Every time I sit down to review this record, I just can't seem to put into words what makes it so great. But as this is the last list of 2005, and this record is absolutely my favorite record of 2005, it seems like it can't be put off any longer. But it's true, I listen to this record every day, all the time. And even after months of non-stop listening I still can't get enough of it.
I'm a bit embarassed to say I first heard about Chiodos in some magazine touting them as a 'band to watch' or 'next big thing' or something. And rarely do I pay much attention to those sorts of things, but a few things definitely caught my eye. They were described as being really heavy, really ridiculously prog, a little emo, and with a vocalist who sounded quite a bit like a woman. And you know what, that's not really that far off the mark. Imagine the over the top prog of Coheed And Cambria and the proggy bombast of the Mars Volta, the angular art rock of a band like the Blood Brothers, some super intense Slayer style metal guitar, lots of piano and keyboards, ranging from delicate ballady bits to full on Cradle Of Filth style bombast, extremely emo lyrics, and a completely amazing vocalist who can go from a throat shredding howl to an impossibly high wail. Wrap all that stuff around super complex multi part epics chock full of killer riffs and unbelievable hooks, amazing drumming bizarre arrangements, and vocals that are just so completely are gloriously over the top. Some parts of this record are just SO massively punishingly crushing. Full on headbanging brutality. The opening riff to "The Words 'Best Friend' Become Redefined" would make any thrash metal band proud. Just check the sound sample.
This is also one of those records that has lots of THOSE parts, you know the kind, the parts that give you chills EVERY time you hear them, or make you use every ounce of self control to not wildly air guitar or drum madly on the steering wheel while you're driving. One of which just might be THE part, maybe the ULTIMATE part. Freaks me out every time I hear it. Makes me want to hear it over and over and over. Makes me wish I had written it, makes me wish I was in a band just so I could play it. Check out the sound sample for "Baby, You Wouldn't Last A Minute On The Creek" and see if you can tell which part I mean. Shouldn't be too difficult. The fact is, this whole record kicks my ass that hard. Rare that a record can pull off being this heavy, this complex, this emo, this over the top all at the same time. Without devolving into something impossible and confusing. And it is wildy all over the map, sonically schizophrenic, but somehow every part just sounds completely perfect. The more I listen to it the more perfect it sounds. Anyway, not sure what else to say. It all comes down to the music, so a quick listen to the sound samples should tell you all you need to know, is this indeed the best record of the year, or is Andee full of shit? Well, just so you know, this IS the record of the year, and if for some crazy reason you don't agree, you're probably just mistaken. Or wrong.
So short! Four raw spurts of noise-alicious herky-jerk. We barely caught a glimpse of these two new members of the Gold Standard Laboratories clan . Certainly not the black sheeps in this family, they seat themselves quite comfortably in the recently vacated, overturned chairs of spaz-punks LeShok and XBXRX. So who are these mysterious newcomers? Well, arty postpunkers the Chromatics rose from the ashes of Seattle, WA's underappreciated The Vogue (and you might have also heard of another of their incarnations, The Soiled Doves). Like-minded Monitor Bats just happen to be the jazz-punk side project of blues-rockin' kids The Gossip. Word has it that a Chromatics full length is in the works, so keep those ears to the ground. Until then, you might just have to make do with this brief encounter.
We've been super into that new strain of epic, super complex emo prog lately (well, Andee has at least), bands like Chiodos, Coheed And Cambria. Groups that combine killer metal riffing, super dense and complicated prog arrangements, with super emotive wailing vocals. Like a whole new breed of punk rockers re-discovered Yes and King Crimson and managed to create some impossible hybrid bridging the gap between classic progressive rock and modern emo metalcore. There are about a million bands doing their own version these days, and admittedly most of them suck, but we'll still stick by Chiodos, and the first two Coheed records, and now we have the latest by Circa Survive, a dreamy, epic, psychedelic, dramatic emo prog outfit, who actually eschew the more metal elements that define most of their sonic brethren, focusing instead on texture and melody and mood. There is definitely a Mars Volta vibe, a lot of that has to do with the vocalist's impossibly high voice, on first listen it's hard to believe it's not actually a woman singing, clear and crystalline, a soaring near falsetto, the vocals drifting above dense harmonies, gorgeous melodies, a thick sonic tapestry of shoegazer guitars, angular riffs, complicated rhythms, all woven into haunting and strangely catchy mini epics. None of the songs are outright 'pop song' catchy, but they all manage to suck you in and make it virtually impossible to avoid repeat listens. Heavy, but not in a metal way, just deep and emotional, darkly dramatic, with layers of sound that are continually shifting to reveal hidden parts and recombining into unexpected surprises. Probably won't be that much of a surprise, but this is one of Andee's favorite records of the last few years. And actually, this came out last year, but who cares, here it is 2006 and we're still spinning it like crazy...
There's probably not that much we need to say about this new Circle 7", other than to ask, are you familiar with the band JESTERS OF DESTINY?? 'Cause our Finnish friends Circle really really want you to know about that obscure '80s LA "alternative metal" band. They've already reissued the Jesters' 1986 album Fun At The Funeral on their own Ektro imprint some years ago, and former JoD vocalist/bassist Bruce Duff has appeared as a guest on several Circle-related releases (Circle's Earthworm ep and Hollywood full-length, and the Pharoah Overlord record Out Of Darkness). Plus another Circle side-project, Rakhim, put out a disc, Crimson Umbrella, named after a Jesters song. So yeah, the Circle guys really love Jesters Of Destiny.
Circle's fanboy obsession with Jesters Of Destiny continues with this limited 7" single, featuring cover versions of two Jesters Of Destiny tracks, "End Of Time" and "God Told Me To", both from the Fun At The Funeral album ("End Of Time" also being the Jesters' contribution to the Metal Massacre V comp alongside VoiVod, Overkill, Hellhammer, and Metal Church, among others!). They're great, uber-catchy songs, very representative of the "gleefully gloomy" blend of punk, psych, and metal that the Jesters made uniquely their own, and that helped inspire a certain Finnish band to come up with their own weird genre-hybridizing style (no, Circle don't actually sound much like JoD, but they share a lot of the same spirit, that's for sure).
So, if you've never heard JoD before, you'll get a good idea from this 7" of what they were all about - Circle do these songs pretty straight (no motorik krautrock detours or anything), hewing close to the original versions, and they also brought in ex-Jesters Bruce Duff and Ray Violet to sing and play on this recording. So it's almost more a Jesters 7" than a Circle one. While usually we like bands doing covers to reinterpret 'em in their OWN style (and we still would love to hear a 30+ minute Circle jam on the "Diggin' That Grave" riff, c'mon guys), the respectful way Circle did these songs here makes sense given their mission being to turn people on to the under appreciated greatness of the JESTERS OF DESTINY!
Limited to 500 copies only, we only have a handful.
Ah, Circle. We love 'em. You love 'em (or, if this is the first you've heard of them, then please do an artist=circle search on our website for plenty o' info). And we've all come to expect the unexpected from these freaky Finns, yet also always expect the "Circle" sound: rhythmic, krautrocky, "circular". And they always deliver. Yet we'd have to say, with this new record Panic they've also managed to come up with the Circle album that we doubt -anyone- would quite have predicted, nosiree.
