We've worshipped at the altar of Hello Kitty obsessed French ultradoom trio (now quartet) Monarch for years and years now, harboring a secret crush on Monarch frontwoman Emilie and a not so secret crush on their absolutely pummeling black cloud of sound.
Originally released as a super limited lp on Spanish label Throne Records back in 2008, this two part doom drone dirge epic, is now available on cd, the separate sides, "Mer" and Morte" now reunited into one single sprawling nearly 35 minute opus, a glacial expanse of creeping crawling detuned drift, of psychedelic black ambience, of tarpit doomic dirge, of extreme abstract heaviness, of near static pummel. As gorgeous as it is harsh, as heavy as it is atmospheric, the drums so spare, the drummer has time to go outside for a smoke between snare hits, riffage so lugubrious that SUNNO))) sound like speed metal in comparison.
Think Flood era Boris, Corrupted, Moss, Bunkur, Khanate, Orthodox, Catacombs, but then slow it down even more, take those sounds and smear them into washed out blurs, the vocals a distant mewl, an occasional shriek, the cymbals unleashed in hazy clouds of sizzling shimmer. The guitars heavy for sure, but the riffs allowed to ring out and fade to near silence, before the next one hits, more than any of the other Monarch records, Mer Morte finds the band exploring ambience as heaviness, allowing long stretches of guitar rumble to drift unaccompanied except for some hushed wordless crooning.
The second half, formerly just "Morte", cranks up the tempo to a blasting (well, for Monarch at least) 10 or 12 bpm, the vocals way more intense, and in the mix the Khanate vibe is much more obvious, a pounding hellish dirge, utterly intense and cathartic and emotional and brutal, but after a few minutes, the drums drop out, and the guitars are left to drone and undulate and pulse, streaked with feedback, a gorgeous blackened dronescape, peppered with occasional drum pound, but any semblance of 'beat' has been jettisoned, the record plays out, a trancelike stretch of downtuned doomic minimalism, laced with more of those ethereal ghostlike vox, haunting and mysterious and otherworldly, and grimly beautiful.
Gorgeous packaging too, a four panel gatefold Stumptown sleeve, with gold metallic ink on black matte. So cool.
The latest from these French ultra doomlords (and lady) begins all spaced out and ritualistic, shimmering clouds of metal, keening feedback, a droned out psychedelia that almost sounds like some modern take on legendary Japanese psychdrone gurus the Taj Mahal Travellers, but before long, that ritualistic drift collapses beneath the weight of crushing downtuned riffage, and pounding slow-motion drum pummel. But as with other recent Monarch records, the group have definitely managed to create a sound all their own, moving well past trudge and lumber, churn and crush, toward something a bit more blissed out, and definitely more droney. While the sound is rooted in roiling riffage, the riffs are underpinned by distant layered vocals, giving the sound a distinctly psychedelic vibe, and then the vocals proper kick in, they're feral and feminine, none of that gurgling or growling, instead a wild witchy wail, almost punk sounding, providing a strange sonic dichotomy, but one that make this way more interesting than your average dirge. Not to mention all manner of strange percussion, muted melody, and some surprisingly lush textures, wreathing everything in a softly psychedelic swirl, hazy and druggy, and surprisingly dreamy and meditative, especially the second half, which gets all blissed out, warm and whirling and super hypnotic. And that's just the first track. After a bit of an interlude, the blackened ambience of "Transylvanian Incantations", all murky voices and glimmering high end shimmer, the band finish things off with the 19+ minute "Black Becomes The Sun", the guitars gristly and oozing crumbling distortion, the sound seeming to drift toward classic doom metal, but then the vocals come in, all ethereal and angelic, and the whole sound is transformed into something much more washed out and shoegazey, almost like an ultradoom 4AD sort of sound. Partway through, the song shifts, and an avalanche of drum chaos launches a much harder and harsher second half, much sludgier, and crustier, the melodies of the first half still present, but beneath shards of feedback, and tangled howled vox, moments of true doom splintering into hellish downtuned crush and back again, the drumming mathy, the banshee vocals soaring and swooping wildly over the top, Monarch again managing to make a sound hellish and heavy, into something hypnotic, and weirdly, and grimly lovely.
Killer black on black artwork, housed in a 6 panel style fold out digpak style sleeve.
Latest from these French ultra doom sludgelords and sludgelady, a single song spread out over two lp sides, a sprawling, lugubrious, blackened slow motion tarpit crawl, and if it was even possible, Sabbat Noir sounds and feels even more abstract and spaced out than any of the other Monarchs, which is saying a lot. Sabbat Noir is also the band's first proper full length to feature their new drummer, Robert from the Grey Daturas, who makes himself right at home, his spare hard hitting style perfectly suited to Monarch's weirdly dreamy doomic drift.
The record/song begins with a dense cloud of rumbles and whirs, a slow motion sub-SUNN guitar crawl, wrapped in shimmery cymbal sizzle, an epic, smoldering, slow building low end creep. Thick, almost liquid guitars ooze beneath abstract drumming, the hits ages apart, long stretches of layered guitardrone, a nearly stalled doom, that hovers and floats more than crushes or pummels. The vocals exist way off in the distance, haunting and spectral, just another layer of slow shifting sound, which gives way here and there to hushed ambience, it's not so much a song as a sound, drifty and shimmery, and nearly ambient, it's not until near the end of the first side that things get a little mathy and metal, the riffs coalescing into black hole crunch, the drums pounding out an almost-rhythm. The side ends, and the song picks right back up on the flipside a la Lynyrd Skynyrd, more tarpit creep, streaked with feedback, the vocals moving gradually to the fore, their presence more intense, the riffs coalescing into a more traditional doom, mournful and melancholy, like Paradise Lost or My Dying Bride, but slowed waaaaaay down, the now shrieked vox drifting over this lumbering swoonsome dour doomic miserablism, a gorgeous, desolate, somber dronedoom, that slowly sheds the doom, eventually blissing back out into some more blackened guitardrone dreaminess.
The packaging is incredible, super glossy, metallic prismatic jackets, you have to see them to believe them, easily one of the coolest looking covers ever, the front cover the Monarch logo all shiny and metallic over what appears to be hair, but follow that hair to the other side of the sleeve where you'll find a sexy evil pic of Monarch's vocalist Emilie all corpsepainted and hoTT, the records are pressed on 180 gram vinyl, and of course LIMITED TO ONLY 400 COPIES!!!
First new full length in two years from this French ultradoooooooom combo, the lineup now expanded to include SEVEN players, fronted as always by ultra-cutie Emilie Bresson, whose wholesome appearance and Hello Kitty obsession does nothing to dull her demonic bellow - although here, the opening track starts off hushed and dreamlike, with Bresson crooning dreamily, over a slow, smoldering doomscape, but it's only a matter of minutes before she lets loose with that banshee wail, doused in delay and reverb, allowed to slowly decay, and fade gradually into the whirling blackness below, the band quickly locked into a death march creep. The processed vocals get almost dublike at points, processed and layered, and that had us wishing they almost went all out, and applied some King Tubby action. While it's not quite that crazy, it does get pretty psychedelic, as all the while, the riffage churns and roils and thick swells of darkly melodic slo-mo sludge unfurl dreamily. The vibe at times is almost tranquil, less ferocious and furious and more mesmeric and hypnotic, especially when Bresson adds her sweetly shimmery croon, and when the guitars join along, it's like the Monarch version of 'classic' doom, but before long, the sound splinters and collapses, and we're right back into another stretch of downtuned demonic trudge, those heavily effected vocals swirling into crazy, blown out howls, blurred into thick vocal smears. And so it goes, the three songs here essentially part of the bigger whole, three movements bleeding into one singular ultradoom epic, laced with moments of hushed beauty, as well as abject sonic brutality, the band deftly navigating a slow moving psych-doom dirge, employing a new set of dynamics and subtleties that were maybe not so evident on past records, making much of Sabbracadaver sound downright subdued, some of it properly lovely as well, but those moments are more than made up for by many more moments of shrieking fury and skull caving, soul shearing pummel.
Super swank packaging too, a stark black and white digipak, with clear spot varnish printing, and a booklet with strange, shadowy, ritualistic photos inside.
