Earache's classic vinyl reissue campaign marches on, now hitting us with Morbid Angel's amazing 1989 debut album, "Altars Of Madness". David Vincent's Satanic growl, Pete "Commando" Sandoval's drum artillery, and the squiggly guitar "lava" of bloody Trey Azagthoth and Pete Brunelle: the might of these eventual kings of death metal was on full display here, with some highlights being "Maze of Torment", "Lord of All Fevers And Plague", and "Chapel of Ghouls". Evil Florida death metal, ah those were the days! (But, this this was only their "A" album, they're at "G" in the alphabet now and still going strong.) Reissued on heavy, colored wax, by the way, like the rest of this Earache vinyl series, which is definitely reminding us of how incredible a roster this record label boasted in its prime. Again, those were the days... (CDs still available, of course.)
Deluxe cd reissue of Morbid Angel's classic second helping of death metal mastery, their "B" album (coming between "Altars Of Madness" and "Covenant"). With Pete "Commando" Sandoval's blasting drum artillery, Dave Vincent's aggro growl, and Trey Azagthoth's unhinged squiggly guitar leads, these Floridians made death metal for Satan that was bloodier and blacker than anything outta Norway before or since. Their whole catalog is crucial death metal but "Blessed Are The Sick" holds a special place in our hearts. Here their sick, Slayer to the power of Slayer speed collided with classically-inspired keyboard ambience and doomy dirges, taking death metal to a significant high point of both ridiculous excess and truly affecting evil atmosphere.
The original thanks lists in the cd booklet really says it all. Trey Azagthoth says, in part: "I hail to you Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is to you I dedicate all my works of past present and future. May they outshine the shadowing voices of this other factor of psychic we share existance with. You are the greatest composer of us all. Hail to you O Ancient Ones, Absu Mummu Tiamat, Kutulu, Pazuzu, Humwawa, Xaztur, Hubbur, Kingu, Baxaxaxa Baxaxaxa, The Arylia of Mummu Tiamat, The churning seas of Nar Mattaru, Yog Sothoth, and the ever bubbly bubblies of Shub Niggurath..."
Basically, if you're even a dabbler in "extreme metal" you need to have this disc in your collection, and better late that never, especially as it now comes packaged in a cardboard slipcase, with a Quicktime video for the title track (done all MTV-style) included on the disc, liner notes from Trey, and lotsa photos.
MPEG Download: "Fall From Grace" [/audio/morbidangelfall.mp3]
Flordian death metal champs' first album without longtime controversial frontman David Vincent. Brilliantly brutal, with obscure lyrics making reference to ancient Sumerian deities that somehow combine the cosmic mythos of HP Lovecraft with the self-help teachings of Tony Robbins! There's also many strange instrumental interludes and even a tribal drum computer exercise. Morbid Angel did not fall off, and this is one of the few new releases in the death metal arena that I'd wholeheartedly recommend.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
These death metal gods' totally amazing release from last year, reissued with a bonus disc consisting entirely of Trey Azagthoth's insane squiggly guitar solos (28 of 'em, over 10 minutes worth) taken from the album sessions! Yes, stupid, but in a totally cool way. Who else would do this? Actually, if 'Love of Lava' were released separately, under some other, obscure (Japanese?) name, we're sure that lovers of out-guitar avant-skronk would be drooling all over it! Couple that with 'Formulas...', one of the best death metal releases of the last few years, and this is a must-have package. Plus, you also get an autographed guitar pick!
Bandleader/guitarist/Cthulhu worshipper Trey Azagthoth took a break from his favorite online first-person shooter computer games to craft this followup to Morbid Angel's 1997's death metal masterpiece, "Formulas Fatal To The Flesh", along with bandmates guitarist Eric Rutan, drum tornado Pete Sandoval, and vocalist/bassist Steve Tucker (he of "Cremaster 2" fame). More state-of-the-art death metal from these masters, full of Azagthoth's trademark baroque whammy-bar guitar leads, and (lyrically) the ancient philosophy of the Mesopotamians. Still the reigning kings.
Hail. Album number H from inimitable Morbid Angel. Featuring as always the squiggly guitar stylings and wacky philosophy of death metal maestro Trey Azagthoth, the inhuman drum performance of Pete "Commando" Sandoval, and the brutal barking and bass playing of Steve Tucker. This trio never disappoints, though some will remark that Heretic does not sport their best production job (which may have to do with recording at home with their sound guy at the helm, though this self-production does prevent any outsider from stifling any of their extreme eccentricity). As you might expect, Heretic is full of complex, staccato song constructs bursting with monstrous bpm levels, which can be simply mesmerizing -- and jaw-dropping. Amazing athletically, and intellectually. After all, someone has to compose and arrange this stuff! Plus, their usual selection of off-the-wall instrumentals includes one called "Drum Check" which demonstrates Pete Sandoval and Morbid Angel's sense of humor. Not to be outdone, Pete's insane drum solo is followed by an equally insane solo guitar piece from Mr. Azagthoth. And if, after that, you had any doubts that the man isn't totally demented and silly, be sure to check out his thanks list inside the cd booklet. The metal tradition of album-sleeve thanks lists has been taken to another absurd level of art by Morbid Angel, one of the many extremes to which these all-time-greats can lay claim. Hail. Also, currently we've got the version that comes with an extra bonus disc of crazy solos and outtakes, but we don't know how long it will be available!
In a review recently we made some comment about death metal appealing to the lowest common denominator, a comment based on years of experience attending death metal shows, and in the process managed to illicit a little backlash, so at the risk of garnering even more, let's start this review with this: DEATH METAL FANS ARE THE BIGGEST BABIES!! Okay, so by now, you HAVE to have heard how shitty the new Morbid Angel record is, it's techno, it's industrial, it's garbage, there's a song about cop killing, the lyrics are stupid, the song titles are embarrassing, and yeah, that's all actually pretty much true, but holy shit, we've never seen as much freaking out as we have from disappointed death metal fans. And in fact, disappointed barely begins to cover it. So many death metallers, tough, mean metal dudes, hysterical and angry and apoplectic, posting vitriolic videos on YouTube (where we swear it seemed like some of them were gonna cry), writing angry diatribes on blogs, posting some amazing reviews on Encyclopedia Metallum (average review score: 27 percent! Oof!), it's as if a band they loved never made a bad record before. And yeah, we know. First Morbid Angel record in 8 years or whatever, the return of David Vincent, but so what? Maybe it's because we're not OBSESSED with Morbid Angel, that Illud Divinum Insanus didn't cause us to have a breakdown, or it could be that actually, Illud Divinum Insanus is pretty fucking cool. In its own delusional and fucked up way.
And no, we're not being contrary for the sake of contrariness, although at least one of the metalheads here continues to proclaim Illud Divinum Insanus an utter piece of shit, the other one (me, Andee!), actually digs the new weirdness. And the thing is, as much as we love Altars Of Madness and Blessed Are The Sick, we're pretty sure we'll probably end up listening to this one more, just cuz it's so weird (a subject that the above mentioned hater seemed to agree with oddly enough!). And it is weird. We had heard rumors about how it was all jungle and techno and industrial, and comparisons to the ill fated techno-meets-metal Spawn soundtrack, unfortunately, in all but a couple cases, it's not nearly that weird/bad, much of the record is straight up death metal, and most of the reviewers cop to that, more polished maybe, but those tracks definitely sound like Morbid Angel. But then there are tracks like "Too Extreme" (the title your first clue), which adds programmed industrial pound to death metal guitars, culminating in a ridiculous drill sound, that could have been plucked straight off a nineties Ministry record, and the song definitely has too much groove for death metal, bordering on nu-metal for sure, and the lyrics, that's where we'll agree with everybody, to appreciate even the questionable sounds, you have to tune out the inane lyrics, what the fuck was David Vincent thinking?
