic metal riffage, complete with squiggly leads, doomy crush, and blackened blast. The second song is just as gloriously twisted, with a super dynamic mathy start/stop opening, that leads into a woozy post rocky drift, with gorgeous harmonized guitars, the sound moody and minor key, before again spitting out more DM fury. And that's basically what makes Weapon so interesting is how they infuse their blackened blasting and DM grind with classic melody, old school riffage, wah guitars, leads, Eastern melodies, sitar, organ, whatever the fuck they feel like tossing in, it all somehow works, and serves the greater good, that good being pure evil, evil attained via furious fucked up blackened heaviness. Probably our favorite track though would have to be the final jam, "Towards The Uncreated", which mixes some galloping blackness, with some surprisingly melodic midtempo post rockisms, not to mention some super emotional, melancholic leads, creating a strangely moody metallic bit of doom flecked mystery, bookended of course by blasts of gnarled black crush.
Recommended for anyone who digs Absu, Bathory, Melechesh, Mayhem, Morbid Angel and the like, or any sort of blackened death metal / deathlike black metal.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Obscure, awesome 1971 krautrock proto-metal reissued! And they're called Weed. Need we say more? As always, we will say more, 'cause we've got to mention that the heavy electric organ bombast on this album is cranked out by none other than Ken Hensley of Uriah Heep fame, over in Germany on vacation or something. He appears here under the fairly transparent pseudonym of "Ken Lesley"! Having mentioned that, we realize we should probably review some actual Uriah Heep albums on our site one of these days, but this did just get reissued so we're writing about it now. (Sooner or later we will write up some Heep, but suffice to say that their first five albums RULE, circa '70-'73, though they go downhill pretty steeply after that. If you dig Deep Purple and haven't checked out the early Heep, you should.)
Anyway, back to Weed. Thanks to Hensley/Lesley, they DO sound a bit like Uriah Heep, especially on the killer opener "Sweet Morning Light". Despite (sarcastic?) lyrics about "sun shining bright, on everything in sight" and other seemingly positive things, the singer's depressed delivery and the downer dirginess of the heavy, groovy music creates a much darker, doomier mood! It's kinda brilliant, that contrast. Elsewhere, this album features the more mellow, melancholic acoustic balladry of "Loney Ship", one blues rocker, "Slowin' Down", and several other sorts of organ-ornate melodic kraut prog jams. It ends with another heavy highlight, the song "Weed" itself, the album's longest track at 7:14. And it's an instrumental. With a crunching, exceedingly Sabbathy main riff, or is it Led Zep? Kicks ass anyways. For the first and last tracks alone, this disc is something anyone interested in proto-doom should hear.
Also, Weed should get some sort of award as one of the earliest overt "stoner rock" bands ever, just based on their name, right? Them and Leafhound.
This is a downtuned stoner sludge face off between two German outfits, who tackle their Sabbath obsessions in slightly different ways. Weed In The Head start things off with delciate clean guitar figures, which are interrupted by ULTRA distorted blasts of metal riffing, the kind of distortion that is so fuzzed out the sounds are almost crumbling into pieces. Doesn't take long before the clean guitar disappears under an avalanche of groovy sludge, pounding Cromagnon drums and wailing sort of Ozzyish vocals. A weird blend of Sabbathy groove and Kyuss-y desert rock, heavy but most definitely stoney and groovy. Things occasionally slow down into almost Eyehategod terrirtory and eventually bliss out into a druggy trippy Monster Magnet style space jam. Cool!
Gorilla Monsoon (named for the wrestler we presume) counter with their own stoner psych sludge groove, starting out with a gorgeous bit of hazy ambience, all guitar distortion and feedback, before the main riff powers through, kicking up all that ambience into a swirling sonic dust storm. Dark and murky, but a bit more rocking than WITH, and much harsher vocals, that swoop wildly from a King Fowley type growl to a near Khanate like hellish shriek. There are some sludgy Eyehategod moments, lots of loping midtempo fuzz and groove, but like Weed In The Head, Gorilla Monsoon are ultimately channelling the spirit of the mighty Sabbath (heck, the singer's nom du rock is even Jack Sabbath) and there ain't nothing wrong with that.
Packaged in a nice fullcover foldover sleeve and pressed on nice thick vinyl
Even being the sort of person who knows almost nothing about drugs, I do know the usual preferred delivery method for pot is inhalation, not ingestion (to the lungs, not the stomach). Not that you can't cook it up in a brownie, but the guys in Weedeater sound like they just shovel handfuls of weed straight into their gaping jaws, like some sort of drug crazed harvesting machine, or like a stoner rock engineer dumping coal into the engine of a locomotive, which makes sense, as it's obvious these guys need enough weed to power the relentless, downtuned, full bore stoner metal crush found on God Luck And Good Speed.
