Brand new record from these blackened Belgian weirdoes, whose sound has changed dramatically from our first exposure to these guys, the grim noisy Luizig cassette, releases on Silvester Anfang's Funeral Folk label, which seemed apt at the time, a raw grim lo-fi sort of abstract black metal, along the lines of the blown out primitive fury of groups like Bone Awl and Akitsa, everything in-the-red, blown out and utterly chaotic and noise drenched. Not sure if you can just chalk it up to the natural progress of a band, but the now out of print 3" cd-r on Universal Tongue found the band shifting their sound considerably, tighter, not so distorted or damaged, yet they managed to make this shift and remain as head cavingly baffling as ever. Which thankfully remains the case here, three new loooong tracks of stripped down trancelike minimal black metal, that sounds almost more like some sort of noiserock or noisy krautrock. The band lock in a riff, and a blasting beat, and just pound away on it, over and over and over, the sound gloriously murky and muddy and blown out, the only things that really change are the vocals, which howl and mewl and shriek, occasionally becoming engulfed in reverb or delay (dub style) and spinning into a swirling cloud or processed voices, and the drums which shift from minimal pound, to super sizzly cymbal driven cacophony, the opening track finds the band spending most of their time pounding away relentlessly, only to shift gears about halfway through, get a little doomy, and then shift gears again and get all abstract and spaced out, sounding more like some weird sort of underground post punk band that any sort of black metal band. They do of course return to the murky muddy pound that started things off, only to stumble and collapse into heap of feedback and black buzz.
The second track is a super stripped down, minimal chunk of slowcore, abstract, doomy, but not heavy, just simple drumming, and skeletal guitars, it does eventually lurch into something more heavy, filthy and crusty, with sick vomited vokills and super distorted downtuned crunch, but it quickly slips right back into that doomy dirge complete with Sabbath style basslines, eventually exploding into a weirdly proggy almost Voivod sounding black metal workout, with long stretches of woozy bass driven doomy drift, and some super dense blowouts of churning riffage that is more dronelike than metal-like.
The final track is a 29 minute juggernaut, which begins with a cloud of grinding low end blackness, the drums eventually coming in, creating some sort of motorik hypnorock blackmetal dronedirge, which splinters into something way more frenzied and chaotic, and from there, the track is constantly shifting, long stretches of cinematic strings and mysterious samples, Khanate like ultradoom, more meandering downtuned metallic post rock, super spaced out minimal sludge, laced with ethereal vocals, and weirdly melancholy melodies, bursts of bass heavy prog, some Burzumic black metal, and finally a blast of frantic almost D-beat sounding blackened fury that finishes things off.
Another fantastic and fucked up batch of damaged doom and abstract avant black metal weirdness, needless to say this is the kind of shit that we live for. WAY recommended.
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We had a handful of customers recommend these fucked up doomdamagemetalnoise weirdos, and around the same time, in some glorious moment of serendipity, the band dropped us a line so we grabbed as many copies as we could of their super limited (only 66 copies) cassette, released on the same label that fellow countrymen Silvester Anfang call home...
These Belgians create a serious ruckus, pounding super distorted grim necro ultra raw dirgey droney doom metal, we saw it described as filthyblacksludgedoomdrone which pretty much sums it up. Pounding sludge, with blown out practice space production, grinding guitars, blasting super distorted drums, filthy super sick vocals,�with bursts of blackness and stretches of loping minimal crunch, sort of mathy, very doomy, all very very heavy and noisy and awesome. One of our favorite new bands easy.�
Essential for fans of Bone Awl, Ancestors, Ash Pool, Beherit, Akitsa as well as other practitioners of grim buzz and noise drenched sludge...
LIMITED TO 66 COPIES!!! In super DIY packaging, printed sleeve, photocopied insert, each tape hand numbered...
It's been a little while since we've heard from these Belgian weirdos. Their sound, an ever evolving black buzz sludge, having over the years seemingly drifted away from black buzz, to a more Gnaw Their Tongues style abject doom. But on this latest lp, the band explode from note one into a frenzy of wild, loose, spastic black metal buzzing - however, not sounding so much like a black metal band, but more like some weird noise rock / art rock combo doing their best black metal, which might have some folks crying 'poser', but as far as we're concerned it makes for something much more interesting. Just wait a few minutes for the songs to switch gears, the band grinding to a halt, then launching into an almost Shellac like bit of minimal math rock, albeit a bit more grimy and low fidelity. That opening track is 20+ minutes long, so the song goes through quite a few sonic permutations, adding some woozy droney shimmer, some chugging riffy churn, the sound almost more metallic krautrock at times, depressive black metal at others, eventually exploding into another stretch of stumbling flailing buzzing blackness, only to then add strange samples, squalls of psychedelic noise, and a final movement that's broody and slithery and seriously doomy.
The shorter middle tracks fall into more of a noise rock / dirge rock thing, grimey and downtuned, with the second of the two exploding into an almost D-beat pound, the sounds murky and muddy, flitting from loping crunch to punkish swagger, to noisy tangle, but constantly crusty and corrosive.
The final 13 minute jam, a sonic bookend to the epic opener, unfurls as a haunting hushed shimmer, blossoming into a sprawl of abject slo-mo ultra-doom, all tarpit riffs, and glacial drum damage, long tones and droned out melodies, super trancey and hypnotic and HEAVY, eventually splintering into more black blasts, the final blast getting seriously melodic and epic, making it sound like had the song not ended, it would have become some sort of Godspeed black metal blow out. Killer stuff as always. And yeah, SUPER limited.
Furious and screaming metal core from these Philadelphia kids. Lots of chugging riffs and howling vocals. Not super complex, but relentless and seriously kick ass. Also contains a 10 minute video!
I think the Champs toured with these guys and loved 'em. At least, I know Josh from the Champs raved about them to me once. All Night are retro rock n' rollers from North Carolina, doing the seventies guitar rawk thing with rare authenticity. Bluesy, swaggering, Stonesy, drawling, kick ass stuff a la Cherry Valence, The Want, Gorilla and few others today. The kind of band you hope will be playing in the next bar you go in. They sound more '70s than the last dozen "stoner rock" bands you ever heard. Boogie!
We realized recently, that although we were huge fans of the black metal label Kunsthauch, and the metalheads around here have collections filled with Kunsthauch releases, we had for some reason, never actually reviewed ANYthing on the label. To address that oversight, we got in touch with Kunsthauch directly and are now beginning a campaign to shine some aQ light on some of our favorite Kunsthauch releases, new and old, beginning with this, a compilation from Russian outfit All The Cold, released in 2009 and collecting the group's earliest demos, tracks from various splits as well as a few unreleased songs as well. One Year Of Cold is actually the only proper sort-of-full-length the band has, their catalog being made up entirely otherwise of demos and splits.
All it should take is a couple minutes of opener "Last Winter" for you to fall under ATC's wintery spell, trafficking as they do in a sort of cold, frosty ambient black metal, a la Paysage D'Hiver, Alrakis and other aQ faves, and while the band seem to drift and drone and lumber doomily more than actually thrash and blast, it's precisely that slow temp and atmospheric focus that makes these tracks so mesmerizing. "Last Winter" unfurls a blurred hazy blackened dreamscape, that could go on forever, and really, is only barely black metal, before disappearing in a squall of whipping winter winds, only to have some proper black buzz emerge, creeping, a haunting doomy trudge, the melodies wistful and melancholy, floating above a field of washed out warm buzzing thrum, loping and melancholy, and again almost more dark dreampop that black metal, the music box like melody sounds almost like Burzum's "Rundgang Um Die Transzendentale Saule Der Singularitat" if it were in fact an actual black metal jam. "Through The Dead World" offers up more of the same, beginning with some plaintive harpsichord melody, before the guitars come in, all jagged and buzzy and chuggy, and while there seems to be potential for chaotic blackness, the sound instead sprawls and oozes and transforms into a thick black cloud of warm buzz, of pounding slo-mo drum damage, some seriously super distorted demonik vokills, and more of those plaintive melodies. Occasionally the tempo does get cranked up, and in come the blast beats, but weirdly enough, those moments are even LESS heavy, the sound growing more ethereal and washed out, only those wicked vox keeping the sound from floating into some sort of 4AD bliss out dreampop (albeit with blast beats!). And so it goes, wintery and haunting and dreamy, stretches of grim gorgeous blackened buzz interspersed with long expanses of gauzy ambience, and peppered with bits of classical sounding composition, creepy cinematic synthscapery, grim industrial dronemusic, and lovely winter-sun dappled chamber music, all woven into a fantastically frosty and phantasmagoric blackened songsuite. WAY recommended!