And it's that nu-metal thing that most likely has most people bummed out, cuz even when there's nothing overtly offensive happening, the band do seem to tend toward a sort of Sepultura circa Roots style heaviness.
But where it all goes wrong, where even we can't defend these guys, is on "Radikult", which does in fact sound like Ice-T's "Cop Killer" via nu-metal, fuzzy electronic bass buzz, programmed beats, one of those lurching stop start nu-metal grooves, with David Vincent whisper rapping "kill a cop cop kill a cop kill a kill a cop cop", all ominous nursery rhyme rap style, and then singing the verses in a gruff jock rock growl, some problematically funky basslines, and perhaps THEE worst lyrics EVER. And we mean EVER.
So yeah, folks after more MA style death metal, will find only a little here to love, but folks who want to check out this surprisingly cool carwreck of a comeback album, and aren't afraid of a little nu-metal and some dated industrialisms, you might just end up digging this as much as some of us. Even Allan, who thinks it's crazy/embarrassing for Andee to like this, admits he'll probably listen to it as much or more than Morbid Angel's last couple of albums, just for the humor factor. (But listen to it more than Blessed Are The Sick? No. That's wrong even to suggest...)
We rarely get hate mail, but when we do, it's usually pretty good. And our positive review of Morbid Angel's most recent record, Illud Divinum Insanus, elicited some of the best hate mail ever. We were accused, among other things, of being poseurs, of being the whole problem with San Francisco, and why no one wants to live here, and of liking that Morbid Angel record ironically (all somehow connected). We'd like to believe none of that is true, especially the part about our ironic love of that Morbid Angel album. As long time readers of the aQ list must certainly know by now, we tend to love lots of ridiculous, crazy, stupid, demented shit, and if anything qualified as all of those, it was Illud Divinum Insanus. Have a look at that review if you missed it the first time, and you can see what all the hubbub was about. Sure that record had some classic death metal, but it also had some weird nineties style industrialisms, and some (sort of) rapping. Even the folks here that hated that record, were perversely obsessed with it. And the folks who loved it were also perversely obsessed with it, and even THOSE folks found at least one of the tracks nearly impossible to like. So really, it came as no surprise that the whole record was due for a double disc remix, with all the tracks redone, remixed, reimagined and reworked by all manner of industrial / techno musicians / producers. And again, the haters were appalled, but strangely intrigued, and the rest of us, well, we were pushing it for Record Of The Week, cuz really, this is some Judgement Night style shit, a maybe bad idea pushed about as far as it could go, and in the process, becoming something strangely cool, and surprisingly listenable (for some of us, at least).
So yeah, the vestiges of the originals are nearly wiped completely away on most of these tracks, and what's left is usually just a riff, or only the vocals, the originals totally transformed into pounding gabber, or martial industrial, or creepy electronica, or glitched out weirdness, the sound definitely heavily nineties, hard to avoid when the core of the sound is electronica/industrial crossed with metal guitars, the Ministry vibe looms large, but somehow, these songs work better as nineties industrial metal jams than death metal, especially the more problematic tracks like "Too Extreme". No matter what, or how much, we write, most haters will not be swayed, which is totally fine, but for folks into the WAY weirder/demented side of metal, or who dig nineties industrial metal, or even folks just into the whole traffic accident can't look away vibe of this ridiculous release, this is pretty fucking cool/weird. And if it wasn't actually a Morbid Angel record, and was instead just some super fucked up comp of metal industrial, we imagine lots of folks might be a little obsessed. Cuz lots of this is really fucking cool.
Igorrr (1/2 of aQ faves Whourkr) turn their track into a dizzying chopped up, head spinning collage of stuttering guitars and processed riffs, the sound blenderized and junglized and blasted into a squall of fractured melodies and skittery beats, a track then sounds like it could have come off the Igorrr record proper. The Laibach remix is incredible, adding harpsichord, flutes, swooping backwards guitars, and the vox from the original into a dizzying psychedelic Teutonic pound that KILLS. cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy takes his track and adds a tolling bell, chanted vox, squiggly sci-fi effects, and transforms it into a weirdly cinematic string laden dirge. Tek-One adds thick rib cage rattling bass warble for a bad ass death metaldubstep mash-up, DJ Ruffneck goes full on gabber, pounding and relentless, laced with shards of guitar solos from the original, Black Lung takes the original and blurs it into a murky smear, and spreads that out beneath a heavy house music churn, while Mondkopf buries the original in squelches and low end buzz, turning it into a lurching low end creep, Scott Brown turns his track into full on HI-NRG rave, which is hilarious, but kind of awesome, Fixhead offers up another crazy head spinning heavy dubstep workout, we could go on and on, but they're all pretty great, and weird, and while some are dumb and fun, others are dark and fucked up and fierce, others still tripped out and confusional. Folks who hated the original, and who were offended by our UN-ironic love of that record (we're not poseurs dude - we're TOO EXTREME!!) will most definitely want to steer WELL clear of this monstrosity, but for everyone else, we have to say, we've been listening to this like crazy, nonstop, and that shows no sign of changing any time soon, which always the real measure of a record. In fact, folks who hated Illud Divinum Insanus for being a mockery of a Morbid Angel album, might be able to like this, since it's not even pretending to be death metal.
Includes a download coupon for even MORE remixes, not included on the discs proper.
We're happy to report that the internet has not (entirely) killed the 'zine. Blogs and websites are great, but can't really replace a good old fashioned b&w stapled xeroxed 'zine! They do seem old fashioned, though. And that vintage quality is fully embraced by this metal 'zine out of Canada, Morbid Tales, since the subject matter covered is pretty old school too. Some of the bands here are new, but they carry the torch of '80s underground metal (thrash, doom, death and NWOBHM) high. '90s cult black metal and '70s psych and prog is also not outside Morbid Tales' purview. While all 'zines are labors of love, editor Annick "Satannick" Grioux REALLY is a maniac for this music. Her enthusiasm really captures the spirit of 'zines back in the old pre-internet tape-trading days.
Interviewees, among others, include Darkthrone, Portrait, Master's Hammer, Voivod, Pagan Altar, Cauldron, The Lamp Of Thoth, Elixir, Soothsayer, and, get this, Flower Travellin' Band (who get asked about the naked chopper riding cover photo of their debut LP)!! Plus there's reviews of obscure releases and demos, metal tourist shopping guides to London, Paris, Montreal, and Prague, show reports, and other interesting tidbits, including a brief guide to "Purple Metal" aka Italian Horror Metal like Black Hole and Paul Chain.
This is Morbid Tales' biggest issue yet, 117 full size pages, plus flip it over and then there's another 13 page bonus zine all about heavy metal cooking tips entitled Hell Bent For Cooking (soon to be expanded into a book to be published by Bazillion Points we're told)! Recipes contributed by members of Anvil, Exciter, Cauldron, Trouble, The Gates Of Slumber, Countess, Ogre, Piledriver, and others. Such delicious dishes as: The Stew Of True Doom. Tomato-Garlic Hellfire Chicken. Black Pudding And Squid In It's Own Ink, With A Hashish Garnish. And then by the last few pages, the recipes have turned into drink mixes, these being metalheads after all...
Morbid Tales #6 (+ Hell Bent For Cooking) is an impressively thick tome of metal obsessiveness all in all. We only got a handful of copies (8) and won't be able to get any more, as it's SOLD OUT, so act fast if you want one.
