It's been a good long while since we've heard from aQ faves Circle Of Ouroborus, a damaged outsider blackened folk flecked post metal combo who confound in creating gorgeously fractured ritualistic soundworlds.
This latest missive is one half of a split 12" with the equally mysterious Somnivore. When we last heard from CoO, they sounded a bit like a black metal version of Jandek or the Fall, but things have definitely changed, the sound is not so lo-fi, and the sonics are definitely much improved, but without losing any of their signature damaged weirdness.
Chant like vocals, very reminiscent of older Swans, drift over dark distorted spidery guitar lines, the drums, only occasional, dubbed out and also distorted, while in the background lurk slither little minor key melodies, before in swoops a swirl of clean detuned guitars, being strummed frantically black metal style, but instead of buzzing, the sound blurs and smears into a bleary eyed wash, crooned Jandekian vocals soaked in reverb clamber over the top, and the result is something more like some ost nineties Homestead band than a black metal band. But soon CoO kick into gear and offer up the first hints of anything remotely metallic, distorted drumming, buzzing black riffs, but again, less buzzing as much as muted and muddy, the vocals crooned and dramatic, veering into Urfaust territory. Eventually, the buzz fades to a fuzzy washed out drone, that shimmers and drifts before a clean riffy buzz re-emerges accompanied by more deep crooning vocals, emitting a sort of not very black, and not very metal black metal, that seems to be CoO's specialty. Difficult to describe for sure, but we can't seem to get enough.
Somnivore take up the flipside, the first half is all crystalline clean guitar, urgently strummed, strange whispered vocals, chimes and bells, subtle percussion. All very strident and apocalyptic, like a more ominous and creepy Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat. Effects everywhere, the track eventually devolving into a swirling morass of deep drones, shifting from hushed whirs to barely there shimmer, to throbbing rumble, eventually dissipating in a cloud of delicate glimmering hush. Nice!
Gorgeous full color cover, printed full color insert, with lyrics and liner notes, and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!!!
Okay, so Circle Takes The Square may not be the best band name. In fact, it's pretty dumb. It also gives no clue as to what an intense and amazing record As The Roots Undo is. But as with monikers like the "Flaming Lips", or even the "Beatles", the name will grow on you, which is good, because you're gonna be telling everyone you know about this record. Trust us! From the cover, a gorgeous gold and silver metallic digipak that folds together IPR style, to the music, a bizarre hybrid of old school crusty hardcore complete with shouted boy/girl vocals, modern metalcore, indie/post rock, seriously complex and innovative prog, and even some weird ambient electronic bits, you won't know what hit you. Sounds like it could be a mess, but somehow it all falls together perfectly. Emotional and intense, alternately heavy and intense, melodic and melancholy. Massive Neurosis-style riffery gives way to weird clean guitar breakdowns, spoken word parts and blooping electronic programming. Buzzing grindcore splinters into jangly, rhythmic almost-pop. Definitely schizophrenic. But in a good way. The core of the record is a thrashy, complex grind metal, but the vocals are so distinctive and emotional and the arrangements are so creative that it turns what could have been a run of the mill punk rock record into one of our favorite new records, period.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
While supplies last, cheap copies of the first two Cirith Ungol classics, Frost And Fire (1981) and King Of The Dead (1984)! True heavy metal cult material here, epic, rockin' and Elric-style doomed.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
While supplies last, cheap copies of the first two Cirith Ungol classics, Frost And Fire (1981) and King Of The Dead (1984)! True heavy metal cult material here, epic, rockin' and Elric-style doomed.
True '80s metal doesn't get much more cult than the late great Cirith Ungol, they're up there with Manilla Road and Brocas Helm in the realm of eccentric, epic-er-than-thou Swords n' Sorcery style metal mastery. With ripping guitars and rasping banshee wails, Cirith Ungol tore it up on four albums from 1980-1991, to little commercial avail. They weren't the mainstream of '80s metal that's for sure. If you're into traditional metal that is both hot rockin' (they were from LA after all) and also gloriously doomy, with a definite '70s vibe, and you haven't yet delved into the works of Cirith Ungol, then we'd recommend finding copies of their debut album Frost And Fire, and its 1984 follow-up, King Of The Dead... But, those are both sadly out of print at the moment. Which brings us to this, their rarities collection, an archival anthology entitled Servants Of Chaos. Originally released only in Europe, ten years ago, it's just been reissued domestically, in a digipack, now with an extra dvd disc of live video footage in addition to the two cds of unreleased demos, live tracks and other early ephemera dating back to 1978 that already comprised this set.
Obviously it's for fans. And if you're not (yet), well, maybe it's not the place to start - but then again, maybe it is! 'Cause we know there's a certain type of absurdity-loving AQ customer who will probably dig this MORE than Cirith Ungol's proper albums. Such as, those of you into the wackiness of the NWOFHM (Steel Mammoth, Pharaoh Overlord, Krypt Axeripper, etc.). And anyone who digs the somewhat trippy, outsider metallic stylings of such private-press gems as White Boy And The Average Rat Band or Dwarr, too... This will be right up your alley, 'cause a bunch of the tracks here, some of 'em songs that later did appear on later CU albums, are, in these demo versions, outrageously overloaded with psychedelic sci-fi synthesizer insanity! As the amusingly self-deprecating liner notes by original guitarist Greg Lindstrom put it, these date from "before [he] grew out of the 'I think this could use some more synthesizer' phase". Raw and ridiculous, these are. We played some of this stuff on Brian Turner's WFMU radio show a few years back, and we know that turned Brian, whose metal tastes run to the "weird" exclusively, into a rabid Cirith Ungol fan. Or at least, a fan of this collection!
Elsewhere, you'll find plenty of long lost tracks that were never again recorded, including several even synthier instrumentals, along with (on disc 2) lots of killer live cuts from the band in their heyday. Oh, and a couple quirky covers, including a version of "Secret Agent Man"! Though maybe the oddest track on this anthology is "Ferrari 308QV On Dyno At 8000 RPM", which is nothing but a 23 second recording of a revving Ferrari sports car engine. These guys loved Ferraris.
So, though some of this is a mite more bizarre than "real" Cirith Ungol, it'll give even the uninitiated a good idea of how and why these fantasy metal madmen ruled. Definitely check out their actual albums if you can, wherein they eliminated the silly synthesizer excess, but the songs themselves are rad either way, and always, in any case, pretty darn over the top. (As is the dvd footage, mostly from a show in '84, when metal was METAL!).
For those of you who missed out on the first two solo singles from Al Cisneros, formerly of stoner metal heavies Sleep, and currently of heavy trance-lords OM, you might be forgiven for expecting this to fall somewhere right in the middle, maybe some minimal metallic heaviness, or droned out downtuned dirgery, and while Cisneros' solo sound does share some sonic similarities, this is not metal, nor not really even heavy, at least in the traditional sense. Fans of OM, no doubt hear the influence of dub on that group's sound, and if there was any ever doubt, well, all you need to do is give this a listen. Cuz it is DUB. Not 'metallic' dub, or 'doom' dub, just deep bass heavy old school reverb drenched minimal darkly psychedelic classic dub. Like the 7"s before, these two tracks find Cisneros creating his own strand of dubbed out musical DNA, one which while sonically similar to the dub that came before, also reminds us of other dub influenced outfits, in particular African Head Charge and Muslimgauze.
Murky and minimal, these two tracks are heady and hypnotic, with thick, deep basslines, simple percussion, drums doused in echo and reverb, everything hazy and spacey and druggy, the melodies kind of washed out minor key, a whirring organ unfurling a 4 or 5 note melodic refrain, very mantra like, the whole thing looped and cyclical, in fact, both sides/tracks seem to be essentially the same song, which is more than fine, cuz this is the sort of hypno-dub space out you want to go on and on and on and on and on and on...
Like his earlier 7" singles, housed in a plain white sleeve. And probably pretty limited!
The very first solo record from Al Cisneros, he of stoner sludge gods Sleep, and minimal doom heavies Om, and the first release on his Sinai label, which might have you expecting a sweet slab of downtuned heaviness, or slo-mo bass heavy minimalism, and actually you wouldn't be far off. But this is not metal, or doom, or even rock, this in fact a straight up DUB record. We're not surprised, as Cisneros has been ordering dub records from us for a while, but fans of OM at least shouldn't be that surprised either, as that group's sound was definitely heavily influenced by classic dub. And while Cisneros' first stab at pure dub is pretty excellent, it's also not hard to imagine it being reimagined as a proper OM track, but here, it's all dub, low slung woozy bassline, spare simple rhythm, what sounds like tablas, the vibe a little bit Muslimgauze, a little bit King Tubby, the sound lush and thick, rife with sampled vocals, chiming melodies, dark, droney, druggy and seriously dubby, crank the bass and blast this through your system.
And of course it's a dub single, so the flipside is the 'version', most of the vocals stripped away, or doused in echo and delay and spent swirling into the ether, super minimal and mesmerizing, the focus on the groove of the bass, and the rhythm, totally heady and hypnotic, WAY too short on a 7", it's the sort of jam you want to stretch out forever. Here's hoping there's a dub full length in the future, but for now, grab one of these before they're gone, as they're extremely limited. Housed in a plain white sleeve.
