Inspired perhaps by that brief moment in 1968 when Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi was a member of Jethro Tull, German throwback psychedelic blues rockers Wucan specialize in bellbottomed HEAVY FLUTE JAMS MAN!!!!!! Or wo-man. 'Cause Wucan is one of those female fronted retro-proto-metal bands that are so happenin' today. Female-fronted (she sings, in English and German, and is the one playing the flute) but not as "occult" as a lot of the other groups that have jumped on this particular bandwagon (a bandwagon we aren't at all opposed to, by the way). They've got the flute and the tough heavy fuzz riffs, but Wucan's jams come to reveal more of a funky/groovy vibe rather than a witchy one. And they bring in some of their trippy native krautrock heritage, as well (being German they also think it's ok to use the punning song title "Face In The Kraut" on here), wrapping things up with the 15+ minute "Wandersmann" filled with blues licks and lotsa spacey, freaky FX, choogling along, space truckin' all the way far out. So stuff here for Blood Ceremony fans and Acid Mothers Temple types too.
A Danish prog / power metal band named for Emily Bronte's classic gothic novel? Scoff if you must, but much like their last record The Shadow Cabinet, Salt is another classic chunk of over the top, epic, folk-flecked power metal. As we've mentioned before, the true test of a record is the 'why do you like it' test, where when you hear a song, or a record, without any knowledge of who it is, and thus no preconceived notions, you're forced to decide based simply on the sounds. Which is why at aQ, if we ever ask another employee what's playing, we can expect the response 'Why? Do you like it?' Which has most definitely resulted in someone claiming that yes, they do indeed like something, only to discover, that it was something they hated, or at least thought they hated.
Well, one of us was in a record store in another country, and Wuthering Heights was playing, the whole record, and it was incredible, enough that it was quickly purchased, and then obsessed over, which also meant returning home and buying EVERY record these guys ever made.
So we were pretty thrilled to discover a brand new Wuthering Heights, and we're happy to report it's just as great, bombastic, epic, majestic, over the top, like power metal should be. But Wuthering Heights definitely do their own thing, sure there's nimble super technical leads, wild rapidfire chugging guitars, soaring super dramatic Iron Maiden style vocals, but WH slip into strange folky breakdowns, breakdowns that often continue right on into the heavy bits, resulting in blasting portions of heaviness, that almost sound like super charged folk music, or death metal jigs or black metal polka... As if that weren't enough, they're also super proggy, with tons of parts, complicated arrangements, and they do all this while crafting super catchy songs. Obviously if you're into groups like Lost Horizon, Blind Guardian, Hammerfall, and other power metal purveyors, then this is right up your alley, but if you're into classic metal, epic and heavy, with killer vox and lots of solos, this might be worth checking out. And again, for power metal, this stuff is pretty weird, and thus we find ourselves digging this big time!
Some time ago (in the fall of 2006) our Andee took a trip to Japan. When he was there, he happened to visit a few (ok, many) record stores. In one of 'em, there was some amazingly epic power metal music playing. Andee and his travel buddy Josh both were instantly intrigued. It was like, the best thing they'd ever heard. Turned out it was a Danish prog-metal band called, believe it or not, Wuthering Heights. Andee bought a copy immediately. Josh too. When Andee got back to the States, Wuthering Heights was one of the "finds" that he gloated about, though his pleasure in doing so was tempered by the fact that mere weeks later, a (much cheaper) domestic USA version was released, with an entire bonus DVD disc added on! (The dvd featuring a live performance at the ProgPower USA fest in '04.)
This is that cd, and dvd. Andee can chalk up the extra expense of the Japanese version he got as going towards the greater good of finding out about this so we can share it with all of you... Stirring, sweeping, truly powerful power metal played with virtuoso precision, blazing away at 100mph, the speed taking nothing away from their grandiose, folky melodies. And best of all, the vocals. Nils Patrik Johansson has a commanding voice, his soaring singing with a rough edge that reminds us a lot of Ronnie James Dio himself!
So, technically superb. And Wuthering Heights are also eccentric and individual enough (with their proggy/folky parts), conjuring their own fantastic world, to stand apart from the generic Euro power metal hordes. And plus, they kick ass. Heck they're even unafraid of some harsh guitar skree now and then. Definitely worthy, on the strength of this album at any rate, to join the manly vanguard of the non-cheesy (ok, slightly cheesy) and less-generic Euro power metal hordes alongside the likes of AQ faves Blind Guardian, Falconer, and Lost Horizon (RIP).
Second album from former Ozzy guitar demigod Zakk Wylde's solo Southern stoner-metal project Black Label Society. The first one was quite a surprise, revealing that not only is Zakk a man of fleet fingers on the fretboard, but that he possesses a talent for creating extremely heavy and melodic post-grunge stoner rock with whiskey-soaked vocals that blows the likes of late-model Corrosion of Conformity out of the (swamp) water. This new album is another testament to that. Definitely for fans of Acid Bath and Down! Now here's a message from the man himself, culled from an internet '80s-metal mailing list: This is a message from Zakk Wylde. To all you Society Dwelling Mother Fuckers, Wanted to let you know that Black Label Society's new disc, "Stronger Than Death" hits the street today. Go check it out! Its heavy as fuck, I'm doing this film right now with Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston called "Metal Gods" for Warner Bros. Its a metal movie from 1975-85 and it is going to kick ass. I'm doing all the guitars on the soundtrack. Nick Catanese is in the movie as well. The first single from Stronger Than Death is Counterfeit God and Mark Wahlberg plays bass in the video. Its fucking hesterical! Request the tune at radio and video at MTV. I need your support to make this
happen! Trying to get on the road with Motley, Megadeath and Anthrax. Going out with Pantera in the fall when they are done with Ozzfest. Also, Ozzy asked me to write his next disc which I can promise you will make Ozzmosis look like a BackStreet Boys cd. Send this e-mail to everyone on your list and BLEED BLACK LABEL. BLACK LABEL SOCIETY FUCK YEAH! All the best, Zakk Wylde
We've always been huge fans of Finnish black metallers Wyrd (not sure how you pronounce it, wuurd, or weird), their blend of blasting black buzz and Finnish folk was always hard to resist. The vibe was raw and grim, but with a lilting foresty feel to the less buzzy parts. Recently, all of the old discs have been reissued, we figured we'd finally be able to review all of those, but we thought what the heck, let's review the brand new one first and maybe work our way back, and then WOAH, have these guys thrown us for a loop or what, a HUGE stylistic shift has occurred in the Wyrd camp, and while we were sort of not into it at first, the more we listen to it, the more we're digging it. A lot.
Gone is the raw and the rough, the grim and the lo-fi, and in it's place a much more polished melodic doom, sounding at times a bit like Opeth if they were Finnish, or like some Spinefarm doom outfit. And while it's not as idiosyncratic as the older Wyrd records, it's pretty damn cool. Huge thick riffs, gorgeously melancholic leads, minor key melodies, gruff growled vocals, all midtempo and super polished. Like early Katatonia or even Khold, there's a definite sort of grungy vibe, each track anchored by a super hooky riff and that soaring minor key melody. Most of the tracks have a bridge where the song breaks down, sometimes into just the lead guitar harmonies, other times, a crackly acoustic version of the main refrain, but always, the band lurches back into action in that way that makes it nearly impossible to not start head banging. This may not have been what we were expecting, but damn if we're not WAY into this. Definitely for Fans of Katatonia, Khold and other melodic modern groove and doom outfits...
Wyrd Visions as the name for a psychedelic new weird wherever folk act? Hmm, a bit overt, perhaps, like naming your metal band Brutal Riffage or something. Too much on the telling side of the showing/telling divide taught in all beginning creative writing classes. How 'bout having a wyrd vision, putting it into words, and then using THAT for the name of your band? But, then again, it did pique our interest, and we wanted to know more... Wyrd Visions appear to be Swedish (perhaps now based in Toronto, Canada?) and have some affinity to the Nordic black metal scene despite sounding (almost) nothing like a black metal band. Instead, this is simple, sparse, funeral-paced, ominous doom-folk... the genre inhabited by such singular entities as Wolfmanger, Silvester Anfang, and Greg Weeks. Songs, especially the opening track "Sigill", are loooong, repetitive, hypnotic and haunting. Voices (both male and female) are gentle and hushed, cloaked in droning atmosphere on such cuts as "Bog Lord" and "Ceremony". The instrumentation is for the most part simple, wooden, acoustic. We mentioned black metal, in part due to the presence of "Freezing Moon", originally by seminal Norwegian black metallers Mayhem (another "overt" name we suppose). Wyrd Visions' version is soooo slow and spare and cruel and, actually, lovely. Maybe more affecting than the original which appeared on Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas album back in 1994. The rest of WV's album falls into the same mode for sure. And with the final track "Air-Conditioning" they break out the fuzzed electric guitar, bringing things more and more into an abstracted, molasses-drowned black metal riffing realm for reals.
One of two new releases on the newly launched Psalm 88 label, an offshoot of local black metal cassette label Acephale Winter, and the first we've heard from Xarkrinur, a FIFTEEN YEAR OLD one man (boy?) black metal band from Bangladesh (!), whose warped, home-brewed, weirdly produced depressive black buzz immediately reminded us of late great weirdo black metal horde Benighted Leams. Similarly stumbling and damaged, the guitars brittle and buzzy, the programmed drums machinelike and robotic, the rhythms stiff and strangely static, but it's the vocals, a raspy, whispery growl, that seal the deal, WAY up in the mix, eclipsing the music with every foul utterance, we're also reminded of local lo-fi sort-of-black-metal wacko Fastest, a similarly delivered, super dramatic hushed vokill style. But Xarkrinur conjure up a seriously stunning atmosphere, the second track, slows things down, and gets super atmospheric, with some strange harmonic overtones, and a murky, melancholy main riff, the vocals shift too, becoming more hissy and feral, but the music, super emotional and darkly lovely, sans black metal affectation, could be some tripped out lo-fi post rock. The other two songs here are similarly split, the third another brittle blast of raw primitive buzz, while the closer is a smoldering doomic creep, with thick crumbling chords (that sound like an organ almost), the vocals more wasted and weary, a harrowing sprawl of depressive downer doom that we are digging a LOT. For sure need to hear more from this guy.
LIMITED TO 88 COPIES!!
Recorded back around the time of Subliminal Genocide, Xasthur's debut on Hydra Head, which was a momentous occasion in the BM underground for sure at the time, with many of the troo grim hordes crying foul, an underground black metal icon signing to a very UN-underground label, but it worked, SG was incredible, murky and intense and epic and grim as fuck and no one could really argue with the Xasthur / Hydra Head union at that point. Things quickly changed though, the next few records found Xasthur mixing it up, once again to the chagrin of the same haters whose feathers were ruffled before. Personally, we loved those records too, we even dug the eventual switch to real drums, we've yet to really hate a Xasthur disc. Although as far as we're concerned, nothing will ever touch Nocturnal Poisoning, the first and still maybe best Xasthur record, and the 3 records that preceded the Hydra Head debut are nearly as good, The Funeral Of Being, Telepathic With The Deceased and To Violate The Oblivious. So this demo comes right after those records, and just before Subliminal Genocide, and sounds like it, it may be designated a 'demo' (although with Xasthur, it's hard to really imagine there's much sonic polishing that goes on from the demo stage to the record proper stage), but essentially it's a couple unreleased Xasthur jams, vintage Xasthur, and that's all we need to know.
The first track is a pounding, super distorted murkscape, the buzzing riffage laced with arpeggiated clean guitar melodies, those anguished howls, drums BURIED in the mix, a seasick ebb and flow, woozy and warped, and gloriously low fidelity, lumbering through thick fields of haze and buzz, a weirdly washed out ambient vibe, even at it's fiercest moments. The second track is way more mellow, a dreamy blurred doomic plod, the guitars muddy and WAY out of tune, which only makes the music that much more twisted and atonal and grim, this finds Xasthur at his most Striborg, creating mournful blackened dirges behind a constant wall of smeared fuzz, lo-fi hiss, and tangled gnarled riffage, occasionally slipping into weirdly melodic interludes, only to stumble back into the buzzy fray. There are some awesome sort-of-leads, flanged and seriously psychedelic, totally druggy doomy bleak buzz. So good. Fans will want this for sure, maybe not the place to start necessarily (that would be Nocturnal Poisoning or Subliminal Genocide) although this does make a pretty tempting two song teaser of muddy murky grim black genius. If we weren't already fans, this might lure us to the dark side for sure...
By now, Xasthur is practically a household name. Assuming your house is a cave, or painted black, or lit by torches, or painted black with the blood of your enemies, or filled with bones and skulls and a stereo pumping nothing but black metal. And actually, Xasthur, maybe more than any other one-man black metal outfit, has crossed over into the sort-of mainstream. His washed out blurred blackmetalscapes, definitely predicting the so-called "metalgaze" movement to come. His strange murky buzz, as blissed out as any of the current crop, albeit much more muddy and moody and subtly fucked up.
Finally, Xasthur's debut gets the deluxe reissue treatment, via the fine black souls at Hydra Head. Now repackaged in a spiffy deluxe gatefold, with all new artwork, improved sound, and most importantly, a whole bonus disc, the legendary Darkened Winter Promo 01, which almost no one we know has ever actually heard, which makes sense as it was limited to about ten cd-r's handed out to friends.