We've actually been meaning to review this for a while now, the debut full length from Swedish death metal weirdoes Morbus Chron, who obviously, being from Sweden, and playing death metal, are following in a grand tradition, but rather than rehashing what came before, these guys take that classic sound and twist it all up. The garish psychedelic cover art is your first clue that this is not your dimwitted big brother's death metal. It's more like your deformed-evil-twin-that-you-keep-locked-up-in-the-attic-dosed-on-hallucinogens-to-keep-him-docile's death metal. Right from the get go, Morbus Chron spew an unholy concoction of tangled atonal psychedelic melodies, ominous cinematic ambience, churning downtuned heaviness, occasionally laced with wah wah guitars, and driven by bellowed gruff vokills, the riffs are fantastically slippery and loose, the drumming too, a punkish gallop that seems right on the edge of the drummer's ability, which is most definitely a good thing, the band tight as fuck, but sounding constantly on the verge of collapse, the sound more lurching and lumbering than blasting, the vibe murky and muddy, old school heaviness infused with some warped avant garde experimentation, and executed like a horde of knuckle dragging zombie metalheads. Plus who can argue with a band who names one of their songs "Creepy Creeping Creep"? Yet for all the weirdness and psychedelic-ness, Sleepers In the Rift is still death metal, and sorta classic sounding (to a degree) DM to boot, so all you dabblers who don't actually dig old school death metal, this might not be QUITE weird enough for you. They're no Portal after all, but what they are, is modern masters of some damaged DNA strain of classic Swedish death metal, beholden hugely to the greats, but all warped and twisted and fucked up, and transformed into something sorta new, but seriously ruling.
Sleepers In The Rift, the full length debut from Swedish death metallers Morbus Chron, was a fantastically gnarled collection of murky, muddy, old school, with a decidedly outsider/avant bent, one that seemed barely kept in check throughout that record. But on Sweven, it seems like those avant tendencies have taken over, and it's clear from the very first few seconds, that what's in store is most definitely not more of the same. Backwards effected guitar swoops, give way to a loping, clean guitar figure, mildly melancholic and simplisitc, which is soon joined by some shimmery filigree, and when the song kicks in proper, it's not a blast of thrashing blackness, instead, it's some almost Godspeed sounding flourishes, all haunting shimmer, and slow build smolder, and even when again, it seems like the song will explode into death metal pound, it just sort of blossoms further into some sort of post metal epicry. Now to be fair, it is essentially an intro, but even the first 'proper' song starts out similarly, all shuffle and strum and shimmer, sort of mathy and proggy; and even when it does explode into metal, it's more Voivod than death metal, the vibe and sound sort of sci-fi prog, technical, but super melodic, the only real nod to proper death metal are the raspy anguished vokills, which sound even stranger, when paired with the group's new more polished sound. But it's a pretty excellent combination, one that gives the sound a more psychedelic and prog metal cast. It's not really until the third track, that anything resembling proper death metal comes into play, but then, as another reviewer stated, it seems these guys just don't give a fuck, cuz here, and really every time the sound nears death metal, they do something to subvert it, and they transform it into something else entirely. For a death metal record, there are lots of mellow parts, tons of clean guitars, and again, even the 'death metal' parts, sound to these ears not much like the death metal that came before, or even the death metal these guys used to play! Instead, Sweven is a twisted, futuristic, next level post-death, sci-fi-prog metal masterpiece, that should have fans of avant psychedelic metal, math metal, and future-tech, progged out metallic weirdness wondering just how high in their year end top ten to put this record. We're guessing pretty close to the top...
Yay, more quality black metal from those connoisseurs of corpse-painted cultishness at the Southern Lord label! We and they are usually in excited agreement about the good stuff, as underground BM goes, and Polish (living in Norway) duo Mord are no exception. Fierce, brutal, and deathly, this one's for those who like the fast faster and more fasterer style of bands like Marduk, Gorgoroth and 1349. They're in such a hurry that they've dispensed with song titles, the tracks here are just labeled "Opus I" through "Opus IX" (skipping "Opus VIII" for some reason we don't know). And pretty much each one of these speedy paroxysms of christ-hating grimnity is adorned with a slightly WTF? guitar lick, pay-attention tempo change or electronic fx embellishment that will occasionally have you interrupting your headbanging frenzy to stare at your stereo and go "cool!".
Also, something we mentioned a couple years back when Southern Lord put out a Mord 7": their drummer is named Necrolucas. We love that. The hypothetical AQ house black metal band will feature Necroandee, or maybe Necrocup, in tribute.
Necrolucas and the band he plays drums in, Mord, are back!! Dude not only boasts one of our favorite black metal monikers but his band smokes as well. If you've heard Mord's debut disc Christendom Perished, released on Southern Lord a few years ago, you know what to expect from these none-more-necro Norwegian speed demons. Fast, faster, and fasterer! Furious too. With occasional headbanging breakdowns to catch a breath. Necrosodomic Abyss is a thrill ride propelled by Necrolucas's blasting blizzard of drumbeats, but Mord founder guitarist/vocalist Nordra is crucial too, unleashing an abundance of remarkably rockin' riffs (remarkable for something this grim and raw, that is) as well as a suitably guttural growl. (The band here is rounded out by session bassist named Necrosodom, by the way.) To reference a couple other Aquarius faves, imagine if you will a cross between 1349 and Khold. This disc's eight tracks are simply titled "Opus I" through "Opus VIII" and are of course different from the identically titled Opuses (Opi) found on their previous album. Doesn't that get confusing for Mord when they make a set list? Maybe they don't play live anyway, many black metal bands don't... which would be a shame in this case, if a sweaty crowd never ever moshed to Mord! Listening at home, maybe you'll get some moshing in too.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Brief blast of chillingly grim black metal brutality from Mord, who just happen to be members of black metal horde Zorn, and again, we have to wonder why people are compelled to start a new band that sounds EXACTLY like their other band. But no complaints when both bands spew gorgeously grim and bleak, buzzing and blazing black metal. VERY LIMITED, on red vinyl. Interesting aside: one of the band members name is Necrolucas. Makes you think. Necroandee? Necroelliott? Necrocup? Kinda like that.
ATTENTION TROLLMANN AV ILDTOPPBERG faithful. Trollmann maybe e dead and gone but fear not...
Avid AQ list readers and doomlords worldwide should be well aware of our love of mysterious doom duo Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. Four full lengths, a live record and a live dvd-r, each a sprawling lugubrious brew of fuzzy spacey keyboards, Skepticism-like slow-crawl riffs, rumbling demon vocal gurgles, as blessed out and darkly ambient, as they are heavy and crushingly ominous. For those new to Trollmann, it's not just the amazing and mysterious music, it's the whole world Trollmann have created, or the world they call home. The records are called Forest Of Doom, Arcane Runes Adorn The Ice-Veiled Monoliths Of The Ancient Cavern Of The Stars, Dark Clouds Blacken The Sky On The Eve Of The Thousandth Sacrifice, Tolling Beyond The Tombs Of Ancient Grimnity, the band members are depicted on their record covers, drawn, never photographed, one a little hairy elf on a toadstool, the other a huge bruiser of an ancient caveman, armed with a massive axe, the instruments used to make this music: "Cosmic keys to gates unknown," and "Rumblings Of Doom, Prophecies Of Times To Come." Hell yeah!