A relative stoner rock institution, Dixie Dave and company have been spewing their filthy, crusty, blown out, drug rock for going on 10+ years now, and before that Dixie fronted the equally heavy and even crustier Buzzov-en, so this man knows his way around a stoney riff and a druggy groove, and this shit sounds just as good now as it did a decade ago, and I don't even smoke pot. So I can only imagine how amazing this must sound high�
But even NOT high, Weedeater destroy! Like some impossible crossbreeding experiment gone hellishly wrong, one part Eyehategod, one part Sleep, one part Corrosion Of Conformity, one part Bongzilla, guitars tuned so low the strings drag along the ground, amps stacked so high, they need a ladder to crank those knobs to 11. The vocals a harsh demonic mewl, almost more black metal than stoner metal, the drums simple but massive.
Recorded mostly by Steve Albini, except for one track by CoC's Mike Dean, and that track is the weirdest of the bunch, just bass, banjo and baritone crooning, a creepy stoner country ballad, which somehow sounds right at home amidst the crushing low slung heaviness surrounding it on all sides.
Plus song titles like "Wizard Fight", "Weedmonkey" and they even cover Skynyrd's "Gimme Back My Bullets"!
Packaged in a cool mini gatefold lp-style sleeve, the art embossed and printed in gold metallic ink, with a little hymnal inside with all the lyrics, just like a mini stoner bible.
Like some warped children's fairytale designed for seriously stoned adults, all sitting around on dirty couches, bongs in hand, following along in their little storybooks, a strange voice begins to deliver the tale of Jason... The Dragon (oof, a bad pun for sure, and perhaps a vague reference to that other stoner dragon Puff?), but before the voice finishes with his tale, a thick ominous buzz begins to surface, and suddenly everything seems just a little bit more (in)tense, as if the sun was suddenly blotted out by huge black winged shadows, and before you know it, the sky begins to fall, and the ground opens up, unleashing a torrent of impossibly thick, buzzing bass, and pounding skull splitting drum damage, and a harsh demonic rasp, all woven into some seriously blown out sludgey groove, and so begins the latest chunk of drugged out tarpit heaviness from stoner sludge doomlords Weedeater, and if you weren't sold already, give it one more track, cuz "Mancoon" is a seriously ripping slab of ultra heavy downtuned in-the-red sludgeblues groove, with a guitar sound so blown out it sounds like your speakers melting, and that's what these guys do pretty much better than anyone, melding swinging grooves to abject sludge drenched heaviness, stumbling from Eyehategod style feedback soaked death march doom buzz trudge, to almost Southern rock sounding stoner rock, but everything oozing with grit and filth, and wrapped in the sonic version of a halo of flies, every track a lumbering and crushing, slo-mo stoner doom juggernaut, oh that is except for the weird acoustic tracks, like "Palm And Opium" a strange twang flecked lo-fi hoedown, all acoustic guitar, and woozy slide, augmented by thick distorted buzz, and some seriously creepy Buttholes style processed vox, or the record closer "Whiskey Creek", with it's chirping crickets, Deliverance style banjo, the sound or rain falling, some rumbling bass, creepy and strangely beautiful, and then after a few moments of silence, some strange old timey saloon sounding barrelhouse piano, definitely a bizarre way to finish of a bizarre record, but these guys have always been a bit cracked, and fans of slow and low ultra heaviness, and swinging Sabbathy stoner crush, like Sleep, pre-Weedeater outfit Buzzov*en, Eyehategod, Electric Wizard, Dozer, Dopethrone, Bongripper, Acrimony, and the like, it seriously doesn't get much better than this.
Our friend Adam at Crucial Blast does it again (after his release of Finnish thrashers Katastrofialue from last week's list) with this new slab of blues-scum-metal from North Carolina's Weedeater. Featuring Dave from the mighty Buzzoven, Weedeater basically
Chicago university professor Deena Weinstein unleashes the revised edition of her 1991 scholarly study of heavy metal!! We loved her on NPR's Anthem talkshow, playing Emperor and other metal, and discussing the differences between speed metal, thrash metal, and black metal, in an intellectual, but genuinely enthusiastic manner, unlike some of the 'ironic' poseurs featured on the same show, who shall remain nameless.
Weinstein's book is a balanced and academic look at heavy metal music, its fans, and its role in society. This new edition adds a new 'Metal in the '90s' chapter, as well as an updated list of '100 Definitive Metal Albums' that now includes Arcturus and At The Gates, In Flames and Hammerfall, etc.
Essential for all serious fans of either cultural studies or heavy metal, preferably both!
Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a review of Into The Depths of Sorrow, the reissued 1991 debut from Texan doomsters Solitude Aeturnus. From the same label also comes this brand-new debut from another Texas EPIC DOOM METAL act who obviously take after Solitude Aeturnus in many ways. On Well of Souls' self-titled album, fans of doomful epickosity will find much in the way of chunky guitar riffage, utter dark dirge atmosphere, and tricky, technical prog parts, over which clean, witchy male vocals wave like a clenched fist in the air. There's light and shade, but mostly shade. They don't stray far from their influences (Solitude Aeturnus, Candlemass, Confessor, modern Euro power metal, and old-school '80s American Metal Blade bands like Fates Warning) but they do what they do with power and perfection. The second half of the disc is occupied by the impressively indulgent "Black Reign" -- a suite in three parts, each around ten minutes in length. Epic indeed!
Super-heavy crusty metal merchants from Tempe, Arizona. Pretty intense. For fans of Dystopia, Eyehategod, that sort of thing. We like. This discography cd collects the complete works of this now defunct band: their LP, 7"s, comp tracks, unreleased songs, that sort of thing.
This is actually the first we've heard from LA black metal trio Welter In Thy Blood, and what an introduction. A super limited, and insanely elaborate lp, three songs, two sides, nearly 30 minutes of creeping, harsh, hellish, doom-ed blackness. WITB are often classified as black metal, but sonically they definitely fall more in line with ultra doom outfits like moss or Khanate, but with a distinctly black streak.
The Transference Of Misery begins with slow sprawl of black ambience, all deep cavernous rumbles, groans and creaks, drips and whirs, distant industrial clatter, barely there tones, all blurred into a swirling sonic abyss. Eventually the second songs surfaces from the murk, even more drones, a particularly hellish blackdrone, that sprawls and oozes, sinister and malevolent, before a strange voice speaks and the song proper kicks in, a spaced out, abstract bit of ultra doom, hellish vocals shrieking over black squalls of crunch and buzz, lots of space in between, ultimately, the various parts coalesce and the song transforms and becomes a black doom plod, the guitars blown out and blurred into streaks of crumbling buzz, the vocals even more harsh and processed, the band lumber along, a hellish sonic death march, slipping occasionally back into dreamy black drift, before returning to the crushing black dirge that dominates the side.
The flipside offers up another sidelong sprawl of creeping black doom, the drums a skeletal framework for more shrieked demonic vokills, moaning gnarled riffage, all detuned and angular, in fact, the B-side sounds quite a bit like a black metal Black Flag at 16rpm. An endless doomic plod, that while plenty hellish and black, is sonically way more Moss or Monument Of Urns or Bunkur, than Deathspell Omega or Funeral Mist. Fucking incredible. Essential listening for the doomlords, the black hordes, and the deathdoomdronedirgedrift obsessed...
Incredibly elaborate and beautiful packaging. Pressed on thick black vinyl, housed in a black inner sleeve with a printed red obi style insert. That sleeve is then housed in a second sleeve, printed black on black, with printed red blood splatters, everything is then wrapped in a thick, gorgeously printed outer slipcover / sleeve. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
Full length number three from this LA blackened ultradoom trio, whose M.O. has thankfully not changed too much since their debut, which was a stunning mix of Khanate style arty abject sludge creep, Habsyll like downtuned minimal crush, harrowing black ambient dronemusic, and suicidal slo-mo grim buzz, all tangled up into a heaving, churning sprawl of multiple o'd funereal doooooooooom. This new one definitely pushes the envelope even further, the opening track displaying the group at their twisted, outsider best, fusing loose clattery percussion, and No-Neck / Sunburned style free form skitter, to harsh, hateful vokills and keening arcs of downtuned guitar moan, the vibe almost more Jandek or Derek Bailey via Bunkur or Moss than anything more traditionally doom, the group's secret weapon, bassist Darea Plantin, who in addition to providing the black hole low end, also wields an unlikely but super distinctive arsenal of not traditionally metal noises, including drone machines, circuit bent instruments, Moog and field recordings, all of which are featured prominently, defining much of the music here, if not the band as a whole, and not just arty filigree, the ambience and atmospherics smoldering and sinister, long stretches of strange haunting drifts and murky pulsations, distant pipe fights and free jazz percussive splatter. Even when the sound does coalesce into some proper chug and churn, it's still so far removed from actual doom, as to be some new genre entirely, tranced out and minimal, but dense and layered and heavy as fuck.
