Every time we start a review with a phrase like "we don't really like techno all that much" or "we've never been huge fans of pop punk" we end up getting people writing in defending the genre in question. But truth be told, we -do- like techno and we -do- like pop punk, and we do like all kinds of music, it's sort of the point of this store. It's just that we generally tend to dig the weirder, more far out, more creative risk-taking fringes of all those genres, which is -also- the point of this store. But that said, we don't actually like pop punk all that much, at least not the strain of cookie cutter made-for-MTV dreck that one typically thinks of as pop punk. But we do love pop. Do we ever!!! And we do love punk! And unlike the bad math that results from adding metal and hip hop (oh how we desperately wish someone could make that work!), pop and punk fit pretty comfortably together, add some good songs, and maybe even some metal riffage, and we're in business. Thus we have Reggie And The Full Effect, originally a joke side project for a handful of emo / pop punk luminaries (Coalesce anyone?), now a band that's as good as if not better than all of the serious bands that spawned it. They are the ultimate emo band. Of course you have the huge kick ass production, great catchy songs, sensitive whiny boy vocals and big distorted guitars. BUT THEN, you've got some chugging metal guitars and howling throat shredding vocals, fuzzy synths, goofy lyrics, and an ultra dumb / totally brilliant sense of humour. And as if that weren't enough, every third or fourth song is a total eighties synthpop workout, straight up New Order mockery / worship (one of which is a dead ringer for track two on the recent Killers record! Now who's laughing?!). Goofy and silly, but actually really good and fun and catchy. And finally, you've got RATFE's hardcore alter ego, the fictitious Finnish electro punk outfit Common Denominator, who have contributed one track to each Reggie record, always with Common Denominator's lead vocalist introducing the band, in a thick inexplicably German accent: "HELLO AMERICANS, THIS IS KLAUS FROM COMMON DENOMINATOR. WE ARE THE BAND YOU THAT YOU ARE LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW WE ARE FROM FINLAND AND THIS IS THE THIRD SONG OFF OUR DEBUT ALBUM IN AMERICA, THIS SONG IS CALLED DEATHNOTRONIC AND IT GOES LIKE THIS!!! And what follow is what can only be described as Ministry meets Rammstein meets that song that ALWAYS seems to play during cheerleader competitions (Y'all Ready For This!) as well as some awesome noodly guitar leads.
Even with the presence of Common Denominator, and the occasional synthpop workout, this is Reggie's least 'jokey' record to date, which is probably what makes it their best. Even the lyrics aren't as straight up goofy, in fact if anything, unless this is all a REALLY subtle joke, the lyrics tend toward straight up emo territory, love and loss and boys and girls and all that stuff. Pretty heartfelt stuff actually, and if there's one thing we're a sucker for it's emo! In fact the final song, a brooding piano driven emo ballad to end all emo ballads, is SO sincere, it seems like it MUST be a joke coming from these guys. But it's not. At least we don't think so. At first we were a little disappointed by the lack of skits and random stupidity, but as much as we love those old Reggie records, this one definitely has the potential for most repeated listens. There's just something about Reggie's combination of crunchy metallic guitars, weird Cars / Tupac synth melodies, perfect pop and goofy eighties high school ballads that we can't seem to get enough of!
A customer recommended we check out Rehtaf Ruo (Our Father backwards, how very evil!) describing them as more insane and out there sounding than Benighted Leams. Well, we could hardly resist after that! Happy to report that Boiled In Goat Blood is indeed quite possibly (one of) the weirdest, most fucked up black metal records we have ever heard. And that's assuming you could even classify this as black metal. It's so bizarre it's a bit hard to describe. We were a little cautious throwing this on, the first track was a haunting and creepy slow motion drone, obviously an introduction, but black and ominous enough. Then the record proper started and we were floored, blown away by the sheer musical perversity on display, so damaged and abstract, and so goddamn scary sounding, it really couldn't be more black. The riffs are so lo-fi and so murky, they don't even sound like guitars, more like fuzzy drones, not like Burzum fuzzy, but completely indistinct smears of sound, and the drums are right down there with the guitars, barely audible, except for the occasional REALLY LOUD burst of impossibly fast double kick drum that sounds like a jackhammer or a woodpecker, very static and industrial. But it's the vocals that define Rehtaf Ruo, from a harsh hoarse growl, to a super affected hellish gargle, to a burping grunt, the vocals are SO FUCKING FRIGHTENING. Way more evil than most BM frontmen, it helps that the vocals are WAY louder than the music, their only competition those bursts of spastic double kick, or the occasional very evil Rigor Sardonicous style trash can lid cymbal crash. There are some intensely bizarre moments of abstraction, a track that sounds like a more black metal Jacula, some murky martial percusssion beneath raspy invocations, super sudden fade outs, chiming church bells, some creepy ambient soundscapes made from guitars so distorted they crumble into what sounds like radio static, strange looped freakouts that sound like a more fucked up Jeck or Basinski, or even recent AQ faves WOLD, grizzled guitar clang and the sounds of chains against stone, and of course some ridiculously anguished vocal torture. The final track is a massive ten plus minute horrorscape, of super processed drums, wild hysterical vocalizing, clattery dungeon percussion, moaning minor key melodies, but to get there, you'll have to crawl on your hands and knees, bloodied and blackened, through a field of fire and broken glass, corpses and barbed wire and some of the weirdest black metal EVER.
Digging up more rare metal history (starting with the Solitude Aeturnus demos vinyl pressing), Rob Preston's Doomed Planet label presents a reissue of obscure '80s Bay Area (non-thrash!) metal act Rellik's lone 12", with unreleased bonus tracks filling it out to full-length status. On vinyl only, of course, and limited to 500 copies, almost sold out. OK, most folks who get this list
First off, what's with bands that stick an excess "J" into their name? Wooden Shjips... Frijid Pink... now Reptiljan! Well we love those bands, so we'll take the "J" in Reptiljan as a good sign. Another good sign: these guys are from Finland! All well and wonderful so far you say, but what the heck do they sound like? Well, this is something for folks who've been digging the apocalyptic metallic drum machine fueled hardcore electronic mayhem of such recently reviewed (and raved about) discs as Drumcorps, and that Drum>Machinegun compilation, along with the drillnbass mashups of DJ/Rupture, DJ Scud, Venetian Snares, and Jason Forrest.
This Reptiljan disc is a full auto barrage of lethal stuttering stittering glitchery. Totally AGGRO...vating...ahh...love it!!! Twisted humor, twisted sonics, utterly abrasive and so satisfyingly scratching that itch we have for over-the-top digitally damaged jackhammering laced with samples and noise. Pretty much cranked to maximum distortion, even when exploring crinkly textures rather than higher BPM velocities as some of this does, The Hellbender Suite is certainly EXTREME ten ways from Sunday. Perhaps it might indicate something to you if we quote the dedication on this cd: "to Nuclear Death, Beherit, Impetigo and Cryptobranchus alleganiensis." The latter item being not an extreme underground metal band, but rather the scientific name of the variety of salamander in fact known more commonly as the "hellbender".
This is not really new, but it's one of our favorite freaked out black metal records, and it was reissued last year (originally released in 2002) although we only now managed to get in touch with the label (they also released the Vorak, reviewed elsewhere on this list) but now finally we can list and review, this amazing slab of bizarre blackness.
Those familiar with the Rev. Kriss Hades, probably know him as the guitar player for Aussie black death metallers Sadistik Exekution, who while weird in their own right, are pretty much furious grinding blacknoise, a sort of sloppy psychedelic black mess, awesome by the way, but more simple and fast than freaked out and fucked up. Which is why this first album from Sadistik guitarist Hades is such a mind blower. This is super abstract, noisy, buzzy, outsider experimental black metal, peppered with stretches of black ambience, industrial soundscapes and plenty of whatthefuck heaviness. This record has been described as a mix of Einsturzende Neubauten, Beherit and Pink Floyd, and while the sound here is probably much closer to Beherit than the other two, their are definite moments of tripped out psychedelia and industrial grind and whir.