Alrakis are a little like a German Darkspace, the same sort of epic cosmic blackness, the same obsession with the cosmos, the stars and space and the galaxies around us, but instead of a blown out hypersonic blur, Alrakis conjure their spaced out blackness from something much more depressive and dismal, a mournful blackbuzz dirge that creeps and lumbers, the music melodic and melancholy, wreathed in a warm gauze of blurred buzz, the vocals an anguished wail, the drums a skeletal plod, buried in the mix, all epic and emotional, repetitive and cyclical, heaving and majestic, a loping sprawl of buzzing black mesmer, slipping dreamily from churning black trudge, to hazy celestial shimmer, all droned out and atmospheric, long stretches of contemplative hush, which gradually supernova into another burst of cosmic buzz, and the more we listen to this, the more the Darkspace comparison seems somewhat apt, if you assume that Alrakis does sound like Darkspace just at 16rpm. Which makes sense, the idea of these sounds floating weightless, a black buzz drifting against a glimmering starfield of distant flicker.
Ultimately, the cosmic/celestial focus is invoked by the music's lonely vibe, it conjures up the feeling of being lost in an inky black endless sky, of drifting alone, forever and ever, it's definitely a sad record, and based on the subject matter, we can only assume that it is the imaginary soundtrack for the final journey, whether a literal trip to the farthest reaches of the universe, or the more metaphoric great unknown, this is the perfect score, haunting and harrowing, a grim black depressive missive that is easily one of the coolest depressive black metal records we've heard, with much more going on that just buzz and plod and pound, the sounds are lush and layered, even folks not that into black metal could be lured in by some of these tracks, sounding a bit like a slightly blacker Nadja, the same sort of minimal dronedoomdirge, and many of the tracks are completely ambient, unfurling a sort of grim kosmiche shimmer that seems to drift endlessly into the endless comsos.
Way recommended for sure, one of our favorite new black metal discoveries. Comes in a super swank oversized A5 style digibook, adorned with, of course, images of space and stars...
Altar of Plagues hail from Ireland, not exactly the first place you think of when it comes to atmospheric black metal. But here they are with their full length debut, White Tomb, which finds the band expertly bringing together the epic sweep of groups like Wolves in the Throne Room and Asunder with that style of Isis-informed metallic post rock we all love. Throw in an awesomely guttural black metal rasp, a couple moments of Khanate styled throat abuse, spaced out ambience with cleanly strummed guitars, and an excellent balance of punishing blasts and more lumbering, slowly moving drums, and you've got one hell of an introduction to this previously unknown (to us, anyway) group.
Consisting of two very long movements, "Earth" and "Through The Collapse", made up of two songs each, Altar of Plagues' lyrical agenda, though not printed here, seems to be similar to that of WITTR's brand of spiritually informed conservation, where humankind will vanish under the indifferent and regenerative hoof of Mother Nature. The two songs in the "Earth" suite, "As A Womb" and "As A Furnace" start with a beautiful piece of slowly building depressive guitar ambience before heading into a super heavy black metal jam that does not sound too far removed from the godly Atlanta based group Withered (who, for some reason, we have never reviewed). Things slow down to a cool, spaced out Mogwai-ian moment that links the two songs, as multiple voices combine before ascending once more to a blissful post metal dirge. As this begins to sink in, we are again introduced to heavy, psychedelically informed black metal that suitably brutalizes you before fading off into the distance as layers of treated guitar ambience combine into a whirlwind of buzzing, which is soon overtaken by a sepia-tinged, slightly disquieting outro that immediately segues into the next song suite. "Watchers Restrained" is where things eventually slow to a glacial pace as disturbing, very Alan Dubin-esque vocals spit out line after line of bile while Altar of Plagues lays a foundation that manages to be both super dense and quite spacious. After being pummeled for a bit, the band pull back and the song fades into walls of crumbling decay that bring to mind the cool Cities Last Broadcast album we reviewed a few lists back. Album closer, "Gentian Truth" takes you on one last journey through a melancholy psych metal hinterland, before ending in an atmospheric soundscape quite similar to the way the album began, giving White Tomb an awesome cyclical feel that will undoubtedly bring out more truths with each listen.
Thank the always right-on Profound Lore label for unleashing this mighty beast upon the world, as White Tomb comes as a nice surprise from a group we certainly hope to hear more from in the future.
Not sure what it was about Altar Shadows that intrigued us more, the fact that they're from Lithuania, or that their record is called Speckledy Falcons. Probably a little of both, but the two taken together, well, they were virtually irresistible to the aQ weirdo black metal obsessives.
And rightfully so. Altar Shadows offer up a blend of majestic Viking tinged black metal, midtempo Burzumic buzz, traditional Lithuanian folk music, black ambience and some field recordings, burbling brooks, birdsong and other sounds of nature. A strange combination, but the band are pretty deft at assembling them into something cohesive and compelling, black and heavy, melodic and mysterious.
Many of the songs start off with field recordings, invoking the spirit of the forest, of the wilderness, which is carried through to the music, even with the riffs are buzzing blackly, they are underpinned by strummed acoustic guitars, mournful melodies, woozy waltz like tempos, often breaking down into a sort of lilting folk interlude, peppered with guitar leads, before swooping back into full buzz.
One track eschews the buzz completely, instead offering up dark brooding acoustic folk, clean crooned vocals, glistening acoustic guitars, melancholy melodies, while another blends the two, turning a folk song into a strange lurching loping blackened jam, with strange staccato drumming, and super emotive melodies, soaring leads, and growled guttural vocals. Their version of a traditional Lithuanian folk song follows a similar pattern, the guitars spread out in long streaks of downtuned buzz, the vocals a demonlike roar, but woven into a strange folky framework, big drums pounding out a rhythm over harmonized melodies, and some simple strumming, strange but quite cool.
But don't let all the folk throw you off, Altar Shadows are indeed a black metal band, who offer up some gorgeously grim black buzz, blast beats, furious riffing, it's just that their black buzz is infused with the spirit of the past, and informed by the folk music of their ancestors, which more than anything, makes their blackness all the more unique, and their sound something special. Plus, SPECKLEDY FALCONS!!!
For months now, we've been trying to list a cd from a local one man black metal band called Wikkid. And the way we know it's a one man black metal band is it says so right on the front of the cd, along with the location "Bay Area California". It's a damaged chunk of extremely weird outsider blackness, that we really want to share with you all, but the man behind the band is extremely elusive. When he initially showed up here, in a 49ers jersey, a big black straw hat, and smoking a cigar in a cigarette holder, we weren't expecting the cds he wanted to consign to be anything like Wikkid. And before you knew it, they were gone. So we pestered him for more, instead he brought in some Wikkid T-shirts that he had printed at home with spray paint. So we kept pestering him, but this time, instead of Wikkid cds, or more spray painted shirts, he brought in THIS, the first release from his "black metal influenced organ/keyboard instrumental" project. We were intrigued, not knowing at all what to expect, and while there is definitely some sort of sonic thread tying the two together, Alturaz is a whole different beast, in fact without the above backstory, this could definitely pass as some modern minimalism or spaced out psychedelic kosmische. The first track is just church organ, the chords unfurling ominously, over whirring organ drones, haunting and liturgical, sounding a bit like a black metal intro stretched out into a song proper, we're reminded of Jacula too, sinister and ritualistic, haunting and darkly cinematic, super simple for sure, but really, it's more about mood and vibe, and the sound has plenty of both to spare. The second track is even more minimal, a super spare sprawl of processed organ blurts, rumbling low end thrum, fragmented melodic swirls, lots and lots of space, creepy and soundtracky and very abstract.
It's on track three, "Split Demonic Versonalities" that things get cosmic, the organs now wreathed in space-y FX, the sound swirling and shimmering, sounding like a planetarium show composed by John Carpenter, pulsing and sinister, swirling and ominously cinematic. And then finally, another super hushed, ultra minimal, barely there coda, all low end pulsations and super subtle colorations, like black billowing ripples in a sonic pond, tranquil and hypnotic, but like the rest of the record, infused with a strange ineffable dread.
Recommended for fans of psychedelic space synth, and abstract kosmische, as well as creepy soundtrack music, and it just might hold us over until we can finally get us, and you some WIKKID!