Spoiler warning! Since we know that the legions of Circle fans reading this pretty much don't need us to tell 'em that they want this or any new Circle cd and will be all over this like stink on a pig regardless, we should mention that this review contains something in way of a "spoiler" about the album's contents and if you're already planning on buying this you might want to read no further. Not that the surprise is, y'know, like The Crying Game or anything. So read on if you want.
Looking at this, you might be wondering, what do the apocalyptic, crusty-punk looking black-and-white graphics mean? And why'd they call it Panic? And what's with the sticker on the front, proclaiming Circle to be "Finland speed-kraut pioneers" and telling us that they consist of ex-members of Sorto Ja Riiso, Saaste, Nyrkinen Kehitys, Spiders, and Suomen Ruutivarasto? Are those even real bands? Ultimately, you're wondering, what's this gonna sound like??
So, let's put it on... it starts off with "Black Tape", reminiscent of their recent lovely Miljard set: minimal piano plinking amidst spacey organic washes of synth, sort of Circle in an ambient Aphex Twin / Terry Riley mood. As that track flows into the next, and the next, the tone becomes more urgent, ominous, and busier... And then, without warning (well, unless you've read this) track number four ("Neverending Dinner") blasts from the speakers, a loud n' raging PUNK rock shock to the system, 38 seconds long. Seriously retro '80s styled hardcore punk, boots and spikes and all that, with vocals angrily shouting subversive political diatribes, the music uber-distorted and as catchy as a veneral disease. Wow. That's what we mean by a surprise! Thus begins this mayhemic middle portion of the album, six tracks, averaging not much more than a minute in length each, is Circle's teenage punk rock rebellion reborn and moshing hard. But since it's Circle's version of punk, so you can still hear the sci-fi prog rock keyboards layered in there, twittering and swooshing amidst the purely punk noise. Weird weird weird. Then, like a summer thunderstorm, all that's over with... and we're back to the vast, instrumental reaches of deep, dark space, the disc coming to a conclusion with its two longest tracks, the 12 minute "Tunnel" and the 14 minute "And Far Away", both even dronier and spacier than the synthscapes that began the album. Wow again.
If you think about it, those two extremes -- spacey prog and quasi-metallic rockin' -- are both integral parts of the hard-to-define Circle sound. So it's as if on Panic, they've taken the "usual" Circle thing and pulled it apart, like taffy. The opposite ends of the album are stretched out into a bleak and beautiful drone-zone, while the heaviest densest craziest stuff settles into the middle.
Some might criticize Circle for what might appear to an indulgence in high-concept joking around... post-modern appropriation... punk playacting... taking the piss... whatever. But what we think is that they're all the more amazing for it, for deciding to do a "punk" record yet keeping it Circle. After all, if you're gonna make as many albums as these guys have AND always have to make sure you stay true to the very distinctive sound they're established (the "circular", repetitive thing), you've gotta be creative, which they are. So their solution here is to sandwich their warped '80s punk pastiche between something completely different -- cosmic electronics like '70s Schulze or maybe a John Carpenter soundtrack. The jarring juxtaposition is brilliant and maybe even meaningful, somehow tying in with the nuclear nightmares depicted on the album graphics. And there are many clever details in the graphics dep't by the way, from the collaged riot pics to the fonts used to the barbed wire borders and the Ektro flag-logo... tight. In fact, we might wonder which came first, the graphic notions or the music...!?
By the way, while we've got your attention, may as well let you know to look forward to another new Circle album coming out on No Quarter in September. Haven't heard it yet, but Jussi from Circle tells us it sounds like "60's black metal"... whatever that means! No doubt more surprises in store.
We've had these for a while now, meant to list this ages ago, not sure what happened, but regardless, here you go, the latest, greatest blast of grinding death metal brutality from the brilliantly named Circle Of Dead Children. A furiously fast, ultra downtuned selection of brief blasting bursts of death metal drenched ultragrind, most clocking in at under a minute, but even the briefest blasts pack in a million parts and a billion notes. Head spinning, ear splitting, mind meltingly technical grind, think Discordance Axis, Creation Is Crucifixion, Cephalic Carnage, you know the sort of blazing destruction we're talking about. Plus awesome cover art and killer song titles like "No Tears Fall Through Hollow Eye Sockets", "Chemical Goat". Just what you need for that next gore soaked, techgrind, mathmetal fix for sure!
Okay, so Circle Takes The Square may not be the best band name. In fact, it's pretty dumb. It also gives no clue as to what an intense and amazing record As The Roots Undo is. But as with monikers like the "Flaming Lips", or even the "Beatles", the name will grow on you, which is good, because you're gonna be telling everyone you know about this record. Trust us! From the cover, a gorgeous gold and silver metallic digipak that folds together IPR style, to the music, a bizarre hybrid of old school crusty hardcore complete with shouted boy/girl vocals, modern metalcore, indie/post rock, seriously complex and innovative prog, and even some weird ambient electronic bits, you won't know what hit you. Sounds like it could be a mess, but somehow it all falls together perfectly. Emotional and intense, alternately heavy and intense, melodic and melancholy. Massive Neurosis-style riffery gives way to weird clean guitar breakdowns, spoken word parts and blooping electronic programming. Buzzing grindcore splinters into jangly, rhythmic almost-pop. Definitely schizophrenic. But in a good way. The core of the record is a thrashy, complex grind metal, but the vocals are so distinctive and emotional and the arrangements are so creative that it turns what could have been a run of the mill punk rock record into one of our favorite new records, period.
Circle X were a mysterious and mythical aggro angular artrock band formed in Louisville in the late seventies, eventually relocating to NYC and falling in with the No Wave crowd, stumbling on the noise rock periphery for years, even recording a record in 1994, before disappearing completely not long after. We have been huge fans since we first heard these guys way back when, all of their records are amazing, and amazingly difficult, all unfortunately out of print, including this one apparently, but a distributor found a stash so we grabbed all we could so you all could get a gander at the filthy, sweaty, fucked up sound of Kentucky art rock circa 1979.
Of all their recordings, this short sharp blast (4 songs, 11:33) of growling vitriolic fury is probably our favorite. It's the meanest and leanest, essentially a punk rock record, with lots of swagger and snarl, a sort of damaged art rock version of the Stooges: fuzzed out jagged guitars, often soaring into squealing angular harmonies, pounding drums, that often explode into convoluted splattery fills or stumble into bizarre almost tribal anti-rhythms, and the vocals, woah! A raspy howl, that always sounds on the verge of cracking completely, wild and untamed, half shout, half spoken, but so emotive and intense. A breathless furious delivery that perfectly suits the band's primal pound. On their dirge-y version of "Onward Christian Soldiers" you can definitely hear bits of early Swans, Copshootcop, and other NYC junkyard thugs, with its relentless pound and tangled atonal washes of super distorted guitar. This shit is raw and intense and primal and so goddamn good.
Fans of down and dirty, scuzzy garage rock stomp will be way into this (think Brainbombs, Stooges, etc.) as will art rockers not afraid to get a little dirty.
WE ONLY HAVE ABOUT 15 COPIES!!! And since this is way out of print, when these are gone they are gone for good!