But from the first song, it's easy to tell this is some freaky mind blowing stuff. Beginning with haunting acoustic guitar, weaving mournful melodies amidst whipping winds, when the band kicks in, instead of launching into blasting blackness, it's more a sort of murky blown out buzz, the guitars super washed out, the riffing just a blackened smear, underpinned by epic swells of super dramatic keyboards, the drums a buried blast, WAY down in the mix, while over the top the vocals are a confusional pile up of grunts and growls, of shrieks and howls, mumbling and singing in tongues, the whole thing smeared and seasick, buzzing abstractly, almost more experimental black ambience than metal, but there are riffs, and drums blasting away, reminiscent of Wold and Velvet Cacoon in some ways. The first track finishes off with more acoustic guitar, this time though draped delicately over muted black riffing.
And the weird thing is, that's about as metal as the record gets, that first track, from then on it gets more and more unhinged, more psychedelic, less riffy and definitely less 'metal', but no less heavy. The next two tracks are reinterpreted Sadistik Exekution tracks, and while we're not that familiar with the originals, these versions definitely twist the originals into new shapes. The first is a blazing black blast of buzz, but beginning with a tripped out psychedelic assemblage of backwards guitars and processed vocals, then the song itself is super convoluted, riffs slipping and sliding everywhere, squiggly leads, a total damaged black psych freakout, while the other is a sort of blissed out ambient Godflesh / Pitchshifter thing, all industrial rhythms, the riffs, way down in the mix and doused in FX, haunting vocals and all manner of swirling shimmer and crumbling drones...
Right after that is the super brief "Luciferion", a super distorted, ultra fuzzed out shred fest, just guitar, buzzing riffs and wild leads, the whole thing blown out and in the red, followed by "Meditation Of The Midnight Candle Practice" an extended soundscape of warped distorted guitars, strangled effects, huge washes of glacial guitardrone, super affected leads, glitched out minimal rhythms buried way down in the mix, drifting lo-fi ambience and super tweaked studio sounds, all woven into a seriously cracked world of black sound. The record finishes off with a creepy haunted house horror movie church organ jam that morphs right at the end into a super thick corrosive deathdronedirge...
A seriously demented slab of damaged psychedelic black buzz. Which obviously means WAY recommended.
The reissue includes a thick booklet with lyrics, photos, an excerpt from an interview with Hades, and lots of Hades' super intense artwork...
UK label Miskatonic, supporters of true underground doom metal, bring us this disc by the semi-legendary Revelation from Maryland (of doom). Featuring Revelation's 'new' line-up, this disc consists of eight demo cuts plus two live tracks circa their 1995 European tour supporting Saint Vitus and Solitude Aeturnus. It comes as a prelude to a brand new fourth album on which this long dormant band is now, at last, at work. To certain doom fanatics, these 'demos' are going to be more thrilling than many proper albums from other bands, such is the regard in which this band is held. If you've never heard Revelation before, expect doom metal (or, alternatively, depressive stoner rock) along the lines of The Obsessed and Place Of Skulls -- heavy, slow, Ozzified.
The most unhinged band in metal, Canada's Revenge, somehow manages to even sound more insane on this, their fifth full-length record, despite the departure of founding member Pete Helmkamp (Angelcorpse). The aural equivalent of being dragged to hell, also the aural equivalent of any of their trademark abject 3-word album titles. One of the few bands left still pushing extreme metal further!!!
Comes with sick patch.
There's actually a goodly number of black and/or death metal releases on this week's list, and they wouldn't be here if we didn't like 'em. But if what you're looking for is something that's *really* evil-sounding, shredded, distorted, blackened, and fucked up, well, like they say: dude, Revenge is sweet. (Forget about the best served cold part, though.) Seriously, Canada's Revenge sure as heck here have made one of the noisiest, nastiest black metal records we've heard in a long time. Their second full-length, Victory.Intolerance.Mastery (how's that for an album title?) is, uh, extremely extreme. Utterly so. Roaring, rumbling, raw. Not for those concerned with such sophisticated niceties as polished production, or melody, or even, well, music. Nope, this is purely over-the-top hellish thrashing mayhem. Clattering drums, belching vocals, screaming guitars, all recorded past-the-point-of-pain. Really, we thought that Aufgehoben No Process was the Anaal Nathrakh of noise-rock...but now we think that Revenge are the Aufgehoben No Process of black metal...does that make sense? Truly cult stuff. What else to say? Well, this blasting brutality boasts the, ah, talents of bass warrior Pete Helmcamp (Angelcorpse, Order From Chaos), whom along with the other guy in the band (one J. Read on "bloodhammers" and "actrocity commands") is one of the reasons that our pal Drew from Matmos just came in and bought this disc -- he thinks these guys are cute! Bet that's the only time someone purchases this cd for the cuteness factor. Another selling point: Revenge have such a nice, spikey, negative-space logo.
We always talk about how something is super limited and sold out and out of print so we won't go into too much detail, but then we invariably do, but not this time. We have less than 10 copies, originally limited to 500, sold out and out of print. Once these are gone it's off to eBay with you.
Two covers, one recorded in 2001, one recorded last year, Saint Vitus' "Dark World" and Judas Priest's "Deceiver", both given a Reverend Bizarre makeover. With vocalist Albert doing his best "Vocal Impersonation" according to the liner notes. His Rob Halford is wildly over the top and pretty amazing. And he already sounded a lot like St. Vitus's Scott Reagers to begin with, as that band such a huge influence on Rev. B.! As always, heavy and doomy, the songs obviously classics, too bad we got so few of these.
Along with the post-Reverend Bizarre project we just got in and made our Record Of The Week (Sami "Sir Albert Witchfinder" Hynninen's ultra-doomy The Puritan, you already read about it above, right?), we also were finally able to get some copies of this, a MUST HAVE for all fans of these now defunct Finnish true doom metal legends. In fact, it's so good we would not hesitate to recommend it to any curious persons who have yet to hear ANY Reverend Bizarre. It's not an official "best of", actually this posthumous collection consists of uber rarities from various vinyl split ep's and other obscure sources, but it does still have some of their best stuff on it. And, since Rev. B. had fashioned themselves into one of the best "traditional" doom metal bands around (in part by not being TOO traditional) that means this is one of the best double discs of doom we've heard since, well, the LAST Reverend Bizarre album, the 2cd swansong that was III: So Long Suckers.
There's 15 tracks here, leading off with "Demons Annoying Me" from a long vanished split 12" with Orodruin, which happens to be a NON-boring nearly 18 minute epic, a true masterwork of heedless heaviness, built from raging riffs, distorted noise, and cathartic screams, one of the tracks that transcends this band's obvious influences and definitely deserves pride of place as the first track on this altogether awesome double disc. Other standouts abound, from the anthemic "Blood On Satan's Claw" (boasting some King Diamond-y falsetto in the vocal dep't.), to the brief and bludgeoning "Odinn's Men", to the seemingly Current 93 influenced "Apocalyptic Riders", to the also pretty darn epic eleven and a half minute "From The Void II", complete with slo-mo drum solo...
Then there's the two killer cover songs included here, both from a long out of print 7" we once stocked: Judas Priest's "Deceiver" and Saint Vitus' "Dark World". As the liner notes put it, it's as if Saint Vitus wrote that song for RB to cover. And while Albert's vocals are quite impressive throughout this entire collection, it's really amazing how well his wildly over the top "impersonation" of Rob Halford comes off on "Deciever", and with Vitus such a huge influence on RB to begin with, it's no surprise that Albert channels Scott Reagers perfectly on "Dark World" (heck he channels Reagers perfectly all the time, check out the track "The Tree Of Suffering" for another very good example). Wow.
RB's music can get pretty trancey, doing a dirgey drone at a creepy crawl, with the likes of the gloomy "Bend" (an unlikely "cover" of a track by Finnish electro artist Mr. Velcro Fastener, by the way, from a split they did!) and a bunch of others bringing in hints of black metal grimnity. But also some tracks are fairly uptempo and succinct, like the '70s Sabbatheque rockin' of "Broken Vows", which any Witchcraft fan is gonna love. And if you get at all bothered the Devil in your music (why are you reading this then?), beware the backwards shit going down on "The Gate Of Nanna" at the end of disc 2, that's Satan worship if we've ever heard it. So cool.
The cd booklet deserves mention as well, they didn't neglect the liner notes that's for sure. There's many pages of text in tiny tiny type discussing the what/when/where/why of each track in great depth.
R.I.P. Reverend Bizarre... and doom on brothers, Doom On!!
