Zounds! Zoinks!! ZIRAKZIGIL!!! "Z" is the letter of the week here at aQ thanks entirely to this absolutely enormous slab of cosmic progressive supersludge courtesy of Portland's very heaviest Z-word. Worldbuilder is only the sophomore full length from these grizzly wanderers of the astral plane (after their debut "Battle Of The Peak" which we rightfully raved about back in 2013), but already pulses with a wild streak of spiritually charged confidence usually reserved for bands of the Neurosis, Mastodon, Om ilk. What immediately sets Zirakzigil apart from some of their simpler minded sludged-out contemporaries is the level of musicianship on display. While this certainly bears similarities to the aforementioned Neurosis (especially in the vocals) and perhaps also to bands like Isis or Yob, Zirakzigil eschew any kind of hypnotic repetitive approach, instead peppering their songs with whirling stop start time signatures and off kilter drumming, dramatic twisting structures and dizzying transitions, at times even sounding like some jazz-fusion answer to monolithic post-metal. But as wonderful and thrilling as all of that weirdness is, it only serves as a compliment to something even grander. That's Zirakzigil's real secret weapon, distraction. The awesomeness of the more frantic passages, with all their warped musicianship, frenetic rolls & confounding riffing, provides the ultimate disarming contrast to Zirakzigil's truest strength: Those Enormous. Epic. Riffs. When Worldbuilder really opens up and simplifies, it becomes the stuff of mountain crumbling legend - the kind of thing you want to ride out into battle and die to (whether that's on horseback or in a starship is unclear... it seems like either one could apply equally to this record!) It's an approach not dissimilar to Elder's newest album (which we also made ROTW recently!), but Zirakzigil are way more immediate and aggressive. Confrontationally spacey if you will! The way every song seamlessly leads into the next (four tracks all running at 13+ minutes by the way) only makes the experience all the more massive, like being torn slow-motion-asunder by an enormous hour long suite of galaxy swallowing black hole orchestration - a pummeling meteor shower of multicolor Northern Lights heavy, heavy, heavy metal. Glorious, twisted & very recommended.
Another killer hard rock reissue from the UK's Rock Candy label. See elsewhere on the list for the other one, the legendary debut, and only release from SF's own Sea Hags, a classic slab of gritty hard rock glam brilliance. But this one, this one is something extra special.
Some of you might remember a short lived musical movement in the eighties in the UK, affectionately called Grebo. A bunch of greasy bastards (which is where the name came from supposedly), in leather and spikes, long hair, wielding big guitars, even bigger riffs, and singing songs about sex and drugs, and well, yeah, rock and roll. Some other Grebo bands included Pop Will Eat Itself and Crazyhead but it was Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction who carried the Grebo torch most proudly. The lineup: Zodiac Mindwarp, Cobalt Stargazer, Flash Bastard, Thrash D. Garbage and Slam Thunderhide, the sound, equal parts glam rock, seventies hard rock, and obviously lots and lots of camp and theater.
This is over the top, wild and wooly heavy metal rock and roll. As much about getting laid and getting high as it is rocking. And it shows in the songs. "Backseat Education", "Bad Girl City", but it's the opening track, the kick ass "Prime Mover" that was there biggest hit, and definitely their best song. Beginning with a goofy messianic bout of testifying some sort of utter nonsense, but when that main riff kicks in, you're hooked. Thankfully the rest of the record is just as kick ass. Every track a perfect little pop song, wrapped in glammed out riffs, sing along choruses, wild leads, and killer drumming.
This is another one of those records, that isn't weird or fucked up enough to appeal to anyone other than folks who dig this kind of shit. So we won't try to convince dronenerds or popkids, or avant garde elitists to check it out. But anyone into glammy, punky, hooky hard rock and roll will go nuts for this, that is if they weren't already waiting for the reissue anyway. Just check out the sound samples, you'll know in a matter of seconds if you're the kind of greasy bastard this stuff was meant for.
As with all the Rock Candy reissues, the packaging and presentation are amazing. If only ALL reissues were this well done. Jewel case wrapped up in a full color slipcase. Bonus tracks, all the 12" B-sides, tons of photos, extensive liner notes, interviews with Zodiac himself, as well as an extensive band history.