Just in, straight from the source (yup, CF bassist Jasper brought these in to us), Citizen Fish have just issued their third collection of odds'n'ends on cd-r (the previous two were released on cassette). Not to be mistaken for their newest album out now
If we didn't know better, we might have thought this was a new release on Load. At least at first. It's got moments of jumbled atonality and sonic chaos, super distorted vocals, spastic drums, furious crunch and grind. BUT, it also has a really intense moody pop element. Sort of gothy and dark, with throbbing low slung bass, tribal drumming, and crooned super emotive vocals, often heavily effected and sent careening though thick clouds of reverb or dubbed out delay. It also sounds a bit new wave, propulsive and herky jerky, almost danceable at times. Imagine Joy Division or the Birthday Party as young noise rockers circa 2007, if they had grown up on the East Coast, were raised on noise rock and toured with Lightning Bolt and Usaisamonster. Super dramatic and dense, epic and tribal�
As the record progresses the pop element seeps into even the noisiest moments, sounding more and more like Duran Duran or Icicle Works yanked out of the safe confines of their new-romantic/new-wave world and thrust into some strange modern world of noise rock and post-post-dance-punk. Pretty cool.
Maybe the most aptly named band ever? Weird that when we first stumbled on Clockcleaner, it was in our search for more music from damaged drug addled caveman noisemakers the Violent Students, but it seems Clockcleaner is now the more viable band, with the VS sort of fading away, with only one proper record we know of. And where the sound of the Violent Students was more of a massive frontal lobe melting cacophony, Clockcleaner seemed to take that same aesthetic, and apply it to actual songs, the poppier Dr. Jeckyl to the Violent Students' Mr. Hyde...
And right off the bat, Clockcleaner up the ante with maybe their best song ever. A dense propulsive, grungy, filthy, swampy stomp, a malevolent, lascivious and lurching Swans slither, an ominous stumble and plod over Morricone Western twang, reverbed surf guitar, growled baritone vocals, sounding straight out of late eighties NY noise underground Copshootcop, the Swans, everything bathed in reverb, and swirling alien FX, bizarre little bits of melody... And the record sort of goes from there, adding damaged Jerry Lee Lewis piano pound, crumbling chest rattling bass, slippery drunken slide guitar, more super dramatic crooned vocals, still more reverb and effects, the whole thing a sort of hellish end of the world swing, plenty of groove, but gnarled and convoluted, dangerous and drunken, reminding us quite a bit of Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost even Nick Cave, a blackened noise flecked confusional cabaret. Awesome.
Killer tape-faced cover art too...
Latest blast of post punk noise rock mayhem from this Violent Students offshoot. For those of you who may not remember, the Violent Students are a crazy, druggy damaged noise rock behemoth, a stumbling Butthole Surfers-esque freerock what the fuck glorious mess that we went totally nuts for.
We later discovered a few of those Students also did time in a band called Clockcleaner, who ended up totally cleaning our clocks (ahem) but for a whole different reason, their strange nineties indie noise rock, shoulda-been-on-AmRep stun and pummel completely hit the pot, and pushed all those dusty buttons bands like the Cows and the God Bullies and Lubricated Goat used to push.
So here we have a brand new 7" ep from these musical miscreants, and it's a bit of surprise. The A side is total post punk new wave pop, or something, propulsive jangly guitars, simple drumming, yelped vocals, we're hearing tons of the Misfits and the Damned... sort of new wave art pop, but filthier and a little more lo-fi, and it's awesome! Noisy and hooky and super duper catchy.
But before you start screaming sell out, flip the disc over and we're back into nineties aggro post punk snarl and swagger, echoey clangy guitars, thick chunks of angular noise rock, keening guitars, reverbed vocals, lots of scrape and wail, and we love it. These guys kick serious ass, wrapping you in a nineties style Halo Of Flies while simultaneously dipping you head in a good old fashioned bucket of new wave jangle!!
Plus "Frogrammer"? How rad a title is that for a song?!?!
Clockcleaner are the slightly less unhinged offshoot of the truly demented and damaged garage-noise-sludge combo the Violent Students. The recently released Clockcleaner cd was a killer flashback to the good ol' Amphetamine Reptile days, when we were all rocking to the Cows, the God Bullies, King Snake Roost, Lubricated Goat, Halo Of Flies. These guys sound like they were somehow transported from Minneapolis in 1995 to right here right now. And we fucking love it. I think when we reviewed the cd we said they sounded like the Cars meets Flipper which sounds fucked but pretty great too. This 7" feature an alternate version of our favorite song on the cd and an unreleased B-side. The cool thing is on this 7" the band are way slower and sludgier and filthier sounding, so instead of sounding like Scratch Acid or the Jesus Lizard, they sort of sound like Green River mixed with the Birthday Party. This alternate version of "Missing Dick" is a creeped-out blues crawl, with weird keening guitars, a way more lo-fi production and vocal totally doused in echo. Not as rocking as the other version, but so much more fucked up sounding.
The B side is super scary and dark, angular guitar lines over a simple plodding drum, with an INSANE growled/yowled vocal rant. Eventually the band kicks in HARD with a wild burst of fuzzy downtuned guitar growl, and launches into a sort of menacing post punk swagger that totally hits the spot.
A few lists back we went apeshit over some mysterious band of musical miscreants called the Violent Students, who made an unholy din like we hadn't heard since the glory days of the Butthole Surfers. Damaged and filthy and freaked out, a druggy chaotic punk sludge mess that just totally blew our minds. We recently discovered that some of those very same Students were doing time in the band Clockcleaner so we figured we oughta check them out as well, and so glad we did! For CC, the all out chaos has been reeled in a bit and while the result is less fractured and less completely unhinged, it's still pretty demented and manic, but way more song oriented with some KILLER riffs. When we first threw this one, the first thing we thought was the Cars meet Flipper. Which pretty much describes our dream band. But the more we listened the more we felt like we were slipping back in time, to that special moment, that only lasted a few years, where the Amphetamine Reptile label could do no wrong. Clockcleaner could easily have existed right there between the God Bullies, Halo Of Flies, Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost and all the rest. The record starts off with some weirdly eighties metal riffing, like the intro to some Ratt song, before the whiney Jello like vocals kick in, and the whole thing lurches into action with plenty of Buttholes tribal pound, Jesus Lizard groove and a decade's (the nineties) worth of Amphetamine fueled fury. Plus some amazing song titles ("Missing Dick", "Gentle Swastika", "Interview With A Black Man", "Blood Driver") and some problematic poop smeared cover art, but they had us at the Cars meet Flipper!
Once there was the Dwarves. Now there's Clockcleaner. Similarly abrasive and snotty and puerile and oft banned, but where the Dwarves spat out short bursts of pop punk doused in liquid acid and then dusted with coke, Clockcleaner are a much weirder and much more unpredictable entity. Less punk sonically maybe, but no less punk spiritually.
Here, CC offer up twangy guitars, crooned dramatic vocals, frantic drumming, and all sorts of cool space-y FX, not to mention some demented lyrics. Within the song proper, there's a long stretch of super tripped out weirdness, with effects swirling everywhere and even some horns. There's a definite Lubricated Goat / King Snake Roost vibe going on, which is never a bad thing.
