Last list we raved about UK crust / noisecore combo Sore Throat, and in that review, we mentioned that perhaps, besides making some of the most amazing and brilliantly brutal music EVER, they were also most likely directly responsible for these guys, the late great Anal Cunt, who over the years have been equally beloved and reviled, maybe better known to most for their ridiculous and often hilarious and even more often offensive song titles, not to mention their violent and brief live performances, but fans of extreme music, have know for ages, that these guys also made some seriously kick ass noise. And yeah, we mean noise, cuz while they are often classified as metal, in the early days, their sound was more like short, sharp concentrated bursts of Merzbowian white noise, each 'song' a burst of feedback drenched chaos, all tangled riffage, amp buzz and drums-down-the-stairs anti-rhythms, peppered with the occasional stumbling melody, or buzzy guitar grind, these tracks are fierce and feral and furious and easily some of the most face meltingly kick ass grind/noise you'll ever hear.
Not for the faint of ear, the tracks gathered on these two disc are the band's earliest, and thus most raw and unpolished (if anything they ever did could be considered polished), with most of the songs lasting mere seconds, and so many tracks that on cd, and even on record, there were clumped together as whole records, here the tracks are whole record, whether it be the "47 Song Demo", "The 88 Song EP", or various splits with other noisemakers like the Meat Shits or Seven Minutes Of Nausea. Probably the most remarkable track here is the "5,643 Song E.P.", which besides featuring a little piano intro(!), also happens to be what is essentially 16 Anal Cunt tracks playing at once, over three hours of music, crammed onto a 7", and onto two track here, those 16 AxCx jams on top of each other, blasting and stumbling simultaneously, and other than sounding way more dense and thick and HEAVY, it still sounds like pure AxCx sonic chaos. Fans will definitely want this, tons of rarities, lots of stuff on cd for the first time, loads of pix in the liner notes, as well as detailed notes on each song from AxCx mainman Seth Putnam from before he died earlier this year (R.I.P.). And while many metalheads will fail to see the appeal, anyone into noise and grind and pure sonic punishment, no doubt already understands. Andee AND Allan approved, and wholeheartedly RECOMMENDED!!
Previously released as two seperate, hard to find cds ("Old Stuff Part 1" and "Old Stuff Part II") on two different labels. Now some crazy person at NG Records has gone and released this new version, compiling (as it says) the early works (i.e. demos, singles, and compilation appearances) of this notorious blurr-core, noise-metal, very un-pc band from Boston. Over 7000 "songs" to be found here, spread over two cds. That's mainly thanks to the presence here of the tracks from the infamous "5,643 Song EP"... Now for most reviews of A.C. discs, we'd simply pick the best song titles and leave it at that, 'cause offensive & funny song titles are what A.C. does best. But the material on here dates from back when A.C. didn't supply titles (or lyrics for that matter) for their "compositions". So that leaves us to make a case for the musical rather than humorous value (or musically humorous value) of these tracks. Oh boy...well for all you experimental jokers out there, the aforementioned "5,643 Song EP" features the songs playing at the same time! There's actually three hours of material compressed onto the original 7", and it took twenty hours for them to record it! Compares favorably to the Francisco Lopez disc we made record of the week last list... Then there's the "Unplugged EP" tracks, where A.C. takes their screaming metal chaos into the acoustic realm for some unique results. And, any fan of John Zorn or Masonna should really check out A.C. as well, on general principles... truly a classic band, American outsider improv "genius". If not musical genius, then comedy genius. Sure, you or I could have recorded more or less the same stuff on your parents' stereo much like these guys did for their first demo (disc one, track one), but you have to admit that you'd never record so much of it, for so many years, or play such crazy shows. We (Allan and Andee anyway--in fact, A.C. was the first interview Allan ever did for his old 'zine) love this band. For you collectors, note that there's material on these cds not found on the original singles and such. And for novices, we also recommend A.C.'s "Morbid Florist" ep and "Everyone Must Be Killed" album to start with... The cd booklet includes detailed liner notes about each track/release written by A.C. mastermind Seth Putnam. All hail!
We listed a split record between these guys, Anapparatus, and a band called Llange a while back, both bands doing their own version of the metallic post rock thing. Llange were definitely more of that sort of Godspeed / Explosions thing, but Anapparatus took their post metal whatever and injected some serious screamo into the mix, which definitely hit the spot.
When we got that split, they also sent us a handful of an older ep, and boy what a difference a year or two makes, the Anapparatus of old shows no sign of post rock, or post metal, or whatever you want to call it, instead they are full on mathy post punk screamo metal grind. Furious tempos, insane drumming, incredible riffing, buzz and blast, howled vocals, every song a lurching, sweat soaked, basement destroying, ultra dense math metal workout.
Sure they bliss out here and there, get all moody and doomy now and again, and there are melodies and hooks everywhere, and the recording is so good, the band sound loud and heavy and like you're right there in the pit about to get crushed by a volley of stage divers, but even in the frenzied fury of these short sweet songs, they also manage to inject a little Drive Like Jehu into the proceedings, making for some serious dense, complex post punk heaviness. No idea why these guys aren't HUGE, but we've practically been listening to nothing else since we first got these in.
Packaged in a full color sleeve, pressed onto one of those 3 inch cds embedded in a 5" plastic disc, super striking looking, and a killer bargain, eight songs, 22 minutes, 6 bucks. WAY recommended.
You know, you think by now we'd be sick of the metallic post rock thing, the slow builds, the epic crescendos, the mathy drumming, the explosive metallic blow outs, the spidery riffage, the Godspeed like ambience, but fuck it, we're not, we LOVE that shit, especially when someone does it right. Or does it differently. Mixes it up a little while retaining the bits that made us dig that sound in the first place.
Thanks to aQ pal Dave S. for the heads up on these two bands, both of the math rock post metal whateveryoucallit variety, but each with a distinctly different take on the sound. Anapparatus is the band that lured us in, their sound is sharp and hard, heavy and metallic, but with a total screamo edge. Howled vocals over churning minor key riffage, super powerful drumming, all locked into a loosely post-metal framework, lots of long stretches of tribal understated rhythms, chiming guitar harmonics, soft sheets of feedback, but then when the heavy parts kick in, and the vocalist shrieks, it's magic, like if Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky recorded for Gravity Records in the nineties. Some of the riffs are SO catchy, and the band unwind terse super tight mini-epics, that manage to sound super controlled but sprawl wildly at the same time. But it's definitely the vocals that seal the deal, transforming what was already a killer mathrock band following in the well worn footprints of Isis and Pelican and the like, into something intense and passionate and angry and aggro and fuck it EMO. Way mathier than any of the above mentioned bands, and so much more impassioned, this is post metal punk rock for sure. All three tracks destroy. We'll definitely do our best to track down more from these guys.
But Llange aren't too shabby either, although right off the bat, their take on the sound is a bit more traditional, but like we said, it's a sound we love, and Llange do it well, wrapping guitars in soft billowy reverb, the drums weaving a dense framework for the soaring guitars, the arrangements flowing organically from slow brood, to heavy moody dirge, to full on blown out psych jam to shimmery near balladic drift. The band does get almost metal at times, but chooses to remain just this side of full on downtuned crush, which suits them just fine. The closer adds gorgeous crooned vocals to the warm whirring synths and tight mathy drumming, the melodies sweetly melancholy, building to a seriously heavy finale that would most definitely give Conifer a run for their math rock post metal money...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Described as Morbid Angel meets At The Gates, Sweden's Anata play relentless and pummelling melodic death metal. While their last record -was- really great, it was definitely plagued by their blatant Morbid Angel worship. On 'Dreams...' they make a huge progression, still heavy and intricate and almost catchy, but much more uniquely Anata.