Reverend Bizarre is so worshipful of their obvious influences (Sabbath, St. Vitus, Cathedral, Witchfinder General, Pentagram, Trouble, Sleep, Electric Wizard, etc.) that it might be easy to dismiss them as being just fans instead of the real thing... but we've got to say, there's something just so darn charming about how much these lads LOVE doom metal. It's infectious. And their songs are even ABOUT doom! Sloganeering for doom, that's their thing -- sing-along album opener "Doom Over The World" is a doom-lovers anthem basically. And they've chosen stage names guaranteed to amuse: Albert Witchfinder (vocals, bass), Peter Vicar (guitar), Earl of Void (drums). Yup, they've got some sort of extra-special, amateur fanboy appeal that makes you root for 'em. And they've worked so hard at living up to the standards of their heroes that they're not half bad, in fact, we're darn impressed. They come across like a hybrid of Saint Vitus and Cathedral, with dramatic, clean vocals definitely owing something to original Vitus singer Scott Reagers.
Their discs are always adorned with cryptic inscriptions like "Lohja Power" and "C.O.T.D" -- the latter standing for "Circle Of True Doom" something I think these guys invented, though I've seen it on other bands' cds. It also says "Apocalyptic Doom Metal" in big letters on the back cover of this one but when you first spin the disc, for the first few songs you'd think that "Party Time Doom Metal" or something like that would be a better motto since there's a definite headbanging catchiness to the first few tracks, the Rev. Bizarre boys rockin' out whilst dooming it up. As "into" doom and depression as they and their audience (you?) might be, the listener can't help but have their frown turned upside down when the band kicks into such rollicking, riffy, uptempo tunes as "The Devil Rides Out" and "Cromwell". It's heavy metal, and it's doom. But II: Crush The Insects ain't all fist-waving rockers. They do play slooooooow a lot of the time too. After the first three cuts, the album takes a turn into the realm of, well, apocalyptic doom metal, with track lengths in the double digits. Like the crawling epic "Slave Of Satan", which was apparently a number 2 HIT song in their native Finland!!! Hard to believe, as it's 13 and a half minutes long!! And that's the edited album cut, which is considerably shorter than the 21 minute single version!!! Torturously slow, anywhere else in the world it'd be a miracle if it made it into the Top 40 THOUSAND. The record continues in this vein, with some brief bursts of speed, through to the very last song, with the dumb/brilliant title of "Fucking Wizard".
The end is nigh! Heck here it is, at long last. The final tolling of the bell for Finnish apocalyptic doomsters Reverend Bizarre. Thus this album is titled So Long Suckers, and there's a sticker on the front that says: "Doom Metal Is Dead". What could be doomier than that? Funny how these guys, who started off as not much more than an enthusiastic fanboy tribute to their favorite doom metal acts, have now become almost one with the genre itself. Or at least their own, admittedly redundantly denoted, subgenre of "Apocalyptic Doom".
When we heard they were breaking up, that was a bummer, but we were eager to hear this promised swansong release. So, sad to see them go... but what a way TO go. A sprawling double cd, six slo-mo (like swimming in a moat filled with molasses) songs of super heavy repetitive riffage and lyrical lethargy, lasting over two hours total. Everything that we love about the bizarre Reverend sorta summed up right there. Spirited, eccentric and extreme, the sort of band that thinks nothing of writing 25+ minute long songs, like some sort of oppressive, epic, plodding prog, giving them all the more space to display their guitar blunt force trauma and deep voiced vocal drama... so massive and monotonous. Disc one starts off with the twenty nine minutes of "They Used Dark Forces / Teutonic Witch". Track two, "Sorrow", is a 25 minutes. Track three, "Funeral Summer", a mere 11:41... and that's the whole of disc one. There's a few shorter numbers on disc two (like the fuzz ripping instrumental "Kundalini Arisen"), but also another 25 minute bruiser (the majestic and martial "Anywhere Out Of This World"), which becomes psychedelically trance-inducing by the end, for us, almost like Om.
Of course, song length doesn't put the o's in yr dooooooooooom alone. Reverend Bizarre take their final shot here at the classic crush of heroes like Saint Vitus (also a big influence on their cleanly-crooning vocalist), Cathedral and of course Black Sabbath. The riffs they repeat forever and ever are forged from the heaviest of distorted tones, the overall atmosphere is one of weighty, weary, weirdness. This is one monolithic tombstone all right, an end to this band's 13-year career that itself seems rather endless while you're listening to it. Endless and eternal. Reverend Bizarre, R.I.P... and doom on!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Single from their new album Crush The Insects. Contains extended (20+ minute!) version of the album track. Aparently went to No. 2 in Finland. Huh? DOOOM!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Rev B do a song called "Rotestilaulu", Kuolema reply with "Kaljaa Nuorille".
Ratto Ja Lehtisalo are a weird band. Made up of half of aQ faves Circle, their sound is less krautrock, and more like some weird hybrid of eighties new wave faves, Oingo Boingo, The Fixx, Sparks, Talking Heads, but then Circle are pretty weird themselves, flitting from murky propulsive hypnorock, to bombastic metal to atmospheric drone to eighties style New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and back again. And the side projects, too many to name here, but needless to say, they are all pretty far out.
This here is the latest from Ratto Ja Lehtisalo, and find the band, doing what they do best, confounding and confusing, and even more confounding and confusing is that they are teamed up with the mighty late great doomlords Reverend Bizarre!! Sure they're both from Finland, and yeah, RB's Albert Witchfinder got recent aQ Record Of The Week recipients Quest For Blood signed to Jussi from Circle's Ektro label, but sonically, the couldn't be more different, and yet, weirdly enough, they sound kind of cool back to back.
Anyway, Ratto Ja Lehtisalo start things off with some demented court jester music, sounding very twisted and Renn Faire, before slipping into some moody almost Circle-ish drama, a weird almost-krautrock, but way lighter and jazzier, with chanted vocals that sometimes sound like Queen, sometimes like Circle, the first thing that came to mind was Cluster mixed with Shadowfax, which sounds bad, we know, but is more, just sort of, strange, it's like the music to some insane production of seventies mime troupe Mummenschanz, the band lock into a very Circle-like jam, but soft and fuzzy and jazzy, but just like the Circle mothership, easy enough to get lost in and carried away by.
The flipside comes from Finnish doomsters Reverend Bizarre, who like Tupac, just seem to keep releasing records post mortem, but heck we're not complaining ONE BIT.
A new track composed over an improvised drum track, and it's obvious cuz the drums steal the show. Huge roiling guitars, throbbing doomy bass, and those vocals, deep and resonant and soaring. This is, my friends TRUE DOOM! The track lurches and sways, grooves and swings, sometimes slipping into seriously dense tangles of angular riffing and freaked out drumming, near the end the band launch into a blissed out psychedelic space rock drift that devolves into a bizarre coda all bellowed vocals and wild drums, and yep, a DRUM SOLO!! Before slipping back into the riff and dooming their way to the very end. As always. awesome.
A weird and wonderful, and did we say WEIRD, split of far out Finnish freakiness. Super limited. Pressed on thick swirled opaque white vinyl, with killer cover art by Albert Witchfinder.
Either you've been eagerly awaiting this new full-length album from Italy's best, most baroque, bombastic symphonic metal band since their last release (the "Rain Of A Thousand Flames" ep), or you could care less. Double bass drums, crazy keyboards and
They call what they do "Hollywood Metal" but that refers to a Hollywood that only makes blockbuster fantasy films about dragons and wizards...not surprisingly, Peter Jackson gets a mention in band leader Luca Turilli's thanks list!
If you want to take a chance on some ridiculous yet amazing metal, you could do no better than check this out!
These over-the-top, sword-swinging Italians return with not a new album but a 42-minute "ep" teaser for their upcoming 2002 full-length. As always, they've cranked out some utterly ridiculous yet wonderful symphonic fantasy metal. The thirteen minute
While supplies last, we'll be stocking the digipack version of this disc, which folds out into a pop-up monster, and features a cd-rom video clip for the title track. The video is unbelievably cheesy, and we wouldn't have it any other way.