It seems many moons ago now that a mysterious man sporting a black cowboy hat with a cigar (in a cigar holder!) perched upon his lips first strode into the aQ shopfront to thrust upon us some of the weirdest, most damaged outsider black metal we have ever heard, under his one-man solo project Wikkid, and since then we've had further unexpected visits where we've been blessed with weird home made spray painted t-shirts along with cut and paste printed cassettes and cds by Alturaz, this same mystery man's "black metal influenced instrumental organ" outfit. And now here we have a split between those two projects - Wikkid and Alturaz (a split between two one man projects that both feature the same one man! How amazing of a concept is that??), and it's just as fucked up as we'd hoped. Not only in the music disarmingly bizarre, but even the little details are bewildering. The album cover simply features the same cover art from both previous Wikkid and Alturaz releases, but squashed together so they'll both fit on one cd sleeve (but make no mistake, this is all new music!). The track names at first seem to be delineated by Roman numerals, except when you get past "III" they just become "IIII", "IIIII", etc.! The beauty of these bizarre Easter eggs is it's truly impossible to determine whether this is totally calculated, or just genuine weirdness on the creator's part (but personally, we're betting on the latter.) As for the music, Alturaz starts off this strange journey with "In the Name of Self", a full 37 seconds of genuinely creepy horror movie ambient reverb accompanied by some truly bizarre pitch-shifted echo chamber death growls. The second track "Forbidden" (and second Alturaz track) is literally just three minutes of desolate Arctic tundra winds. It's not until track three where Wikkid first emerges and the weirdness truly begins. "Worship of Fire" kicks off with some guitar work (the word "riff" doesn't really apply here) that sounds like someone chewing on metal, before the song dizzily tumbles into some crazy d-beat drumming, constantly drifting in and out of time. The vocals exist on some other audial plane, like a nervous muttering goblin having a panic attack. The affect is a bit like Hellhammer crossed with The Shaggs (Shagghammer??), or as one aQer puts it: Wikkid make Striborg sound like Steely Dan. With the next Wikkid track, the sound quality totally changes (a real trademark of this split - things like levels have no meaning here!), getting way louder with much more low end. "The Unreleased One" is an instrumental mid paced plod, all chugging guitars and intermittent double bass that seems to start and stop with little regard for the song's timing. And then there's this sudden abrupt high pitched beep, way way louder than anything else in the mix, like something's being censored, and suddenly "Putting The Black Birds Blood In Your Veins" (what a title!) bursts forth with some truly demented blast beats and tinfoil tremolo guitar, before Alturaz returns to close out the proceeding with more lonely howling winds and creepy instrumental clean guitar. Needless to say, if you're interested in the shadowy fringe areas of black metal, you need to check this out, but really, we'd recommend this to anyone truly fascinated by those strange outsider records that seem to exist free of any genre constraints, and any petty earthly concerns like "listenable" or "musicality." Utterly weird, utterly fascinating, and totally amateurish but all the better for it. How could we not love it??
It's been two long years we've been waiting for this, another mysterious rhythmic communique from French blackened post krautrock alchemists Aluk Todolo. But it's not like they've been idle. Since 2007's Descension, two thirds of Aluk Todolo have recorded a record and toured the world as Gunslingers, and all of Aluk Todolo do double duty in French black metallers Diamatregon, who recently released a new full length on tUMULt called Crossroad.
But as much as we love those other two bands, and we do, there will always be something magical about the strange sonic world Aluk Todolo are able to conjure up. Especially considering they're a three piece, a power trio, drums, guitar, bass. Nothing else, no synths, no strings, just the basic rock band instruments. It's testament to the power these three wield, that they can do so much with so little. Or more accurately, so little with so little. As the music of Aluk Todolo, is disarmingly simple, subtle and minimal, but in its minimalism, lies its power. The power of rhythm, of texture, of mood, these five long pieces are so evocative, so expressive and strangely emotional. Even at its most spare and skeletal, the sound is palpable, almost a physical presence, which is surprising again considering just how stripped down Finsternis actually is.
Descension, Aluk Todolo's debut, was heavy and space-y and rhythmic, we described it as a buzz-less black metal, some of the songs were thick and caustic, others were loping and motorik, but on Finsternis, it's as if the band decided to strip away all the extraneous sounds, leaving just the core, the root, the heart of the music, and that heart beats out a simple, hypnotic rhythm.
The record is split into 4 parts, with a brief interlude, but those four parts are split into two distinct movements. The first, which comprises the first two parts, is much of what we described above, simple skeletal rhythms, surrounded by minimal guitar whir, bursts of grinding distortion, fragmented jangle, keening feedback, but it's all about the rhythm. After a brief burst of mathy chaos, the track reverts to its initial rhythm, this time the bass more prominent, fuzzy, distorted, woozy and mesmerizing, the band locked in tight, the bass and drums solid and unwavering, while the guitar sings in the background, moaning and keening and howling, giving the track an ominous otherworldly vibe, a trudge across some hostile alien landscape, a weary, washed out deathmarch.
Then the interlude, a haunting abstract percussive sprawl, simple percussive thuds set amidst a sea of warped distorted low end, bits of glitch and hiss, and grinding shards of industrial clatter, which gives way to the second, noisier movement, the drums transformed into a simple machinelike pound, snare and cymbal crashing over and over and over, the guitars whipped into a frenzy of blurred buzz and warped swirling blackened chaos, what at first sounds noisy and harsh, soon reveals itself as strangely textural, and as hypnotic as the more stripped down first movement, the guitars slip from monochromatic whir, to insectoid black metal riffing, constantly swirling around the motorik pound and pummel, the final track finds the guitars slipping into ever higher registers, blissing out, laced with feedback, smoothing out into warm smears and blurs, before a brief deconstruction, and a surprisingly tranquil last few minutes, the drums back to a woozy lope, the guitar offering up warm swells and shimmering thrum, the bass throbbing beneath, eventually stumbling to a halt in a cloud of creaking metals and static-like tape hiss. Woah.
Just like Descension, Finsternis is an intense and emotional journey through sound, a haunting and hard to describe exploration of rhythm, mood and texture, a slow shifting otherworld defined by This Heat, Geronimo, Laddio Bolocko, Can, Faust, accessible only via the three shadowy figures that make up Aluk Todolo, whose magic and mystery has been rendered in these glorious black rhythms.
Housed in a multi panel jacket with super striking original artwork by Stephen Kasner, on the always impressive Utech label (whose other two new releases, from Gog and Olivier Dumont, we'll review on the next list, although we do have both in stock if you want 'em, and we're fairly sure you do!).
Third album from French post black metal instrumental kraut-psych occult rock trio Aluk Todolo, and third time Record Of The Week! We've just resigned ourselves to the fact, that every record from these guys is gonna blow our minds, and by extension, we imagine, yours as well. In the musical math that makes up many of the bands we love, the convoluted equation that resulted in Aluk Todolo is tough to beat. Featuring members of black metal horde Diamatregon (whose last two records were released on Andee's tUMULt label) and psych rock outfit Gunslingers, AT takes some elements from both of those groups, but also This Heat, Faust, Can, the Necks, Circle, Hawkwind, and Taj Mahal Travellers... They are most definitely sonic alchemists, as we've described them in every review so far, distilling all of these disparate sounds and influences into something all their own, and something that obviously pushes all our buttons.
This latest double disc takes everything we dug about them before, and somehow makes those things more, and better, given the space to stretch out, the songs become MORE epic, MORE intense, MORE tranced out, MORE heavy. There's 8 songs over 2 discs/lps and 2+ hours. Imagine a super charged Necks or Circle fused to the blaring psychedelic heaviosity of Psychic Paramount, and the furious grim buzz of some obscure black metal horde, the sounds repetitive and cyclical, hypnotic and mesmerizing, the opener here displaying their black metal roots, and just how those roots can be sculpted into something trance-y and droned out, while remaining pretty goddamn grim and blackened. Launching immediately into a fierce frenzied blast, all tremelo picking and blast beats, a churning, roiling single riff, overlaid with soaring minor key melodies, slipping easily from classic black metal blast to dense static mesmer and back again, until almost 4 minutes in when everything is swallowed up in a blast of whit noise, before the frenetic riffing tapers off, leaving just the bass and drums to churn frantically, beneath thick swirls of effects, only to gradually build back up, and during the last three minutes, unleash the sort of dense, brutal, buzzing black metal, most proper BM bands can barely pull off.
If that opening track is sort of the shot across the bow, the second track is when things get serious, slowing things down to a super distorted post-rock lope, the drums driving and the guitars thick and distorted, keening melodies, the Slint vibe looms large, before the band dial it down, and lock into a totally mesmerizing, dizzyingly dense roiling 'groove', that sounds like amped up Circle, grinding away hypnotically, peppered with occasional bursts of metallic crunch, and near black metal blowouts, always slipping right back into that mesmeric churn, the guitars impossibly distorted and fuzzed out, the bass super melodic, the sort of track you never want to end, slipping easily from progged out psychedelic buzz drenched tangle to warped noise rock minimalism and back again.
The rest of disc one finds AT dialing back the buzz and crunch, and weaving lush landscapes of woozy melody, and darkly driving hypnorock, the songs wreathed in keening feedback, moaning melodies, lush layered guitars, swaths of melodic jangle, of shimmering chiming harmonics, the sound drifting from minimal chugging dirge to loping psych rock meander, and from wild krautpsych blowout to swoonsome Slintish slither.
Disc two offers up 4 more sonic invocations, heavy on the noise rock, but dipping into super minimal minor key mesmer, low slung almost gothic sounding dirgery, the seriously Circle-like seventh track, that takes the sound of our favorite Finns, and douses it in clouds of shimmering noise, and freaked out freeform psychedelic shimmer, and finally, the record finishes off with an epic doom jam, the band pounding away malevolently, the bass distorted and blown out, shards of feedback everywhere, noisy and psychedelic and a bit chaotic, but all anchored to the unwavering rhythm section, the song gradually losing momentum, slowing way down, getting doomier and doomier and dirgier and dirgier, transformed into a slo-mo tarpit crawl, the riffing bleeding into long droned out tones, the sort of doom-noise creep that folks into Bunkur and Monarch and the like will flip over, but here it's more atmospheric, a heady doomic coda, the sound seeming to decay naturally, shedding layers along the way, until finally the drums go too, the record continuing to fade away, to drift heavenward, eventually dissolving into a cloud of feedback.