Now available on lp! Ultra thick vinyl, super heavy weight gatefold sleeve, and most importantly, AN EXCLUSIVE BONUS TRACK!!!! Limited to 1000 copies, so these probably won't be around for long. Here's our review of the cd from when we first reviewed it a few years back:
If there was ever a band more "AQ" than Zombi I'd be hard pressed to think of it. Take two guys, both obsessed with horror movies, particularly those by director Dario Argento, and even more specifically the Argento soundtracks by Italian prog outfit Goblin. Give these two guys a drumkit and a massive arsenal of synthesizers, and sign them to Relapse. And what do you get? Basically, a record we just can't stop listening to. And songs that are just BEGGING to accompany some gruesome footage of disemboweled corpses, dark stormy nights, windows covered in flies, and screaming barefoot girls in nighties running through graveyards in the pouring rain. Not that the music of Zombi is THAT scary, it's just so evocative, and SO reminiscent of Goblin, it's hard not to try to envision what kitschy eighties European horror movie these tracks might have come from. Sonically, the simplest description and the one that should have most of you rushing out to pick this up straight away, would be Goblin meets Tortoise. Yep, post rock horror movie soundtrack music swathed in ominous synthesizer buzz and electronic drone. Maybe a more accurate description though might be: long lost Goblin tracks performed by AQ faves Heldon, with all the requisite swooshing spaciness, haunting minor key melodies, propulsive krautrock rhythms and thick fuzzy synths. The synth soundtrack music of John Carpenter is also an obvious influence, but again, put to use in a post rock context. Whichever way, you NEED this!
A band called Zombie Battle Axe. A record called ...Now You Are Dead. Released on Slut Factory, the same label that released the latest record by Iron Bitchface. So of course we were expecting some sort of grinding metallic weirdness. Some throbbing techno grindcore, something spastic and freaked out at least, but lo and behold, Zombie Battle Axe is nothing of the sort. Instead, ZBA weave dark, creepy crawly cinematic soundscapes that sound like they could have been plucked with out of a movie by John Carpenter or Dario Argento.
Long wavery synth tones, whirring and shimmering like that dense fog that always seems to be creeping along the ground in cemeteries.
Long drawn out melodies, mournful and melancholy, the sound of rain and wind, thunder and lightning, lots of howling wolves, deep dolorous drones, layers of buzz and hiss, all recorded super lo-fi, so the tape hiss adds to the mysterious murk.
Some seriously haunting cinematic ambience, drone music wrapped around some scratchy old Halloween sound effects record, dubbed onto an old cassette, stuffed into a beat up old tape player, buried in the front yard and broadcast through 3 feet of worm filled black earth. The perfect soundtrack for midnight strolls along muddy swamps, raising the dead, leering and lurking in dark alleys searching for your next victim or for your next super-eight home made giallo.
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Reissue of the reissue. Previously an actual black box, with 2 cds, now everything fitted onto one disc. When these two Naked City records originally came out, it was before aQuarius had started doing our "list". But then Tzadik reissued 'em in The Black Box back in 1996, and we had a chance to review them... but all we said was: "Stars John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Fred Frith, Joey Baron & Yamantaka Eye. For their re-issue, Zorn has packaged these two albums in a black box, presenting all of the original, controversial artwork in the liner notes. Zorn gives a bit of history behind the graphics for Naked City releases. The albums, one fast and furious, the other slow and brutal, are without equal. They demonstrate the most aggressive sides of these incredible musicians."
True that, but there's more that could be said! Perhaps we figured, at the time, that everyone must already know all about Zorn and Naked City and there was no point in any extensive description. But, nowadays, there's gotta be people reading this who haven't yet experienced the mindboggling, genre-jumping musical mastery of Naked City, especially as intensely expressed on Torture Garden, originally released as a 45rpm 12" on the Shimmy Disc label in 1989, and if you're one of those folks, you're in for a treat - as long as you dig the idea of a "jazz" band playing almost every style of music imaginable, from lounge to country to surf to grindcore, in jarringly short, sharp stop on dime bursts, with Eye from the Boredoms vocalizing over top like a gibbering demon, screaming along with Zorn's saxophone, performing songs with titles like "Thrash Jazz Assassin", "Speedball", "Jazz Snob Eat Shit", "New Jersey Scum Swamp", and "S&M Sniper"! It's like the cartoon music of Carl Stalling meets Napalm Death meets, well just about everything else in the realm of music. Utterly insane and influential (though it must be said, Napalm Death was a HUGE influence on this). It's how we first heard about the Boredoms, too!
Blew us all away the first time we heard it. 12, 17, 28, 43 second songs that had more and better riffs in 'em than some ten minute Metallica epics. Well maybe that's exaggerating. But you get the idea. Amazing. And definitely Naked City's most "metal", grindcore-iest moment. Utter mayhem, with Zorn and Co. cramming a crazy number of changes into each track. Videos of them performing reveal a reliance on sheet music, but we don't blame 'em. That almost makes it more insane.