We first heard about Italian one man outsider black metal band Rhuith, via the Hammer Smashed Jazz blog, one of our favorites, a blog that doesn't offer bands' music for free, instead highlighting cool releases and directing folks to places where they can buy em. So this band Rhuith, were apparently a killer weirdo black metal band from Italy, who besides crafting grim twisted outsider buzz, also has a serious obsession with dark pop and classic eighties music, which most definitely found its way into the band's sound, but also meant that he would often cover music from that era, as well as offering up blackened versions of distinctly non-metal tracks, Depeche Mode, Portishead, Placebo etc. Our kind of band for sure!
So we finally got in touch, and small world, ends up, Rhuith is a long time aQuarius mailorder customer. Which sort of makes sense, considering his twisted take on black metal and the fantastically unlikely hybrid that is Rhuith. So we managed to get a whole bunch of his most recent release, Voormithadreth, a four song demo, LIMITED TO 66 COPIES! Which just so happens to include two bonus tracks from another out of print releases, one of which is his Portishead cover, which is worth the price of admission alone.
SO what does Rhuith sound like? Imagine a super lo-fi take on classic black metal, the riffing frenzied and buzzy, the drums way down in the mix, pounding away, but the vocals, holy shit, so over the top and out there, slipping from long slow reverbed mooooooans, to effects drenched shrieks so loud they blow out the whole song. Another track sounds all swampy and garage-y, midtempo and groovy, the vocals even more freaked out, with some strange dubbed out effects, so it almost sounds a bit like a black metal Butthole Surfers. The 48 second long "The Owls" is a furious bit of primitive blast and buzz that leads into the loping Burzumic dirge that is "The Son, The Lion And The Phoenix", a keyboard flecked bit of creepy black doom, with more crooned vocals, and a second half that's all warped and twisted guitars, and swirling distorted effects, weirdly pretty.
Two bonus tracks, the first a gorgeously poppy bit of blackened jangle, a killer main guitar part that sounds straight out of the Breakfast Club soundtrack, but super distorted, the sound crumbly and raw, the vocals a hissy demonic shriek, a killer combo of harshness and pure eighties pop, peppered with some super creepy minimal breakdowns, all spoken word and low slung drones. And then the Portishead cover, an amazing version of "Over", no drums, just super blown out downtuned guitars, playing that main riff over and over, the vocals deep and emotional and dramatic, this could easily be a Rhuith original, and dare we say it adds a whole new vibe to the original, and the more we listen to this, the more we just might like the Rhuith version better. Dark, and haunting, and hypnotic, just today, we've probably listened to that one track 10 times. Can't wait to hear what he decides to cover next. But it's not just the covers that make Rhuith so special, he has definitely cultivated a unique sound, one that touches on lots of stuff we dig, but twists it all up into something new and bizarre and bad ass. It's rare to be digging a record so much, that you find yourself ALREADY looking forward to the next one, but that's exactly how we're feeling with Voormithadreth!
Packaged in a dvd case, with a black and white cover, and inside a xeroxed insert, both the cover and the disc itself hand numbered.
It's been a while since we've heard from Italian one man black metal band Rhuith, who had a penchant for strange covers, including Depeche Mode, Placebo and Portishead. On this brand new tape, he teams up with fellow Italian noisemaker Rotorvator, for a truly twisted and brilliantly tweaked chunk of abstract industrial pop flecked blackness. The opening track sets the stage, with its simple motorik drumming, swirling shimmery atmospheres, bizarre howled vocalizations, and blasts of blown out industrial crunch, which eventually leads into the second track, a much more metal proposition, but still weirdly industrial and also seriously twisted, the guitars murky and buzzy, the drums mechanical and super distorted, the vocals a buried in the mix monstrous growl, the whole thing laces with weird almost techno sounding synth stabs, the vocals getting more and more croaky, over the churning trancelike rhythm, the sound shifting from muted and muddy, to bright and brittle, everything hazy and washed out but still distorted and seriously heavy.
The rest of the record spirals into creepy depressive dirge, spidery minor key guitar melodies, hushed haunting falsetto vox, clomping percussive thumps, thick squalls of psychedelic blacknoise, an ultra distorted noise drenched blackened pound, infused with wild shrieks, detuned guitar crumble, and swirling buzz, which slips into a murky gurgly drone, before exploding again into some super distorted, raw and frantic black metal pound, the guitars in-the-red, the vocals super hot and WAY up in the mix, the drums a robotic programmed d-beat. Eventually the sound slips into something more spaced out and synthy, even a little new agey, the sounds panned hard careening from speaker to speaker, laced with stuttery chopped up rhythms, deep growled vox, chiming harmonics, streaks of effects and glitched out electronics, the tape speed constantly in flux, the distorted sounds growing more and more distorted, the bass woozy and pulsing, a sort of low slung new wave that quickly transforms into a hysterical noise metal plod, that pounds and pounds until the tape runs out.
So bizarre, and bafflingly brilliant, noisy and sort of poppy, rhythmic and atmospheric and just totally far out. But sadly CRAZY limited. We got about 10 copies, and will NOT be able to get any more. Comes in a cool black and white fold out poster sleeve.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
So, sure, "experimental/improv/psych" bands based outta Brooklyn are probably a dime a dozen these days, so what makes the debut from this new Thrill Jockey signing worthy of glorious Record Of The Week status here at aQ? Well, for one thing, Thrill Jockey have had a pretty good track record in that area lately, with aQ fave bands like White Hills and Barn Owl, and fans of either ought to check out Rhyton. At least, we had to give it a listen, and when we did, WOW! Totally tripped out and hypnotic, stonery psych explorations embraced our ears - and we think gently tingled any mystic sixth or seventh senses we may possess. Their jamming has a fuzzed-out edge, and a definite exotic, Eastern vibe, buzzing with electric saz for one thing... as if they're not from Brooklyn, they're from Brooklynistan!
The mesmeric music of Rhyton is a mind-melting mind-meld involving three well-matched musicians, a supergroop of sorts, the trio consisting of D. Charles Speer from the No Neck Blues Band, Jimmy SeiTang of Psychic Ills, and Spencer Herbst from some bands we confess we've not heard of before. Speer is on the strings, playing electric saz, electric mandolin, and baritone guitar. SeiTang is on bass and tape delay. Herbst is on drums and percussion (and videocassettes, we read somewhere?). A good set up for playing something that's rock, but not.
Over the course of the five, mostly long, mainly instrumental tracks here, Rhyton easily convinced us to make this Record Of The Week, or maybe hypnotized us into doing so! We just couldn't say no to their repetitive, reverby bath of shuddering soundwaves, sub-bass pulsations, meandering raga-like "split stereo, dual amped" leads, and loads of oscillators, loops, n' effects.
Relatively mellow opening track "Stone Colored" eases us in, giving us a sense of, if not where Rhyton is going, at least how they're gonna get there. And, as the cliche says, the journey is the destination. That's before the 12+ minute "Pontian Grave" heavies things up even more, and the raw side of Rhyton's experimentation is revealed. And so it goes, Rhyton getting into outre modes of instrumental psychedelic possession, centerpiece "Teke" being the perhaps the most druggily dubbed-out of the album's varied transmissions...and then, on the fantastic final cut, "Shank Raids", we REALLY hear the Middle Eastern influence come to the fore. It's not just the electric saz they've been making use of, on this one the rhythms n' melodies sound straight out of the Turkish psych songbook, stately and spacey, but also gnarly, warped and distortion-damaged, almost what it would be like to Greg Ginn's Gone, or Black Flag circa The Process Of Weeding Out, attempting a Mogollar or 3 Hur-el cover, yeah! There's a whiff of Sun City Girls to this as well.
Eastern aspects aside (or not), Rhyton's unique vibrations are on roughly the same wavelength as those of such outfits as Carlton Melton, Davis Redford Triad, White Hills, Titan, Bardo Pond, etc., and thus this should appeal to quite a few of you. So we say, get it! And get it quick, as the compact disc edition, packaged in a slim handmade sleeve (abstract art glued on front, hand-stamped text on back), is ultra limited to only 200 hand-numbered copies!! We got a bunch, but that bunch is probably all we'll get. Meanwhile, the similarly-appointed vinyl version is just a bit less limited, 500 copies made, and it comes with a postcard insert and free download code.