Just bass and keyboards, the duo managed to weave lush and truly haunting soundscapes, doomy drones and slow motion heaviness, like a black metal Tangerine Dream crossed with a much more ambient Thergothon. So we were pretty heartbroken when we discovered earlier this year that the band had called it quits. Their mysterious partnership dissolved, and our portal to that alien sonic dimension sealed forever. Or maybe not!
We arrived to work to discover a huge fissure in the floor of the store, some sort of fog or smoke drifting from below, an unearthly glow emanating from the murky abyss, the bravest among us braved the unknown and reached into the crevice, feeling around, it was warm, and moist, and gritty, the air a completely different quality, until they grasped something, a cloth sack, tied with rough twine, when pulled from the dark, spilled open just as the fissure miraculously closed up. What was in this sack? Some bits of ancient treasure, a handful of bones, some dirty cloth stained with something resembling blood, and THIS! The debut disc from Mordraaneth, aka Belegur from Trollmann, who over the course of these two discs, has thankfully taken up his cosmic keys to gates unknown, and opened up a new gateway, allowing us to return, at least aurally, to the glorious sonic landscapes of Trollmann, drones and dirges, smears of murk and shimmer, dark ambience and black doom. The sound familiar enough that anyone into Trollmann will find this essential, but different enough to remain mysterious and magical.
The opening track is a long meditative keyboard suite, layers of throbbing whir and pulsing chordal washes, the notes and overtones beating against one another, subtle rhythms and textures beneath the tranquil dreamlike drift. Definitely reminiscent of Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, but with a vibe at atmosphere much more ancient, and timeless, the music of crumbling castles, of blackened underground passages...
The second track introduces vocals, a buried in the mix demonic rasp, and a thick layer of buzz, some subtle percussion, a strange slow motion martial fantasy fanfare, wreathed in hiss and static, the distortion crumbling, the track peppered with bits of grinding growl and blown out fuzz, but somehow still hypnotic and dream like, the keyboard running through it, it's melody entrancing and so pretty. The rest of disc one drifts along lazily, like floating down some black river that runs beneath the Earth's crust, winding through lost civilizations and abandoned villages, eye glimmering in the darkness here and there, a permanent midnight. Haunting and ominous and soporific.
The second disc is two looooong tracks, beginning with what sounds like harpsichord, once again transporting us back to some ancient court, you can almost imagine Lords and Ladies, doing some strange dance, beneath a huge stone edifice, lit by firelight and the stars above, the whole disc, all 58 minutes of it, is a weirdly festive medieval folk, like a much more haunting and fucked up Renaissance Faire music, or some sort of ancient new age, imagine Kitaro and Brian Eno in full corpse paint, scoring a film about knights and dragons. Medieval fantasy ambience. Playful and lilting, glimmering and glittering, a gauzy sun dappled cloud of music box melodies, slightly smeared and blurred into a dreamy drift.
Can't wait for Thundarr, the other half of Trollmann, to return with his Rumblings Of Doom and Prophecies Of Times To Come, but for now, we're perfectly happy to revel in the blissy ambient dreamusic of Mordraaneth!
Hard rock and metal reissue label Rock Candy is one we always keep our eye on... While a lot of the stuff they reissue is of perhaps marginal interest to most AQ shoppers we'd imagine, often being on the obscure AOR, pomp rock, and hair metal side of things (although a lot of that has found its way into Andee and Allan's personal collections, ahem), once in a while they bring us something truly killer that we know our discerning, headbanging customers will be into. Like, for instance, the '70s albums from jammin' Japanese metal pioneers Bow Wow that we've reviewed recently.
Well, here's a new reish from Rock Candy that we deemed worthy of review here too. NWOBHM act More (as in, "more! more!" we'd assume, thereby making it even easier for 'em to come out for an encore when fans at the show are chanting their name) is a semi-forgotten fave, one of the few of the NWOBHM hordes to gain major label backing (they were on Atlantic) but still only chalking up two albums in their career, both of which benefit from that major-label production budget. This one, from 1982, is their second and best. (Though their '81 debut, Warhead, is good too, and has also been reissued by Rock Candy, we'll review it too eventually).
One listen to opening track "Killer On The Prowl" pretty much oughtta convince you, it's old school metallic badassery that simultaneously evokes classic acts like Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and early Iron Maiden. (By the way, what is it with the idea of "prowling" that is so totally metal?) And the rest of the disc pretty much keeps it up at that level, totally rollicking n' ripping, both melodic and energetic, with an aggressive street-level vibe that at times even reminds us of early Metallica (by way of Budgie). They also successfully venture into more atmospheric, epic territory on the likes of album-ender "Nightmare", and make a cursory attempt at radio-ready rockin' with the Zeppish "Rock And Roll".
Replacing More's original vocalist Paul Mario Day, one Mick Stratton takes a star turn at the mic, his vox at the edge and over (the top), capable of both a triumphant soar, and fists-clenched snarl, that kinda reminds us of the great Ian Gillan circa his stint with Black Sabbath on Born Again, and that's a damn good thing. Not to be outdone, More's six stringer Kenny "Mad Axeman" Cox kicks ass as well, supplying the heavy riffs and guitar heroics left, right, and center. He also gets pictured on the cover - not sure what they were thinking there, was he really the best looking guy in the band? Although possibly the most beefy and bearded and biker-y, it would seem. But who cares what he looks like, his guitar tone is what it's all about... However, as you can see, Rock Candy decided to provide this with a new cover featuring the More logo on a blood-splattered background, though the original Cox cover is still to be found inside the booklet.
Quality, solid stuff, and we're saying that as people who collect a lot of obscure metal from the era - this one stands out. If this hadn't been their last album and they'd stuck around, they might be better known now, like say Saxon or Raven, to name a couple of their comparable NWOBHM contemporaries... But despite having had their chance on a big label, More didn't "make it" for reasons expounded upon in the detailed liner notes found in the cd booklet (which is packed with photos too, this whole reissue being quite nicely done, as per the usual with Rock Candy's releases).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Furious and epic black metal a la Dimmu Borgir but with more dynamics and less cheesy keyboards/atmosphere. Strange groovy breakdowns, and super catchy riffs as well as weirdly melodic parts and some really inventive out of the ordinary guitar playing.
We had never really heard Morker before. Our first experience with them was on a split lp with Draugsang which was too limited and too expensive for us to get enough to list (we actually do have a couple copies in stock, just ask), but we liked what we heard so we decided to get a handful of the new full length, number two from these Swedes it's pretty excellent.
We spend a lot of time focusing our energies on things that are damaged and demented and fucked up and bizarre and not always entirely musical, but once in a while it hits the spot, especially metalwise to get a blast of something heavy and brutal and black but still melodic and catchy, and thus we have Hostmakter, a gorgeous collection of melodic black metal, which reminds us alternately of old Dimmu Borgir, Dissection and Dark Tranquility, all bands we most definitely love, and who traffic in a style of black metal that seems to have fallen out of favor, or maybe we've just been too preoccupied with the seedy filthy underbelly of black metal to notice. Whatever the reason, this disc is hitting the spot for sure, each track is epic and hooky and melodic, the vocals still raw and raspy, the guitars still buzzing and frenzied, but those black elements are wrapped around something much more musical, melodies soar, guitars tangle up in Maiden-ish harmonies, there's definitely a power metal element too, the songs are peppered with interludes and breakdowns, arpeggiated clean guitars, doleful piano, all providing brief respite from Morker's epic majestic black bombast.
Definitely recommended.