Two more tracks of swirling, murky, druggy dub from Sleep / OM frontman Al Cisneros, whose love of dub seemed fairly evident even in those outfits, but recently, Cisneros has been going full dub, on a handful of singles and eps. The time around, his take on classic dub remains darkly groovy, washed out and laid back, and like his other dub joints, definitely beholden to outfits like African Head Charge and Muslimgauze. The strange/cool thing about these two tracks, is that they sort of sound like the theme music from some obscure seventies cop show, but slowed way down, dipped in FX and stretched out into something way more lysergic and psychedelic. Like his other releases, Cisneros basically just lays down a simple, mesmeric drug-dub loop and lets it roll (we've compared his dub to a slowed down version of Finnish hypno-rockers Circle), tranced out and cyclical, with the variations subtle and minimal, this time around, the main loop/riff/groove is augmented by some distant drones, some hushed metallic swells, over which the ghostly, distorted, lo-fi vocals drift, ghostly and ethereal. It's fantastically murky and moody, as is the B side which is the dub version, stripping away the already minimal vocals, and letting the track itself just smolder and slither, a slowly swirling, head nodding dubbed out murk, that fans of classic dub will no doubt dig, with a sonic connection to Sleep and Om that seems pretty obvious to us. Druggy dubwise divinity that comes HIGHLY recommended.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!! And exquisitely packaged, with hand stamped vinyl labels, housed in a letter pressed chipboard jacket and dust sleeve, with a screen printed insert, all printed on a vintage 1910 press, with stunning artwork from artist David D'Andrea and released on his Samaritan Press imprint. Originally ONLY available on the OM tour, and from D'Andrea's website, we got a handful for the shop, but not sure how long those will last.
Oh, and FYI, we also just got yet another Al Cisneros dub 7", entitled Lantern Of The Soul, released on his own label Sinai. We'll list that next time, assuming we still have copies. Those are only $5.98.
With another new 7", the mainman from stoner doom legends Sleep and tranced out mesmer-metal outronauts OM continues to dig deep into his love of classic dub, a sound that has most definitely informed even his most metal of musical endeavors. But unlike the other singles from Cisneros we've reviewed, this one sounds like a full band, a little less straight up classic dub, and more a sort of subtly dubby, psychedelic jazz, a groovy skittery rhythm beneath a sprawl of swirling synths, hazy and dreamlike, like some seventies cinematic psych, the soundtrack to some lost foreign thriller, droney and druggy, melancholic and moody, the sound breaking down sometimes to just bass and drums, darkly propulsive and hushed, but those ultra minimal moments are balanced by the rest of the track (a single song, spread out over two sides) that unwinds languorously, two sides of laid back and hypnotic, tranced out retro dub-psych-jazz bliss.
Housed in a plain, white, jukebox style 45 sleeve, pressed on clear vinyl.
Solo single #2 from Al Cisneros, mastermind of tranced out psych-doom outfit OM, and former bassist for late great stoner sludgelords Sleep, who has never been shy about his love of dub, that dub-love influencing the sound of OM more and more with every record. But these self released 7"s seem to be a showcase for Cisneros to experiment with making proper, classic sounding old school dub, and it sounds as good as you might think.
The A side here is a loping, looped sprawl of hypno-dub mesmer, that sounds more like Muslimgauze or African Head Charge (much like the OM dub remix 12"s reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). The melodies are woozy, Eastern tinged, the beat is a motorik, almost industrial sounding shuffle, the bassline languid and liquid, the A side here almost sounds like a single measure looped for the whole of the side, totally tranced out and circular, in fact it almost sounds like old classic Circle slowed away down, that same sort of head nodding murky groove. The flipside begins with a bit of ambient drift, but soon locks into a similar groove, the sound reminding us also of minimal techno / heroin house, but way more murky and hazy, clouds of swirling ambience shift slowly above that main loop that could go on forever, and for the length of these two sides nearly does.
Like the first single, absolutely recommended, and also like that single, VERY limited...
Another platter of fantastically druggy, droney dub from the man responsible for the stoner rock epicry of Sleep, and the minimal psychedelic drone-dirge of OM, but who has always (obviously) been obsessed with dub, and who recently decided to start doing some actual dub himself, and over the course of a handful of limited releases, has crafted some pretty fantastic stuff, with a sound that's not so much classic Jamaican dub, as it is informed by the sounds that that music influenced. Like on Cisneros' other dub records, we hear lots of Muslimgauze and African Head Charge here too, loping, minimal rhythms, deep, throbbing basslines, tons of echo and reverb, each track essentially a single groove, stretched waaaaay out, the sounds dense and lush and layered, rife with Middle Eastern strings and melodies, total trip out, drone dub dreaminess for sure. Darkly psychedelic, but infused with a deep sonic warmth, the sound laid back and mesmeric, most of the tracks here are woozy and washed out and seriously stoney, but there are moments, where things darken and get slightly more industrial, with a vibe reminiscent of the post dub excursions of outfits like Vatican Shadow or Silent Servant. Housed in a plain brown 12" sleeve, and most likely quite limited...
What might you expect from a group featuring members of doomdrone heavyweights Trees and Tecumseh? Something slow and low and lumbering... Probably, us too, but City Of Churches is anything but. Not slow, or low, or lumbering, instead, Memelust is 63 tracks (yep 63 tracks on a 7") of super hyper spastic tech-grind insanity. Some songs are literally one second long, a single harsh guitar-drums-shriek burst, others sprawl to 5 or 6 seconds, a few even longer, those 'extended' tracks jam way too many parts into way too little space, so each blast is a bursting at the seams micro-blowout of chaotic screamo grind fury.
The sound is so short and sharp, the songs so jagged and fragmented, that at times, when there are 5 or 6 2 second long tracks in a row, it almost sounds like someone is just fucking around with the volume knob, turning it down, then up, then down, and up again, creating the briefest of shards from a larger grinding whole. But that is not the case, these are all actual tracks, songs even... some improvised, others composed using an invented system of musical notation! City Of Churhes has been described as 'brutal prog', we might alter it a bit to GRIND-prog, equal parts Harry Pussy, Naked City, Napalm Death, Anal Cunt, Brutal Truth... we could go on, but you get the drift, this is about as UN-easy as un-easy listening gets. A dizzying onslaught of total grinding metallic fuck-you-up.
Packaged in gorgeous hand screened black and white and yellow on heavy cardstock sleeves, with a printed insert. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
Now on vinyl, the second, sort of self titled ep (aka CCII), from post Velvet Cacoon outfit Clair Cassis,
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, and housed in ultra thick, case wrapped gatefold jackets, on clear vinyl while they last, here's what we had to say about the cd version when we first reviewed it back in 2010:
The final(?) twisted blackbuzz missive from outsider black metal weirdos Clair Cassis, whose -other- posthumous record we made our Record Of The Week a few lists back. Clair Cassis, for those who don't already know, was the short lived post Velvet Cacoon outfit, made up of essentially the same members, but whose sound was a poppier, prettier, and in some ways an even weirder version of what they had been doing in Velvet Cacoon. Whereas VC offered up sprawling expanses of droned out black buzz (originally purported to be played not on guitars, but on a diesel powered harp) and deep black ambience, CC take those same elements and craft them into more concise chunks of gloomy almost poppy black metal, with Joy Divisiony bass lines, chiming Cocteau Twins like guitars, lots of unlikely hooks, all woven into sheets of black buzz, galloping blast beats, and some seriously freaky croaked Gollum-like vokills.
This ep and the one before it barely crack 50 minutes combined, so this is essentially side 2 of CC's 15 track swansong. And like the first installment, this stuff is twisted, warped and bafflingly brilliant. The gothy post punk vibes even more pronounced here, the bass thick and sinewy, the guitars even more melodic, and the sound dangerously closer to blackened pop than poppy black metal, and it definitely suits them.
The record explodes right out of the gate a buzzing black blast, but even within those first few seconds, it's easy to hear that there's way more going on, the low end is thick and layered and lush, the melodies mournful and melancholy, almost like a blacker buzzier Lifelover. The first two tracks flit from melodic buzz to midtempo dirgey gloom, it's not until the third track "Praline Civet", that the band let loose and stop trying to disguise their sound as black metal, it soars and pulses, it's a glorious blackened gloom pop, surprisingly epic and emotional, for a band of legendary cynics and charlatans. "Bronzed Ash" might be the prettiest song here, a moody midtempo lope, that has strange drumming, lots of clean chiming guitars, lush washed out atmospheres, super blissy and shoegazey, and it ends way too soon after about 90 seconds. The final track too is super cool, and strange and not at all typically black metal, with trippy processed harmonized guitar melodies, over a churning swirl of muddy riffage and motorik drum pound, super psychedelic and dreamily noisy, and poppy and really sort of noise poppy.
So good. And might as well be considered another Record Of The Week, the second half of their FIRST Record Of The Week (their FIRST s/t record that we did in fact make ROTW), a moody, blissy, shoegazey collection of psychedelic, droney, buzzy tripped out blacknoisepop.
Record number three from this drug driven blurwave blackgaze Velvet Cacoon offshoot. Longtime readers of the aQ list are no doubt already familiar with that Northwestern horde, whose exploits, sonic and otherwise, included a ridiculous band backstory (eco-terrorists?), made up instrumentation (diesel harp?) some purportedly plagiarized sounds (a whole record supposedly stolen and redone as VC), not to mention a whole mess of angry, bitter and confused black metallers in their wake. And while we bought into it all, when the truth was revealed, that VC was in fact, just a guy and a gal, taking lots of drugs and making some blissed out black buzz, we actually thought it was funny. The for some strange reason, VC mainman Josh decided to disband Velvet Cacoon, and immediately created Clair Cassis, a band that was quite sonically similar, the same sort of washed out buzz, droney black mesmer, the biggest difference being that CC trafficked in WAY shorter songs, and those songs were WAY heavy on the bass (infamous for it's absence in almost all black metal) and traded in much of the drone and drift for something distinctly more poppy. And we were, and are, pretty into it. Dense thick whirling hazy black metal, formed into dark almost new wavy chunks of blackbuzzpop, sure still black and buzzy on the outside, but strap on some headphones, and the basslines become sinewy and serpentine, the melodies and buried hooks reveal themselves, step back and its a glorious blackened blur.
