Brazilian death metal madmen Krisiun return with their first domestic release (fourth album overall). Those who saw them play here on their last tour tell me that Krisiun are perhaps the fastest and most insane death metal band ever. Certainly they take the instrumental portion of the death metal experience to the extreme that all bands in the genre really should aspire to; it's like they're the Nitro of death metal (Nitro being the uber-epitome of LA glam glass-breaking screamin', hyperspeed guitar soloin' hair metal who were so laughable yet so amazing that even today they have a cult following). Fans of the baroque brutality and sinister speed of Morbid Angel (whose guitarist Eric Rutan produced this rippin' disc) must hear Krisiun!
Maybe you remember the good old days. Obituary's Slowly We Rot, Morbid Angel's Blessed Are The Sick, and - of course - Sepultura's Beneath The Remains. THOSE good old days. The days when metalheads could look each other in the face and say things like, "Dude, Scott Burns fucking rules," and it would mean something. Maybe even one tattooed tear would drop. Earthdogs worldwide would only consider purchasing longsleeve versions of their favorite band's shirts. When the only guy in the band allowed to have short hair was the drummer. Guitar solos were mandatory. Well, Brazil's Krisiun have managed to continually exist within that realm. It seems that for them the only difference between then and now is heightened production value. Their music remains heavy, tight, and fast. You're getting zero corpsepaint, no buzzing guitars, and absolutely no art-school-esque Banks Violette collaborations. Metal dudes weren't wearing makeup and crying about how they hate people, because they were too busy trying to kick ass. Death metal, no bullshit necessary. We're not even sure if they know that black metal has taken the spotlight in "extreme metal" for like, oh, almost 15 years now. Make sure to bang your head in a circular motion, even while listening to their cover of fellow Brazilians Sepultura's "Refuse/Resist."
Holy shit! SIX POUNDS OF METAL. There are certain things, that as metalheads, one feels might just be utterly essential, something every self respecting metaller NEEDS to own, and this friends is one of those things, the long in the works hardcover book compendium of every single issue of long running (25 years!) Norwegian metal magazine Slayer. You might remember not long ago we reviewed the ultra deluxe hardcover version of the final issue of Slayer Magazine, which went out of print in a flash, that's included here too, but more on that in a second.
Bazillion Points, who also released the equally amazing and almost overwhelming Touch And Go zine compendium, not to mention Hellbent For Cooking,The Heavy Metal Cookbook, Tom Gabriel Fischer's Only Death Is Real Hellhammer / Celtic Frost book, and Daniel Ekeroth's Swedish Death Metal book, phew, has really outdone themselves with this Metalion book. It really does weigh SIX POUNDS, and is gorgeous, super striking front and back cover, printed in foil stamped red metallics. Inside you'll find EVERY PAGE of every single one of the zine's twenty issues, but that's not all, it's also, as the title suggests, a diary/memoir of sorts, kept by Slayer Mag mastermind Jon Kristiansen, all about the magazines, the story behind each issue, as well as his life in metal. It also includes the pre-Slayer zine Live Wire, of course tons of rare photos, and like that out of print Slayer Magazine issue XX. While the outside is super swank, the inside is total classic cut and paste old school zine style, lots of drawings and cartoons, different typefaces, photos, no efforts made to smooth the edges, to hide the bits of tape or the staples that might have show up in the photocopies, total DIY, kvlt metal zine, just fancied up and presented in book style. And over the course of 20 issues and 25 years, the magazine featured pretty much every metal (and metal beloved) band that mattered: Watain, Morbid, Whiplash, Bathory, Sadus, Kreator, Master's Hammer, Sadistik Exekution, Funeral Mist, Nifelheim, Destroyer 666, SUNNO))), Grotesque, Savage Thrust, Medieval, Invidious Deathrash, Obscurity, Nocturnal Graves, Pagan Altar, Strid, Mayhem, Emperor, Slayer, Nihilist, Celtic Frost, Cathedral, Entombed, Morbid, Napalm Death, Metallica, Opeth, Cradle of Filth,�Sadus, Satyricon, Enslaved, Pentagram, Jarboe, Immortal, Possessed, Overkill, Ulver, Dark Angel and more more more.
Also included are multiple forwards from publisher Ian Christie, SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley, Fenriz of Darkthrone, Tomas Lindberg from Grotesque, Chris Reifert from Death/Autopsy, and Erik Danielsson from Watain.
We've barely cracked the book and we're already totally captivated and will no doubt get sucked further in. Kristiansen is a great writer, his interviews are funny and cool, the bands really open up, and it's really interesting to read interviews with all these bands from the last two decades, and Kirstiansen's life story is pretty amazing, he's self deprecating, includes lots of embarrassing photos of himself as a child and a teen and at every stage of his metal evolution, and the way he tells his story is a pretty great read on its own, and the magazines are way more enjoyable now, with Kristiansen offering context and history and all the drama and various tales behind the assembly of each issue. Needless to say, this is metalhead nirvana, and even if you never read it, it'll look amazing on your coffee table, but odds are you won't be able to resist, and like us you'll get sucked in, and lost in 25 years of METAL.
Be warned, mailorder folks, this book is MASSIVE, and HEAVY, and we don't mean heavy like metal, we mean heavy like SIX POUNDS, so this book will be shipped by weight, not by the usual per-item flat rate price, but it's SO worth it...
We first discovered Krohm after Wrest from Leviathan suggested we check them out, if we were in the mood for some super dirgey, cold and miserable, almost doom-like suicidal black metal. When aren't we? And whaddayaknow? He was right. Nortt, Xasthur, even some Leviathan are the main touchstones for Krohm's super mournful doomic black metal. Nary a blast or furious riff to be found. Instead this is midtempo buzzing blackness. Like Malefic from Xasthur, Numinas from Krohm, weaves a bleak depressive instrumental back drop, all fuzzed out guitars, simple martial drumming, thick slabs of bass rumble, above which he drizzles haunting and heart breaking guitar melodies, peppered with his way down in the mix howls. This is a sea sick drift across a pitch black sonic ocean. Lurching and loping, riding the gentle swells, each track a sort of sea sick waltz, or a death march across a muddy swamp, trudging head down, eyes cast Earthward, body racked with sorrow, a sky full of cold rain. A soul as black as your broken heart, dead and done beating forever, walking and wandering and waiting for the ground to swallow you whole. So awesome.
Essential for fans of Xasthur and Nortt and all manner of depressive black doom...
An entirely new (and entirely grim) prospect to us here at aQ HQ, Mysterium Coniunctionis brings together two hitherto unheard of corpse-painted practitioners of the dark arts: Italy's Krowos and France's Malepeste, both of whom thrive in the murkiest depths of mid tempo depressive raw black metal. The three Krowos tracks ply almost exclusively in a shuffling Burzumic plod (with the occasional daliance into a Transilvanian Hunger-esque blast) - a dreadful and inevitable suicide trance - the vocals anguished and shrill, the guitar work simple, patient, repetitive and hypnotic. The sound is muddy and lightless (as it should be), a slow motion abyssian slog into nothingness. Malepeste's contribution are no more uplifting, peppering their marching funereal thud with some deep droning Attila Csihar-esque vocals. Musically, they mine a similar field as Krowos, their brand of black metal slow, simple and bleak, but accented by an off kilter looseness that adds a certain sickening delirium to the proceedings. Those interested in black metal's darkest, most hopeless canals need look no further than this staggering, bleeding husk of a split.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Austrian metallers Silenius (of Summoning) and Martin Schirenc (Hollenthon, ex-Pungent Stench) have crafted this disturbing and confusing collage of sampled sounds. If I knew more German we might have a better idea of their intent, but what we can tell you is that this combines snippets of fascist-era speechifying, ominous horror-movie keyboards, folky themes, WWII sound effects, militaristic drumbeats, electronic noise, mysterious dialogue, and brief industrial-dance interludes. It's a bit like being trapped in a bunker circa 1944 as the bombs fall, tuned into a shortwave radio that is somehow, at moments, picking up a Rammstein broadcast from the future. A very intriguing and creepy listen indeed.