It's been a while since we heard from NOTHingness records, but they're back, after a year-long hiatus, with a killer slab of heathen funereal slow motion dooooooooooooom. By now we shouldn't really need to go into too much detail about all those extra 'o's but, needless to say, Danske Hymer Til Morket is massive, and glacial, sloooooooow, and ultra heavy, a tarpit trudge through an expansive landscape of warm washed out synths, slow plodding drums, and downtuned distorted guitars, spread out like the thick black wings of some beast, completely blotting out the sun and smothering the earth in thick pitch black shadow.
Unlike a lot of the funeral doom we've been digging lately, the sound of Morkheim is actually quite melodic, reminiscent of the classic UK doom bands like Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, but of course slowed waaaay down and dipped in filth, left to crawl bloody and broken across a soundscape of lurching, slithering rumble and buzz.
The keyboards that wash over everything here definitely remind us of ultradoom legends Skepticism, and it's easy to hear Moss and Esoteric and the like, but it's the melodies, and the synths, and the strange mix of the classic and the modern, that results in some strange hybrid, epic and majestic, dark and droning, brutal and black, that makes Danske Hymer Til Morket so interesting. Just check out the album closer, an all acoustic Viking lament, with just simple fingerpicked guitars and soaring majestic vocals, that manages to somehow sound just as heavy and intense as the trudging pummel of the rest of the record.
LIMITED TO 111 COPIES!!!
Weird name. Weird band. Cool band! First thing to note: this is from the same folks who brought us Ufomammut's Lucifer Songs. In fact, Supernatural Cat is Ufomammut's label. And yes, as we were hoping, MoRkObOt are another HEAVY, spaced-out band of freaky Italians. But while Ufomammut sound like Electric Wizard playing Hawkwind songs, these guys exhibit a more precise -and- alien sounding technique in their all-instrumental compositions, which are definitely very heavy and DISTORTED a la Ufomammut. It's as if Ufomammut built a spaceship, took off from Earth, went up into outer space, and found these guys already there, orbiting some far off galaxy in a blinking robot vessel!!
The MoRkObOt trio -- Lin on bass and synth, Lan on bass, and Len on drums -- obviously have a lot of the same influences as Ufomammut, including the aforementioned Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, and Godflesh... with the latter influence maybe more prominent here, though this isn't all darkly depressive, instead it's sometimes almost energetically happy, like these guys have been popping pills they bought in a shady spaceport cantina. Some tracks are all about repetitive rhythmic pummel... or jaunty, twisting riffery... others feature passages of ominous synthy ambient drone and disturbing sound FX... it's all very psychedelic and sci-fi sounding, like a band jamming around the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. By the time you've experienced the last track, the 23+ minute "Poldon", you're waaaay out in space, maybe never to return... We pretty sure that this will appeal to fans of Titan and Zombi and Circle, and of course the other bands mentioned above!
Another thing to note: these REALLY swank and elaborate, hand-printed, hand-assembled packages (for the cd and the 10" both, they're equally cool lookin', and come in various random colors) are LIMITED. The cd contains a 500 numbered copies of the cd, 500 numbered copies of the vinyl (which, by the way, contains a much shorter version of "Poldon" than the cd does). Both formats feature a wire-bound booklet featuring cool artwork for each track, Voivod-style! Ufomammut's "Malleus Art Lab" is responsible for all the far out art, design, and execution.
This futuristic-psychedelic Italian band from the Malleus/Ufomammut outer space orbit has come back to visit Earth again, blasting and baffling our senses with the intense radiation of the three long tracks that comprise this 40 minute disc/trip. As with their previous Monstro, the trio of Lin, Lan and Len again indulge in heavy, throbbing, occasionally spaced-out instrumentals with a rhythmic, industrial edge - something like Godflesh gone postrock amok. Or imagine the soundtrack to an alien autopsy that mixed up the internal organs of Lightning Bolt, Shellac, and Ufomammut. Sick.
MoRkObOt's guitars (both basses!) are distorted and drilling, laced with noise and FX, that gives way to moody electronic expanses, brushed with restrained, jazzy drumming. Indeed, we said "occasionally spaced-out" but maybe it's the other way around, the bulk the album actually consisting of near-ambient void-drone interrupted by the frantic panic of urgent, abrupt riffage and rigid clangorous rhythms. While this idiosyncratic band doesn't sound like most of the "doom" music we sell, believe us it's plenty ominous and intense, the doom it portends (a catastrophic asteroid impact? our sun going nova? the eventual heat-death of the universe?) not in doubt.
We had never really heard of these guys before, fronted by a Polish ex-pat named Milosz Gassan, a legend apparently in the European metallic crust punk scene, having played in Filth Of Mankind (who we had heard of), their debut album apparently a huge favorite of Fenriz and Nocturno Culto of Darkthrone, so much so, that they incorporated the Morne logo into the artwork of their Circle The Wagons record!
Joined by a crew including members of Grief and Disrupt, Morne's metallic crust is in a big way beholden to the mighty Neurosis, the same sort of heaving metallic majesty, epic songs, crushing riffs, bellowed angry vox, but laced with plenty of moody melody, just check out the sprawling 17 minute opener, which has everything you could want in a doom crust metal epic, the sound shifting from crushing bombast, to more blissed out piano flecked meander, the guitars unfurling spidery minor key melodies one second, crumbling downtuned riffage the next, the track slipping into some dark psychedelia midway through, a warm whirling low end shimmer, all blurred guitar buzz and delicate melody, minimal muted drumming, slowly building to a a sort of post rock smolder, darkly dreamy, before finally finishing off with a blast of churning, chugging, epic doom sludge pummel.
And so goes the rest of the record, at its core a Neurosis-y doom-sludge, but with the songs drifting in different directions, lots of post rock action, the sounds laced with shimmery drones and meandering rhythms, hypnotic and cyclical, while other tracks slip into something more post punky and gothic gloom, the reverbed plink of minor key piano, the mournful melodies, that transform some stretched into an almost doom pop, and still others get seriously metal, unfurling fierce riffy chug and pounding downtuned crunch, and finally, the almost operatic, chamber music opening of the closer, which too eventually gives way to another bad as bout of surprisingly melodic metallic churn.
Definitely recommended for the usual suspects, fans of post-metal, doom sludge, and all stripes of epic heaviness, think Neurosis, Isis, Pelican, A Storm Of Light, Seidr, U.S. Christmas, VYGR, Mouth Of The Architect, Conifer, Tides and all the rest.
Like Asylum before it, the latest from doom crust heavies Morne, featuring members of Grief and Disrupt, owes much to the mighty Neurosis, their sound similarly epic and majestically downtuned, with some Sabbathy swing to it too. Looong songs are of course the rule, the five here ranging from 7+ to 12+ minutes, and they're slow going, in more ways that one, the riffs and songwriting seem to take a backseat to the vibe and the sound, so it sort of depends on your mood - dedictated doom addicts will no doubt dig, but some may find Shadows trance inducing, but perhaps not in the way the band intended...
Holy shit, does this sound like a made-in-hell aQ dreamdate or what? The first filthy sonic offspring of a mutated meeting of the minds, between Mories the mastermind behind longtime aQ faves Gnaw Their Tongues and Aderlating, and the mystery man behind one man Aussie black metal/blacknoize juggernaut Nekrasov, known simply as Bob. Both men specialize in a sick breed of sonic depravity, the soaring orchestral cinematic black doom noise of GTT, the grim harsh buzz of Aderlating, and the noise infused blackness of Nekrasov, but none of that prepared us for the opening track, a haunting near symphonic sprawl of swoonsome strings, laid over a bed of spare percussion, and softly swirling black ambience, a darkly demonic chamber music, that sounds a bit like a satanic Rachel's, or a way more sinister noise drenched Necks, a hushed blackened shuffle, that is gradually subsumed by thick, caustic swaths of crumbling distortion, heaving low end moans and rumbles, the whole thing splintering into a glorious billowing cloud of hellish harsh noise and grim psychedelic blackness.