On this disc, the 42 tracks of Torture Garden (the longest of which clocks in at 1'19", but most don't come anywhere near the minute-mark) are followed by the single, 31'38" track that comprised the entirety of the 1992 Naked City album Leng Tch'e, long out of print, the yin to Torture Garden's yang for sure. Leng Tch'e is like the Naked City version of Earth or the Melvins, one long sludge trudge, super heavy and doomic and nightmarish. Again, Eye's vocals vie with Zorn's saxophone in emulating the screams of the damned.
If we had to choose our favorite Zorn album from amid his VAST discography (The Big Gundown? Spy Vs. Spy? Spillane? Bar Kokhba? Absinthe? Execution Ground?) Torture Garden would get a lot of our votes... it's certainly one of the most "extreme", though an argument could be made for Leng Tch'e too. No wonder they both belong together here (which also has something to do with the original, controversial cover art, necessitating the "black box" treatment). Nice to have 'em back in print, for the uninitiated, and also for old fans like us who had almost forgotten how incredible this shit is.
FYI some of the Torture Garden tracks also appeared on cd on the self-titled Naked City disc on Nonesuch (1989) and the Avant-label release Grand Guignol (1992).
Zoroaster's monster debut ep from last year had us looking forward to more from this heavier-than-thou Georgia band, and Dog Magic is no disappointment, being another devastating display of brutal doom metal in the Eyehategod tradition, putting 'em up there within the ranks of such bands as Khanate and Graves At Sea. It's six songs, just under an hour, featuring several epics approaching the 15 minute mark, like the massive "Algebra Of Need".
Zoroaster takes doom to all of its extremes, from trance-inducing passages formed from nothing but distorted electronic drones, to bulldozering bursts of thrashing speed -- that's right, doom doesn't always have to be slow! Though plenty of this is, slow and sludgy and laced with all sorts of disturbing experimental textures. Zoroaster should provide not only your requisite doom fix this week but lots of good headphone listenin' for months to come, but be careful to have mercy on your ears and not to turn it up too loud or those headphones will clamp together and crush your skull just when you're trying to enjoy the electric organ solo in the middle of "Terminally Charged", or something...
Four albums in, and Georgia's Zoroaster have established themselves as more than just a band of bearded Southern boys with bad attitudes getting sludgy, Eyehategod style. They certainly started out that way, and we liked 'em then too, but quickly a penchant for spacier, more psychedelic exploration sent them off in a variety of interesting directions, mostly all of 'em still quite HEAVY though. Synth-drone, slowcore, stoner riffery, that's all part of their trip... dunno if we'd even really call them doom (or dooooOOOOoom) any more. They're just way "poppier", and spacier, and also more experimental than you might expect. There's mantric dirges here totally worthy of Om at their finest, other parts where they freak out like Acid Mothers Temple... or rock out like the good ol' Southern boys we mentioned that they indeed are. But it's just as "Eastern". Tracks like "Odyssey" sound like Buddhist monks zoned out on Hawkwind, with someone from a Tokyo Flashback act on lead guitar, or maybe Stephen Wray Lobdell... Sometimes these songs are storming, sometimes they're slow and languid (well, a lot of the time), no matter what though, Matador is an heavy-lidded yet uplifting listen, with an oxymoronically "urgently relaxed", stoned vibe generally absorbed via throbbing waves of synthesizer, low end guitar, leaden battery, and sometimes even a bit of (heavily effected) vocal melody.
Zoroaster are the "sludge" band we'd recommend to White Hills and Wooden Shjips fans. Likewise if you like UFOmammut, US Christmas, Litmus, Los Natas, Boris and even a bit of Baroness too...
This new one was produced by Sanford Parker, heaviness studio guru de jour for good reason. Probably, uh, "420 friendly" but you don't need any help to get a high from this, just turn it on up!
Anyone who has happened to catch Atlanta's Zoroaster in a live setting will more than likely mention the same few details: walls of multiple full stacked amplifiers, strobe lights with no apparent "off" switch, and three dudes bringing the DOOM like nobody's business. But most of all, massive, MASSIVE volume. And while Zoroaster effortlessly lay waste on stage, their albums manage to retain this monolithic heaviness while also revealing a method of songwriting that probably wouldn't be described as "nuanced", but nonetheless brings more than a few surprises. Unlike many doom bands, Zoroaster display a notable melodic presence, which makes for one hell of a combination with their metallic tendencies toward sloooooooooow, lumbering riffs, powerful caveman drumming, and vocals that sometimes venture into guttural black metal territory. Without fail, any time we put on a Zoroaster disc, someone in the store, be it aQ staffer or customer, will come up with a slightly confused look on their face and ask what we're listening to. After all, you could probably count on one hand the number of doom bands who manage to incorporate French horns and Theremins into the mix while still coming across as uncompromisingly heavy. Atmospherics are another staple of Zoroaster's psychedelicized approach, with strange bursts of oscillated fuckery worming into the mix but never taking over to the point of distraction. AND everyone in the band is credited with playing Moog, which is just fucking awesome...