Finland's Ektro Records label (run by Jussi from Circle/Pharaoh Overlord as you may know) would have us believe that this four-song ep is one from the vaults, supposedly a reissue of singles tracks recorded back in '83 by the mysterious metal entity known as Krypt Axeripper. Obscure cult '80s metal, eh? Well it looks like it: it's got a suitable logo, fantastical n' scary artwork, and the cd booklet even reproduces the labels from the "original" vinyl release of the tracks "Battle Of The Axehammer" and "Possessed (By Trees)". Wait a sec, "Battle Of The Axehammer"? Isn't that also the title of the live Pharaoh Overlord album? Indeed it is, and we're about 99.666 percent sure that "Krypt Axeripper" is in fact the heavy metal alter ego of our friend Jussi! Playing guitars, bass, synths, and singing, Axeripper is joined by "Rattfinder" on drums, who from the sound of it is probably one of Jussi's colleagues in Circle...
And of course, as with *anything* Circle-related, no matter what the concept, it's got that hypnotic Circle-sound at its base. In fact, we'd say that there's stuff on Circle's Sunrise or Pharaoh Overlord 4 that's actually way more metal than the songs here. Yes, they're all got a bunch of very metal (and crudely catchy) guitar riffing going on, albeit ramshackle and lo-fi. But then there's the vocals, which despite lyrics about Lucifer, have a very woozy, weirdly crooned, eccentrically pop quality to them, pitched high in a much more gentle way than a real metal screecher would do. And the guitar solos -- those are all totally psychedelic, Floydian/Frippian washes, really nice as well. And the drums, we mentioned, not metal at all. Too wimpy and motorikally rhythmic. So it's a truly unique and amusing mix, and we LOVE it. Sure the vocals come across as a bit silly at first, but they're actually pretty cool when you really listen, and it's impressive how the vocal parts are arranged, with various lead and backing vocals interwoven, all sung by Mr. Axeripper hisownself.
False metal? More like freak metal. Krypt Axeripper may be fake (and funny) but we're still fans for real. It's interesting how in trying to make a pastiche of heavy metal music (if that's really what he was trying to do...), Jussi came up with something that, if we had to compare it to an actual metal record, reminds us of Voivod's most controversially "alternative" album, the college radio confusional Angel Rat from 1991. We also appreciate that this experiment was kept to just 11 minutes, four amazing, strange songs, not overdoing it, just enough to give his inner metalfan a chuckle -- and to get us to keep hitting play again and again and again on this wacked-out quartet of relaxed, quasi-metallic tracks. Krypt Axeripper seriously (or maybe not-so-seriously) rules!
The return of KTL! Maybe our favorite of the many satellites circling the Sunn 0))). One half of that dynamic doomdrone duo, Stephen O'Malley, hooked up with Austrian noisemaker Peter Rehberg (aka Pita) a year or two back, and the result was the godlike s/t debut, the soundtrack to a performance art piece (of which this also contains elements), which we can only assume was dark and creepy, considering the music on that disc was a black hole slab of expansive subterranean drones and damaged digital buzz. KTL managed to create an intense chunk of dark art, in the midst of a million bedroom drones, so while we played that disc to death, we secretly hoped it wouldn't be the last we'd hear from these two.�
Not a year later, and KTL are back, with another sprawling journey, trawling through the bottomless depths of some hellish underworld and drifting weightless through a starless black sky. A bleak, but occasionally jarring landscape of sonic mystery rife with plenty of drone and buzz.�
The opener is a bleak expanse of claustrophobic sound, the sound of waking up in pitch blackness, wet, cold and alone, wandering blindly, feeling your way, hands rubbed raw from sliding along rough stone, the tiniest sounds magnified into some lurking beast ready to pounce, gusts of warm wind rush past, as do strange slithery shapes underfoot, you can hear the wide open space towering overhead, but you can feel the walls closing in, suffocating. Gorgeously dark and bleak, ominous and so creepy. The perfect music for being buried alive, miles below the surface of the Earth. As the first track dissipates, a strange percussive thump gradually surfaces, a heartbeat maybe... a dense layered backdrop of shimmering low end and muted pulses undulates beneath the murky throb, very slowly building in intensity, as streaks of high end grit and buzzing glitch, and strange high pitched melodic fragments begin to materialize all around, like suddenly finding yourself inside a lightning storm, it's almost pretty, but still sharp and jagged. As the upper register peals intensify, they suddenly coalesce into some sort of deafening angelic chorus, a gorgeous layered textural wall of dreamlike skree, some demonic string section, surprisingly melodic beneath all the sonic barbs and white hot buzz. Hard to describe other than to say it's a bit like Nadja or Jesu, run through a bank of alien FX pedals and broadcast through a million tweeters. So intense and gloriously blown out.�
The next step in the journey involves visiting the "Abattoir" (much of this disc was in fact recorded in an actual French Abattoir) , and it sounds just like you'd imagine. A bit like O'Malley's Sunn 0))), with layer upon layer of constantly shifting coruscating guitars, a drone metal Niblock maybe, stretched out and hypnotic, the texture of the guitar constantly ever changing, going from smooth and washed out to rough and sharp, a bit like Spacemen 3 or Loop at it's most propulsive, a sort of churning distorted chordal whir, and a lot like Sunn 0))) at its most static. But all throughout, the rough raw shimmer is disrupted by all manner of textural disturbances, bits of grit and muted glitch and subtle shards of fragmented melody.�
Finally, the record winds down with an extended coda, thick shards of glistening guitar suspended in gauzy clouds of electronic flutter and swirls of soft sonic snow. Eventually the sharp edges are worn away leaving a strangely haunting slightly degraded Basinski-esque drift that is smoothed even further out, into shimmery spacey synths and sweet chordal swells that drift away leaving nothing but static.
Hot on the heels of KTL number two, comes, you guessed it, number three, this one however is a brief two tracks, carved into a gorgeous one sided lp, with the other side featuring a super striking etching than none other than Savage Pencil.�
Like 2, 3 also features music the duo of Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita) composed and recorded for�the theatre piece Kindertotenlieder by Gisele Vienne and Dennis Cooper, which goes a long way to explaining why, 3, even more than 2 maybe, sounds so dramatic and even cinematic at moments.�
The first of the two tracks here is quite brief, an introduction almost, effects and glitched electronics swirl over a deep black whorl of muted guitar buzz and warm organ whir, a pulsing, vibrating, shimmering backdrop that hovers and flutters beneath streaks of electronics and smeared feedback, and groaning industrial creaks and grinds.�
The second track is the main attraction here, and takes up most of the side, based around an incredibly intense super low speaker rattling rumble, a sort of blurred and abstract low rider bass, almost more felt than heard, that throbs and sets bones rattling in your skin, a bottomless black morass, a sonic tar pit which all manner of strange and subtle sounds seem to be struggling against, desperately trying to keep from being sucked under. Scrabbling, atonal Derek Bailey like guitar scratch and scrape, haunting plink plonk melodies, tiny high end trills, sparkling slivers of feedback, subtle electronic shadings, all drifting on that ominous and constantly shifting extreme low end black sonic sea. A truly haunting, gorgeous chunk of deep deep deep black ambience...