"Blood Stained Hope" might be one of the more traditionally doom tracks here, but it's really all relative, cuz it's still spaced out and warped, the rhythms lurching from doomic pound, to super loose and off kilter, at one point locking into a rhythm that seems to be totally at odds with the rest of the music, creating a woozy tension, that transforms what might otherwise be a knuckle dragging crawl, into something wild and warped, damaged and demented, those more 'rocking' parts balanced by long stretches of hushed, haunting thrum, of softly crumbling ambience, and distant rumbling drones, the whole thing an ever shifting, at times skeletal, at other times strangely psychedelic, and at others still, abject and utterly depressive, avant experimental doom epic. Two shorter tracks find the group's sound coalescing into some warm washed out almost dreamy doominess, before again splintering into a weird sprawl of brittle high end plod, all buried murky guitar melodies, simple drumming, anguished vox, all wreathed in a cloud of swirling psychedelic noise, hissing and buzzing, swaths of crackle and blurred melody, all woven into woozy billows of abstract soft noise atmosphere, through which, the band trudges along, a lo-fi doom death march. Until we reach the closer, a near 11 minute epic, that begins with simple minor key clean guitar strum, super effected vokills, that sound almost like guitar feedback, swaths of field recordings, eventually erupting into full on doomnoise, but never getting totally doomy, instead, it's a glorious cacophony, the guitars tangled and detuned, the vocals hissy and hateful, the drums more like rattling chains and big sheets of metal smashing into each other, eventually, for the last few minutes, building to a gorgeous, thickly layered sonic fugue, super dense and tranced out, an ultra intense, and weirdly tranquil coda.
As always, amazing stuff. Very likely WAY too arty for the true doom set, but very recommended for all you doomlords into Bunkur, Khanate, Habsyll, SUNNO))), Monarch, Fleshpress, Nihill, Otesanek and the like, as well as folks into tripped out arty free form psych, who maybe never imagined that stuff like that could be utterly crushing and tarpit heavy!
Werewolf are a mysterious Polish horde who specialize in murky, brittle, lo fi grimness a la their countrymen Graveland. Huge guitars swirl and buzz, the rhythms veer from seasick waltzes to buzzing blackened blasts, thick walls of guitarfuzz and swirls of chaotic ambience create a dense foresty murk, where drums pulse and throb way down in the mix, like tribal war chants barely heard drifting like the stench of death on the wind. The vocals are a growling gargle, another layer of buzz in Werewolf's chaotic sonic squall, the cymbals splash and shimmer like acid rain eating away at everything it touches. This is more of that glorious loping buzzy droning black metal we can never seem to get enough of. The mix is so thick and overblown that the riffs eventually blur and smear, the whole record becoming a super buzzy trancelike drone. Awesome.
We had been hearing about this band for ages, and our mail order customer Greg just happens to play guitar in the band and was kind enough to send us cd-r's in the past so we were super psyched to finally get their first actual official cd release, and we were equally psyched when we realized what an absolute monster of a record it was!
Ultra dense, super heavy and relentless Dazzling Killmen / Meshuggah / Voi Vod style tech-post-rock/metal weirdness. Complex and convoluted song structures assembled from jagged metal riffs, crazy drumming and weird atonal guitar freak outs, all woven together into a completely kick ass, impossibly labrynthine metallic math rock headfuck. Occasionally, the action lets up, allowing glimpses into some alien musical world behind the curtain, made up of almost mosh-worthy half time breakdowns, shouted stop start stutters, pretty melodic interludes, blasts of ADD Melt Banana-ish chaos and shimmery droned out space rock. But always returning to Wetnurse's brainmelting, spinecracking metallic calculus core. And then there's the vocals. Bizarre and beautiful (sort of), veering from grunted death metal howls to gutteral Pantera-ish hardcore shouts to shrieked almost-goofy demon-like warbles, usually in the same song! Woah. Definitely heavy enough and weird enough to be a new favorite! Guest vocals by Mike Olenader (ex-BURNT BY THE SUN), and recorded by the legendary MARTIN BISI!
Wheels Within Wheels is the curiously monikered project of a man called Crow (one half of the black doom duo Seidr, whose debut is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list) and is a fantastically brutal and blown out collection of isolationist blacknoise buzz, each track a suffocating black hole of sound, the buzz so intense it seems to define the sound, reminding us of Wrath Of The Weak or Paysage D'Hiver, and other sonically like minded bands, in that the BUZZ IS ALL. WWW definitely tempers his black metal buzz with plenty of industrial drone and abstract noise, the opening track in fact is more noise than black metal, but still, there's the buzz, thick swaths of static guitarbuzz, sprawling and tangled into heaving black swells. It's a bit like black metal with the drums removed, and the riffs slowed way down, the distortion cranked way up, although about 6 minutes in, the buzz seems to coalesce into actual riffing, and it's a glorious buzzy crawl, the sound so hot and in-the-red it seems to be constantly peaking, making the sound even more distorted and fractured sounding. And once the sound gathers momentum, it's the perfect black metal, washed out, blurred and blown out, almost like a Merzbow / Tim Hecker / Pyha mash up, and if that doesn't sound fucking bad ass. Weird that when the buzz finally abates it reveals an acoustic guitar strumming away underneath, which has us wondering what else is going on beneath the surface.
