Depths is the latest blast of grim melodic blackness from this Aussie black metal horde, and the first we've reviewed on the list. This came highly recommended by weirdo black metaller the Botanist, and for fans of dense blasting buzz infused with plenty of moodiness and melody, you'd be hard pressed to do better than these guys. Just check out the opening track, pretty much everything we love about black metal, the sound is dense and murky, the guitars are thick and buzzy, the drums pounding and furious, the vocals an anguished how buried in the mix, the arrangement constantly shifting, from the opening salvo, a face melting black blast, to the more midtempo majesty of the middle stretch, replete with soaring epic guitar melodies, to an abstract, clean guitar spacey interlude, an back again, PS infuse their furious blackness with a surprising amount of emotion, giving the impression that with the drums and guitars stripped away, this might sound like Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky, that same sort of brooding, slow building intensity, which sound even cooler here, wedded to thick black guitars, and churning buzzing heaviness.
The band do introduce some cool twists, surprising almost clean vocals, draped over some ultra melodic almost Katatonia sounding riffage at one point, and chugging pop flecked almost Khold style grooves here and there, but those elements are definitely not the focal point, there guys are all about blast and buzz, howl and crush, the sound is epic and massive and heavy and BLACK, a glancing listen, and you might think this was just a wall of furious buzz, but closer listening reveals all sorts of texture and melody, but without taking away from the power or ferocity, it's almost as if all that melody, and all that sonic moodiness, was unintended, a natural byproduct of this sort of buzz and blast, but it's too well crafted, and too much an integral part of PS's sound, which manages to totally transcend the typical grim buzz of most black metal, offering up something much more epic and melodic, and ultimately way more sonically rewarding.
A short sharp blast of buzzing grim blackness from Canada, from a horde known as Pestkreuz, whose sound is all classic buzz and blast, combining the sound of the early Norwegian greats with some of the more recent modern BM outfits. Think Funeral Mist and Katharsis via Satyricon and Immortal; while this may not be pantheon-worthy as any of those, it's definitely a pretty excellent chunk of orthodox black metal, one that should most certainly hit the spot for all of you who need a dose of furious, frenzied black buzz, there's even some passages that dip into the punkier side of BM, but for the most part, PK engage in the sort of corpse painted, Christ defiling, blast beating, tremolo picking, demonik vokill-ed heaviness, that we (and many of you) can't ever seem to get enough of.
The more we hear from Mr. Stephen Brodsky, frontman of the mighty Cave In, the more we're beginning to wonder if maybe his particular genius was wasted in the context of a sludgy metal band. Or perhaps it was specifically that weird pop genius that made Cave In such a bad ass proposition. And that should have had people more prepared for their eventual shift into bombastic progpop.
Regardless, we've got two Brodsky projects on this week's list, the psychedelic power pop of Brodsky's Octave Museum, and this brand new disc right here, that sounds like some weird hybrid between Elope, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Beatles, XTC, Kyuss and the White Stripes... If that's even possible, and on repeated listening
This disc is pretty all over the map, some tracks are jangly and dreamy, others are crunchy and super heavy, many are both. But it's the perfect pop songwriting that holds all of these disparate sounds together. And perfect pop they are.
We were pretty much sold 10 seconds in, the opener is a barnstormer, a killer riff, with a lurching stop start verse, and some Beatles-esque falsetto vocals, all wrapped around one of the most killer hooks ever! The second track is more blessed out, folky and very British sounding, with epic melodic swells, and more falsetto vocals, gentle acoustic strum and some playful vocal guitar interplay. But track three, "Walls Of Etiquette is the gem here, and most likely the single, if records like this actually have 'singles', groovy and stoner, with a slithery riff, keening vocals, a super catchy melody, and a churning super intense grinding metallic refrain, and a chorus to die for. Very reminiscent of Queens Of The Stone Age back when they were AWESOME. A lot of this record reminds us of that amazing Open Hand record we raved about a few years back. "Man Of The Mountain" is another killer, beginning with a crunchy metal intro, before slipping into a dreamy folky drift, all poppy shimmer and irresistible hooks.
The rest of the record plays out in a pretty similar fashion, with Brodsky pitting his Beatlesy pop heart against his distorted desert axe, the results pretty tough to beat. And this is one of those records we just gave a cursory listen to, but soon found ourselves spinning it over and over EVERY day. No better recommendation than that...
Latest from the always awesome Khrysanthoney label, who so far have given us killer records from Sleeping Peonies, Clair Cassis, Velvet Cacoon and Necktarium, as well as, in their previous incarnation as Starlight Temple Society, records by Lonesummer, Marsh, Schrei Aus Stein, Nightbringer, Temple Of NOT, Void Of Reveries, Hamnskifte and Roba El Khaliyeh, a pretty varied and musically elite lineup for sure, and yet this new group, a one man band with the cryptic monicker Petrychor, seems to be the perfect addition, another outfit that manages to appeal both to the true grim hordes, while pushing that sound to its very boundaries, creating in the process a distinctly original variant, which us why this stuff is so appealing to the sonically adventurous extreme music obsessives. It's definitely black metal. Frenzied and hyperspeed, blurred riffage, frantic blastbeats, this true grim blackness melded to avant experimental abstraction, conjuring up a sound like a more warm and less wintry, woozy and washed out Paysage D'Hiver, or a less crusty, more melodic Wrath Of The Weak, or even, perhaps more accurately and definitely less distinctly metal, like a drum machine driven, demonic vokill-ed Lovesliescrushing, with a sound that slips from delicate and haunting, all spidery steel string guitar, and what sounds like mandolins, to lush layered choral ambience, and mysterious droney drift, to full on dense blurry blackness.
But the sonic devil is most definitely in the details here. The pretty acoustic parts are not just run of the mill haunting minor key strum over creepy keyboards - it's obvious Mr. Petrychor is an incredible guitarist, unfurling what sounds like some Fahey style Appalachia one second, some wildly percussive, densely strummed Michael Hedges like mesmer the next, even some flamenco style workouts, the (im) perfect and unlikely foil for the heavy parts, which are super distorted, and strangely murky, with the drums weirdly produced, blown out and in the red, sometimes almost like a techno beat, the way they pulse and pound, clipping constantly and creating strange decayed rhythmic thuds that seems to drive the swirling chaotic sonic maelstrom, other times slipping into something that sounds like an IDM style electronic skitter, but buried beneath layer after layer of buzz and thrum and whir. Meanwhile, the riffs are less 'riffy' and more indistinct and amorphous, those 'riffs' seeming to ooze and smear into lush chordal swells, often wreathed in a swirling minor key haze, or roiling beneath warped, churning melodic tangles, rife with haunting synths and what sounds like strings, with a subtle gypsy folk vibe seeming to surface here and there, Petrychor's blast beat-ed whir and thrum less about black metal and more about some sort of abstract blackened ambient buzz, the fierce and obviously intense propulsive crunch deftly transformed into something almost dreamy, without losing any of it's grim energy and chaotic ferocity, culminating in the 14+ minute final track, that again finds blurred riffage, and swirling keyboards held together by a dense Teutonic techno sounding pulse, the sound growing more and more buzzy and murky, before splintering into a wild blacknoise buzzpsych crumble, before slipping into a lush, hushed ethereal outro.
SO incredible. We can definitely see this being our black metal record of the year (and maybe yours too!). The perfect balance of blackened heft and dreamlike shimmer, of buzzdrenched skull caving crush and thick blurry blissout.
And as if that wasn't enough, also included is a second disc, which contains Petrychor's first demo, Dryad, three songs, 23 minutes, a slightly rougher and more raw, but no less blown out and blissed out, version of Effigies And Epitaphs, the same sort of frenzied riffage, blurred swirly melodic heaviness wedded to haunting acoustic guitars and deep dense dronemusic, but the title track here might be the most epic and majestic of the bunch (both records in fact), sounding like a blackened Godspeed playing in triple time, the melodies seeming to spiral heavenward in thick churning clouds of buzz all wreathed in frantic wildly intertwining melodies, while the closer finishes the whole set off with gorgeous and downright creepy chunk of dense black rumble, a thick, undulating sprawl of tarpit blackdronedrift, underpinning haunting piano plinks and some incredible steel string strum, like some seriously sinister otherworldly cinematic black Appalachia.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!!! Housed in a cool 6 panel full color eco-wallet style sleeve with printed insert. Also included is a link to a free download of a third record, a companion release called Artistry Of Exhaustion II.
Reissue of their '87 six-song demo plus 9 tracks from a live show that recorded that same year. Phantasm, if you don't remember, was the band of ex-Hirax vocalist Katon W. DePena and ex-Metallica bassist (pre-Cliff!) Ron McGoveny. The demo tracks feature drum god Gene Hoglan (Dark Angel, Old Man's Child, Death, etc.). Thrash!!
The label describes The Phantom Family Halo as sounding like Alice Copper, Black Sabbath, Tangerine Dream and Marc Bolan, or Scott Walker fronting Roxy Music. Phew, it's hard not to think this might be the best record EVER given that description. And while this is pretty darn good, it's not quite all that.
The first thing we actually thought when we heard this was Black Mountain. The same sort of seventies hard rocking hippy groove thing going on. Drawled vocals, fuzzy guitars, lazy and laid back, stoned and wasted. But PFH add a healthy dose of spacey synths, drifting new wave ambience, and a bit of a glam swagger to their seventies groove.
