We've long championed these German post black metallers (metallic post rockers), their sound most definitely heavy and brutal, but also moody and atmospheric, and with every record, their sound seems to continue to move well beyond the confines of 'black metal', the genre which is where they seem to be most often (and increasingly inappropriately) lumped with their more grim brethren. While some black metal tropes surface here and there, the sound of WH is more recognizably marked by clean soaring vox, intricate proggy arrangements, spidery Slint-like melodies, even the occasional synth. In the past we've compared them to Dutch instru-metallers Gore, even Voivod, as well as groups like Mogwai and Explosions In The Sky. This time around we're hearing Swans (mostly in the deep vox), lots of Slint, with those distinctive arpeggiated minor key guitar parts, there's also the brooding moody bombast of Katatonia, but don't let all those comparisons lead you to believe these guys are just a mess of conflicting influenced and purloined sounds, those are merely references, cuz with this record, maybe even more than last releases, the band continues to carve out its own truly unique sound, one that here is at it's most lush, layered and melodic.
In fact this time around, the metal component is almost entirely removed, only vestiges remain, buzzing guitars, pounding drums, but even those elements, at their most metal, are defined by context, and here the band is capable of taking a blast beat, and letting it pound quietly beneath crystalline guitars, and haunting crooned vox, or taking very black metal sounding melodies, and transcribing them for acoustic guitar, and turning black buzz into some strangely alien pastoral folk. And the vocals, even more varied this time around, the deep Michael Gira like croon is present, but so is a super emotive raspy wail, not to mention so super cool (and strange) falsetto, all woven into the group's sprawling mini-epics, super dynamic, and emotional, and alternatingly epic and majestic, brooding and moody. At this point, we're not sure we'd recommend this to most metalheads. Especially black metallers, but hell, folks who dig Alcest and Amesoeurs and Les Discrets and Katatonia as well as the more metallic side of the post rock spectrum, and heck even prog nerds after something more far out, these guys might be just the ticket.
Full length number two from this UK neo-pagan black metal horde, and like the first one, and much like their sonic brethren in Winterfylleth (they also share members with another aQ fave, Atavist) the band continue to be focused on nature and Anglo-Saxon history, and their sound is appropriately epic and sweeping and atmospheric. And while that sound hasn't changed too much since the first record, they've definitely honed that sound, and if anything, this new record is quite a bit heavier, more fierce, and dense, the keyboards still present, big time, but their presence in the mix is a bit more subtle, sweeping to the fore on the slower atmospheric parts, but fading into the background when the band are at their most brutal.
The songs are super long, and almost proggy, ultra dynamic and constantly shifting, from explosive blasts of furious black buzz, to brooding, dense atmospheric sprawls of moody blackened psychedelia, replete with gorgeous clean vocals, swirling synths and tribal drumming, even some fluttering flutes here and there, and from midtempo classic metal majestic to shimmery, acoustic guitar flecked drift, the drums pummeling and intricate, the vocals shared now by the various members, so super varied, from demonic shriek to banshee howl, so surprisingly melodic crooning, the guitars shifting constantly from soaring fast picked flurries, to old school metal chug, to tranced out buzz, the band totally capable of laying down some seriously gnarled Deathspell worthy riffage, or Wolves In The Throne Room Cascadian epicry, but always returning to the atmospheric black buzz they do so well.
As we mentioned in our review of the first Wodensthrone record, it's not that the music of Wodensthrone is super original, or twistedly bizarre or even really that radical, it's more that it's just so well crafted, so full of emotion and energy, so epic and intense, headbangable for sure, but also darkly introspective, it's easily one of the best modern iterations of that classic black metal sound, and much like when we got the first one, we find ourselves wanting to listen to little else!
Recommended for fans of Wolves In The Throne Room, Primordial, Negura Bunget, Drudkh, etc.
Sometimes it gets pretty overwhelming with all the black metal we get coming through these doors, not that we don't love it, but it can become easy to lose track of everything. Which of course makes it really awesome when something just blows you away and reminds you why you got into black metal in the first place. Britain's Wodensthrone happen to be one of those bands. Not that there's anything mindblowingly original about these guys, it's just that Loss is delivered with a sincerity, not to mention an expert musical prowess, that really makes this one stand out among the sea of bands currently making the rounds. Featuring members of Atavist and Winterfylleth and recalling the majestic approach of bands like Emperor, Enslaved, Weakling, and Wolves in the Throne Room, Wodensthrone would be a pretty good example to explain what black metal sounds like to the uninformed. "Epic" would definitely be the word to use here, and this actually caught us a bit off guard considering how many bands have been taking a more raw approach as of late.
Wodensthrone are one of those bands who will remind you that synthesizers can be used for more than creating Cradle of Filth styled ridiculousness, as the keyboards here are both cinematic and sprawling, adding essential atmospherics to make you aware of black metal's obsession with the natural world. While these elements could very easily suck in the wrong hands, here they fit perfectly in conjuring Britain's pagan past. The production on Loss is enormous, and it makes total sense that the band ventured to Romania to record with members of Negura Bunget at their studio. Like Negura Bunget, Wodensthrone expertly merge folk-inspired elements from the respective country with a gigantic metal sound. It's worth noting the pagan influence here, as the melodies and overall mood of the album appear to be a little more, shall we say "positive", when compared to the all out evil of satanic black metal. There seems to be a serious awareness of classic British folk with melancholy acoustic guitars, mandolins, and flutes all commanding a pretty significant presence here, even in moments of all out metallic fury, and it's really refreshing to hear this stuff done so well. Definitely a nice surprise here, and enough to ensure that Loss will be on seriously HEAVY rotation for quite some time.
Debut full length from this East Coast one man black metal band, and from note one, A Spell For The Death Of Man reveals itself as something not even remotely typical, a distinctly different, and surprisingly melodic take on the old blast and buzz. The opening minute or two of the nine minute "Solitude" is just guitar, all soaring mournful and minor key, playing out a distinctly post rock riff, unfurling lazily, wreathed in reverb, majestic and epic, sorrowful and distinctly indie, gradually growing slower and slower, before stick clicks bring on the blackness, a furious tangle of squiggly buzzsaw riffage and blasting beats, buried blackened shrieks. Somehow, even though on the surface the song seems to have switched gears completely, elements of the intro remain, within and beneath the roiling heaviness, lending the music a distinctly 'indie rock' vibe, especially when the track shifts again, and suddenly it sounds a a little like Superchunk or Seam, only supercharged and blackened and Satanized. Not to say this is super poppy and jangly, but it is, sort of. Once you hear it, it's tough to ignore, but then why the heck would you want to? Folks with a super limited musical scope, say, ONLY metal, probably won't hear it as much, especially if they're open to more melodic stuff like Alcest or Amesoeurs, but for those who maybe didn't grow up listening to only metal, as we're guessing is the case with Woe mainman (and only man) Xos. Just wait until the breakdown near the end, when that opening riff is wrapped around some muffled chugging, and some dense tribal drumming, suddenly it's equal parts Husker Du, Bastro and black metal.
The rest of the record is a bit more traditionally black, but even then, with galloping rhythms and dizzying black riffage, the songs still manage to sound strangely melodic, and in some super abstract sense, kind of poppy. But again, all of this pop and jangle and post rock, is totally tangled up with some seriously dense thrashing and super heavy, blasting black metal. It's that unlikely mix that makes Woe sound so different, and makes this record so awesome, deftly balancing the grim and the kvlt with the moody and hooky and melodic. The record closes with an even less black metal number than the opener, strange angular midtempo minor key guitars, plodding drums, very postrock / mathrock, the vocals still in black metal shriek mode, but draped over a lilting almost dirgey slowcore groove, definitely pretty, and a bit woozy and mysterious, but still heavy, and just the slightest bit black.
Fans of more melodic blackness will definitely dig, while dabblers and newbies might have just found the perfect black metal gateway drug.
We were so obsessed with the first Woe record, A Spell For The Death Of Man, a black metal record that was strangely melodic, and peppered its blast and buzz with post rock melodies, and referenced Husker Du and Bastro as much as it did black metal. So not only were we thrilled that this one man band got signed to Candlelight, but that there was a new record on the horizon, which was revealed to be this, the enigmatically titled Quietly, Undramatically, which as you might imagine is neither.
Much like the first record, Quietly begins about as unblack metal as one could imagine, keening guitars, pounding tribal drums, definitely way more math or post than black, but the slow building tension was gradually ratcheted up, some guttural vocal bellows, the whole thing so melodic and epic, and then POW, a classic metal break and the record explodes into some of the fastest most furious black buzz we've heard, constantly shifting into something almost punkish, or slipping in little bits of classic metal, but barreling along ferociously, peppering the blasting buzz with some incredible drumming and some twisted gnarled riffage.
The title track is 8 minutes of pure melodic black bliss, exactly what we loved so much about the first record, sure it's heavy and the drums are blasting, but the melodies soar, and the harmonies are gorgeous, reimagined, this could have been some sort of indie pop song, but here it's something totally other, epic and majestic and so heavy, slipping into midtempo breakdowns that are just as melodic as the main body of the song, relentless but so catchy, 8 minutes is way too short.
The rest of the record is also melodic, but not so obviously so, although "A Treatise On Control" definitely comes close, with its soaring melodies, and super intense crescendos, sounding almost emo at times, super passionate and emotional, a noise rock / screamo / black metal hybrid that totally slays, and while still definitely black metal, manages to elevate the usual tropes and create something distinctly unique.
Lest the true black hordes be discouraged, the final two tracks are way more more furious and frenzied, but even at their most frantic, those songs remain infused with Woe's masterful melodic sense, and a pop element that seems to underpin the otherwise grim proceedings, although perhaps it's not so noticeable that it would distract the casual black metaller. But for us, it only further cements the fact that Woe is making some of the coolest, most distinctive and innovative black metal around, and thus this comes totally and unequivocally recommended to anyone who likes their black metal to not necessarily sound like all the other black metal out there.
A Brand new full length from these East Coast black blasters, and maybe their most black metal. Which is maybe a weird thing to say about a BLACK METAL band, but part of what we dug so much about Woe, especially when they were a he, and a one man bedroom black metal band, is that the black buzz was heavily tempered with lots of post rockisms, and noise rock elements, we mentioned in a past review that their sound was as much beholden to Bastro and Husker Du as black metal. Which was definitely true of their (his) debut, A Spell For The Death Of Man, but slightly less true for record #2 "Quietly, Undramatically", which while still black metal, remained super melodic and definitely still displayed hints of noise rock and other not specifically black elements. Which brings us to Withdrawal, which as we mentioned is maybe the blackest of the bunch. Sure there are moments of clean singing, acoustic guitars, super catchy major key melodies, but really that stuff isn't so rare in black metal, and the band were pretty melodic from the beginning, we even compared certain parts on past records to Alcest and Amesoeurs. But get an earful of the opener, it's frantic and frenzied, exploding immediately into some furious blasting and buzzing, and while the band are still heavy on melody, the buzz and blackness is definitely front and center these days, soaring and epic and majestic, slipping easily from heads down, grim blasting ferocity, to super soaring metal majesty, to galloping thrashing heaviness. There are definitely moments, the band slip into some doomy dirgery, or explode in a bit of mathiness, but it's much more integrated into the group's sound, a sound which is now firmly and solidly black metal, but it's definitely a strain of black metal that few can pull off, and even fewer who are this good. Making grim buzz this catchy, and making melodic blackness sound this fierce and furious, it's pretty incredible, as is pretty much all of Withdrawal, which seems like it wouldn't be nearly as appealing, sans the overt math/noise rockiness, but somehow, those elements remain, just subsumed into the blackness, which is making us dig this just as much, and maybe even a little more that the other Woe records, which is saying a lot!
If you've been paying attention to the Aquarius New Arrivals list (c'mon folks, it's summer now but the school of AQ is still in session, and you're gonna get quizzed on this list later) you'll have come across our recent review of a cd by a heavy, rhythmic British avant-rock outfit with the odd name of Hey Colossus. A great album for those into sludgy, repetitive riffing, maybe like the Melvins meet Circle but more aggro than that.
Hey Colossus already employ no less than three guitars to make their noise but on this vinyl-only EP they've teamed up with another UK band called Woe (a skronky, heavy duty improv jazz beast) to get really really loud and ugly/pretty on two tracks, one of 'em a cover of Miles Davis' "In A Silent Way" believe it or not!! With nine musicians -- including two drummers, two trumpeters, two bassists, keyboards and all those guitars -- this has got some serious avant-heft. "In A Silent Way" has never sounded so ominous and heavy, and the flip is full of militaristic rumble as well. Great stuff! Limited to just 200 copies, on nice thick vinyl, and we have but a handful.