First the record itself. A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors was not in fact our introduction to Xasthur, that honor belongs to Nocturnal Poisoning, a record we still consider to be one of the all time greatest black metal records EVER. Released in 2002, that record was nearly perfect, a buzzing melancholy epic, as much about texture and timbre as songs and riffs. Atmospheric and intense and beautifully blackened.
A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors was in fact, the first full length Xasthur recording, never properly released until much later on Total Holocaust in 2004. And while it shares sonically a lot of what we love about Nocturnal Poisoning, it's much more raw and immediate. Less cohesive maybe, more chaotic, the recording lo-fi and way more murky, this is as dark and grim and melancholy as it gets, Buzzing riffs, rumbling bass and pounding drums are all fused into one huge organic whole, a writhing, twisting black metal beast, that swings wildly from thrashing chaos, to waltzing minor key dirges, to creepy dark ambience. The vocals are so low in the mix they just sound like another layer of fuzz, adding to the swirling roiling madness. This is everything black metal is supposed to be, intensely personal, singular in vision, utterly bleak and crushingly dark, buzzing and throbbing, hypnotic and heavy as fuck. Lots of sonic weirdness and a bizarre, very lo-fi production (tape hiss, drop outs, etc...) just add to the overall madness. The extra tracks on the THR reissue (not on the original demo) are included, demo tracks, extra tracks, covers (Mutiilation, Burzum). It would be worth it already, but then there's a whole extra disc...
The bonus disc, the Darkened Winter Promo 01, is a snapshot of Xasthur's early sound, as it was developing into the expansive epic miserable bleak beauty it would eventually become. And actually hearing this now, it's almost there, structure-wise, riff-wise, it's WAY more lo-fi, muted and muddy and smeared into blurred blackness, but all the things we love about Xasthur are already present, those mournful arpeggiated melodies, the warbly black ambience, the vocals buried in the mix, the songs heaving roiling seas of bleary black misery. The fifth track, sounds like it's from a different session, the guitars much louder, a lilting clean sound, the riffs effected, the drums a muted skitter beneath the cascading minor key chords. The final track is the heaviest, and most traditionally black sounding Xasthur recording we've heard. A definite practice space sound, the drums big and boomy (and real, not a drum machine!), the guitars crunchy and thick, the song swinging from midtempo plod to brutal black bursts, with stumbling blast beats, almost sounds like a blackened noise rock band. Almost like the Dead C covering Burzum.
What else is there to say, it's Xasthur, it's a black metal classic and there's a whole disc of unreleased material. Essential and fucking awesome.
We almost sold out of these after only a few days, without even reviewing / listing it, but then it IS a new Xasthur record, and it IS a super limited (500 copies) cassette version, and cassette means cult, in a cool oversized clamshell case, with original artwork by Hildolf from Draugar, and inside, it also contains a photocopied booklet, 3 pins and a patch! So yeah, no real surprise that those flew out of here. We did manage to get a handful more of these, but seeing as how these have been selling pretty much nonstop, who knows how long they'll last.
Beyond all that stuff, we're pretty psyched for sure. Finally, a new record from Xasthur, aka Malefic, a one man doom-ed depressive black metal machine, whose last release, Defective Epitaph was a huge hit around these parts, due in no small part to the shift from drum machine to actual drums, no programmed beats, actual kit bashing rhythms courtesy of Malefic himself, and the result was pretty stellar, creating a sound even more raw and murky and lo-fi than past efforts, but no less bleak or introspective or amazing. So now comes All Reflections Drained, soon to come on double lp, and we would assume cd, but for now available only in the very old school, very metal, and very kult kassette format. And it's very much a continuation of Defective Epitaph, from moment one, the sound boomy and reverb drenched, echoey and WAY lo-fi, loping doomy guitars, stumbling midtempo drums, and then WOAH, the sound shifts, and the drums double time it under a layer of thick low end dramatic piano, creating some strange Skepticismy drift, over the relentlessly buzzing blackness below. The mix is REALLY weird, fractured and gloriously fucked up, the sounds shifting and merging into one another, the songs too, woozy and warped and seasick sounding and a bit waltzy, the drum sound super raw and distant and for the most part buried in the mix, minus some flurries of kick drum that practically explode. The guitars are washed out and melancholic, lumbering doomily through hazy clouds of muted buzz and soft focus hiss, lots of creeped out ambience, and dark soundscaping, way less of a focus on vocals, in fact several songs in, and we barely noticed any, minus some far off clean crooning and some rumbled mutterings, the usual blackened harsh rasps seemingly lost in the swirling off kilter mix.
If anything this record is a logical extension of the direction Malefic had been taking the sound of Xasthur, like a Defective Epitaph part two maybe, but somehow quite a bit doomier, and WAY weirder, more spaced out and experimental, with a serious focus on dark brooding non-metal parts, hints of slowcore and drone abound, some parts are downright orchestral, and the sound is definitely even murkier and mysterious than ever, dripping with buzz and tape hiss, blown out low end (that sounds like a tuba or something similar) and thick crumbling distortion, but fear not troo grim hordes, it's still plenty depressive and dolorous, minor key and epic, miserable and moody, gorgeously buzzy and bafflingly brilliant.
Again, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! And these will probably disappear FAST... To be sure, there will be a vinyl and perhaps cd version coming out eventually, but they won't be as kvlt as this! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
With music, as far as we're concerned, when it comes right down to it, it's all about the vocals and the drums. Sure bands have kick ass guitarists and amazing bass players, but the thing about singers and drummers, if they suck, they can drag down a band that is perfect in every other way, and if they are amazing, they can rescue an otherwise forgettable group. So many times, we've seen bands play live, only to have the drummer hit super soft, or play to slow or too fast or too sloppy, and remove any sort of energy or power the band would otherwise exude. Singers are worse. How often have you heard a band, and thought "Shit, this band is amazing" until the vocals come in and no matter how great the band was before, a shit vocalist makes all that moot.
In black metal, the vocals aren't as make or break, sure some folks prefer the classic demonic rasp, others the monstrous growl, still others the hysterical shriek, but for the most part, most BM vocalists fall somewhere between all three, and rare is the black metalhead who absolutely can't stand one of those...
Drums are a different matter. Black metal is all about the drums. As much as the buzzing riffage, it's the drums that define the sound, whether it's a the plodding beat of a midtempo Burzumic dirge or the blazing blast beats behind a burst of furious grimness. The strange thing is, at least around these parts, we have to redefine 'bad drummer' when we're talking about black metal. One man black metal bands are du rigeur these days, but its not uncommon to notice in the liner notes, that while that one man did everything else, some other person played the drums. That's because the guitar, the bass, those are related, synths and vocals are much easier to figure out or fake, but the drums, that black house of cards could easily tumble to the ground with terrible drumming as the foundation. But there are exceptions, and kudos to those one man bands who decide to tackle the drums themselves. In some cases it makes perfect sense, Leviathan for example, Wrest was a drummer first, so the drumming on Leviathan records is amazing. The more midtempo bands, well it's not nearly as hard to drum a simple 4/4 as it is some insanely complicated blast beat. But some groups, the drums struggle and stumble, the tempos waver, but as we mentioned above, in BM that's not always a bad thing, Graveland, Woodtemple�the sound of those bands for some reason is enhanced by the off kilter drumming, just like in some crazy artrock bands it's not about precision or perfection, it's about feel and emotion, and a drum part that is stumbling wildly is sometimes way more suitable than a super straight locked in rhythm.
So what the fuck does this all have to do with the new Xasthur record? Well, if you must know, it's that Defective Epitaph is the first Xasthur record to feature real drums. No more programmed drums, this is the sound of Malefic behind the kit, and while the sound is different, it's not half bad. In fact if anything it makes the sound more raw, more live, due in no small part to the murky lo-fi production. The drums definitely have that sort of rehearsal space quality to them, but they do suit Xasthur's murky muddy soundworld. And there's only one track that requires a serious blast beat and even then it's only briefly before the song reverts back to a loping dirge.
But beyond the drums, Defective Epitaph is just another step in Malefic's slowly evolving descent into darkness. All of the usual sounds are present. And a quick listen, you probably wouldn't be hard pressed to immediately pick this out as a Xasthur disc. But it's not just the drums, or the presence of real cello, also played by Malefic, the songs are generally slower, the chords more dissonant, sometimes to the point of sounding detuned. It's almost as if Xasthur is transforming from a black metal band into a funeral doom band. Which is definitely not a bad thing.
"Purgatory Spiral" on first listen was really atonal, and the most out of tune sounding of the batch, but repeated listens reveal some strange masterplan, the music becoming more twisted and gnarled, more woozy and sick than out of tune. The cello moaning way down in the mix, the drums a super simple plod. "Cemetery Of Shattered Masks" is more classically Xasthur sounding, but the recording is really strange, cavernous, very much like a rehearsal recording, not just the drums, as if everything was recorded on a single mic in the corner of the room. Once again, it's not bad, just strange, but like the rest of the disc, it grows on you, taking on a sort of washed out blurred vibe as if the record was recorded by Tim Hecker or something. Then there's "Malignant Prophecy", which launches out of the gate thick and distorted and corrosive, the guitars loud and crumbling, again slightly atonal, but heavy and thick, until about halfway through, where it reverts back to that booming practice space sound, as if two separate tracks were pasted together. Weird but still pretty cool. And actually a lot of the record sounds like that, as if maybe all the tracks were super raw and lo-fi, recorded with a few mics, but then some got guitar overdubs adding that super intense buzzing immediacy.
There are long stretches of near ambience, and moody murky interludes, and even bits of the song proper change in timbre and sound like haunting breakdowns, the cello, sounds less classical and more like an abrasive drone, but it suits the rawness of the overall sound.
This record has been pretty polarizing. Lots of folks have absolutely hated it, lots of folks love it. It seems hard to believe if you were a fan of Xasthur, that you could totally hate it, but it is weird, and definitely takes some warming up to. For us, since we're into the damaged and demented, the fucked and far out, well if anything, this Xasthur record is more of all of those things, so it's probably easier for us get into. But folks of a similar mind will most likely feel the same. Nocturnal Poisoning may still be our favorite Xasthur record ever. Subliminal Genocide might be a close second. But Defective Epitaph, while currently in third, is just fucked up and unique enough that it might move up to second any time now�
We do carry the Hydra Head version, but the Daymare Japanese import version comes with an entire extra disc of unreleased tracks, nearly 40 minutes! So we figured anyone into Xasthur would probably want the extra disc as well. So here it is, five tracks, all unreleased, a couple alternate early versions of songs on the record proper, a couple untitled tracks, a pretty cool sort of coda to the record. From a long drawn out doomy synthscape, to a classic old school buzzing Burzumic dirge, complete with chanting monk like vocals and a killer overblown riff, to an epic buzzing black doom jam, that morphs from creepy crawl to blasting buzz�It's cool to hear some of the alternate versions, with the fucked up edits, and weird segues, all left in (hence the subtitles "First Attempt", "Second Attempt").
As with all Daymare releases, the packaging is gorgeous, a miniature lp style gatefold, Japanese obi, and a foldout insert with tons of liner notes (all in Japanese).
Xasthur is a one-man, home-recorded black metal outfit delving into the distortion-washed realm of Burzumic bliss, and is a favorite of both tUMULt's black metal master Leviathan *and* the Jewelled Antler/Thuja crew, so you know it's beautifully primitive and droney stuff, with majesty undying. The music is all shades of grey, like the packaging, with strains of melody obscured in mists of mostly mid-tempo metallic mayhem a la ancients like Darkthrone and Burzum, achieving, even at speed, a trance-inducing dirge quality. It's truly "A Walk Beyond Utter Blackness" in the "Forgotten Depths Of Nowhere", as per two of the song titles. If you like cultish black metal that verges on experimental drone (or vice versa), Xasthur should please you greatly, and offers more proof (along with Weakling and the aforementioned Leviathan) that even "sunny" California can produce black metal to rival that from Nordic climes. From the same label that just brought us that Lugubrum "De Totem" reissue we recommended recently, this has been a sleeper hit here at the store, and we're happy now to have enough in stock to give it a listing.
The guy behind Xasthur goes by the name Malefic, which leads to a little Andy Rooney question I've got: why do folks need to make up two names when one would do? why not call your band (ahem) Malefic? Although, his contact address is c/o "Scott" so we can see the need for at least one pseudonym in order to maintain the aura of grim darkness that his music deserves.
MPEG Download: "Soul Abduction Ceremony" [/audio/xasthursoul.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Soul Abduction Ceremony" [/audio/xasthursoul.m3u]
There are lots of remarkable things about this latest Xasthur disc. It was released on his own Disharmonic Variations label for one thing, instead of Hydra Head, his home for the last few records. It features the vocals of folk chanteuse Marissa Nadler quite prominently, which was definitely a bit of a surprise! Even more surprising is that according to Malefic, the man behind Xasthur, now referring to himself by his given name Scott, this is the very last Xasthur record. EVER. He's not giving up music, just black metal. Which might seem less surprising once you've heard Portal Of Sorrow. Whose sound is at once a continuation of the last few Xasthur records, but at the same time, a total departure. Right out of the gate, the title track, is all acoustic guitars, and cooing wordless vox, more some sort of ethereal depressive doomfolk than black metal. Haunting atonal chords, folky guitar strum, wheezing organs, everything warped and warbly and really quite beautiful. Some more 'metal' guitars enter into the picture but they just serve to add filigree to the folky gothic dirge. Pretty weird and fantastic for sure. And for sure to bum out legions of true grim black metallers. The second track is more black metal, but if anything it's WAY weirder than the first track, with what is either the worst, or best production yet, the guitars detuned and atonal, the drums insanely produced cardboard box thumps WAY up in the mix, Nadler's often wordless vocals again soaring and dramatic, while Malefic croaks along in the background, a gloriously stumbling bit of blackened freak folk buzz, moody and murky, with some serious chug part way through, but that chug is accompanied by PIANO, which renders it more some sort of blackened chamber music.