It never gets all that HEAVY, and we hear very little Black Sabbath if any at all, but we DO in fact hear PLENTY of T-Rex and Roxy Music, dramatic crooning over swirling glammy grooves and shuffling in the pocket percussion. Definitely the perfect fix for your seventies glittery hard rock stoned groove addiction.
The weirdest thing about this group is definitely the membership/pedigree though. One member is also in a Venom style metal band called Dead Child along with Dave Pajo, as well as drumming for an outfit with a forthcoming Siltbreeze release. While another member was a touring member of the reunited Slint and just happens to be Brian McMahan's (of Slint) little brother.
Super limited. Hand silkscreened. Vinyl-only first edition.
Demo 1 is the debut release from a New Orleans one man band called Phantom Feel, who traffics in a sort of black metal, but a strain far removed from the grim buzz and black blast of most BM, instead, the vibe is much more woozy and washed out, the opening intro is all lush, smeary swaths draped over skeletal skitter and programmed pulses. The track blossoms into mournful almost shoegazingly melodic sweeps, shimmering dreamily over murky muted riffage, and clouds of soft focus hiss, the sound tied together by spidery minor key guitar melodies keening way off in the background, and cool crooned vocals. The vibe is almost cold wavey, a little gothy, much more like a blackened M83 actually. The second track definitely gets a bit more grim, the buzz more to the fore, the sound a bit more bleak and melancholy, the vocals more tortured, but even then, the sound continues to be more pretty and psychedelic than black and malefic.
But flip the tape over, and the sound slips right back into PF's woozy warbly soundscapery, this time strange processed sampled voices, buried beneath a creeping almost Portishead-y style dirge, warm and liquid, lots of thrum and buzz, all blurred and bleary, the black metal riffage here smeared into hazy distant streaks, while in the foreground the haunting sonic haze roils and churns. Gorgeous stuff for sure. And really only barely black metal. In fact, much of this is WAY too weird for meat-and-potatoes metalheads. Much likelier that if you're into strange dark drone music, psychedelic ambience, creepy slowcore, abstract blackened electronica and other twisted sonic strains, then this is for you.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, and each copy with a hand painted/stamped sigil on the front.
Perhaps you remember (and/or have in your cd collection) the Atomsmasher cd released by Hydra Head last year? Lead by avant/ambient guitarist James Plotkin (formerly of weird Earache metal band OLD), and featuring drum god Dave Witte (Human Remains/Discordance Axis/Melt Banana/etc.), with processed "AudioMulch" vocals from DJ Speedranch, Atomsmasher got a pretty enthusiastic recommendation from us at the time, as a unique blend of live (but inhumanly played) drums, avant-noise-sampling guitar, and computer-created chaos. Grindcore electronica?
Well, after a ridiculous legal wrangle with some uptight, clueless pop band that apparently had the rights to the name Atomsmasher (and absurdly accused this Atomsmasher of intentionally 'stealing' it), the Plotkin/Witte/Speedranch project changed their moniker to Phantomsmasher. (I think they should have just called themselves Atomsmashersmasher.) Now they've come out with a new cd, on Mike Patton's Ipecac label. At first listen we weren't sure, and thought maybe the original Atomsmasher cd was superior. This one seemed a bit too...post rock. Not quite like Tortoise or Gastr del Sol though, more metallic (but by no means actually metal) and aggro, kinda like Don Cab. Witte's drumming sounds more real, less computerized than before. There's still insane blasting parts, but also some more straight-ahead boom bap. And Plotkin's thick bass slabs get almost funky. From the get go (track one, "Bishop Hopping"), with Speedranch's weirdly child-like Mulched vocals, it reminded us of a Ruins or Hella record, but thrown in a blender on "high". Cool, but not nearly as out-and-out insanely intense as the noisefest of their first album, though still pretty nuts. But things get more interesting as the Phantomsmasher disc goes along. The chaos coalesces into something more like actual songs, not totally random rhythms and noise-eruptions. In its own, densely complex, distorted, and noisy way, it's kinda catchy! Definitely different from the debut, but they've chosen a worthwhile direction to explore.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
When you first see the Atomsmasher lineup: James Plotkin (ex-OLD), Dave Witte (Discordance Axis, Human Remains) and Speedranch (of '& Jansky Noise' infamy as well as contributor of vocals to the first Venetian Snares record), you might be thinking this would be the most insane metal record ever. And maybe you'd be half right. While this -is- extreme, -and- insane, there is not a riff in sight. Instead Atomsmasher is an unholy mix of super processed, super distorted spastic sort-of-grindcore, sputtering malfunctioning electronica and howling indecipherable shrieks and howls. James Plotkin turns his guitar into some sort of bizarre sampler, spitting out slabs of sound and walls of screech, rarely resorting to playing his guitar like a guitar (to be expected from his ambient improv projects of recent years, post-OLD). Speedranch contributes a litany of caterwauls that are so heavily processed they often sound like another guitar, or even more drums?! And then there's Dave Witte, quite possibly one of the best and fastest drummers around. And this to me is the only bummer about Atomsmasher. It seems like Witte's considerable drum talent is wasted, in that all his parts are distorted and triggered and chopped up and filtered and processed to the point that he sounds like a drum machine anyway. I'm nitpicking though. So think equal parts DHR, V/VM, and Drop Dead. A jawdroppingly complex and ridiculously experimental slab of metallic electronic weirdness. Definitely Recommended.
The other day a mail order customer called up and ordered Finnish post-rockers Circle's tUMULt release "Andexelt", and also "Ciudad de Brahman" by Argentinian stoner-rock outfit Natas. I immediately suggested that he also get a copy of this debut cd by
Whoo-hoo! Hypnotic as ever, here's the third studio album (and fourth disc overall counting the live Battle Of The Axehammer) from Circle's so-called (by us) "stoner rock" side-project. Well now we'd have to say that stoner rock tag is a bit inaccurate, an oversimplication. I mean, we were kinda hoping they'd always stay "heavy" but I think that they're not so much "the stoner rock version of Circle" now, than they are simply a stripped down, instrumental Circle with more psych guitar action. Very very krauty. This actually actually sounds a lot like Salvatore, as much as Circle, for that matter. Which is most definitely a good thing!
Stacked up alongside the rest of Pharaoh Overlord's albums, it's not so dark as II, not so fried and blown-out as Battle, and probably comes closest to #1. And it's definitely something stoners are still gonna dig, but while they do heavy it up riff-wise sometimes, the psych aspect is laid-back and mellow just as much. Can you imagine the vibe of that last Dead Meadow mixed with a Circle style rhythmic pulse? This is all about tracks like opener "Test Flight", a druggy ten minute psych-jam, or track three, an epic, but almost funkily tight number called "Laivius 17", that builds up over 13 minutes and 13 seconds, getting more and more psych-guitar-skronked until it snaps -- into track four, "Autobahn", nothing but a droning, distorted guitar-burn solo. It's ten minutes but I wouldn't mind it for a whole album! That then swivels into the tick-tock, low-key groove of "Octagon". Very Can, that one. And on it goes... If only Pharaoh Overlord/Circle could come up with a way to make their cds automatically repeat when they reach the end, that would utterly satisfy the Circle aesthetic. Of course, you, the listener, will probably want to hit play again, but that's assuming you're not too zoned out to move your arm.
Another one to file under "NWOFHM"! New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal. That's Pharaoh Overlord/Circle bassist Jussi's little joke. Only now it's gone waaaaay beyond joking. Or to another level of joke anyway. What we're saying, is that this fourth Pharaoh Overlord opus is a headbanger's delight, for real. Sure, Pharaoh Overlord were already supposed to be the "heavy" Circle side project, and they were, but not like this. This ain't mere 'stoner rock', this doesn't sound anything like Kyuss anymore. Instead, they've adopted chugging speed metal riffage that could be from an Accept album circa 1984, lashed it to their usual repetitive krautrocky rhythms, unleashed some very metal vocals, and gone entirely over to the dark side (which, by the way, is the title of one of our favorite tracks here, the album-ending 8+ minute instrumental epic that just drives a mean riff into your brain like the spiked fist thru the face of the skull in the cd booklet!!)). They even snuck a little umlaut in over the 2nd 'o' in 'Overlord' on the spine of this cd.
Circle (and Pharaoh Overlord at this point have pretty much the exact same lineup as Circle, it's basically the same band) have dropped big hints about their love of metal before -- making references in their graphics and in their music, with many tracks on such albums as Sunrise and Tulikoira being pretty darn metal, as we've noted before -- but here they go whole hog. They sound less like a spacerock band who want to give a nod to metal with a riff here and there, than like a really weird actual metal band! It's rifftastic, hypnotic biker metal with a strange psychedelic side to it. And best of all -- it works! It's a high concept success (and as we mentioned, they've been seemingly high on this concept before, but never have been this tight with it). The unpredictable predictability of any Circle or Circle-related album, their basic kraut-inspired, "circular" formula, stands up to and indeed seems to embrace this metallic obsession. The tick-tock percussion and cyclical riffs just wind up tension, even as they entrance the listener, making this so very heavy and ominous in a way that maybe no other metal band would or could explore but they'd have to appreciate. AMAZING!!