From our pal Duncan at Rage Of Achilles comes this thrashing, pummelling head banging death/splatter/grind/metal doubleheader. Two bands we'd never heard of, battling it out, both pretty awesome. The first 21 tracks, almost all clocking in at a minute or less, come courtesy of Anatomi-71. Crusty, sort of lo-fi, not-quite-hyperspeed grind. Two vocalists (or one doing double time) grunting growls and hellish screeching. All furious and fast and compliacted. Good stuff, but the final 12 tracks are where it's at! The band Nemo are responsible for these, and they are soooooo fast, and so insane sounding. They incorporate lightning speed drum machines, video game samples, and all sorts of bizarre bleeps and blips and buzzing into the mix, turning their metallic grind into some sort of grindmetal alien video game soundtrack. This stuff is so nuts it's kind of hard to even describe. If I was making a horror/alien invasion/splatter flick, the is the music I would want as the soundtrack. Think some fucked up mix of the Locust, Orthrelm, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Crom Tech, Man Is The Bastard, Space Invaders, Galaga, Missle Command, Joust and Rastan. Or the best death metal video game they never made for the Commodore 64! Fucking great!
There was a zine produced by power electronic antagonist Mark Solotroff, back in the mid-'90s, called Rape Of The Angels. In one issue, he wrote rather poignantly about two new projects which then were mostly unknown - Brainbombs and Bodychoke, describing them as two sides of the same abject-rock coin with one side aligned with the bacchanalia of the Stooges and the other the melancholy of Joy Division. At the time, Solotroff's principal outlet for his power electronics was Intrinsic Action, which was shameless in appropriating Whitehouse's ultra-violent posturing and searing noise. But since, Solotroff has ventured into a whole host of projects with various aesthetic differences, but all of which maintain an axis of grime, sleaze, transgression, and violence. Anatomy Of Habit is Solotroff's first venture into an outright 'rock' context, after the punishing electronics of Bloodyminded and the bleak coldwave of A Vague Disquiet; and here, it all comes back around to Brainbombs and Bodychoke (although more Bodychoke than Brainbombs) with Anatomy Of Habit. Formed around Solotroff, drummer Dylan Posa (Brise-Glase, Cheer Accident), Greg Ratjczak (Winters In Osaka), Kenny Rasmusen, and Blake Edwards (Vertonen), the band is a steamroller of huge Swans / Neurosis riffs chugging out of crawling rhythms, and lots of bad vibes. Both sides of the wax are sprawling numbers that hypnotically build out of interlocking guitar and bass that steadily builds towards a distorted, crushing climax with dextrous turns toward powerdrone sludge. Solotroff, with his years of barking like William Bennett, has turned into quite a deft vocalist with his baritone in perpetual motion amidst the roiling noise-rock, coming across more like a cross between Jaz Coleman and Michael Gira. Well worth checking out.
We didn't think it was possible, but with their second record, Ancestors have managed to get louder, heavier, more distorted, noisier and weirdly enough groovier. Short and not at all sweet, a bunch of songs jammed onto a 7" (or a cassette if you swing that way), a relentless blown out blast of blackened ultra distorted metallic punk. Or black metal. More likely somewhere right in between.
Not to be confused with THE Ancestors, the stoner rock outfit, Ancestors have a rich punk rock pedigree (Charles Bronson anyone?) but since the old days the sound has moved way further into the black, think Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ash Pool, Malveillance, Zarach'Baal'Tharagh, that sort of relentless blackened crusty metalnoise, furious and frenetic, a wall of chaotic crush infused with blast beats and buzzing riffs. Record number two is so ferocious, it's a wonder it can remain musical, but it does, BIG time, in fact, it's weirdly way more musical than the first record, more melodic, with more of a groove, more slow parts, but that only makes them sound that much more fucked up and brutal.
Hissing white hot distorted fury, the riffs crumble and melt, the drums pound and thrash struggling not to get swallowed up by the churning blackness, and then the vocals, holy fuck, they are SICK, ultra distorted, processed, some sort of inhuman howl / shriek / gurgle, like Abruptum meets Popeye meets Merzbow, but sometimes so warped it almost sounds like it's not in fact a voice, but some sort of malfunctioning synth. Amidst all this blown out noise drenched damage, the guitars occasionally explode into awesome blasts of super technical and angular post punk squiggle, but all blackened up. There are also hooks and catchy melodies, and the songs slow down to offer up a CHUG, or a fragmented groove, before bursting back into action, overall, the whole record manages to sound way more polished and refined, without losing an ounce of vitriol.
The record even finishes off with a weirdly gorgeous bout of midtempo moodiness, but the band manage even with that, to make it sound abrasive and caustic and catchy as fuck.
Beautiful packaging, the 7" comes in a super abstract full color sleeve and insert, printed inner sleeve, very little in the way of information, pressed on thick white vinyl, LIMITED TO 333 COPIES!!! The tape is also limited, and features the same abstract full color artwork, and the same dearth of info...
Latest from these LA psychedelic space-prog heavies, whose sounds has definitely gotten more polished and melodic, but thankfully no less heavy and druggy, and in fact, may have gotten even proggier. Which as far as we're concerned is never a bad thing.
The sound on In Dreams And Time is not that far removed from their last, Of Sound Mind: crushing riffs, bombastic drumming, crooned gruff vox, and LOTS of keyboards; swirling walls of sounds, massive production, intricate arrangements, dreamy angelic female vox, and of course looooong songs, with a sound that slips deftly from Neurosis like churn, to Voivod-y math metal, and from blissed out FX heavy Hawkwind style blowouts, to slow build majestic post rock epics a la Godspeed, with stops in between for haunting balladry, and full on planetarium lightshow psychedelia, all tangled up into a dizzying concoction that these guys definitely make all their own. The first thing we thought listening to this recently, was that it bears a bit of a resemblance to the new WAY less metal Baroness, but if anything, these guys might even do that sound better, not sacrificing any heaviness, but managing to push their sounds in all kinds of non-metal directions, the opener an organ heavy bit of mathy psych metal that is as melodic as it is heavy and dense, before slipping into some dark. dolorous piano driven minimalism, which quickly explodes into a weird bit of super heavy, but still melodic dirgery, the song swinging back and forth between the haunting hush and the soaring howl. Later the sound gets downright prog, swirls of organ, long stretches of shimmery space rock lope, clouds of effects, the melodies minor key and melancholic, but rife with blasts of furious riffery and near metallic heft.
The rest of the record seasaws between headbanging psychedelic prog metal and more melodic post metal heaviness, with "Running In Circles" finding the perfect middle ground, the vocal harmonies and soaring majestic melodies wreathed in some serious heaviness, which leads directly into the 19 minute closer, which is a killer psych rock headtrip, stretched way out, droney and druggy, super hypnotic, lush and textured, a little cinematic coda near the end, after nearly seventeen minutes of the kind of space-psych that fans of White Hills, the Heads, Lumerians, Mugstar, Assemble Head, Farflung, and the like should flip over.
Not to be confused with the -other- Ancestors, the noise drenched, blackened lo-fi, blown out raw as fuck punk metal outfit, no, this is something all together more stoned and groovy, spaced out and ROCK.
Don't know too much about these guys other than they're a 5 piece from LA, and man can they riff with the best of 'em. Two looooong songs, one nearly 17 minutes, the other almost 22, each a sprawling stoner rock psychedelic groovescape. Think Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, Earthless, Dead Meadow, Acrimony, Los Natas. The songs are less proper songs, and more epic jams, the actual verses and chorus and vocals relegated to popping up here and there, while the majority of the song is spent rocking the fuck out, unfurling majestic sun baked soundscapes of riff and groove and killer leads EVERYWHERE. Occasionally, the songs bliss out, and get all tripped out and druggy, with soft Santana-y guitar squalls, and tons of effects, but those parts inevitably build and build until suddenly the song is back in full swing, the band lurching and lumbering and grooving relentlessly. This is the sort of jam band we can get behind, epic heaviness and endless riffery.