And so it goes, the whole record is not only strangely composed, but the sound itself is totally alien, it sounds accidental, but a sound this twisted and warped and idiosyncratic MUST be by design.
"Shrine Of Failure" begins with clean guitars and floppy bass, a constantly descending melody, the vocals singing right along, before the heavier guitars kick in, but instead of making the song heavier, they seem to float above the already in progress weirdness, adding a layer of distorted buzz, and alternately wild psychedelic squiggles of tangled lead guitar. "Stream Of Subconsciousness" is another washed out doomic dirge, driven by Nadler's angelic croon, and Malefic's warbly guitars, the swoonsome synths, leading to an ambient drift, and then more murky stumble. "Horizon Of Plastic Caskets" is all minimal drumming, swirling synths, distant vocals, a sort of black ambient post rock lope, peppered with Malefic's maniacal screams, which do nothing to take away from the track's haunting cinematic vibe.
"The Abyss Holds The Mirror" opens with some seriously lovely multitracked vocals from Nadler (she's credited with "choir, vocal flashbacks, vocal instrumentation") before the song proper kicks in, and it's a dirgey doomy deathmarch, with church organ, croaked demonic vocals, all set to a heartbreakingly melancholy melody, the whole second half is just organ and vocals, and is the last thing you'd expect to hear on a black metal record.
"Released From This Earth" is all struggling drumming, atonal piano pound, and more of Nadler's heavenly crooning, in some ways, this almost plays out like a Marissa Nadler record, with Xasthur as his band, no disrespect to Malefic, in fact, that's what makes this record so good, it's less about having some token guest vocals, and more about true collaboration, which is exactly what makes this record so fucked and far out and special. Even at it's blackest, it's about as far removed from black buzz and grim blast than you could imagine. Which is what keeps us from mourning the death of Xasthur, and instead has us anxiously awaiting the future rebirth, and phoenix like ascension of whatever comes next.
This Record Of The Week from last year, now available in the vinyl format, via Kemado! Limited. numbered, gatefold sleeve, download code. Here's what we said about the original compact disc edition:
There are lots of remarkable things about this latest Xasthur disc. It was released on his own Disharmonic Variations label for one thing, instead of Hydra Head, his home for the last few records. It features the vocals of folk chanteuse Marissa Nadler quite prominently, which was definitely a bit of a surprise! Even more surprising is that according to Malefic, the man behind Xasthur, now referring to himself by his given name Scott, this is the very last Xasthur record. EVER. He's not giving up music, just black metal. Which might seem less surprising once you've heard Portal Of Sorrow. Whose sound is at once a continuation of the last few Xasthur records, but at the same time, a total departure. Right out of the gate, the title track, is all acoustic guitars, and cooing wordless vox, more some sort of ethereal depressive doomfolk than black metal. Haunting atonal chords, folky guitar strum, wheezing organs, everything warped and warbly and really quite beautiful. Some more 'metal' guitars enter into the picture but they just serve to add filigree to the folky gothic dirge. Pretty weird and fantastic for sure. And for sure to bum out legions of true grim black metallers. The second track is more black metal, but if anything it's WAY weirder than the first track, with what is either the worst, or best production yet, the guitars detuned and atonal, the drums insanely produced cardboard box thumps WAY up in the mix, Nadler's often wordless vocals again soaring and dramatic, while Malefic croaks along in the background, a gloriously stumbling bit of blackened freak folk buzz, moody and murky, with some serious chug part way through, but that chug is accompanied by PIANO, which renders it more some sort of blackened chamber music.
And so it goes, the whole record is not only strangely composed, but the sound itself is totally alien, it sounds accidental, but a sound this twisted and warped and idiosyncratic MUST be by design.
"Shrine Of Failure" begins with clean guitars and floppy bass, a constantly descending melody, the vocals singing right along, before the heavier guitars kick in, but instead of making the song heavier, they seem to float above the already in progress weirdness, adding a layer of distorted buzz, and alternately wild psychedelic squiggles of tangled lead guitar. "Stream Of Subconsciousness" is another washed out doomic dirge, driven by Nadler's angelic croon, and Malefic's warbly guitars, the swoonsome synths, leading to an ambient drift, and then more murky stumble. "Horizon Of Plastic Caskets" is all minimal drumming, swirling synths, distant vocals, a sort of black ambient post rock lope, peppered with Malefic's maniacal screams, which do nothing to take away from the track's haunting cinematic vibe.
"The Abyss Holds The Mirror" opens with some seriously lovely multitracked vocals from Nadler (she's credited with "choir, vocal flashbacks, vocal instrumentation") before the song proper kicks in, and it's a dirgey doomy deathmarch, with church organ, croaked demonic vocals, all set to a heartbreakingly melancholy melody, the whole second half is just organ and vocals, and is the last thing you'd expect to hear on a black metal record.
"Released From This Earth" is all struggling drumming, atonal piano pound, and more of Nadler's heavenly crooning, in some ways, this almost plays out like a Marissa Nadler record, with Xasthur as his band, no disrespect to Malefic, in fact, that's what makes this record so good, it's less about having some token guest vocals, and more about true collaboration, which is exactly what makes this record so fucked and far out and special. Even at it's blackest, it's about as far removed from black buzz and grim blast than you could imagine. Which is what keeps us from mourning the death of Xasthur, and instead has us anxiously awaiting the future rebirth, and phoenix like ascension of whatever comes next.
What a long strange trip it's been for Malefic and Xasthur. What's even stranger it seems, is that he ended up finding a new home on the very hip indie label Hydra Head. Sure HH has released its share of dark heaviness, but black metal, especially of the ultra personal, cult and grim kind, is so concerned with staying true, and not selling out. So it's a bit of a coup that HH nabbed Xasthur. Especially after a whole mess of records on Moribund, Total Holocaust Blood Fire Death, Profound Lore and Southern Lord. There has apparently been a bit of a backlash in the true cult BM underground. But fuck 'em. Hydra Head is a killer label and Malefic probably just got tired of being screwed left and right. Plus, oh what a joy it is to watch the true grim warriors weep at the loss, their corpsepaint smearing in long grey streaks. But it really is their loss more than any one 'cuz damn if this isn't the best Xasthur record since Nocturnal Poisoning. And that's saying a whole lot considering how much we've loved pretty much everything he's ever done.
The thing With Nocturnal Poisoning is that it was this perfect mix of sorrowful melancholia and black buzz, the sound was murky and muddy and fuzzy, but above it, were delicate melodies, dreamlike minor key filigree over a bottomless black pit. It was that strange juxtaposition that made it so special. Take that pretty element away, and you're left with just another black disc of Burzum worship. It's a little like the oil paining on the cover. You could see the texture of the canvas and the individual brushstrokes beneath the art. And with the music, it was the same thing, you could see the various elements, feel their texture, see the thick grainy backdrop upon which Malefic placed all of his dreamlike melodies and murky anguished howls.
Every record after that contained similar elements, and amazing songs, but it seemed like the recordings got more brittle, lots of high end buzz, not so much of that glorious malefic murk.
Subliminal Genocide almost sounds like it was recorded right after Nocturnal Poisoning and shelved for the last few years. It's THAT heavy and dreamy and melancholy and murky and goddamn beautiful.
There's not a lot of black metal that you might consider truly beautiful, but the songs on Subliminal Genocide, aren't just blasting thrashing metal, they are gorgeous lilting laments, epic and majestic and minor key. Taken out of a black metal context, they'd sound like some sort of super emotional epic post rock, but as they are, buried under thick layers of blackened buzz and wrapped in huge swaths of fuzzy sonic fog, they become even darker and more desolate, lonely and mournful. Almost none of the record is faster than a loping midtempo, about half the tracks are slow motion dirges, downright doom, with the double kick coming in more as a thick black low end cloud than any sort of actual blast, and a handful of tracks are nothing but swirling whorls of sad black ambience.
And because of the fuzzy indistinct production, and the thick murky halo around every track, lots of Subliminal Genocide sounds like some bastardized black metal version of M83, or Tim Hecker, or a little like Jeck and Marclay spinning old scratched up Burzum lps slowed waaaaaay down.
This record is simultaneously so dark and depressed and utterly evil sounding, but also fuzzy and psychedelic and totally blissed out, it's sort of hard to imagine, especially listening to this right now, that there could ever possibly be a better combination.
Xasthur may just turn out to be the black metal Acid Mothers Temple. Seems like there's a new release every week. Of course, we're not complaining. Not at all. A world like ours needs as much bleak, suicidally depressive, magnificently brutal and buzzing, totally personal and painfully intimate black metal brilliance it can get. And Xasthur (along with his spiritual / sonic compatriots Leviathan, Draugar, etc.) is well up to the task. Suicide In Dark Serenity was previously released on vinyl in an extremely limited edition several years back and is now available on cd for the first time. And it's everything we've come to expect from Malefic, who is Xasthur. Epic tracks of dense, minor key metal misery: buzzing lightning speed blasts become mournful soul shearing blurs, sludgy midtempo dirges become musical death marches, fuzzed out guitars and anguished wails populate a barren, desolate landscape, grim and bitter. If that weren't enough to convince you that this is an essential purchase, then know this: there is a single bonus track, a totally immense, epic 16 minute rehearsal track from Xasthur's masterpiece Nocturnal Poisoning, that is almost worth the price of admission alone.
The blackened California onslaught continues... When one looks at the state of metal today, you could be forgiven for thinking California was the last bastion of true, evil, completely fucked up black metal genius. Norway? Sweden? Pfah! The new Leviathan is easily one of the best black metal records of the year. The forthcoming Draugar threatens to be the weirdest. And then there's this, the excellently-titled Telepathic With The Deceased, the latest chapter in suicidal sonic blackness from Xasthur. Hailing from Southern California, Xasthur is Malefic, another tortured one man band, who unlike his blackened brethren, focuses less on 'shredding', strange song structures, or bizarre parts, and more on mood and ambience, which is why Xasthur more than anyone, comes closest to the simple fuzzy midtempo buzz of nordic legend Burzum. Where Leviathan rules some fiery pit, and Draugar is floating around a black star in the ether, Xasthur howls in agony from a damp and filthy, cramped basement, bitter memories and unknown horrors piled high around him, a four track the only outlet for his misery and anger. Sonically, Xasthur also stands apart in his unique and unlikely method of mixing/recording that somehow involves burning cd-r's of multiple tracks and re-recording the cd-r's back onto the 4 track! Lending the finished product a burned out, fuzzed out decayed veneer. Definitely one of the best black metal records of the year!
Newest release from AQ black metal favorite Xasthur, who was responsible for the godlike Nocturnal Poisoning album a couple years ago which was a buzzy droning slab of Burzumic grimness that rivalled almost any black metal we had heard. Xasthur is just one man, a misanthrope called Malefic, who carves bleak crushing black metal buzz-scapes from sheer wells of blackness and despair. While Nocturnal Poisoning was a monochromatic wash of midtempo Norwegian style blur, with lots of sonic murk and low end rumble, The Funeral Of Being adds more uptempo numbers and a lot more treble. Yep, treble. Harkening back to ear shredding classics like Ulver's Nattens Madrigal and any old Darkthrone, this is a drill to the cranium of high end mosquito swarm guitars, splattery buried-in-the-mix drums, and barely audible anguised howls. In fact the production is really quite strange, considering how weirdly lush the first record was. It's as if Malefic thought that Nocturnal Poisoning was *over produced* and prurposefully set out to make this new recording as RAW as possible. And raw it is. Even the ghostly keyboard breakdowns are under a fuzzy layer of hiss. But the production only enhances the beautiful grimness of The Funeral Of Being. Rarely is an artists tortured soul so perfectly laid bare by the cacophonous sound of his instruments but then Xasthur is indeed a rarity.
Finally, a new release from the mighty and mysterious black metal entity Xasthur. After a recent spate of reissues, all of them amazing and essential, Malefic, who alone IS Xasthur, has finally deigned to unleash this blackened beast into the world. And in a world like this, we definitely can't get enough music this abject and lonely and dark and personal. As always, Xasthur's world is a bleak and depressive one, pinned beneath a thick, smothering sonic blanket of Burzumic riffing, midtempo mournful melodies, insane double kick drumming and this time around, grand and melancholic keyboards, adding a much more epic and dramatic darkness to the proceeedings. We always end up comparing every Xasthur record to his debut masterpiece Nocturnal Posioning, for the obvious reason that it's one of the best black metal records ever, but thankfully, To Violate The Oblivious takes a lot of what we loved about that record and moves forward, instead of just making Nocturnal Poisoning part two. Present are the gut wrenchingly minor key melodies, the fuzzy wall of blackened riffs, the loping midtempo rhythms, but the keyboards somehow manage to make everything that much more mournful, and the songwriting is more introspective and melodic, making this almost a doom metal record in black metal clothing. It's depressingly glorious to listen to the blackend fruits of Xasthur's labor of love (hate?) as he sinks further into cultish oblivion and obsessive loneliness.