The flipside is a cover, by Australian punks X (not to be confused with the more well known L.A. X (get it?), a track called "Hate City" which according to the sleeve, the band couldn't understand the lyrics so they just made their own. But the song suits them, with crunchy guitars, growled howled vocals that slip into a strangled whine and then back again, and another killer bunch of unexpected horns.
And it is Clockcleaner, so even though the record is called Skinheaded Lady, the cover features a grainy old photograph of a nun. These were also apparently tour only 7"s, we got the last copies direct from the band, so odds are these will be the last ones we ever see.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This underground Japanese band surprised and delighted us with this crazy fuzzed-out stoner-rock meets grind metal release. Clotted Symmetric Sexual Organ (let's just call 'em CSSO) really kick 'em out, wallowing in total wahwah-happy heavy psych guitar overdrive. It's wild and distorted and super-energetic, a blend of '60s garage, '70s hard rock, and '90s noise-thrash. Forget Acid Mothers Temple, this is the real Japanese freak-beat! Indeed, CSSO could learn Kawabata Makoto a thing or two about over-the-top motorpsycho guitar. Imagine AMT or High Rise with a garagey Guitar Wolf edge, going nuts with that style of psychedelic freakout, then breaking into a speedy grind part with blast beats and cookie monster vocals! It's like a weird, wonderful mix of The Groundhogs and Napalm Death or something. When CSSO's stoner/grind rock attack isn't going full-tilt they throw in spacey sections of shoegazing drone tones, trippy electronics, and other cosmic krautrock inspired soundz -- sometimes sheer, blissful noise. Then it's back to the catchy rockin' stuff, like Hendrix gone grind. Like AMT or the Boredoms, they can be quite playful and confounding -- for instance, one song features what might be the world's longest fade-in, it's two minutes before you can really hear anything at all!
Partially 'cause this was so unexpected (we thought they might be a good but generic grindcore band) but also because it's so great, this just totally blew us away. A new favorite in the long line of genre-bending, rule-defying bands from Japan (Boredoms, Melt Banana, Boris, et. al.), and thus highly recommended!
Who would have thought we'd ever see a new Coalesce album, ever again? After a spate of unbelievable records, and a fairly acrimonious breakup, we figured we'd have to make do with Give Them Rope and Revolution In Just Listening and Functioning on Impatience, which hell, is the sort of 'making do' most bands would kill to be able to offer their faithful. But this new Coalesce pretty much picks up right where the last one left off, after a 10 year break, the sound is immediately recognizable, churning chugging super complex mathy post hardcore metal fury, stop start arrangements, lurching mosh worthy blowouts, the guitars massive, the drumming relentless, and the vocals, how can Sean Ingram still sound like this ten years later? Actually how can he even speak after a decade of vitriolic bellowing. But for all that stayed the same, a lot has changed in the decade since Revolution. On "The Comedian In Question", the band break down into a sort of droned out lope, and the vocals slip into some clear crooning, the sound is definitely sort of Alice In Chains, but on Coalesce it sounds so good. Great in fact.
Then there's the beginning of "Wild Ox Moan", a total lo-fi distorted blues jam, again with clean vox, the guitar clangy and clean, some slippery slide slipped in as well, before the band erupts into another furious pounding anvil to the skull. Long stretches of reverbed nylon string guitar butt up against some of the heaviest punishment these guys have ever doled out, which is saying something considering they're old enough to be the parents of most of the kids in the crowd (not counting us old guys), cool angular Drive Like Jehu high end guitar melodies wind around bizarre vocals and spill over into a weirdly groovy churn that sounds as much like Pantera as it does Coalesce, some stripped down jazzy moodiness, and at least one track that is so awesomely off kilter and slippery and dizzy, the whirling woozy guitars constantly causing the listener's head to spin, and while all the weird shit sticks out the most, it's really not the most prevalent stuff going on here, although the weirdness does seep into most of the more classic Coalesce sounding riffage, even so, the majority of this record IS in fact classic sounding Coalesce, just a bit more twisted, still heavy as fuck, and still weirdly catchy, maybe more so then ever, the weird stuff only makes it cooler and more fun.
Killer packaging too, beautiful silver and black-on-black digipak, with one of the most elaborate die cut booklets we've ever seen.
Originally released as an insanely limited cassette tape to coincide with a tour, this collaborative recording is now available as a spiffy, and still limited, lp, and includes a bonus track NOT on the original tape.
What might one expect from this match up, some cool cold wave grooves with howling noise drenched vocals, or better yet some heavy harsh noise shot through with dark moody melodies, and cold synths? Well, the weird thing is, this doesn't sound like either band, together or separate. Instead, this is swirling psychedelic synth space drone ambience, a little blissed out, a little brooding and ominous, all starry shimmer and blackly abstract, but plenty dark and definitely a little malevolent. Huge expanses of muted feedback, processed rumbles and whirs, buried melodies, all softly heaving in deep black swells, shot through with ever shifting textures. The B-side though gets downright poppy, still space-y and abstract, but infused with some seriously shoegazey shimmer, melodies much closer to the surface, glimmery and gauzey, with a distant rhythms, skittery and hushed, that over the course of the side, builds to a fairly aggressive industrial pound, while the sounds around it grow more and more bleak and caustic.
And then there's the extra track, which is easily the poppiest of the bunch, a soft focus M83 / Nadja / Jesu bit of blissy pop ambient drift, swirly and abstract, with wordless vocals adding to soft space-y psychedelia until some super strange vocals come in, a little harsh, heavily processed, distorted and menacing, wrapped around distant grinding guitars, and for a few moments it suddenly does sound very much like we imagined it would.
And of course, EXTREMELY LIMITED.
Not sure why, but we never really paid much attention to Louisville sluggers Coliseum, they maybe seemed too punk, or something, whatever it was, we're sort of kicking ourselves now, cuz this new one, their third, is a serious barnburner, although from what we hear their sound has changed quite a bit, still punk for sure, but super melodic, a bit metallic, and catchy as all get out. Maybe somewhere between the pop sludge of Torche, the muscly cock rock of Turbonegro and the post Kyuss hard rock of Queens Of The Stoneage, big chugging churning guitars, crushing powerhouse drums, killer hooks, thick fuzzed out bass, and the vocals, probably the most distinctive element, a harsh raspy howl that manages to be fierce and melodic, rough and raw, super intense and emotional, perfectly paired up with the throb and crush of the music pounding away beneath. The more we listen to this, the more these songs get stuck in our heads, and the more we dig 'em!
Features guest spots from Bonnie Prince Billy and members of Jawbox, Rodan, Squirrel Bait, Shipping News and Rachels, a sort of who's who of Louisville underground rock...