Which is our baptism by black sonic fire, into the warped and harrowing soundworld that is Mors Sonat, nothing so lovely as that opening track, and if anything, the record is like a musical black pit, yawning before you, and with every track, you get farther and farther from the edge, where eventually, fingers bloody and torn, all hopes of clawing your way out have been abandoned, leaving the only hope to continue down, further into the blackness.
Thick swirls of hellish voices, buried beneath cascades of black industrial crumble, dense low end rumbles and howls, and splinters into a grinding swirls of blackened shards, long sprawling stretches of slowly decaying power electronics give way to sheets of blacknoise, which in turn give way to dense noisy drones, and soundscapes of abject grey thrum, and terrifying cinematic mystery.
There are moments of lightness, subjectively speaking, when compared to most of the records deep black, but those moments are suffused with their own terror, dense and intense, laced with ghostly voices, buried melodies, a strange uneasy oasis surrounded on all sounds by black walls of unstable sound, that can collapse at any moment, and usually do, transforming these small moments of tranquility, into full bore black holes of sonic chaos. Near the end of the record, there's a gorgeous bit of funereal creep, all pounded piano, and grinding blurred staticky ambience, spread out into a haunting expanse of sonic malevolence, lovely but blackly lovely, a final respite, the long slow trudge toward the inexorable end, in the case of Mors Sonat, the final track, an all engulfing blast of hateful, harrowing, feedback drenched white noise terror.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ultra grim and frosty, gloriously plodding midtempo black metal from Finland, dirgey and completely hypnotic. featuring at least one member of the mighty Horna. This is ultra simple, dense and buzzing, with riffs that are more like static streaks of black buzz, the drums a caveman thud. Most of the tracks here break or come close to breaking the 15 minute mark, and most have no more than two parts, sometimes just one, usually a simple buzz, sometimes a haunting minor key melody, but always drenched in distortion, and always completely mesmerizing and dronelike. These sound like songs that have been playing forever, and will continue to play forever, and we've just stumbled across them, observing them briefly before moving on, leaving Mortualia to buzz and drone into the ether. But it's not just the riffing and the hypnotic plod, the vocals are utterly insane. Not Bethlehem insane, or even Silencer insane, they are much more feral and mewling, the closest we've come to capturing the sound of Mortualia is Burzum meets Oxbow!! An anguished, tortured shriek, equal parts demon, wild animal, and possessed child, draped over an endlessly blown out blackened droning riffscape. So good.
1971 strikes again! Proto-metal freaks, rejoice! Connoisseurs of the "early heavy" have reason to be excited about this, the lone album from this raw n' heavy psychedelic blues rock power trio from Denmark, originally released in '71, finally available as a legit cd reissue complete with liner notes and vintage photos in the cd booklet.
Recalling Vincebus Eruptum era Blue Cheer (big time!!) and early, bluesy Black Sabbath a bit too, Moses deliver blown-out, fuzz-bombed, acid-laced, hairy hippy proto-metal of Biblical proportions. Full of stoned vocals, loping riffs, and lots of wailing, wasted acid rock guitar soloing (worthy of Blue Cheer's Leigh Stephens and/or Randy Holden), Changes is highly recommended to anyone whose interest has been piqued by anything we've just mentioned or referenced. There's six songs here, nothing complex, certainly catchy though, what more to say? Each one provides the good vibes of ye olde primitive proto-metal, starting with the thudding blues brutality of title track "Changes" (which has nothing to do with the Black Sabbath piano ballad of the same name, by the way). Later on, "Beginning" gives the drummer some, ready for some DJ to mine for a crude breakbeat. "Skaev" is the only one here sung in Danish, but the lurching, surging riffage requires no translation. We're glad the final track, 7 minute track "Warning" is in English, though, 'cause we're getting a kick out of the lyrics, a story of a "straight" falling in with a turned-on crowd, which include lines like: "...and suddenly the girl gives him two feeling good pills, eat them if you can, a little after in a big discussion, forgotten everything about his wife, moving with the others in a big procession, he shouts out, this is life!" Awesome.
So, anyone into early Blue Cheer, Randy Holden's Population II, and the recently reissued Speed Glue & Shinki from Japan, stuff like that, will dig Moses for sure. Also, having just reviewed a bunch of '70s garage fuzz monsters from Africa, like Ngozi Family and Witch, we're hearing a lot of similarities here (minus the African thing, of course, but not the fuzz and groove). We bet if we said this was from Zambia or Nigeria, people would be freaking! Denmark is less "exotic", but that's not what's important when banging your head to these 1971 sounds.
Abject, miserable, mournful, agonized, anguished, tortured and tormented ultra mega doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom! That's right. We've officially reached an all time high in o's (40 in case you were counting), and an all time loooooow in DOOM. Every time we hear from these crushing creeps they've pushed it even further into the deep dark damnable depths, forcing us to add more and more o's. That's right, it's the return of Moss, the UK's heaviest, slowest, sludgiest slow motion downtuned doom metal behemoth. Moss take the paint peeling acidic abrasiveness of Khanate and combine it with the warm suffocating murk of bands like Skepticism or Thergothon, or even aQ faves Nadja (who did a split with Moss a while back). Ultra minimal and nearly static in its sludginess, with the simple caveman plod of the drums the only thing keeping this from turning into a full on drone, this is like one HUGE riff, pulled and stretched into two epic streaks of fuzz and pound, with vocals that might even give Alan Dubin from Khanate a bit of a fright, like a demon howling through a mouthful of broken glass and rusty bottlecaps, teeth black with the blood of a thousand vanquished souls, the sound that finally comes out is a noxious black cloud that causes everything it touches to wither and die, totally blown out and so harsh it makes our throats sore just listening to it.
But like the best sludge / doom, there is some sort of subtle melodic undercurrent going on, maybe it's deliberate and these guys are on some whole other musical level or maybe it's just some chance occurance, some strange alignment of overtones or some lucky bit of abstract composition, it hardly matters, the end result is somehow both hauntingly beautiful and horrifically harsh, there's definitely some dark beauty hidden beneath Moss' black sludge exterior, but the joy of music like this is the fact that the music's beauty is buried and bruised, battered and brutalized, the sonic search for the beauty within is like wading waist deep through boiling hot pitch, ears plugged with hot tar, all the while being showered from above by the tears of angels.
The most recent Moss record, previous to this, besides being an awesome chunk of crusty ultra doom, was a bit of a debacle, at least in terms of release and format. The outrageously expensive 10" format, was in fact meant to be a DOUBLE 10", but was not, although the price seemed to still reflect the missing second record. Then the cd came out, including TWO extra tracks, a Discharge cover, which had already been on a split with Monarch, and the 11+ minute "Eternal Return", both of which were apparently meant to be included as that second 10". Or something like that. Needless to say, vinyl folks missed out on "Eternal Return", and the Discharge cover too if they missed out on the Monarch split, even though they sort of already paid for 'em. So the bad news, or maybe the good news, depending on your perspective, and financial situation, is that the third proper Blind Drugged Moss track, "Eternal Return", which was included on the Tombs Of The Blind Drugged cd, but has never been on vinyl, is NOW actually ON VINYL. And it's gorgeously packaged and elaborately presented, so the only downside of that is shelling out another $17 to finally get that track, "Eternal Return", on wax, but c'mon! It's Moss!!