Like past Aluk Todolo releases, the sounds and songs here are so intense and hypnotic, heavy and heady, it's the rare sort of record that somehow appeals to metalheads and post rockers as much as experimentalists and avant gardists, a sound transcendent and tranced out, dense and sinister and somehow still strangely beautiful, and obviously well worth Record Of The Week honors for sure. And then some.
Finally, the long awaited return of these mysterious French audio alchemists, whose sound is a strange amalgamation of black metal buzz, krautrock mesmer, and psychedelic ambience. And the aforementioned mystery lies not with the group itself, whose lineup features members of black metal outfit Diamatregon and psychedelic rockers Gunslingers, both big time aQ faves, but rather in their sound, and how a sound so minimal and spare, how seemingly reductive on the surface, manages to transcend, to exist as something wholly other, a band who at times can sound like other bands that came before, but only fleetingly, those sounds subsumed and reimagined, and spit back out in a shape that is distinctly Aluk Todolo.
This ritual is not a new recording, but in fact archival material recorded at the same time as their Descension record, and is a This single track, spread out over both sides of a 10", and begins with a loping dirgey rhythm, pounding through clouds of swirling cacophony, shards of jagged guitarnoise and layers of chordal shimmer, an electrified field that seems to crackle around the groups core pulse/groove, the surrounding noise, not so much just noisy as haunting and ominous and textural. A brief bit of super creepy, deep garbled vocals intone what must be some sort of warning, as the sound continues to drift, mesmerizing and hypnotic, dense but at the same time almost ethereal, seasawing between noisy and chaotic, washed out and woozy, until eventually the noise recedes, leaving just long streaks of hiss and glitch and static, all wreathed in a blurred melodic haze.
Finally an even slower, more spare rhythm begins, this one plodding along through a black haze, pelted by squalls of super distorted buzz, quick blasts of blown out crunch, those blasts themselves strangely melodic, as if they were spaced out notes to some other, mysterious melody, the sound eventually building to a much more rocking final blast, organ like whirs underpinning muddy riffage and still more explosive bits of grinding guitar crunch.
The flipside is much more relentless and abrasive, the dynamics ditched in lieu of something more textural, a wall of buzz and crumbling crunch, the drums an anchor, buried in the murk and mire, the noise surprisingly nuanced, textural one minute, caustic the next, blurred and melodic, but also hissy and harsh, creating all sorts of constantly shifting and evolving textures and overtones. A washed out spate of abrasive guitardrone fashioned into something almost riff-like, wrapped around that constant motorik beat, that krauty rhythm that definitely reminds us of German Oak, albeit way noisier and more blackened, the track pounds and drones and buzzes away before finally finishing off with a surprisingly woozy, buzzy, drifty dramatic outro. Wow.
As always, super striking packaging, pressed on heavy vinyl, and yeah, most likely very very limited.
Holy fuck, this record is amazing! You'd never guess it, but Aluk Todolo is the occult trance rock side project of French black metallers Diamatregon. OK, maybe it doesn't seem that off the wall, Diamatregon definitely dabbled in strange rhythms and distinctly non-black metal sound forms. But this is definitely something else altogether. Ominous krautrock rhythms over Einsterzende style industrial clatter, some lost seventies psych rock holy grail channeled through modern post rock. Dreamy and dark and mesmerizing. Hypnotic guitar lines and simple shuffling rhythms that build into clattery propulsive jams, all clanging angular riffs and dense tangled drumming. VERY This Heat like, and reminiscent of the late great Laddio Bolocko. Some sort of dangerous and mysterious postrock / krautrock hybrid, lo-fi but thick and dense and amazingly heavy.
Gorgeous packaging, white and silver on black, a fold out die cut sleeve with a Japanese style obi, and a cover image that manages to be totally familiar ('got yer nose') but somehow creepy as hell.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another underground superstar collaboration. This time Aussie guitarist Oren Ambarchi, the Stephen O'Malley half of SUNNO))), as well as one of the Master Musicians Of Bukkake, Randall Dunn, got together to conjure up a gorgeously spooky alternative score to a film by Alexis Destoop called Kairos, as is often the case, we've yet to see the film, but the music on its own is pretty great. As you might imagine from the lineup, it's all shades of dark and ominous, sinister and menacing, haunting and atmospheric, from swirling flurries of glitchy electronics, to drowsy, twang flecked, Earth-like crawls, caked in gristle and grit, thrumming swells of industrial rumble, and dense billows of chordal shimmer, some moments dark and jazzy, others cosmic and dreamy, still others driving and droney. There are some heavy moments for sure, the second side/movement takes the skitter of the first and adds some rhythmic muscle, as well as some thick sheets of crumbling buzz, creating what almost sounds like a drone metal Necks, but laced with more psychedelia and some buried almost-Eastern sounding melodies, like a blurry, melting raga wrapped around some gristled/grizzled slow core.
After that, the sound gets a bit more mystical and abstract, much like Dunn's Master Musicians, spaced out drifts, hushed and haunting, but only briefly, before blossoming into wild, percussion heavy psychedelic freakout. Japanese psych chanteuse Ai Aso contributes some dreamy vocals on the second half of side 3, transforming the sound into a hushed, psychedelic torch song, before returning to the drone and buzz for the sprawling final movement, gorgeous arcs of warm guitarbuzz and moaning, droning tones, layered and lush, drifting drowsily, almost like all the instruments are gradually detuning, the shimmery dreamlike drift, fading, darkening, and blackening into an almost SUNNO)))-like slo-mo finale.
Reissue of the debut cd from this atmospheric local group, that uses classical chamber music instrumentation to create dark, beautiful sounds akin to a black metal Rachel's. Black metal? Well, this was originally released this by Elfenblut, an imprint of now defunct British label Misanthropy, famous as the home of Burzum! And, for further "heavy" credentials, we should mention that band leader Kris Force has played with both Neurosis and the Swans. This was previously only an import, and now boasts three bonus tracks exclusive to this new version!
Originally released as a super limited 10", local moody metallic chamber ensemble Amber Asylum's latest Garden Of Love is now available on cd, again limited, this time to 750 copies, packaged in a mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve, and includes the previously unreleased bonus track "Serenade" available only on this here cd. Four brand new tracks that take Amber Asylum's gothic strings and vocals sound even further out, having now expanded their lineup to include former members of The Gault and SF black metal legends Weakling. The opening track is quite possibly the best thing we've heard from them, a brooding dramatic soundscape of intensely moody strings, and anguished melodies. Locked in by simple almost programmed sounding rhythms with haunting operatic vocals drifting ghostlike through the mix. Sounds a bit like Skepticism with a string section, and you know that is a very good thing. The second track heads into almost Goblin territory at points with super aggressive pizzicato strings, bows sawing away at the strings emitting truly ominous melodies. The rest of the record is far more tranquil, expansive, romantic, epic, melancholic yet hopeful, with delicate crystalline piano figures, very subtle strings and sweetly plaintive vocals. So nice.
First we've heard from local moody metallic chamber ensemble Amber Asylum in quite some time. Rumor is there have been label problems, but you'd never know it from this amazing self released 10" (other than it being, um, self released). Three brand new tracks that take Amber Asylum's gothic strings and vocals soun even further out, having now expanded their lineup to include former members of the Gault and SF black metal legends Weakling. The opening track is quite possibly the best thing we've heard from them, a brooding dramatic soundscape of intensely moody strings, and anguished melodies. Locked in by simple almost programmed sounding rhythms with haunting operatic vocals drifting ghostlike through the mix. Sounds a bit like Skepticism with a string section, and you know that is a very good thing. The second track heads into almost Goblin territory at points with super aggressive pizzicato strings, bows sawing away at the strings emitting truly ominous melodies. Side B clocks in at a little over 12 minutes, and is far more tranquil, an expansive, romantic epic, melancholic yet hopeful, with delicate crystalline piano figures, very subtle strings and sweetly plaintive vocals. So nice. Available only on limited edition 10" vinyl!
Ignore the new age blurbs on the back of this cd, this is a beautiful piece of Morricone-style dark cinematic bliss from San Francisco violinist/vocalist Kris Force, featuring a revolving cast of guests, including John from A Minor Forest.
2nd album (and domestic full-length debut) of atmospheric chamber music from this acclaimed San Francisco band, sort of the goth-metal answer to Rachel's. Not that this sounds metal at all, it just seems to be the eerie classical music thing that appeals equally to Satanic Black Metallers, "dark ambient" aficianados, and so forth - and the group's association with Neurosis adds to their metal cred.
Awesome reissue of this seminal crust classic. Heavy and noisy and brilliant. Includes 2 bonus tracks!