Can Jussi and Co. get any more metal than this? Well soon we'll see when we get the upcoming Circle cdep Earthworm which features Bruce Duff from '80s alt-metal band Jesters Of Destiny on vocals! Supposed to be pretty darn heavy. Stay tuned.
Most aQ customers by now are familiar with (and fanatic about) both Circle and Pharaoh Overlord. Kind of like Parliament-Funkadelic, the two Finnish groups are more-or-less the same band really, making more-or-less the same kind of music, the Circle-Pharaoh Overlord thang all about repetitive, "circular", psychedelic sounds. Sharing members and a mesmeric M.O., both Circle and Pharaoh Overlord are masters of spacey hypno-rock, often heavy, sometimes "metal", frequently quite WTF?, all of which is what you get here for sure, in both cases, on this pair of vinyl-only live records with similar, sharp cover graphics and the same dang title. Turns out these are the first two in what promises to be a series of "high quality, multi-channel 'live' recordings" under the 6000 km/h banner (a name meant to connote "speed, dynamism and goal-orientedness" according to the tongue-in-cheek corporate jargon employed by the label's press release).
Pharaoh Overlord's 6000 km/h release documents the band's performance at a festival in Turku, Finland, Summer 2014. There's four songs here (one straddling two sides), all of them exclusive "world premieres". Typically it's jazz groups who make live albums that are actually 'new albums' in that sense; rock bands doing live recordings historically tend towards greatest/latest hits collections - not that that's what you get with Circle's 6000 km/h, either, even though they're not (all) new songs on there� Anyway, there's something jazzy about this, and proggy and noisy too, PO sounding both epic and experimental on such cuts as the 16+ minute "No Ota Sitten Kolmekymppia" (that's the one that starts on one side and ends on the other). Groovy, dense, strange...
Oh, and we love that it admits on the sleeve that there are "a couple of overdubs... but who gives a **** anyway!"
Black vinyl is what we've got, limited to 350 copies only!
Yay. Pharaoh Overlord is the all-instrumental so-called "stoner rock" side project of our favorite Finns, Circle. Now they're back, with the aptly titled "II", and a new line-up that's apparently all members of Circle. Interestingly, while Circle themselves went kinda metal with "Sunrise", Pharaoh Overlord seem to have have mellowed out. Well not quite, as track 4 amps up the riffs a bit. But you'd be hard pressed to call this "stoner rock" anymore. It's more like a really relaxed Circle, still "heavy" but in a way that has less to do with being loud than being low (a bit like them other AQ-faves Bohren and Der Club Of Gore). Repetitive trance-inducing space rock, all deep, rumbling, and spacious. A real nod-scene. Metronomyic drums, meandering guitars, six long tracks of minimal, mellow menace. Even darker and dubbier than their first album. Definitely dubbier. But still totally psychedelic. Goes well with the disc Argentine stoner rockers Los Natas recorded for Circle's label Ektro, "Toba-Trance". And Circle fans will of course be pleased -- we're reminded of Circle's "Paint It Black" cover... Lovingly packaged courtesy of No Quarter, a label also responsible for some excellent releases from the likes of Earth and Laddio Bollocko.
Bow down, people. Just bow down. If extended, repetitive, droned-out krauty stoner prog a la Circle is your thing, then this disc definitely for you, surprise surprise. Sheer hypnosis. Utterly mesmeric. Sounds sooooooooooooo gooooooooooood. It's hard to think of these guys as just a band, the music here seems produced by some organic force. It's a living thing really. A throbbing monster of an album.
Just like their sister band Circle, of which they're all members, Finnish psychsters Pharaoh Overlord have built a discography (they're up to six albums now, counting this one) that somehow maintains a core identity yet always does something different each time out. They started off with the stoner rock riff mantras of #1, then went to the mostly subdued noirishness of II, followed that with the live-and-raw Battle Of The Axehammer, then came back with the krautrockingly Circle-like diversions of #3, all before delving into the absurdly headbanging metallisms of #4 that even added vocals to their previously instrumental lineup. So, now what? What next? A second live album, this time called Live In Suomi Finland, recorded in Helsinki in May of 2006. On it the regular Pharaoh Overlord lineup of Jussi, Tomi and Janne is augmented by two more Finnish friends, and special guest Hans Joachim Irmler of legendary krautrockers Faust! His electric organ grind here adds an extra dose of distorted drone to the proceedings.
Of the two live PO discs this is definitely the best sounding. It's not as raw and blown-out as Battle Of The Axehammer, it's got better fidelity, but if anything it's even heavier!! Perhaps its the additional "remixing" credited to Irmler, whatever magic he worked in later in the Faust studio definitely makes this more than "just" a live album.
There's five tracks here, though it's a very continuously flowing disc... starting with the infectious riffery of "Black Horse" (which has appeared previously only in another live version on Battle Of The Axehammer), followed by two totally new tracks, "Tutankharmony" and "Zero Gravity" that relax the volume and mood a bit with a sense of smokey, improv mystery. Then they launch into "Skyline", the heaviest cut from II, before winding up / blowing out with a quarter-hour rendition #1's "Mangrove". An incredible 50+ minutes all told. Boy, we wish we'd been there! Too bad SF-Helsinki flights aren't quick or cheap...
Finland's Pharaoh Overlord return with this devastating double lp on Aaron Turner and Faith Coloccia's vinyl-only Sige label. Whilst we have many favorite Finns, these guys (and their mothership Circle) are among our very favoritest. Yours too probably, so we imagine these are gonna fly out of here fast.
This Circle sideproject is certainly VERY "circular" here, full of repetitive minimalist vibrations to the max, utter stoner neo-kraut hypnosis for sure, with a heavy metallic undercurrent and some freaky cosmic jazziness to it too. Of the couple most recent previous PO efforts, Lunar Jetman aligns more closely with the space/noise rock of live lp Horn, rather than the "song-ier" classic metal of Out Of Darkness, harking back also to the dark stoner soundscapes of some of their earlier albums as well; but as always, it is its own entity.
Lunar Jetman features six tracks, mostly quite long, sprawling over four album sides, for far more than an hour of slow burning, steady building, all-instrumental Overlord action. The album begins with the insistent gallop of the nearly 11 minute long "Rodent", which almost sounds like Maiden gone motorik! With extra spaceage shoegazey shwooshing and wooshing thrown in. It'll have you totally transfixed before it's even half over. The distortodelic kraut-iness continues amidst the metronymic percussive percolations of the even-lengthier track two, "Palmyra Cali"; then "Cardinal" is a much shorter, blissed out improv-sounding interlude.
That's followed by the 16+ minutes of "Black Horse", at long last a studio version of a composition earlier documented in briefer versions on both PO's 2004 live album The Battle Of The Axehammer, and then again on 2007's Live In Suomi. Here, it begins with much skitter and skree, before hammering into the happy heavy churning riffage we recognize. This one's definitely bound to be a fave of all the Wooden Shjips' fans out there.
Finally, Lunar Jetman delves deep into the dirge, with the two-part, nearly half-hour, massively moody "Cave Of Hair", a detailed, obsessively repetitive soundscape of ominous chuggery, building from quietly brooding near ambient creepy-crawl to metallic majesty...
Another awesome Overlord recording, in other words. And fyi, Lunar Jetman features Faust's Hans Joachim Irmler on keyboards, who has performed with PO previously, appearing on Live In Suomi - and who produced Circle's 2002 Klangbad release, Alotus. Not that PO nor Circle need Irmler to make 'em any krautrockier, they already had that covered!! But this IS plenty krautrocky.
Double lp fancy limited (530 copies) vinyl for now via Aaron Turner's Sige imprint; cd version expected also from Ektro, someday soon we hope...
It's "NWOFHM" in overdrive overload this week, with not one but two new albums from key exemplars of that Circle side project "scene" up there in Finland. The new vinyl-only offering from Steel Mammoth called Radiation Funeral, you'll find reviewed elsewhere this list, and then there's this, Out Of Darkness, the new cd from Pharaoh Overlord. With fists in the air (and tongues possibly not in cheek?) these two releases have really upped the ante regarding the METAL part of the NWOFHM equation.
Quick recap for those out of the loop: Finnish space prog neo-Kraut band (and massive AQ faves) Circle like to dabble in the metal realms, on their own albums and also by means of various side projects, enough of which exist to populate a self-proclaimed, quasi-parodic New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal movement, NWOFHM for short. These bands usually use metal "signifiers" for their own twisted purposes, making music that's as much experimental and pop and prog as it is metal, but done up in leather and spikes basically for fun.
Circle offshoot Pharaoh Overlord was originally more of a stoner rock take on Circle's motorik mesmerism, dark and psychedelic and heavy. But not "metal". Then they did the album entitled #4, which was NWOFHM almost to the point of being "actual" metal (though still totally repetitive and hypnotic a la Circle of course). But #4's follow up, their previous disc to this, Siluurikaudella, was, while we liked it quite a bit, a definite departure, more of a freakout/improv thing, definitely not remotely metal (or NWOFHM).