The track itself is a killer, it's Moss, so by now most of the aQ faithful should know what you're getting into, crushing, pummeling, doom drone dirge heaviosity, or as we described them in the Blind Drugged review:
All anguished and distorted, with distended guitar and bass strings hanging loose and low, vokillizations of sheer misery and madness torn from the singer's throat like a still beating bloody heart ripped from the sacrifice, and bits of bent and battered drum kit scattered across the rancid tundra that is Moss's metallic soundspace!
Indeed. We love Moss, and they RULE, and this is definitely worth the price of admission, just seems a tiny bit frustrating having to piece together Tomb Of The Blind Drugged one expensive chunk of vinyl at a time, but hell, we think Moss are worth it.
And the packaging, wow! A thick fold out cardstock gatefold, with not one, but TWO Japanese style obis, one along the side, one holding the sleeve shut right in the middle, plus inserts, a poster, all pretty spiffy. And CRAZY LIMITED. Maybe already out of print, which means these are the only copies we'll ever get.
It's been a little while, but finally time to all out another complement of o's. That's right, UK doomlords Moss return with their latest batch of ultra mega doooooooooooooooom. And like their last record, Tombs Of The Blind Drugged, Horrible Night is another collection of slo-mo-sludge, sub-Sabbathian swing, glacial downtuned creep, and churning, lumbering low end heaviosity. The weird thing is, considering how heavy and sludgy these guys are, we only just now discovered they don't have a bass player, and the singer ONLY sings. We always assumed they were a proper three piece, guitar, bass, drums, with one of those blokes singing. Kinda insane that just guitar and drums can conjure up such a thick, blackened oozing sound. But we digress.
While much of the sound on Horrible Night is essentially a continuation of their multiple o'd ultra doom, there is one thing that has changed, and that's the vocals. There are in fact still some throat shredding howls, but the bulk of the vocals are clean, soaring proper singing. Suddenly Moss have a twinge of true doom to them. Vocalist (just vocalist) Olly Pearson does a decent Ozzy-ish wail, which most definitely changes the tenor and tone of the Moss musical universe. The opening title track eventually settles into some old style Mossiness, replete with the howled anguished vokills, there's even some super weird tripped out psychedelic leads at one point, but the whole first half is total old school true doom, slowed down to a crawl, Pearson belting it out. Not sure if we're imagining it or not, but with the clean vocals, even the music seems to swing a but more, sounding a little bit more Sabbathy and stonery. Hard to say if true ultra doomlords will be disappointed, but we're digging it a lot. Definitely adds some melody and musicality to the group's otherwise minimal but massively crushing dour dirgery, and it's interesting too, that the music hasn't changed all that much really, so it's still droned out and doomy, lumbering and trudging, funereal/funeral ultradoom, but now with proper vox. We can't help but feel like the sound's gonna explode into a galloping classic metal groove at any point, and it feels like that expectation imbues the music with a weird dark tension, cuz it never does, Moss have it locked down, keeping their BPM to a minimum, and tuning down as low as they can, unfurling thick sheets of undulating, crumbling, super distorted buzz, the riffs serpentine and slow motion, it's the sort of metal that doesn't inspire headbanging so much as a sort of swaying back and forth, hypnotic, mesmerizing, a many o'd dooooooooooom, given new life, and transformed into the world's slowest, and most abject, blackly psychedelic true ultra doom. And we DIG it.
It's been a while since we've had to employ multiple 'o's in a review. A bit of a death of doom it seems. Or at least the sort of doom that requires all those extra 'o's. A loyal customer of ours even whipped up this [http://www.aquariusrecords.org/doomchart.html] "doom chart" based on our usage of multiple 'o'd doom in reviews!
And if memory serves, Moss was one of the bands that routinely got described as doooom, or doooooooooom, and sometimes even doooooooooooooooooooooooom. So we were all ready to put finger to key and just let the 'o's roll out, one after the other after the other, until we felt we had conveyed the crushing doom of Moss. That is until we pressed play, and were treated to "Ritus", a five and a half minute soundscape of whirring synths and washed out ambience, of cymbal sizzle and proggy keyboard drones, of whispered voices and buzzing shimmer. Hmmm. The liner notes say it's inspired by Doris Norton, an electronic musician who's also a member of AQ faves Jacula!! An interesting start from one of the sludgiest, crustiest bands around. Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom. Ahh. That's better. The second track returns us to that dank dark sloooooooooow place Moss call home. Twenty three minutes of downtuned crush, the tempo only slightly faster than the growth of actual moss. But even all gnarled and sludge-y, something has definitely changed. It's not nearly as filthy, and harsh, it's actually weirdly pretty. Almost like it's some more melodic metal record being spun manually with one finger at 3 or 4 rpm. The distortion is still dense, the long drawn out chords seeming to crumble, the drums spaced way out, but somehow still more buys than you're average ultradoom drummer, the vocals are still harsh and howling, but somehow, they too seem to be a bit more smooth, further down in the mix, like another layer of sound, the howls allowed to unfurl into another layer of buzz. It's strange, but we definitely dig. And we're not saying this is NOTHING like old Moss, or folks into Bunkur and Esoteric and the like won't love it, you will, the differences are subtle, and the sound is just a little bit, well, prettier, if you can imagine something bleak and black and harsh and hateful being pretty. Which we can!
The next track, a nine minute dirge, is a bit more raw and rough, most of that prettiness we were blathering on about above is GONE. Shrieking feedback, the drums even slower and more spare, the guitars even more distorted and the vocals throat shreddingly harsh, the tempo slightly accelerated, bordering on Eyehategod territory.
But it's all bout the closer, "Gate III: Devils From The Outer Dark". Clocking in at 35 minutes + and beginning with a churning sea of downtuned rumble and buzz, before the drums finally kick in, and f course by kick in we mean pound sporadically. This track is WAY more than a dirge. It makes the track before it sound like thrash metal. This is slooooooow and so so so so dooooooooooooooooooomy. The guitars thick and corrosive, the chords allowed to ring way out and fade away before the next one drops in to take its place, but weirdly enough, this one too sounds sort of pretty, not like the opening track, but still very dreamlike and mesmerizing. Long streaks of feedback spread out over wide open expanses of minimal thud and warm warped slow motion buzz, when the vocals drop out, it becomes something entirely different, finishing off with several minutes of thick low end drone, the guitars rumbling and wrapped into a thick nearly static pulse, something truly hypnotic and almost spacey, but without sacrificing a single one of those extra 'o's.
Definitely a progression, a band can only pound and plod for so long, but so subtle that the casual listener might not even notice. "Oh yeah, heavy, slow, dooooooom", but as with most music, deep listening reveals a whole lot more going on beneath the surface, and once your ears lock on to that stuff, even the sounds on the surface begin to sound different.
WAY RECOMMENDED for the doom-ed amongst you. And just cuz we knew you were waiting for it, Sub Templum could very well be doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom disc of the year!!
Besides being one of the filthiest, sludgiest doom bands EVER, Moss also hold the uniquely AQ distinction of being the first band to get 40 'o's in an AQ review. That's right. Moss are most definitely the supreme masters of D-oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-M. Only that many 'o's in doom can truly represent the sort of twisted anguished glacial drone drenched doom these guys are capable of unleashing. Every thing they touch turns to murky, dirgey mayhem. A blackened, hateful soundscape of slow motion thud and growl, a hellish trudge through a black sonic pit. But we're sure we already had you at 40 'o's!