The next track, "Galvanzied Astral Corpses" is even more distorted, if that's even possible, but instead of sounding heavier or more black, it somehow sounds dreamier, almost shoegazey, like a blackened Nadja or something, the main melody lilting and lovely, but buried beneath layer after layer of heavily distorted riffage. There also seems to be some sort of echo drenched sampled vocals, very haunting and mysterious, but this is totally the sort of stuff that hits the spot, simultaneously heavy and buzzy, but also dreamy and droney and hypnotic, this is not the sort of black metal that induces headbanging, it's the sound that brings on deep trance, this is drifting off tripping out heaviness of the highest order.
And the whole record is equally entrancing, impossibly dense and oozing with black buzz, this is the rare black metal record, that while grim and bleak and black and seriously punishingly heavy, it's also droney, and abstract, and weirdly blissed out and dreamy, there's even bass, a rarity in black metal, but it adds to the weight of these jams, and even gives a few of the tracks a sort of groove, but as mentioned above, it's all about the buzz, and metalheads and dronelords can all agree on the power of the buzz, and Wheels Within Wheels is one of the few bands who seem to be creating blackdrone rituals for both.
VERY VERY LIMITED. We got our copies (in)directly from the band, but as this came out last year, these could very well be our last copies ever...
Super limited cassette featuring two one man black metal bands from Kentucky, the first, the oddly named Wheels Within Wheels we've raved about before, it's the solo project of Crow from doomlords Seidr, and even though the label describes his 20 minute track as some sort of industrial blackened sickness along the lines of Gnaw Their Tongues, to our ears, WWW continues to push his peculiar brand of blackness into ever more blissed out shoegaze territory, the sound here definitely veers into some noisier and grimmer territory here and there, but it remains epic and majestic, melodic and lovely, warm and fuzzy and washed out, especially the opening movement, way more psychedelic and dreamy than heavy, a pounding lumbering bliss pop dirge that should have folks into Nadja and Jesu and the like suddenly realizing that maybe they do in fact like (some) black metal, and once they're hooked, WWW gradually drags them somewhere much much darker.
Merkaba, a before now unknown to us atmospheric black metal outfit counters with his own bit of melodic blackness, a sound the label likens to Fell Voices meets Neil Young which we have to say doesn't sound that far off. There's a definite Crazy Horse vibe, the sound psychedelic and drenched in feedback, long slow smoldering sprawls of rumble and buzz, that build to explosive squalls of heaviness, eventually erupting into dense blurs of black buzz, while still retaining the melancholia of the slower more psychedelic parts. Gorgeous stuff for sure, heavy and heady, a tripped out black buzz that is definitely recommended for fans of WWW and that sort of melodic shoegaze heaviness, although Merkaba sound, at least in places, definitely hews closer to traditional blackness. Great stuff from both bands. And of course, SUPER LIMITED.
Two aQ black metal faves join forces for this killer split, Kentucky pagan anarcho vegan one man band Panopticon, and isolationist blackbuzz outfit Wheels Within Wheels (a side project of epic metal outfit Seidr), both offering up some of their best, and strangest material. Up first is Wheels Within Wheels, who unleashes two epic tracks of droned out blissy buzz, the first, "A Burial Of The Mother Of Orion", is downright shoegazey, the riffs so blurry and blown out, they seem to smear into a washed out dronescape of layered buzz, the drums buried in the mix, a murky distant throb, the guitars occasionally coalescing into a monstrous crumbling chug, but then just as quickly blissing back out into total blackbuzzdrone, before peeling back the buzz completely, leaving a long stretch of hushed skeletal guitarscapery, a haunting bit of shimmery drift over a deem ominous low end thrum, which leads directly into "A Splinter Of Hope In The Blackest Of Hearts", which is almost like a continuation of "A Burial", but more melodic, the guitars soaring majestically, but still wreathed in a haze of blurred buzz, growing gradually prettier as the track progresses, it's hard to describe, but it's a weird warm bit of blackbuzz shimmer, and when the vocals finally join in, a mournful croon, the sound is transformed again into a strange buzzy lament. Gorgeous and haunting, and a lot prettier and more washed out than the other WWW record.