Xasthur may have flown the Moribund coop and ended up roosting in the spiffier Hydra Head henhouse, having just released the mind meltingly brilliant black classic Subliminal Genocide a few months back, but it seems that Moribund have a few blackened odds and ends left over, some of which they've now seen fit to release as this self titled ep. Three tracks, 24 minutes, an instrumental, an unreleased track and a track from 2005, it does sort of smack of cashing in, but we'll be the first to say it, Xasthur castoffs are better than 90 percent of other black metal bands best material, and this disc pretty firmly drive that point home. The opener, titled simply "Instrumental" is a seven minute sprawl of arpeggiated minor key guitars, bursts of stumbling double kick, fuzzy layers of black guitar, a haunting refrain that sounds either like processed vocals or keyboards. Thick and fuzzy and gauzy and beautiful. Actually, it sounds remarkably like an instrumental version of one of the songs off Subliminal Genocide. Which might bug the guys at Hydra Head and Malefic himself, but is not such a bad thing for the listener. For those of you who like the sound of black metal, but can't get around the howling shrieks, this track could very well be your gateway to all things black and grim. Without the vocals, it sounds even more like a more evil M83! The second track, "Bubonic Plague" is classic Xasthur, muddy and murky, and so so so buzzy, the melodies are cold and mournful, the guitars snarl and drone, the vocals are so buried in the mix that they just sound like another guitar, buzzing right along side the riffs. The rhythm plods and lopes like a death march, in fact more than ever, this is Xasthur in his doom metal in black metal's clothing guise. Mournfully miserable and blackly bleak. The final track starts off as fierce as Xasthur ever gets, a gloriously blown out black buzz, vocals harsh and up in the mix, the guitars sharp and jagged, the whole thing a swirling chaotic blast of grim fury, but before long the song unwinds into a blackened waltz, with more fingerpicked guitars, distant double kick, and a wooozy hazy ambience, culminating in a stripped down clean guitar and drum coda. So good.
Killer artwork too, some monstrous looking cave formation on the front, a milky white dripping stone beast, and on the back a field of stalactites looking like some ancient torture chamber.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In addition to getting the brilliant new Xasthur full length back in (see elsewhere on this list), we finally managed to get copies of this amazing split (now out of print!) between AQ black metal fave Xasthur and the unknown to us and now defunct Acid Enema. Xasthur offers up more of his grim, bleak, depressive blackness: buzzing guitars churning in a murk of tape hiss and amplifier grit, barely audible anguished howls, relentless drumming, all weaving melancholy melodies and dark fugues into epic and harrowing soundscapes of abject misery and soul ripping hatred. Blasting Burzumic squalls give way to loping melodic breakdowns with finger picked guitars and mournful keyboards. So gorgeously grim. Seems everything Xasthur touches turns to black. The Acid Enema tracks take the buzz and dirge of Burzum and Darkthrone and add some industrial weirdness and damaged brutality. Razor sharp speaker shredding guitar tone and big boomy drums underpin some seriously demonic howls. A whirling, blood-red pool of sonic chaos, threatening to crush and blacken your ears and your heart and your soul. Some weird melodic ambience and then a DHR worthy industrial cover of Mayhem's "Deathcrush" with rigid hyper-distorted beats and punch-to-the-skull machine gun rhythms. Now out of print, so when these are gone, they're gone for good.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
While we all wait patiently for the new blackened masterpiece from Southern California's one man blackdoomkult Xasthur to drop, here we've got a little blast of suicidal bleakness to hold us over, on this split. The sound is HUGE. A massive wall of black gauzy haze, murky ambience, and blistering fuzz. Two new tracks that give us a glimpse of what to expect from the upcoming full length as well as an older tune "Funeral Of Being, a creepy, Goblin-esque, almost romantic, minor key ambient dirge! Xasthur finishes things off with a buzzing midtempo Wigrid cover, pretty true to the original, but just tweaked enough to sound like it's all his. And Germany's Angra Mainyu are the perfect foil for Xasthur, with a creeping, plodding, wintery blackened doom very reminiscent of old Burzum. Occasionally songs erupt into a wash of blazing and buzzing and blastbeats but the majority of their half of the split is spent trudging along through huge drifts of black thoughts and utter despair, wrapped in a swirling fog of impenetrable buzz and finger picked minor key guitars. So cold and dismal, dark and creepy. And so fucking good.
Been trying to track these down for ages, and finally managed to get a handful. Two new tracks from longtime aQ fave Xasthur, and one from Swedish one man black metal horde Black Circle.
The Black Circle track is super simple, raw, old school, primitive depressive black metal, midtempo, murky muddy riffage, growled guttural vocals, simple drum plod, definitely a bit grim and frosty, but more sort miserable and moody.
The Xasthur tracks, both sound like fragments, maybe parts of a bigger, never realized epic, but they're pretty kick ass parts, if you've been digging the direction Malefic's been taking the sound of Xasthur lately. Washed out guitars in the background, everything woozy and warped, depressive and abstract, definitely less metal and more atmospheric, tangled atonal guitars, warm muted synths, soaring strings, croaked barely-there vocals (courtesy of new Xasthur member M.H.), everything ULTRA lo-fi, plenty of buzz and hiss, but that only adds to the atmosphere. The second Xasthur is actually a cover or interpretation of a song by Tiamat, but we couldn't tell, still sounded like a Xasthur jam to us.
Limited to 888 copies, each one hand numbered, they come from far far away, so when we do run out, we may not be able to get more, and even if we can, it might takes us a while to restock.
Back in stock!!! Last list's RotW...
We normally don't make "now available on cd" releases Record Of The Week. But there are plenty of reasons to do just that with this one! First off, C'MON! It's LEVIATHAN and XASTHUR! On the same disc! Two of the most important, and musically creative black metal one-man-hordes in the new wave of west coast black metal (NWOWCBM?) teamed up for the ultimate NWOWCBM one two punch. Singlehandedly (doublehandedly?) putting USBM back on the black metal map, and completely redefining the genre, grim and brutal and black for sure, but also totally bizarre and avant and experimental. Plus even you folks who picked up the vinyl versions will need this, as there are 4 bonus tracks, three of them are from Xasthur, a brand new unreleased track, a rehearsal track from 2004, and a Katatonia cover! The other bonus track is Leviathan's amazing version of Judas Iscariot's "Where The Winter Beals Incessant"! But even without the bonus tracks, this clash of the black titans is totally essential, some of the most beautifully blackened and furiously fucked up black metal you are ever likely to hear. Xasthur from Southern California and Leviathan from right here in SF are blackened brothers, both exploring similar themes of hate and misery, darkness and death, but coming at 'em from completely different sonic angles. Xasthur is more about mood and atmosphere, with thick swaths of fuzzy riffery, galloping drums, rumbling bass and agonised howls of despair, all dense and dark and claustrophobic. Leviathan is much more technical and a lot weirder, but no less moody, with ultra complex and bizarrely arranged parts, insane drumming, buzzing riffery, and hints of doom and progrock mixed into his bleak and blackened metalscapes. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!!
A super limited missive from Xela, aka John Twells, head honcho of the super kick ass Type label. But his work as Xela is much darker than his label might lead you to believe. His is a world of doom. Not old school heavy metal doom. But truly ominous darkened worlds of doom. His is not a doom of huge riffs and pounding drums, but instead, rumbling sinister drones, and haunting ambience. Crumbling black landscapes of mysterious buzz and whispered menace. The A side of this tape is like a field recording of a rickety old dock, jutting out into the choppy waters of the River Styx, old rust chains rattle, rusty lanterns clang against one another, the rotted wood groans and creaks, the wind howls, the choppy water laps at the pilings, black birds circle overhead, an old boat tied up to the dock rocking wildly in the water, straining against the frayed rope, while in the distance, an ominous buzz permeates the air like the stink of decaying flesh, and somewhere, below the surface of the water, or hidden behind the black clouds overhead, some unspeakable beast growls, his ominous rumble like thunder filling the sky.
The B side takes up where the first side left off, that same dock, being lashed by a fierce storm, but instead of rain and lightning, it's decaying black buzz, and howled vocals, a stumbling, lurching doomy drone, recorded on an old tape, the sound dropping out, the speed shifting, slowing down and speeding up, as much a part of the sound as the obfuscated riffs, and the creeping mournful melodies. Fucking awesome.
Red cassettes with metallic gold sticker, in a cryptic printed black and white sleeve, photocopied insert. LIMITED TO 111 COPIES. Already out of print. We got the last batch so act fast.
Realistically, if you all are anything like us, a one line review is all it will take for you to know in your heart of hearts, that not only do you HAVE to own this, but that it will rapidly and immediately become your favorite record. OF ALL TIME!!
So here we go: Xexyz are a black metal band who use a Nintendo Entertainment System as their "keyboard" and who essentially have composed black metal songs around the 8-bit themes to Nintendo classics like Metroid and Rygar's Quest. Yes!! We were right, weren't we?
Anyway, Xexyz are a grim buzzing lo-fi horde of black warriors who just so happen to be video game nerds and who have decided that there is nothing more grim or more cult than the instantly recognizable buzz and beep of their favorite Nintendo themes. And you know what, it's sort of true. And it definitely works. Some folks here thought this sounded like the Muppets and Stereolab playing black metal, but it's so much more grim than that. A haunting 8-bit refrain bleeps maniacally under moaning black guitar buzz, while hateful hellish vocals rasp and growl over the top. The theme from Metroid rings out, one of the coolest, and weirdest video game themes ever (second only to Rastan maybe), the weird electronic pulse underpins a thick slab of distorted guitar, when the song finally kicks in, it almost sounds like a lo-fi version of THAT Burzum track, the black fuzz with the haunting keyboard figure in the background. But you know... with Metroid instead. And "Nightmare On Elm Street", is so awesome, the Nintendo theme is super fuzzy and haunting, and perfectly lends itself to some Burzumic buzz, creepy crawly and pretty damn black.
So totally amazing and weird and thus of course absolutely fucking recommended...
We reviewed the Unseen Forces label vinyl reissue of this a few months ago, but for those of you who prefer cds, we just got in a few copies of the previous Stormspell cd version that we mentioned in that review, which went a lot like this:
Not long ago we listed a cool picture disc vinyl compilation that the Unseen Forces label put out, called Grave Command, featuring the likes of Orchid, Danava, Occultation, Deceased, Ghoul, Ride For Revenge and others from the realms of heavy metallic weirdness. Standing out amongst all those mostly evil & occult modern day acts was a band called XINR, actually a Christian metal act from the '80s, from up in Portland. Their killer track "All Hallow's Eve" was taken from this lp, consisting of demos recorded circa 1984. Devout Christians but also devout metalheads, XINR (pronounced ex-sinner, get it?) were obviously heavily influenced by Judas Priest and Accept, and come of sounding a lot like Cirith Ungol, with over the top screechy vocals and heavy, catchy riffs. A bit doomy, and pretty darn (excuse me!) rockin'!! Satan doesn't have all the best tunes it turns out. Sadly, the band's career was tragically ended (before it had barely started) by a motorcycle accident that took the lives of their singer and guitarist. However, their headbanging legacy lives on! If you like rippin' old school metal and don't mind if it's Bible believing as long as it's badass, then this is fer you!
Not long ago we listed a cool picture disc vinyl compilation that the Unseen Forces label put out, called Grave Command, featuring the likes of Orchid, Danava, Occultation, Deceased, Ghoul, Ride For Revenge and others from the realms of heavy metallic weirdness. Standing out amongst all those mostly evil & occult modern day acts was a band called XINR, actually a Christian metal act from the '80s, from up in Portland. Their killer track "All Hallow's Eve" was taken from this lp, consisting of demos recorded circa 1984, that Unseen Forces has now released on vinyl for the first time (there IS also a cd version on Stormspell that we can get too by the way). Devout Christans but also devout metalheads, XINR (pronounced ex-sinner, get it?) were obviously heavily influenced by Judas Priest and Accept, and come of sounding a lot like Cirith Ungol, with over the top screechy vocals and heavy, catchy riffs. A bit doomy, and pretty darn (excuse me!) rockin'!! Satan doesn't have all the best tunes it turns out. Sadly, the band's career was tragically ended (before it had barely started) by a motorcycle accident that took the lives of their singer and guitarist. However, their headbanging legacy lives on! If you like rippin' old school metal and don't mind if it's Bible believing as long as it's badass, then this is fer you! Limited white vinyl, includes lyrics and liners.
What we're about to say, we don't say lightly. Trust us. We may traffic in hyperbole. And our shelves may be stuffed with lots of 'best evers' and 'worst evers' and 'greatest evers', but this friends, is quite possibly the weirdest record we've ever carried. When we first threw it on, we were immediately struck with the realization, that what we were hearing, was either the most amazing thing we had ever heard, or absolutely the worst piece of shit EVER. Andee quickly decided on the former. And no matter how hard he tried, or how many repeated listens he was subjected to, Allan is sticking with the latter. But the more we play this in the store, the more the tribe of Xynfonica worshippers grows, Antaeus, Matt, Cameron, one can only handle a few listens before you're forever in its thrall. We're not sure how Allan does it, maybe there's some sort of chip in his brain, or maybe he's not really human at all, who knows. What we do know is we will wear him down, and just like you, faithful yet doomed reader of this list, he will eventually bow down to the damaged glory that is Xynfonica.