Originally released as a super limited cassette in 2004, Badb is one of the first releases from Canadian black metal weirdos WOLD, and if you thought the other records were noisy and demented before, this one will blow your mind (and probably your speakers too). After a quick opening intro of whipping winter wind, that ends abruptly as if someone just leaned over and pushed stop on the tape player, the record launches into the title track, the first song in what is apparently a songsuite based on a the myth of a mysterious war goddess, and is an crumbling onslaught of superdistorted buzz and while there may be drums, if there are, they're buried WAY down in the mix, the vocals however are right up front, a wild demonic shriek over the churning roiling blackness below. And so goes the rest of the record, a twisted maelstrom of sound, a sonic blizzard of black buzz and harsh vokills, the guitars less riffy and buzzy as they are practically a Merzbowian wall of blown out white noise, that white noise seeming to be in constant flux, occasionally coalescing into an almost riffy churn, before splintering again into a blast of face melting buzz. The recording is super lo-fi too, which gives even the harshest passages a strange washed out and muted vibe, the coolest parts when the sounds seem to blur into one another and become a strange sort of pulsing alien rhythm.
"Final Offering" might be our favorite, a murky monster of a track, with the most discernible riffing, and a cool murky swirl that envelops everything in its path, and when the vocals back off, the music becomes a weird audial illusion, like those paintings that reveal hidden shapes if you stare at them long enough, the wild tangle of buzz seems to unravel before your ears, the various melodic fragments and interwoven textures shifting and transforming, eventually seemingly melting into a blurry viscous pool of buzz and drone, that eventually fades to black, finishing the record the way it started, with another stretch of frosty winter winds. Awesome. And EXTREMELY noisy, fans of Wold know what to expect, and folks into other noise metal outfits like Nekrosov, Gnaw Their Tongues, Alkerdeel, Hallow and the like will definitely dig, but be warned this is less about THE RIFF and more about blown out blackness...
Latest blast of twisted noise drenched otherworldly blackness from Moosejaw, Saskatchewan's Wold, fronted by mysterious sonic alchemist Fortress Crookedjaw, this mysterious duo offer up another slab of baffling brutality, that seems now more than ever to be almost completely loosed from the bounds of traditional metal, hell, any sort of metal at all, instead sounding like some sort of industrial / noise / power electronics blow out, the sound buzzing and hissing, looped churning squalls of white noise and grey thrum, the vokills an inhuman croak/whine, having just reviewed Sore Throat, and elsewhere on this list Anal Cunt, we'd posit that Wold's sonic orbit exists more in the realm of noise, it's not really until the third track here, "Free Goat Of Leviticus", the the sound takes on a shape even remotely resembling metal, and it remains REMOTE, the blasting and buzzing blown out completely, the sounds blurred and smeared into crumbling crusty murky swells, blistering blasts of buzz and hiss and rumble, even the vocals a garbled transmission from the depths, all wound into a churning caustic chaos.
"Inner Ire" offers a little bit of a respite, dialing back some of the distortion, letting a murky pulse surface, even some barely-there melody here and there, but over the top, is laid a Faxed Head worthy melted tape on the dashboard blast of damaged metallic noise. "Dragon Owl Didacticism" too hints at the metal that must lurk below the surface, but considering the surface is a roiling black cauldron of howl and garble, grind and shriek, all muddied and muted and twisted into dizzying blacknoise streaks, that metal remains just that, a hint.
The last four tracks though, change everything, sounding almost like a different record tacked on as a bonus, the almost cold wave sounding "Dry Love", with it's programmed beat, cold machinelike groove, buzzing clinical angular melodies and strange detached vox, or the new wave blacknoise of "Working Tools For Paris", with a bloopy electro beat buried beneath a swaggery snarly whining vocal and some hazy melodies, and when the super distorted vox drop out, what remains sounds almost like it could be some coldwave rarity unearthed. "Free Eyes" is crusty punk via black metal filth filtered through warped power electronics, with the main 'groove' downright mesmerizing, and then finally, the nearly 11 minute title track, seems to channel aQ beloved Will Over Matter, with another stretch of super distorted blackened murky electro-noize, replete with haunting spoken word vox, and another bloopy beat, one that becomes more and more blown out over the course of the track, until the whole thing is a thick undulating sprawl of rhythmic hypno-noise bliss.
As always, utterly confusing and totally whatthefuck, and as always, we can't stop listening. Baffling brilliant outsider electro-noise black metal genius for sure.
Woah, didn't expect to get another round of these super limited (300 copies to be specific) cassette anthologies from Saskatchewan's favorite (only?) black metal noise terrorists, the mighty WOLD. Imperator serves as a good introduction to the truly insane sounds of WOLD, combining tracks from each of their three awesome full lengths, and more importantly, impossibly rare tracks from various cd-rs and cassettes released in tiny batches that less than 100 people would have ever gotten their hands on.
It's hard to actually describe a band like WOLD. Sure, it's black. You could call it "metal", but these boys whip up some of the noisiest, most out of control sounds ever committed to tape, seeming to owe more of a significant debt to industrial noise merchants like Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle than any black metal band we could think of. Whatever you want to call it, WOLD's brand of chaos is truly unique. Sheets of uncontrollable white noise, an industrial strength throb, and the unbelievable witch-like shrieks of Fortress Crookedjaw (best black metal name ever, methinks) all merge into a hellacious brew of unrestrained evil, with amazing lyrics (none of which are printed here, so good luck) and perhaps most surprisingly, melodies that are both beautiful and catchy. Of course, said melodies are buried under multiple layers of windy tape hiss, crumbling distortion, and overblown electronics, and what you get out of a WOLD track depends on how well you are prepared to listen, preferably under a pair of headphones at maximum volume. It's like taking a wild ride through a barren wilderness of ice and fog, both disorienting and exhilarating, and noisy as fuck.
Released as a professionally printed, smoky black cartridge on the very cool cassette label Rotting Chapel, this is probably the only chance you will ever have to get this little bastard from us. We got about 10 (yes, TEN) copies, so act fast!
Wold are an ultra mysterious outfit from the barren land to the north (Canada, Saskatchewan to be precise), who play the weirdest and most weirdly recorded black metal we've ever heard. Imagine some old radio serial, or some snippet from an old black and white film, sort of scratchy and fuzzy and otherworldly, then smother it in guitarfuzz and blown out distortion, add some keening guitar melodies and blast beats, and you've got what we can only describe as a black metal Philip Jeck. The warm and warbly keyboard melodies and timeless cinematic snatches of sound are so hypnotic and dreamily repetitive. It's almost like a black metal band doing their own blackened version of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops. Kind of hard to describe, but Wold somehow take the drone-y aspect of BM bands like Graveland and Nargaroth even further, adding a creepy and scratchy looped mesmer beneath a wash of almost My Bloody Valentine like guitars. Or an even more abstract analogy, imagine Persephone in Hades, the goddess of Spring who was kidnapped and spirited down into the depths of hell, all these little ribbons of Springtime and loveliness drifting in the cold and grim underworld, a bleak and miserable expanse of sound with brief glints of color and sunshine, glimpses of a world that once was, looped like a rotting old filmstrip, repeated over and over and over, head nodding, thoughts drifting, eyes closing, spirit shifting, soul blackening.
As if the music weren't weird enough, the band is fronted by the curiously named Fortress Crookedjaw, and backed up by his cohorts, Operationex and Obey.
And then of course there's the band's manifesto:
"Wold embraces the Mytho Poetic; the communication is expressed through our music, and theoretical as well as practical work done through our Woldclan brotherhood and our lodge, the L.O.T.M.P..
"Wold venerate our ancestors and cultures through myth and existence, and remain open and reflective to other effective metaphors.
"Wold promote awareness.
"Wold strive for honor and dignity above materialistic lies and novelty culture.
"Wold solemnly swear to adhere to the law of the Self."
It takes a lot for a record to so completely kick our ass and to so confound us musically. Definitely one of the coolest and weirdest black metal records we've heard in a long long time!!
Seems kind of foolish to continue to proclaim different black metal bands the "weirdest ever" or "the most fucked up we've ever heard". We're quite tempted to take that route again with this bizarre Canadian horde, but the truth is, they were barely black metal to begin with, more a sort of Jeckish, Basinskian ambient blackness that bordered on the downright dreamy. Well, if anything the band has moved even further away from traditional black metal and into a distinctly, more damaged and significantly noisier world of sound.
Fortress Crookedjaw, Obey and Opex, the trio who make up this ensemble, have taken the strange scratched, looped sepia toned smear of their first record, and torn it apart, doused it in white hot sheets of crumbling guitar and damaged feedback, offering up an even more obscured black metal, a metal turned inside out so we can see the squirming guts inside, malfunctioning electronics everywhere, coating every single riff, every growled lyric, every snatch of barely audible drums, in a crackling sparking field of sonic solar flares. Like listening to Jeck's Surf on a busted car radio, where it's mostly static, but you can -almost- hear bits of melody in there somewhere. Or more accurately, listening to some old skipping 78's on Masami Akita's custom sound system, while Malefic from Xasthur sings along.
Some tracks are almost pure noise, the riffs and drums and anything else discernible as actual music, buried beneath an avalanche of Merzbowian skree, usually the vocals hovering atop, like another harsh jagged layer of sound. But occasionally, the noise abates, and we get a glimpse of some melancholy melodic murk inside, or a brief blast of black riffing, but more often than not, those bits are quickly subsumed and the record becomes a roiling chaotic black swirl once more.
A few tracks, like "The Field Hag", harken back to the first record, with the noise reeled in, and a haunting muddy soundscape allowed to drift and shimmer ghostlike, beneath a thick layer of fuzz and grit and a glass gargling demonic screech, and theoretically, every track on Screech Owl is like that, just some are more obscured and obfuscated than others. Tracks like "Windmill" and "A Sword Becomes Red With Fury" are so distorted and blown out, that they become Pan Sonic style glitch and buzz scapes, pulsing short circuited rhythms, spare and skeletal, with almost no trace of melody, metal or otherwise. Like that busted car radio when you go through a tunnel, all distorted and choppy with only little bits and snippets able to surface through the distortion and static.
Screech Owl weaves chaotically from blown out dreamscapes doused in furious fuzz, to crumbling damaged black loopscapes, to Whitehouse style noise, to soft focus looped ambience to ultra lo-fi black metal buzz, often in the same song. Distortion, noise, processed feedback, every track a delicate balance between huge pulsing flows of fuzzed out electronics, buzzing black metal madness and dreamy fuzzy drone and whir. Baffling and fucking brilliant!
One of two black metal / noise hybrids on this week's list, the other, from Australian one man band Nekrasov, this one, the latest from Canadian duo WOLD, whose discs of noise drenched outsider black weirdness have held us in their thrall from the very first listen.
But much has changed since L.O.T.M.P, which was an impossible hybrid of Philip Jeck like turntable warble, and walls of blacknoise, classic black metal buzz filtered through sheets of haze and warped shimmer, well, okay, maybe not that much has changed, if anything, the biggest change is how much noisier Wold have become, and how much more they hew to traditional black metal, albeit appropriately skewed and cracked and fractured and WELL fucked.
For those new to the strange world of Wold, they are a duo (formerly a trio), from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. They are called Fortress Crookedjaw (best black metal name ever?) and Obey, there's a picture in the new cd of two really regular looking dudes, not sure if it's Wold, but if it is, never has there been more of a "but they were such nice boys" in black metal. Because the sound of Wold is anything but regular black metal. There are riffs, and harsh screeched vocals, there doesn't seem to be drums very often, none are credited in the liner notes, and you can't really hear them, except on one track, where a primitive drum machine spews out a stuttery waltz, and often even when they're NOT there, we still feel like we're hearing them, the duo unfurl sheets of white hot guitar hiss, walls of crumbling distortion, that seem locked in some sort of static sprawl, kind of looped, but also wavery and warbly, due no doubt to the recording quality, as well as the composition. Tape hiss is much of a part of their sound as the guitars, maybe more so. An array of electronics also add layers of grit and glitch, the sounds grind and scrape, piled on top of each other until often it's a seemingly impenetrable wall of sound. But the wall is cracked, and all sort of fucked up sounds ooze through the cracks. Some tracks are super abstract post industrial ambient scrape-scapes, all grinding rhythms, and swirling hiss, others get dangerously close to classic sounding super raw primitive black metal, but as you listen, they seem to change shape, the riffs, the vocals, a glancing listen reveals nothing untoward, just some killer blasting lo-fi buzz, but once you settle in, the music drags you kicking and screaming into some jagged harsh buzz drenched, off kilter chaotic noise infested blackened sonic underworld.
If we had to pick bands to compare Wold to, it might be Ildjarn, Akitsa, Bone Awl, that sort of super raw, blown out in-the-red underproduced fury, but then add some Faxed Head, for the two share a similarly skewed and totally demented aesthetic, but where Faxed Head do it for laughs, Wold twist it into something sinister and frightening. Certainly Merzbow, as NOISE is a major component, but even when Wold are spewing sheets of what appear to be white noise, the sounds are not that simple, they churn and twist, and hide layers upon layers of sonic weirdness underneath. In fact, on first listen we were a bit put off a bit by the sheer noise level of Stratification, gone were all the warped buried 78 sounds, and in their place even more hiss and buzz and skree, but headphones changed everything. Revealing amidst the harshness an incredible array of strange sonic weirdness, buried melodies, obscured loops, bits of prettiness, almost invisible through the haze and murk and blur and NOISE, but which manage to subtly change lead into gold, turning something almost too harsh and abrasive, into something impossibly mesmerizing, and for the adventurous ear-ed, a veritable sonic wonderland of noise drenched beauty.