Holy shit these guys just keep getting better and better. Record number four finds this Louisville trio about as melodic as they've ever sounded, but still pretty goddamn heavy, and a lot more punk than last time around actually, with a massive production courtesy of Jawbox's J. Robbins, which perfectly suits their sound, giving even the poppiest jams some serious heft, and making the whole record sound equal parts classic nineties math/noise rock, chugging post punk and sludge pop heaviness a la Torche. In our review of the last Coliseum, we compared their sounds as being a strange mix of Torche, Turbonegro and Queens Of The Stone Age, which might still apply a bit, but to these ears, the new Coliseum has definitely shifted to something much more punk, managing to fuse their new found poppiness, with the urgent, punk fury of their earlier records, and while not as overtly and immediately catchy, it's a sound that suits them, the crunchy guitars, the gruff yowled vocals, the dense, hard hitting drumming, the thick buzzing bass, and the songs, super reminiscent of another era, the nineties, a sound/era/scene that we (and they) seem still pretty connected too. Not hard to imagine this record coming out on Homestead or Touch And Go back in the day, there's lots of brooding gloominess going on too (check out "Love Under Will"), lots of low slung bass driven groovery, and chugging churning punkiness, it's the sort of sound we often lament doesn't really exist anymore, and when bands do try to channel it, they often fail spectacularly, but these guys kill, and are out of time masters of that sound, a sound we love now as much as we did then.
Like their last record, Coliseum called in all sorts of favors so the guest roll call is a serious indie who's who, Wata from Boris, Jason Loewenstein from Sebadoh, Jason Farrell from Swiz and Bluetip, and Elizabeth Elmore from Sarge - her contribution maybe our favorite, her vox a good balance for Ryan Patterson's gruff bellow, almost wish she sang with him on all the tracks...
The late great Aussie underground guitar hero Lobby Loyde lead this crew of hard rocking "sharpies", who made two albums of boogie bar band proto-punk in the early '70s: the classic Ball Power from '73, and this, their not-quite-as-great-but-still-cool 2nd album from '74. The album and its title track may be called Heavy Metal Kid, however it's NOT heavy metal. (Not any more than the unrelated '70s band Heavy Metal Kids was.) But, that title track is an up-up-uptempo proto-glam stormer! Elsewhere, the Balls offer up a high energy mix of '50s style stompers and FX-laden psychedelic fare (such as "Back To You"). ZZ/DC?
Remastered from the original master tapes, pressed on 180 gram vinyl, gatefold sleeve, with lyrics insert & obi, limited!!
We've yet to list anything from these Bay Area emo/screamo killers, which is a shame cuz these guys SLAY. Every thing we've heard from them, has been practically perfect. Heavy, mathy, complex, melodic, epic and brutal and emotional and LOUD. The songs are short and super intricate, with tons of parts, lots of stop/starts, the sound somehow chaotic but still ultra tight, the drums wild, all over the place, the vocals very raw and raspy and Rites Of Spring-ish, in fact in some ways, Comadre sound like a revved up super charged RoS or Fugazi, which is most definitely not a bad thing. And besides the -sound-, they whip up incredibly catchy songs too, hooks galore, totally unforgettable melodies, jamming more into 90 seconds than most band can pull off in 10 minutes, the sort of sound that hints at insane, sweat soaked, stage collapsing live shows, that energy captured surprisingly well on wax!
If you dig stuff like Pianos Become The Teeth, Orchid, Mohinder, The Locust, and classic emo/punk like Fugazi and Rites Of Spring and Embrace and all that stuff, you should definitely check these guys out!
The final missive / swansong from this long running Bay Area emo/screamo outfit, and like the records we've reviewed before from these guys, it's another dense, mathy, moody, super heavy, crazy catchy, intricate and emotional blast of post hardcore heaviness/hookiness that KILLS, and once again has us wondering why they weren't way more huge. And while much of the ferocious energy of their early releases is still present, there definitely seems to be a more pronounced pop/melodic element. Even on tracks like "Cold Rain", it's mostly just the shrieked vox that make this screamo or emo, otherwise, it's more some sort of super poppy crazy catchy post punk, with a main guitar hook that kills, and a bouncy crunchy main riff that would be just as at home in a proper pop song. And while these guys always had a pop element, this time around, they've cranked the pop through the roof, and that poppiness is literally all over the place, which makes it even more of a tragedy that this is the last we'll hear from these guys. And sure there are some tracks that are way more rocking and punky, furious and fierce, but even at their most aggro, the sound is shot through with a poppiness they just can't seem to shrug off, but who says they even want too, the combination of shrieked chaotic heaviness, lilting melodies, weird electronics, occasional piano, organ, driving rhythms, and hooks galore, seriously tough to beat. So catchy and crunchy and heavy and so goddamn good. RIP Comadre.
Vinyl version comes in a thick gatefold sleeve, pressed on 180 gram wax, with a big 12" x 12" booklet, the cd version in a digipak.
Killer split from Bay Area screamo punks Comadre, here teamed up with European punk rockers Glasses. Both bands offer up some of their best material yet.
Comadre (whose equally badass 10" is reviewed elsewhere on this list) dial down the frenetic vibe of their 10" and go for some seriously tuneful pop songsmithery, still heavy and distorted and intense, but this time it's all about the hooks, and the hooks are huge, listening to this, it's hard to see how these guys aren't HUGE, can't imagine these guys can stay underground for much longer.
Glasses kick right back with some super aggro, ultradense, mathy metallic punk rock heaviness, wild tangled riffage, furious frenzied drumming, vitriolic vocals, all wound into 3 blasts of proggy punk metal fury, definitely need to hear more from Glasses...
Super fancy packaging, two 7"s with a 12 page booklet fixed to the inner spine of the gatefold sleeve.
This isn't metal exactly, but it is HEAVY. And it's not punk, although it is raucous, unruly and unkempt. It's not screamo though there is a LOT of screaming. And it's not noise, but boy is it noisy! And it's for sure not powerviolence, even though it is indeed quite powerful and most definitely violent. This is more like a drum kit, a bunch of guitars, a bass, HUGE amps, and a guy screaming his lungs out, all loaded into a cannon and fired at your ear, mere inches away, blowing you head into a million pieces. Grinding, thrashing, chaotic, relentless, brutal metallic punk rock noise. Wow. 42 songs, 32 minutes, average song length about :40 (the shortest clocking in at :10, the longest still a brief 1:30) and some of the best song titles EVER: "Dead Parents, Yea!", "We Sticks Butter", "My Foot, The Catheter", "Plastic Bullets Are So '84", "Also Comes In Red, Orange And Fuck You", "Shit 3:16", "Q: What Kind Of (A Band) Name Is Scrotum Grinder? A: A Terrible One.", "Cumbersome Ant People" and thirty six more!
After reading this tome if you still haven't gotten your fill of Aaron's writings, he also wrote the extensive liner notes for the new Jawbreaker rarities cd. And who could ever get enough of one of the greatest zines ever. Cometbus has been around (sometimes pub'd under different names) for over TWENTY YEARS! Got all the issues? Me neither. For this book Aaron personally selected the best, and filtered what he thinks of as the worst, writing from Cometbus. The most recent issues aren't here, as they are still in print, but the best of the rest of it is. So great!
Pittsburgh grinders return with their second full-length of fierce death metal, and it's a doozy indeed. With Synthetics, Commit Suicide have achieved that rarest of accomplishments -- delivering a follow-up album that stays completely true to all of their original elements while bolstering every component that made them such an immediately powerful force on their debut. Everything seems just punched up a notch here. Be forewarned, this is relentless death metal without the slightest breach of accessibility for those not interested in the fastest most aggressive style of music possible. But if you're willing to submit, the execution is flawless. Non-stop blazing riffage with a million stops and changes between speeds varying from fast to pretty fast to full-on blasting, with a vicious growler roaring overtop. There really isn't a single stand-out member though -- the band functions seamlessly as a whole, with all changes felt on guitar bass and drums as one. For fans of Death, Dying Fetus, Morbid Angel and the like, look no further for uncompromising brutality.