Packaged in ultra thick jackets, the vinyl housed in a black printed inner sleeve, sealed with a sticker.�
Perfect for the dead of winter, it's another quietly creepy, digital dronedoom opus from this two-man stupor group, featuring Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita), this time with production assistance from Jim O'Rourke. If you've heard KTL's I, II, or III (which was vinyl-only) you have an idea of what to expect - and are probably already plotting to purchase this. This is their first studio album constructed entirely for their own dark purposes, as opposed to having been commissioned as a soundtrack for live theatrical performance or film, though it certainly still has mysterious, soundtrack-y qualities. The sort that usually causes us, in reviews of KTL (and other dronesters too) to paint word-pictures of what the music evokes in our mind's eye. Subterranean caverns, bottomless pits, fallen angelic choirs, airplanes buzzing over dark forests... but we won't bother this time, you should just listen to this and your own imagination should have no difficulty providing all sorts of esoteric imagery. It may be soothing, it may be scary. Probably scary, it's up to you though. We find a lot of this to be as sinister and grim as Dick Cheney was in his Dr. Strangelove wheelchair at Obama's inauguration!
These six tracks are full of seismic rumble, high end hiss, eerie abstract glitch, sweeping drones, ringing electronics... some more epic and/or active than others. Distorted industrial rhythms shudder through several cuts, notably the disc's longest piece, the 21+ minute "Paratrooper", which features doomic beats by the drummer from Japan's Boris (who also brings his gong for an appearance on the disc's final track). While that's KTL IV at its heaviest, most of this is more like the sound of SUNNO))) sighing and whispering... or, conversely, Pita busting out a guitar to play along to a half-melted Swans record he found in the ashes of a burned-down church.
Ahhhh, the black ambient onslaught continues. A vinyl based campaign to rain corrosive black drones on an adoring audience moves forward unabated, and we're right there in the front, face raised to the sky, letting the buzz and whir and rumble and roar rain down on us...
KTL is the duo of Stephen O'Malley, one half of the not-so dynamic duo SUNNO))), and Peter Rehberg, aka Pita. Their sound is a bit SUNNO))) like, with O'Malley unfurling sheets of abstract riffage, and Rehberg contributing various blasts of processed sounds and power electronics, the result is in fact quite beautiful, the three full lengths have helped solidify KTL as one of our favorite SUNN side projects, taking the churning brutality of that group, and stretching it out into something more abstract and expansive, still a dark sonic trawl, but the guitar is less downtuned and sludgy and more glimmering and effulgent, not to say it's not still doomy and dark, just more colored and less BLACK. And of course, there's so much more texture, with Rehberg delivering intense subsonics, smeared buzz, and all manner of blurred wonder, it's a pretty stellar combination.
So here we have a live recording of the duo, performing a few KTL classics, and one brand new track. Which is interesting as we just assumed that KTL was improvised, and while maybe there is an element of that in their music, you can definitely here bits and pieces that you'll recognize from the other recordings, and probably the more eagle eared among you will be able to pick out whole songs.
The first side opens up with a doomy swirl of washed out guitar, corrosive and keening, the riffs unfolding and overlapping. We don't really hear Rehberg until a few minutes in, when he offers up a thick, crumbling, superdistorted low end throb, that grinds ominously just below the sprawling guitarnoise, surfacing every once in a while to nearly blow your speakers. The sound builds to a glorious crescendo, sounding a bit like Sunroof! Or GHQ or one of those sort of ur-psych combos, but with a subtly abrasive digital component, that gives the sound a bit of an alien feel, the sound constantly thickening, with Rehberg's electronic machinations gradually overtaking the moaning guitars.
The flipside is even more blown out and psychedelic, O'Malley's guitars soaring ever skyward, roaring and keening, Rehberg wrapping those guitars in billowing sheets of grumbling digital glitter, smearing the churning riffage into haunting, nearly orchestral swells. So good.
Gorgeously packaged, deluxe gatefold, striking live images from the performance, also includes a massive poster of the show. Vinyl only for now. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Each one numbered. Not sure if there is a cd planned or not, still no cd of KTL 3, so you might want to grab one before they're gone.
SUNNO)))-worshippers alert! 1/2 of that drone metal behemoth, our pal Stephen O'Malley (who has also piloted or participated in such units as Khanate, Burning Witch, Ginnungagap, Teeth Of The Lions Rule The Divine, Thorr's Hammer, Fungal Hex, Lotus Eaters, etc.) has travelled to Europe to collaborate with Austrian experimental digital noise artist Peter "Pita" Rehberg! They're calling themselves KTL because the music they made is to be the soundtrack to some sort of stage piece called Kindertotenlieder by performance artist Gisele Vienne and novelist Dennis Cooper ("Closer") due to debut at a festival in France next year. Judging from the music, not to mention the people involved, we imagine it's gonna be beautiful, but also somehow disturbing and dark... This cd certainly is.
It starts off with the 24 minute drone "Estranged", blissful and spooky piece that builds towards its end to noisier heights, threatening the storms to come on this album. And yes, the four parts of "Forest Floor" that take up the main, middle part of the disc are a harrowing journey indeed, into a buzzing, claustrophobic realm of dangerous digital sonics and heavy drone, like SUNNO)))'s lugubrious riffage mixed with the glitchy crunch of Pita -- which is what it is, of course! Not for the faint of heart. Part four, in particular, sounds like a doomed prop engine airplane rumbling over a dark forest landscape from some black metal album cover, at night...
Finally O'Malley and Rehberg wind things up with the quieter (but still creepy) 13 minutes of "Snow", a softly pulsing, detailed improv exploration of lowercase sounds... Very nice!
Let's hope KTL isn't just a one-off collaboration, we'd like to hear more from these two! Their mastery of minimalist ambient music, electronic glitchology and Earthy guitar sludge make a fine sipping brew.
A note for all you object fetishizing consumerist completist types, be forewarned that there will eventually also be a vinyl version of this on the Aurora Borealis label, a double LP limited to 500 copies... we can take preorders now...
Back in 2010 or 2011, these guys were being touted as the next big thing, which was crazy, cuz we couldn't track down their record. We were reading about them everywhere, and seeing the on all sorts of top tens, all before we heard a lick of music. Well when we finally did, we definitely understood what everybody was so excited about. That first record was heavy and hooky, and was a sort of mish mash of influences, black metal, D-beat, cock rock, stoner rock, and somehow it all worked, it might not have knocked out socks off like everyone else, but we did dig it a lot. Enough that we were pretty excited to discover there was a new record.