The second track is almost Melvins-y at the beginning, howled vocals over slow churning guitar grind, before slipping back into something way more sixties and psychedelic sounding. Like the super kick ass outro of every killer space rock song all stitched into one epic mega-jam. Near the end, the track blisses out and transforms into a loping moody dirge, with reverbed guitars and haunting female vocals way off in the distance, finally kicking back into gear for the last few minutes, a whirring minor key organ making the groove seem melancholy and strangely funereal.
Killer stuff for sure. Any one into heavy heavy post rock, stoner rock, riff heavy jams, sweet leads, or ANY or any of the above mentioned bands will most definitely dig this.
Housed in a sweet digipak with awesome artwork by Arik Moonhawk Roper!
We're gonna start this review like the last one from these guys: Not to be confused with the -other- Ancestors, the noise drenched, blackened lo-fi, blown out raw as fuck punk metal outfit, no, this is something all together more stoned and groovy, spaced out and ROCK.
Ok, with that out of the way, let's talk. This Ancestors, hailing from Los Angeles (um, wait, might that be where the -other- Ancestors are also from? Maybe?), takes the whole prog-metal approach that so many bands attempt and does it, frankly, WAY better than most. Like, you can tell Ancestors actually listen to prog rock, not just Neurosis-informed metal bands showing off proggy chops merely because it is the latest thing. In fact, there are certain moments of majestic grandeur on Of Sound Mind that many metalheads would have been embarrassed by just a few years ago. We sure are glad things have changed, because this stuff is really hitting the spot, and one of the band's greatest strengths is their prowess with amazing sounding keyboards. There are tons of swirling, distorted Hammond-style organs and fuckloads of buzzy synthesized goodness. Of course, the rest of the band really have it together as well, what, with all the epic guitar solos and the awesome rhythm section. Along with bands like UFOmammut and Titan, Ancestors are one of the more impressive bands to offer up music that perfectly merges progged out, atmospheric heaviosity with CRUSHING, grooving metal in the vein of the Melvins (the dude sounds quite like King Buzzo, in fact), Neurosis, and the like. Thankfully, things never get too proggy for their own good, and more than anything, you will be digging this collection of lumbering, epic songs that effortlessly chug into double digit time limits, sometimes separated by cool keyboard-centric interludes. The songs are long enough to take you all kinds of places, and the structures are sufficiently out there and complex, perfectly utilizing the cd/double lp format over the course of 71 minutes, making Of Sound Mind one of those perfect albums for late night, lonely listening.
Holy shit! All we can say is look out Bone Awl. You'd never know it from the strange cover art, an abstract photo of pens and books and a family photo, or the name, or the indie like scrawled liner notes, but this is some of the fiercest, heaviest, most damaged off kilter and ultra raw black metal we've heard in forever. Well, since Bone Awl actually, or maybe Ildjarn. But music this raw and punky and fucked up, is only barely black metal anyway, they sound a bit like a supercharged Brainbombs, or maybe the Violent Students playing black metal. This is in-the-red, overblown, crusty blackened garage stomp. Filthy and pounding. The drums are so hot, they make the tape distort. The vocals are an inhuman snarl, the guitars are just a dizzyingly dense tangle of white noise and black buzz. The tempos are relentless and occasionally, the guitars and drums lock into a weird four on the floor techno style pound, albeit dripping with amp buzz and blown out guitar, before launching back into a full on black crust speaker smash assault. Fans of all things raw and distorted beyond recognition will go apeshit. And all you Bone Awl obsessives might have just found a new band to love...
Swedish melodic death/prog metal, featuring the sort of over-the-top guitar and keyboard wizardry that makes people either love or hate the similarily-inclined Children of Bodom. The former (first) vocalist of Darkane does a bit more actual singing on here than he did in his previous band.
Been meaning to list this for while now, and unfortunately it's now out of print, and we now have the last ten or so copies, never to get more. So as always in these cases, don't dawdle. From the same label that has brought us some of the most crucial underground black metal of the last few years (Xasthur, Nortt, The One, Blodulv, etc.) comes a new (to us) Danish outfit, who specialize in that sound we love so much: ultra grim, ultra frigid, buzzing mostly midtempo black metal, a la Graveland, Nargaroth, Woodtemple, with high end fuzz-drone distortion, mosquito-like minor key melodies, simple galloping drum beats and that from-hell, paint peeling death rasp, all smeared into a buzzing mesmerizing blackened blur. Totally hypnotic and drone-y. Halfway through there's a gorgeous ten minutes of muted, melodic ambience, as dreamy and subtly beautiful as any of our favorite drone records. Followed by a truly bizarre melodramatic piano driven ballad, that's interrupted sporadically by ultraviolent squalls of sandblasting black metal buzz. Weird. And quite cool!
And again, LAST TEN COPIES! ONCE THEY'RE GONE THEY'RE GONE FOR GOOD!
Record number two from this amazing Danish black metal one man band, the one man being the same fellow responsible for Make A Change... Kill Yourself and Holmgang. Ultra grim, ultra frigid, buzzing mostly midtempo black metal, with high end fuzz-drone distortion, mosquito-like minor key melodies, simple galloping drum beats and that from-hell, paint peeling death rasp, all smeared into a buzzing mesmerizing blackened blur.
Fucking awesome! Comes in a swank full color digipak.
Those unfamiliar with the Danish black metal band Angantyr, might be surprised to find out that the man responsible for Angantyr, is the very same man who sonically slit his wrists and bled out the brilliantly depressive Make A Change� Kill Yourself discs, as well as being the dark soul who conjures up the grim old school buzz of Holmgang.
And while our black and broken hearts may belong to Make A Change� Kill Yourself, out head banging, spike encrusted, grim kvlt souls bow before the buzzing black Lord Angantyr. Here, Angantyr forms a sinister sonic alliance with mysterious Swedish duo Nasheim, and the two offer up some seriously awesome blasting and frosty grimness�
Angantyr offer up three tracks, nearly a half hour of classic Scandinavian style old school black metal, furious bursts of scalding blackness, as well as loping midtempo Burzumic dirges, massive swaths of washed out buzz, harsh howled vocals, mournful minor key melodies draped over spikey blackened crags, plenty of MACKY's miserablism finds its way into Angantyr's mysterious black world which is a very good thing. The final track is live, and super lo-fi, but ultra intense, thrashing and brutal, you can almost hear the sweat and blood, and fire and brimstone. So great.
Nasheim counter with a single 25 minute track, an epic journey through a buzzing black soundworld, beginning with simple swooning folky strum, the tranquility shattered by a black wall of sound, a thrashing buzzing burst of gnarled guitars, hyperspeed drumming, and strange strangled howls, before retreating once again to a gentle little sonic glade, which is immediately laid flat by a colossal riff and an avalanche of pounding drum crunch, which gives way to a killer extended blackpsych jam, sounding almost like Opeth, with arpeggiated acoustic guitar under a relentless buzz, a killer melodic lead, and a loping waltz-like tempo. The rest of the record veers back and forth between variations of both, lurching at one point into a strange, almost Amrep sounding part, before resuming its epic journey, all soaring majestic guitar harmonies and chaotic drumming, finishing off with a stretch of almost Viking sounding blackness. It's sort of hard to describe such a massive and sprawling slab of sound in such a small space, needless to say, the black and buzz obsessed will not be disappointed. So many parts, so many styles and various shades of black, all deftly arranged into a single symphony of depressive buzz.
Another awesome sonic document from Angel Eyes, one of our favorite of the new breed of metallic post rock outfits, a la Pelican, Isis, Minsk, Conifer etc...