In transit across the Pacific for months now, we had almost given up, but this grim little slab of droned out ritualistic slo-mo sludge finally showed up from Australia. Previously a tour only release from this aQ beloved female fronted French ultradoom horde (now featuring Robert Macmanus from Grey Daturas on drums), Sortilege is a single 11 minute track, and is of course everything we (and you) have come to love about Monarch, sprawling expanses of low end buzz, deep drones, minimal drum pound, blurred downtuned guitarage, but "Sortilege" is something a bit different, with the song never fully exploding into actual churn and crunch, instead, it seems to be Monarch's take on black ambience, and we have to say it most definitely suits them. The sound atmospheric and haunting, the rumbling buzz of the guitars a thick backdrop for all manner of wordless vocalizing, of warm washed out streaks of feedback, of buried melodies, and constantly shifting textures, not harsh or heavy, but still harrowing and haunting, the eleven minute running time is a bit frustrating, cuz this is the sort of jam you want to keep going and going and going. But otherwise, a seriously dense slab of hypnotic blackened drift, a sonic full moon ritual, corpsepainted and candelit, deep in the forest, in some underground cave, the sounds seeping from beneath the ground, and enveloping the listener like some grim black cloud. Awesome.
Really swank reflective black digipaks, with some super striking photos of frontwoman Emilie, multiple Emilie's in fact, face painted, dagger in hand, presiding over the ritual, whose soundtrack is captured on Sortilege.
We sure are going to miss Monarch. In a black and sludgy sonic world, they were a little ray of sunshine. Errr. Well, not really. But they did manage to infuse their tarpit doomdeathdronedirges with a goofy sense of humor, without turning Monarch into an ironic pisstake.
So here it is. The final missive from France's Monarch. Possibly the world's only female fronted deathdoomdronedirge outfit. Imagine Khanate or Corrupted or Bunkur or Moss, fronted by a slight young French woman, in a sensible skirt and blouse, hair pulled back in a pony tail, somehow emitting the sort of vulgar demonic yowls that usually come from some stooped hunchbacked axe wielding hairy beast. Thus is the magic of Monarch. their records are decorated with cute doodles, cartoons of burning churches, big eyed skulls, and hearts everywhere. They have an unhealthy obsession with Hello Kitty, their email name is sanriosabbath for chrissakes! How can you not help but be cuted-out by these cute little doomsters? Well, the massive pummeling wall of headsplitting ultra doom might be a start, the impossibly glacial plodding thud and the ear shredding sheets of corrosive feedback help too. However mislead you might be by the cuteness on the outside, be prepared to have your insides torn out and your ears filled with black tar by the caustic corrosive funereal doom on the inside. Easily one of the slowest heaviest dooooooooom bands in the world, this is quite a swansong. Two side long tracks. Each so slow it's almost ambient. It's a bit like listening to SUNNO))) or Earth 2 when some caveman drummer decides to crash the party and start drumming slowly along. Riffs stretched out into huge droning smears of black rumble, ringing and reverberating, pulsing and wavering unsteadily before the next ten ton riff drops. Both tracks are slow plodding ultradoomscapes, like the ultimate doom metal intro stretched into actual songs, smeared across both sides of the record. The vocals don't even come in until the song is almost over, a shrieking black coda, after twenty minutes of slow burning doom drone tension. The B-side features some distant Ozzy-like crooning way off in the distance before the scowling growl kicks in. So slow and heavy. On the AQ doooooomscale, Monarch rank more O's than we could possibly include in this review! So sad these doomlords (and doomlady!) are hanging it up. But what a way to go. Essential doom. If you like Esoteric, Boris, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Earth, Esoteric, Skepticism, Eyehategod, Marzuraan, Atavist, Catacombs, Khanate, Pale Horse, Monument Of Urns and you don't have any Monarch in your collection, get with the program! Or else we'll have Miss Monarch come over there and stomp you to death with her Hello Kitty Keds!
Beautifully packaged in thick black sleeves with red text, the cover is a doodle of a big eyed skull being stabbed by big knives, over a glowing heart. Includes a big poster, a Monarch calendar, marking the dates from 6/6/6 until 7/7/7, the year of the Monarch!! Each lp hand numbered in metallic marker.
LIMITED TO 666 COPIES. WE GOT 50!! It's already out of print so once these are gone they are gone for good.
In lieu of the long rumored 3cd, 3 hour, single song Corrupted record (that may be a rumor but we WILL have the new single disc, single hour long track cd El Mundo Frio in the next week or two!) all you drone doom sludge freeks can hold yourself over with this black hole heavy slab of utter crush and total annihilation. Two discs, almost ninety minutes, THREE TRACKS, of impossibly downtuned, ridiculously slow, creeping crawling funereal sludge doooooooooooooooooooom (that's right TWENTY o's, this is some serious doom). This French three piece (four piece at the time this was recorded) trudges the same long, slow and blackened ultradoom path as Khanate, Burning Witch, Corrupted, Boris, Bunkur, Moss and the like. Sounding a bit like Eyehategod, trapped in some sort of dimensional time rift, so each riff is stretched out into an entire song of chugging tarpit riffs, squealing solid state feedback and pounding percussion, each beat so far apart, it's unclear whether the drummer actually plans on coming back with another. And of course insane vocal chord shredding shrieks. Howling banshees and hellish demons ain't got nothing on Monarch's vocalist, who, it might be interesting to point out, is in fact a woman. Not that you would necessarily guess from hearing her demonic screech. But there is definitely a feminine sensibility going on with Monarch. The sort of cutesy heart album cover. The cartoony artwork and website. The random bits of Sanrio silliness, and lots of taking the piss out of black metal and corpsepaint and the whole macho metal thing. Monarch are most definitely the slow motionist, crust sludgiest, satan worshippingest, Sanrio obsessed, Sabbath fixated, cute girl fronted band in the world!
This was super tough to get, each of the three runs of 500 copies selling out before we could get enough to list. So we got a huge chunk of this pressing, but we can't be sure what will happen when these run out, so as always, if we run out, we might not be able to get more.
Finally! Been waiting for the vinyl version of this for a while now. Taking the slow boat all the way from Spain, but it was well worth it, sounds awesome, looks amazing. Metallic gold and black on shimmery silver matte finish, all new artwork. SUPER LIMITED, we got a bunch, but we won't be able to get more. Here's more about the music inside:
A while ago we were informed that French ultradoom combo Monarch had called it a day. We were crushed. One of our favorite purveyors of filthy slow motion doooooooooom, fronted by a woman, a rarity in doom for sure, and with a penchant for smiley skulls and Hello Kitty. A band that seemed tailor made for the very bizarre tastes of the AQ faithful, seemed to be no more.�
But before we could begin our campaign of mourning, black clothes spray painted with cute skulls, black Hello Kitty armbands, we discovered that in fact we were misinformed, or maybe the band had taken a break, or something, but we cared not, for whatever reason, Monarch was still alive, and would live to doom another day. And doom they did. Gracing us with more and more glorious downtuned heaviness, including their bad ass cover of Turbonegro's "I Got Erection"!
So now that we're pretty comfortable with the continued existence of our favorite cute doomsters, we can wait patiently for each new, massive slab of harsh slow motion glacial dooooooooooooooooooooom. And for folks new to Monarch, don't go expecting this to actually -sound- cute. They may be fronted by an adorable French girl, who spins playfully on the beach in their videos, but when she opens her mouth to sing, it's the sound of blackness and misery, a demonic caterwaul, unrivaled by most male metal vocalists. And sure the art on their records may be cute cartoon burning churches and big eyed ghosts, but the sounds inside are slow and black as tar, guitars tuned so low they rumble instead of roar, drum beats so far apart, the drummer can probably smoke a cigarette between beats.�And we're happy to report that this 16+ minute chunk of doom is all that and more. The more being the haunting ethereal female vocals partway through... Crushingly heavy, weirdly beautiful. A plodding symphony in slow motion. Essential Monarch beautiful brutality.
The surprise here is the Grey Daturas track, also a 16 minute epic, that on first listen sounds surprisingly doomy, and a lot like the Monarch track. The Daturas are often heavy, but rarely doomy like this, but it suits them. And they pepper their doom with all sorts of sonic weirdness, bits of electronic fuckery, strange modulated feedback, subtle FX, until about 13 minutes in, when the song suddenly morphs into a muted wall of smeared and crumbling white noise, a blast of blurred sound that eventually fades into nothingness.�
Pretty amazing stuff, from both bands. Doom hounds will be well pleased.