So for anyone a bit confused by Siluurikaudella, you'll be happy to hear that Out Of Darkness returns PO to headbanging territory, and then some!! Definitely a metal album, and a rockin' one. Well, it starts off with a lovely acoustic guitar intro, "Eyes Of The Pharaoh", but starts rockin' about 43 seconds later, when the title track erupts, total classic metal riffage with Danzig meets Hetfield vocals courtesy of the singer from US stoner metal band Night Horse, who also appears on the disc's killer final track "I Am The Light". He's not the only guest, as Circle's big hero Bruce "Jesters Of Destiny" Duff and his bandmate Frank Meyer from LA sleaze rockers Angus Khan have cameos too, providing some guest vocals and lead guitar on a few of the cuts here as well.
The nearly ten minute "Devastator" demonstrates that Pharaoh Overlord haven't abandoned the "Circular" style of minimalist repetition, that track devastates indeed with its seeming endlessness (which is awesome). Somewhat poppier is the next track, the chugging "Doomsday Mourning", that's got some psychedelic Uriah Heepishness to it, laden with synths, psych soloing, and dramatic vocals. And that's more the norm, this album being really pretty darn catchy throughout, Pharaoh Overlord mixing their '80s metal obsessions with some Teutonic '70s proginess, and whatthefuckever else they desire. Our heads aren't just banging, they're spinning. Turns out they weren't kidding with the song title "We Came To Rock"! Ok, it gets a bit goofy on the two Bruce Duff sung tracks (especially "No Speed Limit") but that's entertaining too, however for the most part this is a REAL metal / hard rock album, or at least sounds that way, being strange rather than silly when it's not full on metal. For fans of Circle, Queen, krautrock, Thor, La Otracina, Blue Oyster Cult, Accept, Judas Priest, Metallica, Steel Mammoth, Destruction, Anvil, Lucifer's Friend, White Boy And The Average Rat Band, uh, and everything else that's awesome.
Oh, if this wasn't cool enough already, love the outer space neon lazer tiger cover artwork!!! Purrfect for the tight ripping soundz within. The cd booklet also contains an interesting quote from R. Buckminster Fuller. Didn't know he was a metalhead.
FYI, there's another new PO album too, vinyl-only effort called Horn, that we're hoping to get soon too. Haven't heard it yet, don't know where it falls on the NWOFHM spectrum...
Most aQ customers by now are familiar with (and fanatic about) both Circle and Pharaoh Overlord. Kind of like Parliament-Funkadelic, the two Finnish groups are more-or-less the same band really, making more-or-less the same kind of music, the Circle-Pharaoh Overlord thang all about repetitive, "circular", psychedelic sounds. Sharing members and a mesmeric M.O., both Circle and Pharaoh Overlord are masters of spacey hypno-rock, often heavy, sometimes "metal", frequently quite WTF?, all of which is what you get here for sure, in both cases, on this pair of vinyl-only live records with similar, sharp cover graphics and the same dang title. Turns out these are the first two in what promises to be a series of "high quality, multi-channel 'live' recordings" under the 6000 km/h banner (a name meant to connote "speed, dynamism and goal-orientedness" according to the tongue-in-cheek corporate jargon employed by the label's press release).
Pharaoh Overlord's 6000 km/h release documents the band's performance at a festival in Turku, Finland, Summer 2014. There's four songs here (one straddling two sides), all of them exclusive "world premieres". Typically it's jazz groups who make live albums that are actually 'new albums' in that sense; rock bands doing live recordings historically tend towards greatest/latest hits collections - not that that's what you get with Circle's 6000 km/h, either, even though they're not (all) new songs on there� Anyway, there's something jazzy about this, and proggy and noisy too, PO sounding both epic and experimental on such cuts as the 16+ minute "No Ota Sitten Kolmekymppia" (that's the one that starts on one side and ends on the other). Groovy, dense, strange...
Oh, and we love that it admits on the sleeve that there are "a couple of overdubs... but who gives a **** anyway!"
Black vinyl is what we've got, limited to 350 copies only!
A band that loves black metal, Motorhead, and thinks that killer trees are cool?? French death n' roll juggernaut Phazm is just such a band. Rampaging trees (like the Ents from Lord of the Rings) menace fleeing humans on the disc's cover art, and in such songs as "Vicious Seed" and "Forest Recipe". It's kinda like Godzilla but with giant, malevolent trees instead of a big lizard. A bit silly, though environmentalists should approve. But the trees vs. humanity theme (one done very differently by Hammers Of Misfortune on The Bastard) shouldn't necessarily be what sells you on this anyway (or not). That'd be the music -- loud n' blackly, blastingly metallic, with pumelling drums, nasty guitars and gruff, raw vox, but with passages of melody as well, and a good helping of midpaced rock n' roll catchiness in the riff dep't. Almost like a black metal Kiss. And there's also an excellent and not entirely incongrous (even though it's not about trees) Motorhead cover here, a greatly gargled n' grinded version of "Dogs" from Motorhead's Rock N' Roll album, which serves to perfectly wrap up this debut blast of aggro-arboreal, black metal RAWK!
Includes a cd-rom low-budget video clip for one song.
Holy mission to Mars! What a fantastic discovery, the first we've heard from Phobonoid, a one man black metal / industrial / noise outfit from Phobos, and yep, that's one of the moons of Mars, and the music on Orbita is a high concept soundtrack to the end of civilization on Mars, as viewed from Phobos, and also BY the god Phobos, culminating in the eventual meeting between Phobos and his brother Deimos, on the scorched surface of the ruined red planet. And sonically, that's sort of what it sounds like, opening with a dense cloud of blacknoize, darkly billowing, ominous and sinister, eventually frenzied riffing begins to emerge from the blackness, a roiling sonic chaos, that instead of bursting into blasting black buzz, blurs and swirls into a grinding, almost orchestral buzz, a lurching doom-drone creep, wreathed in electronic fuzz and glitched out crumbling distortion, before erupting into a blown out Godflesh style industrial dirge, the sounds mutated and on the verge of collapse, electronic flecked heaviness, that buried blackness bleeding over the mechanized rhythms and the insectoid riffing. And that's just the first track! From there on out, Phobonoid paints a bleak sonic picture of Mars' ruination, achingly melancholy guitar buzz blossoms into blackened industrial blasts, the vocals a demonic rasp, the programmed drums relentless and robotic, inhumanly fast at times, but constantly slipping back into a monstrous, crushing plod, the sound almost psychedelic, dense and lushly layered, noisy and super distorted. Throughout the 7 songs here, the sound is in constant flux, a dizzying barrage of black tarpit creep, churning atonal blasts, mechanized metallic buzz, with one gorgeously austere stretch of blurred, almost blissed out industrial ambience, before one final blast, of majestically epic mechanoid black buzz. So good!
Self described as 'industrial doom', the French outfit known as P.H.O.B.O.S. take the industrial pummel and clattery chaos of classic Godflesh, the serpentine song structures of Voivod and the grim grating brutality of the most bizarre black metal, and wind it all into a dense, hateful, slow motion black hole beast, plodding and pounding mercilessly, like some sort of unstoppable behemoth, crushing everything in its path, sucking life, spitting fire, spewing jagged shards of metallic blackness. The sound of a million monstrous jackboots, marching endlessly toward some unspeakably bleak final destination. The stretched out feedback soaked abstract doom of Khanate, given an industrial makeover, throbbing Teutonic rhythms, never even coming close to midtempo, instead pounding out impossibly slow rhythms, the whole thing wrapped in white hot sheets of feedback, and churning tarpit riffage, with the occasional melody tossed in, surviving only briefly, like a cow thrown into a river full of pirahnna, the whole thing exploding in a churning, bloody froth before settling back into the relentless machine like crush. And despite all that brutality, it's also amazingly hypnotic and listenable, with some of the beauty of the post-Godflesh outfit Jesu wethinks.
Originally released on the Appease Me label, run by Phobos' French metal brethren Blut Aus Nord.
When Brooklyn's White Hills was here last week (they played a rad instore, hope you made it), they brought us some copies of this new compilation on which they appear, alongside the likes of Mammatus, The Heads, Kawabata Makoto, Residual Echoes, Plastic Crimewave Sound, Fuzzhead, and a couple others (many of whom are depicted in the cover drawing montage, done by Plastic Crimewave, whose art you may know from his Galactic Zoo Dossier 'zine). Heavy duty, fuzzed out, psychedelic stoner rock nirvana here, folks! But it's NOT exactly a comp, actually. It's the follow-up to an out of print disc called Jamnation that we reviewed (thumbs up) a few years back. And that's the catch, kinda. Both Jamnation and now Phosphene River aren't just various artists collections, they're spoken word projects from the fevered mind of one Dan McGuire, who lays down his gritty beatnik poetry overtop the instrumental spacey effects laden bliss and/or throbbing distorted guitar riffage being pumped out by these bands. We've said it before, we'll say it again, we're not so big on the spoken word thing. You'll never catch us at a poetry slam. BUT, we gotta say, first off McGuire's rambling Lizard King orations, we can deal with, usually. His subject matter is surreal and sinister enough to somewhat make up for the sheer self parodic silliness of the whole spoken word thing. And, his words don't really get in the way of the music, which is really why we're listening. He slips right in there like he belongs, instead of being a total distraction. He's got a cool, gritty voice (we compared him to turned on, dropped out John Wayne / Henry Rollins hybrid before) and sorta sounds like the hardboiled detective doing the voiceover in some '50s noir movie, except with the drug fueled, fear & loathing laden, imagination of a Hunter S. Thompson. Even when he's getting Biblical, as he does on the PCS track "Are You A Dragon". His streams of consciousness can be sort of hypnotic - we'll admit to listening less to what he's saying and more to the heavy sound of the whole thing. And as we said when we reviewed Jamnation, McGuire has a knack for knowing when to back off and leave space for the music. He'll let a track play halfway through sometimes before opening his mouth - and the tracks he's selected for this disc are of course good 'uns, as you might have already guessed from the quality lineup who contributed. It's pretty well done for what it is!