After two self titled eps, comes this, Luxury Absolute, another short (ish) collection of CC's unique brand of black and buzzy, midtempo dronegaze doompop, the sound here though even more tripped out and psychedelic than on past releases, with the bass MASSIVE, even moreso than usual, with the sound so blown out and in the red, that the sound continually peaks, and clips, the sounds distorting and crumbling, adding a strange sort of bleary, blurry decay vibe to the already woozy minor key proceedings. Just check out opener "Antique Sea Smoke", a warped lumbering almost dirger, with the guitar melodies swirling amidst grey clouds of whir and thrum, the bass thick, and driving, the drums distorting like crazy, all of that overblown sound pushing CC even further into shoegaze territory.
The rest of the record follows suit, barring a few creepy stretches of haunting rumbling black ambience, the rest of Luxury Absolute unfolds as a series of brief dreamlike black blurs, melancholic and mesmerizing, the drums a lurching programmed pound, the vokills a demonic croak, but the guitars, so warm and whirling, thick and layered, the doom vibe is huge here too, partially because of the tendency toward dirgery, but also cuz the sound is so thick and viscous, imagine diSEMBOWELMENT or Skepticism trying their hand and shoegaze cold wave, and you might be getting close. Either way, this is some awesome stuff. Occasionally frustrating, cuz the songs are so short (longest 3:31, shortest 1:51, 19 minutes total), and we would love to hear these jams stretched out into tranced out dronepop blackbuzz drifts, but the brevity seems to reinforce than in their own twisted and fucked up way, these really are just pop songs, albeit, buzzy, and sludgey, and dirgey and BLACK. Might be our favorite CC yet. Hope it's not their last.
Packaged in a super swank DVD sized digipak. LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
When we first discovered mysterious Northwestern black metal outfit Velvet Cacoon, it wasn't just their blown out buzz that had us enraptured, it was all the rumors and weird stories about the band itself, that they were some sort of eco-fascists, who had built a huge gasoline-driven HARP which was responsible for their massive buzz. We later discovered that the whole eco-fascist / droneharp thing was a ruse, a put on, the band intentionally fucking with what they considered to be a contemptible black metal scene. It was then revealed that Velvet Cacoon were in fact a couple of drug obsessed dandies, who when they weren't crafting some of the most stunning black metal weirdness, were waxing about the various drugs they took, and their decadent lifestyle. But all that stuff only made them more interesting, and gave the sound a certain twisted cachet, coming as it did from these unlikely creators.
As it happened, the band got fed up with the drama and the internet message board bullshit, and decided to scrap Velvet Cacoon entirely and start fresh. A new band, a new name and a new sound. Thus we have Clair Cassis, whose sound really is not all that far removed from the washed out black buzz of VC, but does distinguish itself in some important ways. The first being the song length. The band described CC in an interview as being a more pop Velvet Cacoon, and so it is, the shortest song is under 3 minutes, the longest just less than 7, the band forcing themselves to be more succinct, to move through their musical ideas in a more structured and less unhindered way, instead of letting songs and parts drone on and on. Not that we minded before, in fact, we like it when our black metal drones and buzzes endlessly, but there's something to be said for the opposite approach, which tends to force the write to craft SONGS more than SOUNDS. The other big difference is the bass. And with that the above mentioned pop element. The lack of bass in black metal is practically a running joke, the brittle buzz and furious blasting of most black metal generally relegating bass to a barely there buzz, so when a black metal band takes the bass, and makes it as much a part of the sound as the guitar, it changes the whole shape of the sound, in the case of Clair Cassis, gives it a sort of woozy, gothic, cold wave vibe, black metal is dour and depressive by its very nature, but here it's gloomy and haunting, an emotional sort of darkness and depression.
This new sound/direction is immediately noticeable on opener "Ambercandle" which begins all warped and woozy, the riffs twisted and seemingly melting over the pounding doomy drums, when the track finally kicks into gear, the bass drives the songs, thick and dense, the notes slippery, haunting gloomy low end swells that add some pathos to the already loping minor key dirge, besides that it makes the sound so much heavier. Even on the next track, "The Feathered Fog" which begins with a somewhat standard burst of blackness, droney and relentless, still the bass is there adding heft, and a melodic counterpoint to the frenzied riffage, and then when the song switches gear, lurches into halftime, the bass swoops right to the front and the song transforms into a woozy seasick dirge.
And as you listen, the record definitely reveals itself as more than buzzing black metal, and knowing what we do about the folks behind it, it's not hard to imagine them creating this otherworldly pop music, and simply choosing to cloak it in black metal finery, which definitely explains the catchiness, the heavy bass and buried grooves, but it's probably best to not analyze it too much. A casual glancing listen will definitely provide plenty of black metal pleasure, the guitars are thick and gnarled, the drumming (real this time it sounds like) heavy and blasting, the arrangements trancelike and hypnotic, with long stretches of deep shimmering drone music, as well as plenty of pounding doomic dirgery, Velvet Cacoon fans won't be disappointed, but digging deeper reveals all the other subtle sonic alterations that make Clair Cassis simultaneously much more accessible, but also even weirder than VC. The songs may be shorter, but they're no less complex and convoluted, in fact in some ways, they're even more, considering parts don't drone on, the band flits from part to part, from blast to plod to drift to blast again.
"Pearls & Pinesmoke" is another standout, a soaring blasting droner, thick with bass rumble and throb, grim enough, the drums a little loose and chaotic, the vocals a creepy croak, and then the breakdown comes, and it's total melodic black nirvana, half tempo, the guitar still buzzy, but the bass unfurling an insanely melodic and ridiculously catchy part, that totally transforms the song, and then the sound shifts again back to blasting buzz, somehow the bass remains, adding unlikely melody to even the blackest bits, and fear not, a part that good comes back again, fans of Alcest and Amesoeurs will be in heaven. And after a strange interlude, the track shifts again, into another woozy, differently melodic dirge, laced with more melodic bass, but this time wrapped around spidery acoustic guitars, all still wreathed in crumbling buzz.
Finally the record finishes with the awesomely titled "Hazelhearted In The Seaparlour", which explodes immediately into a dense churning blast, heavy and harsh and layered, with a strange midtempo bridge/chorus, that features a strangely bouncy, and again surprisingly melodic bassline, way up in the mix, changing the focus of the song, before dropping out again and letting the guitars take over, before the track finally fades out, leaving nothing but the wheezing strains of what almost sounds like elevator music, or the music they play in the middle of the night at outside malls, the sound here replete with random bits of found sound, footsteps and other curious ambience.
And just leave it to the fickle folks who disbanded Velvet Cacoon at the height of their popularity to nip their new band in the bud as well, which apparently is exactly what happened. Clair Cassis is no more. But what a way to go. There is a second record floating around, who knows if it will ever get properly released, but for now, this one is not surprisingly shaping up to be a serious contender for black metal record of the year!
BACK IN STOCK!!
Yet another twisted blackbuzz missive from outsider black metal weirdos Clair Cassis, whose -other- posthumous record we made our Record Of The Week a few lists back. Clair Cassis, for those who don't already know, was the short lived post Velvet Cacoon outfit, made up of essentially the same members, but whose sound was a poppier, prettier, and in some ways an even weirder version of what they had been doing in Velvet Cacoon. Whereas VC offered up sprawling expanses of droned out black buzz (originally purported to be played not on guitars, but on a diesel powered harp) and deep black ambience, CC take those same elements and craft them into more concise chunks of gloomy almost poppy black metal, with Joy Divisiony bass lines, chiming Cocteau Twins like guitars, lots of unlikely hooks, all woven into sheets of black buzz, galloping blast beats, and some seriously freaky croaked Gollum-like vokills.
This ep and the one before it barely crack 50 minutes combined, so this is essentially side 2 of CC's 15 track swansong. And like the first installment, this stuff is twisted, warped and bafflingly brilliant. The gothy post punk vibes even more pronounced here, the bass thick and sinewy, the guitars even more melodic, and the sound dangerously closer to blackened pop than poppy black metal, and it definitely suits them.
The record explodes right out of the gate a buzzing black blast, but even within those first few seconds, it's easy to hear that there's way more going on, the low end is thick and layered and lush, the melodies mournful and melancholy, almost like a blacker buzzier Lifelover. The first two tracks flit from melodic buzz to midtempo dirgey gloom, it's not until the third track "Praline Civet", that the band let loose and stop trying to disguise their sound as black metal, it soars and pulses, it's a glorious blackened gloom pop, surprisingly epic and emotional, for a band of legendary cynics and charlatans. "Bronzed Ash" might be the prettiest song here, a moody midtempo lope, that has strange drumming, lots of clean chiming guitars, lush washed out atmospheres, super blissy and shoegazey, and it ends way too soon after about 90 seconds. The final track too is super cool, and strange and not at all typically black metal, with trippy processed harmonized guitar melodies, over a churning swirl of muddy riffage and motorik drum pound, super psychedelic and dreamily noisy, and poppy and really sort of noise poppy.
So good. And might as well be considered another Record Of The Week, the second half of their FIRST Record Of The Week, a moody, blissy, shoegazey collection of psychedelic, droney, buzzy tripped out blacknoisepop.
BACK IN STOCK!!