This legendary / infamous slab of punk rock, finally reissued on vinyl!!
Formed in early 1977, The Consumers were Phoenix Arizona's answer to the Germs. Punk fucking rock. After recording their debut album (20 minutes of adrenaline fueled, hateful, spazzy and totally catchy punk) shortly after their inception, the Consumers relocated to LA where they continued to terrorize, destroy and get banned from playing almost anywhere! Furious and angry and kick ass and better than almost any punk rock since ('cept maybe the Electric Eels, who they definitely have a thing or two in common with, sonically and otherwise). Two of the Consumers went on to play in 45 Grave, Human Hands and Dream Syndicate, while the other two Consumers went on to...die! Only two Consumers are still alive!! Punk as fuck.
A collection of straight-up punk rock culled from recordings spanning fifteen years ('77-92). Most are by The Controllers who were in existence from '77 to '79 (and reunited briefly in '96), a couple are by Skull Control ('92). Yes, these are the sounds of the early days of punk. Brought to you by garage and punk rock historians Bacchus Archives of Dionysus Records.
They may have set the bar impossibly high with 2001's Jane Doe, one of the most perfect punk metal / metallic punk rock records EVER, but it's really time to stop holding that against them, cuz even stacked up to Jane Doe, the records that followed (You Fail Me, No Heroes, Axe To Fall, and now this one) are impossibly dense, insanely heavy, progged out, super dynamic, mathy, tech metal hardcore genius, the sort of sound that most bands spend their whole lives aspiring too without ever coming close.
The sound here is really not that far removed from the last few full lengths, but as they say, why fix what ain't broke? That's not to say this is Axe To Fall part two, the band always seem deadset on pushing themselves and their sounds further and further, and every record, it seems that their sound couldn't get any more heavy and chaotic and furious and intricate, and yet it does. EVERY time. The band occasionally slip into something approaching more traditional punk rock bash and crash, but the majority of their time is spent maneuvering through maze like arrangements, stop-on-a-dime breakdowns, dizzying almost psychedelic blasts of facemelting heaviness, and even when they do get all punk rock, it's weirdly lush and layered and rife with texture and melody, and still about as mean and metallic as punk rock gets. And when they do slow it down, unfurling some doomy churn or some post rocky tangle, it's impossible not to imagine a room full of sweaty punks losing their shit. Hell, even listening to this on headphones, it's kinda hard not to just go apeshit. And with all this furious mathed out punk and chugging metallic crush, not to mention some rad classic metal guitar harmonies (check out "Sadness Comes Home"), it still manages to somehow be catchy as fuck. Music this crazed and chaotic should not be so goddamn catchy, but it is Converge after all, and once again, they've created a modern metal punk masterpiece, that a whole 'nother generation can analyze and pick apart, desperately trying to discover what warped musical DNA can produce sounds like these. As for us, we don't really care where it comes from. As long as it keeps coming. We'd definitely expect this to end up on lots of folks year end lists. It's definitely gonna make ours...
Metalcore is sort of a dirty word these days it seems; conjuring up images of Warped Tours and Hot Topic's. All the short haired emo guys are now playing brutal-tech-death metal while the dirty long haired metalhead guys are slowing it down, making all kinds of epic post rock and convoluted math rock. What gives? Converge continue to blaze their own path and break down the boundaries between hardcore and metal, while incorporating bits of noise and other weird sounds, the REAL crossover.
Converge were sort of always the hardcore black sheep, too noisy, too metal, not punk enough. Going on 15 years now, Converge have been the kings of the underground, subtly or not so subtly influencing all the metalcore outfits that have gone on to be HUGE. It's time for the world to recognize that Converge have been making some of the most progressive, and beautifully fucked up metallic punk rock music of the last two decades.
No Heroes falls sonically somewhere between the all time metalcore milestone Jane Doe and their more recent, but equally as punishing and original You Fail me.�The pace is furious, hovering around warp speed most of the time, but these guys are masters, and amidst the cacophonous, chaotic din lurk all sorts of sonic surprises, tone of space and atmosphere, discordant, jagged, chunky, choppy riffs, incredibly complex rhythms, as well as hooks galore, all masterfully whipped into a glorious metalcore frenzy.
Highly recommended.
Converge have always been one of the best metalcore bands around. But with the release of Jane Doe a few years back they quickly moved right to the head of the line, having crafted what is most definitely the most amazing, heaviest, most complex, catchiest and most chaotic metalcore record ever. EVER. So once again we're faced with what would almost have to be a massive disappointment after the total Godhead that was Jane Doe. But we should know better than to doubt Converge. While this record may not be quite as good as Jane Doe, it almost doesn't matter. In fact it's a whole different kind of record. Not nearly as dense and chaotic as Jane Doe, You Fail Me is strangely melodic and dare we say almost new wave at times. Now don't get all scared off. You Fail Me is still heavier and more brutal than almost any record you'll hear this year, but there's a lot more weirdness going on. A lot more space, and more experimentation. Not so much being 'experimental' per se, but more dabbling in some distinctly un-Converge like sounds, pop melodies, acoustic guitars, clean singing, angular new wave-ish guitar, bouncy almost emo-ish rhythms, folky ambience, but all safely ensconced in a jagged, prickly nest of swirling metallic guitars, chugging downtuned riffs, ridiculous drumming and throbbing punch-in-the-gut bass. Definitely weirder, but quite possibly just as good as Jane Doe. Just in a wonderfully different way.
If you're anything like us, you saw the names of these two bands and immediately added this to your cart. Cuz really, what more do you need to know about either of these bands that you don't already? Anyone into heavy music, who isn't obsessed with either or both of these groups is missing out big time. Both now celebrating their 20 year anniversaries, and commemorating that fact with this split 7", featuring one track from each band, recorded last year. The Converge track is a killer (of course), pairing grinding blasting furious verses with an impossibly melodic / catchy refrain, that's downright poppy. DropDead counter with what they do best, a blasting, thrashing, pounding slab of political hardcore, no frills, howled vox over grinding riffage and pounding drums, furious and frenzied and somehow catchy like crazy. We imagine fans of both or either will absolutely need this, and this also works as a pretty sweet introduction to two of the most important punk rock / hardcore bands of the last two decades! Pressed on blue vinyl, includes a download coupon as well, and guessing it's also probably pretty limited.
We do love our lo-fi New Zealand indie rock, and South Auckland's Coolies apparently realize that we like it best really lo-fi... and noisy... 'cause that's what they deliver! We're not surprised we dig 'em so much, 'cause their current drummer happens to be Stefan Neville, of AQ-fave NZ noise-popsters Pumice (and The Futurians, etc.), and he also recorded, mixed and edited the material on Master. Otherwise consisting of girls (Tina and Sjionel), who started the band as teens, Coolies have been around since the late '90s, releasing a 7" back in 2000, and a 10-song tape recorded on a ghetto blaster... but this is their first full-length cd, comprising music made over the past four or so years since Stefan joined the band. Raucous, energetic, poppy, punky, "annoying" (their word), "brilliant" (also theirs, but we tend to agree), the ten tracks on Master, most of 'em short sharp shocks, should appeal to NZ noise nerds, as well as peeps into today's burgeoning garage punk girl-groop soundz like Vivian Girls, Brilliant Colors, Grass Widow... the DIYness of this also brings to mind those Messthetics comps of '80s UK cassette culture. Oh and we're also reminded of Kleenex/Liliput. In short, the Coolies are cool. If you're in the mood for some raw, angular, urgently rhythmic "pop" songs that is! From the same label that brought us recent the Record Of The Week by Fabulous Diamonds, another Down Under fave...