So, if you like stoner psych -and- spoken word, this is for you for sure. If just stoner psych, well we'd say that this comp is rad enough to withstand the inclusion of all that jawing. And think about it, McGuire's purple flow of deviant verbiage is really not that different from what these band's guitarists are doing with their axes, wailing away, off on their own freaky trips...
We haven't heard from Canadian outfit Picastro in ages, in fact, we sort of assumed they might be no more. In past reviews we described their music as having a "somber heaviness" which makes them a pretty good match for doomgaze duo Nadja, and indeed the two groups team up for this lp collaboration, and from the sound of it, the A side seems to be more of a Picastro record, with Nadja guesting, and the B side a Nadja record with help from Picastro. But both sides are pretty great.
Picastro's 'side' is a series of shorter tracks, a woozy sort of post rock, detuned twang, male and female vocals, plenty of weird distortion, there's a Tom Waits sort of junkyard vibe to a lot of the sounds here, which also reminds us of the late great Reeks And The Wrecks (whose lost first lp is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). The sound shifts from creeping slowcore to a sort of jazzy drift, all shimmering strings and muted percussion, all wreathed in a folky ambience, the whole thing like some abstract dirgey drone folk slowcore, and the sort of thing that reminds us of Codeine and post Phleg Camp weirdo country combo the Reveries.
The flipside is a single sidelong track, which should be the first hint that Nadja are in the driver's seat. The second would of course be the thick swirling buzz, rife with acoustic guitar (Picastro?), the sound muted and washed out, before blossoming into full on distorted shoegazey dirge, blown out, heavy and hazy, but still melodic and darkly pretty, the two groups a perfect match, conjuring up a sweet bit of dreamy sorta folky doom bliss!
Includes a download coupon!
Pig Destroyer is the raging grind band lead by Scott Hull (Agoraphobic Nosebleed, ex-Anal Cunt), and this 38-track collection is documents the band's progress to date, featuring 18 tracks (including their Melvins cover) from their debut album "Explosion In Ward 6" (here remastered), two Carcass covers from a split 7" with Isis, a Dark Angel cover from an as yet-unreleased thrash tribute comp, and other stuff from a 7" and demo tape... So, even if you already have "Ward 6", it might be time to trade that in for this disc...
Book Burner is the first record in 5 years from these grindcore gods. Their last full length was 2007's Phantom Limb, and as we mentioned in that review, as much as we dig these guys, we sort of dig PD frontman Scott Hull's -other- grind band even more, the twisted, warped, drum machine driven Agoraphobic Nosebleed, perhaps in part due to the fact that the music is not at all restrained by the limits of human drumming, which means that a lot of AnB stuff is ridiculously, and inhumanly fast, not to mention dizzyingly convoluted. But let's not sell PD drummer Adam Jarvis (who also plays in Misery Index) short, he comes about as close as any other human we can think of to insane hyperspeed drum damage, and the rest of the band follow suit, unfurling some seriously shredding, grinding heaviness, that in the world of grind really has no equal. We bitched about the more punky parts of the last record, and for the most part, that stuff has been jettisoned, in favor of lots of crushing slow and midtempo parts, that KILL, as well as crazy chunks of wild progged out math metal, which sound sooooo good, especially when paired up with bursts of lightning speed grinding blasts, the switch to churning chugging riffage only makes it sound that much heavier. And if anything, the sound of Pig Destroyer has continued to inch ever closer to that of Agoraphobic Nosebleed, more dense and complex, more furiously frenzied and fucked up. It's still somehow surprising the sort of hype this record's been getting, these guys popping up on the covers of all the metal mags, and no doubt filling up year end lists, but we have to say, as skeptical as we were, the more we listen to this, the more we're digging it, repeated listens yield a deeper appreciation of how fucking epic and relentlessly masterful this stuff really is, strap on some headphones and get lost in the wild squalls of grind, and the classic metal flecked churn and chug, a furious face melting modern grind metal powerhouse that jams 19 songs into 32 minutes, and sets the grind bar pretty goddamn high. As always, creepy artwork, demented lyrics, and a clutch of sick guest vocal spots from occasional PD/AnB vocalist (and full time Salome frontwoman) Kat Katz.
Grind monsters Pig Destroyer offer up one of their rare, but always devastating DOOM efforts here. Rather than the usual horde of frenzied blasts, the brutality here comes in the form of just two long tracks, recorded back in 2006 and apparently saved for a rainy day.
The title track is the real long one, over 19 minutes, and operates in a slo-mo realm of distortion-drone sculpting, punctuated by sudden explosive detonations. There's stretches of extended, Eyehategod-esque feedback, and some cryptic spoken samples in the mix as well. Some of it sounds liturgical, like a metal monk ceremony, almost blissful in spots. But very heavy indeed when all is said and done. Mass and volume is right! This is Pig Destroyer entering Boris and SUNNO))) territory.
The other, shorter track, "Red Tar", is by far the more, uh, rockin' one, still slow and low but more about lurching riff-crush and nasty, phlegm-choked vokill gargle (and more peals of feedback and other sludgey moves from the Eyehategod and Graves At Sea playbooks, too). By the end, though, it takes on a surprisingly majestic, melodic character, almost uplifting despite all the bad attitude on display, finally fading away with a passage that's purely percussion, after a flourish of feedback.
We kinda wish Pig Destroyer would dabble in this sort of slightly post-rockish doom metal more often, they're dang good at it!
Originally available as a bonus DVD audio disc with the first pressing of Pig Destroyer's Terrifyer album, the half hour plus track "Natasha" functions almost better as its own record (which it now is), seeing as it was pretty sonically removed from the rest of the grinding mayhem found on Terrifyer.
Rumored to have originally been intended for a two-part split with the similarly godlike (and sadly defunct) Creation Is Crucifixion, which never materialized, "Natasha" is possibly the single strangest and greatest effort yet from these Pig Destroying psychopaths. Extrapolating on the previous love-scorned dementia lyrical themes of their Prowler In The Yard opus, "Natasha" is a hallucinogenic half-hour nightmare of epic proportions. Heavy, plodding sonorous drums (and finally a bass guitar!) crash like thunder as ominous feedback echoes off the graven landscape of lyricist JR Hayes's surreal acid-trip of uncomfortable adolescent obsession gone horribly awry. The piece metamorphoses through several states, from long quiet ambient passages to keyboard dirges to full-on metallic surges before finally dissolving into the audio equivalent of the gnashing jaws of the song's eponymous protagonist. Absolutely stunningly majestically heavy and downright, dare we say, beautiful - like a psylocybin-striated amalgam of Corrupted, Boris, Godflesh, Buried at Sea, Old Man Gloom and Neurosis. Includes the same disturbing short story liner notes as before, but with some gorgeously garish new artwork. Natasha is an absolute must-hear and definitely proves once again that Pig Destroyer remain at the very fore of extreme music innovation.
For some reason the blurb on the cover of Painter Of Dead Girls trys to pass this off as new material although in all other ways it's touted as a stopgap release collecting material from long out of print splits. Regardless, this is some seriously punishing brutality. Pig Destoyer, for those of you new to this stuff, is the 'other' band of Agoraphobic Nosebleed mainman and ex-Anal Cunt axeman Scott Hull, and like AN, Pig Destroyer traffic in brutally heavy, spastic, crushing, ultra complex and pummeling metallic grind. Unlike Agoraphobic Nosebleed however, PxDx employ a real live drummer. Which is pretty unbeleivable when you hear how ridiculously fast and complex some of this stuff is. 17 tracks, 20 minutes total, of some of the most intense, furiously destructive grinding metal you will ever hear. Adding to the what-the-fuck factor is the fact that PxDx have no bass player, which seems completely impossible with shit this heavy! Included are some amazing covers, the Stooges' "Down In The Street", with vocalist J.R. Hayes doing a pitch-perfect Iggy, but with all the swaggery strut of the original sucked out in favor of a much more rigid, metallic bulldoze, a pretty straight up verison of the Dwarves' classic "Fuck You Up And Get High", and an awesome cover of Helmet's "In The Meantime". The liner notes include credits for a final track that seems to be missing. Also includes three videos recorded in 2000 live at CBGB's, one of which features a microphone shattered into pieces while Hayes howls away, somehow managing to be heard over the deafening tumult of his bandmates.