The return of Canadian black metal weirdos Wold, and another batch of completely blown out, noise drenched, abstract, lo-fi, ultra raw, frosty grim heaviness. Although with these guys, heaviness is not necessarily accurate. It is heavy, but more in the sort of Neil-from-the-Young-Ones kind of 'Heeeeeaavy', totally psychedelic and tripped out, and a blurred, washed out swirl of sounds that only really loosely approximates black metal.
Most metalheads would find themselves diving for the eject button, but for the rest of us, who are willing to dig deep into outsider sounds, Working Together For Our Privacy is as rewarding as any of the other Wold records, a hidden world of sound, melodies, and textures, riffs and beats, almost entirely obscured by swirling whirling clouds of crumbling distortion and FX drenched white noise. On the surface, this is the sound of a million TVs between channels, a symphony of AM radios out of range, broadcasting nothing but static, but like when you stare at snow on a TV screen, images surface and emerge and change and disappear, the same thing seems to happen listening to this Wold record, from the chaotic skree, all sorts of sounds and song fragments surface, revealing something almost pretty lurking beneath the violent and abrasive surface.
All three songs here, long ones, seem cut from the same cloth, each an explosion of industrial crunch, and blurry buzz, heaving and roiling, not even black so much as WHITE, white noise, white out, a cloud of particles and sonic fragments, a barrage of crunch and crush and pummel, that can almost completely block out the songs themselves. Almost. In a weird way, this stuff is hypnotic, mesmerizing, entrancing, if the conditions were right, this sort of thing could definitely lull you to sleep, but cranked through your shitty old speakers, it could also induce embolisms. Such is the magic of Wold. Another winner from these mysterious Canucks, one where the prizes remain a banged head, ringing ears, blown speakers and a head full of buzz....
These eager young Swedish metalheads return with a followup to their excellent self-titled debut. The sticker on the front of the cd case says it all, in two simple words: "Heavy Metal" (with a picture of a spike-clad fist coming at you). It's the NWOBHM all
We praised their debut for being fresh and powerful, retro but not cheesy (unlike so much current European powermetal that's popular). They had a kind of garage edge that got under our skin. This disc is certainly similar -- maybe a bit less catchy than the debut but if anything *more* metal -- starting with the cover. Maybe the unfair criticisms of the wonderful, but somewhat whimsical and unusual album cover art of their previous disc got to the band, 'cause the cover of "Black Wings" sports a much more typically metal design, complete with a new, chrome-plated Wolf logo. That's in keeping with this disc's generally darker, more "evil" tone than Wolf's debut. Song titles like "Demon Bell", "Night Stalker", "Venom", "Genocide", and "Unholy Night" stress that darker, more diabolic direction as well (and demonstrate some imaginative shortcomings, but what do you expect)... Solid Swedish heavy metal for fans of Maiden!!
(By the way, this disc comes with a "special surprise" for PC users -- a hidden song you can download from Wolf's website. Which is nice, but think about it: if the idea is to make a song available only to people who own the cd, why not just PUT IT ON THE CD??! Duh.)
All right! A domestic release for the new, third album from a band that's become a favorite 'round these parts, when the moon is full and we feel like howling along to some killer old school heavy metal made by hungry young Swedish heshers clad in leather and studs. Not exactly the most original band ever, but they've got something -- youthful exuberance, a garagey rock n' roll edge, maybe a sense of both irony and reverence for the masters, not to mention songwriting and playing ability -- that makes this special. Wolf ain't just another European power metal band, they've got an (evil) star quality about 'em for sure.
Their previous two albums worshipped at the altar of Iron Maiden and this one does too but I think their allegiance has tipped somewhat towards Judas Priest. Certainly we'd guess that when Wolf is rehearsing in their practice space they say "let's do our Priest number" when they want to play track two here, "American Storm"! Sounds like something off of Painkiller. Even the lyrics display excessive Halfordisms. But perhaps to demonstate some diversity they end this album with a cover of Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper"...which they commendably covert to a Wolf-sounding song, although there's other less well-known BOC tunes I'd rather have heard 'em try. And that's followed by two bonus tracks: covers of Slayer and the Ramones! But it's their own material that makes this disc such a fun slab of retro-metal mania, demonstrating a high level of energy and a knack for melody. The lead-off title track will definitely get stuck in your head, first thing. In fact, while I'm all for extended, six-minute long metal songs, I'd actually suggest that they cut a 'radio edit' of "Evil Star" on the off chance that they could have a pop hit... that'd be cool.
Cd single from this band of Swedish youngsters, metalheads who worship the metalgods of the '80s (Maiden and Priest) rather than trying emulate their Nordic corpse-painted peers. Their debut self-titled album was one of the best "true metal" releases of the
This week's entry into the NWOOSHM (New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal, we've dubbed it) comes from Sweden's Wolf. This traditional metal band (in the tradition of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Mercyful Fate, specifically) are almost not even the new wave anymore, as this is their fifth album! Hard to believe it, we remember like it was yesterday when we first heard their 1999 debut and were like, wow, this band sounds so much like it's 1983, and these dudes probably were toddlers back then! Well now here we are 10 years later and Wolf are still cranking out the true metal like it's, well, no later than 1989.
Ravenous is a good title for this disc, 'cause they sound hungry again, regaining the spark that seemed somehow lacking on their last effort The Black Wind. Singer/guitarist Niklas "Viper" Stalvind's distinctive high pitched vocals scream out lyrics inspired (but not THAT inspired, if you know what we mean) by horror and history, backed by chunky riffs, shredding leads, and galloping rhythms. Nothing incredibly original, but quite metallically solid, indeed, exceedingly ass kicking. Which is pretty much all you can ask from a band called Wolf who write songs with titles like "Whiskey Psycho Hellions", eh?
"Love At First Bite" is another song here, and we're pretty sure it's not about the '70s Dracula comedy starring George Hamilton, but it would be cool if it was. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the current lineup of Wolf all have nicknames, the others besides "Viper" are: "Raptor", "Axeman" (no prizes if you guess what instrument he plays), and "Tornado". We can see -maybe- calling somebody Viper on a regular basis, but do you really think their buddies say, "Yo, Tornado, let's grab a beer?" Or, "Dude, did you see that chick Axeman was hanging out with?" No, we don't think so...
Don't think we're making FUN of Wolf though, we think it's all part of their plan. Likewise with the fact that the Wolf logo on the Ravenous cd itself is, for some reason, pink!
Fourth album from these Swedish traditional metal mongers. Speedy and catchy and all done up in the denim and leather. Yep they deliver the goods, but we're not sure how inspired this sounds this time around... I mean, we loved their debut and each subsequent release, but although their head-bangin' batteries haven't run low, the special creative x-factor perhaps has...we're not hearing anything new here. Or maybe we just weren't in the mood. Can't point out exactly what's wrong, maybe nothing, or it's just the lyrics that are sounding tired to us. Certainly they still seem just as rippin' and retro as before, music-wise. If you liked their other discs, definitely at least give a listen to the sound clips below... but if you don't have their other discs, we're not sure if we'd say to start with this one. Get the self-titled debut, or their previous one Evil Star instead.
Ah, and we'll give it another listen. After all, we *know* that these guys are capable of making metal's many cliches sound fresh, and if that was tougher for them than usual this time, it should still be a fun spin when we're in a less critical mood...
Young Swedes playing traditional heavy metal, a pretty great debut. No Hammerfall-like pop silliness, just heads-down, raised-fist, speedy Iron Maiden/Riot styled METAL with decent-enough (not too) high pitched vocals, and plenty of ripping guitar work. And the production, courtesy of Peter Tagtgren (Scandinavian metal producer of the moment), is super. Take the likes of In Flames or Soilwork, add real vocals and make the songs a bit more catchy, that's Wolf. And they should get props for the incredible Richard Scarey/children's book-like cover art (by famed European illustrator Hans Arnold), a cover which has been universally but unjustly slammed in all (otherwise positive) reviews that we've seen of this album. It's great, and it harkens back to the album covers of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal which weren't afraid to be weird and not-blatantly metal for metal's sake. Anyway, we applaud the band for their unafraid aesthetic choice. More importantly, we also salute them for making such a great record!!
As we're always pleased to observe, apparently there's an absolutely inexhaustible supply of worthwhile old music awaiting rediscovery, every week it seems we're lucky enough to see another amazing batch of obscure rarities reissued, vintage psych, prog, folk, funk, jazz... We've long thought that the next fertile field for reissue frenzy would be the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), and lo, it's happening, there's been a bunch of cool reissues and archival releases hitting the racks in recent weeks, like the Dark Star reviewed last list, Jameson Raid and Bleak House (both of which will be on our next list), and this one - WOLFBANE. Nope, never heard of 'em before either, but man are they great.
The six tracks on this 33 minute cd come from the two demo tapes that this band recorded during their 1980-1983 "career"; raw, rough and riffy rock recorded by a trio consisting of a guitarist named Dee, a bassist named Lee, and two different drummers variously named Syd (demo #1) and Sid (demo #2). Actually, they weren't always a trio, Wolfbane apparently went through several frontmen, but none ever managed to make it into the studio, leaving guitarist Gramie Dee to do the singing on all their recorded demos. Which is awesome, 'cause his voice is actually really cool, and we can't imagine why they'd even have wanted any other singers. He's got a tough, sometimes slightly Ozzyish voice, with a ragged hint of a rasp, that's perfect for Wolfbane's style, which falls on the heavier, doomier side of the NWOBHM scene, having a palpable Sabbath vibe, definitely for those who hold the likes of Witchfinder General and Angel Witch near and dear! The spoken intros are a hoot, the riffs are killer, and they just freakin' rock, doin' songs about werewolves ("Wolfbane" and "The Howling"), love or the lack thereof ("Leave Me"), serial killers (the epic "See You In Hell"), swords & sorcery ("Elric Of Melnibone"), and prostitutes ("Midnight Lady"). What more do you want? Drugs? Vampires? More werewolves? Doubtless had they made it to a demo #3 they'd have done a song about at least one of those subjects (chances are, more werewolves).
The primal DIY-ness of this is totally a plus, Wolfbane exuding underground charisma and true heavy metal spirit to the max. We're so glad these songs have been reissued, we'd have never heard 'em otherwise, and the cd booklet comes complete with a cheeky band history and notes on each track.
The newest slab of blackened wyrd doom-folk from the misty moors of... Texas? Poland? Mordor? Well, wherever main-mangler Smolken makes his home these days. Smolken, also the man responsible for the equally dark and fucked up Jandekian "black metal" of Dead Raven Choir, always has had a skewed take on his favorite subgenres of music, in the case of Wolfmangler entering the realm of doom metal riding a swaybacked country-folk steed, but eschewing the cinematically Western wide-open spaces that Earth has been roaming of late, to plow deeper into the muck and mire of the direst of wagonwheel-sucking mudflats... There's 14 doleful and dirgey tracks here, Smolken sawing away on some classical-sounding stringed instrument like an uber-depressed, one-man chamber music outfit. Besides those suicidal strings, this is sparse and skeletal, there's not much more here... some background ambience, clanking percussion, and creepy whispers... all of which work for us in a Dead Raven Choir like fashion. But then Smolken airs some almost-spoken, sorta-theatrical clean vocals (on tracks 12 and 13 fersinstance) and we're not quite as into it. For DRC fans surely, but maybe not doom metallers this time out (unlike Wolfmangler's earlier split with Moss).
Back in print and back in stock at a slightly cheaper price. But still just as warped and wonderful and weird as before...
The return of Wolfmangler, aka Smolken, who also just so happens to be the man behind Dead Raven Choir. Hot on the heels of a split with UK ultra doomlords Moss, Wolfmangler continue to explore the dark world of doom in their own truly peculiar manner. With bass, electric bass, drum, flute, trombone and bassoon (each band member is also credited with things like umber bulk, water nymph, floating eye, tengu, trapper and of course leprechaun) the Wolfmangler ensemble create a truly unique doom, woven together from wheezing woodwinds, throbbing low end, simple occasional drum beats and weird grumbled growly vocals. The result is not so much a massive doom sound as a creepy ancient court music, plodding and funereal. You can almost imagine some black clad procession trudging along the winding cobblestone streets within some walled fortress. Kerry though it sounded like punk rock slowed waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down.
Texturally it's unlike anything we've ever heard. The closest reference might be Skepticism, the way it sounded like their music is being heard through the floor or from a building next door. Wolfmangler's sound has a similar timbre, a bit like some high school marching band dipped in tar and forced to march through a desert of black sand, or maybe like holding a stylus in one hand, and a scratched up 45 of Fleetwood Mac's tusk in the other, and trying to manually play the record by dragging the needle along each groove. Warbly and dizzyingly warped, Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves is some sort of hellish circus music, the soundtrack to a Fellini film, showed one frame at a time, a New Orleans Funeral Jazz band 78 played at 16 rpm on an old dusty victrola. So gorgeously slow, so pretty and creepy and dreamily doomy.