Stoner rock from this side-project of the Queens of the Stone Age/Kyuss bass player. A little more "punk" sounding than those bands, in parts, but there's plenty of extended psych guitar jamming as well.
Shambling from the darkness of Saint Petersburg's deepest wooded overgrowth into the even darker darkness of Saint Petersburg's dankest dampest cave (we presume), comes Mondsaal! An entirely new prospect to us, this bizarre disc of murky, woozy Russian cosmic hatefulness arrived seemingly out of nowhere, but we're finding ourselves pretty damn smitten by its lurching weirdness. The esteemed Encyclopaedia Metallum describes Mondsaal as "dark/black metal", and we have to say "dark metal" is a pretty great way to describe these weirdos. Aesthetically it's sort of black metal. There's Burzum-esque midpaced plodding, there's otherworldly synthesizer strings draped over almost everything, but there's also a thick murkiness to their sound that feels more reminiscent of Swedish crypt-dwelling death metal or the warm bloodletting anesthesia of funeral doom bands like Skepticism or Until Death Overtakes Me. Even the mid-range vocal growls lean more towards the death than the black, and the blast beats (on the rare occasion that they do decide to show up) are eerily slow and shambolic. It's a sound that's strange, sorrowful, damaged, ugly, but weirdly warm & enveloping all at the same time. The constant droning of soft synth pads and the squonking of dissonant horns (yes, that's right, there's horns) stand in stark contrast to the naked writhing ugliness of everything else that's happening, and the result is pretty psychedelic & spacey (in a bit of a similar way to the Dunnock/Intergalactic Holocaust split we reviewed on the last list!). The whole affair closes out with a hazy ritualistic rainy desertscape ambient piece, leaving the impression that you've just passed through some living slow motion morphine nightmare. It's a pretty entrancing experience - either hideously beautiful or beautifully hideous, we're not sure yet, but either way: very very recommended.
Monno are definitely a noise rock band. In fact, we're not even sure if they are a band, so maybe they're just noise rock. But actually, this doesn't really rock in the traditional sense, so maybe it's just noise. But the thing is, it's NOT. Monno ARE a band. And they DO rock. And they are about as noisy as a rock band can get. They produce a dense sonic squall that sounds like someone took Merzbow, Total, Skullflower and SUNNO))), chopped em all up, sprayed them out of thousand watt speakers, at a drummer who head down, resolutely pounds his way through a dense cloud of caustic, skin peeling, ear shredding noise. Rock. There are occasional riffs, and they totally slay, like a way more blown out Scratch Acid, and there are massive slithering low end bass grooves, but then the vocals, holy fuck, it's like some feral howls being run through a million distortion pedals with dying batteries and broadcast through a wall of tweeters with broken speaker cones. All wrapped in barbed wire-like swirls of shrieking tangled feedback. So harsh and heavy and so fucking great. Fans of Violent Students, Butthole Surfers, Clockcleaner and just loud fucking rocknoise in general will dig this in a big way!
Packaged in an oversized black on metallic silver booklet, with original artwork from Dennis Tyfus (who runs the Ultra Eczema label!).
As some of you already probably know, this limited 12" is a split release on both NYC based post rock label Temprorary Residence, and now-L.A. based thinking man's metal label Hydra Head. Accordingly there are about 7 or 8 different versions, some on Hydra Head, some on TRL, some with different colored labels, but you know what? That's just tough. We have to draw the line somewhere, and it's now right here. We have about 30 copies of the Temporary Residence version, which is already out of print. When we run out of these, we might get some of the HH version(s). Not sure which ones. This collectable vinyl business is beginning to obscure the whole reason we all buy records, because we love music, and we love to hear amazing music, and this record is absolutely fantastic. So try to stop worrying about the color of the vinyl or the number pressed or any of that stuff and just pick this up because it's so damn beautiful. Pelican deliver a massive slice of gorgeously grandiose post rock, sweeping and emotional, melancholy and but weirdly hopeful with its minor key arrangement. Not a trace of 'metal' to be found here. Which is fine by us. Imagine a slightly heavier version of the song that plays during the final scene at the end of the movie, after the boy has gotten the girl and we finally realize everything is going to be okay. It sounds a little like that. Really beautiful. The second track makes up for it though, as James Plotkin (Khanate, Joy of Disease) takes Pelican at their dirgiest / sludgiest and adds tons of extra grind and grit and grrr and effects and crumbling distortion and malfunctioning electronics. Like your favorite Pelican song dipped in blood and rolled in the dirt. Wow.
Mono, who are often touted as being metal, stick closer to their mighty epic post rock sound with a sidelong track that is as Godspeed You Black Emperor as a non-Godspeed band is likely to get. Brooding and melancholy, building to a huge explosive coda, before drifting back into a creeping maudlin dirge, that sort of drifts and fades into the dark. So nice. And as we mentioned before, far too limited.
Years and years and years ago (2001!), we reviewed a record by a Canadian seventies worshipping hard rock combo with the bizarre name of Sir Hedgehog, and it was one of those classic records pretty much all the aQ heavy rockers here were obsessed with, we sold a ton too, and always sort of wondered what happened to those guys. Well, apparently at least some of them now play in another goofily monikered outfit, this one called Monobrow, and while they may not worship the seventies as much as they once did, they're still heavy and hard rocking and psychedelic, the new band is all instrumental though, with a more stoner metal vibe, big riffs, killer leads, bombastic drumming, the songs mathy and a little bit proggy, we even hear a little Fucking Champs, if the Champs were on MeteorCity. And actually, the deeper we get into the record, maybe these guys haven't ditched that seventies love as much as we thought, plenty of proto-metal sounding grooving, wild wah wah guitar freakouts, thick meandering melodic basslines, and songs that are pretty goddamn catchy considering they're instrumental, as well as pretty dense and proggy, but hell, we can't imagine anyone into heavy psych, stoner metal, riff rock or just classic heaviness, not flipping out over these guys.
Most definitely recommended, and another one of those records we can't seem to stop listening to.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hey, an awesome uber-heavy band from Sweden, what a surprise! Last list we had Salem's Pot, also now on the same label comes this album from psychedelic stoner sludge outfit Monolord. (As in, Lord of the Monolithic riffage!) What they do, and do well, are massive mesmeric doom jams, derived from the devolved DNA of old grandads Black Sabbath. While that's nothing we haven't heard before from the likes of OM and Electric Wizard, Nibiru and UFOmammut, Gonga and Sleep, we're still suckers for it - the blown out speaker-rumbling amplifier worship, the repetitive riffs, extended song structures, the mantric vocal chants (utilizing an echoing underwater-y sort of effect, much more stoned sounding that way). There's five long songs here, one of 'em an instrumental, the others featuring fantastical, occult lyrics fixated on death and ritual. It's OM/Sleep, perhaps, that these ceremonial riff/chant tracks remind us of most, not a bad thing at all. Recommended to all who like to be able to throw on a disc, crank the volume, and be helplessly, hypnotically buried beneath a slow moving, oozing mound of HEAVY.
First off, go see these guys if you get the chance. It's a crazed rock spectacle, kinda like Japan's DMBQ but more dangerous, or at least shirtless. They live up to the hype you may have heard about their live performances, that's for sure. This guitar/drums/vocals trio from Israel are very, very rock n' roll, and they know how to put on a show. Probably everyone who's ever seen them has a good story, likely to include the drummer soloing whilst simultaneously crowd surfing, and the band's wiry, longhaired, mustachioed frontman (who looks like a cross between Iggy Pop and Doug Henning) energetically scampering about, spilling many, many audience members' beers (grabbing 'em with his teeth and tossing them back over his head, usually, at least if they're served in plastic cups). Allan's Monotonix show story even involves a goat!