Who would have thought a band with name like Pig Destroyer, and heck, a band that -sounded- like Pig Destroyer, would be super popular, but just check out the sticker on the front of the new Pig Destroyer record Phantom Limb: "For fans of Slayer, Mastodon, Lamb Of God, Melvins, Black Dahlia Murder, Cephallic Carnage." Huh? Cephallic Carnage makes sense but the rest? It seems like maybe they're just saying, "If you like heavy music, this is heavy too, so you'll probably like it." Which is certainly true, but Pig Destroyer are way heavier and weirder and more extreme than most of those bands, but then again who are we to complain if the Alternative Press youth of today are digging shit like Pig Destroyer along with their Slipknot, way better than A.F.I. of Aiden.
But as much as we dig PD, we're still surprised at how popular they've become. They're definitely great, but not -that- great. Maybe if you have a limited exposure to grind, we can see how they might blow your mind. But personally we tend toward Pig Destroyer's drum machine drive alter ego Agoraphobic Nosebleed, who take the metallic grind of PD, and speed it up, twist it all around, and chop it into short sharp blasts of furious impossibly technical fury.
But fuck it, we're nitpicking, sure we like AnB more, but this is some seriously heavy and brutal metalgrind insanity. These guys totally destroy, and totally shred, super convoluted arrangements, confusional mathiness and superhuman tempos, all wrapped in super downtuned chug and blown out distortion, howled vocals and buzzing bass, lots of the tracks slip into a more straight ahead thrashing punk which we're not so into, but the blasting parts are face meltingly intense and so awesome, and PD do kick out some damaged sea sick doomy jams here and there that are pretty kick ass. And hell there are plenty of super catchy killer riffs dotting Pig Destroyers hyperspeed grindscapes.
So yeah, maybe we love Agoraphobic Nosebleed a bit more than PD, and this is definitely not our favorite Pig Destroyer disc (that would probably be the Painter Of Dead Girls comp, or maybe their debut full length Explosions In Ward 6), but fuck it, this is still severed heads and hacked-off shoulders above most grind, and definitely heavy enough to please most metalheads and grindfreaks alike�
When we first heard what the title of the new disc from East Coast grindmetal kings Pig Destroyer was called, we were making fun of it like, "oooh, scary, a prowler --- in the yard!" Somehow prowlers don't seem as scary as what most other death/black metal
Pig Destroyer's 2002 album "Prowler in the Yard" was called by some the best grindcore album since Brutal Truth's '94 masterpiece "Need to Control" and anyone who heard it knew that honor was not undeserved. Thus having some big gore-soaked rubber boots to fill for their follow-up, Pig Destroyer has still somehow managed to not only meet but surpass their own vaunted standards. I don't know if it's the blood-red album art, creating the same sinister synesthetic effect as Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss, but everything about Terrifyer is just grander, heavier, darker, more deadly. The production on this is positively devastating -- it's unimaginable that just three individuals, with NO bass guitar could make music this crushingly heavy, but anyone who's seen them live knows this is no mere studio trickery. Scott Hull, undisputed king of grindcore guitar has pushed his playing and song-writing abilities to new peaks of riffing alchemy -- it's busier, more complex, catchier, and yes, somehow EVEN FASTER, occasionally adopting tornado-like Discordance Axis-style cyclical riffs for maximum effect. It goes without saying that the drumming is simply inhuman, but it's the guitars that make Pig Destroyer such a standout band, especially in the realm of grind. Most bands these days have supersonic blast beats, but it's often a criticism of grind that the guitars are too simplistic and tune-less, and this presumption Pig Destroyer positively blows apart.
And then there's "Natasha", the single 32-minute doom track that comprises disc 2 (oddly on an audio-only DVD, available in stereo or surround-sound). Rumored to have originally been intended for a two-part split with the similarly godlike Creation is Crucifixion which never materialized, "Natasha" is possibly the single strangest and greatest effort yet from these psychopaths. Extrapolating on the previous love-scorned dementia lyrical themes from "Prowler", "Natasha" is a hallucinogenic half-hour nightmare of epic proportions. Heavy, plodding sonorous drums (and finally a bass guitar!) crash like thunder as ominous feedback echoes off the graven landscape of lyricist JR Hayes's surreal acid-trip of uncomfortable adolescent obsession gone horribly awry, complete with an accompanying 6-page short story in the booklet. The piece metamorphoses through several states, from long quiet ambient passages to keyboard dirges to full-on metallic surges before finally dissolving into the audio equivalent of the gnashing jaws of the song's eponymous protagonist. Absolutely stunningly majestically heavy and downright, dare I say, beautiful -- like a psylocybin-striated amalgam of Corrupted, Boris, Godflesh, Buried at Sea, Old Man Gloom and Neurosis. This song is a must-hear and together with the unbridled aggression of disc 1, makes Terrifyer a very difficult release to beat for heavy album of the year and places Pig Destroyer at the very fore of extreme music innovation.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Nine more tracks from the totally amazing Pig Destroyer. Scott Hull, also of Agoraphobic Nosebleed and formerly of Anal Cunt, takes grind even farther, making the riffs faster, the songs more fucked, and the drumming even more inhuman and machine-like (we were convinced it was a drum machine for a while). The GNOB side (bong backwards, get it?) is kind of jokey and stupid and pretty much pointless, but definitely get it for the Pig Destroyer tracks. [/cat/metal115.html]
Latest slab of pummeling, punishing industrial power violence from this local one man band, who also just so happens to be 1/2 of another band we love, Iron Lung, but unlike Iron Lung, BHT, aka Jon Kortland, creates twisted blurts of caustic noise, grinding, distorted power electronics, and brutal metallic churn. This latest is split into 28 tracks, each 44 seconds long, each a sonic stunner, from skull cleaving blown out crush to sculpted static over stuttering jack hammer rhythms, it's a hard sound to swallow, difficult listening for sure, and it's likely most metalheads might find this a bit too brutal, and too abrasive, and probably not metal enough, which is saying a lot, but for folks into twisted avant noise, industrial and power electronics, outfits like Ramleh and Skullflower, Whitehouse and Swans, Brighter Death Now and Bastard Noise, PHT definitely fits somewhere amongst all their equally sonically twisted brethren!
Some tracks are strangely atmospheric, others purely rhythmic, the sounds themselves blown out and in-the-red, plenty of sonic gristle, crumbling feedback, hiss and hum and skree and squalls of feedback, metallic clang and clatter, with sounds often exploding into wild gouts of white noise, but just as often evolving into murky pulsations. Heady, heavy and hypnotic, the vocals a wild bellow, the only really link to the group's punk/metal roots, otherwise, the sounds is more experimental, and avant, and even with the vocals, the vibe is more like some lost industrial outfit from the eighties or nineties. There are plenty of surprise too though, moments of unlikely melody and beauty ("1970"), gorgeous bits of grey ambient drift ("Scum"), and a bunch of tracks that almost play out more like some warped variant of minimal techno, all skeletal crunch, and stuttery throb, and yet, it all somehow works together as this bizarre, noise drenched hydra-headed, 28 part psychedelic, power electronic noise-crust epic. And it KILLS.
Awesome orange and black minimal cover art too.
What might you expect from a band called Pig Heart Transplant? With a record called Hope You Enjoy Heaven? And song titles like "Prison / Fortress", "Crawling Through Hell", "Abject. Debased. Diseased" and "I Video Tape Your Diet"? What if the band featured members of Spazz, Silentist, Iron Lung, Despise You, Artimus Pyle, Gob, Brainoil and more? What if we told you they shared some splits with dirgedoomnoise duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer? Yeah, you'd probably come up with something like THIS.
A punishing slab of slow motion power violence, crushing downtuned guitars, pounding drums, harsh hellish vokills, everything dripping with filth and murk, total Man Is The Bastard worship for sure. Low end all over the place. Some tracks the guitars are burning hot, the production way in the red, others are super creeped out murkscapes of industrial pound and processed vox, while still others are sludge-doom trawls through all manner of crusty low slung dirgemetal, and a couple are long buzzing drones, with howled vocals over the top, sounding a bit like a low end deathmetal Whitehouse. Maybe our favorite track though, is "Feeding From Your Trough", reminding us a bit of Geronimo, a fucked up mechanical sprawl of pounding crunch and hissing static, dripping with distortion and noise, locked into a stumbling lurching rhythm, with some chunks of grinding heaviness that sound like they could blow out your speakers, slipping from clipped robotic trudge, to hateful blacknoise dirge and back again. Some seriously harrowing shit for sure. Which as you probably know by now, means WAY recommended. At least for those in the mood for some murky and menacing musical punishment.
Folks went nuts for the PHT full length we reviewed a few weeks back, so here we have two new slabs of murky, muddy, downtuned sludge drenched power violence. Both tracks are gloriously crusty and filthy and so so so heavy, and would have fit perfectly on the full length.
One side features a massive lurching riff over machinelike drumming and howled vokills, pounding and relentless but strangely hypnotic almost like a sludgier Geronimo. The flip side is even doomier and more spaced out, with crushing low end, squiggly streaks of feedback, all wound into a lumbering grinding slow motion behemoth, with glass gargling vocals all beneath a thick layer of buzzy grit.
The weird part about this 7" is that both tracks, each side, features essentially an entirely different lineup! There's only one guy who plays on both sides and on one he plays drums, while on the other he plays bass. We knew they were a sort of collective and this seems to prove it. Especially considering that both sides definitely and distinctly reek of that filthy blackness that could only be Pig Heart Transplant.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES. Packaged in hand stamped plain red sleeves with a printed red bottom obi.