Somehow this is the first record we've reviewed from these Belgian heavies, even though this is their fourth full length, but they've definitely found the perfect home for their epic, sprawling riffscapes, as their aesthetic is quite similar to Neurosis', huge heaving riffage, churning slow burn heaviness, pounding tribal percussion, anguished vocals, imagine Neurosis via Godspeed with a serious experimental bent, and you'd be close to approximating Amenra. Four tracks here, the shortest a little over nine minutes, the longest thirteen, the band weaving blackened expanses of doom-prog heaviness, streaks of feedback swirling around Teutonic riffage, lots of space, long stretches of minimal drift, of hypno rock lope, and doomic lumber, spaced out droned out mesmer, and psych-trance drift, all of which is touched on in opener "Dearborn And Buried".
That track pretty much sets the template for Amenra's smoldering slow build bombast, the Godspeed comparison no more apt than on the second track "Boden", the opening few minutes a brooding murky churn, laced with soft focus melodies and strange scraped percussion, slowly ratcheting up the tension, before exploding into a seriously epic avalanche of majestic metallic crush, worshippers of Isis, Neurosis, Pelican and all the rest, who have yet to discover these guys are in for a revelation, their skull crushing riff heavy heave tempered with soaring spidery melodies, before breaking down into a stretch of softly psychedelic drift before another final salvo, all swirling, soaring heaviness.
And so it goes, the band engaged in a constant sonic battle between light and dark, a push and pull between black hole heaviness and heavenly light melody, never more fully laid out than on the 13 minute "A Mon Ame", which displays a surprisingly light touch, the band smearing soft chords into dreamlike swells, adding layer upon layer of washed out riffage, of droning melodies, of lush layered texture, clouds of cymbal shimmer, even when the drums kick in, the sound remains restrained, a tense post rock churn, replete with crooned, almost chant-like clean vocals, building to a brief bit of explosive crush, before quickly settling back into a hushed psychedelic drift, eventually building to a final heaving climax, all shrieked vox, roiling distorted guitars and concussive drum bombast.
Fans of Neur-Isis-y heaviness and epic post rock flecked doom, bow down!
We had sort of given up on ever getting this in stock, which was killing us. One of our favorite records of last year (one of Andee's top 10), a record some of us listened to EVERY DAY, over and over. Heavy and buzzy, but so beautiful and relentlessly catchy. Sure we've had black metal records in the past that were 'pretty'. Catchy too. But those records took their hooks and their soaring melodies and wrapped them all up in spiky blackness, subtly catching our ear beneath all the buzz, the prettiness more a byproduct than a reason for being. But Amesoeurs are completely different. It's almost like some shoegazey, indie druggy drone rock band decided their blissed out indie jangle needed more, well, BLACKNESS, and thus enlisted a corpsepainted frontman, with a demonic banshee shriek, to wail and gnash his teeth over the band's nearly perfect buzzing pop.
From the first notes of the opener "Bonheur Ampute" you're hooked. If you didn't know what was playing, you'd probably be thinking it was some lost Swervedriver track, or some modern band channeling My Bloody Valentine and Ride. The music is that gorgeous. The guitars are thick and heavy, a little buzzy, but they glisten and sparkle, and well, jangle. The opening riff is so impossibly catchy, sort of minor key, but only barely, this is simply perfect pop music wrapped in a thin layer of buzzing blackness. There's no denying it. A loping riff, underpinned by strummed acoustic guitar, while over the top guitars keen and soar, melodies intertwine, harmonies drift and shimmer, even the black metal shriek starts to transform into something less evil becoming more just another element of the blissy poppy buzz. Near the end of the first track, all the other instruments drop out leaving just the acoustic guitar, and when the band kicks back in, they go for it, transforming the track into some otherworldy buzzpop, that original riff ringing out, but over the top some gorgeously melodic underwater, blooping Pinback like bass lines and soaring angular guitar melodies.
The second track begins with a haunting spidery Slinty guitar line, minor key and skeletal, hovering in a wide open expanse of dark shimmer, when the band lurches into action, the main riff sounds like some classic Maiden hook, transformed into a loping pop song, the band eventually ramp it up, the drums becoming a double kicking blast, the vocals shrieking, but the main melody remains and the song becomes a haunting emotional minor key buzz drenched slab of shoegazer black metal, complete with acoustic breakdowns and a mysterious percussive coda.
The final track opens up with another gorgeous tangled bit of clean guitar, that turns into straight up clean ringing indie jangle, but surprises us with ethereal female vocals, which transform it into some nineties sounding dark pop like Velocity Girl or something. Eventually, a buzzing guitar joins the fray, and by the end, it's another swirling blackened slab of blissed out buzz. So fucking awesome.
Black metal record of the year! Of forever! And that's assuming that this even counts as black metal... Either way, this is absolutely essential. Black metalheads don't be put off by the prettiness, we love us some Antaeus and Katharsis and Darkthrone and all that, but this is just so goddamn good. And all you indie rock mix tape makers, try blowing somebody's mind by slipping one of these tracks into your next mix, right there between Spoon and Pavement. The perfect black metal gateway drug...
(And be sure to check out -- if you can find 'em -- Amesoeurs mainman Neige's other bands, Alcest, who take the blissed out pop thing even further, and Peste Noire, a more black, but equally strange and pretty outfit. We'll try to track them down for the store, but who knows...)
Finally! After three, years, France's Amesoeurs release their debut full length. And it's pretty shocking when you think about all the fuss these guys (and gal) have stirred up, with only FOUR songs to their name. FOUR songs in THREE YEARS. And yet, people were obsessed with those four songs, ourselves included, but hell, those four songs were fantastic, magical, barely black metal to the point where we had trouble understanding why metalheads liked it at all, but that's the thing, it managed to transcend, the songwriting is amazing, the arrangements, the production, the riffs, and mood, the ambience, Amesoeurs really are something special.
And it's not like they were doing nothing for the last three years, mainman Neige, managed to release records by his other bands, Peste Noire, Alcest, Forgotten Woods, Lantlos, in fact 3 of the four members of Amesoeurs also play in Peste Noire, but don't be expecting any of that gnarled raw black weirdness, no, Amesoeurs as most folks already know is all about melody, songcraft, it's more post rocky and shoegazey than buzzy and black, at least most of the time, and never more than on this new one. Vocalist and bassist Audrey Sylvain takes center stage here, singing most of the songs, helping Amesoeurs create a gorgeous lush sound that is so far removed from black metal, even blasts of buzz or furious riffing can't take away from its pure poppiness. Some of these songs sound like a band who should be on Slumberland not on Profound Lore.
Anyway, Amesoeurs starts off with a blast, some Joy Division-y bass, some mathy angular post rocky guitar, simple stripped down drumming, very moody and tense, almost new wave sounding, distant strings swell, until the guitars explode and the whole track is infused with buzz, creating an impossible hybrid, gorgeously achingly melodic and epic, but so buzz drenched and blackened, if the whole record had played out like this nonstop, people would have been flipping their lids (even more than they already are), but then that would take away from what makes Amesoeurs baffling and brilliant.
The second track, "Les Ruches Malades", shows no signs of blackness at all, the guitar has some bite, some crunch, but the main riff is more jangle than buzz, the bass throbs, the drums are super tight, and Audrey's vocals are front and center, this is one of those tracks that make it hard to believe metalheads get into this band at all.
Then it's back to more epic emotional blackness, buzzing, thrashing, soaring, but still jam packed with melody and moodiness, suddenly shifting to some hard rocking shoegazey jangle pop, peppered with bursts of Katatonia-like groove, before slipping into more loping rainy day bliss pop. Musically, the follow up "Recueillement" is more of the same, but here Neige adds his own shrieked black metal vox, which sound really odd draped over the minor key jangle beneath, but it also sounds kind of cool, a bit jarring for sure, but in a good way. Blackened and emotional and intense.
And so it goes, most of the record loping and jangling and shoegazing, occasionally offering up a bit of black buzz, and at least one track, "Trouble (Eveils Infames)" is pure blackness, all thrashing buzzing frenzied fury, no pop to be found, but that's the only real moment of grimninty to be found, the record is much more about melody and mood, the heaviest it gets is when Neige shrieks over some woozy melancholy jangle, and then there's the title track, that is SO new wave, straight up Cure worship, right down to the bass line and the chiming guitar parts, although Amesoeurs give it a cool twist at the end adding an awesomely jagged chugging riffy outro.
The record closes with another Katatonia style chunk of melancholy doom pop, although again, Neige roughs it up a bit with his blackened vokills, and after a brief stretch of silence, the record closes with a secret track of distorted drum machined and blurred buried melody.
Of course WE love it. C'mon! It's like if Black Tambourine were actually Black METAL Tambourine, plenty of Katatonia, Lifelover, all that off kilter blackened pop too, but it's obvious Neige and company are black metal masters (Alcest, Peste Noire, Forgotten Woods, Mortifera, right?) so even the poppiest moments are infused with a bit of blackness, no matter how subtle, and when the band do kick out the jams, like on the record opener, it's heavy and emotional in a way few other bands, black metal or otherwise, are capable of.