Yet another mysterious missive from the dark forests of Poland (via Texas of course) courtesy of doom folk trio Wolfmangler, featuring the one and only Smolken, aka Dead Raven Choir.
While Wolfmangler have been know to lay down some serious doom (c'mon, they shared a split with Moss!!) albeit in their own uniquely skewed fashion, these two tracks are not so much doom as they are doomy, the band embracing their foresty folk side, but shot through with a healthy dose of mourn and misery.
The sound here is some sort of funereal campfire folk, simple plodding percussion, moaning violin, fluttering flute, very tribal, and primitive, almost old timey, like some strange pirate sea shanty. Growled ghostly vocals crawl menacingly over what at times sounds like a very gnarled and twisted version of Peter And The Wolf.
The second side is a bit slower and creepier, even darker and more lugubrious, the flute, instead of flitting and fluttering is stretched into long drawn out melancholy melodies, the vocals a ragged whisper, the strings now weaving a surprisingly lush minor key backdrop.
A nice little slab of creepy crawly doom folk for sure.
Packaged in super swank silkscreened sleeves. he cover image, a wolf and what appears to be a river of blood, and a drowning body. Nice!
Smolken has always been a confounding personality, the man behind both Wolfmangler and Dead Raven Choir, releasing records on proper metal labels, but also on weirdo avant free folk microlabel Jewelled Antler, mixing black metal, folk music, country, bluegrass, whatever the hell he feels like really, the results sometimes brilliant, often baffling, but always weird and wonderful in their own way.
They Call Us Naughty Wolves marks the return of Smolken as Wolfmangler after more than two years of relative inactivity, and to be honest, we were approaching this with a bit of trepidation. It was after all a record called They Call Us Naughty Wolves, and according to the label was blackened burlesque chamber music, a sort of channeling of pop from yesteryear, not to mention that some of the cds come with a pair of Wolfmangler undies (really! more on that in a second). But really, conceptually and sonically, this is no stranger than past Smolken projects, so we threw it on, and were pleasantly surprised, if one can find this sort of music simply 'pleasant'.
The sound is creepy, and dark, and creaky, and mysteriously ominous, strings moan and groan, a slow lugubrious chamber music, transformed into something much blacker and creepier, the melancholic gloom and string laden dirgery accompanied by a blackened croak, vokills that gurgle and growl, although they are sometimes accompanied by an angelic female counterpoint. The guitar or bass is more a fuzzy blur, a droney rumble, that underpins the strings, cellos or violins driving the tracks, creating the muted melodies, and it's that weird guttural vocal and string combination, that can't help but remind us of those groups like Xynfonica, Shevelreq, Gluttony, Thursar, the twisted metal vox with gnarled guitar synths emulating exotic instruments. So right off the bat, if that stuff is to your twisted taste, then this will definitely hit the spot. But Smolken's vision isn't so damaged or demented, it's definitely rooted in sounds more traditional, a sort of blackened doom chamber folk, which will appeal to fans of dark slow low moody weirdness. Although some of it is definitely WAY weird. The band occasionally slipping into some strangely jaunty jig like Renn Faire folk music, but for the most part, it's just some seriously brooding, surprisingly beautiful, freaked out and fucked up outsider darkness, like Tom Waits' Black Rider blurred and muddied and blackened into some woozy warped soundtrack to a filmic fable of wolves and woods.
Two lucky aQ customers who order this, will also get a companion pair of red (riding hood), women's panties, with a screenprinted image of a wolf dressed up like grandma on the butt, They Call Us Naughty Wolves after all, it'll be totally random, so cross your fingers...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Battlecruiser is a new label from AQ pal Campbell Kneale who runs the impeccable NZ label Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. Battlecruiser is basically an outlet for a bunch of New Zealand noise guys to fufill their secret desire to be metal gods! Who can argue with that? Cool band names, distorted guitars, demonic vocals and all that good stuff! Metalheads might have to stretch their definition of 'metal' to really get into this stuff, but the rest of us, metal and unmetal alike will find lots of beautiful crushing far out noisy weirdness on these evil 'lil 3" cd-r's!
Maybe the weirdest of the batch, the first track on Wolfskull's Black Hole Rose sounds a bit like Jandek metal. Guitars warbly and out of tune slathered in the most noxious distrotion possible, pained emotional vocals all sort of drunkenly wobbling along. Track two is an extended gong/cymbal workout, very hypnotic and sparse. And the final track is a dreamy bacwards guitar thing. Definitely a cool record, but probably the least 'metal' of the batch.
It's been nearly a year since we've heard from this mysterious black sonic beast from New Zealand, a shadowy entity that may or may not be a dirgedronedoom shadow cast by the very dark side of one PseudoArcana head honcho Antony Milton.
Black Uhura is four looooooooong tracks of gorgeous viscous murk. The opening track is a dreamy drift, if you dream of being dragged through thick tarpits in the very depths of the underworld. Riffs held over a flame and melted down into shimmering black puddles of sound, rippling gently, beneath, vocals mumble and warble, buried under a crushing slab of slow sinister sprawl, like some unholy collision between SUNNO))) and the Dead C, but with the bass cranked and the treble turned all the way down.
The second track is way more caustic, a blown out riffage rendered in violent squalls and smeared sheets of crumbling buzz and low end rumble. Prickly and chaotic and dirgey, almost more Merzbow noise, than any sort of dirgey drone, but closer listening reveals some buried riffage, some moaning walls of feedback, some corrosive metallic song structure, but sounding as if it were left outside to rust and decay and slowly crash to the ground.
The third track returns to the relative tranquility of the first, with the song elements even more noticeable, a barely there voice, a sing songy melody, some sort of desiccated melody, all washed out and indistinct, beneath the slow flowing river of molten hum and lo fi shimmer. Then the final track crashes back down, but not before slowly building up from a tolling church bell, a stuttering disembodied riff, thickening guitar growl, coruscating peals of feedback and machine like grinding buzz, all slowly sinking into a roiling black abyss, eventually morphing into a super hypnotic processed low end slither, and a surprising drum machine'd smoky coda...
Packaged in a super swank oversized dvd sized booklet, offset printed. The cover black on thick brown cardstock, the inside 8 pages of hellish black and white sketches, liner notes, the cd affixed to the back cover, and a 200mg sticker. Limited of course...
When we reviewed the first record from these French black metal freeks, easily one of our favorite weirdo black metal records ever, we reprinted their particularly twisted manifesto, just to help shed some light on what these guys were all about. No manifesto tucked away in record number two, but the line-up and instrumentation is somewhat revealing:
E: Abnormal guitars, odd bass, weird sounds abuse, mortuum tunes
L: Eerie and bizarre vomit parts, vaporous incantations
C: Ethereal drums, wraithlike mix tasks, noise suffocation
And the rest of the liner notes go one to describe most everyone and everything involved as repugnant. So yeah, think repugnant, abnormal, odd, weird, eerie, bizarre, ethereal, wraithlike, noisy and suffocating, and you'd definitely be close to understanding the sort of gloriously sick blackened metal damage Wolok produce.
Caput Mortuum is tighter and more well produced that the first record, while simultaneously being somehow more fucked up and warped. All it takes is a listen through the first song, and you'll know if you've got the kind of fractured and freaky constitution to withstand this sort of aural punishment. Skittery effected chants give way to woozy tangled riffage, chaotic relentless blast beats, raw sick processed vokills, the whole thing convoluted and impossibly gnarled, with lurching start stop arrangements, a moody melodic breakdown, that gives way to a chugging churning drone drenched anti-groove, which in turn gives way to a lumbering, stuttering fucked up, almost industrial sounding bit of buzzy stumbling blackness, alternatingly pounding and blasting. ALL the sounds wreathed in strange effects. Think Blut Aus Nord or Spektr's fucked up inbred offspring. It all makes a little more sense when you realize one of the three responsible for this unholy damage is also responsible for the raw primitive filth that is Zarach'Baal'Tharagh.
But Wolok, like their elder statesmen in Spektr and Blut Aus Nord, are mired in black metal, but obviously are giving it all they've got to transform regular old buzz and blast into something else entirely, and fuck if it didn't work. Warped and woozy minor key dirges give way to impossibly frenzied freakouts, noise drenched doom is gradually transformed into strangely melodic avant doom pop, before exploding into some seriously Naked City worthy stop start whatthefuck, like listening to a Lifelover record melt, while someone spins a Deathspell Omega record manually with their finger. In fact, much of this record sounds a bit warped and warbly, as if while the band was recording, someone, a band member or otherwise was constantly fiddling with the tape speed, and various other things in the control room, adding all manner of indescribable weirdness to the proceedings, but all that strange shit wouldn't mean much if the band couldn't play, and songs and riffs weren't amazing, it would be just a cool sounding mess, instead, this is in fact a cool sounding mess, but a dense, super technical, gloriously freaked out and frenzied, moody, otherworldly, twisted and seriously, geniusly fucked up mess. And while we hate to say it, this definitely joins the new Katharsis in the running for black metal record of the year!
We've become a bit obsessed with French black metal. Who can blame us? France has been producing an inordinate number of furiously fucked up grim black metal outfits. Just off the top of our heads, Deathspell Omega, Spektr, Blut Aus Nord, Seth, Mutiilation, S.V.E.S.T., Eikenskaden, Ad Hominem, Glorior Belli, Arkhon Infaustus, but a quick look at Encyclopedia Metallium online shows almost 2,000 black metal hordes lurking throughout the French countryside.
And now we add to the list Wolok. Who follow in the damned and demented footsteps of their countrymen in Spektr and Blut Aus Nord, by taking a grim black metal buzz and turning it inside out, bending and distorting and tearing it apart only to put the pieces back together again, adding all sorts of non metal weirdness to come up with a truly twisted piece of black art.
The core of Wolok's sound is indeed a grim and harsh buzzing blackness. But that grimness is surrounded by a dizzying swirl of damaged drones, serene passages of dark ambience, strange choral hymns, chopped up and reassembled into stuttering vocal landscapes, everything drenched in all sorts of alien FX. But this is not just some buzzing black metal record with 'trippy' sound effects, no every single part that makes up the actual songs, is equally damaged and diseased, riffs twist and tangle, slippery and impossibly convoluted. Almost like black metal played on a slide guitar, strange notes float from within dark clouds of metallic blackness, over the top a glistening shimmer of sparkling electronics and jagged shards of feedback screech, a noisy, psychedelic sheen laid over the grim blackness below. Some riffs splinter into strange dirgey chugs, creeping doomscapes of downtuned crunch and haunting found sounds, deep drones swirl around processed vocals and mournful guitar figures. Some strange mix of Abruptum, Burzum and Blut Aus Nord, a murky, lo-fi buzzscape, peppered with cinematic ambience and caustic white noise fuzz, while buried in the mix, blurry blasting drum freakouts, and a motley collection of vocals and voices, screeching demons, gurgling monsters, rumbling spoken word, ultra distorted growls, all just more blurry swirl to mix into Wolok's chaotic black blast. Definitely a new favorite far out black metal around here.
And if the music wasn't enough, the Wolok manifesto let's you know what you're in for, in no uncertain terms:
"Wolok appeared in 2003 to unveil the truth about existence.
Wolok exclusively spreads hate and scorn towards human filth.
Wolok supports your depression and despair.
Wolok mocks your miserable way of living.
Wolok appreciates the smell of your putrefying carrion.
Wolok urges putrid scum to self-destruction.
Wolok is absurd.
Wolok never existed and will never exist.
Wolok deals with musical vermin.
Wolok is as futile as the sum of 6 billion lives.
Wolok wants you dead."
LIMITED TO 541 COPIES. Killer creepy artwork too!
Haven't heard anything from these boundary-pushing Cascadian black metallers for a few years, not since 2011's magnificent Celestial Lineage. But for those of you hankering for some more Wolves, here's the vinyl-only release of a live recording also done in 2011. That's 2011AD, not BC, they want you to know, make no mistake. And as the title also indicates, it's a BBC session, recorded in England. Two songs, one per side (WITRR have long songs, these two are over ten minutes each). You get a rendition of "Prayer Of Transformation" on the A side, and "Thuja Magus Imperium" on the flip. The studio versions of both tracks can be found on the Celestial Lineage album.