This latest two song ep, gives us more of what we loved about their debut Something To Do With Death, long (two tracks that sound like movements of a bigger whole, one 16+ minutes, the other 10 minutes) slow building epics, spacious and expansive, dark brooding drifts that grow into roiling crashing chaotic heaviness. Whereas a lot of these sorts of band seem to have begun drifting one way or the other, ditching much of the metal in favor of a more ambient dark post rock sound, or alternately ditching a lot of the atmospherics and getting more and more metal, these guys still manage to deftly combine the two. The slow builds are super intense, gorgeously shimmering, the guitars fuzzy blurs, the drums a distant shuffle, the heavy parts are HEAVY, the guitars churning and downtuned and distorted, the vocals an anguished metallic wail, but even when Angel Eyes are at their heaviest, their sound is still streaked with gorgeous melodies, and sweeping cinematic heft, like Neurosis scoring the denouement of some amazing epic adventure film, it's almost impossible to not envision huge walls of flame engulfing whole cities, or a skyline gradually collapsing, or a planet crumbling and drifting apart, so totally evocative and intense and moody and emotional, just the way it should be. And the slow parts are gorgeous, brooding and darkly dreamy, a bit of Morricone twang, a bit of Calexico, a bit of Scenic, Godspeed of course, the various spidery melodies seeming to transform and become entangled before our very eyes, like the soundtrack to a time lapse film of the end of the world.
The second 'movement' is the more intense, like a more metal Explosions In The Sky, only allowing the listener a few brief respites between soaring sonic dramatics, the guitars keening and wailing over shimmering fields of sizzling cymbals and dense squalls of tribal pound, the melodies haunting and emotional, all woven into the roiling metallic swirl, eventually fading into a droning whirring fade out...
Packaged in a cool fold over ecopak, all hand silkscreened, the lyrics printed on the inside.
Angel Eyes are another band ready to make their mark in the blossoming post rock / sludge metal scene, and manage to do just that with Something To Do With Death, making -that- sound completely their own. So much so that upon hearing this disc we freaked out and immediately got in touch with the label and got a bunch of copies for the store. The general vibe is one we've come to love, the slow building brooding moodiness, a creeping post rock slow burn, minor key guitar, distant droney shimmer, simple martial percussion, building in intensity, the opening track could be Mogwai or Godspeed, with its understated majesty and about-to-explode urgency. Track two, the awesomely titled "By The Time He Was My Age, Orson Welles Had Made Citizen Kane", starts off with more loping post rockiness, but quickly lurches into some seriously fierce Neurosisy sludge, but within the roiling churning downtuned brutality, lurks plenty of mournful melody and subtle sonic shadings. Making this more than just heavy, more a an emotionally loaded ferocity. In fact each song is a expansive and beautifully convoluted journey, from massive pummel, to dreamy shuffle, to tribal ambience, to blown out guitarnoise and back again. So fucking good. Obviously, anyone who digs Isis, Pelican, Godspeed, Tides, Conifer, Minsk, Mouth Of The Architect, Rosetta, Minsk or any of the current crop of postrockmetal outfits NEEDS THIS NOW!
Bands should really label the side of their records. Especially if it's a split and the band they're sharing the split with has a somewhat similar sound. Similar to how bands that sound like SUNNO))) or Nadja should definitely label the speed a record is meant to be played at, since it often sounds equally good at both (or all three!) speeds.
So we were super psyched to finally get a new record from one of our favorite post rock metal combos, Angel Eyes, and we threw it on, and while it definitely sounded similar, it seemed like a lot had changed. The sound was a strange constantly shifting melange of loping metallic post rock, lurching caustic grind and skittery jazziness. We were pretty sure we had mistakenly put the other band's side on, when they shifted gears and kicked out some seriously epic blackened screamo-y Neur-Isis style jams, and then we weren't so sure. Eventually we did figure it out, especially once we laid our ears on the side long single track epic on the flipside, but we did decide that we did indeed dig this crazy band with the crazy name A Fine Boat, That Coffin!, who definitely take the post rock metal thing and tangle it all up with screamo and grind, although we could do without the bits of jazziness, thankfully those are brief. But for sure, heavy and chaotic and epic good stuff.
But flipping the record over, we suddenly felt right at home again (boy are we gonna feel dumb after all this if that side WAS in fact Angel Eyes), with a sound both warm and lush, heavy and crushing, brooding, pounding minor key melancholic slow building heaviness, epic and majestic, anguished howled vocals over super melodic metallic crush, monstrous and pummeling and almost orchestral at times, laced with cool expanses of shimmery, dreamlike low end guitar, streaks of glistening feedback, chiming bell like melodies, eventually slipping into a super minimal drift, all reverby and echoey, a woozy soft focus slowcore sprawl, that eventually builds and builds and explodes into a super epic emo metalpsych blow out finale. These guys are so good. One of the few bands, amidst the many who now practice this sort of thing, that should have the big boys shaking in their boots.
Cool gatefold sleeves, a bit confusing which band is on which side, but you'll figure it out, and both bands kick ass, but Angel Eyes' sidelong track is worth the price of admission. LIMITED of course, we got our copies direct from the band, their LAST copies, which means when we run out we'll have to get more from the label in Europe, so if that happens, please be patient while we wait for more to arrive from overseas, and needless to say (but since that's the way we roll we'll say it anyway) ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY RECOMMENDED!
I (Allan) have been trying to regularly review some classic old hard rock and metal albums, reissues of stuff that we as a responsible record store -should- have on our website. Some have gotten better customer responses than others. I did a whole bunch of KISS reviews and those were sorta hit or miss. And then a few lists ago I reviewed Def Leppard's debut, On Through The Night, to small avail. New Wave Of British Heavy Metal gem Loose N' Lethal by Savage did far better, perhaps 'cause its more obscure. But here's something, well let's put it this way: I know for sure that not everybody out there already has this album. So we should expect to sell quite a few of these, ok?
Like the two albums named above, this is a bona fide NWOBHM classic. And one perhaps more aligned with the Sabbathy doom/occult vibe that we so adore here at AQ, from bands both old and new. And this, their 1980 debut, is Angel Witch's finest platter. Believe me, we don't have room here to discuss the ups and (mostly) downs of Angel Witch's ill-fated on-and-off career after this album. Better to imagine that this disc (including all the bonus tracks of equal vintage) was all they ever did, and allow it to shine from its pedestal of NWOBHM perfection, just a brilliant concoction of heavy riffs, ripping solos, melodic vocals (with some badass shriekin' upon occasion), and dark, mystic atmospheres. It's catchy, too. They had a way with memorable, stick-in-your-head choruses - once you've heard the song "Angel Witch" itself, it's always gonna seem familiar, ferinstance.
Angel Witch, as an exemplar of the NWOBHM, are indeed very British, with quite the Hammer Horror vibe. We'd think so even if one of the bonus tracks wasn't an instrumental called "Dr. Phibes". Speaking of bonus tracks, this reissue, the "25th anniversary edition", not only sports a "nice price" but also features even more extras than earlier Castle pressings, bringing the total of tracks on the disc to 20. There's six tracks from 7" and 12" singles and the Metal For Muthas comp, several of which are gems equal to the best of those on the album proper, plus an additional four live BBC radio broadcast recordings!
Highly recommended to any headbanger worthy of the name, being a macabre NWOBHM essential in league with Diamond Head, early Iron Maiden, and Witchfinder General - indeed, we must say that any fan of WG should be aware of this 'witch as well!
It's been a while since we've heard from mysterious tribal, psychedelic, what-the-fuck outsider metal outfit Angelblood. But they've returned, with a vinyl only blast of damaged metallic skree that sounds as fucked up and tripped out as ever.
When we first heard Angelblood, we assumed, because of their sound, and the fact that their record was a Japanese import, that they were some mysterious all girl Japanese metal troupe. We only later discovered that Angelblood was in fact Dave Nuss from the No Neck Blues Band and artist/musician Rita Ackerman. While some of the mystery was gone, it wasn't enough to stop us from diggin their crazy sound.
So now here we are years later, with a brand new missive from Angelblood, a stumbling, chaotic, drug addled, metallic transmission from some weird otherworld, that produces feral voiced majestic metal. Or whatever this stuff is. It's definitely metal, at least some of the time, although it spends a lot of time sprawled out in strange stumbling streaks of droning ambience, the vocals, a Yoko Ono-ish wail, washing over the shimmering dronescapes in the background.