When we first discovered mysterious Northwestern black metal outfit Velvet Cacoon, it wasn't just their blown out buzz that had us enraptured, it was all the rumors and weird stories about the band itself, that they were some sort of eco-fascists, who had built a huge gasoline-driven HARP which was responsible for their massive buzz. We later discovered that the whole eco-fascist / droneharp thing was a ruse, a put on, the band intentionally fucking with what they considered to be a contemptible black metal scene. It was then revealed that Velvet Cacoon were in fact a couple of drug obsessed dandies, who when they weren't crafting some of the most stunning black metal weirdness, were waxing about the various drugs they took, and their decadent lifestyle. But all that stuff only made them more interesting, and gave the sound a certain twisted cachet, coming as it did from these unlikely creators.
As it happened, the band got fed up with the drama and the internet message board bullshit, and decided to scrap Velvet Cacoon entirely and start fresh. A new band, a new name and a new sound. Thus we have Clair Cassis, whose sound really is not all that far removed from the washed out black buzz of VC, but does distinguish itself in some important ways. The first being the song length. The band described CC in an interview as being a more pop Velvet Cacoon, and so it is, the shortest song is under 3 minutes, the longest just less than 7, the band forcing themselves to be more succinct, to move through their musical ideas in a more structured and less unhindered way, instead of letting songs and parts drone on and on. Not that we minded before, in fact, we like it when our black metal drones and buzzes endlessly, but there's something to be said for the opposite approach, which tends to force the write to craft SONGS more than SOUNDS. The other big difference is the bass. And with that the above mentioned pop element. The lack of bass in black metal is practically a running joke, the brittle buzz and furious blasting of most black metal generally relegating bass to a barely there buzz, so when a black metal band takes the bass, and makes it as much a part of the sound as the guitar, it changes the whole shape of the sound, in the case of Clair Cassis, gives it a sort of woozy, gothic, cold wave vibe, black metal is dour and depressive by its very nature, but here it's gloomy and haunting, an emotional sort of darkness and depression.
This new sound/direction is immediately noticeable on opener "Ambercandle" which begins all warped and woozy, the riffs twisted and seemingly melting over the pounding doomy drums, when the track finally kicks into gear, the bass drives the songs, thick and dense, the notes slippery, haunting gloomy low end swells that add some pathos to the already loping minor key dirge, besides that it makes the sound so much heavier. Even on the next track, "The Feathered Fog" which begins with a somewhat standard burst of blackness, droney and relentless, still the bass is there adding heft, and a melodic counterpoint to the frenzied riffage, and then when the song switches gear, lurches into halftime, the bass swoops right to the front and the song transforms into a woozy seasick dirge.
And as you listen, the record definitely reveals itself as more than buzzing black metal, and knowing what we do about the folks behind it, it's not hard to imagine them creating this otherworldly pop music, and simply choosing to cloak it in black metal finery, which definitely explains the catchiness, the heavy bass and buried grooves, but it's probably best to not analyze it too much. A casual glancing listen will definitely provide plenty of black metal pleasure, the guitars are thick and gnarled, the drumming (real this time it sounds like) heavy and blasting, the arrangements trancelike and hypnotic, with long stretches of deep shimmering drone music, as well as plenty of pounding doomic dirgery, Velvet Cacoon fans won't be disappointed, but digging deeper reveals all the other subtle sonic alterations that make Clair Cassis simultaneously much more accessible, but also even weirder than VC. The songs may be shorter, but they're no less complex and convoluted, in fact in some ways, they're even more, considering parts don't drone on, the band flits from part to part, from blast to plod to drift to blast again.
"Pearls & Pinesmoke" is another standout, a soaring blasting droner, thick with bass rumble and throb, grim enough, the drums a little loose and chaotic, the vocals a creepy croak, and then the breakdown comes, and it's total melodic black nirvana, half tempo, the guitar still buzzy, but the bass unfurling an insanely melodic and ridiculously catchy part, that totally transforms the song, and then the sound shifts again back to blasting buzz, somehow the bass remains, adding unlikely melody to even the blackest bits, and fear not, a part that good comes back again, fans of Alcest and Amesoeurs will be in heaven. And after a strange interlude, the track shifts again, into another woozy, differently melodic dirge, laced with more melodic bass, but this time wrapped around spidery acoustic guitars, all still wreathed in crumbling buzz.
Finally the record finishes with the awesomely titled "Hazelhearted In The Seaparlour", which explodes immediately into a dense churning blast, heavy and harsh and layered, with a strange midtempo bridge/chorus, that features a strangely bouncy, and again surprisingly melodic bassline, way up in the mix, changing the focus of the song, before dropping out again and letting the guitars take over, before the track finally fades out, leaving nothing but the wheezing strains of what almost sounds like elevator music, or the music they play in the middle of the night at outside malls, the sound here replete with random bits of found sound, footsteps and other curious ambience.
And just leave it to the fickle folks who disbanded Velvet Cacoon at the height of their popularity to nip their new band in the bud as well, which apparently is exactly what happened. Clair Cassis is no more. But what a way to go. There is a second record floating around, who knows if it will ever get properly released, but for now, this one is not surprisingly shaping up to be a serious contender for black metal record of the year!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest blast of audial mayhem from Finland's grim buzz horde Clandestine Blaze. People around here forget what a metal stronghold Finland is. It's not all faeries and forests and drum circles and acoustic guitars. There is a serious black cloud hanging over the land. As is demonstrated by the various black minions who call Finland home. It's strange, for being one of our favorite BM outfits, we've actually never reviewed a Clandestine Blaze record before (not counting the split with Deathspell Omega), thankfully, this new one is as good if not better than any of the other CB releases. Frontman Mikko Aspa in addition to being the single soul behind CB, is also a member of Finnish ultra doomsters Fleshpress, and strangely enough, also sings for AQ faves Deathspell Omega.
But Clandestine Blaze is not doom, nor avant black metal, no this is old school black buzz, grim and frosty, primitive and necro.
Each track is based around a single riff, played over and over, inducing a glorious trancelike state, the guitars relentlessly buzzing, the riffing so drenched in reverb that the notes wash into each other becoming one long buzzing drone, the vocals a hellish croak, dripping with FX as well. This is true black metal for sure, but as with a lot of that stuff, a purity of vision often produces unintended sonic results, much like isolation, a sound develops, that while at it's root is indeed pure and true, contains elements that gradually seep in to the sound. Usually making the music even more special and unique. Such is the case for sure with CB, while a cursory listen reveals a simple buzzing black metal, closer listening reveals mysterious depths, layers upon layers, arrangements that coalesce into strange shapes. A perfect example is the 12 minute long, midtempo centerpiece "Ashes Of The Eternal Wanderer", a completely hypnotic blackened blur, the guitars and drums buzzing into a thick snarling drone, almost dreamlike at times, which is one of the reasons we love the buzz of black metal so much, that trancey dronelike element, and that is all over Church Of Atrocity. It's not so much about the riffs, or the arrangements, it's the sound, a whirling buzzing blackness that wraps your head in a dark cloud, fills your ears with black buzz and carries you off...
But heck, don't let all this high falutin' talk of drones and purity of vision, scare you off, Church Of Atrocity is just as enjoyable as a simple blown out chunk of brutal old school blackness! Either way, highly recommended.
Even though one band is from France, and the other is from Finland, you couldn't ask for a more perfect pairing. This split was originally released in 2001, and only recently was repressed so we could get enough to list, unfortunately it seems to already be out of print again so the 30 or so we got will most likely be the last for a while.
Finland's Clandestine Blaze specialize in ultra primitive black metal, paying homage to Bathory, Beherit, Darkthrone and the like, with buzzy sludgy riffs, thrashing and blasting mostly, but occasionally slowing down to a near doomy crawl. Their sound a buzzing murky blur, so much so that when they're not plodding along like Celtic Frost at 16rpm their black metal bombast smears into a gloriously hypnotic blur.
Clandestine Blaze are paired up here with Deathspell Omega in (appropriately) their earlier, more raw incarantion. DSO spew forth their buzzing blackened thrash, very much like the other DSO reissues, raw and grim on the surface, but with plenty of subtle compositional and sonic irregularites right below the surface, adding a definite depth not found in lots of similar musics and a hauntingingly unlikely catchiness very rarely (if at all) found in any black metal.
So good!!
For the longest time, the Web Of Mimicry label seemed to exist mostly for all things Secret Chiefs 3 related, all post Mr Bungle avant rock, but they've also done heavy stuff like Asva, and the recent Good For Cows record, which totally defied expectations, we were imagining some sort of genre splicing freakout, but instead we were treated to a disc of seriously sludgey avant doom heaviness, granted there's SC3 connections in those bands too. But now there's this, the latest full length from these Philadelphia metalheads, whose Web Of Mimicry debuts is seriously one of the heaviest records we've heard in ages.
Massive sprawling metallic epics that channel the machinelike chug of Meshuggah, through all sort of dark ambient soundtrack atmospherics, brooding slow building post rock, and crushing ultradoom. The first track alone, is 20 minutes of all over the map metallic crush, from the churning chug of the first few mintues, before working through dense math metal tribalism, a soaring vocal driven post rock slow build, replete with psychedelic solos, some lurching start stop doom that is quickly transformed into more impossibly mathy grind and chug, only to explode into a sort of slow motion industrial doom plod, all soaring distorted guitars and caveman crush, fucking totally epic and insanely heavy.
There's six proper songs, all long and epic and convoluted and complex, separated by brief interludes, birds chirping, droning buzz, super distorted howling screams, hushed rumbles, but hell, they're the only breather you'll get, the proper tracks are relentless, leaping deftly from crushing Neurosis style pummel, to wild tangled Dillinger Escape Plan style frenzied hyperblasts, to random bits of haunting piano, slow motion doom plod, to weirdly melodic clean singing, to hiss drenched buzz, but always back to that churning chug, until the final track, a super weird assemblage of stuttery static, processed field recordings, damaged effects, a patina of crackle and hiss, all of whioch fades out leaving just super spare, solo piano.