On Voice of Saturn, the band's second full length, things start with a brief ambient intro that leads right into the first song, "Seeing the Dark". Rather than trying to explain "stoner rock" to someone, it might be more advantageous to simply put on a song like this, a plodding burst of fuzzed out heaviness that rocks ridiculously hard with gigantic guitars and sandpaper vocals. But then, in maybe the biggest what-the-fuck moment in Zoroaster's career, a simple repeated piano note takes over as everything else dwindles away before returning with cleanly hummed vocals for a beautifully mind-melting slowcore jam. Bravo guys. "Spirit Molecule" clocks in at a lengthy 13 minutes, allowing the band time to brew up a heavier than thou dirge with bits of otherworldly noise before heading into "Undying", an ominous downtempo groove accented by strange witchlike vocals that sound like they were beamed in from some unknown galaxy. "White Dwarf" is a decaying soundscape made up of white noise and underlying synth pulses that segues into the title track, where the band sparks up another doomed out blast of negative energy as the appropriate mantra of "Chaos" brings the song to its conclusion. "Lamen of the Master Therion" closes the album with a familiar sound that you quickly realize is the aforementioned beautifully mind-melting slowcore jam, the piano now accompanied by a strummed acoustic guitar! FUCK YES! Even after that, you can stick around a bit for the secret track, a cool drumcentric moment that we will not describe as "tribal".
Hopefully this new disc will bring Zoroaster to the attention of more people, since they are obviously choice candidates to the current throne of doom. Anyone digging Sleep, Electric Wizard, and UFOmammut will do themselves a real favor by picking up Voice of Saturn, and adventurous non-metalheads might find something to like as well. Needless to say, this one is coming to you highly recommended.
CHAOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!
Another entry in the slow, low, sludgemetal sweepstakes! (First prize, win a giant anvil dropped on your head! Second prize: a lifetime of depression! And for five runners up: rusted old guitar strings that once belonged to Tony Iommi!) These Georgia boys are all about total, trance-inducing heaviosity in the vein of Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Buried At Sea, old Melvins, and Om. Utter "dun dun dun dun dun" riff-mongering. Like certain strains of grim black metal, and modern minimalism, this is music that one can describe as "monotonous", but in a GOOD way. And the five tracks here (one of 'em an untitled, unlisted coda) are varied enough across this disc's approximate 33 minute running time to leave you wanting more. Released by Battle Kommand, who know quality darkness (Leviathan, Xasthur, Ruins of Beverast) and distributed by the equally discerning folks at Southern Lord, this is indeed a promising debut from Zoroaster. Oh, and there's a giant squid on the front cover, that's worth automatic mega bonus points in our book!
How this one never got reviewed by us before, we'll never know. Two tracks from avant jazz heavies Zu, remixed and reworked by Phantomsmasher / James Plotkin. The already head shearing / ear drum destroying shred of Zu's unhinged metal jazz crush just gets more warped and wild and all gloriously twisted up. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, super swank packaging, colored vinyl in a diecut quarter sleeve, includes a download code as well.
Alphabetically, at the back of the pack, but in fact Zuul is definitely high up on our list of new n' true heavy metal bands that totally kick ass. Hailing from the very metal middle American town of Carbondale, Illinois, the young (but old school) heshers of Zuul deliver the goods with soaring melodic vocals (that sound rough n' ready too), raging riffing, and fleet-fingered leads. The album cover artwork features an axewielding headsman, which is always a sign of quality metal (and quality artwork). Or, at the very least, it'll give you an idea of the '80s inspired metal on offer here, making us think of Omen, although musically they probably owe the most to Iron Maiden, and various other NWOBHM greats, big and small. While death and warfare are Zuul's typical lyrical themes, they're really all about rockin' and having a good time, Zuul's heavy and speedy songwriting also possessing a definite "pop" edge, with "whoah-ohh-ohh-ohh!" bits, catchy choruses that stick in your head, and so forth (though they stay far away from ballads). And at least once on this album, they even sing about girls, that'd be the song "Ride Ride", with lines like "lipstick and lightning / standing there by the record machine / so enticing / know what I mean", that's classic, the term "record machine" probably ONLY ever used in song lyrics, are we right?