The opener is a free rock psychedelic trip out, the guitar spending more time swirling and humming than actually riffing, the vocals mewling and howling, the guitars gradually becoming more and more riff-like, eventually launching into some eighties style metal riffing, but the metallic vibe is wrapped around an ethereal drift, and strange loping groove, that eventually falls to pieces, the vocals dancing wildly atop an avalanche of drums and crumbling guitars.
The second track is where things get heavy. As in heeeeavy man. A blown out proto metal riff looped hypnoticall beneath the wild banshee wails, and over the course of the track swinging from that metal riffing, to a more proggy rhythmic workout. Minus the vocals this could be some lost Italian hard rock classic, but the vocals turn it into some insane avant psychmental freakout.
Our favorite track is probably "Edward's Call", a damged off kilter take on power metal, with some killer grinding start stop riffage, freaky leads, super convoluted song structures and more wild unhinged vocalizing.
The whole record is so haunting and tripped out, heavy and cracked, catchy and insane. Imagine Hammers Of Misfortune if they got lost in some massive black forest, eventually went feral and were adopted by a tribe of Yeti's, the tribe's forest rituals eventually seeping into the metal psyches of the band. Years later, the bearded and filthy Hammers begin making sounds, a primal primitive forest metal band, the tales of their tribe told in wails and whoops and hollers, all over a stumbling metallic ritual. That's sort of what this sounds like. But not quite�
Needless to say, this is essential listening for outsider metal freaks, and even prog nerds and weirdo krautrockers with a taste for the truly demented might be able to get into Angelblood's far out psychmetal damage. Awesome.
The return of one of our favorite purveyors of blissed out metallic dream doom, The Angelic Process. There is a brand new album on Profound Lore, which we do have in stock, so feel free to order that one too. We'll review that one on the next list. But we figured we oughta list this one first. ...And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey was originally released on Crucial Blast way back in 2001, in a run so limited we never even saw one. Now the band has decided to reissue all their old recordings and release them on their own Decaying Sun label, starting with this one...
The Angelic Process' M.O. was much the same here as on the incredible Coma Waering, released on Paradigms back in 2006, slow burning metallic drone epics, the guitars effulgent and blown out, woven into huge washes of dreamy bliss, over simple machinelike rhythms, with soaring emotional vocals buried and lost in thick ropy swells of sound. Everything run through some sort of amazing vacuum cleaner effect that wraps all the sounds in thick swirls of foggy whir. It's like M83 and My Bloody Valentine And Jesu blended up and mixed with some Godflesh and Neurosis, a gorgeously monstrous plodding doom, smeared into blackened shadows that somehow glow warmly from within. It's not really metal although it is most definitely heavy, it's not really pop either, even though there are hooks galore buried within the murk, it's not industrial, although it is intense and mechanical sounding at times, and it's not really doom, although it is heavy and sooooo sloooooow. It's somehow all of those things at once, yet none of those things, a constantly mutating sound that manages to also mix in tranquil ambient interludes, drawn out stretches of keening guitar and smoldering drone, and wild bursts of full on amp crushing, speaker melting noise. It's like the sonic equivalent of being doused in molten metal, every track a thick, viscous flow of sound, pouring from the speakers in black torrents, melting everything within reach, turning all to ash. So good.�
Includes two bonus tracks not on the original releases.�Packaged in slimline cases, with full color artwork, professionally printed cd-r's, each one signed by both members of the band! Probably limited, these things always seem to be, so even though we got a bunch, not sure how long they'll be around...
A new slab of glacial metallic beauty from Paradigms, one of our new favorite labels. In the past, they've brought us the drone dirge of Hjarnidaudi (an aQ Record Of The Week), the chamber gloom of Amber Asylum, the cult black metal of Throne Of Katarsis, the druggy prog of Blueprint Human Being, and now two new releases, a grim slab of icy pagan Canadian black metal from Utlagr (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this, the newest release from dirge doomists the Angelic Process.
Described as slow motion doom drone, The Angelic Process are so much more. This is not just some series of cromagnon metal riffs slowed down and turned into 'art', nor is it a monochromatic wash of rumble and whir, not that there's anything wrong with that, we love that stuff, but the Angelic Process are more of a proper band, with songs, vocals, drums, parts, choruses, verses, all that normal band stuff. They craft simple, swoonsome dream rock, like M83 or Spacemen 3 or Cyann & Ben, albeit a lot more dark and ominous, but it's what they do with that rock, with those songs, that makes this record so special. And so mind meltingly heavy. Each of these songs is buried under a sea of warm sonic swirl. Where a normal band would kick on a distortion pedal for the chorus, The Angelic Process kick on a thousand, and it sounds like they maybe also have 30 or 40 extra guitarists standing at attention just waiting to dump a monstrous mass of churning thick blown out guitar fuzz all over everything. Closer reference points might be Jesu or My Bloody Valentine. The songs are moody plods, droney dirges, but within these songs, and beneath all the murk and fuzz and buzz, there are buried epic swells, heart rending melodies, soaring beneath the gauze and haze, it's like Low or Godspeed being backed up by Earth, performing live with Glenn Branca's guitar orchestra and produced by the Teenage Filmstars. Or maybe Swans if they made a record for French blisspop label Gooom. One of those extremely rare records that manages to be as breathtakingly lovely as it is crushingly heavy. The best blown out blissed out space rock drone guitar record since Loveless! SO RECOMMENDED!
Limited to 750 copies, packaged in a mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We went from discovering what we believed to be the only recording from this Southern blissed out doomdrone duo, to suddenly being inundated with a bunch of recordings, old AND new. We're not complaining, cuz if you're anything like us, you can NOT get enough of this sort of My Bloody Valentine metal, epic swaths of blown out beautiful heaviness that drifts and shimmers as much as it pounds and pummels.�
It's hard to know what to say about�We All Die Laughing that we haven't already said about all of the other Angelic Process records, if you're a fan of stuff like Jesu, Nadja, Hjarnidaudi, odds are you're already hip to the gorgeous sounds of the Angelic Process. In iTunes, the genre comes up as 'new age' which in a way it sort of is, but it's OUR sort of new age, blissy and dreamy and washed out and soft focus and blurry and abstract, but also heavy as fuck, massive and crushing and completely overwhelmingly intense.�We All Die Laughing is no exception, from the first track, which begins with a simple machinelike rhythm, and swirling ambient swells, a barely there guitar, before an avalanche of guitars drops from above, obliterating everything, somehow at once dense and heavy, yet so completely beautiful and packed with melody. Which is pretty much how the whole record stacks up, there are long stretches of low end shimmer, and simple tribal drumming, bits of ambient whir and fragmented melodies, but these are just breathers between the crushing black holes of sound, the million vacuum cleaners tuned to 'E' roar of their impossibly heavy sonic crush. You can read more of our AP gushing in any of the other reviews, but what more do we need to say, if you want it heavy, and want it beautiful, it really doesn't get more beautifully heavy than the Angelic Process.�
Packaged in slimline cases, with full color artwork, professionally printed cd-r's, each one signed by both members of the band!�
What can we say that we haven't already said about this dynamic dronedirgedoom duo? Seriously, have a look at any of the other reviews we've written about The Angelic Process, and see us gush like crazy, what's not to love? Gorgeous swirling black ambience, massive crushing metallic pummel, soaring majestic melodies, the sound somehow heavy and brutal, but washed out and gauzy, a thick My Bloody Valentine haze draped over everything, voices drift amidst the buzz like paper angels dropped into a roaring fire. Everything glistening and sparkling, glimmering and shimmering, then roaring and grinding and washing over you like some suffocating black tide.�
All�of their records are fantastic, each feels and sounds like a continuation of the one before it. As if they were all movements in some metallic black hole symphony, with each record, each movement, offering up its own subtle twist on the AP's black buzzing sound world. This latest might be the most sonically varied of the bunch. It's been out for a while now, but we had been working our way through the older titles first.