Killer stuff. No idea how we never heard of these guys before, or why they're not all over Terrorizer and Decibel, but we'd be surprised if that didn't change real soon.
Lassitude is the very first release from the just launched UK label Lone Vigil, and is the debut of black industrial post metal doomlords Cloaca. Both the label and the band are fronted by Chris Naughton, he of doomsludge masters Atavist and neo pagan black metallers Winterfylleth, but Cloaca is a whole different beast than either of those two outfits, and while most descriptions peg Cloaca as 'experimental industrial doom', that might be a bit misleading. It might have you picturing a churning avant Godflesh or some sort of machinelike downtuned Swans, when in fact, the sound of Cloaca is much more organic, and much closer to the slow build post metal of groups like Pelican, Neurosis, Cult Of Luna, Snowblood, and Isis, the guitars lush and warm, the songs sprawling epics, with spiralling melodies, and dense tribal drumming, brooding and majestic, like a blackened Godspeed, building to explosive howled churning ultra metal blow outs, that transform into roiling chugging grooves, heavy and motorik and mesmerizing.
The songs spend much of their time drifting dreamily, spidery guitar melodies draped over loping post rock rhythms, and when they do get heavy, it's not always explosive crescendos, the band can lock into a riff and ride it out like some sort of black doom post metal Hawkwind, extended psychedelic cosmic metal jams that destroy, heaving hypnotically, thick sonic swells that churn and roil and eventually do explode into some serious heaviness, but it's not just big chords there either, the band get super dense and complex, start stop rhythms, mathy arrangements, thick and convoluted and so so heavy.
Throughout the record, Cloaca deftly flit from moody drift to soaring majesty, to metallic crush, wrapping impossibly hooky melodies and strange disembodied sampled voices around thick slabs of metallic hypnorock, a sound that's definitely hard to make your own, but these guys have definitely staked their claim on this chunk of epic brooding heaviness, that we would imagine few would be able to challenge.
Definitely essential listening for fans of Rosetta, Baroness, the Body, Grails, The Ocean, Angel Eyes, Tides, Souvenir's Young America, Mouth Of The Architect, Irepress, Indian, Conifer and other post metal alchemists...
Slithering slimily forth from our very own San Franciscan tombs comes this arcane analogue artifact of bestial bewitchment, the debut burnt offering from decrepit black/death/punkers Cloak! Indeed their label Transylvanian Tapes (run by none other than Jimmy from East Bay doomlords/aQ faves Swamp Witch) describes Cloak as "pummeling black/death metal executed by punks", but we would go so far as to describe them as "pummeling black/death metal executed by punks WHO ALSO WORK AT AQUARIUS!!!", since Cloak features our very own Kirk wrenching out malignant bass guitar asphyxiations and general low-end terror! Cloak's debut demo is a writhing, twitching leviathan mass of primitive draconian horror, squirming back and forth between glacial doom-vertigo, shadowy crypt-dwelling death metal buzz, and gutter-crawling crusty grooves. The sound is immediately musty, dusty and cemetarial (Is that word?? It is now!), but remarkably catchy and well recorded. The riffs absolutely infectious, the drums a merciless militaristic pummel, the vocals grotesquely dripping with thick droplets of venom - a mid range throaty rasp as opposed to DM's typical low-end gurgle. But for as simple and primal as Cloak's songs can be, there's also a deadly focus and tightness, a sense of sadistic regal purpose. It's a perfect blend of hazy nightmarish atmosphere, hectic energy and genuine fist-pumping metal intoxication free of gimmicks or tricks - organic, pulsing and suffocating! And having had the privilege of catching them live we can say with confidence that it ain't no studio fluke, Cloak is the real dirty deal. Definitely highly recommended for fans of death and black metal's filthiest crevices. Prepare to succumb!
Mories, the madman behind the avant, blackened, symphonic, cinematic doom project Gnaw Their Tongues, returns with his fourth full length in 5 years as Cloak Of Altering, a sonically similar project that retains the grim noise and blackened ferocity of GTT but fuses it to some sort of fractured breakcore, adding frantic programmed drum machines, and wild glitched out rhythmic splatter to the proceedings, which only manages to make a fucked up sound even more fucked up. We're reminded of aQ fave Igorr, Venetian Snares too, but that sort of programmed weirdness is then wedded to grinding metal and blackened buzz. More often the sound erupts as a gout of damaged grindcore, but throughout, the sound continually splinters and morphs, crumbles and blossoms, into all manner of fucked up experi-metal shapes, sometimes barely metal, sometimes IMPOSSIBLY metal, but throughout, always a damaged blacknoise, electro-grind, black-wave, post-metal sci-fi doom WTF?, that should have weirdo metal nerds losing their shit.
Latest disc ov blasting lo-fi fucked up blackness from this Northwestern one man horde, another super limited self released jam (the last one was limited to 24 copies, which all came to us and all disappeared pretty much immediately). So fair warning, if you want to get your hands on this sick shit, be quick, or be very very disappointed.
No idea what F.D.K.L.S.O.M.F. stands for, but this is some super intense, super pummeling, buzz drenched, grim, kvlt, frosty, lo-fi, raw and primitive black metal skree.
Stumbling, mostly midtempo, the guitars buzz frantically, the vocals shriek wildly, the drums are chaotic and confusional, the songs don't really blast or plod, instead they seem to veer wildly, and druggily from tempo to tempo, slowing down, speeding up, this is about as raw as it gets, mostly brittle high end, guessing it's just drums and guitar, if there is a bass, it follows in the long tradition of inaudible black metal bass, but it hardly matters, this is all about the riff, and the atmosphere, and both are stellar, the riffs destroy, dense and angular and atonal, the atmosphere is definitely primitive and basement / practice space / dungeon / cave, lots of echo and reverb, and at its most frenzied it's a white noise squall, the vocals especially, but when it's not so in-the-red, it's like listening to some weird lost classic outsider black metal demo, which is pretty much what this is.
ULTRA LIMITED AGAIN, home brewed packaging, a weird little devil deer insert, all the cds in very generic, and entirely UNmetal primary colored paper sleeves. GRIM!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We originally discovered Cloak Of Displacement, via baffling black metallers Gargotheron, whose cd-r we went a little nuts for when we had it way back when. But it didn't take long for CoD to win us over, transforming the "Bone Awl meets Lightning Bolt" sound of Gargotheron into something filthier and blacker and doomier, a downtuned crusty blackened sprawl that seemed to ooze evil. Totally not typically black metal, or even metal really, more a chaotic stumbling super distorted electronic flecked blacknoize. Needless to say, we were down with the Cloak.
So we waited patiently, for going on two years now, and finally it's here, actually, THEY're here, two new discs from the mysterious Cloak Of Displacement, both of these are ultra limited, and we mean ULTRA, as in there are ONLY 24 COPIES!!!! That's it, and of those 24, we got TWENTY of them. So you know what that means, first 20 evil bastards to jab a gnarled claw into that add to cart button, will be feasting on CoD's grim black sonic banquet(s). And yeah, you're probably gonna want both, cuz they're both way different...
Frusen Bjork Lund is 4 tracks, nearly 50 minutes, of raw, pounding, lo-fi, filthy, fucked up and BIZARRE primitive black metal, the buzz is muted and way down in the mix, the drums are a chaotic stumble, the vocals are sick and inhuman and go from guttural growl to mix destroying caterwaul, not that the already damaged mix needs and more destroying, it's a confusional, head spinning, brittle bit of crunch and blast and howl, weird as fuck, definitely essential listening for folks (like us), who like their blackness as baffling and as unhinged as (in)humanly possible. There's warped feedback, bizarre kitchen sink percussion, sprawling non-arrangements, some killer riffing, but also some what the fuck guitar strangulation, the closing track is a stretched out Burzumic buzzscape, wreathed in hiss and amp buzz, the drums plodding, the vocals hysterical, reminiscent of Striborg, but this makes Striborg sound downright polished and stable, which is definitely saying something.
Once again, these are crazy limited, and handmade, each one comes with a hand-glued sleeve (made from the very evilest of construction papers, and in various grim shades) each with a pasted on front and back cover image, burned around the edges by the flames of hell...
It's been a while since we've heard from one man, lo-fi, outsider, doomdrone, blacknoise weirdo Cloak Of Displacement, and fans of any of the other CoD cd-r's we've raved about in the past know just what to expect, which is to NOT know what the fuck to expect. This time around, it's three tracks, all dramatically different, the first hint being the instruments listed on the sleeve: guitar, knife, drums, vocals, and POWER SAW. Hell yeah.
And the first track, the epic 21 minute "Torture Beckons Me" definitely follows through on the implied promise of sonic whatthefuck. A spaced out abstract ultra doom crawl. But instead of heaving avalanches of blown out downtuned riffage, and massive pummeling beats, the reality is way more bizarre and baffling, tons of space, occasional swells of muted guitar buzz, some SUPER abstract drum thump and plonk, and some seriously SICK vokills, super skeletal and minimal and in its own way sort of hypnotic. Like a way less harsh, way more spaced out blackened Khanate maybe? The riffs pulled so far apart they're more like occasional squalls of thrum, the track nearly free of momentum or propulsion, more an ooze or drift, the vibe ritualistic and primitive and totally fucking strange.
The second song picks up the pace, but if anything gets even WEIRDER, with some muted rhythmic riffing, lots of seriously stumbling drumming, and twisted freaked out hysterical vox that make the dude from Lifelover sound like Neil Diamond. The song weaves and wobbles drunkenly, reminding us a bit of Varghkoghargasmal or a more brain damaged Hypothermia. And finally, the saw make an appearance, the brief closing track / outro, that plays like the bloop bleep of ambient Burzum, but the whole thing is wrapped in the harsh buzz of the power saw, which is presumably being used, at least judging from the song title, in the "Disposing Of The Body".