Latest chunk of blackened heaviness from aQ faves, Pig Heart Transplant, who we just discovered are now aQ neighbors! Not sure most folks would be all that thrilled to discover these guys were your new neighbors, not once they feasted their ears on this stuff. Downtuned pounding sludge, Godflesh style, or maybe Swans, metal laced with industrial pummel, massive grinding guitars, monstrous drumming, harsh vox that slip into deep bellowed croons, some sort of churning, chugging avant noise rock doom, like some impossible hybrid of Swans/Wolf Eyes/Godflesh/Eyehategod, or something. The track has a rad outro of abstract buzz, laced with strange bursts of metallic clatter, washed out and eerily hypnotic.
PHT are up against Juhyo, who we've never heard before, but after hearing this are way into checking out more. A glitched out electronic buzz gives way to something much more haunting and droney, deep sonic swells beneath processed reverbed samples, the vibe super cinematic, the track drifts and drifts until it's swallowed up by a wall of SuUNNO)))-like thrum, pelted with streaks of sine wave high end, before melting down into a droney creepy sample heavy drift. So good.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Housed in super swank silk screened silver on black sleeves with similarly printed and #'d inserts.
There's lots of ways we find out about cool new bands. We finally listen to a promo that came in the mail, or a customer raves about them, or we read about 'em in a fanzine or on the internet, etc. etc. One of the best ways though, is to randomly see a band playing live that you've never heard of before, and be impressed. That's the deal with how we discovered local SF heavies Pigs.
I (Allan) just moved into a new apartment here in the Mission, that's not too far from the Potrero del Sol skatepark. On one of the days I was moving stuff, I could hear live music coming from the direction of the park, where they do sometimes have outdoor shows. Sounded like yr basic punk rock, but then a band started playing that - as best I could tell from several blocks away - sounded much more metallic and interesting, with shredding guitar leads and chunky riffage and everything. And obviously very loud. So, needing a break from my moving tasks, I wandered over to the park posthaste to check out what was going on. When I got there, the band I'd heard was still playing, and they were GREAT. Super heavy, fairly hairy power trio (boy drummer, girl bassist, bearded dude guitarist / sometime vocalist) kicking out the jams big time, sorta like a scrappier, scuzzier Melvins, in their earliest, fastest, punkiest incarnation. Like, with some more Motorhead mixed in. I had a blast watching the rest of their set, totally into it, already wondering if they had any recordings I could get my hands on for Aquarius. Also wondering, just who the heck they were. Well both questions were soon answered when the drummer held up a garish purple, very DIY looking handscreened LP emblazoned with the name Pigs, saying they'd just put this record out. Better yet, moments later a friend of mine appeared, who it turned out was friends with band as well, and told me that he'd just been telling Pigs before they played that they should bring their album down to Aquarius. And so they did, a week or so later, not just the limited vinyl but also a cd version too.
Just like their live set, the album is a blast (of distortion, among other things). Sometimes slow and sludgy, equally often full of frenzied jamming, Illuminati House Party is pure metal-punk underground awesome, with more than a few nods to classic rock catchiness. Pigs traffic in Black Sabbathy riffs (most definitely in "Lurch"), their songs furthermore having plenty of rollicking swing to 'em a la both Sabbath and Sleep. The guitarist constantly peels off tangly, widdly leads like they're coming back into style. All the tracks here (11 of 'em) rule, from the sick-o smartassery of "Hard Lovin' Van", a song with gnarly Ginnish licks and hoarse, strangled vox that could almost be an old Tad tune (some of the lyrics: "let's go the lake, and feed the ducks...get in the van, take the candy"), to the even more punk "Population Control", to the wasted doom of "Hessian's Revenge" and sheer shred of "Surf's Up". And then there's the epic instrumental 3-part rifftastic "Taser Trilogy" wherein Pigs show off their Champsy chops, not to mention stoner sense of humor (and not for the first time on this record). Yeah, great stuff!
Is it possible to imagine an unholy hybrid of, um, Electric Wizard, Breadwinner, and, er, Pissed Jeans?? Pigs might be it. Soooo glad I was within earshot of the skatepark that day!
Doomheads rejoice (slowly and mournfully of course), because Rhode Island's most sluggish misery wizards have slithered forth once more from their crumbling Victorian mansion, suffocated and overgrown with ivy (we assume), to deliver their second crushing heap of cavernous ominous DOOM. Void Worship is an album full of oily gothic horror, adorned with creeping Vincent Price melodies that seem to creak like a haunted shadowy staircase. The songs crawl and lurch like a sick and dying leviathan - occasional lush guitar harmonies peaking through, providing momentary glimmers of sunlight, before being swallowed again by the looming grey stormclouds. The drums are a dreary inevitable plod that almost seem to slow down the more the songs progress, giving the sense that the music is buckling and collapsing under its own insurmountable weight. The vocals of The Wizard (yeah, that's his name) are dramatic and theatrical, looming like a silhouetted specter, bringing to mind some of doom metal's more expressive frontmen like Albert Witchfinder from Reverend Bizarre or Robert Lowe of Solitude Aeturnus. His voice is drenched in reverb and somewhat buried in the mix, sounding ghostly and distant yet also proud and direct, as if he were conjuring sad spirits with arcane regretful spells! The extended instrumental passages where his voice disappears entirely (four of the eight tracks on this record are entirely instrumental) only add to the fleeting mystery of his presence. There are some more uptempo moments, like the dusty graveyard boogie of "The Paladin", but for the most part this is an album of lamenting Lovecraftian bleakness in the tradition of early Warning or Pallbearer, the music moving carefully through the shadows like something from Nosferatu. Light those skull candles, draw those purple velvet curtains, and adorn yourself in your finest ceremonial robe - the time has come to give yourself over to the void!
It's a lot easier to write about metal when there's a hook. In our case, it's often that a band is super fucked up, their sound demented and damaged, but we worry sometimes that our thirst for the weird and wacky, perhaps paints to simple a picture of what we dig. Especially when it comes to metal. Cuz as much as we love the strange stuff, we have an undying love for the classics. Like many folks our age, we were lucky enough to grow up in a golden age of metal, whether it was crazy eighties hair metal, classic Bay Area thrash, speed metal, death metal, even the first and second waves of black metal. Those are sounds and musics we will never grow tired of, and we're just as excited about bands of today who are mining those sounds, and offering up their own versions of the classics, as we are of the folks actively subverting and bastardizing those sounds.
Which brings us to Rhode Island doom trio Pilgrim, who besides having some of THEE best metal names we've heard in ages (Krolg Splinterfist, Slayer of Man on drums, Count Elric the Soothsayer on bass, and of course The Wizard on guitars and vocals), sonically take their cues from the classics, Sabbath of course, Candlemass, St, Vitus, Cathedral, but also (slightly) more modern outfits like Electric Wizard and Sleep. And of course, judging by their handles, and the awesome fantasy album art, you can also probably guess what sort of lyrical focus these guys have, yup, swords and sorcery and dragons, and all that good stuff.
So yeah, sonically, it's pretty much everything you're blackened doom-loving heart could want, massive downtuned riffs, slithery Sabbathy slo-mo grooves, pounding drums, the songs epic and majestic, rife with classic doom melodies, all minor key and mournful, and the vocals, a crooned, sort-of-Ozzy-ish heavy rock caterwaul, that suits the music perfectly, maybe not distinctive enough to push these guys to the next level, but the perfect voice for pure underground true doom. Melodic, a bit raspy, passionate, a little rough around the edges, but it suits the music, which again is some seriously awesome classic sounding doom, from the swaggery atmospheric opener, complete with cool almost chanted wordless vox, to the more spaced out tarpit creep of the title track, with a handful of the tracks offering up sonic surprises, like the furious almost stoner rock groove part way through "Quest", not to mention some killer leads, the downright poppiness of "Adventurer", or the super strange midsong breakdown on "Forsaken Man" which is all slow motion post rock meander beneath what appears to be some sort of black magic ritual.
So yeah, this may not be fucked up or freaky, warped or weird, but not everything needs to be, what it IS, is heavy, and catchy, and doomy, and pretty goddamn great!
Former aQ Record Of The Weekers Pinkish Black are back with album number two - surprisingly released by big metal label Century Media, their first was on Handmade Birds - and it's another lurching amorphous mass of droning psychedelic deathrock tinged weirdness! Though they may hail from Texas, Razed to the Ground is an altogether unearthly album - conjuring mental images of bizarre alien landscapes, black slime oozing from every pore. It's a sprawling cosmic nightmare, like H.P. Lovecraft chewing on a mouthful of rotten magic mushrooms. Pulsing black ambience throbs like leeches slithering up through damp soil - before erupting in a churn of dizzying cyclical noiserock, all while science fiction B-movie synths swirl overhead and a ritualistic voice chants emotionless in the distant void. Pummeling yet patient drumming recalls the hypnotic grace of latter era Neurosis. The vocals are an eerie lush croon, at times invoking the same kind of dead-eyed fanaticism of Peter Murphy or Rozz Williams but while maintaining a sort of detached ambivalence that actually doesn't sound too far off from Josh Homme. Bass distortion bubbles like tar while insectoid synths hum and whine like something from a monstrous Dr. Who horrorshow. Or maybe a demented zombified Gary Numan. Elsewhere, creeping haunted house piano sluggishly hammers out a funereal dirge before tumbling toms usher in an ominous slab of heavy spaced out synthesized doom rock. Near the album's end, a melody emerges that could almost be described as uplifting. Almost. But it only serves to accentuate the dystopian extraterrestrial bleakness of the rest of the album as the track abruptly fades to silence, before returning with the lonely haunting pluck of discordant notes and the sound of a chill biting wind, ending the record in a way that could be described as about the furthest thing from comforting. But it's certainly appropriate from a band who named themselves after the grizzly scene left behind by the suicide of one of their former bandmates. It's not a pretty journey, but damn is it a fascinating one. If the fringe synthetic avant-garde heaviness of Wreck & Reference or the decayed blackened death rock of Atriarch is your curdled cup of tea, then this is absolute essential listening.