By now you're probably wondering what the fuck we're on about. Fair enough. So let's go back a bit. Not sure how we first heard about Xynfonica, but we got the disc in, it had an amazing cover, an old painting of some ancient battle, men on horseback, wielding swords, the record title: A Feast For Famished Ravens, song titles like: "From Your Father's Skull" and "The Viking Zodiac", a huge booklet jammed with more lyrics than could possibly fit in the three songs here, there are even footnotes!!! So we still hadn't listened to it, but we were pretty much sold already.
So we finally threw it on, and were greeted with some strange synthesizers, guitar synthesizers to be specific (we later discovered) and a growled demonic vocal, the synths, sort of atonal and detuned, like a demented Peter And The Wolf, the vocals, a strangled black metal rasp, so okay, we're thinking, a cool weird intro, so we waited for the band to kick in, and waited, and waited, and waited some more, scanned forward� So then we thought, okay, maybe the whole first track is the intro, so we skipped to the second track, which of course started with the raspy vocals and the seasick synths, but we gave it the benefit of the doubt and waited and waited, scanned forward, and then it dawned on us. HOLY SHIT. This was the band. There were no drums, no guitarist. It was just some trollish demon and his damaged synth, spewing endless tales of mysterious battles and lost civilizations. And suddenly, it had us. Xynfonica. Sure it's creepy and demented, and borderline retarded, and the synths sometime sound so wrong it makes us dizzy, so 'off' it makes our eyes water, the melodies are demented, alien, creepy ominous one second, bouncing cheerfully the next, but always those vocals, an everpresent demon storyteller, it's hard to explain exactly why we're so taken, but we are. Every time we play this, initial reactions range from confusion, to hysterical laughter, to anxiety to sheer unadulterated joy. Imagine if Jandek was the keyboard player in a black metal band and decided to make a solo record, or imagine Mr. Roger's neighborhood but Mr. Rogers is out sick, so the dude from Abruptum is filling in, or imagine the music files from some medieval video game getting corrupted, and then used as the intro music for some evil metal band. Well you know, what? There's no need to imagine. It's all right here. Xynfonica will give you all of that and more. With just a rudimentary grasp of the synthesizer, and a frog in his throat, all will be revealed, and we shall all revel in his stumbling, confusional musical brilliance.
Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica...
Y's "Pseudo Youth...Human Cesspool" is a collection of hypersonic start/stop thrash heaviosity from this German outfit. Contains their "Ali Bomaye" lp, a couple of singles, and a few unreleased tracks, all now on cd for the first time. [/cat/metal166.html]
Geeze, will you look at that cover?? A gory painting of a severed, hairy hand, dripping blood with hanging sinews and jutting bone, clawing at a wall. For 1978, when this album was first released, that had to be considered pretty extreme! It would be at least another ten years before the likes of Cannibal Corpse would make such "shocking" images commonplace on album covers. So perhaps it will come as no surprise that apparently this band went on to become an important part of the '80s heavy metal scene in their native Spain. But this debut album of theirs, recorded when the guys in the band were in their mid-teens (!), actually harks back more to the proto-metal heaviness of the early '70s and even '60s, to which we say, right on! It's fuzzed-out, garagey psych, tons of fierce, heavy acid rock guitar, sounding something like Stray or Sir Lord Baltimore, or seventies Spanish older-brethren Tapiman and The Storm.
The first three tracks are all vicious stormers. Really raw and riffy!! Tracks four and five mellow out just a bit, balancing the heaviness with more melody. They've got a balladic '60s psych pop element to 'em, but they definitely don't wimp out in the end. We've gotta say, wow. Apparently the original of this is an expensive, rare-ass record (some collectors, we're told, even doubted its existence) but thanks to this cd reissue it's alive and well and and bloody and clawing at the walls. Recommended to all proto-metal freaks.
GOD? is the Drag City imprint curated by garage rock wunderkind Ty Segall. Last list we highlighted the 7" single they just put out by noisepunks Running, and here's their other new release, seven inches of fury from Zath, a Chicago-based extreme metal outfit featuring members of Cave, Coughs, Oozing Wound and Oakeater among others, who have a previous 7" on the Captcha label. Hellish underground deaththrash is Zath's metier. We're talking pounding battery, growling vocals, brutally technical guitarwork, lots of nods to Slayer and the like... Zath sure as heck rip it up on these two tracks, "Black Goat Razor" (what you shave your black goat with?) and "Pain Reaper". Tuff stuff!
Our friends in Hammers Of Misfortune did a US tour this summer, and when they got back, they said that of all the bands they played with, there was one they felt was definitely better than they were. (Only one you ask? Maybe that sounds arrogant on their part, but they're not arrogant, just self-confident... playing over-the-top operatic metal like they do, you've gotta be self-confident, eh?). They'd played with a lot of good bands they liked, but only one really blew 'em away: Minnesota's Zebulon Pike. That was enough for me -- I had to hear these guys! A trip to their website and some mp3 downloads later, off went my email to 'em, ordering cds. And now here they are, and they look quite nice too. But how they sound is what's important -- and the most concise, comparative description I can come up with for Zebulon Pike is something like Pelican meets The Fucking Champs. They're a heavy instrumental stoner/math rock band, with two guitarists who are all about the insane harmonies. The drummer and bassist get a workout too, what with the complex, dynamic song structures this band navigates. From ultra-sludgy riff attacks to mellow and pretty (even a bit jazzy) breakdowns, the melodic doom calculus of Zebulon Pike proceeds at a generally slow pace (nine or twelve minute long songs are the norm), interspersed with bursts of note-manic playing. You'll definitely hear the band's '70s influences of Wishbone Ash and Black Sabbath, translated into a modern instrumental post-rock realm. The band also goes beyond metal and prog to cite classical composers like Bela Bartok and Avro Part as inspirations to their "slow motion apocalypse". Mighty, mythic instrumental metal indeed. FYI Zebulon Pike takes their name from an early American explorer, the same guy for whom Pike's Peak is named.
Wow, not just a new Hammers Of Misfortune album this week but also a new Zebulon Pike! Two what we might call "advanced metal" bands that don't really have anything to do we each other, except a) they both slay and b) that we first heard about Zebulon Pike after Hammers came back from a tour raving about this kick-ass instrumental metal band they'd played with in Minneapolis. Epic length songs, dual-guitar harmonies left right and center, and HEAVY was the word from the Hammers camp. ZP's first album, 2004's And Blood Was Passion, proved all this and more to us, and we've been eagerly awaiting another one since then! As we're sure a lot of you have been too, 'cause that first Zebulon disc has been a steady seller here, people totally going for what we described as their blend of the math-rock, post-rock instru-metal prowess of both The Fucking Champs and Pelican. (And what we will -again- describe as a blend of those two bands!)
ZP II: The Deafening Twilight is just what we wanted: still no singing, five more head-banging, mind-blowing tracks (one just five minutes long, two around thirteen, and the other two of 'em upwards of 20 minutes in length) of sheer shut up n' play stoner riff mastery, post-rock dynamics of beauty and might gone totally metal, as many twists and turns as a Pacific Coast drive on Highway 1, convoluted yet catchy and melodic... and again, damn HEAVY when the pedal's to the metal. They can thrash violently or go for pretty and quiet, even breaking out instruments like vibraphone, tubular bells, and medieval greatpipes when their compositions demand 'em. Furthermore, they're shredders but this doesn't come off as techy and complex for the sake of it like, say, Behold The Arctopus. It's more "classic" and song-centric. And way more metal than some of their instrumental peers. I mean, we do love Pelican, but are they metal enough to title a song "(Behold) The Wizzard's Fountain"?? ZP'd fit right in on a bill with The Sword or Baroness. Recommended.
Massive Minneapolis instru-metal discovered (for us) by our friends in Hammers Of Misfortune a few years back in 2004. We instantly became fans upon hearing their first album. As did many of you. They followed that with an equally powerful second album in 2006. Now, another 2 years later, they're up to album number three, and we're proud to have such a burgeoning Zebulon Pike section in our metal bin!
If you haven't heard ZP before, just imagine a mathy yet melodic, all-instrumental, and even more epick version of doomsters The Sword... Or, as we have said before, a mix of old Pelican and The Fucking Champs, with immense twin guitar harmonies and stonery heaviness. There's always been a "post-rock" side to 'em along with the metal, the post-rock coming on strongest on this third effort, with the the 2nd part of their loud-soft dynamics dialing up the atmospheric prettiness over significant stretches of these extended, and otherwise utterly heavy compositions.
They're named after American 1800's explorer Zebulon Pike, but to our ears Zebulon sounds like some sort of science fictional, metallic element found on the extreme edge of the periodic table. As in, "the asteriod is composed almost entirely of solid zebulon." Or, "this chunk of zebulon possesses strange radioactive properties!" So connoting something both heavy and, um, technically advanced. But the being named after the pioneer who lent his name also to Pike's Peak makes sense too, in that ZP's music is not unlike a craggy mountain range, full of peaks and valleys, tall granite spires and bottomless chasms. This is mountainous metal. Their riffs are of avalanche proportions, their long songs (three on this disc, the shortest a mere 10:55, the longest 16:25) move with the inexorable power of giant glaciers, having slow but majestic momentum, though they pick up speed now and then for a sudden rockslide or volcanic eruption. The vast heavens above and beyond those peaks are also visited by ZP, especially on track two, "Star-Ocean", dusted with spacey, Zombi-esque synths in an cosmic interlude at about the 10 minute mark.
It's a mystery to us why this band isn't better known. Why they're still putting out their records themselves on their own label, why they haven't gotten the sort of attention awarded bands like Baroness and Pelican and Mastodon and Om and Hammers... Why aren't they signed to Southern Lord or Hydra Head? Where's the limited picture disc vinyl and diehard boxsets and stuff? What about tours? But they're too good to stay our little secret forever! Anyone into metallic post-rock and/or stonery sludge ought to enjoy exposure to that Zebulon radiation we mentioned...
Zex isn't the only exciting release in the 'Z' section this week! We've also got the new album from longtime aQ faves, Zebulon Pike, instrumental post-metallers extraordinare from St. Paul, Minnesota. Zebulon Pike seem to be one of those bands that we love and think should be bigger than they are, but never seem to hear about except via our own reviews (another example: Combat Astronomy). It's been four years since this quartet's previous opus, Space Is The Corpse Of Time. That one we made a Record Of The Week (so they SHOULD have gotten huge, right?!?) and even in that review we were apologizing for having pretty much exhausted all our superlatives in our previous hyperbolic raves about the band's other albums. So once again we have to fall back on the old standby - if you are a Zebulon Pike fan, you already KNOW you want this; if you aren't, well what part of super heavy epic progressive spacey post rock instrumental metal do you not like??? These guys are the masters!
This new disc features four new, and also of course quite long, tracks. Well, actually the last one, billed as an epilogue, is actually short, a mere two and a half minute ripper, but the others make up for it length-wise, especially the penultimate one, "A Fragile Portal", 18+ minutes long, which is also a ripper (in parts), and furthermore gets extra-fancy with the addition of two saxophones and a contrabass, sparingly deployed - but that arty chamber rock element doesn't stop it from being ultra-lumberingly-heavy, don't you worry, and neither does the eerie lullaby music box chiming part about six minutes in.
As always, anybody with any ZP experience knows to expect perfectly executed, exquisitely crafted, compositions combining minimalist repetition, sheer thundering riffage, complex shifting song structures, super tight instrumental interplay, exciting dynamics, and massive amounts of majestic feeling. Once again, Zebulon Pike compare favorably with a bunch of other big aQ faves... "The White Leopardess" sounds like Stinking Lizaveta on steroids; while opener "Nostalgia (For The Unreal)" immediately reminds us of The Fucking Champs when ZP's dual guitar harmonies arrive, but soon it's like The Champs playing atonal 20th Century classical. Mammatus, Pelican, Pharoah Overlord, Yob, Broughton's Rules and a bunch of others could be namechecked too, though really at this point ZP should be a band we could namecheck alone.
Grab this, strap your instru-metal heaviosity crash helmet on, crank it up, and get ready do some heavy duty loop-de-loops!