It might take a few listens, for some folks here it still hasn't clicked, then again it might take just one, we were smitten halfway through the first song, but then that first ep is still probably one of our most listened to records of the last several years, and if you're really in need of some blasting blackness, obviously this might not be the place to look, thankfully you don't have to look far, Neige has at least one or two other bands that'll have you covered, but if you're looking for something, gorgeous and twisted and black and dreamy and poppy and heavy and mysterious, well then, this friends, is it.
Recently, we've been marveling at the fact, that otherwise troo, grim, cvlt metalheads, seem to be totally smitten with this new wave of blissed out dreamy, barely metal black metal. Most notably, Alcest, who are more My Bloody Valentine than Burzum, and Alcest mainman Neige's other not very metal project Amesoeurs. Sure that stuff is epic and sweeping and gorgeously gauzy, but it's barely metal, let alone BLACK metal. But here we are, anything from either of those outfits is like black gold to the black metalheads world wide.
Well, if the most recent Alcest had you wondering about the above, then this single will definitely be the true test. We'd been waiting ages for a new Amesoeurs record, the last ep, was an all time favorite around here, still heavy, but also mathy, and post rocky, and pretty damn shoegazey all at once. Well this most recent single, one brand new song, jettisons all traces of metal entirely. The result is pretty great, but it's hard for us to imagine metalheads digging this much. More than metal, it sounds like nineties indie rock, college rock, the female vocals are way up in front, over a jangly guitar, and super sunshiney major key melodies, hard not to think of stuff like Jale, Helium and Scrawl, which is not a bad thing at all, just a not very metal thing. But it's a killer song, and back in the day, these guys would have been huge on Simple Machines or K or one of those labels. Can't wait to hear what they do with the next full length.
The flipside features a band called Valfunde, which is essentially the exact same band, except with the addition of Peste Noire mainman Famine, and he brings a little bit of metal and a whole lot of what the fuck to the proceedings. The first Valfunde track begins much like the Amesoeurs track, strummed clean guitar, a bit of jangle, minor key, but over that, another guitar, super distorted and woozy, spills out a convoluted and stumbling sea sick melody, the sound is maniacal and druggy, almost like someone is constantly and randomly twisting the tuning pegs while the guitar is being played blindfolded. The result is a song that sounds a bit like a funhouse mirror sea shanty, dizzying and completely and awesomely fucked up. The second track is the only sort-of-metal thing going on here, with a midtempo Burzumy buzz, creepy haunted house organ, while the vocals are delivered in a raspy demonic shriek, eventually joined by soaring epic guitar leads, not as damaged as the first track, but still pretty freaky, in that distinctly Peste Noire way.
Good stuff for sure, but metalheads be warned, everyone else, as long as you're up for some weird shit, this might just hit the spot...
The first thing that struck us about this debut release from Amocoma, a mysterious black metal horde from right here in San Francisco, was the cover art, a child-like pen and ink drawing of a pile of heads, but instead of being bloody or gory or horrific, they're sort of more cartoonish, like a whole slew of stick figures were decapitated, their heads tossed in a huge pile, beneath the scrawled band logo, wreathed in clouds of smeared ink. We were definitely intrigued. And�if anything, once inside, we were even moreso...
Amocoma traffic in an ultra lo-fi, muddy murky blackness. It's definitely black metal, there is plenty of buzz and blast and howled vocals, but at the same time it's sort of stumbling and noise rocky, it's probably a little of both, but it's all rendered nearly indistinct by the incredibly FX drenched lo-fi production.�
Beginning with dreamy swirls of soft focus harmonics and distant rumbles, it doesn't take long for the band to lurch into action, a simple hypnotic riff, looped over and�over, almost sounding more like a bass than a guitar, and not so heavy as it is trancelike. The drums are mechanical and repetitive, the vocals are howled and swathed in reverb, spread out over the proceedings like a black cloud, so much so that at times they just sound like another layer of buzz. And the more you listen, the more pretty it sounds, sure it's raw and harsh, but the melody is so hypnotic, and the swirling clouds of distortion and reverb give everything a sort of soft focus shimmer.�
We're definitely reminded of WOLD, in the sense that these little fragmented pop songs, are rendered black and buzzy by the application of super saturated distortion, tape hiss and amp buzz, reverb and delay, so even at its heaviest, it's washed out and abstract, and downright dreamy. The drone element is through the roof, and it's impossible not to hear Tim Hecker or Machinefabriek or any one of those masters of smeary dreamlike sound. At some points things get super psychedelic, like halfway through "Small Dark Sea That Was A Body" where the guitar drops out, leaving just the drums, to sort of pulse and putter in a wide open expanse of soft swirl, while drifting above are all manner of glistening guitar harmonics, spacey FX sparkles, and warm warbly melodic hum.�
Damaged and dreamy, freaked out and fucked, one of our new favorite slabs of black beauty for sure...�
Another two songs from one man slow motion doom merchant Amort. We keep hoping for a full length, maybe even an lp or a cd, but there's something about this slow seep of Amort's miserablist music that just seems appropriate, the sound of some massive black beast painfully excreting each and every sound, captured on tape, which does in fact enhance the sound, this one especially, as some of the notes were so blown out, the tape so saturated, that it actually sort of made us dizzy listening to it on headphones.
While past missives have focused on ambience, sounding more cinematic, riffs and stretched into long sprawling dirges, the sound here is much more primitive funereal doom, at least on the A side. The guitar massive and churning, the vocals as deep and demonic as possible, any more and it would just turn into a puddle of black sludge. The cinematic element is restrained to haunting little interludes, a creepy speech over a gurgling sea of hiss and electronic burble, the massive riff always poised just out of earshot, ready to crash down and swallow everything whole.
The flipside begins with gently picked downtuned guitar, the low end cranked, a thick pulsing rumble, another guitar unfurling a plodding chug, another loosing little trills of high end shimmer into the blackness, the vocals again, a gurgling black cloud. But with a little flutter of clean guitar surfacing here and there, drifting through the throbbing black expanse.
Transparent green cassettes in black and white covers, and with a black and white hand numbered insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
This cassette just showed up in the mail one day, with a short note asking us if we wanted to sell it in the store. Hard to tell what it would sound like: band called Amort, two songs, cover image an oil painting of wild horses, very striking, but still no clear sonic picture. The tape came wrapped in a flyer, with the words "Slow end sonic destruction" printed in thick black letters across the top. Our first clue...
So we threw it on, and were first greeted with the sound of lilting piano, notes hanging suspended in wide open expanses of near silence, but soon that piano was joined by a slow lava like flow of glacial riffing, a downtuned low end thob, a la SUNNO))), Earth, Corrupted, but draped over a delicate slowcore background, then in came some incredibly low, gurgling vocals, and suddenly all was revealed to us, gloriously hauntingly beautiful slowcore sludge. The massive riffing and monstrous vocals, drift in and out, often leaving just a lilting minor key guitar, to gently pick out the melody, hushed and minimal, like some sort of super abstract post rock, before the guitars pour back in and the vocals croak forth, but even at its heaviest and sludgiest, it's strangely pretty, the melody a minor key lament, the sound more murky and muddy than pummeling and heavy, like Corrupted covering Low maybe... The tempo gets upped a notch or two, sounding like the band might lurch into full on rocking, but instead, the riff just loops over and over, becoming more of a rhythmic drone than an any sort of actual rock riff, eventually fading to black.
Side two creeps along similar ground, beginning with abstract minor key guitar figures, allowed to unfurl and drift through an empty space, joined by simple piano, before launching into a slow motion ambient doom, all burnt out guitar and reverb drenched vocals. Very reminiscent of the Tomb Of... cassette, a strange melding of abstract ambient piano and dirgey doom drenched sludge. The interesting thing about Amort is there are no drums, this is all just huge walls of guitar, harsh demonic vocals, and tinkling piano, on the second track, the guitar becomes weirdly harmonized, creating super tense harmonic melodies, like some displaced Iron Maiden lick, slowed down to 2 or 3 rpm. This track two sort of wanders back and forth between forlorn slow motion cabaret, just piano and undistorted guitar, and pummeling drone doom crush. But in the hands of Amort, they sound so perfect together. The ultimate post rock downer doom...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
Brand new tape from one of our favorite purveyors of 'ambient slowcore doom'. Influenced heavily by bands like SUNNO))), as well as bands on the blacker and more metal end of the sonic spectrum, Amort, have their own unique angle, at once mysterious and cinematic, heavy and atmospheric. Like most of their songs, the proceedings start out with plodding abstract piano, throbbing low end notes, ringing out and reverberating, drifting in vast expanses of near silent hiss. With hushed whispered vocals, and the occasional distant wail of anguish and oddly, NO DRUMS (although it took us a while to even realize there were no drums, the sound is so thick and dense). Eventually, the guitars roll in like some thick black fog, and the band becomes some sort of black glacial beast, slithering and lurching in slow motion. The piano picks out mournful melodies beneath a thick wash of rumbling crumbling distortion. It's definitely closer to Thergothon or Skepticism that SUNNO))), not so much a static drift as a plodding trudge, the guitars beating against each other, pulsing and throbbing, the piano pounding away, buried way down in the mix. Sort of what you might imagine SUNNO))) covering Low might sound like, or even some Mazzy Star / Khanate mash up!�Essential listening for the ultra-doom obsessed, and slow core fans looking for something a little darker or heavier should definitely check this out....