('Tis also on vinyl, we're out at the moment, but should get some soon...)
If this cd-r is any indication (which we assume it is, duh!) these Coolies are not those Simon & Garfunkel-covering punk rock-opera (!) guys from back in the '80s -- much to Andee's chagrin, mention of this band really got his hopes up. No although these Coolies are also punk rock, they're more of the lo-lo-fi and lo-lo-skilled sort. But they don't let that take away from their good times... nor will it take away from yours if you like your rawk super messy and super trashy. Actually if that's the case, your party might even rev up a notch if you pop this baby on your stereo. Just imagine if the Coachwhips were three teenage girls... lotsa yellin' and bangin' on drums and sloppy guitar chords and probably lotsa PBR (or the New Zealand equivalent to that brew). This release comes with a Coolies button for your backpack.
Every batch of tapes we get from our pal Jason's Ormolycka label, is like weirdo music nerd Christmas. But instead of getting socks or a sweater we get some obscure Japanse grind, or some damaged electro, some goofy white boy hip hop, or some lost psychedelic rarity. There's some seriously demented curatorial music genius going on, and this latest bunch of tapes is no exception. Instead of overwhelming you with all of them at once though, we'll pick a couple of our favorites, and review them all over the course of the next few lists. But if you do want them all, and why wouldn't you, just ask, and they can be yours!
Copout were a hardcore band from Tennessee, who were around for a few years in the early to mid nineties, whose various members would go on to play in bands like His Hero Is Gone, Talk Is Poison, Deathreat and others, and whose sound was very much aligned with the Slap-A-Ham stable back in the day, playing the annual Fiesta Grande fest with bands like Capitalist Casualties, No Comment, Discordance Axis, Man Is The Bastard, Agents Of Satan, Spazz, No Less, Noothgrush, so you get the idea, Copout fit pretty perfectly amongst all those bands, the sound raw and furious, a little metallic, lo-fi and fucking super pissed, shredded vocals over slashing guitars and wild drumming, punk as fuck for sure. This tape collects their entire recorded history which is not much, just a couple 7"s, a tape, and a couple comp tracks. Awesome.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
In a way, it'd be way easier to review this if it was the debut album from some new, unknown band. Then we could just talk about how it's a dark, heavy album of often speedy stoner metal with cavernous, killer riffs and a seemingly old school hardcore punk edge to it, that SLAYS. There, we said it, and really, 'nuff said.
But, 'cause it's in fact the new album from the reunited three-piece lineup of seminal '80s punk/metal act Corrosion Of Conformity, the same lineup responsible for the CoC's all time crossover classic Animosity from 1985 (Mike Dean, Woody Weatherman, and Reed Mullin), it comes with a lot of baggage. Some folks, punk rock CoC purists, probably won't even listen to it, having given up on the band years ago after they "went commercial" in the '90s. And even fans of '80s CoC willing to give this a go, won't find an Animosity part II here anyway. Which could understandably have been the expectation, one subject to unavoidable disappointment. Others, into the band's latter day Southern stoner rawk thing, might not understand why they're doing an album without longtime frontman Pepper Keenan (he of Down fame, as well). So yeah, lots of baggage, that really we don't want to delve into much more here, 'cause what we're saying is, give this a chance on its own terms, it's actually damn good. This boldly self-titled album is its own beast, a blend of the old and the new really. And the trio for sure seem energized by this return (somewhat) to their roots. They sound like they MEAN it.
While Animosity it ain't, they did prove on tour not long ago that they still could rip it up on the old Animosity-era material live (causing many 40-year old fans to risk injury in the moshpit, boy that was a bit scary). And for sure some of the tracks here are written that way, like the feedback laden "Leeches" and the speedy chugger "Rat City", both barely over 2 minutes in length. But there's a lot more to this album than putting the punk back into CoC... they also bring the metal. So, it's more like if some of their (better) later stuff was done with Animosity-era attitude, by those same dudes. Certainly CoC's "Southern Sabbath" tendencies are on display on tracks like "The Doom" (natch). We know they were/are fans of Trouble, you can hear that here... Also (though it almost seems weird to say), some Melvins too.
And what about the vocals? At first, we too thought, hmm, if they're gonna have longtime bassist and former frontman Mike Dean sing again, wouldn't the idea be for him to growl and yowl like he did back in the day? Instead, he's much more melodic here than we remember (but still, sounds a heckuva lot more punk than Pepper). Dean snarls and spits, but also SINGS. And sounds pretty cool doing so, we think! Love his slightly gargled, high pitched, fists-clenched croon on the rippin' "Your Tomorrow" for instance. (Reed also takes the mic on a few tracks, too.)
So, for what it's worth to fellow CoC fans/followers, in our opinion this is definitely their best album since Deliverance, at least. And the most metal they've been since Blind. And the most punk since Technocracy.
But, we don't want only those folks who already knew what the initials CoC stand for to buy this! Anyone who hates bourgeois society but likes skateboards and Sabbath ought to check this out. Likewise if you're just into badass metallic doomed out rockin'. Like we said, it slays.
Oh, the Seldon Hunt version of the CoC skull that adorns the cover is pretty cool, by the way!
(We've got the digipack cd edition with 2 bonus tracks while they last, or the import vinyl version w/ bonus 7"...)
Boris may be the drone dirge darlings right now, but we've always had a soft spot for their more obscure countrymen Corrupted. Where Boris revel in cartoonish imagery, seventies kitsch, eighties heavy metal, bell bottoms, double neck guitars, and balls out rock and roll, Corrupted lurk in the shadows, sullen and distanced, weary and wary, crusty and curmudgeonly, wrapped in mystery, each record printed in stark black and white, a Japanese band singing exclusively in Spanish strangely enough, who are obliquely political, and much more grim and gloomy than Boris at their droniest. Every record a massive plodding slab of depressive doom, epic and monstrously heavy, but with stretches of delicate beauty. Rumors have been floating around of a triple cd, single three hour song, Corrupted release, but until that truly materializes, El Mundo Frio will probably remain the heaviest, creepiest, most beautiful, epic, expansive slab of slowcore doom drone you will ever hear. Ever. One hour and twelve minutes. A cloud of shimmering drone underpins hazy, haunting piano and warm chordal swells, plucked harps and simple finger picked guitars. For almost ten minutes, Corrupted creep along dreamily, stepping lightly, drifting lazily through a stark ambient soundfield, before the heavens collapse and the sky begins to fall in huge crushing chunks, and massive stabs of super distorted guitars swell and crumble into an abstract pounding rhythm. Completely heavy, but strangely lovely at the same time. A lilting melody is hidden somewhere beneath all that buzz and rumble. Eventually the stabs slowly mutate into a creeping, loping post rock rhythm, with minor key strums, simple shuffling drumming and growled semi-spoken vocals, before the whole thing fades to almost nothingness, revisiting the delicate shimmer of the beginning of the record. The last twenty five minutes are mostly ambient with snatches of that hypnotic post rock, and a brief but furious explosion of soul crushing heaviness with the same vocals delivered now in a glass gargling gurgle, and then the track drifts off into ten plus minutes of barely there dreaminess, mostly single notes on the harp drifting like snow flakes against a black night sky. So lovely. Easily the most fully realized 'doom' or 'dirge' track ever wethinks. So emotionally charged, so effortlessly complex and yet so utterly and beautifully simple. Somehow it's the perfect blend of Boris's Flood (our favorite Boris!), the doleful slowcore of Low, the abstract dirge of Harvey Milk, the epic expansiveness of Godspeed You Black Emperor, the metallic post rock of Pelican, the downtuned ultradoom of Skepticism, and the majestic dreaminess of Growing.