MPEG Stream: "The White Leopardess" [/audio/zebulonpikethewhite.m3u]
MPEG Stream: "A Fragile Portal" [/audio/zebulonpikeafragile.m3u] ----* ----* Also Relatively New In Stock, But Not Yet Reviewed : ----* A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS "Transfixiation" (Dead Oceans) cd/lp 13.98/17.98
ABDU ALI "Best Of Abdu Ali" (Deathbomb Arc) cassette 6.98
ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE AND THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. "High On Heaven: Live In New Haven" (Safety Meeting) 3lp 38.00
AKATHARSIA "s/t" (Econo Jam) lp 19.98
AKATOMBO "Sometime, Never" (Hand-Held) cd 14.98
ALASTOR / TUNDRA "The Forbidden Fruit Of Purity" (Slava Satan / Total Human Collapse Movement) cd 14.98
AMBARCHI, OREN "Live Knots" (Pan) cd 17.98
ANTWON "Heavy Hearted In The Function" (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
ART BLAKEY & THE JAZZ MESSENGERS "Mosaic" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
ASS "Live In New Jersey" (self-released) cassette 6.98
ATKINSON, FELICIA "A Readymade Ceremony" (Shelter Press) lp 23.00
AXIS: SOVA "Early Surf" (God?) lp 17.98
BAR STOOL WALKER (BRUCE ANDERSON) "Oh Hey Broadway" (no label) cd 7.98
BARROW WIGHT "Unfinished Tales" (Heavy Chains) cassette 4.98
BELLE & SEBASTIAN "Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance" (Matador) cd/2lp 14.98/31.00
BIRTH CONTROL "Operation" (Zyx) lp 21.00
BLACK SPIRITUALS "Live At Disjecta: High Vibration Resonance Vol. 1" (Tapeworm) cassette 8.98
BLACKSHAW, JAMES "Apologia" (Bladud Flies!) lp 23.00
BLACKWOLFGOAT "Drone Maintenance" (Small Stone) cd 13.98
BLAKULLA "s/t" (Mellotron) lp 29.00
BLANCO, MYKKI "Gay Dog Food" (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
BOOTLEGS "s/t" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
BOOTLEGS "W.C. Monster" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
BROADCAST "Haha Sound" (Warp) lp 27.00
BROADCAST "Tender Buttons" (Warp) lp 25.00
BROADCAST & THE FOCUS GROUP "Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age" (Warp) lp 25.00
BROTHERS OF THE SONIC CLOTH "s/t" (Neurot Recordings) cd 14.98
BROTZMANN, PETER / JIM O'ROURKE / KEIJI HAINO "Two City Blues" (Trost) lp 24.00
BROWNOUT "Brownout Presents: Brown Sabbath" (Ubiquity) cd 15.98
BUTLER, WILL "Policy" (Merge) lp 17.98
CARAGNANO, ANNA / DONATO DOZZY "Sintetizzatrice" (Spectrum Spools) lp 22.00
CARIBOU VIBRATION ENSEMBLE "CVE Live 2011" (self-released) lp 36.00
CARTER, DEAN "Call Of The Wild" (Big Beat) lp 23.00
CHAIN, PAUL "Live Tape 2" (Minotauro) cassette 9.98
CHAIN, PAUL "Live Tape 3" (Minotauro) cassette 9.98
CHAIN, PAUL "Unreleased Vol. 2" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
CHAIN, PAUL "Whited Sepulchres" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
CHAIN, PAUL VIOLET THEATRE "Opera 4th" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
CHERRY, DON "Complete Communion" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
CLENT, DJ "Last Bus To Lake Park" (Duck N' Cover) 2lp 24.00
CLOAK "Succumb" (Transylvanian Tapes) cassette 4.98
CODE III "Planet Of Man" (Wah Wah Records) lp 35.00
COLE LODGE "RNB" (Death Records) cassette 4.98
COLLINS, LYN "Think (About It)" (Get On Down) lp+7" 35.00
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS "Repetition Reinforcement" (Diagonal) 12" 17.98
COSMIC DEALER "Crystallization" (Pseudonym) 2lp 38.00
CRAVING ANGEL "Dark Horse" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
CRYPT VAPOR "Erotik Maniac" (Heavy Chains) cassette 4.98
DAMON & NAOMI "Fortune" (20/20/20) lp 15.98
DECEMBERISTS, THE "What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World" (Capitol Records) cd/2lp 14.98/26.00
DECERF, JEAN-PIERRE "Space Oddities 1975-1979" (Born Bad) lp 21.00
DEFYANCE "Amaranthine" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
DEFYANCE "Time Lost" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
DEFYANCE "Voices Within" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
DENGUE FEVER "The Deepest Lake" (Tuk Tuk) cd/lp 15.98/15.98
DESTRUCTION UNIT "Live In San Francisco" (Castle Face) cd/lp 13.98/15.98
DEVIL CHILDE "s/t" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
DINOSAUR JR "Bug: Live At The 9:30 Club" (Outer Battery) lp 21.00
DISSOLVE "s/t" (Painter Man) 12"/cassette 11.98/4.98
DRAKE, NICK "Family Tree" (Sunbeam) 2lp 34.00
DUAL ACTION "Back In" (Bed Of Nails) 12" 17.98
DURTHANG "Passage Beyond The Cold Vales Of Desolation" (War Against Yourself) cd 14.98
EARTH JERKS "File #06" (Computer Tapes) cd-r 4.98
ELFMILK "Relocation" (Independent Recordings) lp 13.98
ENGLISH, LAWRENCE "Viento" (Taiga) lp 26.00
EX-CULT "Cigarette Machine" (Castle Face) lp 15.98
FATHER JOHN MISTY "I Love You, Honeybear" (Sub Pop) cd 14.98
FATHER YOD & THE SPIRIT OF '76 "Kohoutek" (Drag City) lp 22.00
FEEDTIME "Flatiron" (Sub Pop) 7" 5.98
FF "Ffeeling" (300 Mics) lp/lp+blotter paper 17.98/24.00
FUNHOUSE "The Way Things Will Be" (Minotauro) cd 14.98
FURY, THE "Sex" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
GORGUTS "...And Then Comes Lividity Vol 1" (War On Music) lp 21.00
GORGUTS "...And Then Comes Lividity Vol 2" (War On Music) lp 23.00
GORGUTS "...And Then Comes Lividity Vol 3" (War On Music) lp+7" 28.00
GREEN, GRANT "Street Of Dreams" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
GRIM FUNERAL "Abdication Under Funeral Dirge" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
GUNN, STEVE & THE BLACK TWIG PICKERS "Seasonal Hire" (Thrill Jockey) lp 19.98
GURU GURU "UFO" (Zyx) lp 21.00
HENRY BLACKER "Hungry Dogs Will Eat Dirty Puddings" (Riot Season) lp 16.98
HILL, ANDREW "Black Fire" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
HOLDERLIN "Holderlins Traum" (Zyx) lp 21.00
HORNWOOD FELL "s/t" (Avantgarde Music / Burma Music) cd 14.98
HOUND "Out Of Time" (SRA) lp 17.98
HUTCHERSON, BOBBY "Total Eclipse" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
IMPERIOUS RITUAL "Unholy Congregation Of Hypocritical Ambiguity" (Profound Lore) 2lp 34.00
IRON MAIDEN "Piece Of Mind" (Sanctuary) lp 25.00
IRON MAIDEN "Powerslave" (Sanctuary) lp 25.00
JANVS "Nigredo" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
KALEVALA "People No Names" (Svart) lp 26.00
KEMO KEMOSS "Rejoice, No Survivors" (no label) cd 4.98
KID MILLIONS & JIM SAUTER "Fountain" (Family Vineyard) lp 15.98
KRITZLER, JIMI "Noise In My Head: Voices From The Ugly Australian Underground" (HoZac) book 49.99
LE STELLE DI MARIO SCHIFANO "s/t" (BDS) lp 17.98
LI XI "Meet Me Somewhere" (Sundowning) lp 18.98
LIVING EYES, THE "Living Large" (Agitated Records) lp 17.98
LOTUS THIEF "RERVM" (Svart) 2lp 34.00
LOW WORMWOOD "Lanzhou Lanzhou" (Maybe Mars) cd 12.98
M.D.C. "s/t" (Beer City) lp 15.98
MAGMA "Felicite Thosz" (Jazz Village) lp 22.00
MAIOVVI, ANTONI "Avrokosm" (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
MENACE RUINE "Venus Armata" (Sige) 2lp 26.00
MINGUS, CHARLES "Mingus Plays Piano: Spontaneous Compositions And Improvisations" (Supeior Viaduct) lp 23.00
MINGUS, CHARLES "The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady" (Superior Viaduct) lp 23.00
MISANTROPUS "s/t (violet)" (self-released) lp 21.00
MONK, THELONIOUS "Genius Of Modern Music Volume 1" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
MONK, THELONIOUS "Genius Of Modern Music Volume 2" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
NAHAR "The Strange Inconvenience" (Avantgarde Music / Sad Sun Music) cd 14.98
NAME, JACK "Weird Moons" (Castle Face) cd/lp 13.98/15.98
NKVD "Hakmarrja" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
NOCTURNAL POISONING "Doomgrass" (The End) cd 12.98
NUDITY "Astronomicon" (Iron Lung) lp 16.98
O'DWYER, AINE "Music For Church Cleaners Vol. 1 And II" (MIE) 2lp 30.00
OF MONTREAL "Aureate Gloom" (Polyvinyl) lp 17.98
OFDRYKKJA "A Life Worth Losing" (Avantgarde Music / War Against Yourself) cd 14.98
OGRE "Dawn Of The Proto-Man" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
OGRE "Seven Hells" (Minotauro) cd + dvd 17.98
OIL THIEF "Obsolencence & Monality" (Chondritic Sound) 2 x cassette 15.98
OLDER SUN "Bad Man b/w What You Need" (Valley King) 7" 9.98
ORB "Womb" (Heavy Chains) cassette 4.98
ORCUTT, BILL "Gerty Loves Pussy" (Palilalia) lp 16.98
PANDA BEAR "Meets The Grim Reaper" (Domino) cd 13.98
PEOPLE'S TEMPLE CHOIR "He's Able" (no label) cassette 6.98
PERFECT PUSSY "I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling" (Captured Tracks) 12" 16.98
PINES "The Field Journal" (Time Released Sound) 3" cd-r + booklet 30.00
POP GROUP, THE "Cabinet Of Curiosities" (Freaks R Us) lp 22.00
POP GROUP, THE "Citizen Zombie" (Freaks R Us) lp 31.00
POP, IGGY "American Caesar" (Plain Recordings) 2lp 31.00
POPULARE MECHANIK "Kollektion 03" (Bureau) cd/lp 19.98/27.00
PUBLIC ENEMY "Fear Of A Black Planet" (Def Jam) lp 34.00
PURE GROUND "Europa" (Chondritic Sound) cassette 8.98
PUSHUPS "Beast Jammz 2008" (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
PYONGYANG HARDCORE RESISTANCE "II" (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
PYRAMIDS "A Northern Meadow" (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
RILEY, TERRY & ROBERTO CACCIAPAGLIA ENSEMBLE "In C: Performed Live At Aterforum, July 9, 1988" (Mirumir) 2lp 37.00
RODMAN-MELCHIOR, LETHA "Shimmering Ghost" (Siltbreeze) lp 15.98
ROLLINS, SONNY "Newk's Time" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
SANNITI, ALESSIO "s/t" (self-released) lp 21.00
SANULLIM "The Psychedelic Years 1977-1979" (Dounia) lp 25.00
SETH "s/t" (Minotauro) 2cd 17.98
SHORTER, WAYNE "Adam's Apple" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
SIGNOR BEN EDICK THE MOOR "El Negro" (Deathbomb Arc) cd 8.98
SIGUR ROS "Agaetis Byrjun" (XL) 2lp 27.00
SILVERFISH "Fat Axl" (Southern) lp 16.98
SIVYJ YAR "From The Dead Villages' Darkness" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
SLEAFORD MODS "Chubbed Up" (Ipecac) cd 15.98
SMILES "s/t" (Death Records) cassette 4.98
SONMI451 "The Limbic System [Deluxe]" (Time Released Sound) cd 50.00
SONMI451 "The Limbic System [Regular]" (Time Released Sound) cd 14.98
SONNY AND THE SUNSETS "Talent Night" (Polyvinyl) lp 15.98
SORDIDE "La France A Peur" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
SPEAKING CANARIES, THEE "Platter Base Must Be Constructed Of Moon-Rock" (Chunklet) lp 16.98
SPECTRE "Ruff Kutz" (Pan) 2lp 30.00
STONE ANGEL "s/t" (Acme) lp 24.00
STONEY & THE JAGGED EDGE "Chasing Rainbows" (Big Beat) lp 23.00
SUMAC "The Deal" (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES "Calculations Of The Ancient" (Minotauri) cd 17.98
SVARTRIT "I" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
SVARTRIT "II" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
SVARTRIT "III" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
SWALLOWED "Lunarterial" (Dark Descent) cd 14.98
SWAMI JOHN REIS & THE BLIND SHAKE "Modern Surf Classics" (Swami) cd/lp 13.98/14.98
SWAY "s/t" cd 17.98
SWEET TORMENT "Hell / Ancient Pantheon" (Heavy Chains) cassette 4.98
SWERVEDRIVER "I Wasn't Born To Lose You" (Cobraside) cd 12.98
SYNT.TOFS "Radio Centraal 2008" (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
TACTICS "The Re-Mastered Plan" (Minotauro) 2cd + dvd 32.00
TAYLOR, CECIL "Unit Structures" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
THE AVENGERS VI "Real Cool Hits" (Dionysus) lp 15.98
THEESATISFACTION "Earthee" (Sub Pop) lp 17.98
THOABATH "A String Detached" (self-released) cassette 3.98
TIARAS "s/t" (Mt. St. Mtn.) lp 15.98
TOMORROWILLBEWORSE "Down The Road Of Nothing" (Avantgarde Music / Bylec-Tum Productions) cd 14.98
TOO SHORT "Born To Mack" (Plain) lp 25.00
TORCHE "Restarter" (Relapse) cd/lp 14.98/23.00
TRAFFIC SOUND "A Bailar A Go Go" (Lion Productions / Repsychled) cd 15.98
TREPANERINGSRITUALEN "Veil The World" (Cold Spring) cd 15.98
TRITON WARRIOR "Satan's Train b/w Sealed In A Grave" (Supreme Echo) 7" 11.98
TRUE NEUTRAL CREW "#Monsanto" (Deathbomb Arc) cassette 6.98
TRUE NEUTRAL CREW "#Poppunk" (Deathbomb Arc) cassette 6.98
UNCLE SAM "Heaven Or Hollywood" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
UNION TRADE, THE "A Place Of Long Years" (Tricycle) cd/lp 9.98/19.98
V/A "Dance Mania: Ghetto Madness" (Strut) 2lp 29.00
V/A "Music of Tanzania" (Sublime Frequencies) 2lp 29.00
V/A "Nordic Metal: A Tribute To Euronymous" (Hammerheart) 2lp 26.00
V/A "Off The Beaten Tracks" (Grown Kids Radio) lp 19.98
V/A "Punk 45: Extermination Nights In The Sixth City" (Soul Jazz) 2lp 29.00
V/A "Spiritual Jazz 6: Vocals" (Jazzman) 2lp 28.00
V/A "Ultra High Frequencies: The Chicago Party" (Numero) 2lp 23.00
VANDROOGENBROECK, JOEL "Biomechanoid" (Aguirre) lp 28.00
VATICAN SHADOW "Death & Unity With God" (Modern Love) 2lp 26.00
VIET CONG "Viet Cong" (Jagjaguwar) cd 13.98
VOIVOD "Negatron + Phobos" (Hypnotic) 2lp 27.00
WAND "Golem" (In The Red) cd/lp 13.98/15.98
WEEPING RAT "Tar" (Handmade Birds) cd 10.98
WHIRR "Sway" (Graveface) cd/lp 14.98/16.98
WINTERFRONT "Northwinds" (Werewolf Promotion / Lower Silesian Stronghold) cd 14.98
XYZ "s/t" (Radical Elite) lp 16.98
ZERO DOWN "No Limit To Evil" (Minotauro) cd 12.98
All kinds of awesomeness here on this new Zebulon Pike album, their fourth, and the Minnesota instrumental math metal stoner doom post-rock space-rock (whew!) combo's first full-length in like three years. It's also their first ever to be released on (double lp gatefold) VINYL as well as compact disc. If you're already a big ZP fan like us, and we know lots of AQ customers are, then you're automatically super stoked at this news and we should just get outta the way and let you "add to cart" without further ado. But, we realize that (for some strange reason) not everybody in the whole world knows who ZP is or just why they're so great. So unfair (for them) and unfortunate (for all their potential fans), 'cause as we've said before, they should be HUGE... at least signed to Hydra Head (instead of their own label) and touring with bands like Baroness, hyped by all the cool magazines and blogs and whatnot. Not sure why that hasn't really happened yet, but if we have anything to say about it, someday it will.