And if anything, this new one Meir, pretty much oneups that first record in every way. Well, almost. The first one was definitely meaner, and had more of the black metal and D-beat stuff going on. This new one is a whole lot poppier, and the clean vocals are really good, like proper singing, with some of the songs here catchy enough that we wouldn't be at all surprised to hear them on the radio. We mentioned Turbonegro in our review of the first record, and recently when someone was in the store asking what these guys sounded like, we came up with "Turbonegro, if they weren't joking", which isn't all that far off the mark. The sound is crazy catchy, over the top, totally bombastic, but still pretty heavy, most definitely metal, but there are some crazy melodies that sound like they were plucked straight off some top 40 jam, the saving grace is that they're then doused in distortion and someone howls their guts out over the top. And most of the songs have full on blast beats, furious riffing and lightning fast pounding, but often those blasts don't sound mean or black, just epic and triumphant, and like a faster version of the catchy part already in play. Check out the first two sound samples, those have to be the happiest, most sunshiney blasts EVER. And the third track starts off with a full on blast, but with gang vocals, and some swirling guitars, and the blast blossoms into some classic sounding anthemic eighties metal, or at least a meaner more modern version. Again, catchy like crazy, but still heavy, there's even some slide guitar giving the sound a sort of Hellacopters vibe. In fact, every time the clean vocals come in, the sound gets VERY Hellacopter-ish. Allan hates when we mention bands like Queens Of The Stone Age or the Foo Fighters, but in some ways, Kvelertak sounds like a heavier, meaner, louder and WAY better band than groups like those. Holy shit we just got to a part with handclaps and footstomps, the band suddenly sounding like a super metal version of Queen. Which is absolutely a good thing!!
These guys are Norwegian, so this stuff probably IS top 40 there, that's usually how it works, in a country where Dimmu Borgir win Grammies, but really, this record is so good, and these guys are genuinely fucking great, it's sort of a crime this stuff is not all over the radio EVERYwhere. Which of course means, if you couldn't tell, WAY recommended.
It was beginning to get pretty ridiculous, for ages we were hearing all about this band, how great they were, reading about them in metal mags, hearing other metal bands rave about them, much talk of how amazing their record was, appearances in top ten lists, pictures of the super striking John Baizley cover art everywhere, even beginnings of a backlash on the blogs about how overhyped they were, but the only problem was, you couldn't find the record ANYWHERE! At least in the US, we spent months and months, trying every metal distro, every non metal distro, we had just about given up, when voila, it finally got picked up and released domestically, with a whole mess of bonus tracks to boot. So was the wait worth it? Does Kvelertak live up to the hype?
Well, yeah, actually it was. This stuff IS pretty awesome, and bizarre, a weird blend of blasting black metal and D-beat cock-rock Turbonegro style over the top rock. Just have a listen to the opening track, which explodes in a frenzy of buzz and blast and shriek, only to switch gears into a way more groovy heavy metal punk pound, the shrieked vocals the only thing keeping it from going full Turbonegro. In fact, the NON black metal parts kind of sound like a supercharged Hellacopters, which is not at all a bad thing. And the sound is epic, the production massive, the energy through the roof.
But it's that sort of heavy rock groove thing, that might deter lots of the more true and kvlt metalheads. "Mjod" is all pounding pianos and tamborines, and big rock riffage, epic and swinging, that Hellacopters vibe huge, and the vocals are shrieky, not counting the deep bellowed gang vocals on the chorus, there's even a little acoustic guitar break, and then suddenly, a stretch of blasting black metal, which slips right back into the soaring cock rocky chorus. And so it goes. Hard to tell if these guys are black metallers indulging their inner KISS (or Turbonegro, or Hellacopters, or...), or if it's just some heavy rockers who toss in a blast here and there or a little tremlo picking to add some cult cred. Cuz it is a weird mix, and it doesn't always flow so smoothly, but we're digging it a lot, and if anything, it sounds like these guys probably KILL live. And that definitely comes across here big time.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This brand new 7" from Swedish depressive black metaller Kyla sounds exactly how you might expect, considering the man behind Kyla is also responsible for the equally black and depressive Hypothermia, as well as counting himself a member of damaged black metal pop weirdos Lifelover.
Kyla traffic in a sound we love, a woozy, super distorted, melancholic, minor key buzz, which begins all warbly and minimal before giving way to a mesmerizing trancelike not-quite-blast. The vocals are howled and anguished and echo drenched and nearly hysterical sounding at points, but they surface only here and there, leaving most of the record to pound out a hypnotic blackened dirge. The guitars are downtuned and almost sludgey sounding in tone, the drums muffled enough to blend in with the blurred guitars and rumbling low end, the B-side has a weird pop vibe running through it, and a killer main melody, reminding us big time of Lifelover, but the vocals are even more unhinged, exploding in squalls of terrifying shriek.
Pressed on ultra thick vinyl, housed in super striking black and white sleeves, and of course VERY LIMITED!
Kylesa are another one of those bands we've always dug, but for whatever reason, have never reviewed ANY of their records. So time to remedy that omission right now, with this, their 5th full length, since 2001, when the band was born out of the dissolution of Savannah sludge metal outfit Damad, and like Damad, Kylesa trafficked in a similarly sludgey Southern sound, epic crushing downtuned riffs, howled vox and dense tribal drumming. Heavily influenced by Neurosis, Kylesa kicked out jams that were doomy and low slung, swampy and thick, crushing riffage giving way to stretches of rhythmic mesmer, only to explode into another head caving burst of metallic crush.
Over the years though, Kylesa's sound has changed dramatically, like their Southern sonic compatriots Baroness, their music started out super heavy and sludgey, almost punk, feral and fierce and crusty and brutal, and gradually developed into something much more psychedelic, melodic, and at times downright poppy.
On A Spiral Shadow, the songs concern themselves with texture and arrangement as much as pummel, moreso in many cases, the dual drummers adding an awesome and densely rhythmic element, with the band sometimes breaking down into total Crash Worship drum jams (and live, the stage is littered with drums, so the guitarists can join in), the guitars too, for as much as they grind and churn and chug, they also soar and chime, melodies and harmonies woven into intricate psychscapes, the songs slipping easily from hooky metallic psych pop to fierce doomy plod and back again, howled male vocals switch off with more melodic female vox, it's easy to see why this seems to be Kylesa's 'breakout' record. It's still heavy, and complex, and metal, but also hooky and melodic and sort of tripped out and psychedelic. Makes sense that folks into Mastodon and newer Baroness are all over this stuff. And rightfully so.
If we had to pick a favorite track it would probably be "Don't Look Back" which is so dangerously poppy, it almost sounds out of place, like it might belong on a Torche record, or like it must be some nineties indie rock cover, but for all it's extreme hookiness, and incredibly catchy guitar harmonies, the sound is still thick and lush, with some seriously crunchy verses, and some pummeling drumming, holy shit, it's just so goddamn catchy, this song totally KILLS.
The thing is though, the more we listen to this record, the less this track really stands out, and the more the rest of the songs seem to start sounding nearly as catchy, even at it's heaviest, A spiral Shadow is infused with melody and texture, the arrangements hypnotic and trancelike, soaring epic crescendos and stretched out hypnodronerock all tangled up with gnarled downtuned pound and fierce churning pummel, and for every bit of metallic chug there's some mysterious melodic warmth or poppy psychedelic shimmer woven in. Awesome.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Includes the songs from their Man's Ruin 10" (that featured a cover of Sabbath's "Into The Void"), as well as recordings by guitarist John Homme's post-Kyuss outfit Gamma Ray (now called Queens Of The Stone Age because of the other Gamma Ray that all you Helloween fans are of course familiar with).