So if you're into the current crop of retro headbangers a la Enforcer, Cauldron, Wolf, Hot Fog, and these dudes' labelmates Harbinger, Zuul get the horns up from us. Good fun. And while they play it shreddingly straight (non-ironic) in their songs, it's not like they don't have a sense of humor. We like how the credits in the cd booklet helpfully note that "this album was recorded", full stop. And heck their name Zuul comes from the demon in the movie Ghostbusters!! Another nod to the '80s we guess. We want you on our team on trivia night if you already knew that. (By the way, while our website scripting doesn't support umlauts, Zuul of course have got 'em above each u in their name, depicted in their logo as little skulls.)
Carbondale, Illinois's catchiest band of NWOBHM lovin' heshers unleash their sophomore slab of throwback metallic might. Ooooohyyeah! We loved their debut Out Of Time back in 2010 (which sounded like 1980 in Zuul years), and this one's another ripper specializing in '80s styled, speedy umlaut-laden metal with a definite pop sensibility, not unlike SF's own Space Vacation. Wailing and shredding and riffing and riffing and shredding and wailing, this 2nd effort fires on all cylinders, delivering the goods with, not inappropriately, songs about rockin', getting laid, and doing bloody battle in fantasy/historical settings (as per the wonderfully garish cover art). But it's not all fun and games and good times, there's some serious/somber sections too, ferinstance the acoustic strumming of majestic instrumental "Of The Fallen" which functions as an intro to the next track "Bounty Land", an epic both galloping and ponderous, getting into the real world of war and death, weighty with heartfelt emotion.
Effin' recommended to fans of the few other "modern" metal bands also operating in Zuul's zone of vintage metal revivification, like the aforementioned Space Vacation, Twisted Tower Dire, Cauldron, Bible Of The Devil, Midnight Chaser, and High Spirits (whose Chris "Professor" Black put out the cd version of this on his own Planet Metal label).
Weirdo black metal (?) from 2004, long out of print. How can you resist a song called "Black Narcotic Obfuscation"? The flip is "Birth, Sex, Death" so this pretty much covers it all. On Vendlus, also for fans of the left-field stuff on Garm's Jester label.
Second album from this post-Emperor supergroup, as good if not better than their debut.
Norwegian black metal supergroup featuring "Z"amoth and Trym of Emperor, and Destructhor of Myrkskog. Plus vocals by Daemon of Limbonic Art and Trickster G (aka Garm) of Ulver. Together they present the devastating debut of Zyklon, which they claim 1) is a
First we've heard from this mysterious outfit, but somehow from the strange name, and symbol heavy spelling, we were expecting something heavy, which is precisely what we got. A churning, death march plod, sort of Godflesh-y, pounding caveman pummel beneath thick caustic downtuned riffage, blurred into heaving swells of droned out thrum. This is a some serious slo-mo, abject doom-dirge heaviness, the opening track eventually shifting into something more majestic, the droned out riffs, soaring heavenward, wreathed in feedback, the vibe very Harvey Milk, as if they might break out into some twisted Leonard Cohen number at any second, but instead, the band unfurl a woozy bassline, that drifts below streaks of feedback, as the whole track oozes malevolently, into a stripped down creep, laced with whispered vokills, squalls of tribal drumming, all driven by that distorted bass buzz, before finally exploding into a sort of anguished doom ballad, the vocals a mournful wail, over the lumbering doomic creep.
We kind of expected the second song to be more of the same, but wow, the instrumentation is the same, but the vocals, epic, soaring, belted out, this could be a doom metal Circle, the same sort of near ridiculous almost operatic bombast, but here it transforms the sludge into some sort of epic doom-prog, or a more rocking Harvey Milk maybe, it even reminds us at points of Magma! The final track mixes it up again, laying down a murky dirge of muted guitar chug, swirling almost psychedelic shimmer, before blossoming into some slow near metallic churn, and those vocals again, swoop in, dramatic and over the top, and transform everything, suddenly it's some warped ultra heavy doom ballad, a little bit mathy, a lot bit moody, darkly dramatic, eventually shedding much of the heaviness, and finishing with a strange stretch of stripped down minimal syncopation. Seriously cool, and seriously warped stuff. Fans of twisted doomy dramatic heaviness will go nuts for these guys, Harvey Milk, Pinkish Black, Eagle Twin, Like A Kind Of Matador, etc.
Be warned, the jackets are not perfect, some have slightly dinged corners, some slightly split seams, we weren't able to get replacement covers, so we're selling these at a serious discount, but if you are AT ALL anal, you might not want to buy one of these, but even with the slightly dinged up sleeves, this is WAY recommended!! Includes a download code!