Finnish experimental black metal weirdos Ride For Revenge, might be one of our favorite groups going right now. We've raved wildly about every one of their records so far, and then there's RfR electronic offshoot Will Over Matter, who we dig just as much. And it's not surprising, Ride For Revenge don't traffic in grim black buzz, they're not sonically similar to classic Norwegian black metal, or Swedish, or French - if anything, they're much more in the tradition of all the WTF? music we love from Finland, from Circle to Keukhot, Dead Reptile Shrine to Circle Of Ouroborus, their music is murky and dirgey, mathy and rhythmic, repetitive and hypnotic, and if you thought their records proper were fucked up and far out, this new double cd of singles and comp tracks and live jams will blow your mind.
The first track alone is worth the price of admission, RfR getting all Will Over Matter, and unfurling a 21 minute electronic/black buzz hybrid, the first 6 minutes of which, is just weird squelches and bleeps and bloops, with some creepy voice intoning over the top. And when the riffing finally comes in, the song doesn't explode into metallic gallop, or burst into furious blasting, instead, that riff, just sort of buzzes in the background, while the bleeping and squelchy blooping continue, the whole thing a sort of damaged black buzz kosmische or something. And then at about 9 minutes in, another guitar (or is that a synth?) comes in, all thick and crumbling and corrosive, drums too, plodding and spare, and again, no blasting or galloping, now it's just a woozy, murky creep, still spaced out and cosmic, but now buzzy and blurry lumbering, and then vocals come in, raspy and sinister, over a bed of what is essentially blackened power electronics, the vocals mutating gradually, until they sound robotic and alien, a little like Cylons from the old Battlestar Galactica!!! What the fuck? And that's just part one. Part two of the 32+ opening jam, finds the band slipping back into a field of blooping FX and electronics, that again, are eventually subsumed by some damaged drumming, and crumbling distorted guitar buzz, noisy and chaotic and fucking demented. This time, the sound does get fast and buzzy, but it's a loping, stumbling blackened mess, that eventually resolves in a tangle of buzzing, glitched out electronics. Phew! Only two other tracks on the first disc, but they're lengthy WTF? workouts. One's an old track from 2009, that is freaked out NOISE, sounding very Japanese, or Japanoise. Total skree and screech, howl and throb, feedback, and gristly grinding crunch, howled vokills, some seriously brutal blacknoise. The other's a 20 minute epic, recorded in 2013, the same time as those first two tracks, this one ditching the electronics, and unfurling a murky rumbling ambience, which soon turns into some weirdly dubbed out black dirge murk, sounding a bit like Aluk Todolo, a sort of black-kraut hypno-rock, totally mesmerizing, and if those first two tracks didn't make it worth it for you, this one definitely will...
The second disc is much more 'metal', the first few tracks live, the band sounding a bit more conventional, but only a bit, the sound distorted and blown out and lo-fi, but still tranced out and minimal, very much in the vein of Aluk Todolo, some dirge-y occult rock, with some sick, howled vox, loping, lumbering, minimal black murk, that veers from churning almost-doom, to stumbling metallic frenzy and back again, with at least one guitar doing nothing but spraying thick crumbling black drones over the proceedings, either that or the riffs, just blur into blackened smears, either way, it's plenty tripped out and hypnotic. There's a few awesome demo tracks, super brittle and muddy, with weirdly clean guitar riffing, distant drumming, rumbling vokill rasps, all smeared into some minimal black metal murk. There are some other rarities, a fantastic 10 minute ambient creepfest, all grinding low end, mumbled vox, pipe fight percussion, spare and SUPER creepy, laced with some electronic flecked guitar buzz, and some seriously tripped out production, and a second track, that's cut from the same cloth, but then adds a shit ton of furious blackened guitar-noise to the proceedings, not to mention some super fucking creepy vocals, making it sound like some blackened bastard offspring of Whitehouse and Suicide! Then finally, more old demos, these the most metal of the bunch, epic riffing, simple drumming, the first of the three almost sounding like 'true' metal, old school lo-fi crusty filthy blackness, raw and fierce and pretty fucking rad.
Finland's weirdo minimalist black metallers Ride For Revenge might just be in the running for most aQ Records Of The Week, especially if you count RfR electronic offshoot Will Over Matter, and even moreso if you consider the fact that even if we didn't make one of their records a ROTW, we thought about it, and likely wanted to, and probably didn't for some non musical reason, like having to get them from Finland, or ordering a bunch and selling most of them before we even get a chance to review/list it, and really, in retrospect, not sure why we didn't just institute permanent/perpetual Record Of The Week status on these guys. What we're getting at, is even though this is NOT a Record Of The Week this time around, it basically IS. And will always be, cuz if any band demanded the slavish worship of the aQ crew it's these guys, who manage to take a genre we already love, and transform it into something that barely sounds like that genre at all, and yet somehow makes us love it even more.
This latest batch of jams is another black-dirge / noise-rock wallop, this trio delivering some ultra primitive heaviness, with some of the sickest, grittiest, gnarliest guitar buzz ever, not to mention thick, organ dissolving low end, and chaotic, shambolic, caveman drumming of the highest order, all wound up into extended dirges that play like krautrock melted down into a brew as black as pitch, then reconstituted with some sort of ancient black magic, the resulting lumbering sonic ritualism is as mesmerizing as it is terrifying, the sound in constant flux, whether it's stumbling black metal primitivism, doom-ed tarpit creep, psychedelic blacknoize, or wild, thrashing metal-punk, it all bleeds into one massive, epic, demonic sonic sprawl, in fact, so much so that song titles, and even song breaks seem superfluous, nobody's gonna grab this and think to themselves, let's throw on "The Fog Is Green And Pungent" (okay full disclosure, we actually did!), no this is a fully immersive experience, this is the sort of black bog filth you're meant to luxuriate in, to get lost in, to let wash over you, and pull you under, just surrender, let the churning molasses riffage and pounding dirge-drummage ooze into your every orifice, and transform you from the inside out, headphones on, you become a shambling, blackened acolyte to these mysterious priest of blacknoise/occult rock ritualism, and suddenly it's transcendent, the sound becomes shape, the shape becomes divine, the underworld rises up and swallows the surface dwellers whole, and the soundtrack to this apocalypse becomes, a gnarled, filth encrusted thing of grim black beauty, and we honor this epochal convergence, by sacrificing ourselves, and as our souls wither and die, we become one with these ancient spirits, approaching the black gates of the netherworld, we all join together, a hulking black shape, horned and fiery, and for eternity, we Ride For Revenge!!!!
We talk a lot about how weird Finland is, so before we go any further, let us apologize to the majority of Finland who to be fair are probably not weird at all. Now that we've got that out of the way, HOLY SHIT! Is there no end to the amazing and damaged and demented music coming out of Finland. We're beginning to think not.
The latest evidence comes in the form of the brand new full length from Ride For Revenge, who we first heard a while back on a split with fellow countrymen Torturium, their half of the split a downtuned black trudge, like Winter or diSEMBOWELMENT but with that impossible to describe Finnish something that transforms everything into some special sort of what-the-fuck. Creepy synths, plodding drums, grinding guitar and harsh vocals, not exactly black metal, not in the traditional sense at least, but most definitely metal.
On King Of Snakes however, the band have gotten even weirder, and distinctly less metal, but no less heavy. Supposedly there are guitars, but to our ears it just sounds like just drums and lots and lots of bass. Each song a plodding doomic lurch, the drums pounding out a simple rhythm, the riff repeating over and over, most songs with just a single part, very mesmerizing and hypnotic. Like a caveman Circle or a guitarless Gore, these guys just bash out endlessly cycling looped low end and killer crushing doom drum pound. The vocals are a super affected gurgling growl, not in the death metal sense, instead, super dramatic, intoning unspeakable evils, a rumbling demonic baritone, peppered with the occasional super delay drenched goat metal grunt.
Some tracks also have cool creepy keyboards as well, that add all sort of mood and texture, and it's not cheesy metal synth either, it's all strange analog buzz, a sort of krautrocky blur draped over the endlessly pounding groove.
Ride For Revenge are another one of those black metal bands, who seem to be black metal more out of pedigree than sound, but even though this doesn't sound like metal, it is most definitely black. It sounds a bit like Godheadsilo jamming with Finnish alchemical dronelords Tiermes, with the occasional injection of Hawkwinded FX and SUNN-drenched rumble, mysterious and murky swaths of throbbing low end thrum wrapped around the drums like some evil warlock's cloak.