Some of you might remember Gargotheron, whose cd-r we reviewed a while back, a blurred baffling black metal horde from Arizona, whose sound was grim and raw, primitive and pummeling, spastic and hyper kinetic, octopoidal drumming, insectoid riffing, we described it as "Bone Awl meets Lightning Bolt", so what might we expect from Cloak Of Displacement, a strange ritualistic avant doom offshoot of the mighty Gargotheron? How about long expanses of processed downtuned guitar drone, gurgled distorted vocals, abstract riffage and clouds of glitch and buzz and electronic interference, brief bursts of in-the-red ultra distorted noise drenched black metal. And more fucked up weirdness. We're tempted to describe it as a black metal Faxed Head, but it's not quite so purposefully damaged, although it's plenty demented. There are stretches of almost prettiness, in the guise of sprawling low end buzz, a little Earth (circa 2), a little Khanate, a pinch of SUNNO))), but filtered though some sort of sick Abruptum like sonic ritual, in fact ritual is an apt description, as the performance was literally part of a REAL ritual, with a real live witch performing incantations and spells, at one point snipping locks of hair from the various band members while they recorded, even the packaging, sealed with wax, have been cursed, so open at your own peril!
Grim and fucked up, mysterious and abstract, definitely essential listening for ambient noise metal freeks into stuff like Abruptum, Emit and the like, but also might hit the spot for the slow and low obsessed, Khanate, SUNNO))), Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Vulture Club and other purveyors of minimal blackened filth.
Packaged in a hand stamped black envelope, sealed with wax, hand numbered, LIMITED TO ONLY 45 COPIES! We took most of those, inside a hand written missive from Cloak Of Displacement, to YOU.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We originally discovered Cloak Of Displacement, via baffling black metallers Gargotheron, whose cd-r we went a little nuts for when we had it way back when. But it didn't take long for CoD to win us over, transforming the "Bone Awl meets Lightning Bolt" sound of Gargotheron into something filthier and blacker and doomier, a downtuned crusty blackened sprawl that seemed to ooze evil. Totally not typically black metal, or even metal really, more a chaotic stumbling super distorted electronic flecked blacknoize. Needless to say, we were down with the Cloak.
So we waited patiently, for going on two years now, and finally it's here, actually, THEY're here, two new discs from the mysterious Cloak Of Displacement, both of these are ultra limited, and we mean ULTRA, as in there are ONLY 24 COPIES!!!! That's it, and of those 24, we got TWENTY of them. So you know what that means, first 20 evil bastards to jab a gnarled claw into that add to cart button, will be feasting on CoD's grim black sonic banquet(s). And yeah, you're probably gonna want both, cuz they're both way different...
Vernal is all ambient, a 43 minute black ritual, that finds the man behind CoD, teamed up with two other players, one who simply wields "magick", while the other two handle guitar, keyboard and percussion. Guitars throb and drone, low end rumbles reverberate ominously, sheets of feedback undulate, layers and tones lock into a sort of Niblockian drift, super hypnotic and intense, eventually, the drone begins to fragment, pelted by FX and various shards of buzz and hum, seemingly crumbling to pieces but always coalescing back into something heavy and hypnotic, thick throbbing pulses, over shards of high end skree, bits of abstract minimal almost doom, barely there rhythms, strange processed crunch collides with lush doomdrone riffage, bursts of distorted rrrooar, strange clunks and creeps, definitely less metal and more abstract free drone weirdness.
Way recommended for sure, and not just for weirdo metalheads, dronelords and ambient explorers will find a lot to dig here too...
Once again, these are crazy limited, and handmade, each one comes with a hand-glued sleeve (made from the very evilest of construction papers, and in various grim shades) each with a pasted on front and back cover image, burned around the edges by the flames of hell...
Another release from the newly launched KV&GR/Recs label, run by weirdo black metal one man band Cloak Of Displacement. All of the releases so far (Mavra, Edasi) criminally limited, and this one is no different. LIMITED TO JUST 20 COPIES, of which, we got ALL twenty. But judging from the last batch, these will likely be gone in a flash, so don't dawdle.
Cloak Of Displacement, a long time aQ outsider black metal fave, offers up another set of twisted low fidelity blackened what the fuck, murky warbly riffs, primitive recording, stumbling damaged drumming, and some of THEE weirdest vocals ever, slipping from goofy grunt to croaking quack, the sound itself stumbling from abstract drift, to pounding dirge and back again. Occasionally within these three tracks, the sound does explode into a sort of blast, but it's a lurching lumbering blast, on the verge of total collapse, a chaotic careening black weirdness that sort of rule. Elsewhere the sound shifts to something more abstract, a sort of spaced out doom, a demented detuned creep, all warbly chords and rehearsal space drum splatter, and those creepy alien vox. Folks who loved past CoD releases will NOT be disappointed.
The flipside is taken up by another one man band, the mysterious and oddly monikered Blood Escutcheon, whose sound is more of an ambient blacknoize, riffs stretched out into layered drones, warm and whirling one second, caustic and buzzy the next. The side opens up with some dreamlike ambient drift, that slowly builds to a blowout of Merzbowian noise, infused with fragmented riffage an strange disembodied heavily effected vocals, which leads directly into a super creepy stretch of processed vocal dronemusic, a sea of hiss and static, underneath which a super processed voice drift creepily, before the sound blossoms into some blurred blown out almost Skullflowery noise, which with headphones strapped on, reveals all manner of sonic weirdness lurking below the surface, the side ending with some cool, softly distorted industrial crunch, blurred out and smeared into something much more soft focus and ambient.
And again, we only have 20 COPIES of these, and there are in fact ONLY 20 copies, so act fast.
Includes killer cover art from Blood Escutcheon mastermind Thaniel Lee. Each copy hand numbered.
Another mysterious musical missive from Finland, record number two of alchemical magickal dronemusic and deep otherworldly black ambience from a group that features members of one of our favorite Finnish combos, the mighty Dead Reptile Shrine (who have a new double cd coming out on tUMULt this year). We raved about the last C+B disc, a collection of raw and primal sound rituals, not all that far removed from the music of countrymen Tiermes.
Separated into 4 suites, Cloak Of Fire, Cloak Of Doom, Cloak of Darkness, and Cloak Of... um.. well Cloak Of Cloak oddly enough, this disc is in fact a reissue of a long out of print cd-r, originally released in an edition of 100 copies. As with the other Cloama & Blutleuchte disc, the sounds here are dark and ominous, rumbling and whirring and shimmering, but this is not mere ambient music, or drone music, there is much more going on, texture and noise, and all manner of difficult to describe sonic happenings.
The drone is for sure the root of the sound, but that drone is twisted and stretched out, wreathed in strange effects and peppered with bursts of hiss and buzz. Some tracks are simple sprawling black blurs, while others, incorporate haunting sung spoken vocals, simple tribal percussion, a bit like a more raw and freaked out Muslimgauze, while others are thick grinding walls of distortion, dense crumbling heaviness, shot through with haunting melodies, and creaking groaning crunch, as well as strange voices and snippets of conversation, and still others are rich swirls of blurred soft focus colors and slowed down riffs, mysterious crawls through vast expanses of deep stellar buzz. String sections wrap around military speeches, industrial percussion is buried beneath seas of grinding metallic shimmer, long long stretches of deep hushed thrum, and haunting chantlike vocals, all culminating in what sounds like a hissy, washed out, black metal blur, a swirling digitized buzz laced drone, that slows and thickens until it becomes an ominous flickering downtuned dirge-y drift.
Gorgeous packaging, the booklet filled with all manner of symbols and landscape photos as well as some seriously strange liner notes.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This underground Japanese band surprised and delighted us with this crazy fuzzed-out stoner-rock meets grind metal release. Clotted Symmetric Sexual Organ (let's just call 'em CSSO) really kick 'em out, wallowing in total wahwah-happy heavy psych guitar overdrive. It's wild and distorted and super-energetic, a blend of '60s garage, '70s hard rock, and '90s noise-thrash. Forget Acid Mothers Temple, this is the real Japanese freak-beat! Indeed, CSSO could learn Kawabata Makoto a thing or two about over-the-top motorpsycho guitar. Imagine AMT or High Rise with a garagey Guitar Wolf edge, going nuts with that style of psychedelic freakout, then breaking into a speedy grind part with blast beats and cookie monster vocals! It's like a weird, wonderful mix of The Groundhogs and Napalm Death or something. When CSSO's stoner/grind rock attack isn't going full-tilt they throw in spacey sections of shoegazing drone tones, trippy electronics, and other cosmic krautrock inspired soundz -- sometimes sheer, blissful noise. Then it's back to the catchy rockin' stuff, like Hendrix gone grind. Like AMT or the Boredoms, they can be quite playful and confounding -- for instance, one song features what might be the world's longest fade-in, it's two minutes before you can really hear anything at all!
Partially 'cause this was so unexpected (we thought they might be a good but generic grindcore band) but also because it's so great, this just totally blew us away. A new favorite in the long line of genre-bending, rule-defying bands from Japan (Boredoms, Melt Banana, Boris, et. al.), and thus highly recommended!