But, the question remains, does any of that translate on record? Well this six song, 24 minute Drag City debut should answer that question. It reveals some depth to the riffy, hard and heavy, good times rock they dish out at their shows, with more melody and intricacy certainly (surprisingly). The title track, ferinstance, is almost prog pop! Yet, they don't stint on the fuzzy guitar and pounding drums we were expecting either, so if you play it loud, you might manage to spill a beer or two on yourself at home. If you just see 'em live, what you'll remember is how they played, not what they played. But spin this a few times, and some of these riffs may get stuck in your bangin' head. However, Monotonix live is a tough act to follow, which is their own damn fault, and so this still seems a bit secondary, like, they've gotta make records, if only to have something to sell on tour. But it is nice to see that they've put some effort into this aspect of the Monotonix experience too, instead of totally coasting on their live insanity.
Hard to believe that there was a time when Monster Magnet were not goofy cartoon parodies of metallic space rock (and we mean that in a good way). We love their ridiculous lyrics, overblown I AM GOD themes, their obsession with hotrods and honies and loads and loads of drugs, and of course their sound, that Hawkwind on steroids super RAWK. But there was a time, when Monster Magnet were fucking scary. A drug drenched musical outerspace acid trip, a BAD trip, all blown out guitars, every pedal turned all the way up, amps to infinity, face behind a greasy mop of hair, house lights off, black lights on, one riff beaten to death and launched heavenward. This was that time. It was a satanic drug thing they used to say. And it sounds like it. Originally released in 1991, "Tab" is arguably the band's finest moment, 30 minutes of outerspace drug rock divinity. The ultimate slab of psychedelic downer drug rock. The first 6 or 7 minutes are a primitive Krautrocky jam, simple propulsive drum beat, wordless vocals, sparse instrumentation, before the drugs really kick in, then "Tab" becomes a supecharged Loop or Spacemen 3, all fuzzy guitars, and swirls of reverb and delay and every other effect under the sun. Over the course of the next 20 minutes the guitars get more freaked out, the vocals get distorted and delayed and shot into space, the effects take over completely until the band is barely audible under the dizzying sonic chaos. So blissfully divine. "25" is way more rocking, a pounding drum beat, and a ripping garage rock riff, vocals a super distorted smear of sound, again the whole thing drenched in space rock goo and blown out rawk madness. "Longhair" is a lazy laidback psychdrone groove, stoned and staggering, giving Kyuss a style and sound to rip off for sure. And the final track "Lord 13" is a shuffling spacerock raga, with shuffling percussion, hand drums, strummed acoustic guitar, all under that ubiquitous druggy haze.
For this new reissue, they've tacked on a 7 minute live version of "Spine Of God". Murky and lo-fi, but appropriately druggy and spacey, with plenty of hilarious crowd conversations between folks who were oblivious to the fact that they were standing RIGHT next to the guy taping the show, but the mighty power of "Spine Of God" is untouchable, a slowly uncoiling dirge, that is somehow only enhanced by the dipshit telling his friend about some new tape he got.
It's a satanic drug thing. You wouldn't understand.
We posted this on the New Arrivals list a couple times sans review, just so the MM fanatics and various other folks who didn't necessarily need a review to know this was something they needed, but promised then that we would offer a more comprehensive review of this, a brand new 10" (the second in a series) from our favorite Space Lord Motherfuckers, the mighty Monster Magnet, who whipped up these jams to sell on their recently wrapped up Dopes To Infinity 2011 tour, which as the name suggests, found the band revisiting their classic album of the same name from 1995, which is what this 10" is all about, three tracks from Dopes To Infinity, "King Of Mars", "All Friends and Kingdom Come", and the title track, all reimagined, reworked and according to the band, "Lo-fi, decidedly deranged and extremely psychedelic", which definitely describes these doped up, blissed out, cosmic stoner rock space-psych blowouts.
"All Friends" is definitely more lo-fi than the original, transformed into more of a spaced out creep, with lots of extra effects, but it's not until "King Of Mars", that the reimagining becomes more dramatic, the sound even trippier than the original, ominous and satanically sinister, total drug rock ear candy for sure, and then "Dopes To Infinity", which was already pretty much perfect as it was way back in 1995, is just somehow made MORE perfect, or maybe -differently- perfect, it's tough to even listen objectively, cuz once that instantly familiar riff came in we were GONE, totally transported to some hedonistic offworld drug den, where MM are the house band, black lights and alien babes and amps from here to high heaven. Fucking awesome! Of course.
And as we've mentioned in other MM reviews, it's a satanic drug thing, you wouldn't... well, wait a second... since you're reading the aQ list, you probably DO understand. So grab one of these before they're gone (we're one of the only places this is available)...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hands down, Monster Magnet are Andee's favorite stoner metal / cock rock band. Huge riffs, catchy songs, and the most brilliantly inane lyrics about the universe, sponge baths, asteroids, volcanoes, muscle cars, love slaves, Satan, pot, death, and of course, penises! Really.
Now available domestically, for those who sweated out their Monster Magnet addictions and held off buying the expensive import version that we've had for a few months. The same reveiw applies: the newest record from the reigning kings of drugged out
Monster Magnet might just be one of our favorite bands ever. Pretty much every incarnation too. From the early days, the "satanic drug thing you wouldn't understand" era, all Hawkwind channeling heavy psychedelic drugged out stoner rock megajams, to the Kiss worshipping, over the top, cockrock ridiculousness of Dopes To Infinity and Powertrip. The crazy videos, the insane lyrics, the impossibly catchy songs, the choruses to die for, if we were doing a Weird Science sort of scenario, but instead of building the perfect dream girl, we were conjuring up the perfect band, it very well might end up sounding just like Monster Magnet.
We were warned that this new one was something different altogether again, that it was darker and moodier, and not nearly as bombastic or heavy, all of which is true, but even so, we're digging this like crazy, the core sound still pure Monster Magnet, the brooding, dramatic majesty, the crushing metallic heft, the psychedelic space rock shredding, and while songs like the opener are sort of moody and minimal, there are just as many tracks, like the title track for example, that are just primo MM, pounding drumming, space lord motherfucker riffage, Dave Wyndorf's distinctive dramatic rock god vox, and again, hooks galore, the band able to take crazy poppiness, and disguise it as spaced out heaviness. And yeah, lots of Last Patrol is dark and folky, lots of acoustic guitars, the vibe actually sort of MM via Spacemen 3 which as you might imagine is not a bad thing AT ALL. In fact, we'd say maybe 50 percent of the record is sort of dark, acoustic, psychedelic, druggy space folk, the vibe very classic seventies, think all that classic acid folk, but done MM style, and for every bit of bongo laced, string laden acoustic guitar cosmic broodery, there's some classic heavy psych drug rock heavy metal stomp to balance it out.
Another classic from these space lord motherfuckers, and thus, needless to say (but we'll say it anyway), WAY recommended. And while they last, we have the digipack version with bonus tracks.
We're gonna just come out and say it. Monster Magnet have NEVER made a bad record. Ever. They've come close for sure. And there have definitely been some bad songs, but every record has had at least a handful of MM classics. Sure maybe once they made the shift to a more pop oriented sound, there was no hope of them ever making another Spine Of God. But that was just fine with us, we love Dopes To Infinity or Powertrip as much as we love Spine Of God. To be fair, being superfans, we're probably not the most objective when it comes to MM, but we will say, the last couple of records, Monolithic Baby and 4-Way Diablo, were probably the weakest of all the MM records. That said, there was plenty on both to dig, just in comparison to some of the other stone cold classics, those two maybe paled. So we were maybe expecting more of the same, another Monster Magnet record, that maybe didn't rule, but that was pretty great, and had at least a few killer jams, but then BLAM. First song in, and we're digging the heaviest, fiercest MM record in ages. "Hallucination Bomb" is low slung and sinister, swaggering epic stoner space rock bliss, fat fuzzy bass, a killer main riff, wild loose leads, and ridiculous over the top lyrics, what more could we ask for? How about a whole record that good! That's right, you got it, solid top to bottom, with another clutch of ridiculously genius song titles too: "Bored With Sorcery", "The Titan Who Cried Like A Baby", insanely inspired lyrics like "I'm a pumped out freak on a big wheel..." and some of the sickest riffs since God Says No.