Truth be told, we haven't yet cracked one of these open to listen to it yet... but we do know from past experience that WITTR are an excellent live proposition, so we imagine true fans will find this WAY worthwhile. ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! 20 GUILDERS "New Songs And Wrong Songs For Patricia" (Gulden) cd 14.98 ABDUL-RAUF, LEILA "Cold And Cloud" (Saadi Saati / Pesanta Urfolk) lp 19.98 ALLIN, G.G. "My Prison Walls" (Aggronautix) book 54.00 ALTO! "s/t" (Raheem) lp 14.98 AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB "San Francisco" (Plain Recordings) lp 19.98 ANIMA MORTE "The Nightmare Becomes Reality" (Transubstans) cd/lp 21.00/19.98 BEGGARS "s/t" (Lotus House) 2cd 13.98 BELZEBONG "Dungeon Vultures" (Emetic) lp 16.98 BLACK FLAG "What The..." (SST) lp 23.00 BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS, THE / TEENAGE MONSTER (WALTER GREENE) "OST" (Monstrous Movie Music) cd 27.00 BRAN (...) POS "Den Of Ordure And Iridescence" (Resipiscent) lp 15.98 CAFFA "Day Of Disease" (Transylvanian Tapes) cassette 4.98 CAPTAIN TRIPS "The Dance Of Untruth" (Stormspell) cd 11.98 CARNACKI, THOMAS / VULCANUS 68 "split" (Alethiometer Records / Gigante Sound) lp 14.98 CLAYTON, JACE (DJ/ RUPTURE) "The Julius Eastman Memory Depot" (New Amsterdam) cd 11.98 CORYELL, LARRY "Barefoot Boy" (BGP) cd 11.98 DAMON "Song Of A Gypsy" (Now-Again) lp 29.00 DANTESCO "We Don't Fear Your God" (Inframundo) cd 13.98 DEAD MEADOW "Warble Womb" (Xemu) cd/2lp 15.98/32.00 DEAD MOON "Trash And Burn" (Mississippi) lp 14.98 DEAD RIVER "s/t" (self-released) cd-r 9.98 DELUXE, JEAN-EMMANUEL "Ye-Ye Girls Of '60s French Pop" (Feral House) book 25.00 DINGER, THOMAS "Fur Mich" (Bureau B) lp 23.00 DOWNES, BOB "Deep Down Heavy" (Esoteric Recordings) cd 23.00 DRIFTWOOD, JIMMIE "Sings Newly Discovered American Folk Songs & The Wilderness Road" (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 17.98 ELOY, JEAN-CLAUDE "Gaku-No-Michi" (Hors Territory) 4cd 60.00 ELOY, JEAN-CLAUDE "Shanti" (Hors Territory) 2cd 39.00 ERICKSON, ROKY "Don't Slander Me" (Light In The Attic) 2lp 28.00 FALCON (EX-CIRCLE) "Beer & Ribs b/w Sunset Street" (Full Contact) 7" 8.98 FELL VOICES "Regnum Saturni" (Antithetic) 2lp 30.00 FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC & DENIS SHAPOVALOV "Steel Glares And Night Shadows" (Obs / STILL*SLEEP) cd 12.98 FLAMIN' GROOVIES "Shake Some Action" (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98 FLESH WORLD "s/t" (La Vida En Un Mus) lp 16.98 GOBLIN "Il Fantastico Viaggio Del Bagarozzo Mark" (AMS / Cinevox) lp 34.00 GOODBYE & AMEN (GUIDO & MAURIZIO DE ANGELIS) "OST" (Intermezzo Media) cd 29.00 GRACE SINGS SLUDGE "Longshot" (self-released) 7" square lathe cut single 11.98 GRAND MAL X "Stealth Minds" (Black Horizons) cassette 8.98 GROUP RHODA "12th House" (Not Not Fun) cd 13.98 HARSH TOKE "Light Up And Live" (Tee Pee) lp 16.98 HEDERSLEBEN "1: Upgoer" (Unternarz) cd/lp 9.98/19.98 HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER "Bad Debt" (Paradise Of Bachelors) cd/lp 14.98/23.00 IKEDA, RYOJI "Supercodex" (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98 INHALT "Occupations" (Dark Entries) 12" 11.98 IRON DOGS "Free & Wild" (Dying Victims Productions) cd/lp 12.98/16.98 JACUZZI BOYS "s/t" (Hardly Art) cd/lp 12.98/13.98 JANDEK "Athens Saturday" (Corwood) 2cd 12.98 JANE POW "Love It Be It / State" (Slumberland) cd 10.98 JARRE, JEAN MICHEL "The Essential" (Disques Dreyfus) cd 16.98 JARRETT, KEITH "Mysteries / Shades" (Impulse) cd 16.98 JASMINE REEF "Wet" (self-released) magazine 9.98 JAWORZYN, STEFAN "EP 2" (Shock) 12" 17.98 JOHNSON, CHUCK "A Struggle Not A Thought" (Strange Attractors Audio House) lp 14.98 KING, PETER "Omo Lewa" (Secret Stash) lp 17.98 KIZILOK, FIKRET "Anadolu'Yum" (Pharaway Sounds) cd/lp 17.98/32.00 LANTERN "Rock 'N' Roll Rorschach (eu Edition)" (Cardinal Fuzz) lp 24.00 LAU, LEONG "Dragon Man" (Strawberry Rain) lp 26.00 LEATHER STRIP "Teenage Demos" (Dark Entries) lp 14.98 LES RALLIZES DENUDES "Maked Diza Star" (Bamboo) 3cd-r 34.00 LLUVIA "Premonicion De Guerra" (Fallen Empire Records) lp 19.98 LORD NASTY "Phuck Em And Forget Em" (self-released) cd-r 11.98 LORNA DUNE "Miamisphere" (Lo Bit Landscapes) 12" 11.98 LOW / SHEARWATER "Stay / Novacane" (Sub Pop) 7" 5.98 LUGUBRUM "De Totem" (Aphelion) lp 26.00 LUGUBRUM "Face Lion Face Oignon" (Aphelion) lp 26.00 MAGIC TRICK "River Of Souls" (Empty Cellar) lp 15.98 MALKMUS, STEPHEN & THE JICKS "Wig Out At Jagbags" (Matador) cd/lp 14.98/16.98 MERCYFUL FATE "Don't Break The Oath" (Roadrunner) lp 29.00 MERCYFUL FATE "Melissa" (Roadrunner) lp 29.00 MIMINOKOTO "Chofu, Ekoda, Koenji [Live In & Around Tokyo]" (Plunk's Plan) cd 14.98 MONOTON "Monotonproduct 07" (Desire) 2lp 30.00 MOORE, ANGELO "Sacrifice" (self-released) cd 8.98 MOORE, STEVE "Pangaea Ultima" (Spectrum Spools) cd/2lp 16.98/32.00 NEGATIVE STANDARDS "VI.VII.VIII.IX.X.XI" (Vendetta) lp 14.98 NEGATIVE STANDARDS / WHITEHORSE "split" (Vendetta) lp 14.98 NEGATIVE TREND "s/t" (Superior Viaduct) 7" 9.98 NIGROMANTE "Black Magic Night" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 12.98 NOCTOOA "Adaptation" (Owl & Troll) cd 11.98 NOSTALGIST "Monochromantic" (Nostalgium Directive) 7" 8.98 OBLITERATION "Black Death Horizon" (Relapse) cd 14.98 ORIGINAL STALAG 17-18 AND 19 "s/t" (Technique Records) lp 13.98 OVVL "s/t" (Stormspell) cd 11.98 PARADOX "The Demo Collection 1986-1987" (Stormspell) 2cd 13.98 PINHAS, RICHARD "Desolation Row" (Cuneiform) cd 17.98 POW! "Hi-Tech Boom" (Castle Face) cd 13.98 RADIOACTIVITY "s/t" (Dirtnap Records) lp 16.98 RAJATTTAJAT "Awopbopaloopop Alopbam Raja" (Ektro) cd 14.98 RANGDA "Live In Kreffeld" (Unrock) 10" 25.00 RAY, RUBY "From The Edge Of The World: California Punk, 1977-81" (Superior Viaduct) book + cd 23.00 RAZOR "Armed And Dangerous" (War On Music) lp 17.98 REGIME "Demo 1991 +3" (Stormspell) cd 11.98 ROCKEY, PALMER "Rockey's Style (Movie Album)" (Trunk) cd 16.98 RUN AFTER TO "Run After To / Gjinn And Djinn" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 12.98 SAVAGES, THE "Live In The Studios Of Columbia University's WKCR on March 21, 1974" (B13) lp 30.00 SHEARWATER "Fellow Traveller" (Sub Pop) lp 17.98 SHINE BROTHERS, THE "Hello Griefbirds!" (Cardinal Fuzz) lp 24.00 SLEAFORD MODS "Austerity Dogs" (Harbinger Sound) cd 17.98 SOULEYMAN, OMAR "Wenu Wenu" (Ribbon Music) lp 26.00 SOUNDGARDEN "Screaming Life / FOPP" (Sub Pop) cd 12.98 SOUNDS OF THE CITY EXPERIENCE "s/t" (Jazzman) cd 17.98 SPACE "Magic Fly" (Repertoire) cd 13.98 SPARKS "New Music For Amnesiacs" (Lil Beethoven) 2cd 23.00 SPINAL TAP "From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: This Is Spinal Tap" (The Control Group) lp 29.00 STEREOLAB "Sound-Dust" (1972) 2lp 25.00 STICKMEN, THE "s/t" (Homeless) lp 24.00 SUN RA "This Planet Is Doomed: The Science Fiction Poetry Of Sun Ra" (Kicks Books) book 12.95 TAIST OF IRON "Resurrection" (Skol) 2cd 16.98 TALABOT, JOHN "DJ Kicks" (K7 Records) cd 15.98 TEISCO "D.O.C." (Dual Planet) cd/lp 15.98/24.00 TINDERSTICKS "Les Salauds (OST)" (Lucky Dog) lp 29.00 TOTALLY RADD!! "Shark Attack Day Camp" (Bad Idea Graveyard) lp 19.98 TRONICS "Say! What Is This?" (M'Lady's) cd/lp 14.98/17.98 TURNER, MICK "Don't Tell The Driver" (Drag City) lp 22.00 V/A "100 Moons (Hindustani Vocal Art, 1930-55)" (Mississippi / Canary) lp 14.98 V/A "Elaste Volume 4" (Compost Medien) 2lp 23.00 V/A "German Measles: Volume 2" (Bear Family) lp 28.00 V/A "High Voltage : Giant Steps & Flashpoints In 20th Century Experimental & Electronic Sound" (Fantastic Voyage) 3cd 15.98 V/A "I Heard The Angels Singing: Electrifying Black Gospel From The Nashboro Label 1951-1983" (Tompkins Square) 4cd 42.00 V/A "Inside Llewyn Davis OST" (Nonesuch) cd/lp 17.98/28.00 V/A "New York Eye And Ear Control" (ESP-Disk) lp 26.00 V/A "Radio Niger" (Sublime Frequencies) cd 15.98 VANAY, LAURENCE "Evening Colours" (Lion) cd 16.98 VANAY, LAURENCE "Galaxies" (Lion) cd 16.98 VENOM P. STINGER "1986-1991" (Drag City) 2cd 16.98 VILE, KURT "Wakin On A Pretty Daze (Deluxe Edition)" (Matador) 2cd 16.98 VOX POPULI! "Pacific 231 (Cut Chemist Presents Funk Off)" (A Stable Sound) cd 17.98 WALKER BROTHERS, THE "Nite Flights" (Tizona) lp 23.00 WHIRR "Distressor" (Graveface) cd 12.98 WILDHONEY "Like Me" (Nostalgium Directive) 7" 5.50 WITCH "Movin' On & Kuomboka" (Now-Again) 2cd 24.00 XIAO HE "The Performance of Identity" (Maybe Mars) 2cd 14.98 YO LA TENGO "Fade (Deluxe Edition)" (Matador) 2cd 16.98 YOUNG, ROLAND "Hearsay I-Land" (Palto Flats) lp 16.98 YOUNGS, RICHARD "Calmont Breakdown" (Fourth Dimension) cd 17.98 YOUNGS, RICHARD "I Dream Of Mezzanine / Cloudplanes" (The Spring Press) lp 15.98
By now, Wolves in the Throne Room have established themselves as one of America's most gifted and awesomely dependable black metal bands, and their third long player, Black Cascade, picks up right where their recent Malevolent Grain ep left off. All the elements of their expansive, blackened psychedelic approach are here: sprawling songs with a methodical attention to song structure, relentless drumming, perfectly interlocking dual guitars, tortured raspy vocals, and an ability to seamlessly merge synthy ambience with a furious but often very melancholy black metal onslaught. There seems to be a legion of haters out there, ready to label the band as a bunch of PC hippies who aren't adhering to whatever rules they assume apply to a style of music that is pretty nihilistic and iconoclastic by nature. But fuck those people. This band is great and truly deserves whatever accolades come its way.
The ever-present density of WITTR's sound is further heightened on Black Cascade, their bio proudly emphasizing the old school analog sound they have achieved through vintage recording gear and classic tube amps. While we don't want to ramble on about various pieces of musical equipment, it should be noted that these devices have certainly helped the band to capture a sound music nerds might refer to as "organic". Sure, we at aQuarius love all the homemade bedroom black metal that sounds as if it was recorded in a blender during a tornado... The sound on Black Cascade, however, is clear and upfront, though hardly refined or polished. It is quite rock n' roll in a classic sense, which works great when the band breaks out some Thin Lizzy-esque guitar harmonies on the first track "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog". Mossy, ultra distorted guitars hang like a thick black cloud (or a sea of fog, if you will) in the atmosphere as the drums create the necessary propulsion that make a Wolves in the Throne Room song sound like it could, and should, carry on FOREVER. Song #2, "Ahrimanic Trance" is, true to its title, a hypnotic, trancelike black metal trip into some long forgotten wilderness. The song gives one a feeling of being transported at high speeds across the landscape while watching from the back of some primitive vehicle, a sense that is carried on in the next track, "Ex Cathedra". The final song, "Crystal Ammunition", starts life as a dizzying, hyperspeed slab of pure black metal before morphing into a beautiful lament that may (or may not) reference the melody from Malevolent Grain's "A Looming Resonance". It's seems like things will culminate in the ultimate fadeout. But, uh, what happens after the fade out? As everything gallops off into the distance, otherworldly guitar chords and tambourine are the only sounds evident. Eventually these too recede as they are overtaken by a phased out synthscape. Fucking awesome.