This Japanese psychedelic grind band's Are You Excrements? album was a surprise hit here at Aquarius when we reviewed it two years ago. And we're still eagerly waiting for a new album from 'em. But we did just get a few copies of this retrospective disc, the aptly titled Collection. It's a 45 track anthology of material predating Are You Excrements?, mostly from presumably rare split 7"s and comps circa 1993-2000. As such, this stuff is definitely more on the traditional grind metal than stoner/psych side of things, but is certainly still quite freaky and weird. Aficianados of the grind genre will be reminded of early Carcass, and indeed this disc includes a Carcass cover (the classic "Genital Grinder") along with equally appropriate covers of songs by General Surgery, Regurgitate, and Napalm Death. But imagine Carcass infected with a dose of silliness a la Boredoms -- or does anybody remember Exit-13? The disc closes with an alternate version of the song "Living Dead A Go Go" that appeared on Are You Excrements?, thereby bringing us amost up to date in CSSO-world. We wonder what the future holds.
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We've been so focused on the Paysage D'Hiver reissues lately, that we've barely had time to dig into the other releases on Cold Dimensions and Kunsthall, but there are at least two that we definitely need to highlight, the latest Trist, which we'll review soon, and this one right here. Melancholie2, from German one man band Coldworld, quite possibly, one of the best depressive black metal records we've ever heard. Although defining Melancholie2 as a depressive BM record might be a bit reductive. It will make more sense, read on...
A dizzying mix of lilting melancholia, furious blackened blasts, epic morose arrangements, awesome drumming (a definite shortcoming in most bands), kick ass and ridiculously catchy riffing, and most importantly, incredibly evocative atmosphere and ambience, even when a song is buzzing along frantically, beneath the surface there is always some sort of drifting crystalline melody, or whirring drone, or chant like vocal line, it sounds a bit confusing, but the mix is magical.
The sound on Melancholie2 is so dynamic, so majestic and heavy, no lo-fi boom box recording here, the guitars are massive, thick and crunchy and buzzy, the vocals raw and primal, the keyboards and synths lush and shimmery, the drums somehow perfectly audible amidst all the buzz. And as with most black metal records, buzz is a key component, and here that buzz is all encompassing, warm and expansive, coating everything in its warm embrace.
The slower tracks are definitely Burzumic, the lumbering riff, the plodding rhythm, underpinned by a gorgeous keyboard melody, the midtempo tracks are like a less weird Lifelover, the music hooky, and weirdly poppy, but still grim and black, slipping from melodic lilt to intense speaker shredding blowout, rare that a band, or man as the case may be is equally adept and crafting doomy dismal blackness AND intense blasting black metal. The ambient tracks are surprisingly effective, moving and lovely, most black metal bands use cheesy synth sounds, but here, those parts sound like antique music boxes, or the soundtrack to a soft snowfall in some forgotten forest, dark, and haunting, but definitely beautiful and breathtaking, only moreso when they lead directly into another intense burst of blackness.
Some of the tracks are dangerously poppy, but the band manages to pull it off, channelling the sweeping sound of Katatonia, but adds some truly bizarre, almost robotic sounding vocals, which definitely sounds goofy, but in fact, the effect is anything but. It's more some sort of abstract alien doom, that is truly creepy and otherworldly. A few of the tracks are gorgeous sprawls of washed out sorrowful doom, but at least one shifts part way through into a strange pounding bit of minor key midtempo black metal, before slipping back into that depressive plod.
It's really hard to do this music justice. It's at once so familiar, embodying so much of what we already love about this sort of music, at the same time, it manages to sound unlike anything we've heard before, every song manages to be both heavy and wistful, depressive, but weirdly rocking, as a whole it's an incredible, expansive song suite, culminating in the final track, a skittery glitched out ambient landscape, bits of static and hiss drift between simpler percussion, and a shuffling rhythm, moody minimal guitar, slightly twangy, all draped over a swoonsome bit of minor key drone, with a crunchy metallic middle, before slipping back into more skittery melancholic drift. So goddamn good.
Quite possibly one of our new favorite records, black metal or otherwise!
Not sure why, but we never really paid much attention to Louisville sluggers Coliseum, they maybe seemed too punk, or something, whatever it was, we're sort of kicking ourselves now, cuz this new one, their third, is a serious barnburner, although from what we hear their sound has changed quite a bit, still punk for sure, but super melodic, a bit metallic, and catchy as all get out. Maybe somewhere between the pop sludge of Torche, the muscly cock rock of Turbonegro and the post Kyuss hard rock of Queens Of The Stoneage, big chugging churning guitars, crushing powerhouse drums, killer hooks, thick fuzzed out bass, and the vocals, probably the most distinctive element, a harsh raspy howl that manages to be fierce and melodic, rough and raw, super intense and emotional, perfectly paired up with the throb and crush of the music pounding away beneath. The more we listen to this, the more these songs get stuck in our heads, and the more we dig 'em!
Features guest spots from Bonnie Prince Billy and members of Jawbox, Rodan, Squirrel Bait, Shipping News and Rachels, a sort of who's who of Louisville underground rock...
Holy shit these guys just keep getting better and better. Record number four finds this Louisville trio about as melodic as they've ever sounded, but still pretty goddamn heavy, and a lot more punk than last time around actually, with a massive production courtesy of Jawbox's J. Robbins, which perfectly suits their sound, giving even the poppiest jams some serious heft, and making the whole record sound equal parts classic nineties math/noise rock, chugging post punk and sludge pop heaviness a la Torche. In our review of the last Coliseum, we compared their sounds as being a strange mix of Torche, Turbonegro and Queens Of The Stone Age, which might still apply a bit, but to these ears, the new Coliseum has definitely shifted to something much more punk, managing to fuse their new found poppiness, with the urgent, punk fury of their earlier records, and while not as overtly and immediately catchy, it's a sound that suits them, the crunchy guitars, the gruff yowled vocals, the dense, hard hitting drumming, the thick buzzing bass, and the songs, super reminiscent of another era, the nineties, a sound/era/scene that we (and they) seem still pretty connected too. Not hard to imagine this record coming out on Homestead or Touch And Go back in the day, there's lots of brooding gloominess going on too (check out "Love Under Will"), lots of low slung bass driven groovery, and chugging churning punkiness, it's the sort of sound we often lament doesn't really exist anymore, and when bands do try to channel it, they often fail spectacularly, but these guys kill, and are out of time masters of that sound, a sound we love now as much as we did then.
Like their last record, Coliseum called in all sorts of favors so the guest roll call is a serious indie who's who, Wata from Boris, Jason Loewenstein from Sebadoh, Jason Farrell from Swiz and Bluetip, and Elizabeth Elmore from Sarge - her contribution maybe our favorite, her vox a good balance for Ryan Patterson's gruff bellow, almost wish she sang with him on all the tracks...
Another entry in the ever expanding field of sound making we've dubbed doomdronedirge, from a group called Colossloth. It's a sound we've come to love, we just can't get enough of that creepy downtuned crawl, that sprawling rumbling ambience, it's doomy, but not metal, heavy, but not riffy, it's more like dronemusic infused with a degree of menace, an ominous blackness, think Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Wicked King Wicker, R.Y.N., Amort, Haptic, Grief No Absolution, and yeah even SUNNO))) to a certain degree.
Colossloth add their own twist to the proceedings, injecting their sound with a hit of industrial ambience, and some haunting piano, the result is entrancing, totally bleak and beautiful, a single epic doomscape, split into two side long drifts, all simple looped pounding rhythms and layered feedback, laced with muted bits of crunch and whir, rumble and creak, while throughout, a piano plays out a mournful melody, strings are plucked, melodies surface and unfurl before slipping back into the miasma, a mysterious minor key sonic dirge, some sort of funereal martial industrial doom drone trudge, mesmerizing and cinematic, this would be the perfect soundtrack for some Italian horror film, with the main character, in some sort of fugue state, hallucinating, wandering through an old empty house and out into the black forest...
Gorgeous and creepy and intense, but also weirdly pretty, the hushed melodic creep constantly battling with the crunch and hiss of the gloomy industrial drift, woven into a perfectly ominous dirgedronedoomdreamscape. AWESOME.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!!
It's been years and years since we last heard from Colossloth, a one man dronedoomdirge unit from the UK, who on previous records whipped up just about the perfect aQ concoction - heaving drones, dense rumbles, psychedelic noise and blown out industrial doom, all blurred and smeared and tangled up into one huge shape shifting behemoth. Very little has changed all these years later and Outstretch Your Hand For The Impress Of Truth is another baffling batch of avant noise and synth soaked psychedelia, that's pretty tough to classify, even moreso here, with caustic squelches peppered with FX laden scrapes and creaks, all wound up into some sort of rhythm, but most certainly not groovy, and underpinned by layers of haunting shimmer, and beautiful buried melodies. The sound is definitely noisy, but not really noise, flitting from lush, layers fields of backwards shimmer, to blown out organ jams that sound like isolated tracks from some lost ELP record run through a battery of boomboxes, to what sounds like some John Carpenter soundtrack melted down into a gorgeously abstract ooze. There are heavy moments for sure, but mostly, the sounds seem hazy and smoothed around the edges, giving everything a druggy, soft psych feel, with plenty of prickle just below the surface, and for what IS essentially kind of a noise record, it's pretty goddamn hypnotic, every track here locking into mesmerizing loops, and tripped out avant industrial/electronic ambience. Awesome.
Customers have been bugging us for a while now to track down some music from German psychedelic stoner rock outfit, and boy are we glad we did. Huge Hendrixian guitars, sun baked and lysergic, like someone snuck into Kyuss's old practice space and swiped THAT guitar tone, but then somehow managed to make it even MORE druggy and fuzzy. Furious blown out space rock jams, that are HUGE and THICK with snarling psychedelic guitars and pounding drums. But Color Haze balance these drug fueled freakouts with long stretches of jazzy shuffle, shimmering cymbals, muted riffing, simple throbbing bass, but it only sets you up to have you head caved in when the hammer falls. And fall it does, hard and heavy and so gloriously downtuned and freaked out.