We could go song by song, but why bother, if you're like us, you'd buy a new Monster Magnet no matter what, and the fact that it totally rules, only makes it that much better. And if you've somehow made it this far without hearing MM, holy shit man, what's wrong with you, total epic over the top stoner space rock genius of the highest order, buy this one, then go get Spine Of God, Superjudge, Dopes To Infinity, hell, you're gonna want them all. And odds are you'll have a new favorite band. It's a Satanic drug thing, you wouldn't understand. Trust us.
Absolutely recommended.
Fancy Black Friday Record Store Day version of this latest slab of hook filled stoner space rock heaviness from these long time aQ faves, comes as a deluxe digibook, with two bonus tracks, housed in a fancy box with a little window through which you can peep the USB drive, which contains the whole record in MP3 form, bonus tracks and all, as well as ringtones, an interview with MM mastermind Dave Wyndorf, desktop wallpapers and a Napalm Records sampler...
We're gonna just come out and say it. Monster Magnet have NEVER made a bad record. Ever. They've come close for sure. And there have definitely been some bad songs, but every record has had at least a handful of MM classics. Sure maybe once they made the shift to a more pop oriented sound, there was no hope of them ever making another Spine Of God. But that was just fine with us, we love Dopes To Infinity or Powertrip as much as we love Spine Of God. To be fair, being superfans, we're probably not the most objective when it comes to MM, but we will say, the last couple of records, Monolithic Baby and 4-Way Diablo, were probably the weakest of all the MM records. That said, there was plenty on both to dig, just in comparison to some of the other stone cold classics, those two maybe paled. So we were maybe expecting more of the same, another Monster Magnet record, that maybe didn't rule, but that was pretty great, and had at least a few killer jams, but then BLAM. First song in, and we're digging the heaviest, fiercest MM record in ages. "Hallucination Bomb" is low slung and sinister, swaggering epic stoner space rock bliss, fat fuzzy bass, a killer main riff, wild loose leads, and ridiculous over the top lyrics, what more could we ask for? How about a whole record that good! That's right, you got it, solid top to bottom, with another clutch of ridiculously genius song titles too: "Bored With Sorcery", "The Titan Who Cried Like A Baby", insanely inspired lyrics like "I'm a pumped out freak on a big wheel..." and some of the sickest riffs since God Says No.
We could go song by song, but why bother, if you're like us, you'd buy a new Monster Magnet no matter what, and the fact that it totally rules, only makes it that much better. And if you've somehow made it this far without hearing MM, holy shit man, what's wrong with you, total epic over the top stoner space rock genius of the highest order, buy this one, then go get Spine Of God, Superjudge, Dopes To Infinity, hell, you're gonna want them all. And odds are you'll have a new favorite band. It's a Satanic drug thing, you wouldn't understand. Trust us.
Absolutely recommended.
Bigger! Dumber! Sillier! Better than ever! Who else could we be talking about but Monster Magnet! It's time for the return of the modern gods of spaced out sexed up cock rock. Heavy and trippy and druggy and catchy, Monster Magnet are the perfect mix of Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Kiss, and Spinal Tap. What started out as a "satanic drug thing you wouldn't understand" has turned into the catchiest, silliest, most enjoyable band you're likely to see on MTV. While this may not be as subversively sludgy as their brilliant early classic Spine Of God, or as perfectly polished as the more recent Power Trip, it's still pretty fucking great. Frontman Dave Wyndorf spits an endless flow of sexual non sequiters and boastful proclamations, tales of outerspace exploration, sexual escapades (often coincidentally occurring in space), rocking, sex, and... well... even more rocking and more sex! Massive slabs of perfect sludgy stoner space rock with HUGE guitars, classic riffs and hooks galore keep all Wyndorf's silliness grounded -just- this side of Kiss-like buffoonery. But Monster Magnet wear it well. Really well. They may have begun life as an underground drug metal cult, but this is where they always knew they'd end up, in a space-ready tour bus, cruising the galaxy looking for new worlds to rock and new babes to bed. And if you need to know just how anticipated this record was around these parts, Andee will count this as his THIRD copy of Monolithic Baby! purchased, having bought the import lp, and then the import cd and now this (as this version has two extra tracks not on the import) and his housemate Josh is also on number three, having bought an import cd version, then the import version with the DVD, and now this domestic version. Was it worth it? Andee and Josh both say "Hell yeah!" Comes with a DVD containing two videos (one involving lots of scantily clad ladies, and one involving a computer generated space ship hurtling through the void), two live tracks and an interview.
"It's A Satanic Drug Thing ...You Wouldn't Understand". Monster Magnet's motto, emblazoned on the back of the cd booklet, is something that they really did live up to, sonically and otherwise, back in the day. Maybe not the healthiest lifestyle choice (frontman Dave Wyndorf actually almost died recently from, yes, a drug overdose), but it sums up Monster Magnet, musically speaking. If you want to hear some "stoner rock" that's both spacier and scarier and Stoogier than most, early Monster Magnet (before they got big) is the way to go.
We reviewed their droniest bad trip masterpiece, the reissued 25...Tab ep a couple lists back, and now follow-up with a review of another favorite, their debut full-length entitled Spine Of God, originally released by Caroline in 1992 and now reissued by SPV with snazzier graphics and bonus track (a demo version of "Ozium").
This came out at the height of the grunge era, but sounds just as Stonehenge (a la Hawkwind) as it does Seattle (a la Mudhoney). It includes their Grand Funk cover, "Sin's A Good Man's Brother", alongside such downer, druggy hits from some parallel just-say-yes universe as "Pill Shovel", "Nod Scene", and "Zodiac Lung". A wasted, burn-out classic, laid-back and leaden, dazed and phased.
We've been digging the latest Monster Magnet record Mastermind lately bigtime (you should be too!), a total return to form for sure, and as if that wasn't enough MM for all the space lord motherfuckers out there, along comes this, a super limited tour only 10", that besides being available exclusively from the band on tour, or from the band's website, is also available from aQ! We're one of, if not THEE only store to have these, and we won't have em for long, limited to just 500 copies, we got a batch direct from the band, so grab one while you can.
The A side is a rerecorded version of the MM classic "Superjudge", a stripped down version, that manages to be as heavy and psychedelic as the original, all spaced out with spidery Eastern guitar melodies, minimal drumming, and some SERIOUSLY fuzzed out bass buzz, that gives the song some skull caving crunch for sure, killer vox, a dead ringer for the original, but set amidst this new arrangement, pretty hard to fuck with, and pretty awesome that decades on, these guys can still slay, and like all MM jams, the song blossoms into an awesome spacey psychedelic freakout near the end, not super heavy and blown out, more sort of trippy and druggy, which suits the new version to a tee.
The B side is a similarly rerecorded version of a song from Mastermind, the main riff like a muddy, murky slowed down Stooges, and like "Superjudge", it's a stripped down practice space jam, more minimal, but still explosive and heavy and epic, a little dirgier than the original, complete with those majestic cock-rockin' choruses and the sort of epic space rock riffery that still kicks ass over most of the other wannabe spacerockers out there.
Released on the band's own label, limited to 500 copies, we got a handful, but guessing these might go quick...
We've had this before, but it's not always that easy to find. So while we have a few in stock we thought we'd list it. It's the very first aluminum slab of Satanic Drug psych-metal to come from the demented minds of Dave Wyndorf and Co., released on
THE URNS RETURN. We never get tired of that. And we never get tired of Monument Of Urns, whose impossibly beautiful and crushingly suffocatingly heavy slow motion doom seems to effortlessly outpace all their doom-ed brethren. Four releases, each one a single track. A single 3"cd-r, meticulously designed and packaged. Each of those four tracks, massive and expansive, slooooooooooooow and so grimly gorgeous. Even at twenty minutes a pop, we can't ever get enough. The Urns' black doomscapes need to spread and sprawl, for hours, days, weeks. A sonic black plague slowly but systematically infecting the whole world.