The overall sound like the others is warped and warbly, a slow crawl though an alien world, like every note and melody is being twisted and bent, tangled up into shapes that confuse and confound, the distortion so thick and viscous it seems to be able to alter the natural order, to use gravity as just another effect, ton-of-bricks downtuned guitars don't fall forward like an avalanche, they seem to drift like billowy black clouds somehow, slabs of low end fall upward, guitars slither in reverse, vocals twist inside out, a gorgeous multidimensional swirl of sound, that occasionally coalesces into a roiling propulsive thunderstorm of blissed out doom. Songs grow�from whispers into roars, a black doom Godspeed, but the heavy parts aren't just heavy, they're unearthly, unreal, melodies are pulled apart into sparkling notes that spin and soar, dancing atop a churning miasma of crush and crunch. The sound is an impossible blend of light and dark, evil and good, beauty and utter and complete horror. Like Katatonia broadcast through a wall of clothes dryers, doom metal performed by a symphony of leaf blowers tuned to drop-D, pop songs composed using cement mixers filled with gold bricks, a DJ spinning My Bloody Valentine over diSEMBOWELMENT, Winter remixed by Tim Hecker, all nestled amidst dreamy drifts of hushed shimmer and soft focus ambience.
We could go on and on and on and on and on and on.... needless to say, an absolutely essential slab of blissed out dreamdronedoooooooooooooooooooooooooom...
Folks have been chomping at the bit for this one and now it's finally here. A double lp collecting older demo material from French black metal horde Angmar and AQ faves, and current black-metal-bliss darlings Alcest. And after the most recent Alcest full length, the barely metal�Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde, and with the first ep being out of print and unavailable, a new Alcest record, even if it's an -old- new record, is enough to get the AQ black metal faithful, all in a frenzy...
Angmar, who we have yet to feature on the AQ list but who we most definitely dig, offer up a handful of demos and rehearsals spanning the years 1998-2003. All the usual adjectives apply, this was long before the band streamlined their sound, so these tracks find the band raw and grim and frosty. Cold buzzing riffage, blast beats and some seriously creepy atmospheres. Every track a relentless burst of black fury, primitive and lo-fi, but all the more intense and blackened for it. The tracks are sprinkled with gorgeous bits of lilting folkiness, short stretches of dark ambience, one whole track of creepy shimmer, a gloomy piano / guitar duet, but it's the blasting buzz that define these guys, and they do it well, burning a black mark on the pale flesh of all that is holy with their beastly racket. Awesome stuff.�
But Alcest is really the reason everyone wants this so bad, and rightfully so. Neige might not be a household name, unless you live with a bunch of black metalheads in France, but it sure should be, and probably will be soon, as Neige is the man behind Alcest, the equally brilliant Ameseours, as well as a member of weirdo black buzzers Peste Noire. The Alcest lp half of this split double, is one sided and features a 2001 demo in its entirety. And for those of you whose only exposure to Alcest is�Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde, you just might be shocked to discover that Alcest were indeed a real buzzing black metal outfit at one time. This demo definitely proves it. It also demonstrates, that even way back then, Neige had a melodic flair that could just not bee denied. The insane thing is that all of this music was written when Neige was all of 15 years old. Holy shit. What were we doing at 15? Definitely not composing legendary slabs of grim melodic black metal. But that's precisely what this is, an epic slab of buzzing blackness, run through with irresistible pop melodies, streaks of jangle and shoegazey bliss, but all merely as filigree for a seriously intense black metal buzz. Howled vocals, furious blasting rhythms, jagged black riffs, all woven into long stretches of midtempo moodiness, epic and minor key, and grim grim grim. But amazingly, without ever losing that mysterious melodiousness that would come to define Alcest's constantly evolving sound.
Gorgeously packaged. Super thick, full color deluxe gatefold sleeve, pressed on nice thick vinyl. And extremely limited. ONLY 500 COPIES PRESSED,�each record hand numbered on the spine. We got about 30 and it's unlikely we'll be able to get more...
Killer underground black metal battle to the death between the Finns and the Italians, released on Finnish cult metal label Bestial Burst. Angmar, from Finland (not to be confused with the French Angmar) offer up some fuzzy plodding blackness, dirgey and primitive, ultra lo-fi and buzzy, with simple drumming, and super anguished vocals. A sort of buzzing black thrash with some old school Celtic Frost moments here and there.
The True Endless from Italy counter with their own black blast, some serious buzzing black Mayhem worship. Lightning fast swirls of thick fuzz guitar, manic riffing and blurry blast beats. Two tracks of completely blown out Norwegian style classic blackness, bookending a gorgeously depressive doomic dirge, with sludgy guitars, plodding glacial drumming and howling guttural vocals.
Slightly sexist (sexy?) aside: The True Endless also feature on bass, Soulfucker, quite possibly the hottest corpsepainted lady we've ever seen!
A couple years back we flipped for a record by the oddly monikered Angst Skvadron, a side project from one of the guys in Urgehal and Beastcraft, but unlike those more traditionally black hordes, Angst Skvadron trafficked in something more proggy and spacey and psychedelic, still sort of black metal, but mostly something else entirely. Armed with a battery of vintage synths and Mellotrons, Angst Skvadron whipped up what was probably our favorite weirdo whatthefuck sort of black metal record of 2010. The strange thing was that that record, Sweet Poison, was in fact their second album, and somehow, the debut had disappeared before we ever got a chance to list/review it. Thankfully, both have now been reissued, Sweet Poison, which is reviewed again elsewhere on this week's list, and this one, Flukt, which we're finally able to review after all these years.
Originally released in 2008, Flukt definitely hints at what would come on Sweet Poison, and while not nearly as far out as the follow up, it is sort of the perfect gateway from the more grim black buzz of Urgehal and Beastcraft, to the tripped out black prog of Sweet Poison. Flukt is still essentially a black metal record, but it's a weird one. Lots of woozy guitars, tangled melodies, strange vocals, the vibe is super Voivod-y much of the time, mathy and melodic, a bit sci-fi for sure, and way proggy. The record is rife with strange moments, the disembodied lo-fi guitar drift that closes "Silent Light, Alien Night", the creepy horror movie theremin melodies all over "A Song To The Sky", there's the awesomely titled "The Asteroid Haemorhoids And The Drunken Sailor", a super distorted chugfest, rife with cool sixties style exotic melodies, that sounds like some sixties spy movie, black metallized, or the woozy acoustic guitar laced lope of "Slaves Of Mental Distortion", which finishes with some warped sliced and diced sampling. There's plenty of rad psychedelic leads, and loads of atmospheric weirdness, but all of that is woven into some killer buzzing blackness, minor key and midtempo, striking a perfect balance between classic black buzz and warped blackened weirdness.
Trondr Nefas, aka T.B., is probably better known in black metal circles for fronting Norwegian heavyweights Urgehal and Beastcraft, among others, but odds are that might be about to change with Angst Skvadron, a blackened bastard offspring, that while still black metal is so much more.
This is record number two from this post black metal trio, whose sound, if we had to describe it, would be something more like post space black prog. And were this easier to get, don't doubt that this would have been a shoo-in for Record of The Week. For some of us it's already Record Of The Year!
Employing the usual instruments, but with an incredible arsenal of vintage and classic keyboards and synths, even a Mellotron, to add all sorts of texture and weirdness to their grim black sound. Did we mention ghostly female vocals? Yeah, these guys are a strange proposition, but have maybe catapulted themselves right to the front of the line, that line being our favorite new black metal bands.
Just take record opener "Valium Holocaust" (great title), opening with a cloud or reverbed piano rumbles, before launching into a lumbering midtempo dirge, equal parts Ved Buens Ende, Khold and Voivod at 16 rpm, the guitars warped and crumbling, the riffs woozy, the rhythm peppered with toiling bells, and laced with little glimmering tangles of melody, and super melodic basslines, and of course some haunting female vocals, that make the track either sound like some black metal Argento soundtrack, or some blackened version of Hundred Sights Of Koenji, gorgeous and creepy and far out and spacey and totally mesmerizing.