While this album was great from the moment we first put it on, repeated listens have been revealing more and more. To say this is a huge departure from what Wolves in the Throne Room have accomplished in the past would be inaccurate. It is, instead, the sound of a group who, with each record, becomes a more realized version of itself.
The return of Cascadian black metallers Wolves In The Throne Room, introduces us to their latest epic, Celestial Lineage, with a sound that continues to move well beyond the bounds of black metal. As it was the band never shied away from augmenting their furious Weakling-beholden buzz and frantic blasts with swaths of ethereal drift and dark hushed minimalism, but here, those non black metal elements play a much bigger role, and manage to take the sound to a whole other level, positioning those non-metallic sounds less as 'interludes' and more as fully realized elements that are woven deftly into the fabric of the songs and sound. The record even opens with a hazy bit of choral drift, all tinkling chimes, shimmery synths, stately piano, and ethereal vocals, that sound more seventies British folk than black metal. Then, instead of simply exploding into some black buzz, the riffs are introduced slowly, blending into the folky drift, transforming the 'intro' into a blackened chorale, allowing the folky flutter to fade, until finally the blackness descends, the sound impossibly lush and heavy, epic and expansive, the sound thick and more lush than ever, the riffing wild and tangled, the drums mathy and intricate, and then again, the band take this grim buzz and wreath it in soaring epic almost folky melodies, some gorgeous harmonized guitars, there are even some full on psychedelic leads, the song shifting from black churn to ephemeral shimmer and back again, even dipping into some majestic doomic dirgery, but somehow the varied parts all fit together perfectly.
After a bit of chanted field recording flecked ambience, sounding like some ancient forest ritual, the band slip right back into pure transcendental blackness, with another sprawl of epic soaring blasting buzz, but again, it manages to be lush and weirdly melodic, on the surface it's a roiling churning blackness, but somehow the sound is infused with a blurred warmth, a subtle melodic core, that elevates the sound beyond simple black buzz. The sound constantly confounding, the song splintering into wide open expanses of feedback drenched, tribal drum driven abstraction, then slipping into a sort of hazy post rocky drift, before finishing off in a blaze of frantic black ferocity, but even there, the sound is wrapped in thick soaring swirls of melody.
One of our favorite tracks might be "Woodland Cathedral" which sounds exactly like the title suggests, over a bed of what sounds like forest sounds, guitars hover and shimmer and soar, the rhythm is glacial and funeral, everything is wreathed in a patina of buzz and thrum, the sound super distorted and almost shoegazey, angelic female vocals drifting over the top, tangled into strange but lovely harmonies, a doomy choral bit of blackened loveliness, which leads directly into the final movement, two 10+ minutes epics, the first, another example of Wolves' mastery of melodic blackness, grinding black heaviness wedded to delicate folky flutter, with hints of post rock, a sound that while in the past was perhaps too obviously beholden to many, now seems to belong to no other, and finally, a sprawling buzz drenched black doomdirge that sounds like Nadja and Comus and Sunroof! and WITTR all blurred into one glorious blackbuzz ur-drone doom-bliss epic. So good.
Super swank packaging too, with some of the most gorgeous artwork/photography we've seen on a black metal record for sure. Vinyl version forthcoming as well.
We're super into this, but avant black metallers Wolves In The Throne Room have gotten a lot of flack for this new record of theirs, which seems to be more based on them as a band, than the record itself; like Deafheaven or Liturgy, the fact that they're 'hip' and 'cool' and lots of non metalheads dig them makes them ripe for criticism from the 'troo cvlt' black metal crowd. Also that they're doing something a bit different. A LOT different, here. And we applaud it! 'Cause taken objectively, as in, if you didn't even know this was WITTR, you might find yourself pretty into it.
The deal is, there's really no black metal here, just pure spaced-out synth shimmer, completely cosmic and kinda New Agey, even. It's total Tangerine Dream worship, but with plenty of dense bombast and thick layered drones. More like Emeralds than Emperor. The sort of thing some black metal bands dabble in as "intro music", taken to the full-length extreme. And it's pretty good - the first track sounds like it could be an alternate soundtrack to Bladerunner. Haunting and ominous, lush drones and buried melodies... Elsewhere, the swaths of thick synth-iness sound almost like Salem, some beatless almost witch-housiness... There's even some Carpenter-y electro beats on "Sleeping Gold Storm". The moaning horns and other elements, in the more cacophonous crescendos, builds up the drama and edginess, but it never gets metal, nope. It's the intro to itself, instead.
Thumbs up from us! And, black metal and/or WITTR fans who aren't open-minded enough to approve of this, don't fret, it's just meant as an electronic "companion" to their last album, 2011's Celestial Lineage, not a follow-up. You still gotta keep waiting for that, but in the meantime, you could try to relax and enjoy these surprisingly spaced-out sounds. Plus, it's not like there's not precedence for stuff like this in the realms of black metal, from Neptune Towers to Alturaz... And for other folks, more into synths and drones than metal, this could easily be the first (only?) WITTR you'll ever need.
We've been selling Wolves In The Throne Room cd-r demos like crazy since we first discovered these guys last year. And how could we not? You gotta love a band that unfurls massive fuzzed out epics, 10+ minute bursts of swirling droning black metal, dirging, lurching and gorgeously blown out. The obvious comparison is SF black metal legends Weakling, and you know we wouldn't make that comparison lightly. The same sort of fierce brutality and chaotic ferocity mixed with impossibly anguished emotionalism all wrapped up in a blackness that is informed as much by suffocating dark ambience and mesmerizing drones as it is grim black metal.
If you thought the WITTR demos sounded great, HOLY SHIT does this new record blow those out of the water. Which is a good thing as two of the songs here are actually from the demos, but they have been massively reworked and completely re-recorded. It's got a huge wall of guitar sound, surprisingly heavy for a black metal band, in place of more typical reedy buzzy BM mosquito guitar. There's thick snarling monster riffs, dense and multilayered, spread thick over furious pounding drumming and howled strangulated vocals (very Weakling-esque). Now you might think the world needs another Nordic style black metal band like a hole in the head, no matter how amazing they are. BUT, Wolves In The Throne Room do it SO WELL, and write amazing songs, and manage to mix it up like crazy, incorporating all sorts of un-BM elements, gorgeous folky ambience, weirdly TRUE metal riffing, even some ethereal angelic female vocals. It all somehow fits, and makes the Wolves' black metal black enough to remain true, but fucked up enough to matter. Plus they probably do think the world needs need a hole in the head...
You'd never guess from listening to this record that the WITTR are a bunch of short haired, furry vested, tight panted, scruffy indie dudes from Olympia. But don't let that put you off, impossibly true metal nerds, just close your eyes, listen close, and all you'll see are grim, 10 foot tall, spike encrusted leather clad warriors of the misty, ancient northwestern forests... Yep, we're surely excited to have their "real cd" debut, at long last!!
Anyone fortunate enough to have seen Wolves In The Throne Room in a live setting will probably tell you the same thing: the band simply KILLS. Not to say that their albums aren't totally amazing - they are - but seeing these guys live is an experience that will stay with you for a while. It's probably a safe bet to assume that for many people, especially here in the states, seeing the Wolves in concert is their first exposure to live black metal. And it would certainly stand as quite an introduction to the transcendental power of true (your goddamn right it's TRUE) black metal. While WITTR on record presents a band who really understand the importance of crafting a beautiful and well thought out collection of songs, complete with otherworldly ambience and a keen attention to production, on stage they are more inclined to rip your face off and scald your eardrums into cinders. They are unstoppable, frighteningly intense, and seriously, loud as fuck - just a few of the reasons why we are so stoked to have this new cd+dvd set chronicling the band's 2008 set at the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands. The sound here is upfront and relentless, and even though things are surprisingly clear, none of the band's power is lost, if anything, this should be a good indication of how awesome they are and why their records are so damn great; WITTR isn't some half-assed studio project by guys who are afraid or unwilling to step into the public realm, they are a REAL band, one that rocks, shreds, and destroys everything in its path. The vocals here are pretty unbelievable, maybe even better than on record, just insane throatshredding goodness and perfect for the sonic assault the band whips up. The dvd features the concert presented in an appropriately murky setting under blue light. It will probably have you longing for the actual live experience more than anything, but we certainly have no complaints. Classic stuff for sure.
Olympia, Washington's black metal titans Wolves In The Throne Room follow up their acclaimed Two Hunters album with this lengthy two song vinyl only ep, the first to feature their new lineup, and the band's most focused and hypnotic creation to date. The formula has not changed, it's just sounding, well, better than ever before. More insular. While Wolves in the Throne Room has always possessed a talent for wrapping majestic melodies within relentless black metal riffing, Malevolent Grain most successfully blurs the distinction between blissed out beauty and brutality. The band is shrouded in an ever present haze of melancholy and despair that is just so much more genuine and effective than guys prancing around in corpse paint like some sort of old school black metal tribute act. They speak as a unique voice in an international scene where so many bands are preoccupied with their bullshit fairy tale take on satanism. All the while, they are heavy as fuck. A Wolves In The Throne Room song plays out as an expansive journey of multiple chapters before fading away into eternity. There is tons of ambience and atmosphere along the way, complete with gorgeous, clearly sung female vocals (courtesy once again of Jamie Meyers, formerly of Hammers of Misfortune), somber melodies, and warm waves of creeping distortion, but ultimately this is total BLACK METAL. Yes, all caps. "METAL" being the key word, the band never falls short on the blazing riffs, unstoppable drumming, and rasping vocals that they built their name on.
In keeping with Southern Lord's reputation for visual, as well as musical, awesomeness, Malevolent Grain comes housed in an appropriately hallucinatory jacket featuring blurry images of lush forest untouched by humanity and the band's new candelabra-esque logo embossed in stunning gold foil. Those who act quickly may be of the lucky few (er, lucky thousand, apparently) to receive the ep on cool "Dark Forest Green" vinyl. Oh, and a quick note, this record is to be played at 45 rpm. Considering how much we were digging it at the wrong speed for over six minutes, you know this comes to you highly recommended.
Southern Lord snagged 'em. Good call, since Olympia, WA's Wolves In The Throne Room are one of the absolute best things that US Black Metal has got going right now. Sure there's lots of awesome, oxymoronically one-man "hordes" (Leviathan, Xasthur, Draugar) but no offense meant, this is an actual band, one that you can go see live, y'know? And they slay. Firmly (and intentionally and worshipfully) in the tradition of the now legendary San Francisco epic black metal act Weakling, WITTR build the same sort of trance-inducing, technically tight, extended compositions (here, up to over 18 minutes in length) of unending grimness and sheer majestic, melancholic beauty.
Post-rock dynamics, classical-sounding female vocals, newagey synth drone, acoustic intros, and other more-prog-than-metal elements are utilized with ease, while the music, in all its ambient-stormclouds-pregnant-with-ominous-doom glory, is such that would waft and wail through the tall trees of the dark forest of black metal myth exclusively... a forest that these dwellers of the Pacific Northwest can easily conjure, living amidst dark primeval woods for real.
AQ customers of the black metal persuasion won't need much persuading, WITTR's previous record Diadem Of 12 Stars is one of our biggest black metal sellers already and this new album has been eagerly anticipated. And it's good. As if there was much doubt of that.
Packaged in a handsome and very sinister looking miniature lp-style gatefold sleeve, this cd is another stellar offering showing that these Wolves are in the Throne Room not as interlopers, but by divine (or, rather, diabolical) right of rule. Along with Bay Area bands like Ludicra, Leviathan, Asunder, and Hammers Of Misfortune, WITTR are leading the pack in putting the West Coast on the map as the home of avant-metal artistry, Nordically blackened or otherwise opposed to the norm.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been wanting to list something from this band forever, ever since a mysterious cd-r wrapped in fur (!) arrived at our doorstep. Already thinking it might be good just 'cause of their cool name, we threw it on and were floored by the Wolves' take on grim and majestic black metal. Punk rockers embracing their darksides and spewing forth a relentless torrent of buzzing blasting blackened thrash. Wow. We pestered the band to get copies of that first demo but for some reason could never get more than a few at a time. Well, the Wolves finally showed up in the shop this last week, bearing gifts! Copies of their brand new cd-r, LOTS of copies, so we got a bunch and can finally give everyone a chance to check out Wolves In The Throne Room!