For those new to the world of Monument Of Urns, their sound is massive, ultra thick guitars, pummeling drums, howled harsh vocals, glacial tempos, incredible dynamics, complex arrangements, and here on Absence, the band have definitely hit a peak. Not as slow as past releases, this one is a monster. With super dynamic stop start segments, squealing streaks of harmonized feedback, guitars that buzz and crumble. The sound here is as much Eyehategod as Khanate. With a healthy dose of Harvey Milk. In fact, lots of this does definitely sound like a blackened Harvey Milk. The lurching mathy stumble, the churning downtuned chug, always with those feedback filled pauses. And somehow, Urns manage to make this caustic doomed brutality catchy. We even just caught Antaeus humming along with the main riff! We've been bugging the Urns to release a full length, or to let Andee re-release all the 3"s on tUMULt cd. But they are perfectly happy to work at their own pace, to create the elaborate packaging one at a time and by hand. To forge this black art, in some mysterious pit, unleashing each noxious missive, only when they deem we are worthy. So for now, we'll have to be happy with the occasional 20 minute helping of glorious black sludge. And wait patiently for the next one.
As always, the packaging is amazing. An oversized cardstock sleeve, with an outer vellum sleeve, the overlapping designs meshing perfectly, the inside gatefold all elaborate fractals, the cd affixed to a nub on one of the inside panels. So nice.
RETURN OF THE URNS!! Quite possibly our favorite one man black doom outfit is back, with installment FIVE, in his ever expanding canon of droning downtuned blackness, and as always, it's gorgeously and lovingly hand packaged, a black folded cardstock sleeve, printed in thick red ink on the front and back, a strange black on black skeleton mandala on the inside.
The big change this time around is that Monument Of Urns has outgrown the 3"cd, this latest track, clocks in at a whopping 29 minutes, which seemingly forced a shift to a proper 5" cd-r. But beyond that, all is well, and grim, and bleak, and harrowingly dooooomy in the world of Urns. When we first put this in the computer, the song info came up "When The Wind Stopped Blowing - A Read To Your Child audiobook!" And while "When The Wind Stopped Blowing" does make a perfectly doomy title for a record, for this record even, evoking some sort of blackened wasteland, a burnt expanse of deadness and pestilence, these sounds are definitely a bit too intense for all but the grimmest of child folk.
A churning, roiling mass of near static black riffage, crumbling and distorted, oozing and filthy, a SUNNO))) baked crawl, that seems to grow more and more dense and caustic and black, as the track progresses. It's not until over 10 minutes in that the drums finally kick in, a BPM of say maybe 3 or 4, a seriously lugubrious tarpit creep, way beyond funereal, this is doom that is dead and buried and dug up again, caked with blood and mud and human flesh, a lumbering sick sonic behemoth, ultra doom, many many o'd dooooom, crushing and punishing and pummeling, total black hole, hollow earth, end of humanity doom, eventually ditching the drums and forward momentum, as the shuddering black grime oozes back into whatever black void birthed it. So goddamn good. Why Urns isn't up there with Moss and Corrupted and SUNNO))) and Monarch and the rest of the grim slowpoke royalty we'll never understand, needless to say, if you dig the very very slow, and ultra ultra low, and can't get enough oooooozing blackness and soul crushing dooooooom, then prostrate yourself before the Monument Of Urns, and let the buzz and rumble wash over you in thick filthy black torrents...
It's hard not to start every Monument Of Urns review the same, and since we can never seem to resist, and actually don't try that hard anyway, it is once again, time to prostrate yourself before the 7th coming, the most recent return of the Urns, which is indeed the 7th installment in their (his actually!) ongoing series of single track mini epics. Broken, like the previous six releases, consists of a 20 minute (or so) track, housed in elaborate home made packaging, and is a thick, festering, caustic sonic crawl, that manages to be brutal, blown out, punishing and pummeling, but also strangely mesmerizing and blackly beautiful.
Ever new Urns record has us immediately thinking it's the heaviest one yet, or the meanest, or the murkiest, and without going back and listening to them all again (which we're now dying to do), Broken elicits the same impression. The riffs bleed and ooze, a gristly, tarpit creep, the seems to blur and smear and grow more indistinct with each passing second, the drums driving this sluggish behemoth are echoey thuds, Neanderthal pounds, spare and sparse, but still bombastic and pulverizing. There are vocals too. Harsh ones that just sort of soak into the surrounding sounds, but also what sounds like clean singing (or maybe just some strange effected guitar melody), that add some haunting almost horror movie sounding melodic counterpoint part way through.
But barring that, and a bit of wild psychedelic squall near the song's end, the bulk of Broken remains locked into a sort of lugubrious lumber, heady and hypnotic, trudging relentlessly, a moody, metallic drag, that borders on industrial at times, sounding almost like a slowed down Godflesh, monstrous and monolithic, seriously some of the most epic and majestic downer doom / sick sludge EVER, and it remains kind of shocking to us that Monument Of Urns doesn't get the same love as groups like Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), etc. At least he does from us. And very likely you too, especially if you dig that sort of downtuned, dopesick dirgery as much as we do...
THE RETURN OF THE URNS!! THE THIRD URNS!!
We've been waiting patiently, almost a year now, for the next installment in Monument Of Urns' creeping crawling, and slowly coalescing masterpiece. A timeless epic, so massive, it can only be presented 20 minutes at a time. Each chapter a massive single track, each a piece of some unimaginable grand design. Each immaculately designed and presented. Each somehow impossibly heavier than the last. First there was The Ancient Method. Then there was The Destroyer Of All. And now, there is Cruelty.
Another all too brief missive from the mysterious dark lord who guards the Monument Of Urns.
Cruelty is another soul smiting slab of ultra sludge, a plodding doom metal behemoth, trudging endlessly forward, knee deep in murk and mire, wreathed in clouds of black buzz, a monstrously monolithic dirge, laying waste to any and all who kneel before it. In addition to the demonic growls, there seems to be some sort of strange monk like chanting, giving Cruelty a sort of demonically liturgical feel. The riff and pounding rhythmic pummel repeat like some sort of hellish mantra, over and over for nearly fifteen minutes, before the riffs devolve into a swirling black morass, over which harsh vocals struggle to be heard, the cries of a tortured soul, soon huge black hole pulses of downtuned crush drop from the sky, threatening to rent our puny planet asunder. The beast arises and continues its relentless rampage, until finally, all that is left is the chanting of those mysterious monks, praying that the beast will never return...
Essential doom for the Skepticism, Moss, Bunkur, Esoteric, Khanate, Corrupted, Earth and SUNNO))) sets... And like the other two installments, gorgeously packaged in a fold over sleeve, printed with woodcut images and strange calligraphic text, the 3" cd-r affixed to the inside.
All must worship before the Monument Of Urns.
Or perish.
A mysterious package showed up on our doorstep one day a few weeks ago. An oversized brown paper sleeve printed with all sorts of geometric figures, atop them a drawing of a curled up skeleton, and beneath the skeleton were printed the words Monument Of Urns. And along with it came a note, printed on the same paper and in the same manner, which said simply "Free doom for all". We were more than halfway to digging this before we even slapped it in the cd player. And moments later, free-doom was indeed ours! (But it'll cost you five bucks.)
Included was a three inch cd-r, packed with 16 minutes of some of the most massive glacial super distorted, soul crushing doooooom we'd ever heard. Riffs that could flatten a city, given ample time to drift into nothingness before the next comes crashing down, a rhythm so slow and spare, it sounds like the drummer could smoke a cigarette between each snare hit, vocals, distant and hazy, as if being shouted from the bottom of a blackened pit, that sometimes roar ferociously before drifting back southward. Essential for fans of all things Skepticism, Bunkur, Esoteric, Corrupted, Earth, SUNNO))), Boris and the like!
THE URNS RETURNS!! We all went mad for the first release from mysterious outerspace underworld doom outfit Monument Of Urns, a massive glacial slab of black as tar, slow motion doom. A brief quarter of an hour, a mere three inches of utter doom and devastation. Beautifully packaged in an oversized cardstock sleeve. So fucking good but at the same time so cruel. It's the kind of track, the sort of sound that you want to go on forever and ever, an endless smear of blackened buzz. Of which we were blessed (cursed is maybe more appropriate) with only a tiny glimpse of the mighty beast. So we were psyched to discover a new, but similarly brief blast of that dismally delightful Urns ultradoom. This time it's in the form of a single 17 minute track entitled "The Destroyer Of All". Upping the drone / drift / ambient ante, "TDOA" begins with a long stretch of slow swirling metal guitars, drifting and droning, before even more guitars are piled on top, and then the drums hit, like someone dropping anvils from a seventh story window. A plodding, trudging stretch of 16rpm riffage and vocals so raw and distorted and distant they just sound like another layer of demonic buzz. So slow and heavy, so impossibly crushing, it's doom metal verging on ambience, sludge metal stretched dangerously close to complete drone-age. And we fucking love it. Someone has got to get these guys to take all of their 15 and 17 minute tracks and string them together into the ultimate doom symphony. A double disc, a triple disc even, we can hardly imagine it.