Imagine if Amphetamine Reptile was a black metal label... then these guys would be Halo Of Flies... Most definitely one of our new favorite 'black metal' records...
The thing about Finnish black metal weirdos Ride For Revenge, is that really, they are hardly even black metal. Hell, hardly metal at all. Instead, they always seemed to traffic in a mysterious low slung, sludgy abstract blackened rhythmic minimalism that reminded us of Circle and Aluk Todolo way more than Darkthrone or Beherit. And then there's RfR offshoot Will Over Matter, who take that same sort of abstract rhythmic weirdness and harness it to primitive electronics, and have created a sort of tripped out blackened power electronics. So of course we were super excited for a new Ride For Revenge, and were expecting another disc of twisted rhythmic churn, or something similar, but what we were not expecting was THIS. After a truly strange intro, which is essentially just a Speak & Spell toy emitting all those 8bit bleeps and bloops and wreathed in echo and delay, which had us imagining maybe RfR had moved toward Will Over Matter sonically, but then when the first song proper kicked in, we were blown away. Metal. And we mean METAL. Dirgey and sludgey and super distorted. Right out of the gate, the band erupt into some seriously corrosive blasts of full on blast beat-ed GRIND, in between which, the band churn and lumber, the guitars filthy and crumbling with blackened distortion, the vocals a glass gargling gurgle, the drums a simple dirgey pound, so we were prepared for the ban's return to full on primitive blackness, but then out of nowhere, in swoop all manner of weird warbly synths, and tolling bells, the whole song transformed into some sort of woozy avant buzz drenched doomic dirge, it's pretty ruling.
But then by track two, it's right back to the primitive bash and pound, the distortion even more blown out and in the red, the band sounding a bit like a blackened Brainbombs, which is not at all a bad thing, the songs peppered with ridiculous twisted drug addled guitar leads, super effected crooned gothic vox, some totally fucked up and freaked out Butthole Surfers style vocal garble, cool thick layered harmonies, that add a sort of warped majesty to some of the tracks, and at least one blast of weird bellowed, strident sermonizing beneath a cloud of in-the-red white noise skree.
There are a couple tracks that strip away some of the crumble and buzz, and harken back to the more purely rhythmic RfR of old, but those moments are brief, the band quickly slipping back into their woozy sea sick doom-sludge churn, but even then, pretty much every stretch of seemingly pure raw blackened doomic primitivism, is in fact seriously fucked up, whether that fucked upness is in your face, or buried way below the surface, it's there, and it keeps Under The Eye firmly rooted in whatever fucked Finnish tradition RfR oozes from...
The long awaited return of Finnish black metal weirdos Ride For Revenge, and when we say weird, we do in fact mean WEIRD. We sort of forget about these guys when we're going on about the most fucked and damaged black metal ever, and maybe that's because their sound ends up being SO fucked up and freaky that it almost ceases being black metal entirely, instead, they seem to traffic in some sort of bass and drums, downtuned doom dirge, a series of hypnotic loops, locked riffs, all completely fractured and crumbling and confusional.
In the review of the last RfR record, King Of Snakes, we mentioned Amphetamine Reptile, and Halo Of Flies, Winter and diSEMBOWLEMENT, Gore and Circle. On Wisdom Of The Few, they continue on in that same baffling blackened trajectory resulting in a sound that off the top of our heads sounds a little like Om and Faxed Head. Right. Most metalheads we'd imagine will not be pleased, as this is seriously wacked, more textural and rhythmic than riffy and buzzy, it again sounds mostly like just bass and drums, but that's once you make it past the lurching, stumbling, guitar intro, streaks of feedback are all tangled up with a strangled reverb drenched guitar, playing out some sort of fractured atonal riff, the entire thing peppered with bits of hiss and glitch, before finally exploding into the lo-fi dirgery of the title track. A super murky muddy looped riff, pounding drums, rumbling low end, and some croaked demonic gurgles, the sound is super in the red, the drum fills peg the needles, but it still manages to sound muddy and subterranean. The drums and bass (or extremely downtuned guitar) locked into a mantra-like loop, the cymbals super hot, a relentless crash and sizzle, again reminding us of a blackened super minimal Gore. But things get even weirder. The clouds of hiss and glitch from the opening track return, and suddenly the sound is not metal so much as some sort of abstract doomy drone. A bass riff pounded out over and over and over, while around it, static crumbles and buzzes, sheets of feedback drift off in the distance, the 'groove' is peppered with little squalls of scrape and crunch, all underpinning a creepy spoken vocal.
The next track is even weirder (or perhaps just as weird), the drums wrapped in weird warped FX, pounding out a simple propulsive beat, wrapped in flanger and phaser, sounding super space-y while all around it, the gurgling demonic vocalist grunts and gurgles, over another totally mesmerizing black groove. Let's not describe the next track as weirder than the one before, cuz it's gonna seem ridiculous after a while, needless to say, it's weird in a different, equally twisted way. A deep whirring rumbling low end, a skittery almost funky krautrock beat, a heavily accented voice speaking ominously and dramatically, the voice switching from speaker to speaker, the drums shifting and subtly speeding up and slowing down, the rumbling drone-y buzz, occasionally revving up, then revving back down. Fucked up for sure, but so creepy and cool.
"Morning Won't Bring A Twinkling Star" is the longest track here, and manages to merge many of RfR's disparate elements into one epic sprawling blackened rhythmscape, a loping drum beat, a woozy seasick bassline, the drums distorted and motorik, the vocals reverbed and haunting, before slipping into a long stretch of warped low end warble and high end sine wave shimmer, before lurching back into blackened action. The record finishes off with a brief soundscape, equal parts distorted crunch, moaning feedback, downtuned flutter, minimal whirring synth, thick doomy buzz and FX drenched warble.
Woah. It's like dipping your head into a garbage disposal grinding up muddy murky chunks of Darkthrone, Aluk Todolo, Gore, Faxed Head, Circle, Urfaust, Geronimo and Lightning Bolt at 16rpm, a utterly demented and genius mix of freaked out, lobotomized black sound, a total mind melting, speaker shredding, ear punishing, minimal post black metal mind fuck. SO FUCKING AWESOME!
ATTENTION FINNISH MUSIC FREAKS!!! It isn't all forest folk and hypnotic space rock over there you know. Finland has some serious metal bands as amazing, as heavy and as fucked up as anyplace else, maybe even more so. Just off the top of our heads, Dead Reptile Shrine! Maybe the weirdest black metal band ever, Reverend Bizarre, amazing classic doom, and let's see... Horna, Thergothon, Circle Of Ouroborus, Spiritus Mortis, Stumm, Wyrd, Vultyr, Trollheim's Grott, Uncreation's Dawn, we could go on and on and on...
So here we have a split from two Finnish black metal one man bands, one name you might recognize, the other you might not, but both are equally amazing.
It takes a very special band to share a split with the mighty and mighty demented Dead Reptile Shrine, but Torturium were up to the job, as evidenced on their recent split with DRC reviewed right here a few months back. Here they continue on their damaged and convoluted journey through some off kilter black thrash buzzscape. Midtempo and completely blown out, guitars are thick snarling beasts, flaying the flesh fron your skin, while some of the most anguished vocals EVER soar and shriek, the drums a murky thud, everything chaotic and crazed. Blasting and buzzing relentlessly, the whole thing threatening to come hunhinged and fly into sharp jagged pieces. Fucked up and furious and so great.
Torturium shares the split with fellow counryman Ride For Revenge, who with a name like that you might expect some classic thrash, but this is anything but. Muddy downtuned guitars, harsh vocals and simple pounding drums, all woven into some sort of murky dirgey black doom. Midtempo rhythms, drums WAY up in the mix, everything sort of droney and hypnotic, tons of reverb, weird swaths of creepy clean guitar, everything cloudy and indistinct, a super old school production liek Winter or diSEMBOWELMENT, fuzzy and relentlessly, trudging through thick FX drenched drifts of black buzz and weird whorls of creepy haunted house synth. So cool and so weird. Definitely a new favorite, and another notch in Finland's holster, or bedpost, or whatver. SO RECOMMENDED!!!