Now on lp, a killer compilation of jams from abstract doomlord Amort, mostly culled from various cassettes, that we've raved about on past lists, but with an unreleased track included to sweeten the deal...
Amort is one of our favorite purveyors of 'ambient slowcore doom'. Influenced heavily by bands like SUNNO))), as well as groups on the blacker and more metal end of the sonic spectrum, Amort, have their own unique angle, at once mysterious and cinematic, heavy and atmospheric.
This collection begins with the sound of lilting piano, notes hanging suspended in wide open expanses of near silence, but soon that piano is joined by a slow lava like flow of glacial riffing, a downtuned low end throb, a la SUNNO))), Earth, Corrupted, but draped over a delicate slowcore background, then in comes some incredibly low, gurgling vocals, and suddenly all is revealed to us, gloriously hauntingly beautiful slowcore sludge. The massive riffing and monstrous vocals, drift in and out, often leaving just a lilting minor key guitar, to gently pick out the melody, hushed and minimal, like some sort of super abstract post rock, before the guitars pour back in and the vocals croak forth, but even at its heaviest and sludgiest, it's strangely pretty, the melody a minor key lament, the sound more murky and muddy than pummeling and heavy, like Corrupted covering Low maybe... The tempo gets upped a notch or two, sounding like the band might lurch into full on rocking, but instead, the riff just loops over and over, becoming more of a rhythmic drone than an any sort of actual rock riff, eventually fading to black.
The next track creeps along similar ground, beginning with abstract minor key guitar figures, allowed to unfurl and drift through an empty space, joined by simple piano, before launching into a slow motion ambient doom, all burnt out guitar and reverb drenched vocals. Very reminiscent of the Tomb Of... cassette, a strange melding of abstract ambient piano and dirgey doom drenched sludge. The interesting thing about Amort is there are no drums, this is all just huge walls of guitar, harsh demonic vocals, and tinkling piano...
The flipside begins like most Amort songs, with plodding abstract piano, throbbing low end notes, ringing out and reverberating, drifting in vast expanses of near silent hiss. With hushed whispered vocals, and the occasional distant wail of anguish and again, NO DRUMS (although it took us a while to even realize there were no drums, the sound is so thick and dense). Eventually, the guitars roll in like some thick black fog, and the band becomes some sort of black glacial beast, slithering and lurching in slow motion. The piano picks out mournful melodies beneath a thick wash of rumbling crumbling distortion. It's definitely closer to Thergothon or Skepticism that SUNNO))), not so much a static drift as a plodding trudge, the guitars beating against each other, pulsing and throbbing, the piano pounding away, buried way down in the mix. Imagine a Mazzy Star / Khanate mash up and you might be getting close!
The next track begins with gently picked downtuned guitar, the low end cranked, a thick pulsing rumble, another guitar unfurling a plodding chug, another loosing little trills of high end shimmer into the blackness, the vocals again, a gurgling black cloud. But with a little flutter of clean guitar surfacing here and there, drifting through the throbbing black expanse.
Essential listening for the ultra-doom obsessed, and slow core fans looking for something a little darker or heavier should definitely check this out....
And in addition to those previously released grimdoom jams, the record tacks on another slow and low epic, the previously unreleased "Desert Of Ice"!! Sweet packaging, the lp housed in a super thick black and white sleeve, the record pressed on nice thick vinyl and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Latest from long time aQ fave one man ultra doom outfit, Amort, here expanded to a quartet, with extra members handling gong, keys, saxophone and extra guitar. Here teamed up with crusty black metal punks Ives.
Amort offer up a single 14 minute track, the begins with haunting female vocals, over deep reverberating piano, and rumbling low end drones, very ritualistic and choral, it's not until nearly 3 minutes in, that the song splinters into what sounds like some sort of abstract free jazz doom, the gong rippling out thick metallic waves of sound, the sax skronking and squeaking, all wrapped in thick whorls of rumble and thrum, a monstrous ominous slo-mo creep, until finally, the song proper kicks in after about 5 minutes, an impossibly glacial chunk of slow motion doom sludge, drumless, and surprisingly melodic, the melodies nearly pop, but the guitars oozing and blackened, the vocals a demonic gurgle, a strange combination for sure, this filthy downtuned evil sound, but the song itself almost happy, like some pop song slowed waaaaaaaay down and then filtered through Corrupted and Nortt and Bunkur, the prettiest, most melodic slab of ultradoom you'll ever hear. It does build, and get louder and louder, there are spidery guitar leads, and more piano, but the sound never gets any less melodic.
Ives are pretty much on the other end of the sonic spectrum entirely, spitting out blasting, thrashing crusty blackness, minor key riffing, furious pounding drumming, harsh vokills, sonically quite akin to the punkier Darkthrone sound, or classic Discharge, but for every bit of D-beat pound, the band unleash a blast of face melting black metal buzz, the sound lo-fi, but still heavy and frantic and frenzied, brutal and blasting, galloping and churning, crusty but plenty grim and black. Killer stuff from both bands, the Ives stuff is from an old cassette, so a little curious to hear more recent stuff, and Amort, well, we can never get enough of their/his gloriously abject slow motion piano pounding dismal doom...
Tape number two from ambient slowcore doom outfit Amort, whose first tape we dug heavily. A dense drifty blend of SUNNO))) style ultra doom, and lilting Low like atmospherics. This time they're teamed up with the strangely named Comfort Wives, who based on the name were ready to be disappointed by, but just like Mom always told us about books and covers, The Comfort Wives actually kick up a pretty mean din. The strange thing is how different Amort sound here. Actually to be honest, the labeling is sort of confusing and we just assumed Side A was the Comfort Wives but in fact appears to be Amort unless the tape was mislabeled. Either way, both sides are awesome, we'll go by the label for now. So Amort sound much more like a band, than a man crafting bleak dronescapes on his own. A plodding midtempo, noisy blackness, huge guitars so low and blown out they threaten to overwhelm the whole recording, which is in no way a band thing, in fact, it's the sort of guitar sound most bands would kill for. An in the red throbbing downtuned buzz, wrapped around a sort of melodic noise rock. The sound here is not so much black metal as it is taking bits and pieces of black metal and incorporating them into their own sound. And the sound here is more of a mournful minor key midtempo dirge rock, with super catchy melodies, simple drumming, some cool harmonies, all wrapped in a blacker than normal production, with some harsh howled vocals. Like a poppier, noise rockier version of Bone Awl or Beherit maybe? Cool stuff regardless, but a strange direction for Amort, while The Comfort Wives end up sounding more like Amort did on the last tape, but somehow darker and doomier and sludgier and much more black metal. An epic and corrosive sonic sludge, that unfurls like some thick black fog. Slow minor key guitar figures drift amidst wide open space, vocals gurgle and growl, all swallowed up by a MASSIVE glacial downtuned dirge, before the low end abates and leaves a simple strummed, almost out of tune guitar to sort of meander, before the blackness falls again. This is not so much BM as ultra doom, or black ambience, the guitars rumble and reverberate, single chords stretched out over vast expanses, the vocals another layer of low end, the riffs so slow they seem to be single plodding thuds that ring out and bleed into the next crusty note, a bit like Abruptum, a ritualistic black minimal doom, epic and murky and hellish and muddy and massive and seriously scary...
Long-haired guitar rawk from the obscure Midwestern band known as Amulet, circa 1980. Reissued for your hessian pleasure by Monster Records, alongside the likes of Ultra, Full Moon, and Truth And Janey (all of whom we've previously listed). Amulet started off in '78 as a cover band doing stuff by ZZ Top, Van Halen, Hendrix, UFO and suchlike. Though a popular local concert draw, they still barely managed to save enough dough to record and self-release this album in 1980. No money for overdubs, so it's got that live feel, appropriate for their party hardy high power hard rock format. How much you're gonna like this kinda depends how you feel about lines like: "She was seventeen / young love machine" (from "Just Like A Woman"). Good times badass boogie rock wank fer shure. Actually, they had a heavier, more serious side too, with religious/philosophical themes ("Do You Live Again", "Life Is Living"). But don't look for a lot of sophistication and deep thoughts -- this mostly about groovy stuff like the unintentionally funny "Funk 'n' Punk" or "Radar Love" re-write "Person To Person". Fun and authentic.