The Northwest's harshest militaristic horde returns with this cassette-only collection: five tracks (including three covers!) of hateful in-the-red black metal, grim neo-folk and crumbling black ambience. Opening ominously with an eerie choral wail, before launching into an overwhelmingly noisy cover of Emperor's "Ye Entrancemperium" (complete with an actual sample of the original's spoken word intro), dragging this classic regal monument of symphonic black metal into the realms of clattering lo-fi, taking a song that was already labyrinthian and opaque and plunging it into even murkier, more impenetrable depths. "Sleep Is The Enemy" is by contrast simpler, but that's not to imply it's any easier of a ride - opening with the foreboding ticking and chiming of some monstrous clock before emerging as a massive tuneless dirge that shifts into a wall of frantic blasts, buried subliminal growls and ghostly breathy whispers, but always returning to the dreamy surreal horror of that looming haunted chime. L'Acephale's take on Darkthrone's "As Flittermice As Satans Spys" (easily one of the best/weirdest BM song titles ever) is the biggest departure here - building this timeless piece of simplistic shadowy black metal into a grim neo-folk march, complete with the rapid strum of a mandolin, cracking militaristic thuds and inhuman howling. "Passing Into Sleep" is an atmospheric wash of moss-flecked black ambience. The single deathly groaning note of a haunted piano tolls endlessly underneath a wall of droning loneliness, creaking and shifting under the weight of its distant feedback and echo drenched operatic vocals. Closing out the proceedings is a reworking of Current 93's "Let Us Go To The Rose" (here translated into the French "Allons Vior Si La Rose"), taking the sparse folk melodies of the original and letting them drift hazily over a minimal, mid-paced, very Burzum-esque drum beat, before morphing into a churning trance of grinding tremolo guitars and furious blasts. And as this is being put out by Black Horizons it goes without saying that the packaging is minimal and beautiful, even including a miniature black and silver printed poster, incorporating the original artwork from Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger into an abstract surreal collage.
They may have taken two years between their first and second records, but here comes number three, mere months after we raved about number two, Stahlhartes Gehause. Malefeasance is another stunner, again mixing all manner of experimentation and soundscapery with a core grim black buzz, but L'Acephale move ever farther from the constricting tropes of black metal here, instead utilizing those sounds and styles to their own end, i.e. creating some of the most mysterious and darkly compelling abstract buzz drenched heaviness we've heard in ages.
Where Stahlhartes Gehause was still essentially a black metal record, Malefeasance feels like anything but, with much of the record buzz-free, and even when the band do create some seriously harrowing grimnity, it's abstract, and obtuse, avant even, bordering on a sort of sculpted noise, utilizing bits of blackness to enhance each track's mood and menace.
Album opener "Vainamoinen Nacht" is an epic 10 minute chunk of blackened drift, hushed and shimmery, laced with strange samples and nits of found sound, ominous and haunting, eventually, the song culminates in a flurry of hiss and static and crunch, leaving just some strange bit of European choral music. The following track, "Hitori Bon Odori", harkens back to L'Acephale's Mord Und Totsclag record, offering up some apocalyptic folk, replete with steel string strum and martial snares, whirling winds, and deem ominous wordless vocals. "A Burned Village" is the first time the band explore any black metal, although the track begins with a haunting funereal drum dirge and deep monk like chanting, which continues throughout the track, which consists of buzzing insectoid riffage, harsh vokills, and no traditional blasting drum beats, instead, more martial snares and that same opening percussion. Heavy for sure, and black, but not necessarily metal, more like some sort of metallic black ambience.
The last three tracks, clocking in at 18:09, 14:17 and 23:00 respectively, make up the bulk of the record, the first, "From A Miserable Abode" explodes in a squall of swirling downtuned guitars, super distorted and saturated vocals, a heaving Merzbowian freakout, tons of effects and stuttering sonic fragments, there do seem to be drums, but they're buried in the mix, instead the track seems to expand ever outwards, a huge dense cloud of frenzied sound, all underpinned by a moaning, keening high end drone, which later on reveals itself as a bagpipe or some sort of horn, the metal and noise fading out, leaving just a glorious Eastern style high end ur-drone, mesmerizing and meditative and very very mysterious. "Sleep Has His House" is another 'metal' track, but again, there seems to be very little forward momentum, very little propulsion, instead, the band whip up supercharged drifts of noise drenched high end skree, while underneath, a guitar is locked in a motorik hypnotic loop, the result a sound like some Finnish forest drone folk outfit remixed by some harsh noise combo, the two disparate elements melding into something wholly original and hauntingly listenable.
Finally, the record closes with the 23 minute "Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted", a deep drone / soft noise exploration, beginning with some subsonic rumbles, some streaks of feedback and brittle high end, and finally an extended doom folk dirge outro, a simple minor key guitar figure over a backdrop of his and whir, the whole thing strangely textural and visceral, ominous and dense with menace.
It's definitely strange that what might be the best L'Acephale record so far, also happens to be the least metal. So much so that we can only recommend this to the most adventurous of metalheads (which we like to think would be the majority of metal loving folk that read the aQ list), but fair warning to the rest, that this is not really a black metal record at all, instead, it's some gloriously abstract, blackened ritualistic collection of dark metallic drift and alchemical doom folk, of blacknoise and apocalyptic dronemusik, and thus, metal or not, is WAY recommended.
A year or so back, a strange and mysterious cd was left for us to listen to. An oversized black package adorned with a cryptic white woodcut, all sorts of strange text, in other languages. It took us forever to get around to it, but once we did we were kicking ourselves BIG time. One of the most amazing slabs of buzzing black grimness EVER. With lots of weird ambient and acoustic stuff mixed in. So we got in touch with the band to order a whole bunch, but unfortunately, it was limited to 100 copies and was gone gone gone.�
So�here we are a while later and in swoops Aurora Borealis to save the day, reissuing that very same cd-r, as an actual cd, in a a super swank dvd style case, with a printed slipcover, as well as a bunch of inserts and even a poster. But all that stuff is just extra, it's the creepy fucked up black damage inside that we're most concerned with.�
A French band name, a German album title, but the band is in fact from Portland, which is a bit unexpected once the filthy black fog of Mord Un Totschlag comes creeping out of your speakers. The guitars are harsh and buzzing, super high end, whirling and furious, with strange little epic melodies and harmonies surfacing here and there, but for the most part, each track is an extreme blast of buzzing blackness, the drums barely there, a constant pound way down in the mix, and the vocals, even more brittle and acidic than the guitars, threatening to overwhelm everything, a harsh hateful hissy howl. Repetitive and hypnotic, epic and majestic, and ultra grim and raw. Lo-fi but still heavy and relentless.�
These black blasts are separated by haunting stretches of apocalyptic folk, which makes a bit of sense when you realize the band features at least one member of Blood Axis and Waldteufel. Dark, dolorous, downtuned guitars strewn over vast expanses of murk and grime, haunting vocals, crumbling industrial ambience, tolling bells, the final track, "Euntes Ibant Et Flebant" is a black ambient epic, a spare sonic wasteland, with angelic vocals buried in the mix, what sound like bombs exploding in the distance and random low end disturbances way way off, rain, thunder, disembodied voices, simple muted percussion, angular guitars drenched in reverb, a gorgeous sprawl of wartime shimmer, of dismal desolate ambience.�
The record seems to center around the 21 minute�"Against A Weeping Sea Of Sleep" which begins as a white hot burst of hellish hateful buzz, the vocals AND guitar blown out almost to the point of becoming pure white noise, until the buzz dissipates, giving way to a simple funeral strum, over a shifting shimmering soundscape of ghostly vocals, and industrial whirs, until the buzz returns, but it's been transformed into a wispy sheet of sound which is draped over a swirling sea of mournful melodies and strummed flamenco sounding guitar, as well as that original steel string dirge, strangely lovely and haunting. The perfect combination of L'Acephale's two seemingly disparate sonic sides.�
Packaged in a dvd style case, housed in a cardstock slipcover, with a huge booklet featuring tons of intense woodcuts, random text, notes on each song, photos, diagrams and drawings, as well as a fold out black and white mini poster.�
It's taken two years, but L'Acephale have finally returned. This Northwestern black metal horde, whose debut was a massive hit around here, after it mysteriously showed up one day, has risen from the murk once again, dragging an army of deacaying flesh with them, hidden from view in the Cascadian forests, the then proceeded to conjure up all manner of sounds and spirits, capturing them only to flay them alive, spread them out beneath a black sun, guts and all, carefully and meticulously crafting the sonic abomination that is this, their second blackened gospel. Another distrubing hybrid of militaristic martial folk, and furious blasting raw blackness, four songs, long songs, the shortest 12 minutes, the longest nearly 25, the opening, a haunting bit of sampled vocals, militaristic percussion, dense drones, haunting chorales, that goes on for nearly six minutes, building the tension, sprawling out like some black military slowly moving machine like toward their next conquest, until finally, the band explode into action, a black cloud of furious buzzing riffage, blasting beats, grunting growling vocals, all wound up into a woozy dizzyingly blasting bit of lurching blackened metal. And then out of nowhere, the buzz and blast drop away, leaving some dark folk, soft strumming, crooned dramatic vocals, moaning violin, the sound definitely reminiscent of Der Blutharsch or Death In June (or perhaps Blood Axis or Waldteufel, seeing as Markus Wolff, one of the drummers, plays in both), gorgeous and languid and darkly haunting, until the rest of the band joins in, splattering the tranquility with chatoc blasts of wild drumming, and more frenetic riffing, finally dropping out, leaving just the sound of wind, and a woman, singing some sort of folks song. Really intense and mysterious. And that's just the first song!