This second cd-r featues a new lineup, longer songs (three songs, 13 minute, 12 minute and 24 minutes) and a sound much closer to what the band had been shooting for all along, according to Wolves drummer Aaron. That sound is a galloping grim black metal not that unlike Leviathan, Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone and the like. In fact it sounds quite a bit like a more lo-fi version of SF black metal legends Weakling. Haunting minor key melodies, relentlessly blasting double kick drumming and repetitive riffs that become hypnotic almost-drones. The Wolves add plenty of their own flavor with plenty of weird folk interludes, creepy swirling melodies, stretches of plodding doom, mathy rhythms and moaning ambience. These guys have been playing around here this last couple weeks, and admitedly it was pretty weird seeing a bunch of raggedy indie punk rockers, curly hair, fur vests, tight pants, t-shirts and tennis shoes, blasting out such a torrent of howling blackened fury. But what these guys lack in spiked armbands, windmilling long hair, and corpsepaint, they make up for in sheer, gloriously grim black metal pummel! These are limited of course. In cool black cardboard sleeves and silkscreened in silver metallic ink. Nice.
We also have a handful of their first demo, if you want one mention it in the comments section of your order and if we have any left we'll grab you one. By the way, the band will be recording a proper cd, to be released in early 2006 on Vendlus Records!
Metatron, one of the masterminds behind UK black metal weirdos Meads Of Asphodel, strikes out on his own (sort of), to craft this twisted slab of Celtic pagan black metal, rooted in the history of the British Celtic Arthurian age, which apparently has historically been misrepresented by erroneous histories and manufactured mythologies. Probably better to let the band themselves describe the lyrical content:
"The album reflects a period around 500AD, that existed after the Romans were recalled to defend their homeland from the Barbarian migrations, the same land hungry hordes that were to engulf the warriors and tribes of Britain. This was� the era of the Germanic and British wars, and the Arthurian defence of our sacred soil that was to end in defeat at Camlan. The main essence of the lyrical concept is the great victory over the Germanic invaders, at The Battle of Baddon Hill around 500 AD, (also known as Mons Badonicus) Baddon Hill was the great Victory that this album surmounts [sic]."
Metatron has recruited a whole gaggle of musical kindred spirits, British and otherwise, including members of Hawkwind, Graveland (!!), Yggdrasil and others, to craft this pagan epic, which definitely has all the stuff you love about pagan black metal (you do love pagan BM don't you?), sure there's plenty of blast and buzz, chug and crunch, but there's even MORE flutes and fiddles, clean chanted vox, gypsy folk sounding melodies, swirling synths, long stretches of fluttery folkiness, swirling almost psychedelic post rock sounding crescendos, there's a bunch of sax too (?!), acoustic guitars, with most of the songs tending toward a seriously seventies British folk sound (albeit often with growled vokills), but all of that pagan / renn faire style swoosh and shimmer, strum and soar, is definitely somewhat balanced by occasional bursts of fantastically dramatic triumphant metal majesty and churning, chugging murky blackened buzz, which are also coincidentally infused with plenty of pomp and majesty, and still more folky flutter.
Meads fans will freak for sure, but anyone into pagan blackness, or metallic folk, or just strange high concept folk infused heaviness, would do well to dig into The Wolves Of Avalon's sonic history of olde Britain.
Previously known as Pussygutt, this male/female duo from Idaho continue to craft grimly powerful blackened folk flecked dronescapes that defy easy categorization. The name Pussygutt probably put off plenty of people, and while Wolvserpent perhaps better captures the group's ominous tone and black metal leanings, it still leaves much about the music, and its makers, quite mysterious.
Two sidelong sprawls, the first a haunting bit of dirgey folk, laid over lush shimmery drones, a gorgeous funeral lament, that only hints at the abject brutality these two are capable of, instead, simply invoking a darkly melancholic mood, eventually guitars drift in, plucking out simple sad melodies, while the strings continue to swirl and soar, gorgeously tense and intense, cinematic and soundtracky. It's not until nearly the nine minute mark that the drums come in, as do the electric guitars, laying down a sort of skeletal doom framework, a different kind of downtuned slowbuild creep, pounding drums, muted riffage, the strings and Sunroof!-like drones growing in intensity, a super intense bit of droney tribal drift, but with an odd start stop arrangement, peppering the lush droning plod with little bits of more traditionally metallic riffage. Eventually some shrieked vocals swoop in, and the song stretches out into a strangley psychedelic epic, a bastardized mix of Godspeed like post rock, avant ur-drone drift, funeral doom, and glacial black metal buzz, all muted and blurred as if mixed by Tim Hecker.
The flipside takes up right where the first side left off, long layered high end tones, a lush undulating upper register dronescape, haunting and hypnotically shimmery, before finally lurching into some seriously metallic crunch, a lumbering doomy dirge, buzzing riffs, caveman drums, all wrapped in swirling swaths of reverbed vocals and superdistorted streaks of ambient melody, erupting into occasional blasts of uptempo chuggery, but always slipping back into that stuttery creep, and constantly wreathed in a lush otherworldly sonic haze.
Like Pussygutt before, Wolvserpent continue to hone their unclassifiable sound, a melding together of dark hushed folk, minimal drone music, and blackened dooooooom. Their name change probably won't really make 'em much more commercially appealing, but who needs that, when you're ruling the darkened otherworld of psychedelic avant heaviness???
We made Wolvserpent's Blood Seed lp our Record Of The Week on list #358 back in November of last year, Wolvserpent being the group previously known as Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho capable of crafting grimly powerful blackened folk flecked dronescapes that defy easy categorization. And as we mentioned then, the name Pussygutt probably put off plenty of people, thus the shift to Wolvserpent, and while that name definitely better captures the group's ominous tone and black metal leanings, it still leaves much about the music, and its makers, quite mysterious.
Yet for as much as we dug Pussygutt, and love their new Wolvserpent incarnation, we somehow managed to miss completely, the Wolvserpent lp that preceded Blood Seed, a record called Gathering Strengths. Thankfully, the mighty Crucial Blast have stepped in, and combined both Blood Seed AND Gathering Strengths into a handsome double disc compendium, the first disc of which, is the first time on cd for the aforementioned Blood Seed, two epic sprawls, the first a haunting bit of dirgey folk, laid over lush shimmery drones, a gorgeous funeral lament, that only hints at the abject brutality these two are capable of, instead, simply invoking a darkly melancholic mood, eventually guitars drift in, plucking out simple sad melodies, while the strings continue to swirl and soar, gorgeously tense and intense, cinematic and soundtracky. It's not until nearly the nine minute mark that the drums come in, as do the electric guitars, laying down a sort of skeletal doom framework, a different kind of downtuned slowbuild creep, pounding drums, muted riffage, the strings and Sunroof!-like drones growing in intensity, a super intense bit of droney tribal drift, but with an odd start stop arrangement, peppering the lush droning plod with little bits of more traditionally metallic riffage. Eventually some shrieked vocals swoop in, and the song stretches out into a strangley psychedelic epic, a bastardized mix of Godspeed like post rock, avant ur-drone drift, funeral doom, and glacial black metal buzz, all muted and blurred as if mixed by Tim Hecker.
The second 'movement' takes up right where the first left off, long layered high end tones, a lush undulating upper register dronescape, haunting and hypnotically shimmery, before finally lurching into some seriously metallic crunch, a lumbering doomy dirge, buzzing riffs, caveman drums, all wrapped in swirling swaths of reverbed vocals and superdistorted streaks of ambient melody, erupting into occasional blasts of uptempo chuggery, but always slipping back into that stuttery creep, and constantly wreathed in a lush otherworldly sonic haze.
Which brings us to Gathering Strengths, originally released on lp by Olde English Spelling Bee back in 2009, like Blood Seed, a single track split into two epic parts, the first, subtitled "Silence Within", begin with the chirping of crickets, which is soon joined by some haunting distant low end thrum, a dreamlike swell, which is soon joined by a more intense layer of buzzing tones, overlapping woodwinds, rife with mysterious overtones, a creepy harmony, the buzz and shimmer drifting in and out, the minimal drift gradually coalescing into an intense bit of dronemusic, like a blackened Phil Niblock, while off in the distance, barely there percussion surfaces, fragmented slo-mo rhythms, while more and more layers are piled on top, super intense and trancelike, until the woodwinds drift off, leaving a feedback laced stretch of blackdronedrift, softly clattery and corrosive, A wolf Eyes-ian industrial sprawl, that transforms into some hauntingly lovely gypsy like folk, driven by a mournful fiddle melody, the sound swells and smolders, all lilting melodies, and cinematic atmosphere, the vibe like a doom folk Astor Piazolla, that is until a MASSIVE avalanche of washed out downtuned doomcrush rolls in, that gorgeous fiddle now all tangled up in a heaving SUNNO)))-like churn, which manages to be both brutal and blackened, dreamy and so totally lovely. Impossibly pretty heaviness, this whole double disc worth it for that 5 or 6 minute stretch alone.
But there's still the second part, that one subtitled "Spirit Walker", this one starts off in seriously gorgeous drone-folk mode, the band laying down a lush, mesmerizing, hauntingly tense layered drone backdrop, over which the violin keens and cries, accompanied by simple shamanistic drumming, the result a darkly mesmerizing glimpse into some lost forest glade, where some shadowy priest like visages are gathered around dancing black flames, conjuring up spirits from another realm, but like the first track, this one too gradually grows heavier, with the addition of a slow thick dirge-y doomy riff, not super distorted or grumbly, but more softly buzzy, the chords ringing out and fading until they seem to bleed into the sounds around them, only to have the next chord take over, what we said about the last few minutes of the first track, well, we could say it about this whole track, worth the price of admission all on its own, a hazy tranced out chunk of heavy, heady, forest folk drone drift bliss.
Both records are incredible, and work amazingly well together, and like Pussygutt before, Wolvserpent continue to hone their unclassifiable sound, a melding together of dark hushed folk, minimal drone music, and blackened dooooooom. Their name change probably won't really make 'em much more commercially appealing, but who needs that, when you're ruling the darkened otherworld of psychedelic avant heaviness???
Dark, ritualistic, blackened ambience, and experimental psychedelic black metal from members of Dead Reptile Shrine, Ride For Revenge, Will Over Matter, Blutleuchte and Cloama, all of whom we've raved about separately on the aQ list before, and who have all come together to create this hour long songsuite, that fuses twisted electronics, shimmering kosmische drift, minimal percussive post industrial murk, and tranced out hypno-psych mesmer. Separated into four movements, and given titles like "Satan Universe Moloch", "Bug Humanity", "She male Vegetarian" and "Neptunean Crystal Rain", at first blush, the sound seems to fall closest to the weirdo minimal electronics of Will Over Matter, the opener laying down a gristly sprawl of glitched out electronic buzz, but bolstered by some dreamy, almost krautrock sounding guitar, a twisted kosmische / avant electronic hybrid, those guitars soon dropping out, leaving a wild tangle of damaged FX and mutated synths, a darkly chaotic blacknoise, that eventually resolves into some dark, almost John Carpenter sounding cinematic dronemusic. Those hazy soundtracky atmospherics bleed into the second track, this time accompanied by some twisted vocalizations, wreathed in static and distortion, and drifting beneath thick undulating sheets of synth, everything peppered with bursts of glitch and crackle, moody and ominous, haunting but weirdly tranquil. Soon industrial rhythms surface and enter the fray, they remain muted and in the background, while once again, the electronics take over, this time drifting atop mutated vocals, pitch shifted and heavily effected, not to mention fluctuating fields of woozy melodies and strange, damaged samples.
It's not until track three ("She Male Vegetarian") that there's any actual black metal, and even then, there's a buzzing blackened main riff, but instead of exploding into a furious blast, that riff lumbers ominously through fields of chaotic murky drumming, the result much more trancelike and weirdly hypnotic, and quickly that riff splinters into a weird stretch of chiming distorted harmonics, and tangled sonic skree, before slipping back into the black churn, now joined by more guitars, the sound more lush and expansive, but still woozy and stumbling, you can definitely hear the Dead Reptile Shrine here, but before you know it, the sound shifts, transformed into a lovely bit of soft synth ambience, before once again, exploding into a field of blackened power electronics, smeared into something droned out and murkily mesmerizing, finishing off with what sounds like a bit of sampled Finnish folk. Finally, the close is announced by the sound of thunder, which is quickly subsumed by some bleak, blurry, tinny black metal riffage, smeared into staticky swaths of blacknoise, laced with moaning, anguished vokills, the sound growing gradually less and less noisy and buzzy, another barrage of alien electronics soon taking over, the record finishing off with a weird bit of black ambient electronic ritualism, that grows more hushed and haunting, before fading out completely.
Twisted and lovely, bleak and black, mysterious and bizarre, minimal and murky, fans of any / all of the members' other projects will no doubt dig. But best be quick, this is LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!! These are the ONLY copies we will ever be able to get, and once they're gone, they are gone for good!!!