Look out! The Anaal Nathrakh attack continues, with the long-awaited full-length studio follow-up to what was pretty much THEE black metal album of 2002, The Codex Necro. Domine Non Es Dignus is still a mighty juggernaut of dense and diabolical black metal, but the Anaal guys have also introduced some new, more melodic elements, including some clean vocals that will make you think you're listening to a Hammers of Misfortune album for a moment. Seriously. And while some might look askance, we're stoked that they're always willing to do something new, while remaining necro to/at the core. How necro? Well the first song is a blast of distortion lovingly entitled "I Wish I Could Vomit Blood On You....People". So no, they haven't mellowed. You can expect a mind-boggling blend of wretched noise, blurring speed, distorted buzzsaw guitar, belching gargling throat-sore vocals, keyboards piled high, and yes, some oddly operatic male singing that makes this even more bombastic than they were before. Seat belts and crash helmets required -- except that seat belts and crash helmets aren't cool (or necro) so I guess you should just die, that's what these guys would want anyway. See you in hell.
Wow. Does the dictionary definition of brutal have the words "anaal nathrakh" in it? Well it should. We've loved this brutal British band for years, from back in 2001 when their devastating debut The Codex Necro blew us away with its ultra-extreme black metal, uh, necro-ness. Well, what's amazing is that Anaal Nathrakh (their name comes from one of Merlin's incantations in the movie Excalibur, btw, if you didn't know) has evolved, from raw black metal to a more melodic hybrid of black and death metal, with some crusty punk grind etc. thrown in, maybe having to do with their inclusion of members of Napalm Death for live gigging and some studio sessions too. And yet, they've stayed about as brutal as can be, even with the clean vocals (i.e. actual singing, and not just cookie monster grunts or shrieking vokills) that pop up on some tracks, amidst the other sorts.
The blasting drums are insane, the keyboards deranged, and the guitars killer -- it's quite a piece of work they have here for those into both the necro, and the slightly more nuanced. Frenzied yet technical. Maniacal yet melodic... you get the idea. If you liked Codex's follow-up Domine Non Es Dignus, or the one after that Eschaton (which we bizarrely failed to review, though the black metal fans here all own it), then get set for another treat. And if you're a black metal dissing death metaller (if that breed still exists at this late date), well maybe this album will be the one to win you over...
Anaal Nathrakh isn't just "extreme" metal. It's extremely extreme metal. And only an extremely extreme metal band could manage to combine all the stuff that AN do, ferinstance just in the vocal/vokill dep't, everything from necro black metal shrieks to death metal grunts to, yes, clean majestic melodic singing too. And the vocals are only ONE of the insane things about this album. We can't really classify this UK band, they're part hyperspeed grindcore blurr, part black metal mayhem, part power metal majesty (but that part is buried and rotting under even more blasting black/death brutality). Let's just say our extreme metal needs have always been met by a session of Anaal Nathrakh abuse, and THIS album is definitely doing the trick as expected... A dense, chaotic, utterly over the top assault of very very extreme, very very metal. Yet amidst all the intensity, Anaal Nathrakh somehow can cram in a catchy chorus or melodic hook (or weird electronically glitched out part) alongside each ultra distorted, utterly outrageous throat-torn scream or chunk of crushing grind frenzy. Fans familiar with their last few albums know the score. For those new to Anaal, we could say maybe imagine old Carcass mixed with Watchmaker mixed with Immortal mixed with something with actual singing, sometimes. But nothing you can imagine will really quite prepare you... you've been warned. The liner notes say it best: "We will fucking kill you."
The return of this grinding extreme black metal duo, another blast of sonic sickness that offers up everything we've come to expect from these guys, insanely furious riffing, impossible blasting programmed beats, throat shredding vokills, twisted, convoluted arrangements, seemingly continuing in their quest to create the sickest, blackest, buzziest metal ever. But weirdly enough, for as heavy and black and buzzy things are this time around, there's also a lot of other weirdness going on, which seems at odds with their core sound. But you know how we are - the weirder things are, and the less they make sense, somehow the more the record in question hits the spot. So Anaal Nathrakh circa now, are mixing in lots of clean vocals (something they began doing back on Hell Is Empty... or thereabouts), dramatic and almost operatic, giving much of the music here a Borknagar or Code vibe, not to mention, even the heaviest bits here are surprisingly melodic. Plus there's twisted stretches of effects drenched tunefulness, some downright psychedelic flourishes, midtempo grooves, industrial ambience, tripped out electronics, all woven into the band's core black buzz, and while on the surface, it could seem like weirdness for weirdness sake, it actually sounds more like those various not-strictly-black elements were borne out of vastly improved songwriting, cuz goddamn these songs are catchy, the riffs are killer, and none of that weirdness sounds at all out of place. Sure, a lot of the time it doesn't sound as much like Anaal Nathrakh as it does Khold or Code, but often those moments splinter into some blurry black blast that couldn't be anyone else.
As much as we loved their debut Codex Necro way back when, this new one, as different as it is, might just be catching up...
Thank god (or Satan) that this record is as good as it is, because of all the trouble we had to go through to get it! We became aware of British black metal act Anaal Nathrakh from first seeing ads for this album in Terrorizer magazine (the UK's metal version of The Wire), then Terrorizer named it record of the month, and then one of the top 40 records of 2001! Yet no metal distributors in the United States had ever even heard of Anaal Nathrakh. Not even the band themselves could help us out, and the one distributor that did offer the album only had TEN COPIES. Our tiny little store wanted at least twice that many.
But, many frustrating conversations and unproductive emails later, we finally have The Codex Necro in stock and are happy to report that it is as heavy, as weird and as completely cool as we had hoped. The formula is still blasting black metal mayhem, but A.N. up the intensity a notch as well as mixing in all sorts of fucked weirdness: bizarre ambient electronic soundscapes, creepy cloying melodies buried in the mix, strangely hypnotic vocal chants, light speed fuzzed out blast beats, found sound interludes, and totally processed and INSANE vocals, from growling guttural bowel-shaking grunts to maniacal high pitched, electronically fucked-with shrieks. Plus the riffs are ultra catchy, and the guitars are so distorted and recorded so hot, it feels like demonic claws are being scraped across your ear drums. Take the raw, "necro" sounds of Nordic black metal pioneers Darkthrone and give them the bombastic force of the best-produced, over-the-top Cradle of Filth stuff, and you're thinking Anaal Nathrakh. When they say necro, they mean it. And they say it a lot. Like in the liner notes: "Anaal Nathrak plays Fucking Necro Exclusively!...Fuck Everything".
What could be more 'necro' than the debut album "The Codex Necro" from the truly disturbed, demented and totally necro UK black metal outfit Anaal Nathrakh?? You know, the ridiculously-hard-to-find black metal masterpiece we raved about last year? Well, how about their demos? Thus this disc is appropriately titled, as it contains both of AN's early demo tapes, plus some equally necro bonus tracks. If you loved "The Codex Necro" like we did, you'll be happy to know that "Total Fucking Necro" is just as good -- in fact some folks think it's better. It's a bit less bizarre than their full length, being much more melodic and traditional in the Norse style. Which is not a bad thing. There's definitely some major Mayhem worship going on here (witness the TWO Mayhem covers) as is evidenced by the distinctly "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" sound. But even then, their very own cult-necro-blackened weirdness is quite present as well. Demos, side projects (Frost, Mistress): it seems these guys are necro geniuses and can do no wrong -- we await their upcoming "When Fire Rains Down From The Sky" ep with grim delight...
NB. And for those of you who dropped the ball first time around, we've just managed to get a few copies of "The Codex Necro" back in as well!
A new half hour, six-song blast of total fucking necro mayhem from these UK metal maniacs. A blast it is, a worthy follow up to their godlike The Codex Necro album that was one of our favorite records of 2002. On this ep, the duo of VITRIOL and Irrumator seem to have shed the overtly weird bits that made The Codex Necro so instantly distinctive, production-wise. No studio fuckery, no space-y ambience, no found sounds, no samples. Just 100%, furious, lightspeed, grim black metal. Which is just fine -- the songs and performances speak for themselves in sinister tongues, without the need for sound fx to tweak things further. This is simply some seriously sick, blazing fast, dark and damaged black metal indeed, with insane blast beats, all sorts of off-kilter stops and starts, maniacal leads, and last but not least, a litany of ghostly howls, anguished screams and cries of utter and abject fury -- some of which are provided by guest cult black metal vocalist Attila Csihar (of Mayhem, Aboyrm, and Tormentor infamy)! We also like the fact that there are photos of the band members on the inside and they look like librarians! Necro librarians that is.
MPEG Download: "Cataclysmic Nihilism" [/audio/anaalnathrakhcataclysmic.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Cataclysmic Nihilism" [/audio/anaalnathrakhcataclysmic.m3u]
More grinding noise and bad taste from the best worst band in the land. Furiously blurry grind bordering on Merzbow-style noise and the most ridiculous/offensive (read:really offensive) song titles ever (odd, since in the early days, they didn't even bother with song titles): 'Your Kid Killed Himself 'Cause You Suck' originally titled (pre-lawsuit) 'Connor Clapton Killed Himself 'Cause His Dad Sucks', 'Rancid Sucks (and the Clash Sucked Too)', 'Being Ignorant Is Awesome', 'I Gave NAMBLA Pictures of Your Kid', and a bunch of others we can't even print.
Notorious grindcore jokers A.C. change tack entirely and record an album of sensitive acoustic love songs--really they do. They've pulled a Ween on us.