The other three tracks are just as dense and tangled, with sampled soundtracks, to convoluted Deathspell style blackness, laced with haunting acoustic guitars, the band locking into some seriously intense bursts of mathy buzz, languid stretches of string laced dark ambient folk, simple strum, and mournful melodies, soaring epic sounding black doom, majestic and mighty, suoper chaotic black psychedelia whipped into a frenzy and wrapped around a women's chorus, like some fucked up black metal opera, deep lumbering minimal drones, sprawling out endlessly, beneath strange bits of creak and groan, and deep intoned voices, some sort of incantation, creepy bits of piano parlor music, all wrapped up in, and surrounded by, jagged shards of grim frosty blackend buzz.
A seriously twisted and magickal collection of ritualistik black art, a litany of musical blasphemies, as lovely and mysterious as they are hellish and haunting.A black covenent scrawled in flesh and blood, and rendered in pure audial evil.
Incredible packaging, 6 panel digipak, with a massive booklet, which tons of diagrams, photos, lyrics, liner notes, as well as text about the meaning behind each song.
Yet another new (to us at least) release from Northwestern apocalyptic folk / black metal horde L'Acephale, whose new record Stahlhartes we raved about on the last list. These two tracks were recorded back in 2005, when this record was actually released, predating even their first demo / full length Mord Und Totsclag.
And anyone who dug either or both L'Acephale's records will probably need this too. Both tracks unreleased, exclusive to this single, not so much folk here, instead, barring some creepy choral intros and a haunting ambient hymn like outro, this is full on raw and harsh old school black metal, furious and frenetic, pounding and thrashing and blasting, the vocals chaotic and off kilter, the riffage brittle and buzzy, the drums dense and often buried in the mix. There are some strange arrangements, some almost militaristic breakdowns, a bit of post rocky mathiness here and there, but those moments are subtle and barely discernible within L'Acephale's blown out sonic squall, a furious and relentless, grim and blackened two part plague delivered from the depths... glorious, soul shearing pestilence in sound.
Beautiful packaging, a black and red gatefold sleeve, with lyrics, credits, some amazing black and white photos of skulls and catacombs, also a printed insert, pressed on red vinyl, and limited to 1000 copies, each one hand numbered (and the numbers are getting up there, so odds are these are almost gone).
If you're like us, you probably never heard of these Boston bashers, a short lived ultra heavy combo from Boston, with just a handful of releases, all collected here, and a sound that makes us wish we had, and one that most definitely puts most other heavy bands to shame, equal parts gnarled Black Flag dirge, mathy sci-fi Voivod-isms, and churning downtuned Swans like pummel, every track here a grim, dense slab of sonic crush, the guitars massive and thick, the riffs fucking fierce, the drums devastating, the band alternatingly locking into hypnorock grooves, or super intricate, churning mathiness, loads of buzz and feedback, total math rock / post rock / noise rock / post punk bliss.
The label describes these guys thusly: "Imagine massive slabs of discordance at earsplitting volume and a terrifyingly intense, tattooed madman working out his personal demons while wearing a too-small Sonic the Hedgehog tee shirt", which sounds pretty amazing (and had us thinking of Oxbow for some reason), and La Gritona, even minus the apparently terrifying live experience, sound pretty goddamn terrifying on record too, with plenty of Jesus Lizard-y swagger, Helmet like metallic chug, and that vocalist, mostly singing in a monstrous bellow, but seemingly constantly slipping into a crazy hysterical shriek, but not like a metal shriek, more like an inhuman high pitched squeal, weirdly haunting, and definitely disturbing, but perfectly suited to LG's pigfuck heaviness. And while they do slow it down every once in a while, those slow songs almost sound even more intense, offering up a sort of mutant blues Birthday Party style onslaught.
Every single track here rules, from tangled atonal metallic dirgery, to doomed out lurching math sludge, old school noise rock crunch to psychedelic fuzzed out harmonic drenched post punk, a sound that at the time was obviously a decade or so to early, but that to these ears would have the current crop of sludge worshippers going nuts, and if Harvey Milk can finally get the love and adoration they so deserved, a full decade late, then why the hell not these guys. And as long as we're mentioning it, Harvey Milk fanatics would do well to check these guys out too. Just sayin'...
Massive double disc, 40 track collection gathering up EVERYTHING these guys ever recorded, which includes loads of unreleased and live tracks, as well as the Steve Albini engineered full length Arrasa Con Todo, which just might be one of the most perfect slabs of skull splitting downtuned heaviness we've ever heard.
All right, this is a relief. Reviewing a freakin' kick ass real ROCK N' ROLL record. Nice to know they still can make 'em. Not that we didn't expect a healthy helping of rockin' from Lima's La Ira De Dios, whose previous album more than lived up to its title, Cosmos Kaos Destruccion (no translation needed, right?). We compared 'em to stonery stuff like Monster Magnet and Hawkwind last time 'round, but on Apus Revolution Rock they've gone even more raw and retro, punking it up '60s garage fuzzmonster style, with nods to surf music and other retro sounds, to the extent of including screaming girls (La Ira De Dios mania!?) in the mix on the blown out opening cut "Revolucion", which has a '50s meets the Stooges vibe that sounds a lot like '70s Japanese jams-kicker-outers Gedo. Good grief! What's not to like about that? And if you like to rock that is. THEY sure do, second track "No Hay Control" not letting up, in fact, cranking it up, it and ALL the dozen tracks on this album delivering nothin' but 110 percent high energy distortodelic rock action.