Soooo... this album, being to our ears arguably their best yet, would be a great one to get into for the first time, for those who haven't yet been exposed to that special "Zebulon Pike radiation" we've referred to in the past. Not sure we can out-do any of our previous reviews in the hyperbole dep't., we've raved about 'em before for sure, and it will be hard for us to come up with anything better to say here, of course we'll pull out the old standby that they're kinda like Pelican meets The Fucking Champs, combining lumbering sub-bass heaviosity, surging melodicism, and stunning dual guitar harmonies - definitely a band playing music for music's sake ("Hats Off To Music" as the Champs would say, paraphrasing Led Zep's feelings about Roy Harper).
With spiralling leads and chugging riffage, ZP is definitely into metal, but also 20th century classical (Steve Reich?), and prog, that's more from whence their extended song structures arise - the five tracks here are mostly long, all the double digits except one. Crucial for an instrumental band, they not only come up with good riffs, but also concentrate on interesting, extreme sonic textures, getting into avant garde areas at times. Like, what's up with the crazy chorus of "wheee wheee wheee" sounds (somehow produced by the guitars, we assume) cacophonously closing track one, "Spectrum Threshold"? We don't know, but we like it. The drummer gets into the avant-action too, there's stretches of percussive soundscapes, dense drum storms and spacious skitter. You definitely don't miss there being a vocalist, this definitely keeps your attention, as long as the songs are, with twists and turns, first hypnotizing with crushing riff repetition, then plunging into a droning abstract celestial otherworld or a quiet jazzy pretty passage, like the tinkling music box midsection dropped into "Echoic Worlds" that sets you up for the heavy angular riffage set to surge forth immediately afterwards. And this album never bogs down, there's always a sense of strong, propulsive forward motion, even with the ambient detours.
Compared to earlier albums by these guys, we sense even more emphasis here on the '90s post rock part of the ZP equation. Lots of that loud/soft stuff a la Slint and Mogwai, but way more metal... some other bands that come to mind while listening to this, from moment to moment, include Don Caballero, Yob, Iceburn (circa Hephaestus, an underrated classic we'd love review someday, if it ever comes back into print!), Megaton Leviathan, forgotten AQ faves Fuehler, early Pharaoh Overlord, Isis, Boris, Conifer, Sardonis, and more... but they sound like ZP and only ZP at the end of the day.
One sign of a good album is that it immediately compels repeated plays from the sometimes jaded, overwhelmed listeners here at AQ, this one sure did and that's why we made it Record Of The Week. Space Is The Corpse Of Time is pushing our buttons for what we like in "this sort of thing" while also springing plenty of surprises.
So if you like your post rock to be heavy and sludgey, and you like your sludgey heavy rock to be instrumental, and you like your sludgey heavy instrumental post rock to be both super melodic and sonically adventurous, almost scientifically advanced, well heck then you sound like our sort of customer and we highly recommend this Zebulon Pike album to you! It's an epic feast of might and majesty and MUSIC.
FYI, if you get the vinyl, it comes with an mp3 download card. Obviously if you get the cd, you don't need that.
Not sure how we managed to sleep on this record when it came out last year. Had we heard it then, it doubtless would have made it into the year-end top tens of many of the metalheads here for sure. Fortunately, we did eventually get a clue - we realized we had to check out this Greek one-man-band after reading the interview with Zemial in the latest issue of Chips & Beer, 'cause any supposedly 'black metal' outfit that name checks Karlheinz Stockhausen*, John Cage, and Magma drummer Christian Vander, amongst others, sure sounds like something we'd dig here at aQ! And dig we do.
So, here's Zemial's 2013 opus, Nykta. Majestic, propulsive, spacey, epic, catchy, hella weird, yeah, Nykta is right up our alley. Zemial has actually been around since 1989, but this is still only the band's third full-length album - and it's a doozy if you like extremely original 'extreme' metal music. The guy behind Zemial, multi instrumentalist Archon Vorskaath, is into modern composers and prog/jazz fusion drummers, but he's also big into Bathory. So this has got to be one of the only 'progressive metal' albums we've heard that's chock full of raw, dirty riffing and gruff vocals that sound right off a Venom album. But there's also out-there spacey synthscapes, Eastern-sounding exoticism, esoteric lyrics, suddenly prominent prog rock keyboard parts, and tons of uber talented and effective percussion from Vorskaath (that's his specialty, having played percussion professionally in an orchestra). And, he's pretty impressive in the vocal department, too, doing some semi-melodic, 'clean' but not too clean singing, with heaps of gusto and strangely effected weirdness.
Zemial really manage thee perfect, hithero unattempted synthesis of savage, driving riffage and tripped out experimentation here. We don't think we've ever heard a metal band that sounds so 'old school' and yet so avant-garde and original at the same time. We fear we can't do this album justice in this review, it's one of those that we just gotta say, trust us, it's brilliant and weird and kickass and totally recommended to open-minded metallers (and non-metallers too), especially fans of Absu, latter-day Darkthrone, and Enslaved (circa Mardraum). Blizaro too - the moody, bombastic synth instrumental "The Small", at least, sounds a lot like something they would do.
By the way, there's nothing wrong with your stereo - the final track here is an homage to Cage's famous composition 4'33", and has thrown a lot of unknowing metal reviewers for a loop, being of course (almost?) totally silent. Hey, it could have been on that Sounds Of Silence lp we made Record Of The Week a while back! (Note to Vorskaath, however: placing the silent track at the end of your album is less effective than if you'd put it right in the middle!)
*In that Chips & Beer interview, Vorskaath talks about how he's played with Stockhausen's jazz musician son Markus, in a piece that involved the musicians fasting and meditating for, like, two straight days before getting on stage to improvise - now that's extreme!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
San Francisco's soul-tinged hard rockers Zen Guerilla are on loan from Sub Pop for this 7" single, wherein they demonstrate their love of metal, covering Black Sabbath on side A and Iron Maiden on side B! Fun stuff, and (as with all good covers) they put their own stamp on these songs -- first, they manage to make a classic Dio-era Sabbath tune sound like the MC5, while on "The Trooper" they drop their usual vocal effects for a straighter take on Bruce Dickinson's air raid vocals, but slop up and noisify (in good way) Maiden's militaristic music. Cool.
Here's one to play loud! The first new album from Japanese heavyweights Zeni Geva in six years (their last being 1995's "Freedom Bondage" on Alternative Tentacles), their ninth-ish disc overall (more if you count tapes and splits etc.), is out now on Neurosis' Neurot label. Zeni Geva mastermind KK Null takes a break from his solo ambient/electronics projects to return to his
Swans. Godflesh. Big Black. Melvins. Eyehategod. Unsane. Zeni Geva. We're concerned here with the latter, who maybe aren't as well known as the first half dozen bands mentioned, but sure as heck belong in that illustrious company... and sound VERY much like some unholy, heavier-than-thou hybrid of all of 'em!! It's been a long time since we've had a new Zeni Geva album to write about... and no this isn't actually a new album. But we're still pretty excited. Every once in a while, we have the opportunity to list and review an old favorite. Something that's been out of print for longer even than we've been doing the Aquarius website and New Arrivals emails, that we'd never had the chance to stock and recommend before, that finally at long last gets a well-deserved reissue and is cause for much celebration 'round here. For instance, to name a couple of recent examples, Harvey Milk's My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. And Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper. You'll note the examples we just cited are all on the "heavy" side... well that's 'cause what we're about to recommend here also pretty darn heavy. To say the least.
You may already be familiar with Japan's Zeni Geva, as they've been around for years and years. This cult "progressive hardcore" trio is the brainchild of guitarist Kazuyuki Kishino Null, also well-known for his "nullsonic" solo recordings. Definitely influenced by early Swans, KK Null started up the doomy and noisy ZG in about 1987. Previously he'd done time in Tokyo underground industrial noise-terrorists Absolut Null Punkt, and with prog act YBO2, which also featured drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, who of course later went on to lead the incredible Magmoid duo Ruins. Meanwhile, post-YBO2, Null formed the far more metallic* Zeni Geva. Null did draft Yoshida in to play drums on some early ZG material (wouldn't you?), and you'll here him here on about half of this disc's tracks, contributing his distinctive vocals as well to a couple songs. Ikuro Taketani (ex-Hanatarashi) plays drums on the other half. The lineup also includes Tabata Mitsuru (ex-Boredoms and Leningrad Blues Machine) on guitar. That's right, there's no bassist in Zeni Geva which is pretty incredible considering how hellishly heavy they are! And it's clear that ZG are something of a underground Japanese rock supergroup.
MMM was ZG's first cd release, coming out originally in 1990 on the UK's now long-gone Pathological label. It's a lumbering juggernaut fully blessed and bloated with everything we LOVE about Zeni Geva that would also be heard on later, Albini-produced releases like Total Castration and Desire For Agony: Utter headbanging, slo-mo, dirt-plowing destruction. Molasses thick riffs dripping from electric axes. Frenzied, technical bashing. Mathy post rock song structures. High-end guitar solo skree. Mean misanthropic attitude. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition.... adorned with the aforementioned guitar soloing, providing a crashing, crushing soundscape to underscore the throaty proclamations of "Sweetheart!" or "War Pig!" or "Blackout!" from gruff vocalist/guitarist Null -- the lyrics to these tracks being little more than the song title shouted over and over with fervent anguish. Glorious stuff, massive and mesmeric.
From the first track, the 16 minute harrowing dirge-stomp "Slam King" that ends terrifyingly with waves of unaccompanied, effected vocals, to the last, the rhythmic and witchy "On Suicide", featuring lyrics borrowed from Bertold Brecht, this is scary, monolithic, artistic heaviness of the highest order.
Let's give a big thanks to Cold Spring for making this classic available once again (as part of a wave of Japanese releases including a new disc from noise legends CCCC). Though we don't see why Cold Spring felt the need to replace the original, much more colorful, and in our opinion, superior artwork, we are happy to note that they did make one major improvement. While the eight songs on the original disc were inexplicably presented as one loooong track with no separate-song indexing (annoying!) they're thankfully corrected that. Now you can skip right to "Guystick Bodie", or put "Skullfuck" on repeat. And in addition to the eight original tracks, they've added three previously unreleased bonus cuts as well! Devastating live versions of album cuts "War Pig" (a Zeni Geva song, not Sabbath's "War Pigs" plural) and "Skullfuck", along with "Dead Car, Sun Crash" (an early ZG number not included on the album proper), recorded in Tokyo circa 1988-89. Whee! Like we said, we're so stoked to get to list/review/recommend this!
*Though not metallic enough to be accepted by the online metal authority Encyclopedia Metallum it must be noted...