So what could be more appropriate than a single ninety minute epic lo-fi doom dirge, captured on three microphones and recorded on a fourtrack, then pressed on to a cassette, the grimmest and most cult of formats? Well how about if each cassette was housed in an mindblowingly elaborate, and highly dangerous, welded iron, industrial sculpture-like case? And how about if each cassette 'case' was welded together from nails, and strange rusty hinges, and huge links of chain, stuffed with burnt parchment and actual moss? Doesn't get much more doomy than that.
Seriously though, when we cracked open the two HUGE boxes these tapes came shipped in, and began to unwrap these sharp and jagged works of art, everyone in the store gathered around to see what the next one would look like. Some were like Venus Flytraps made out of nails, others were huge bear trap things wrapped in chains, and spiked with nails. It was like discovering some long buried ancient armory. A dizzying array of sharp edges and hinged nails, weird greased axles that allow pieces of metal to slide open revealing the tape inside, or dense tangles of bent nails melted into tiny cassette coffins. So intense. And amazing looking. And so appropriate to the massive downtuned sludge inside. It's almost like these tapes occurred in nature, and the protective welded iron coating is a warning to wildlife to beware of what poisonous brutality lurks inside. Each case has the band's name welded or soldered on the side, and each contains a parchment like insert with the liner notes. And plenty of moss as well. So awesome.
So here's the complicated part. They're all totally different. Some are huge, and weigh close to 5 pounds, a massive chunk of metal, some are quite not so big, but still equally spikey and dangerously sharp. So the postage will vary depending on which one you get, and due to the intensely spikey and sharp nature of these beasts, if you order them along with anything else, they MUST be shipped separately. And thus will incur an extra shipping charge. Unless you don't mind all your other records having huge nail holes in them and everything ripped to shreds. But let's assume you do mind, and so we'll just figure on separate shipping. But hell, it's so worth it. These are amazing and creepy pieces of art. It's almost just a bonus that inside is a tape of some seriously damaged, harsh and crumbling lo-fi doom.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES! WE GOT HALF OF THEM! When these are gone, they are gone forever.
If we had to come up with a four-letter word for doom, that wasn't d-o-o-m, it would be m-o-s-s. MOSS! These UK sludgelords, whose previous full-length Sub Templum was a record of The Week last year, are about as heavy as it gets, Moss sinking to the bottom of the black tarpit of doom below almost all others. Of course, playing so slow, the mere three songs here manage to stretch this way beyond ordinary ep length, each of 'em upwards of ten minutes... and then there's a fourth, hidden bonus track that gets this up to about 40 minutes total, so it's actually almost a full album really. And it's the usual grief we get from Moss: these tracks all anguished and distorted, with distended guitar and bass strings hanging loose and low, vokillizations of sheer misery and madness torn from the singer's throat like a still beating bloody heart ripped from the sacrifice, and bits of bent and battered drum kit scattered across the rancid tundra that is Moss's metallic soundspace... sometimes it eventually all congeals into one massive, melancholic drone, a true thing of beauty, heard for instance towards the end of the title track, upon which Moss employ Hammond organ. What else would you expect from something titled Tombs Of The Blind Drugged?? Tombs to which Moss have the "Skeletal Keys" and plan an "Eternal Return"...
We mentioned a bonus track, it's the Discharge cover Moss did that originally appeared on their split 7" with Monarch. "Maimed And Slaughtered" is slowed from a 45rpm blitz to an unrecognizable 16rpm bludgeon... Here's what we said about it in our review of that now out-of-print 7": Moss transform Discharge's punky stomp into a barely moving morass of sludgy pound. Sounding very much like Eyehategod, with simple pummeling drums, howled vocals, and of course guitars tuned as low as they can go before the strings drop off like wet noodles. On top of all the murk, drift weird high end streaks of surprisingly melodic feedback, giving the whole track a haunting and ominous vibe.
FYI, Tomb Of The Blind Drugged is also coming out on vinyl, as a limited double 10" record, minus the Discharge cover we think. Also minus track three, "Eternal Return", which apparently appears on a separate 12" we've yet to track down. We DO have a bunch of the 10" preordered, but the ltd. digipack cd version got here first.
If they gave out Nobel prizes for doom metal, whoever it was that managed to get UK doomsludge combo Moss together with French Sanrio doomsters Monarch, would be a shoe in. And it's not just the killer combo, or the alliterative band names, it's the song choice. As if Moss doing Discharge weren't enough for you, Monarch tackle Turbonegro's all time classic "I Got Erection"!
Moss transform Discharge's punky stomp into a barely moving morass of sludgy pound. Sounding very much like Eyehategod, with simple pummeling drums, howled vocals, and of course guitars tuned as low as they can go before the strings drop off like wet noodles. On top of all the murk, drift weird high end streaks of surprisingly melodic feedback, giving the whole track a haunting and ominous vibe.
Where Moss, turned their song inside out and basically made it their own, Monarch, after a misleading ultra slow count in, do "Erection" pretty straight (ahem), the riff immediately recognizable, same with the "woooooah ooooh" background vocals, so it's up to vocalist Emilie, to make "Erection" her own, and she does, delivering the goofiest, most brilliant lines ever, in a raspy feminine snarl "When I dig a hole... Erection!" It's definitely Monarch at their speediest, and certainly most melodic, and we have to say it sort of suits them. Maybe even better than when black metallers Satyricon covered the same track on a Turbonegro tribute disc some years back, and that was pretty killer too.
And of course, SUPER LIMITED!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
ULTRADOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. Or MEGADOOOOOOM. Whatever you want to call it, this is DOOM. Capital D. Lot's of o's. Lots of incredibly slow motion downtuned guitar sludge, pounding caveman drums, and a rumbling bowel churning low-end. This is the first recording we've been able to get enough of to list after a ton of super limited releases and demos. And if this doesn't hit the doom spot something good, then nothing will. Bunkur, Skepticism, Catacombs, Rigor Sardonicous, Esoteric, Planet Aids, Thergothon. And now Moss. The first track is a 15 minute slab of classic funereal doom. Soooooo sloooooow. Sooooooo heavy, crushing, pounding, chugging drone drenched sludge. Recorded live in 2004. The second track is taken from their long out of print split with Nadja, but here, the track is "fucked up and buried", and the result is a massive and abstract ambient soundscape, downtuned guitars are pushed way back into the distance, while in the foreground all sorts of rumble and crackle and what sounds like the burbling of a bong. A druggy, space-y ambient excursion through the massive decaying skeleton of what was once a doom metal beast.
Moss is joined by the brilliantly monickered Wolfmangler. Wolfmangler just happens to be the work of one Smolken who you might know as the man behind Dead Raven Choir! Weird but true. For all his Jewelled Antler folkiness, Smolken made no secret of his black metal obsession. As Wolfmangler, Smolken takes that love of metal and doom and tempers it with his love of folk and country, and the results are truly weird and wonderful. Best exemplified on the track "Survive" a doom-ed version of a Hank Williams Jr. song. Fuzzed out drone guitar, random percussion, weird rubbery bass lines, and growled raspy vocals. Like a black metal Souled American? Johnny Cash covering Skepticism. Something like that. The rest of the WM tracks are weird, slow motion, fuzz drone dirges, with strange barely there melodies, occasional guitar twang, and lots of ominous ambience!
Amazingly packaged in a vellum sleeve, printed in black on the outside, so the inside has a weird x-ray negative effect. Includes an insert for each band printed on thick vellum. SO NICE!
Limited to 500 copies. We got 50 of those and will not be able to get more! So act fast!
Tommy Lee is the reason Andee got a cowbell back in the day!