ESSENTIAL for fans of all things Skepticism, Bunkur, Esoteric, Corrupted, Earth, SUNNO))), Boris and the like! Packaged in a cool oversized cardstock sleeve, with a mini 3" cd sleeve inside.
Once again, the RETURN OF THE URNS!! For those keeping track, which is a lot of you we're guessing, considering how popular Monument Of Urns is around these parts, this is installment number SIX in the Urns' ongoing exploration of grim black dooooooooom, the sort of lurching, lumbering, blown out, downtuned ultraheaviness we can't ever seem to get enough of. Number six, The Old Man And Death, finds MoU returning to the format of the first 4 releases, a 3" cd-r, housed in a super striking, and meticulously designed oversized sleeve, this time around, there's a thick textured black screenprint of a skeleton riding a ghost horse on the front, and an on old style woodcut on the back, while inside, the disc sits in the middle of a geometric design, overlapping shapes beneath two angels.
And like the past installments, The Old Man And Death is a single track, just shy of 21 minutes this time, and is another corrosive, filthy slab of abject, glacial, tarpit heaviness, the guitars massive, the riffs Teutonic, the drums simple and spare buy crushing, the instruments locked into a sinister plodding death march. The guitars crashing, and then slowly decaying, the riffs transformed into crumbling superdistorted rumbles, before the next riff crashes in. Feedback swirls, the vocals a howling shriek, barely audible, buried in the murk and mire.
And while it's of course crushingly and suffocatingly heavy, it's also dark and droned out, strangely hypnotic, the arrangement very cyclical, repetitive, total trance inducing lowend black doom ritual for sure. Like SUNNO))) jamming with Monarch, or Khanate covering Winter, epic, majestic, slow and low, doom-drone-dirge bliss. Eventually some of the crush is peeled back, in a squall of feedback, revealing a strange muddy minimal riff, it too wreathed in feedback, but soon, that riff blossoms into another brutal black crawl, slithery and sinister, the sound even dronier, the vocals washed out and almost atmospheric, and so it goes, the Urns pounding and pounding and pummeling, until eventually, the sound seems to melt into a viscous black puddle, a swirling, oozing black mass, that rumbles and whirs and groans and buzzes in a gauzy psychedelic haze, before fading to black.
Yet another installment in what has to be one of thee most perfect bodies of work in the extreme ultra doom / black / sludge / drone / dirge underground, and again, all the folks who love Monarch and Bunkur and Moss and The Body and Trees and Habsyll and Fleshpress and Atavist and Orthodox and all the rest, should most definitely be bowing down before Monument Of Urns...
This is the debut release from this young local outfit, and it's a doozy. Obviously influenced by the post-metal heavies like Neurosis and Isis, they also infuse their sound with some seriously atmospheric twang flecked dreaminess a la Earth or Barn Owl. Two side long epics, each one a brooding slow build. Doomy for sure, but also atmospheric, and darkly psychedelic. Clouds of downtuned guitar shimmer ride atop, loping rhythms, all wreathed in a swirl of distant guitar shimmer. Opener "White Owl" begins total True Widow style slowcore, and we would have been perfectly happy if it just kept plodding along like that, hypnotic low slung doom-dirge mesmer, totally tranced out and dreamy. But then about four minutes in, the guitars com crashing down, blown out and in the red, huge heaving walls of cascading riffage. We sorta expected the band to stay locked into that doomy trudge, but instead, things settle down into that opening psychedelia again, before bursting into something much more math/post rocky, replete with some super tense leads, emotional and minor key, adds some serious pathos and drama to the proceedings, and again, we would have been just as happy if it never got heavy/loud again, but obviously it does, and we were pretty darn happy about that too, a dense, chugging mathy tangle, that explodes into a churning doomy groove, complete with bellowed, glass gargling vox, eventually slowing down to an almost ultra-doom sludge, before once again, returning to the dark psych-dirge opening, only to surprise with one final burst of skull caving heaviness right at the end.
The flipside offers up another variation, similarly structured but a bit more riffy, the vocals swooping in much earlier this time, the sound a bit like a more raw, and more fierce Katatonia, but with the same sort of minor key melodicism, and like the first side/track, the song seems to swing back and forth between the two, mixing it up here, by wedding those bellowed vokills to the clean guitar and rums breakdown, before once again bursting into some seriously headbanging riffery and some soaring, emotional Godspeed style crescendos.
Fans of all things slow and low, heavy and sludge-y, post metal and metallic post rock, will wonder where these guys have been all their lives. And as mentioned above, clear a little space between your Isis and Neurosis records, cuz while this might not be the most original sound ever, these guys do it really well, and add their own sonic twists, and while this is pretty great for a first record, it definitely points toward some bigger and better things to come.
Brand new split from local heavies Monuments Collapse, whose debut lp was a big hit around here, fusing Neurosis / Isis style post metal heaviness, with brooding psychedelic slowcore a la True Widow. Their half of this new split finds them in equally fine form, opening with a gorgeous bit of psych folk ambience, before launching into some epic, majestic, crushing heaviness, all throat shredding howl, and blown out, lumbering doomic crush, but like that debut, MC's sound manages to remain rife with melody, the vibe melancholic, the sound laced with droned out, downtuned thrum, not to mention some extended space jam mesmer, chugging, churning, soaring metallic majesty. They close their side of the split with the 10+ minute "Pathos", that begins all meandering post rock drift, chiming melodies, subtle percussion, a stripped down rhythm, and thick, rumbling bass, totally tranced out and moody, the sound building slowly to some serious epic metallic mathiness, the sound blossoming into full on Godspeed style metallic epicry, that stretches out for the remainder of the track/side. So great. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on.
The flipside comes from Breag Naofa, a progged out doom sludge combo from the Pacific Northwest, who were a big surprise for sure, their sound equalling Monuments Collapse in terms of metallic heft and sonic majesty, the opening few minutes, super melodic and mathy, unwinding an epic instrumental jam, that sounds a bit like a way more metal Mogwai, until the vocals come swooping in, a monstrous bellow, the music following suit, thick downtuned riffage, massive drum pound, the song churning and roiling malevolently (but still melodically), before slipping into a washed out post rocky sprawl, all muted steel string strum, chiming chords, and sinewy, spidery bassline, eventually working its way back up to an epic and emotional coda, plaintive and melancholic, sounding a bit like Neurosis crossed with Alcest...
The second track is more of the same. Opening with a rumbling raga like buzz, punctuated by monster drum pound, thick sprawling guitar buzz, and some strange percussion, before exploding into a tarpit trudge, thick chugging guitars and keening high end leads, definitely reminiscent of Neurosis (circa Enemy Of The Sun), brooding and massive, like the first track, it winds down into some spaced out psychedelic drift, and once again works its way back to one final blast of pound and pummel, all dense guitar chug and churning double kick drumming, locked into a seriously crusty doom-ic groove, before gradually fading to nothing. Killer stuff from both bands for sure, and man do we want to hear more from Breag Naofa...
We first heard Australian one man black metal band Moon, on a three way split with Nekros Manteia and long time aQ fave Nekrasov. At the time, we described Moon's sound as merging black metal atmosphere with more contemplative noise elements, resulting in a creepy, unsettling droned out chunk of twisted experimental blackness.
Caduceus Chalice seems to be the fully realized vision of what was only hinted at on that one track, a sprawling songsuite equal parts murky blown out riffage, and blurred blackened ambience, a spectral black soundworld, the guitars, woozy and lugubrious, sounding at times like they're being played in slow motion, the stretches of atmospheric ambience, only a step away from Philip Jeck or the Caretaker, that same sort of of washed out, faded feel, and Moon does deliver the blackness, the riffing is blurred and smeared into whirling streaks of sounds, layers of softly undulating black gauze, wrapped around surprisingly poppy guitar melodies, and the drumming, muted and buried until it's just a heartbeat like pulse, the only TRULY black metal element is the vocals, but even those are hazy and seemingly wordless, wreathed in effects, that lets them seemingly melt into the sounds around them.