The whole record is so close to NOT being black metal. The riffs are gnarled and not at all typical, sounding almost grungy at times, like a way more grim black Skin Yard, which is definitely a good thing.
There are moments of blackness for sure, but even then, the band seem dead set on subverting any sort of true kvlt cred they might otherwise be developing, by twisting the songs all up, whether it's adding Mellotron strings, and creating weird carnivalesque slowcore, or adding all sort of strange crooning vocals, or taking an otherwise black blast beat, and transforming it into a mathy stutter. The slow atmospheric bits are incredible, not just randomly quiet for a minute or two like most BM bands, these are fully formed bits of minimal moodiness, with lush tangled melodies, ghostly harmonies, thick wheezing organs, often giving way to spaced out blackened krautrock, all clean guitars, hazy clouds of reverb, rubbery Joy Division basslines, some full on whatthefuck post industrial lumber and crunch, with thick buzzy bass riffs, and streaks of static and hiss, all wound around some incredible black metal grooves, some of the best riffs we've heard in ages, that in other hands could be the basis for perfect pop songs, but here just infuse the blackness with a weirdly irresistible pop element, that helps make these songs totally weird, totally catchy, and completely genius.
The record finishes off with an unlikely three song salvo, some warm almost sunshiney softly strummed minimal pop, all brushed snares, soaring strings, major key melodies, a lush gauzy dream pop dronescape, that gives way to possibly the most mathy and convoluted track on the record, all super tangled riffage, octopoidal math rock drums, serpentine basslines, super heavy and harrowing, with tortured super effected tripped out vocals, culminating in heaving doomic crush, before finally finishing off with the weirdly melodic title track, a wistful minor key dirge, all clean chiming guitars, simple spare drumming, strings and flutes (or at least the Mellotron version), gorgeous and dreamy and softly psychedelic, an appropriately unlikely finish to one of the most unlikely 'black metal' records in recent memory. And quickly becoming our favorite...
Anima Morte make their home in the frosty Swedish North, but you'd never know it from listening to 'em. There's no cavernous old school death metal here, and there sure ain't no glistening electropop. Instead, Anima Morte deals in the grisly trade of Italian style instrumental horror prog. The Nightmare Becomes Reality is actually their third full length, and it was released way back in 2011 on cd, but we only just found this vinyl version. In fact, Anima Morte have been dabbling in their own brand of epic blood-soaked prog rock since 2007, which by our calculations puts them right at the forefront of the current Giallo slasher revival craze that we here at aQ HQ can't get enough of.
The album opens with a brief wall of droning skittery back alley synths, barely masking the disembodied weeping, whimpering and agonized screams hiding underneath, but this is one of the few moments of relative reprieve on the record, and soon we've entered into a surreal realm of nightmarish groove and technicolor terror. The plucked dissonance of acoustic guitars chime like the monstrous bell of some crumbling ghostly church. Dizzying haunted pipe organs send the listener spiraling helplessly into a sweat-soaked lightless nether realm. Blood curdling stabs of hypnotic cyclical piano slice their way to the forefront like a straight razor gleaming in the moonlight. With its groovy bass, shuffling drums and moments of bright melodic spaciousness, the majority of this record sounds like Goblin at their most progged out, syncopated and heavy. And while the band also list progressive heavyweights like ELP, King Crimson and Rick Wakeman as influences (and justifiably so), the clean modern production almost give the album the feeling of a more contemporary group like Astra or latter-era Opeth funneled through hours of twisted video nasties and low grade slasher flicks. The more overtly gothic flourishes even recall the theatrical Transilvanian madness of a band like Notre Dame. And it almost goes without saying: if stalking the city streets in the dead of night with only the dread sounds of Blizaro, Orne or Tony Tears oozing from your headphones for company is your idea of a pleasant night out, then you should definitely check this out. Music to be murdered by indeed!
We've always been suckers for mathy metal shred, in all it's variations, The Fucking Champs, Meshuggah, Pysopus, Scale The Summit, Electro Quarterstaff, and loads of others, and with that kind of sound, really the shreddier and more over the top the better, which is precisely why this new record from D.C instrumental prog metallers Animals As Leaders is kicking our asses so hard, beyond just the extreme instrumental shredding by all the players, the rhythm section KILLS, and is definitely a fine match for axeman Tosin Abasi, this is definitely not just about shred, their are actual songs, the sort that actually stick in your head. But those songs are only made that much better by some crazy catchy riffage, the dual guitars unwinding insane rhythms, not to mention some killer shredding harmonies, and some of the leads are just nuts, like Yngwie nuts. But like lots of prog metal nerds, these guys definitely have a thing for fusion, which creeps into a lot of the songs here, giving some of the jams a weirdly noodly metal jazz vibe, and they also incorporate some cool electronics, and some programmed rhythms (their first record featured all programmed drums apparently), and when the bass and guitars lock into insane noodly harmony shreds/leads, it almost sounds like some sort of alien krautrock.
You don't have to love Yngwie and Satriani and metal fusion and shred jazz to dig Animals As Leaders, but it helps. If you don't, you can just skip those fusiony parts and revel in all the rest of the wildly technical over the top mathprog heaviness.
Two years ago, we discovered a one man band from Israel called Animus, who crafted a depressive buzz unlike any we had heard before. An incredible dirgey depressive landscape of blown out buzz, of layered whir, a sound that in other hands would sound downright blissful, but there was nothing blissful about that sound, it was miserable, melancholy, suicidal, dejected and despondent, the darkest of emotions rendered it varying shades of black, painted in varying degrees of buzz.
Two years later, Animus returns with another bleak sonic missive, another exercise in blackened buzz, but right from the start something is different. The record begins with hushed minor key steel string acoustic guitar, softly strummed, shimmery, until the buzz swoops in, and immediately locks into a static blast, the drum machine rigid and unswerving, pounding out a relentless beat, while the guitar is locked into a buzzy loop. Impossibly mesmerizing and hypnotic, exactly the sort of subtle transcendence we are always looking for in black metal. And so it goes, slipping back and forth from soft fluttery folk, to frenetic black flurry, until halfway through, after another brief soft interlude, the sound shifts to an impossibly dense doomy crawl, the guitar continuing to buzz furiously, but the drums slowed down to a tarpit crawl, and the vocals spewed out like some noxious black fog, gurgling and growling, a thick layered wall of droning sound. The deeper you sink, the further it moves from black metal, and the closer it gets to some experimental dronemusick. But even that only lasts briefly, before the song shifts back to the opening riff, and resumes its back and forth, only this time introducing extended pauses and haunting church bells. And that's just the opening track.
The next few tracks offer up some cinematic black ambience, soft piano, moaning strings, deep shimmering drones, muttered otherworldy invokations, folky steel string strum, hushed harsh vocals drenched in effects until it becomes crumbling streaks of distortion, before the vocals how and wail over the lilting minor key melody.
That tranquility is disrupted by a flurry of chaotic drumming and buzz drenched riffage, which gives way to a speeded up black krautrock, muted layered fuzzed out guitars, and impossibly fast blast beats, all over a pretty swoonsome guitar melody, and peppered with super random cymbal crash crescendos. Along stretch of incredibly deep rumbling blackened ambience, all subterranean drones and distant whirs, gives way to a haunting washed out final track, the guitars so blurred and smeared it's hard to even hear the riff, instead the guitars sway back and forth like black swells, the drumming spare and a bit off kilter, the vocals a raspy croak, the tone of the track not heavy or grim or brutal, as much as weary and worn, the sound of spirits slipping into the darkness, of the world slowly falling to pieces, the sound of stars blinking out, leaving a vast expanse of utter blackness, rendered in sound, it becomes a woozy whirling almost seasick dirge, with muted militaristic drumming, and a gorgeously thick and viscous soft focus roiling sea of warm languid buzz. So gorgeous and abject, so dreamily depressive, and so fucking amazing.