As always, we were way ahead of the curve. You were too, right there with us. Going all the way back to Acid Bath, that seminal NOLA rock band, that somehow combined Eyehategod style sludge, and groovy dramatic emotional rock a la Alice In Chains or Katatonia or Jeff Buckley, we were proclaiming that not only should Acid Bath have been HUGE, but AB frontman Dax Riggs should be a rock star. So here we are over ten years later, and all that time, Riggs has continued on, first with Agents Of Oblivion, then Deadboy And The Elephantmen, all groups and records we LOVED, and played incessantly, but still, Dax and co. lurked way underground, barely even making a ripple in the mainstream music world.
But come last year, Riggs resurfaced, performing live and releasing a pretty decent disc (that we've yet to review), and suddenly being pushed hard, his sound, not all that different from Agents Of Oblivion, but now with some promotional real label muscle behind him. Unfortunately, not much happened with his solo record, so it was time for plan B, the first Deadboy And The Elephantmen record, re-released as a Riggs sort-of-solo record. Fair enough. We proclaimed it genius way way back when, and time has done nothing but demonstrate what a killer slab of dark grooviness and intensely emotional heaviness this record is, was and continues to be. So since lots of folks may not have been around when we first gushed about this disc, figured this was the perfect time to gush again.
Years and years ago, the big rock n' roll sleeper hit here at Aquarius had to be the awesome Agents Of Oblivion album, featuring two crucial ex-members of the late lamented cult band Acid Bath. Heavy, poppy, psychedelic rock with vocalist Dax Riggs crooning beautifully over it all. We shoulda made it record of the week, we all thought in retrospect. It became one of our favorite records EVER. We were really bummed then to hear that the Agents, like Acid Bath before 'em, broke up not long after the album's release. But, rumors filtered in that Dax and a new crew of New Orleans n'er-do-wells had formed a new band with the unlikely name of Deadboy and the Elephantmen to carry on where the Agents left off. Allan confirmed this when he happened to visit N.O. and was lucky enough to catch a live performance from this new band. They had a demo out then, and we anticipated a full album release on some big label to appear soon...we waited...and waited... and eventually a Deadboy record did come out, but the band had to release it themselves, since once again, the big labels had no idea and dropped the ball big time. Mystifiying, 'cause Dax is a rock star if ever there was one, and these guys should have been HUGE. This record is epic and darkly dramatic, heavy and groovy and weird as fuck, but also catchy and beautiful. Totally accessible yet morbidly underground, we hear everything from some voodoo Alice Cooper darkness and drama, to a little Aerosmith swagger, to the heaviness and angst of Alice In Chains of course -- Acid Bath was always an AIC meets EHG (Eyehategod) hybrid, in a really good way. Radiohead's "Ok Computer" is hinted at too, and Jeff Buckley, as the music combines weirdly sensitive melodicism and dark atmosphere inspired by their hometown's swamps and cemeteries. Dax is as impressive as ever, he really *sings*, drawing out vowels over a dozen notes. His vocals are oddly warm and comforting but also anguished and intense. While the songwriting on this album does not quite match the relatively flowery yet heavy tunesmithery of the Agents of Oblivion album, and neither does the instrumentation call attention to itself, that's not necessarily a bad thing here as it lets Dax' voice take center stage and he... just... wails. He's like a sludge metal Bowie, flamboyant, and dramatic, his vocals impossibly emotive and intense. Sometimes despairing, sometimes incantatory. Oh the angst! And the music is a perfect match, going from brooding and minor key, to explosive and space-y. For fans of Alice in Chains, Acid Bath/Agents of Oblivion (of course), Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees, and Woven Hand. It may have taken a decade, but finally the rest of the world can discover what some of us knew all along�
We were totally blown away by the last Rigor Sardonicous record, a massive crushing black hole slab of funereal doooooooom (WAY more than two o's!) with its slow motion sludge, impossibly guttural vocals, but more importantly (to us at least) was what we dubbed "the most evil cymbal in the world", a huge trashcan like crash, that punctuated almost every measure. As we reasoned, it HAD to be the most evil cymbal in the world, why else was it so frigging HIGH in the mix?! To praise the Dark One of course. And while the ridiculous aspect certainly appealed to us, the 'evil cymbal' only added an extra element to what undoubtedly would have been a completely amazing doom record anyway. But add the evil cymbal and we've got a metal record of the year contender for sure. But now we have a brand new record, or more accurately a brand new recording, as these tracks are re-recorded versions of the band's pre-Principia Sardonica demo. So now, if the weirdly mixed cymbal was a fluke or a recording mistake, here's a chance for the band to fix it, change the levels, record it correctly. But they didn't!! In fact just the opposite! Which most definitely proves the 'evil cymbal' theory!! The cymbals, yes there are more than one, are EVEN LOUDER, clanging and clanking even more dark praise to the most evil one. In fact every aspect of Apocalypsis Damnare pushes all the stuff we loved about the first record even further. The riffs are thicker and slower, hugely sludgey and downtuned. There's more bizarre stuttering double kick drums, and the vocals are SO low, they are dangerously close to dipping below the boundaries of human hearing. A rumbling subsonic gurgle that sort of just drips like tar all over these tracks. And that would already be enough to kick our asses for sure. Maybe the heaviest slowest 'funereal doom' record since Skepticism's Stormcrowfleet or Thergothon's Stream From The Heavens. But then there's those 'evil' cymbals. Holy fuck?!?! Like giant dented trashcan lids, a massive clattery crash demarcating the ponderous plodding rhythms. Imagine UK ultradoom outfit Esoteric, jamming in the garage, spewing that thick viscous doom we love so, while neighborhood kids stood outside throwing bones and sticks at the metal garage door. So weird. And so completely genius.
There's been tons of good doom lately. Especially of the funeral death dirge type. You know, the reviews we usually start with the word dooooooooooooooooom. The more o's the slower and creepier it is. So we'd have to give this one about 10 o's, cuz man is this dark and dismal and glacier slow. This is straight up Skepticism / Thergothon worship. And we love it! Huge tarpit guitars, broadcast from the bottom of a fiery pit, so the sound is a throbbing muted hum, struggling to be heard through the damp stone walls of whatever keep you're holed up in. So overdriven that even at low volume it cause the speakers on our computer to practically melt. Simple pounding drums keep the doom from spilling into space and becoming shapeless rumpling drones. But Rigor Sardonicous have two things that set them apart from the doooooooooom (yes, ten o's) pack. First, the vocals. So gutteral and subhuman they sound like the growl of an angry mother bear defending her cubs. Or sort of like the recent Caninus record that featured pitbull dogs growling out the vocals. So impossibly low and rumbling and demonic. The second is "the most evil cymbal in the world." It must be the most evil cymbal. Why else would it be so much louder in the mix than anything else? Right. It must be because as the most evil cymbal, the best way to praise the Dark Lord, is to offer up a crash every few seconds. But wait, track three contains what can only be "the most evil gong in the world!" And again proper worship to the Dark Lord requires whacking a big ol' gong every few seconds. Definitely bizarre (too bizarre for some -- AQ pal and Stalin Claus mastermind Steven Schultz could not handle the evil cymbal!) but it all adds a certain weirdness that we can't seem to get enough of. So just imagine Benighted Leams mixed with Skepticism. And then of course include the "most evil cymbal in the world". Oh, and the "most evil gong". And on further listening there seems to be a "quite evil hi-hat" as well. Fucking awesome!
Ah, nothing like a glacially slooooooooow blast of ultra mega doooooooooooooom to calm the nerves, at least that's the way it seems to work around the mail order department for the boys (and girls!) who work back in "the Tombs" of AQ. Rigor Sardonicous - one of our all-time favorite "apocalyptic doom" bands - sent a package recently containing their latest CD, "Risus Ex Mortuus" along with some stickers and a hat...we all fought over the hat a bit, but Andee doesn't like to mess up his "drummer hair" and Jason already sports a bitchin' Rigor Sardonicous glow-in-the-dark print T-shirt, so Allan scored the new lid. Besides, we see him wearing that hunter's orange/camo cap a bit too often lately and - where were we - oh yeah - Risus Ex Mortuus!!!