And it's as if Panopticon decided to follow suit, opening with "The Road To Bergen", which might be the prettiest thing we've heard from him, a mournful, melancholy dirge, dreamy and washed out and super melodic, hazy and almost sun dappled sounding, it's a bit like listening to M83 at 16rpm, a gorgeous blurry, buzzy, dreamy slow build to a soaring super melodic almost Nadja like chorus. So great. And then there's the next track, "From Bergen To Jotunheim Forest" which retains the same lilting dreamy melody, but sets it amidst a much harsher landscape, all buzzing blackened riffage and blasting beats, but the melody drives everything transforming a grim black buzz into something weirdly emotional and strangely pretty, and when the guitars let loose with some wild melodic leads, and some killer harmonies, all over a background of blackbuzz and frantic beats, it's seriously mindblowing, and even 11 minutes of that is not enough. And the record finishes with another strangely pretty sonic missive, this one all clean guitar jangle, woozy chant like vocals, and glistening glimmering melodies, the sound almost liturgical, hazy and gauzy and washed out and impossibly dreamy, peppered with brief blasts of furious black buzz, bit for the most part, strangely lovely.
This just might be one of the least grim and black, black metal splits ever, but somehow it also just might be one of our favorites.
Released in 1987, 'Drowning But Learning' keeps many of the same soundtracky elements as his earlier 'The Black Death' album, with the sound of rain, eerie strings and moaning horns, etc. but this time adds some pop sensibility and seperates the record into 14
'Prefab Wreckage' was release between 'The Black Death' and 'Drowning But Learning' and shows Pederson's gradual move towards songs, not so much the pop of 'The Lobster Boys', but more a sort of structured chaos, as opposed to When's more abstract
Strange project, this. The lastest album by Norwegian experimental musican Lars Pedersen, who has garnered praise from the black metal elite (including a profile in Nordic Vision magazine a while back), and has collaborated with Chris Cutler in the past. '...Wunderbaum' features lyrics from texts by not one but *two* Great Beasts: Aleister Crowley and Tom Wolfe! That, plus the fact that it's released on a label run by the guy from Ulver, and the aforementioned praise in black metal circles, means that there must be something distinctly sinister lurking within, although on the surface the music appears as very theatrical electronica referencing hyperdelic cartoon music. Ulver playing Raymond Scott? Another bizarre Jester release that we can only quizzically ponder and recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Before When's recent AQ record of the week 'The Lobster Boys' was released, When's sole member Lars Pederson had already been making amazing experimental music for almost a decade. We first heard about When from the completely baffling Norwegian metal magazine Nordic Vision, who heaped nothing but praise on this band we had never even heard of. And while this older stuff doesn't necessarily sound all that much like poppy 'The Lobster Boys', it's still pretty intense stuff. 'The Black Death', released in 1992, is a single 40 minute piece, that blends military percussion, strings, foot steps, a choir of angelic voices, weird orc-ish growling and muttering, jaw harp, rain, rattles, chimes, woodpeckers, and all sorts of unexpected sounds. Sounds like it would be perfect incidental music for a Dario Argento film, or City of Lost Children, or a movie about Jack the Ripper, or any sort of mystery/thriller set in the grimy dangerous streets of some 19th century city. Dark and ominous and eerie. Tense and creepy, swirling musical malevolence.
When is the (mostly) one man project of one Lars Pederson, who has been recording as When for almost 20 years now. This two disc collection (released on Garm from Ulver's Jester label) gathers songs and pieces and parts spanning When's entire existence. From
Black metal records with nature sounds are a dime a dozen, in fact it might be easier to come up with a list of black metal records that DON'T have dubbed in sounds, wolves, wind, goats, whatever grim picture the band is trying to paint, whether it's some pagan ritual with goat sacrifice, or some grim corpsepainted horde playing in the middle of a black forest communing with wolves, a sound effects record makes it all that much more impressive. Or so bands seem to think. There have been bands who supposedly went out into the snowy forest and recorded there, most notably Ulver's Nattens Madrigal, but we're pretty sure that's just a rumor, most likely spread by the band to make the record seem cooler (and probably to explain the impossibly tinny sound), and then there's the fact that even if it WAS true, you can't really -hear- it. Which brings us to When Bitter Spring Sleeps, a black metal horde who hail from the grim frosty abyss known as Cedar Rapids, Idaho, and whose whole identity, nay existence, is based on musically communing with nature. This entire record was performed and recorded in a nature preserve! So all the sounds, all the dripping water, chirping insects, rustling leaves, all of that stuff is captured along side the bands drone-y buzz. We do have to wonder how the band manage to blast and buzz without disrupting the sounds of nature, you know how a field full of frogs and crickets immediately go silent when you walk amongst them. We like to think the band set up, and then just stood there, motionless, for minutes, maybe hours, until the insects and other forest creatures decided the coast was clear, and the band slowly began to play.