Need we say more? 'Cause La Ira De Dios really say it all with the slogan on the cd booklet: "Peru Psicodelia Punk". Another one they're fond of: "MAXIMUMVOLUMEROCKANDROLL!!!" If you're looking for catchy amped up anarchistic rawk with tons o' frantic fuzz, and cowbell too, for fans of The Heads, The Hives, Crushed Butler, Mudhoney, Larry Wallis era Pink Fairies, Motorhead, Boris circa Pink, fellow Peruvians / labelmates El Cuy, and other rad rockin' coolness of that ilk then La Ira De Dios have a rekkid for you!! Or if you can, imagine Los Natas on a search and destroy mission to do a Louie Louie and you're close to what La Ira De Dios is dishing out here.
So yeah, reviewing this was a blast, just turned it up and let the rock dictate these words... now the problem is turning it off and trying to put on something else we gotta review, which almost by definition will be less rockin' and thus less worthwhile. Plus somehow, in the process of reviewing this, we had a couple beers...maybe we'll just play this record one more time.
By the way, the vinyl version of this comes with a bonus 7", featuring of all things, a cover of "Shadowplay" by Joy Division (!), whereas the compact disc includes an exclusive bonus video for the track "5000 Anos".
Heck yeah, some more "Peru Psicodelia Punk" from these explosive South American garage-fuzz faves. That means it's time to ROCK, let's go! Lima's La Ira De Dios offer up another energetic dose of their can't-sit-still-listening-to-it distorted wailing grooviness on this, their fifth album. When we first heard these guys some years ago, they played spacey stoner rock, kinda like Kyuss meets Hawkwind, but their interest in freaky fuzz mongering has seemingly sent them on a path into the past, so by now it sounds like they've REALLY studied their '60s proto-punk stuff, with a concentration on Detroit. They even have backup vocals by a "girl group" of sorts, "The Borrachettes". The heavy Hawkwind-y space rock sounds are still there, though, too, along with the "Rumble" of Link Wray and some Nuggets-y jangle - and its a combo that's tough to beat, we love hearing La Ira De Dios bash it out in this style, with their gruff, sandpapery singing (some in Spanish, some in English) sounding sincerely urgent and desperate, contributing to this album's generally dark vibe.
They do take a few breaks from the rawk, allowing for some moody, melodic moments amidst the high energy mayhem, such as on the title track at the end of side A, all windswept acoustic strum and hushed downer vocals, before winding up with a jet engine blast of feedback noise, heralding a return to the uptempo rock action of "Underground" that begins side B. In some ways, this might be this trio's best or at least most multidimensional record yet, one that we'll listen to for their trademark "MAXIMUMVOLUMEROCKNROLL!!!" and much more besides.
As always, recommended! Especially to fans of very early Monster Magnet, as well as the likes of Vee Dee and DMBQ and local boys Hot Lunch. But really there's not too many modern day bands doing this sort of thing so darn well, demonstrating the true power of rock. For sure La Ira De Dios owe a lot to the greats - "Ghost City" reminds us a lot of Radio Birdman, and on "The Unrest" they channel the shake appeal of the Stooges - but nothin' wrong with that, in fact, everything is right about it, especially when you've got this cranked on 10 and wish you could turn it up even louder.
Brooklyn trio La Otricina have always been about the spaced out heavy jammy psychedelic proggy stoner riffed awesomeness. But now, with their third full-length Holy Mountain monument, they're REALLY starting to fuck shit up. Reality Has Got To Die is their most gonzo album yet, and definitely their most metal! Opener "Hail Fire" sets the scene, with singer/drummer Adam Kriney, tongue perhaps in cheek, rallying La Otracina's jackbooted troops to march forth and pillage some alien landscape, riffs stabbing down from on high like laser blasts from orbiting star destroyers. Melancholic neo-classical guitar melodies lend some pathos to the scene, but pretty soon La Otracina are retro-thrashing it up like Early Man at a kegger. That sort of behavior continues into the next cut, "Raze The Sky", which also manages to up the quota of sci-fi synths, AND throw in a bit of boogie, and visit the set of an Italian suspense movie... Then "Crystal Wizards Of The Cosmic Weird" launches. It's over ten minutes long and thus no surprise even more ridiculously proggy than what's come before, tossing in all that and more, sounding one second like Sleep, another like King Crimson. Clearly this record isn't for those who think bands should be restrained and tasteful in their application of whatever rad '70s stuff in their record collections turns them on. INDULGE! La Otracina aren't holding anything back, but they ARE making damn sure they're tighter and heavier and probably catchier than your band. Unless your band is, like, Pharaoh Overlord or Mammatus or Danava or something, in whose illustrious company La Otracina definitely belong.
But for every metallic part that sounds like it could be off an album by Early Man or The Sword, there's another trippier one that could be by White Hills, Acid Mothers Temple, or even Jonas Reinhardt. In fact, the title track, stretching out over almost 20 minutes, is definitely towards the kosmik krauty spacey psychy side of the La Otracina equation, complete with lengthy distorto-drone maelstroms, and even a drum solo! And when all is said and done, if you can imagine a New Age version of the Saviours you'd be close to a guess at what this record sounds like overall. Enough with the hypothetical comparisons, though, on Reality Has Got To Die these guys have almost moved beyond comparison, whilst making an album seemingly focus-group tested entirely at Aquarius Records. In other words, recommended!
The double lp version comes with mp3 download coupon. The cd version comes with the cd!
Brooklyn's La Otracina, whom we first knew as a "space rock" band, sure have gotten a bit more "metal" lately; their most recent full length for Holy Mountain, Reality Has Got To Die, incorporated a whole lotta retro-thrash headbanging amidst their usual psychedelic stoner groove and progged out excess.
On this brand new 7" single, with no room for 20 minute space rock jams anyway, they definitely set their controls for the heart of the mosh pit... Raucous rockin' A-side "Madness Of Mind" careens along like a garagey NWOBHM throwback, motorin' most enjoyably as their singing drummer belts (and bashes) it out. They chug it up even more on the B-side, "Twisted Branches", more heads down metallized thump there, it's almost like they've been listening to old Anthrax! Though both trax have their psych side to 'em too, wild guitar soloing in that mode for sure.
For fans of Danava, Saviours, the latest Pharaoh Overlord, and local boys Glitter Wizard...
First release on the new label run by one of the La Otracina guys, named after a Budgie Song, natch. On see-thru green vinyl.
Yet even more silly (but awesome) Dungeons & Dragons / Lord of The Rings metal. This is like the almighty Children of Bodom (blazing fast, duelling lead guitars AND duelling keyboards) but swap the harsh death metal vocals for high melodic New Wave of British Heavy Metal style vocals. Maybe a bit cheesy but still pretty fantastic.
We loved 2010's Evoking The Multiverse debut from this Philly one man band so much, raving about that record's space out buzz drenched blackness, and epic, cosmic majesty, and we were beginning to think that might be all we'd hear from Labyrinthine, when out of the blue, this new one showed up. We're happy to report, it's just as good as the first, but pretty different sonically, where as that first one spent much of its time in ambient mode, sprawling fields of celestial shimmer and woozy, doom drift, this record gets right to it, with an opening track that's definitely blackish, but much more doomy, with some classic metal riffing, in fact, minus the raspy vokills, this borders on seriously true doom, and it sounds killer, even on the second track, the 'band' return to something much more properly blackened, but only just, the sound still infused with plenty of doominess, after a dense double kick opening, the sound slips back into a languorous lope, the fast picked guitar trills, and vocal rasps adding all the blackness to an otherwise mournful, melancholic doom. And so it goes for the first half of the record, the band unfurling, gorgeously melodic, and lushly produced blackened doom that doesn't really truly explode into black fury until track 5, which is truly black metal, furious and frenzied, soaring and majestic, the cool part being that many of the melodies and much of the guitar tone from the doomed first half remain, making even this frantic blackness feel depressive and a little bit doomy, which then leads directly back into, yep, more gorgeously plodding doominess, with tangled harmonized guitar melodies and woozy, almost psychedelic riffage. There's at least one more burst of furious blackness over the next few tracks, but really, most of the rest of the record is spent in full on mournful, majestic doom mode. And while maybe in the beginning, we were missing the Labyrinthine of old, this new record, once we acclimated to the new sound, and vibe, is still pretty fucking great...