Once again, Rigor Sardonicous is back, and on this CD we get a bunch of re-recorded versions of early tracks from long out-of-print releases, an unreleased track, and even a Kiss cover! You haven't heard "God Of Thunder" until you've heard it Rigor-ized, a thick syrupy sludge-y Sunn-y crawl, with the vocals belched out in impossible guttural grunts. The CD even somehow sports some beautiful "Rigor Sardonicous" Old English script printed on the UNDERSIDE of the CD - SICK !!!
Also back again is the signature drum machine (who has occupied the throne since 1991) and the return of 'the most evil cymbal in the world', tha clanged-out trash can lid of a cymbal that we have been totally obsessed with and completely transfixed by since we first heard RS. It's like nothing you've ever heard in the realms of dark murky doomy sludge-pyre music (except on the other RS records obviously). It is back and better (and louder) than ever - way out in front where it constantly rears its ugly head again and again, crashing forth with a clanging clattery crash, before quickly fading back into the sludge. Sounds like Sunn 0))) playing Moss covers at the bottom of a giant sewer pipe while someone drops metal garbage cans from above... a strange kind of beautiful.
Mr. drum machine also seems to be taking it up a notch rhythmically with more blast beats, faster and louder, while somehow not actually making the music sound any faster, just weirder and heavier. And there's no mistaking the downtuned, strings-so-slack-they-touch-the-floor, buzzed-out slow sludge rumbling roar coming from the guitar. Like the sound of low-flying aircraft "strumming" overhead power lines... And again those vocals, spread all over the proceedings like some viscous black paste, a subsonic curdle / gurgle that is hardly human. If you close your eyes, you can't help but picture some goo spewing giant lizard ready to consume you whole, or some creepy Hellraiser / Pinhead style hellbeast declaring your doooom. WE LOVE IT.
The AQ dark lords, sit upon their throne of skulls, surrounded by fire and burning flesh, demons swooping through the murky skies, the earth trembling, the ground littered with the dead, gazing cooly at the scorched landscape that stretches forever in all directions, before looking to the sky and letting out a blood curdling cry of "MORE EVIL CYMBAL !!!"
(The band claim that these are indeed actual cd's, although, we're pretty sure they're cd-r's, but who the hell cares, you can't go wrong for $10.98, and you can't print bitchin' olde English band logos on the playing side of a real cd... or can you?)
It's been a while, but it's time to haul out all those extra doom 'o's we've been saving for an occasion just like this. The return of ultra doomlords Rigor Sardonicous, they of the monstrous glacial downtuned crawl, the 'evil' cymbal (more on that in a second), the growled demonic vox, the lugubrious slow motion trudge, all that stuff we love, and all the stuff that can usually only be described by a whole handful of extra 'o's in doooooooooom.
But the opening track threw us for a bit of a loop. All weirdly folky, with chanted vocals, and fluttering flutes, some haunting almost Renn Faire court music, which quickly gives way to clean mournful minor key clean guitar, could this be the same Rigor Sardonicous? All doubts are wiped away moments later when the whole sound shifts down about a hundred octaves, the crumbling super distorted guitar spreads out like a black fog, the drums pounding, the cymbals still way up in the mix (beginning to think it's their trademark), and then the vocals. WOAH. Impossibly gurgly rumbles, like a frog croaking from the bottom of a tarpit, perfectly complimenting the band's murky plod. Weirdly the band does speed it up, but everything is so muddy and blurred that it almost makes no difference. You can hear what sounds like a little girl way off in the distance, as if she's locked in the dungeon of some great black beast. This is some awesomely creepy, heavy, and fucked up dooooooooooomy shit for sure.
If it's even possible, this is the most extreme Rigor record yet. The guitars more dense, heavier, even more downtuned, the vocals absolutely inhuman, it does almost sound like some super slow dooooom record, slowed down even more. And when the band do 'rock', they still out-doom most of their slow motion contemporaries.
Nothing else to say really. Been digging the most recent Moss, the Corrupted reissue? Still loving those Monarch records, the recent Trees disc? Fancy yourself a doomlord? Well strap on your armor, your headlamp, some industrial strength ear protection, and crawl headfirst into this black tarpit of sound, Rigor Sardonicous take even the heaviest and slowest sounds somewhere even slower and lower and so much doooooooooooooooooooooooomier�
This band name may have elicited a few snickers around these parts, but there is nothing funny about Sweden's Rimfrost. Any and all smiles were quickly wiped from the offending faces once the play button was pushed. No record in recent memory has resulted in so much spontaneous headbanging amongst the AQ metalheads. While ostensibly a black metal band, the vibe and sound on A Frozen World Unknown is way more death metal, and while we're sometimes down on the death metal, none of us would hesitate to jump all over a kick ass slab of ultra brutal death metal. And goddamn if this isn't just that. This record is so amazing. Heavy and chuggy, fast and incredibly LOUD, the drums are insane, the riffing is incredible with plenty of pick squeals and downtuned buzz, but the songs are so totally catchy, and weirdly groovy. Super convoluted stop start arrangements, but not complex for complex sake, those parts actually make sense in the context of the rest of the song and somehow manage to be just as catchy as the rest of the track. Strangely epic and anthemic, a bit melodic, but ultimately just intense and furious and fucking awesome. Absolutely one of our favorite new metal records, death, black or otherwise...
More black brutality from No Colours records in Germany. Home to Nargaroth, Graveland, Wigrid and Woodtemple, so you know this is gonna be good, what you might not expect is that Rimfrost's A Journey is basically a super technical slab of brutal black death metal. Super fast tight triggered drums, downtuned but super compressed riffing, growled blackened death metal vocals, the whole thing super polished and ultra tight. We usually expect No Colours stuff to be buzzy and blurry and home recorded, sometimes stumbling, often midtempo, super personal blackness, so this was a huge surprise, but not a bad surprise at all, cuz we love this stuff just as much. Think Khold, Thorns, newer Satyricon, that sort of clinical black metal, but filtered through some early nineties death metal. Fierce and heavy, with lots of half time chug, killer pick squeals, pounding near doom, and c'mon, they're called Rimfrost!
Rimfrost is either a totally grim and kvlt name for a black metal band, or a sort of goofy, possibly questionable one. These guys are from Sweden though, so odds are the rims there are indeed frosty. And the sound? Frosty as well. Super dense and heavy and punishing, a sort of Viking black metal but without all the folk, this is thrashing blackness of the highest order. Fans of classic Enslaved, old Immortal, you know, that classic Scandinavian sound, which is obviously what these guys are shooting for, and they pretty much nail it. No synths, no acoustic guitars (okay, well, maybe a few), no pretty fluttery interludes (only one, or two), instead, these guys pepper their blasting panzer attack with some super dynamic stop start arrangements, plenty of weirdly mathy bits, some incredibly drumming, the sound MASSIVE and so epic. Riffs gnarled and explosive, the rhythms galloping and relentless, blazing double kicks, the guitars chugging and crunchy, the vocals a demonic croak, the songs themselves, epic and majestic, the tempo often pounding and midtempo, but Rimfrost mix it up, exploding into a full on black frenzy here and there, or sometimes slowing down to a doomic lumber. There are melodies and hooks too, usually subtle, but sometimes brought to the fore for a moment of almost NWOBHM sounding radness, before blasting black into the (g)rim frost. Excellent.
A few lists back we reviewed a tape by the oddly monikered Funeral Fornication, who trafficked in some pretty epic black metal buzz. But apparently, Jaron Evil, the man behind Funeral Fornication, suffered some sort of brain injury, that rendered him unable to play guitar, so while he recovered, he endeavored to create this, a sprawling, and equally, yet differently epic collection of Tolkien themed black ambience and neo-folk, and while at first we were expecting something super cheesy, it's actually pretty cool and weird. Field recorded forest sounds, gristly, lo-fi synth swirl, lush swells of droned out black ambience, dramatic piano stabs, faux strings, swirling FX, some of the tracks pastoral and blessed out ("The Second Age"), others more sinister and cinematic ("The Secret Stairs"). There are still moments of black buzz, like the second half of "Nine Riders", which unfurls a furious blast beat, harsh vokills and insectoid riffing, spread out beneath a layer of cosmic synth swirl, making for a strange, and quite cool juxtaposition. But for the most part, the tape is made up mostly of synthy ambience, ominous drones, mysterious sound design, and epic faux soundtracks to some Lord Of Rings style otherworld. Fantastical and fantastic.
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