We knew nothing about these guys when we first heard them, we were definitely intrigued by the band name, and the song title, "Tell Her I'm Dead", and then when the music started, thick, buzzing, almost synth sounding guitars (or maybe actual synths, hard to tell), with big booming drums, sound like some sort of metal / cold wave fusion, and when the song proper started, that only furthered that idea, the churning distorted bass line, soft focus synth swirl, churning propulsive rhythm, and super dramatic crooned vox, when all of a sudden, the song exploded into a burst of furious blasting, a sort of black metal cold wave, accompanied by some strange sci-fi squiggles, and as soon as it started, it was right back into that gorgeously miserablist mope rock. The second time that burst/blast surfaces, it's accompanied by hellish shrieks, and then explodes right into a crazy drum/synth jam, with the drums pounding wildly in a field of swirling new wave synths, a twisted hybrid that somehow is something we always wanted to hear, but never knew it. The song continues to confound, with creepy falsetto vocals, over a synth heavy doom creep, before finishing off in a squall of FX swirl and psych wave weirdness.
Holy shit, one song is all it took, and the rest of the tracks here are just as good. A little digging revealed that Pinkish Black is in fact a group with roots in an old aQ favorite, the late great Texas prog-psych outfit Yeti, and suddenly the sound of PB made a lot more sense. After Yeti, came The Great Tyrant, and it seems like every band these guys were in, endured all sorts of personal tragedy and loss of life, the sort of thing that would most definitely inspire the sort of gloom and doom Pinkish Black traffic in, and while based on Yeti, it's hard to see just what may have influenced the actual sound here, the last record from The Great Tyrant found them delving into similar territory, super gothy and dramatic, but not so fully realized, PB sounds like where The Great Tyrant might have eventually ended up, the whole record held together with that impossibly distorted buzz, be it synth or bass or guitar, it's a constant presence, whether churning malevolently, or droning blissfully, it's what gives the sound of PB its heft, it's grim black energy, and it's the drums that drive everything else, the playing dense and intricate, powerful and mathy, by turns metallic and brutal, deft and almost krautrocky, those two combined are the framework, over which all manner of soundtracky synth melodies drift and squiggle, and the vocals, a dark soporific croon one second, a washed out almost shoegazey reverbed bellow the next, the songs slipping from dense driving gloom rock to tripped out psych-goth space jams, often some dizzying mix of the two.
After Vaura's recent aQ Record Of The Week, we might not have been surprised to find this being released on Wierd Records, cuz for all its metallisms, and its punk/metal pedigree, this is essentially a super dark, super heavy new wave record, the synth melodies especially had us imagining what a Gary Numan record might have sounded like had he been making his first records 30 years later, and we definitely think they might have sounded something like this. Instead it's on the limited edition Handmade Birds label, run by the guy from Pyramids, who always bring us interesting stuff.
Haunting and heavy, brooding and brutal, imagine some sort of black metal / new wave hybrid, or perhaps a sort of noise rock / goth rock fusion, fans of all that Goblin / John Carpenter worship who might be into something much darker and heavier should check this out, but really, everyone who digs gloomy heaviness will dig this big time, and and if like us, the thought of a sort of metallic new wave gets you all riled up, then this just might be your new favorite record. It is ours!
Got a violent piece of vinyl here for all you proto-metal freaks - a reissue of a killer slice of science-fictional heavy rock, this obscure UK outfit's only album, a private pressing from 1974. Both proto-metal and proto-punk we reckon, heavy stuff with lots of psychedelic Hawkwindiness to it, basically everything you could hope for from a record that has both "Astral Traveller" and "The Ripper" as track titles!! And it does rip, the storming opener "Assasin" sets the tone, with throbbing riffs, wailing maniacal vocals, and wild soloing, reminding us of the Pink Fairies in particular when the guitarist tears into some licks from the old Ventures surf rock classic "Walk Don't Run", though with their amphetamine energy they'd remind us of the Fairies anyway. They also achieve Wicked Lady levels of guitar freakout. And with the use of Moog, and the sci-fi aspects of songs like "Cyborg", they have something in common with Simply Saucer, as well. There's dramatic organ runs, and strident marching riffage, and some softer sounds too - at their mellowest, on tracks like "Bad Omen", they can be fairly melodic and Wishbone Ash-y.
There's been a couple hard-to-find, long-gone compact disc reissues of this in the past (one on Little Wing Of Refugees, who changed the cover art and corrected the spelling of 'Assasin' to 'Assassin', and another on Killing Spell, who called it 'Cyborg Assassin', though that one also did include a few live practice space bonus tracks not found here). But this is the first time we've seen it reissued on vinyl, 180 grams to boot.
A first listen to this elicited the following quote from Andee: "It's annoying enough that I definitely want one!" Need we say more? Well, what's so wonderfully "annoying" (and therefore AWESOME) about this you ask? PIVIXKI is a duo from Melbourne, Australia, that combines blasting grindcore (the drummer) with avant-garde modern chamber music (the keyboardist). It's just crazy enough to work. On half of the duo, virtuoso pianist Antony Pateras, comes from a classical/academic music background; in fact, he's the composer-in-residence at the Australian National Academy Of Music, and we're not surprised to hear he has recorded for John Zorn's Tzadik label. The other half, drummer Max Kohane, plies his trade in the HC punk/grindcore scene, having played with a ton of bands, the one we know best being Agents Of Abhorrence, previously lauded by us for their technical grindcore frenzies! Thus the 11 instrumental tracks here are INSANE, maniacal typewriter-y piano plinking keeping pace with 1000mph octopoid drum battery. It's like Conlon Nancarrow's player piano music doing battle with a (human) drum machine. If Mick Barr played piano instead of guitar, Orthrelm might sound like this. A band it does remind us of, a lot, would be a stripped-down version of defunct Swiss art-grinders Alboth!, remember them?
Besides piano, Pateras plays the organ (including pipe organ) and analog synth as well, on occasion, lending a '70s prog aspect to the overt avant garde classical / grindcore collision. They also get some guests in on viola, vibraphone, and additional percussion in a couple places. So despite the impression we may have given already, there's a fair amount of variation here, PIVIXKI isn't ALL full on grind assault. The methods of their madness involve a number of techniques and textures. PIVIXKI make good use of minimalist repetition, free-improv ivory tickling, glitchy electronic manipulation ("Late Veins" ferinstance), dizzyingly dramatic crescendos, and even some downright pretty parts. One of our favorite pieces is the nervously moody "A Shrewed Manipulation Of The Facts", which (as other moments here do as well) reminds us of Carl Stalling cartoon music, David Shire suspense soundtracks, and/or a hybrid of Zombi and the Necks... Another artist we are reminded of at times is Tatsuya Yoshida from the Ruins, particularly the Ruins drummer's solo stuff where he's playing drums and keyboards simultaneously. (Some of the song titles also make us think of him as well.)
The handsome trifold cardboard packaging contains some interesting liner notes from Pateras, wherein among other things he discusses how he had to learn to adjust his playing/thinking to keep up with Kohane's drumming. You, in turn, may have to adjust your listening/thinking to keep up with this duo's music! Well worth the effort, though really, once you've taken the plunge (past a track or two), it's easy to enjoy. Especially if you like Xenakis, Radian, AND Discordance Axis. Recommended!
Stuff left off their debut 'cause Southern Lord didn't like the more overt Christian message of these songs...
Former Pentagram guitarist Victor Griffin is back, and he's 'born again' -- but he's still into the heavy stuff. The stoner rock/doom metal underground has been all a-buzz about Victor's new power trio Place of Skulls, and now Southern Lord has released
Pentagram fans will find that Place of Skulls sounds rather more like The Obsessed or Spirit Caravan than Victor's old band, but of course if you like Pentagram, you're probably a fan of those bands too! Victor's vocals sound a bit like those of Wino, not as strong though, and the music is of course heavy, plodding and depressive-sounding (but with a positive, Christian message). Chicago's Trouble already established that Christian faith and doom metal can coexist (indeed, where would metal in general be without Christianity, whether bands are pro or con??) but Trouble had better songs. So, while Place of Skulls delivers some solid doom metal, we're not exactly blown away. Stoner/doom fans (esp. those really into Wino's bands) who aren't put off by the Christian aspect should check this out and decide for themselves. Furthering the parallel with Wino's bands, this includes an Animals cover ("Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", which for the record isn't as good as The Obsessed's version of "Inside Looking Out").