First full length from this East Coast one man black metal band, who trafficks in some awesomely epic spaced out buzz drenched cosmic atmospheric symphonic blackness, a sound that falls somewhere between Velvet Cacoon, Wolves In The Throne Room, and Paysage D'Hiver. Six looooong buzzscapes, that drift from midtempo lope, to blurred black blast, the programmed drums skeletal and buried in the mix, a murky throb in a swirling sea of dizzying layered woozy riffage, washed out and psychedelic, the guitar parts spidery and minor key, the sound super atmospheric and depressive, haunting and otherworldly.
Much of Evoking The Multiverse is spent drifting through the sonic aether, the black metal barely black at all, instead, the sound seems to manifest itself as a streaked field of kosmische shimmer, lush layers of warm whirring buzz and smeared soft focus dreambuzz, "The Planetary Dream Of Infinity" most notably, seems to eschew the traditional tropes of black metal entirely (minus the vocals) offering up slow smoldering streaks of prismatic doomic drift, unfurling long burnished tones, sprawling chordal streaks, the entire track, bathed in some sort of soft celestial light, so melodic, and drifty and soft focus, if it weren't for the vocals, it could almost be some sort of blissed out blackened psychedelia, and much of the record exists in this black metal limbo, slipping just as easily into the heaven of warm otherworldly melodicism, as the hell of grim blasting black buzz, but more often then not, situating itself somewhere right in between, the heavy fast black metal parts rife with strange psychedelic filigree and subtle melodic shadings, and the pretty parts occasionally swallowed up by harrowing bursts of pounding frantic heaviness.
Tiny 3" slab of black thrash brutality from this Chicago horde. Features ex-members of metal humorists 7000 Dying Rats!
We all loved 7000 Dying Rats. A hilarious group of metalheads who would be blasting out impossible grind metal one minute, playing the theme from Beverly Hills 90210 the next, and discussing cocks with confused and increasingly threatened metalheads the next. We always joked that if you removed the humor and the skits and the peurile obsession with sex and poop, that they would be one of the most intense and heavy grind metal bands around and would be HUGE. Like lots of bands we love, that problematic sense of humor kept them from mainstream success (or any success?). And so, almost like we predicted, comes Lair Of The Minotaur, a three piece thrash metal behemoth, 2/3 of which come straight from the gaping, smirking jaws of 7000 Dying Rats. But instead of getting rid of the humor altogether (and who would want that), they channelled that humor into the pure absurdity of their band name, song titles and their impossible amalgam of classic black / death metal and buzzing blazing grindcore. LOTM are obviously the modern spawn of Celtic Frost and Bathory and Venom, with all the requisite riffing and grunting, all quite impressive, but even faster and more furious than their forefathers. And they still can't seem to shake their joke/grind roots completely, as occasionally, mid thrash attack, they'll switch to 2 or 3 bars of grinding blast beats, whether they fit or not. Which is what makes LOTM so awesome. Taking the classic metal we know and love and (not so) seriously fucking with it!
We first heard LA black metal horde Lake Of Blood on a split with aQ black metal faves Panopticon, but sadly, that split was so limited we were never able to get enough copies to list/review. So here it is two years later, and Lake Of Blood return with their first proper full length, in the form of a two song, 32 minute lp on local label The Flenser, where LoB prove to be a good fit, their epic slowburn doom flecked post black metal sounding right at home amidst other Flenser outfits like Panopticon, Bosse-De-Nage, Ghast, Necrite, Palace Of Worms, and Seidr.
The A side begins with the sound of surf, the soft white noise of crashing waves, which leads directly into a very wavelike progression of crashing lurching doom, plenty of lumbering stop/starts, angular riffage, crashing staccato heaviness, that almost sounds more like noise rock than black metal (we're hearing Dazzling Killmen for sure), it's not until about 4 minutes in that the band launch into some serious blackness, but even then, it's not the typical buzz and blast we were expecting, instead, the guitars are super bright sounding, and there's loads of melody, and even some acoustic guitars strumming away below the surface, and they pepper their blackened blasting with returns to the opening lurch and lumber. The song gets dense and mathy and pretty complex and proggy, with some seriously kick ass drumming, and over the course of the 17 minutes, the band slip easily from mathy blasting blackness, to stuttery abstract doom, to super melodic drift, to noise rocky crunch and to classic metal churn. All the while the strange production, and those mysterious buried acoustic guitars transforming the song into something all its own.
The flipside offers up more of the same, if a bit more straight ahead, less mathiness, and less of that doomy vibe, and more blasting and thrashing, with the first 5 or 6 minutes veering into almost classic black metal territory, until the band change gears again, and unfurl a droned out bit of almost psychedelic sounding post rockiness, laced with spoken word, and long stretches of droned out buzz, and when the band slip back into some more black buzz, the sound seems to shift dramatically, that mysterious acoustic guitar returns, and the sound is suddenly way more progressive, the sound flitting from dirgey and doomy, to buzzy and mathy, to noisy and chaotic, to super melodic and almost poppy, finally slipping into another bout of classic metal riffing before finally fading out into the surf sounds that opened the record.
Formerly known as Burn The Priest, and newly signed to Metal Blade, Lamb of God play super technical metal, with elements of black metal and grind. These guys keep getting better and better and faster and faster. Can't wait to hear the next record, when they'll probably be called something else.
Record number three from these German post black metallers, the first we've reviewed on the aQ list, although they did merit mentions in our reviews of records by Alcest and Amesoeurs, which makes sense since that's usually who they get lumped in with (along with Farsot, whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this weeks list), which to a certain degree makes sense, like those groups, Lantlos have more in common with the new strains of black metal, but unlike the sort of shimmery ethereal pop of those groups, Lantlos is simultaneously much heavier, and even LESS black metal. To our ears, Lantlos at this point sounds like a post rock band, albeit a very heavy one, and one with a distinctly black metal pedigree, but there are very few instances of blasting or buzzing, the vocals are definitely one the vokills side of the spectrum, but the music, is quite removed from black metal, slipping easily from abstract doomy plod, to dreamy, droney drift, from Neurosisy churn to soaring Godspeed like majesty, from moody, melodic almost Katatonia like doom pop, to skittery almost jazziness and back again. There's also the fact, that many of those sounds coexist in the same song, the lengthy tracks shifting constantly. And while here and there a bit of blasting buzz does pop up, in most cases it's in conjunction with some other sound that is distinctly NOT black metal, which if anything only makes it that much cooler.
These guys definitely get pegged as 'post black metal' but it might be more accurate to describe them as blackened post rock, or simple post metal, cuz they definitely sound like the sort of band that would find themselves sonically more at home alongside groups like Angel Eyes, the Ocean, Snowblood, Baroness, and all the other brooding slow build epic heavy post metal combos we dig so much. And hell, mixing in a little vokill rasp and some extra buzz, maybe a little bit of blast, can't hurt either.