Two weeks ago, we highlighted the reissue of Zeni Geva's Maximum Money Monster, which was the first cd from this ultra-heavy Japanese noise-rock-prog behemoth. In the process of reviewing Maximum Money Monster, we realized we'd never written up anything about this band's killer 1991 album Total Castration, the Albini-produced follow-up to MMM. It's our favorite ZG album, one that we always try to stock, it just predates the AQ list so it never got its due herein. It hasn't been reissued or anything, but we checked with our supplier and they said they still had about 150 copies of the original pressing still sitting and gathering dust in their warehouse, even though the Public Bath label is long defunct. Quite possibly a lot of the folks who snapped up the MMM reissue after reading about it last list don't actually also have this one either, so we figure it's our civic duty to highlight this old fave as well, while we can still get our hands on 'em!
Basically everything we said in the review of MMM applies to Total Castration as well, starting with the litany of crucial bands that ZG must be mentioned alongside: Swans. Godflesh. Big Black. Melvins. Eyehategod. Unsane... i.e. HEAVY (but not necessarily metal) and scary sounds. What else would you expect from an album with a title like Total Castration?! That's also the name of one of the songs, as are these: "Shoot Me With Your Blood", "Bloodsex", "I Hate You", and "Bigman Death". Cheery stuff, eh? Lyrics pretty much consist of these happy concepts being throatily chanted over and over. Oh and there's also "Godflesh", maybe a nod to sonic contemporaries Justin Broadrick and crew.
On each of these thunderous songs, the trio of trio of Null (guitar/vo), Tabata (guitar), and Eito (drums/metals) crash, smash, and bash, Null's guttural, nihilistic exclamations backed up by the iron fist of Zeni Geva's heavier than thou noise rockin'. The guitars chug and squall, the drums hammer down relentlessly. Screams and shrieks wail from the pounding shitstorm of metallic distortion that Zeni Geva have crafted into a throbbing, hypnotic riff-fest -- damn good riffs, with stretches of relatively restrained but still scary atmosphere now and then to heighten the impact when they eventually (as they always do) come down heavy. Meanwhile the high end guitar wielded by Tabata often unfurls intricate, catchy licks and squiggly solos over the top of all this mayhem, to make these songs even more brain-invading and body-shaking. And Steve Albini's production is killer, natch. (He would later play guitar with these guys on a live album, All Right, You Little Bastards!, that's now next to impossible to find.)
Super, super recommended to anyone into heaviness, metal or otherwise. As crucial as the Melvins' Bullhead, Neurosis' Enemy Of The Sun, Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper, Ruins' Stonehenge, Isis's Oceanic, Corrupted's Paso Inferior, Fudge Tunnel's Hate Songs In E Minor, Boris's Amplifier Worship... In other words, essential. If you missed this back in the early '90s, grab it. (By the way, Allan says the time he saw 'em on their US tour for this album was perhaps the best show he's ever been to.)
If you're a follower of the aQ list, you know that there's this retro-but-fresh Canadian metal band called Iron Dogs, that we think is really, really special, eh? We've raved about their two records of punked out, DIY old school heavy metal worship - in fact, we made their Free & Wild album a Record Of The Week about a year ago. Well, the singer/guitarist in Iron Dogs, a talented & busy bloke with the very punk name of Jo Capitalicide, is also in a few other cool bands, one of 'em being the freaking great Zex, who sound kinda like a cross between Iron Dogs and the Rezillos, because compared to Iron Dogs they're more punk, more poppy, and they've got a female singer. This is their debut album, which also has to be aQ Record Of The Week for sure, 'cuz they've waxed a classic, we think, when it comes to records with a "youth gone wild in the streets", us-against-the-world vibe, that will make you feel like a 16 year old runaway again. Heck, we've been wanting to list something by Zex for a while, ever since we first heard 'em, but their two 7"s sold out too fast. But now we're so happy Magic Bullet has just released a US edition of their full-length on both cd and vinyl that we can at last stock and shout about.
Zex, who like Iron Dogs are based outta Ottawa, find Jo playing guitar alongside Gab Sex (bass), Tasha G (drums) and Gretchen Steel (vocals).
On Fight For Yourself this crew crank out ten catchy 2-to-3 minute long blasts of energetic, anthemic streetwise punk with a NWOBHM inspired flair. (That's New Wave Of British Heavy Metal - though plain ol' New Wave is a factor here too!) Really, take Iron Dogs, keep the early Iron Maiden influence, but add a bunch more Ramones, maybe some Fuzzbox, the aforementioned Rezillos, some Joan Jett perhaps, and you've got Zex. So Iron Dogs fans oughtta dig this if they're into punk at all; really quite a few of the tracks, like "Savage City", could easily have been Iron Dogs songs, they've got the same guitar tone, same riff-writing knack, same gnarly, twangy Strat soloing from Jo - but when the vocals kick in, instead of Jo's charmingly rough yobbish yowl, you get Gretchen's more melody-capable, obvious-frontperson-worthy singing, which is tough & sneering enough to convey commanding metalpunk attitude, while also sealing the deal on the uplifting pop side of this band. And, she's got zex appeal (ba-dum-bump). Gretchen's vocals and Jo's riffing make for, at the end of the day, quite a poppy listen indeed - just spin songs like "XXX" or "Wanderlust" and dare them not to get stuck in your head, especially when the choruses (often with gang vocals) roll around. This is one of those albums where it was tough (or easy, depending on how you look at it) for us to pick which tracks to make our sound samples for, 'cuz they're pretty much all killer.
Obviously, we got into Zex 'cuz we love Iron Dogs, and Zex have so much of the same sound & spirit. But even if we'd never heard Iron Dogs, we're pretty sure this still would have grabbed us. So for those of you not yet hip to Iron Dogs, well, do you like, say, the garagey metalpunk of Zig Zags? Or, do you the ripping girl-powered power pop of Ex Hex?? Fans of either could totally get into this. For that matter, d'you just like the teenage excitement of some good ol' rock n' roll? Then check this out. We've been spinning it so much that you could almost call us Zex addicts...
FYI, vinyl version we have at the moment is limited colored (clear, actually) and includes insert with lyrics and show fliers, whereas the cd comes in a slim cardboard sleeve.
You might have seen this on our special 'Z' list last week, but if not...
Hubba hubba! One of our fave blasts of metalled-up punkery or punked out metallurgy last year came from LA rad boys the Zig Zags. Now they've followed up that self-titled debut full-length with another of their killer 7"s singles, this one from the Famous Class label, on translucent slime green vinyl, in a silkscreened gatefold sleeve, limited to just 500 copies. Hella punk cred is pretty evident whenever you crank the Zig Zags anyway, but this four song ep underlines that indisputable fact by including a live 7 Seconds cover, "We're Gonna Fight", as well as a poppy original shredder, "Sunken City", inspired by San Pedro's finest, The Minutemen. But yeah, they're plenty metal too, the lead-off track on the A-side even boasts an umlaut in the title. Scuzzy, heavy, hooky, what's not to like about these dudes? Just played the Hemlock here in SF last week, which was great since it's probably best to hear 'em with a fully-stocked bar conveniently to hand.
Includes download code, nerd!
Joke metal from Canada but it's pretty bad ass nonetheless. And funny.
Awesome garagey/glammy '70s hard rock that sounds like a demented Led Zeppelin some of the time, featuring frontman Fred Cole, future co-founder of the legendary Pacific NW punks Dead Moon! For as big of proto-metal, '70s rock nerds as we are here at aQuarius, we don't understand how we'd somehow NEVER heard of this band until quite recently. And it's not like this is a new cd reissue, in fact, it apparently dates from 1994! When we got clued in to Zipper, we tracked it down, thankfully one of our distributors still had a supply in stock, so here it is, gotta share it with those of you who haven't heard Zipper either. Well, it's nice to know there's always some new but old gem out there we haven't yet heard.
So, Zipper's sole album, originally released as a private pressing (by the Cole's own "Whizeagle Records") in 1975, features nine cuts of high energy ramalama and bluesy grunge. The album opens with a bang, the song "Bullets" being the one that immediately made us think Led Zeppelin, with extremely lewd & lascivious lyrics delivered in what sounds like an exaggerated parody of a lemon-squeezin' Robert Plant. The sexual innuendo here is pretty outrageous / hilarious if you pay attention ("wanna stuff my face in your swimming hole, stroke it so hard I'm gonna break my pole", for example) and the guitars riff it up with wild abandon.
Cole's over the top vocals are big part of Zipper's sound, for sure, and at first (before we realized it was Fred Cole singing) we were kind of taken aback by his style, sneering and screeching, part Percy, part Mick Jagger, often doing a scrappy, campy falsetto that makes us think of Wayne Kramer warbling "Rambing Rose" on the MC5's Kick Out The Jams! Overwrought and ridiculous, but damn it works, with the downer epic "Face Of Stone" ferinstance being truly emotional wrenching. Some big influences are probably late '60s Stones, Zeppelin of course, perhaps early Detroit-era Alice Cooper, and maybe a bit of Black Sabbath. There's some sweet aching ballads, some lumbering blues rawk blasters, some glammed-up punkers, and even a '50s style raver. Good stuff - for raunchy, kickass, low-budget heavy jams from the garage circa '75, look no further!
(Sometime soon, we'll also have to review the reissue of the excellent album by Fred Cole's even earlier band from the sixties, The Lollipop Shoppe, a band whose cutesy name belies their seriously gloomy vibes.)
SWEET! REISSUED ON VINYL. We listed an earlier (and now out of print) cd reissue of this gem a while back, thusly...
Awesome garagey/glammy '70s hard rock that sounds like a demented Led Zeppelin some of the time, featuring frontman Fred Cole, future co-founder of the legendary Pacific NW punks Dead Moon! For as big of proto-metal, '70s rock nerds as we are here at aQuarius, we don't understand how we'd somehow NEVER heard of this band until quite recently.
So, Zipper's sole album, originally released as a private pressing (by the Cole's own "Whizeagle Records") in 1975, features nine cuts of high energy ramalama and bluesy grunge. The album opens with a bang, the song "Bullets" being the one that immediately made us think Led Zeppelin, with extremely lewd & lascivious lyrics delivered in what sounds like an exaggerated parody of a lemon-squeezin' Robert Plant. The sexual innuendo here is pretty outrageous / hilarious if you pay attention ("wanna stuff my face in your swimming hole, stroke it so hard I'm gonna break my pole", for example) and the guitars riff it up with wild abandon.
Cole's over the top vocals are big part of Zipper's sound, for sure, and at first (before we realized it was Fred Cole singing) we were kind of taken aback by his style, sneering and screeching, part Percy, part Mick Jagger, often doing a scrappy, campy falsetto that makes us think of Wayne Kramer warbling "Rambing Rose" on the MC5's Kick Out The Jams! Overwrought and ridiculous, but damn it works, with the downer epic "Face Of Stone" ferinstance being truly emotional wrenching. Some big influences are probably late '60s Stones, Zeppelin of course, perhaps early Detroit-era Alice Cooper, and maybe a bit of Black Sabbath. There's some sweet aching ballads, some lumbering blues rawk blasters, some glammed-up punkers, and even a '50s style raver. Good stuff - for raunchy, kickass, low-budget heavy jams from the garage circa '75, look no further!
Battle Of The Peak is the crushing epic debut release from this Tolkien-esque psychedelic prog-doom noiserock from Portland, whose debut is in fact fucking amazing, not just sonically, but visually as well, more on the over the top ridiculous packaging in a second, cuz musically, it's hard to imagine an aQ metalhead who wouldn't freak out over there guys, epic, sprawling 15+ minute songs, classic metal riffing, big pounding drums, yowled bellowed vocals, the whole thing straddling the lines between classic metal, doom, noise rock, and black metal buzz, which makes sense as the mastermind of Zirakzagil is also the man behind two Northern BM bands of note, whose most recent records were both reviewed on the aQ list not too long ago, but Zirakzagil is a whole different beats, the band unfurling long stretches of tranced out riffing, surprisingly melodic, super dynamic, lurching stop/starts, some seriously soaring leads, at times it sounds a bit like the Fucking Champs, slowed down and stretched out into some psychedelic noise rock doom, at other times it's full on metallic prog, intricate, tangled arrangements slow builds, dense, and intense, the drumming super wild and chaotic, the songs will chug and churn, before slipping into some super melodic passage, and some of the leads, super emotive old school classic shreddery, and while there are vocals, bellowed bearded noise rock howls, most of the record is instrumental, the instruments doing all the heavy lifting, whether it's heaving swells of churning riffage on opener "The Birth Of The White Wizard", the woozy psychedelic shuffle of "Durin's Bane", or the weird mathy psychedelic breakdown near the end of "The Endless Stair", which ends up sounding like a more metal, and more mathed out Don Caballero!
This rules! And it's DEFINITELY not black metal, heck it's really not even that doomy, it IS sludgey, heavy, mathy, proggy and totally epic!
And speaking of epic, the packaging is ultra epic, and NERDY! The title and the cover art are of course beholden to Lord Of The Rings (where would metal be without Tolkien?), but then that stuff is designed into a faux Nintendo game cartridge, the fonts, the label log, the layout, the oversized clamshell case, it looks just like a Nintendo game, and open it up, and the liner notes are deftly worked into the game's instructions, even including a picture of the game controller, adorned with the Zirakzagil logo! Includes a patch and a sticker too. And of curse, EXTREMELY LIMITED! ONLY 98 COPIES, and we have about a dozen...