Similar to our neverending quest for the ultimate in demented and damaged black metal weirdness, we are also constantly on another quest, a search for the darkest, deepest, most depressive, massive, emotional, suicidal, bleak, utterly hypnotic, droney and transcendental blackened BUZZ. We sometimes do find it, but then it's not too long before we need more, and so we begin the search again. Sometimes it's harsh high end and brittle upper register shimmer, other times it's murky low end chest rattling rumble. But we tend to lean toward the fuzzy and lo-fi, the super thick, the dense and foggy, smeary smudgey and washed out. A black metal that instead of borrowing from Burzum (sigh) or Darkthrone (yawn) finds sonic inspiration in My Bloody Valentine, or M83 or even in Jeck or Basinski or Hecker or Fennesz. A buzz that is just not guitar distortion, but is instead a glacier, or a wall, or a swirl, some sort of densely striated monolith, each layer a fuzzy piece of the larger dream like whole. Past masters of the BUZZ, who were able to satiate our hunger, include Velvet Cacoon, Xasthur and Make A Change... Kill Yourself, and on the more doom drenched BUZZ side of things, slower but no less BUZZy, Celestiial, Skepticism, Corrupted even Boris.
Then there are the non metal, but still incredibly heavy masters of the BUZZ, Hjarnidaudi, Nadja, Asva, The Angelic Process...
We could go on and on and on. Needless to say. The BUZZ, and thus the drone that is inherently part of it, is critical, crucial, without the BUZZ, music, nay life! Would have no meaning.
So thus we have the latest in a long line, a member of a mysterious sect known only as Keepers Of The BUZZ. Sworn to their sacred duty, passed down from generation to generation.
Animus is the name used by a young man from Israel, who has chosen the vessel of Animus, with which to protect the BUZZ. And to protect this sacred sonic disruptor, he has fashioned one of the most amazing records of ultra bleak, super personal, fuzzy and muddy, blown out and blissed out (in sound only, certainly not in mood) dirgey midtempo black metal we have heard in ages. Lilting melancholy riffs and simple drum machine rhythms are buried under a super thick wash of murky ambience, a bit like the warm fuzz of M83, but with all the sparkle and shine scrubbed off, leaving a burnished blackened gloom, hugging the lurching riffs like a dense morning fog, every element sounding muffled and distant. But this isn't really lo-fi at all. The sound here is dense and thick, heavy and strangely lush, The all encompassing and mysteriously overpowering BUZZ is draped over all of the other elements, the drums and fuzzed out riffs, drifting and pulsing, throbbing and beating, always nestled snugly beneath the surface, only the distorted howls come close to piercing the black sonic veil. Soundwise, Animus remind us of Thergothon and Skepticism, but where as those bands trudge at a truly funereal pace, Animus tends toward the midtempo, a relentless drone drenched black metal, harsh and harrowing, mournful and miserable, but so absolutely and stunningly beautiful.
Essential for all worshippers of the BLACK BUZZ!!!
Grab a brew, it's Annihilation Time! This is their third album (duh) but their first for Tee Pee (and thus the first we've heard, even though they're from right over in the East Bay... must mean we're more stoner rock than punk). The standard issue spiel about AT is that, as you might have guessed from their name, they're big time Black Flag and Bl'ast! fans, crossing over into the retro-thrash movement, with some classic '70s cock rock moves a la KISS or Thin Lizzy thrown in. Think fellow retro rockin' Oaklanders Drunkhorse, but more punk and skater-ly.
So, do such blurbs tell the truth? And if so, does this supposed hybrid of Deep Purple and D.R.I. sound better on paper than on your stereo? Well check out the twin guitar leads towards the end of track 2, "About To Snap", there's shades of Iron Maiden's Smith/Murray right there, and you'll find plenty more in the way of tasty '70s/'80s metallic guitar action elsewhere on the disc, usually smack in the midst of some much more basic, punk styled riffage... while their music ain't rocket science, it is definitely some good times rock n' roll. Not the second coming of anybody, but still a neat mix of elements, glorious guitar harmonies coexisting with hoarse punk rock vox... even if it's hard to know if we're supposed to be pogoing or headbanging. It can't quite approach the shreddingness of their live shows, but it's fun nonetheless.
Thrashy noisy hardcore GONE METAL?! Woo Hoo! Seems like all those punk kids have GONE METAL. But who am I to complain? I mean, I -do- like metal more than punk. And this -is- good, just not terribly groundbreaking. Think equal parts, Coalesce, Converge,
Anopheli are a new, sort of local outfit, featuring members of East Bay doom crust crushers Monuments Collapse (whose recent full length was a big hit around here, along with their split with Breag Naofa) teamed up with members of UK crust punk legends Fall Of Efrafa. The result is a dark, epically heavy slab of melodic, melancholic, string laden crusty doom! Huge, heaving riffage, infused with mournful melodies, churning atmospheric heaviness that explodes into furious D-beat blowouts, galloping and ferocious, but even then, rife with a haunting, wistful moodiness, due in no small part to the strings, which soar and shimmer, moan and keen throughout. Lush, brooding heaviness, all loping, lumbering doomic epicry, sounding a bit like Neurosis by way of Godspeed, especially with those strings, adding all sorts of pathos to the proceedings, and giving the sound a seriously cinematic vibe, the sounds flecked with cool samples as well. A Hunger Rarely Sated is the perfect mix of pummeling metallic crush, furious crust punk bombast, and dense, mathy, melodic, post rock majesty.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! Includes a printed inner sleeve, and housed in a nice, heavy jacket.
Once you get past the mildly problematic naked-little-girl album cover, and the STUPID band name, you'll discover probably one of the best black metal records of the year. Furious and relentless, amazingly aggressive, and FAST. With catchy riffs, fucked song
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.
Another blackened jewel in Norma Evangelium Diaboli's elite black metal crown. Rapidly becoming the only label that really and truly matters in black metal, NED has unleashed upon the world, some of the best (and is some cases, only) recordings from Deathspell Omega, Funeral Mist, Katharsis and now French black horde Antaeus. Even way back in 2000, when they released their brilliant debut, appropriately titled Cut Your Flesh And Worship Satan, it was easy to tell there was something special (and strange) about these guys. At their core, they were pure black metal, very Mayhem influenced for sure, but that record was peppered with weird ambient interludes and fucked up not entirely black metal parts, they were true enough for the grim BM hordes, but their sound hinted at something much weirder, which of course hooked us.
So here we are, nearly 7 years later, and Antaeus have embraced that weird fucked up side, and ended up positioned perfectly along side their black sonic brethren on NED. And it is a perfect fit. Not as weird and post rocky as Deathspell, not as harsh and buzzy as Katharsis, somewhere right in between, closest sonically probably to Funeral Mist, with their blend of ultra creepy ambience and ultra dense, impossibly fast and heavy buzz. And that's the thing, some of this stuff sounds IMPOSSIBLE! It's so fucking fast, but so intricate and complicated at the same time. Furious and thick and dense and incredibly lightning fast. Dizzying bursts of black buzz that constantly threaten to completely splinter into jagged black shards.
All the while, within and between the blasts of bleak grimness and the soul shearing fury, are lots of awesome midtempo grooves, super catchy riffs that lope along all waltzy and seasick, super catchy and memorable, before exploding back into lightspeed motion. Also here and there are long stretches of processed guitars and black ambience, with creaking atmospheres, deep drones and strange keening harmonics.
A super weird, super grim expanse of totally black brilliance. Could very well be one of THE black metal records of the year. Only a few weeks to discover something more heavy or more black. Seems unlikely.
Gorgeous packaging too (as with all NED releases). Black digipak, with bloody hands reaching for the sky, the bands logo, some dripping blood and a crown of thorns sort of tangle, all printed over the top in a barely visible reflective varnish. Includes a big booklet, also gorgeously laid out, with lyrics, printed vellum, and some truly gruesome band photos.