The result is pretty compelling, the songs start out all minimal and hushed, usually just guitar, the sound of cicadas and dripping water, croaking frogs, practically drowning out the band, and when the band do kick in, the sound is super raw and tinny (a la Nattens Madrigal, there is a reason bands record in studios after all), the drums are a tiny pound, buried in the mix, the vocals a barely audible croak, the guitars a blurry shimmery cloud of sound. The tracks are epic too, with tons of parts and lots of interludes, where the band drops out, leaving just a single spidery guitar line, and the symphony of insects and creatures.
Super cool, the metal itself is not hugely distinctive, but in this context it works in the record's favor, as the sounds of the instruments are equally balanced by the sounds of nature, almost as if an act of supplication, a musical acknowledgment of out tenuous position here on earth.
Obviously, folks into fucked up far out black metal are gonna NEED this, but if you're into weird Jewelled Antler sort of musical / field recording hybrids, odds are this might be the only black metal record that fits the bill.
SUPER LIMITED. Gorgeous packaging, each one hand made, the printed covers, burned around the edges and scorched all over. The smell a heady mix of flowers and fire. So cool.
Sorry, we don't get it. This band isn't good. Any more, anyway.
WHISPERS: Pagan folk / viking metal, epic and black.
LIGHT: blistering chaotic psychedelic BM. Ferocious and introspective.
Don't know much about this UK black metal trio, other than they have a killer, and nearly illegible logo, and an amazingly ridiculous 7" cover, and that their debut 7" was recorded by none other that Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers) when you hear what these guys have cooked up, a weird hybrid of primitive, grim black buzz, and blown out chaotic noise rock skree, the label suggests Ildjarn meets Harry Pussy, or Ulver crossed with Black Dice, and we definitely hear that. It's like the sounds are black metal, but the arrangements are noise rock, or vice versa, but either way, it's a pretty heady proposition, loose and chaotic, grim and black, and pretty twisted, a stumbling, lo-fi, damaged noise drenched sonic assault, that pairs relentless caveman pound with Mick Barr like squiggle shred, the sound abruptly shifting into a churning death march dirge, the vocals following suit, transformed from blackened screech, to monstrous gurgle. The B-side opens with some soaring fast picked riffage, anchored by some stiff, robotic drumming, the guitars and drums conjuring up a seriously tense backdrop for the hellish vokills, until the sound collapses into a twisted, droned out, static black buzz, guitar skree, double kick drumming, and growled vocals, all stretched out into some sort of knuckle dragging black metal minimalism, only to eventually erupt into some loping, knuckle dragging metallic churn, only to lurch right back into that cool droned out minimal noise/skree part, that we sort of wish stretched on even longer, but instead, the band finish off with one final stretch of filthy black buzz and pound.
Killer stuff for sure. Can't wait for the full length. Pressed on blue vinyl, probably limited too, and housed in a nice thick sleeve with the aforementioned ridiculous and amazing cover art.
We make a LOT of things "highlights" on our list, you've doubtless noticed. So, what if we separated out a special section of MEGA-highlights? We're not gonna, but if we did, this would definitely be one of this list's MEGA-highlights, indeed. Our pal Brian from WFMU turned us on to this band a while back. So we were stoked to finally see a (vinyl-only) reissue now! Why so excited? 'Cause this oddly named band from Toledo, Ohio made one of the odder, yet enjoyable heavy metal rarities we've ever heard, this their only album, originally released in 1980. Well, it's nominally "heavy metal", though at times it's a bit like Devo doing heavy metal, with geeky sci-fi new wave inflections (as on "Sector 387"). At other times, it sounds more '60s and psychedelic, in fact psychedelic enough to get a review in that Acid Archives tome we just listed. Really White Boy and The Average Rat Band ought to appeal to anyone into the stranger side of late '70s hard rock, post-punk, proto-metal, poverty grind.
It all begins with a shimmering synth "Prelude", then... "Neon Warriors"! A tumble of drums, followed by a rapidfire, flash-rockin', fuzzed out riff onslaught, kinda like a low-budget Judas Priest. Oh yeah, that's the other thing, there's an ass-ton of FUZZ on here. Probably that's how they wound up in Acid Archives. "Maybe I'm A Fool" sounds more like Motorhead... sorta... then "The Prophet Song" harks back to Hendrix... and they even do a weird, broken down acoustic blues jam instrumental called "Blue Moon" before the record's over. Both rockin', and bizarre enough, to make both the AQ and WFMU warped hit parade for sure. Heck, they were basically making NWOFHM music (a la Steel Mammoth and Krypt Axeripper) long before those Finns came up with the idea. Or, imagine early Manilla Road meets George Brigman, maybe... Also probably for fans of Zolar-X, Todd Tamanend Clark, and the Happy Dragon-Band, amongst other eccentrics. Though this IS more metal than those. Closest perhaps to the likes of Dwarr, not that there's much like Dwarr.