And the Hendrix thing is actually not all that far off, we might mention Santana too. Color Haze are a weird mash up of epic heart-of-the-sun space rock a la Monster Magnet and Hawkwind, super overblown acid fried stoner rock a la Kyuss, but with plenty of that classic Hendrix guitar fuzz, and dreamily psychedelic Santanian stretched out jams.
Not sure exactly what it is about these guys, but when they lock into a jam, we get totally lost, completely carried away, and when the track finally winds down, we sort of shake out head, all bleary eyed, and try to remember where the hell we are and how we got there. Which probably tells you all you need to know about the potency of these super stoned, drug drenched, space rock freakouts for sure.
A couple years back, we raved about a disc called The Dematerialized Passenger, the first album from this unique band (or perhaps we should say project), remember? In case you don't, here's the deal: Combat Astronomy are a USA/UK collaboration, creating a crushing industrial/jazz/prog hybrid. Imagine Godflesh with a free improv horn section, saxophones squealing amidst the metallic riffage. Or Scorn taking a skronked-out stab at chamber music. Like their earlier release, this new Combat Astronomy opus is again laced with punishing, rigid drummachine beats, along with heavy, uber-low-end fretless bass shaking each song with doomic distortion. Which establishes an absurdly heavy context for sax, clarinet, flute and bassoon to freak out organically, like wild weeds creeping through cracks in giant slabs of concrete, on the floor of an abandoned factory somewhere.
But unlike their all-instrumental debut, this time Combat Astronomy have recruited a female vocalist, Elaine di Falco, who also plays some piano, to add yet another unusual dimension to their mashup of extremes, now reminding us slightly of James Plotkin's now forgotten post-Old project Flux. (Hmm, maybe Kayo Dot and later Ulver could be other comparisons now too.) If the addition of her vocals makes this a bit more overtly melodic, it's still no less extreme overall. And certainly just as intricate, her delicate vocal arrangements in themselves quite complex, multi-tracked, as on the urban R&B influenced (???? no, we're crazy) "Touch The Moon" and the album's whispery coda, "Ordinary Miracles". And the focus of CA is still on the ominous grooves, ambient electronics, and battling horn bleats... tracks like "Alive Inside Eternity" and "Sentinel" are lengthy epics (12:36 and 16:49, respectively) of serious beats and blats and skree, in the challenging, compelling, militant manner to which actually only Combat Astronomy can truly lay claim. The vocals, when present, then take it into another, equally unlikely, atmospheric realm of twisted prog-pop. Pretty darn cool!
You don't really hear much about Combat Astronomy, except from us at Aquarius Records (do you?). Which is weird, 'cause this band should be a lot better known than they are, among fans of heavy and/or freaky music, considering they're already on their third (and a half, counting a split) cd release, one that has been long awaited, for a certain subset of AQ-customers in the know. For those not in the know, we'll say that basically CA sound like a Justin Broadrick or Kevin Martin industrial metal act (Godflesh or God, something along those lines) mixed up with freeform improv horn-skree, for results both brutal and beautiful. This band, or we should say this collaborative trans-Atlantic project, to be precise, is the unholy spawn of American sub-bass sludge technician Jamie Huggett and British improv reedsman Martin Archer (and friends). Thus they don't play live that often, which might have something to do with their low profile. They're self-described as an "intense hypnagogic industrial/jazz/prog/doommetal hybrid", and we can't think of any other outfit that better fits that mouthful. As we now know to expect, CA's new disc dishes out uber heavy doomic annihilation, bludgeoning with squelching bass and machine-like beats, the entire thing in fact percussive in its distorted rhythmic impact, amidst ominous organ and rising electronic drone. Yet CA also has a prog/classical side, thanks to Archer's woodwinds and also some female vocals, first introduced to this previously all instrumental act on their 2nd album Dreams No Longer Hesitate, returning here only wordessly, to eerie, avant garde effect. With that in mind, and all the heavy bass, Magma fans might find this to be their extreme sludge combo of choice. We'd also of course recommend Combat Astronomy to those who appreciate the likes of Painkiller, 16-17, Scorn, and even UFOmammut...
And Earth Divided By Zero might just be their best disc yet, keeping the expanded palette of sounds found on their last outing, but leaving aside that disc's occasional surprise explorations of vocal (prog) pop song-ishness, instead forging a more organic synthesis of what we REALLY dig about this unit, the grinding low end and squealing sax skronk, the heavy rhythms and atmospheric, ambient-ish interludes. Not that it's without melodic surprises, like how track two tries to lull us with a placid piano intro, shades of Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore... but soon enough the bass and distortion attack is back in force. Punishing, but such sweet punishment.
With the arrival of Combat Astronomy's fourth album, welcome once again to that unlikely alternate universe inhabited by us at Aquarius Records (and a few others too, like you?), where this intense instrumental outfit is as HUGE as their sonic footprint, their ultra-heavy hybrid of avant garde jazz and post metal industrial doom resounding planetwide in giant concert halls... if 21st century classical chamber deathjazz sludge were the next big thing, they'd be the biggest.
Whereas, heck, in real life, we don't even know if they tour, probably not, since some of the group live in England, with another crucial band member based here in the USA. When they get together (however they do it) it must be a cathartic experience for everyone involved. As they say themselves about this album, it's "LOUD BASS LOUD HORNS LOUD DRUMS MASSIVE RIFFS" all the way. Well, with some quasi-ambient interludes, and bits of melody amidst the mayhem. But for the most part, thick drone, rumbling bass, punishing programmed rhythms, screaming horn blurt. It's kinda like if Godflesh were to record an album for Tzadik, armed with an arsenal of horns and woodwinds. Combat Astronomy use and abuse a variety of saxophones and clarinets, various flutes, bassoon, bass recorder, reindeer horn (?), along with fretless 5 string bass, organ, electronics, zither, tambourine...
On Flak Planet, the formula has been perfected. The disc's opening track "The Stone Tape", is both cinematic and assaultive, it's jazz, but for the squelching sub bass and trudging jackboot rhythms. As the disc spins, there's outbursts of maniacal piano, jarring prog complexities, stretches of exotic atmospheric drone, and more monolithic thud.
Brutal yet beautiful, as we've said before, for fans of 16-17 (natch) as well as, we'd bet, possibly PIVIXKI, Master Musicians of Bukkake, Ehnahre, and assorted RIO ensembles.
A fine follow-up to 2011's Flak Planet, here's another hectic, headspinning batch of blat, bash, and blast from this unusual unit, avant-industrial-prog-jazz-doom titans Combat Astronomy, the collaborative project of American James Huggett (fretless 5-string bass, guitar programming, production, etc.) and the UK's Martin Archer (horns, organ, electronics). Archer also brings in the Juxtavoices choir for the disc's 13+ minute finale "Cave War", Juxtavoices being the vocal ensemble we last heard on the recent Record Of The Week outing by Archer's incredible Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere.
As any Combat Astronomy aficionado expects, 'tis total, tumbling heavy jazz-grind, the burble of Archer's clarinet or saxophones surfacing amidst the thick low-end rumble of Huggett's bass and jackbooted machine rhythms. Where else are you gonna get this fix? You'd have to go back to John Zorn's Painkiller or England's mighty God back in the '90s to hear something like this. Keeping it interesting, the iron fist of Combat Astronomy slips on the velvet glove, sometimes, with occasional snatches of sinister but blissful ambient drone or third-stream jazz or buried melody battling the propulsive chaotic crush of the riff/rhythm onslaught. The pounding power, freakout energy, and sometimes ceremonial-sounding beauty of these ten tracks have us fully entranced. Seeing 'em live (do they ever even play live??) would be amazing.
Never thought about this before, but we hope that the name Combat Astronomy doesn't mean that they're opposed to the science of astronomy, as in "fight against astronomy". Combat astrology, ok, but astronomy? Or maybe, it's a type of astronomy, the kind used in combat, like if you're a starfighter pilot or something. Anyway, not important, nevermind. What is important is that this band shouldn't be as under-the-radar as they are, 'cause they're pretty incredible.
A grinding, rumbling distorto sub-bass death march with jackhammering machine beats... sounds kinda Godfleshy at first... but then, what's this? Heavy-duty blasts of saxophone, flute and bassoon?? Yes indeed, Combat Astronomy combine industrial metal with freaked out free jazz and prog, making for maybe the heaviest "jazz" record since Switzerland's under-exposed and now defunct 16-17 assaulted our ears with Gyatso back in '94. Yet there's also interludes of calm -- doomy passages of ambient moodiess with droning, multitracked reeds. And then it's back to the grind. The rhythms are punishingly mechanical, but also interestingly off-kilter. The weird timing adds to the sense of unease that's also built up by the squonky, skronky sax bleating and ominious electronics... Who's responsible for this brutal, beautiful madness? Well, Combat Astronomy's all-instrumental album The Dematerialized Passenger is a trans-Atlantic collaboration, built upon the foundation of the distorted bass, guitar and programmed beats of one Jamie Hugget from Minnesota USA, in collusion/collision with the saxes, clarinet, violin and effects of Sheffield UK's Martin Archer. Remember that Masayo Asahara cd we reviewed a while back? Saint Agnes Fountain, the supposed long-lost '70s Japanese minimalist drone-prog album that was actually the work of a current-day British musician? He's *that* guy. Two of Archer's pals join in on flute and bassoon as well. The results are likely to alienate all but the most adventureous jazz, metal, and prog fans...which is why we figured a lot of AQ customers might like it! Could certainly be a good one for fans of Godflesh, God, 16-17, Aufgehoben, Last Exit, Zdrastvootie, and other far out outfits on the extremes of industrial, prog and/or improv.