Who better to spin a metallic tale of terror concerning a pair of female vampires and their Countess Bathory-like demonically possessed adversary, than Wooden Stake - sludgy, female-fronted horror fiends extraordinaire? This boy-girl duo (new boy this time, same girl) disgorge the doomed-out death-and-roll riffery, with bassist/vocalist Vanessa Nocera again providing a sinister showcase of morose melodic singing counterpointed with chaotic cackle and full-on guttural death metal vokills. She's both as witchy and as wretched as she wants to be across such ghastly chapters in this vampiric concept album as "Cross-Scalded Flesh" and "Curse Of The Cauldron Countess". Think Jex Thoth meets Obituary on a King Diamond kick.
As we've said before, regular aQuarius shoppers should know what to expect from Wooden Stake: female fronted, horror fixated, riff rituals of slomo sludge, that are part Black Sabbath, part Jex Thoth, part Obituary. The first thing we ever listed by 'em, a limited cd-r entitled Vampire Plague Exorcism, proved quite popular, and is now totally out of print. But, now you'll find those tracks again here, on this new compact disc which collects that 2010 debut together with a bunch of other rare, out-of-print recordings (an unlucky 13 cuts in all) from this cult doom/death duo (one boy, one girl, all ghoulish).
Here's what we said about Vampire Plague Exorcism (tracks 9-13 here), which pretty much sums up the entire Wooden Stake ouvre:
So it's beginning to seem like it's a happening new quasi genre of sorts, this "doomy, black magic metal band with witchy sounding female frontperson" thing. There's Jex Thoth, and The Devil's Blood, and Blood Ceremony... and now Wooden Stake, an extremely doomy duo who've seen more horror movies than you have, featuring Vanessa Nocera on vocals and bass, with Wayne "Elektrokutioner" Sarantopoulos handling the guitars, keyboards, and drums. Like the other abovementioned bands, Wooden Stake is Sabbathy and '70s, with lumbering riffs and an occult vibe, though the difference is that they come from more of a death metal background, and are thus a lot darker and creepier. Electrokutioner is in a bunch of other doomed-out death metal bands we like, among 'em Decrepitaph, Scaremaker, and Encoffination; Vanessa is also in Scaremaker, and just joined Skeletal Spectre. So the guitars are not just thick but EVIL, the plodding drumming has a caveman wallop, and Vanessa's spooky siren song singing style sometimes switches to guttural growls. Imagine Jex Thoth wearing an Incantation t-shirt. Very underground sounding for sure, underground as in "from the grave".
But, say you've got V.P.E. already. Besides the upgrade to an actual cd, what else do you get here? Plenty. In fact, everything, almost, apart from last year's full-length Dungeon Prayers And Tombyard Serenades. There's the 2 cuts from the Black Caped Carnivore 7" (about which we said, that the title track was perhaps the best we'd yet heard from 'em), 2 more from an earlier 7" we never got (Invoke The Ageless Witch), their song from a split 7" with Druid Lord, and for completeness' sake (since it's actually still available), the 2 tracks from their great split cd with Blizaro. You might have some of this stuff, but we didn't even have it all... And also there's one previously unreleased song, "Night Of The Banshee"! So, definitely an essential collection for Wooden Stake fans who might have missed out on any of those limited edition releases, or alternately a fine place to start becoming a Wooden Stake fan if you're into the idea of checking out their brand of heavy & haunting metal, bewitched and brutal... The cd's booklet includes full lyrics, thumbnail cover graphics from all the featured releases, and a pair of b&w pictures of the two bandmembers (in which you'll see Wayne proudly brandishing a truly horrific, eldritch looking guitar, something like a Lovecraftian flying-V, all melted and monstrous).
The grim and ghoulish doom/death duo of Wayne (aka Elektrokutioner) and Vanessa (aka the Funeral Mistress??) are back with a seven inch slab of thick black vinyl to stab thru yr ears... well ok, it's plastic and not pointy, but does the job Wooden Stake style regardless. After their (now totally out of print) debut cd-r Vampire Plague Exorcism, and more recent split cd with AQ faves Blizaro, maybe you know what to expect from Wooden Stake: female fronted, horror fixated, riff rituals of slomo sludge, that are part Black Sabbath, part Jex Thoth, part Obituary... they deliver all that here, with the A-side alone being one of their best songs we've heard yet.
Real soon we'll also have WS's debut full length cd, the awesomely titled Dungeon Prayers & Tombyard Serenades, so watch out!!
In the meantime, grab this two song 7", it's limited to 500 hand-numbered copies....
Now, our appetites fully whetted by their debut out of print cd-r ep, their more recent split cd with Blizaro, and their 7" single reviewed last list, here at last is the first full-length from the ultra-cult (cultra?) Wooden Stake, one of the only boy-girl doom-death duos around, and in any case our fave, as the most "extreme metal" example of the female-fronted occult rock mini-phenomenon happenin' now, a la Jex Thoth, Blood Ceremony, The Devil's Blood, etc.
We've described 'em as playing "slomo sludge", that's "part Black Sabbath, part Jex Thoth, part Obituary" and that's still just about right. Yeah, imagine Jex Thoth occasionally channelling her inner Cookie Monster, that'd be Wooden Stake's Vanessa Nocera. She's the wicked, witchy woman on vocals and bass, while Wayne "Elektrokutioner" Sarantopoulos (also of Decrepitaph, Encoffination, Father Befouled, etc.) handles the guitar and drums, and would slay you in a staring contest, no doubt, to judge from his picture here.
Their music is scary stuff, too, and also wonderfully underground, old-school, and horror-kitschy. The album opens with "Cadaverum Caecorum Liber", yet another of metal's tributes to the Blind Dead movies, from '70s Spain. Nocera first intones the lyrics in spoken rather than sung style, double tracked, over a quietly gloomy guitar backing, lulling and almost lovely, before busting out some raspier vokills (and she'll have you know, by the way, that no effects were used on her voice anywhere on this album). The next track, "Salem, 1692", showcases her more melodic siren song style of singing, that's where the Jex Thoth comparisons come in (and we're also thinking Bliss Blood, a bit). But her throat-shredding deathlier vocals are also employed for contrast. Musically, the gloominess of course continues, lo-fi rumbling riff repetition that's a doomic delight, grinding down down down into the ground. And so it goes, the many moods of Wooden Stake (gloomy, gloomier, gloomiest) highlighted by the multitracking of Nocera's varied vocal personas - she's a one-woman coven, indeed.
All nine of the Dungeon Prayers and Tombyard Serenades found here hit the spot for us, this album never lacking for eldritch atmosphere, whether conveyed by quiet creepiness or loud riffiness. Ferinstance, behold the instrumental interlude "Cemetery Closes At Sundown", a gentle somber solo, leading into the lumbering lurch-out of "Skullcoven", a composition combining bashing brutality with sloppy psychedelic Sabbathry. Which would describe a lot of this record, really. Electric Wizard fans, here's a witchier witchcult for you!
Well, hopefully we've already convinced you in previous reviews to worship Wooden Stake, and like us, you were just waiting for this to come out. But if you haven't yet been initiated, appropriate attention to this album under certain conditions (by the light of the full moon, in a graveyard) ought to do the trick...of course, that's right where it puts you, anyway.
So it's beginning to seem like it's a happening new quasi genre of sorts, this "doomy, black magic metal band with witchy sounding female frontperson" thing. There's Jex Thoth, and The Devil's Blood, and Blood Ceremony... and now Wooden Stake, an extremely doomy duo who've seen more horror movies than you have, featuring Vanessa Nocera on vocals and bass, with Wayne "Elektrokutioner" Sarantopoulos handling the guitars, keyboards, and drums.
Like the other abovementioned bands, Wooden Stake is Sabbathy and '70s, with lumbering riffs and an occult vibe, though the difference is that they come from more of a death metal background, and are thus a lot darker and creepier. Electrokutioner is in a bunch of other doomed-out death metal bands we like, among 'em Decrepitaph, Scaremaker, and Encoffination, the latter of which is also highlighted this list; Vanessa is also in Scaremaker, and just joined Skeletal Spectre. So the guitars are not just thick but EVIL, the plodding drumming has a caveman wallop, and Vanessa's spooky siren song singing style sometimes switches to guttural growls. Imagine Jex Thoth wearing an Incantation t-shirt. Very underground sounding for sure, underground as in "from the grave". So underground in fact that we didn't even think we'd ever get to list this, their debut 5-track ep, as it was limited to a mere 100 copies, and sold out before we could get any. But fortunately Hexamorphosis Productions (a sub label of old school death metal purveyors Razorback by the way) decided to have another handful of these pro-printed cdr-s pressed up, so now we have them, for the moment, at least.
If you miss out, though (and also if you don't), be aware there's a less limited, upcoming full length to look forward too, and also a split release they'll soon be doing with recent AQ Record Of The Weekers BLIZARO!
Well, heck this is a no-brainer, gotta be stoked by this, considering that we highlighted Wooden Stake's debut ep Vampire Plague Exorcism last list, and made Blizaro's recent full-length City Of The Living Nightmare a Record Of The Week not long before that too! Obviously, eagerly awaited, so Hail Satan it's here already - the split release that sees these horror lovin' lunatics together on one cd with exclusive new material. First up, there's the deathly, doomed-out duo Wooden Stake, one of the heaviest and gnarliest of the current wave of female fronted "occult rock" acts a la Jex Thoth and The Devil's Blood; followed by (mostly) one-man band Blizaro, who continues to channel the sinister soundtracks of Italian giallo film through a psychedelic, DIY doom metal prism. Totaling five songs, 43 minutes (two tracks, 14'44" of Wooden Stake; three tracks, 27'53" of Blizaro) this disc is a delirious dose of underground doom weirdness indeed.
Wooden Stake gallop into view with "Death Reads The Black Tarot", Vanessa Nocera's witchy wail leading the charge, somberly supported by the rumbling riffage and bashing battery of Wayne Sarantopoulos (aka drummer Elektrokutioner, of Decrepitaph, Father Befouled, and Encoffination infamy, among others). Their other offering, "The Legend Of Blood Castle" is equally grim and gruesome, the Blood Castle practically coagulating around your ears as you listen to its legend...
Then the balance of the disc is given over to the bizarre progged-out rites of Blizaro, conducted via copious quantities of lumbering bass heavy trudge, psychotic vox, and psychedelic six string freakout. The tracks "Night Fumes" and "Edgar's Blood" are both about one half maniac metal chuggery, one half ominous church organ atmospheres, with a bit more melody on the metal side of the equation with regards to the latter. And then Blizaro winds things up with the calm yet creepy synth soundscape, "Final Escape/Zombie Feast", a Moog-laden mood piece. Nice!
Limited edition release, never to be repressed, FYI.
Latest chunk of blackened whatthefuck from these Swedish weirdos, who most long time readers of the aQ list will already be familiar with. Their modus operandi is a twisted take on the sort of midtempo Burzumic buzz, flecked with bits of folks, strange carnivalesque filigree, and INSANE vocals, from croony clean singing, to throat shredding maniacal shrieking, to growled monster gurgle, all wrapped round some seriously bent black metal, loping and plodding, melancholy and mournful, miserable and doomy.
Woods Of Infinity are not super fucked up in the way a lot of the black metal we love is, retarded, damaged, stumbling, etc. They are however WEIRD AS FUCK, the music for sure, but especially the vocals, and apparently the lyrics, which according to one online source involves a serious love of young girls among other perversions, a truly twisted, surreal, abstract, their weirdness deftly woven into their folky blackened dirges.
This is definitely the best sounding WoI record, very loud and heavy and clear, with lots of acoustic guitars, strange keyboards, out of tune pianos, really bizarre samples, and some of the strangest songs we've heard from these guys yet.
"Lakttagen" begins with some gauzy ambient piano, the guitars come in all filthy and crumbling and gritty, the vocals a raspy cackle, that gets more and more hysterical as the track progresses, the piano plinking out a sad melody, over a buzzy wash of guitar grit. "Avgrund" is a gorgeous epic mournful doomic dirge, but the vocals are some sort of twisted dramatic top 40 croon, all soulful and emotional, almost cringeworthy, but somehow it works. How about "Stilla", another killer doomy din, with strangely orchestral flourishes, choir like background vocals, but then the main vocals join in, a sort of drunken howling, like Lemmy on a bender, caterwauling in Swedish over the dark doleful melancholia underneath.
Then there's "Forsta Augusti", maybe the weirdest of all, a strange sort of shuffling metal calypso, with still more tortured vocal mewlings, over a groovy exotic melody, and a cha cha cha sort of beat. And it just keeps getting weirder and weirder, if that were even possible, more strange fucked up vocal stylings, long stretches of creepy ambience, blasts of almost buzzing black metal, long haunting samples, epic majestic stein hoisting metal sea shanties, shimmering dark folk, and more that we could possibly list in a single review. Remember these are the guys who covered Barry Manilow on another record, so most of this madness should come as no surprise.
Definitely way too weird for the average black metaller. But metal fans into the freaky and the bizarre, the confusing and completely fucked will dig this big time, and quite possibly non metal folks might too, as long as they possess a distinct penchant for weird shit, and have no aversion to some buzzing blackness in their strange sounds...