This reissue on Roach is limited to 400 copies, by the way.
In case you missed it on our Record Store Day "in-between list" last Friday... but these are going fast! At this rate, gone within the week, if not sooner...
Last year - or maybe it was the year before - we told ourselves, hey, Record Store Day is awesome and all, but what would make it even more awesome? Maybe if we had our OWN release for Record Store Day! Something that, then, we could make sure our devoted mailorder customers wouldn't miss out on, also something that we could be absolutely sure we'd have, utterly unique to our store, amidst the chaos and uncertainty of all the other RSD releases.
So, this year, we did it! With the help of our good friends, Brooklyn's psychedelic space rockers extraordinare, you know 'em, you love 'em, White Hills. As those of you who live here in San Francisco may remember, White Hills brought their spaced out sounds to aQuarius for a fantastic instore on October 1st, 2010. Actually, they performed under the somewhat obvious pseudonym Black Valleys ('cause the venue they were playing that same night didn't want them doing another show the same day). In any case, their "Black Valleys" set turned out to be quite a bit different than an "ordinary" White Hills performance, being a drumless, droned-out duo performance specifically tailored to our space, trying (though probably failing!) to keep the volume low enough not to disturb our neighbors... but still hypnotizing us all with their nonetheless heavy sounds. The show was recorded, and it turned out GREAT.
Over a half hour long, the first few minutes of which are filled with shimmering, pretty pulsations and subtle sonic textures, as if this was the White Hills' version of Pop Ambient. It's both mesmeric and miasmic... Eventually waves of grinding fuzz enter the scene, and this slow building sonic juggernaut of throb and drone and drift takes on more massive proportions, propelled by what we can only say are almost ghostly riffs, giving this something of an Earth 2 vibe. We could go on and on, but somehow don't think we need to, since we know what White Hills fans are like (and you're all White Hills fans, right?).
So, digging the recording, White Hills gave us the go-ahead to release it as a special limited edition cd, for Record Store Day this year. And boy are we stoked.
LIMITED TO 300 hand-numbered copies, packaged in slim, dvd-style cases, with cool Op-Art inspired cover graphics by our pal Nathan Berlinguette, printed in black on fancy silvery paper. NOT sold in stores - except for ours!
On their second Holy Mountain release, the heavy stoner psych rockers from up in Arcata, California leave their sunless world of redwood forests and venture into the blinding light and open climes of Dune Worship. With its slow grinding rhythms and spiraling washes of feedback, this album is a more hypnotic and meditative shamanistic exploration. These guys go so deep into visionary states, they even have a song called "Illusion Of Illusion," which begins with a low hum and builds into a ten-minute freakout, to crack open your slumbering third eye into a rude awakening with the pounding onslaught of "Ascension" that follows. For White Manna are no gentle psychedelicists, they always carry with them the swagger of the Stooges - even an unabashed wink at Jim Morrison can be heard in the vox throughout. For a more "modern" comparison, we'd recommend 'em to fans of Wooden Shjips and Psychic Ills both.
More heavy duty jammage from these Arcata hard psych space rockers, whose sound is often described as Hawkwind meets the Stooges, and not sure what else we can add cuz that's pretty dang spot on. This new one on UK psych/space label Cardinal Fuzz is a live set from Europe, recorded on tour in 2013, and finds the band unleashing their particular brand of heavy space rocking, all epic druggy sprawls of fuzzed out stoner stomp, and droney motorik fuzz rock drift, woozy, super melodic Sabbath like basslines and some seriously muscular drumming, all wrapped up in squalls of freaky guitar-noise and crunchy, buzzing riffage. The vocals are drawled and echo drenched, and surface throughout, but really, like most bands of their ilk, White Manna are all about the jams, and like their last record, Come Down Safari (originally a picture disc on Valley King, recently reissued on cd by Captcha) the band can jettison 'the song' at any point, and head for the heart of the sun, or the outer reaches of the cosmos, or the depths of some subterranean pit, filling whatever space they end up with oodles of psych freakout ("Acid Head"), but they can just as easily lock into straight up droned out, hard rocking psych pop ("Evil"), or sometimes that above mentioned Sabbathy vibe gets pushed right to the fore, with some super doomy heaviness ("X Ray"). Needless to say, heavy psych nerds and space rock headz are gonna want to grab one of these quick, before they're gone, and it's SUPER LIMITED, and on Cardinal Fuzz, so odds are they'll be gone before you know it.
Housed in a cool acid blotter sleeve. Includes a download too!