A lot of Caduceus Chalice almost sounds like the record was recorded at 45, and then pressed to disc at 33, everything exuding a sort of haunted drag, as if the sounds were trying to extricate themselves from some black sonic tarpit.
There are moments where that murky atmosphere is shrugged off, for the most part, and Moon can engage in some proper buzz and blast, but even them, there's a gauzy patina over everything, muting the sounds and dulling the sharp edges, which only makes everything seem that much more mysterious and ominous. Minus the vocals, this almost sounds like some sort of experimental shoegaze blackdrone record, drifting and hovering, lumbering and loping as much if not more then buzzing and blasting. "Caduceus" might be our favorite of the bunch, a mournful midtempo lament, that were it not for the vokills, would be the prettiest saddest doom pop song ever, but with the vox added, just sounds that much more anguished and abject.
The record finishes off with the 19 minute "Chalice", a lumbering balladic dirge, the drums simple and Swans-like, the guitars whirling amorphous chordal clouds, processed vocals adding a haunting choral quality, reminding us a bit of Skepticism, but again, sweetly melancholic and darkly melodic, no vocals either, so this could totally pass for some blackened dronepop ballad, even though it's actually a washed out ghostlike slo-mo black metal lament.
Fans of Xasthur and Moloch and other purveyors of mournful, ambient, buzz drenched blackness would do well to explore Moon's mysterious soundworld...
It doesn't get more kvlt than this. Two of the grimmest black metal bands California has to offer. One from SF, one from LA, each rumored to include members of some other more well known black metal bands, the sound of both bands, raw and primitive, stripped down, furious and buzzy, simple and pounding.
The true measure of a black metal band these days is their MySpace presence. The truly grim and kvlt, still somehow manage to whip up a Myspace page, even though that's probably the last kvlt activity imaginable. We like to imagine bands in the forest, or in a cave recording, or covered in blood and corpsepaint wandering through the snowy mountains, not hunched over a laptop writing html. But still a quick look at both bands' MySpace pages reveal that Moon Dark are truly the most hateful and grim band in the land, read as they defend their shitty logo, and their stupid band name, while still managing to accuse all other bands of being false metal and lame poseurs and call for the death of all Christians. While we discover that Harassor are pretty badass looking, fronted by a HUGE bearded bald dude, with corpsepaint and a big upside down cross on his forehead that stretches all the way up to his bare pate. Excellent.
Sonically, both bands tread similar ground. Pounding buzz drenched stripped down black metal. Think Akitsa, Ildjarn, Bone Awl and the like. Moon Dark is the more lo-fi of the two, a furious super distorted rehearsal space sound, the vocals a hysterical shriek over chugging midtempo riffage and barely audible drums (assuming there are drums at all). Occasionally, the riff slips into a bizarre almost circusy sing-song melody which is fucked up but actually awesome, before slipping back into grim buzz mode.
The Harassor side is not so lo-fi but still plenty grim and buzzy, total d-beat style heaviness, Akitsa, Malveillance, pounding drums, SUPER buzzed out guitars, killer gurgly demonic vox, and even some strange scrappy guitar parts which are super cool. Creepy and almost Misfits-y at times, but buzzy and black enough to hold their own with Moon Dark.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Each numbered in human blood. Black and white printed sleeves, and pressed on white vinyl!
Debut from the awesomely monikered Moon Knight, the work of James Brown III, a member of LA black metal horde Harassor, who sometimes also releases sick sonic blackness under the name Lord Foul. But as Moonknight, Brown creates that sort of crumbling blown out blissy blackness we can never seem to get enough of, equal parts buzzy and super distorted, hazy and washed out and shoegazey, clouds of caustic buzz and caveman pound seem soaked in soft swirls of melodic shimmer, sweetly melancholic melodies are looped dreamily beneath a churning wall of roiling riffage and guttural demonic growls, the label describes it as Alcest and Amesoeurs mixed with Ildjarn and Bone Awl, and that does pretty much nail it, a sound that is both thick and corrosive, hateful and hellishly menacing, but also woozy, dreamy, and downright pretty, meditatively melodic while simultaneously buzz drenched and brutally black, two great tastes that have really never sounded better together. Might just be one of our favorite new black metal releases, too bad it's LIMITED TO JUST 100 COPIES, each tape housed in gorgeous letterpressed #'d J-card, printed on sparkly reflective metallic silver paper.
Record number two from LA black metal one man band Moonknight, aka James Brown III, one third of LABM trio Harassor (whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), and like Toplov before it, Ligeia is another blast of blown out black buzz and pounding metallic grimnity, opening with a blast of old school buzz and pound, punkish and droned out, the track gradually gains momentum, the vocals drawn out into raspy drones that mirror the fuzzy insectoid buzz beneath, all interwoven into a mesmerizingly undulating sprawl of hypno-buzz blackness, which leads directly into the crackle drenched lo-fi blur of the second track, atmospheric and almost Tim Hecker-like before the song proper kicks in, cranking up the buzz, the drums buried beneath, reminding us of another buzz overloaded black metal band we dig Wrath Of The Weak, the sound crumbling and in the red, again blurring into an almost near drone.
And so it goes, for the most part. There are still some awesome surprises, like the tripped out effects heavy super atmospheric psychedelia of "Thyrsgrieden", which deftly weds some blackbuzz guitar, vokill rasp and midtempo blasting to the otherwise tripped out space rock drift. There's also some serious dirge-y chug on "Dim Corridor", and the record finishes off with the epic atmospheric "The Translucent Path", a chiming, ominous cinematic creep, that sounds like it could be Umberto or some other Goblin / Carpenter worshipping faux soundtracker. Awesome!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the covers letter pressed on super thick textured cardstock.
This long out of print chunk twisted black buzz now reissued and available again!
Debut from the awesomely monikered Moon Knight, the work of James Brown III, a member of LA black metal horde Harassor, who sometimes also releases sick sonic blackness under the name Lord Foul. But as Moonknight, Brown creates that sort of crumbling blown out blissy blackness we can never seem to get enough of, equal parts buzzy and super distorted, hazy and washed out and shoegazey, clouds of caustic buzz and caveman pound seem soaked in soft swirls of melodic shimmer, sweetly melancholic melodies are looped dreamily beneath a churning wall of roiling riffage and guttural demonic growls, the label describes it as Alcest and Amesoeurs mixed with Ildjarn and Bone Awl, and that does pretty much nail it, a sound that is both thick and corrosive, hateful and hellishly menacing, but also woozy, dreamy, and downright pretty, meditatively melodic while simultaneously buzz drenched and brutally black, two great tastes that have really never sounded better together. Might just be one of our favorite new black metal releases, too bad it's LIMITED TO JUST 100 COPIES, each tape housed in gorgeous letterpressed #'d J-card, printed on sparkly reflective metallic silver paper.
Another winner from the Finnish label Spikefarm that brought us the amazing and sort of silly Finntroll. You remember, the trollish black metal polka band. Well, now here's Moonsorrow. Pagan Folk Metal is what they call it, but much like Finntroll,
We've had a few of these lurking on our shelves for a while, but (like so much other stuff, metal and otherwise) hadn't yet had a chance to give it the website review, until now... Moontower are a cult black metal duo from Poland that formed in the final year of the last millenium, and Praise The Apocalypse is their first full-length release dating from 2003. Being Polish, they're very Graveland influenced, though fortunately they've discarded any National Socialist associations in favor of a purely apolitical, anti-Christian stance.
This disc consists of seven thump n' grind rockers from the bowels of Hell, swathed in hellish buzzing fuzz-muzz, with rasping wretching vocals and monomaniacal programmed drums. The production is...distressed. The vocals in particular threaten to overload the rest of the already fully-fuzzed, distorted musick. We just LOVE this style of elite bathroom recorded burzumic mayhem. Well, it says this stuff was recorded in the "Stronghold of SETH", but while it's possible that stronghold is not a bathroom, it's also definitely no expensive studio. Such a studio would not survive this! Still sounds great though. And bewarned, chances are these few copies we have are the only ones we're gonna ever get...