Mighty expensive but well worth it. Comes packaged in an extravagant hardcover book style digipak, with a gorgeous booklet, lots of abstract black and white landscapes, printed on vellum and overlaid other images. So nice!
A lot has changed since we first listed Paso Inferior nearly a decade ago. Here's our very short review from way back then:
"Japanese crust-sludge band, super slow, super heavy. Their new disc. Some facts: 1) they just toured the States. 2) their lyrics are all sung in Spanish. 3) the drummer used to be in Omoide Hatoba, Boredoms guitarist Yamamoto's weird jazz/pop project, but he quit when Omoide signed to a major. 4) this album features only one song, it's 40+ minutes long... Great vegging-out music for fans of Earth, Sleep, Eyehategod, Swans, etc."
Well, all of that stuff still applies for sure, but this is not, as we thought, a vinyl reissue of the original cd. Instead this is a rerecorded version of Paso Inferior, recorded in 2002, utilizing the same themes and melodies, but a whole new song, the A side sonically similar to the original, the B side, a droney blissed out drift, which is in fact an 'ambient version' of the original Paso Inferior!!
Since the original release, the group has released several more records, each slower and more epic than the last, even incorporating piano and acoustic guitar. And you can hear that in the reimagined Paso. Their appeal spread way beyond the punk rockers and hardcore kids who held them so beloved. Metalheads are Corrupted obsessed nowadays, as are the new breed of dronedirgedoom fanatics. But back in the Paso Inferior days, they were the underground kings of sludge, sharing splits with pretty much every power violence band that was up for it. A band that was spoken of in hushed reverent tones, but whose actual recorded output, included only a single full length, Paso Inferior.
The spirit and power of the original are definitely present, but the sound is better, heavier, and weirdly pretty in that way only Corrupted seem to be able to pull off.
One sidelong doomsludge crawl, the guitars black and viscous, the track laced with squealing washed out feedback, the vocals a growled gurgle, the drums a loping lumbering pound, recent talk of a single 3 hour song don't seem at all far fetched when listening to the reimgined Paso Inferior, there's something magical and mysterious about the music of Corrupted, no matter how slow or sludgey or stripped down, it never gets boring, it sucks you in and soothes your spirit, while it crashes and pummels, mesmerizing, hypnotic, so heavy, but weirdly transcendental.
The other half of the new Paso Inferior is another sidelong epic, this one dark and ambient, all shimmery drones, haunting melodies, mysterious voices, a dreamy drift rife with long tones, layered chords, but all muted and blurred and stretched into something more dark and lovely than grim and ominous, perfectly balancing the sludgey sprawl on the flipside.
All new artwork to go with the music, black on black, shiny on matte, the band logo and flames or drips or streaks of some kind, inside a printed insert, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and of course CRAZY limited. In fact pretty sure this is out of print now and we might be one of the only places with copies. Which means, as always, these will go FAST.
Sadly, the legendary Japanese label HG Fact, longtime home to sludgelords Corrupted, closed up shop recently, rendering loads of amazing records gone for good, but Corrupted managed to acquire a handful of remaining copies of this otherwise out of print doom/sludge classic, and we got as many as we could from them - not many. So this is indeed available again, for what we're guessing will be a very, very limited time...
Here's our review from way back in 2004 when we first listed Se Hace Por Los Suenos Asesinos (and back when Boris were still a doom/sludge band as well):
It's time.
Be afraid.
Very afraid.
Or if you're a typical AQ customer and love your rock music glacier slow, tarpit thick and skull crushingly heavy, well then, in that case there's nothing to be afraid of!
Everyone may quake and tremble when the mighty Boris unleash a new slab of black hole mega dense heaviosity. And rightfully so. Few can keep up when it comes to slow motion riffage, tectonic pummel and massive planet destroying rock. But there is another....one who came before....one who resurfaces occasionally....to remind the world that this sleeping behemoth can rise at anytime and raze all that dare proclaim themselves HEAVY. That beast...is known as... the Corrupted. One of the few bands in Japan, nay the WORLD, that can go toe to toe with Boris and hope to survive, perhaps even triumph. Some of you may remember Corrupted's massive two disc set Llenandose de Gusanos, from 3 or 4 years back, one disc of minimal drones, one disc of crushing sonic sludge (and piano). Maybe the finest document of death/doom/drone/sludge ever recorded - except perhaps for the rumoured-to-exist triple disc (!) SINGLE SONG (!!) Corrupted epic that has yet to surface. But for now, we'll have to be happy with this new 35 minute monster. The disc opens with a 17 minute ambient folk dirge, just acoustic guitar and harshly whispered/grunted vocals. In Spanish (as always) and rumblingly hypnotic. Like a ultra grim, creepily acoustic Neurosis, all stripped down and stretched out. Never imagined just a voice and an acoustic guitar could be so fucking scary, but for almost twenty minutes, the low end folk sludge stretches on seemingly forever, narcoticizing and mesmerizing, before the second track drops like a ton of lead Marshall stacks. Massively loud and perplexingly heavy, HUGE slabs of downtuned guitars pour molten riffs down your willing throat, filling you with black tar melodies, jagged limb smashing drumming, and bass so low it seems to loosen the earth's crust around you. The final track picks up the pace, to barely midtempo, but certainly a breakneck speed for a lumbering behemoth like the Corrupted. Drummer Chew (formerly of Omoide Hatoba) gets to go all Animal on this track, smashing everything within reach, the only thing keeping him behind the kit is the impenetratable wall of mile-thick ocean-deep sonic sludge, like pouring a bucket of hot molasses on a porcupine. Or dropping a sea anenome in a vat of hot glue, or like listening to Black Sabbath with your ears full of mud. Where Boris is channelling all sort of seventies rock, and stoner riffage, albeit through their own slow motion filter, Corrupted are just really fucking scary. A huge uncontainable, slithering, squirming, unstoppable, slow-motion, crusty metallic black hole.
This is hardly a new record, but one we had for some reason or another never listed, and now we got it for a nice low price. Coughs (not to be confused with the doom band Cough) were part of Chicago's fertile underground noise rock scene from a few years back, and even though they have long since broken up, it's clear that today's crop of atonal noise mongers could still learn a thing or two. The band whips up a mighty hell of a racket, and people in Chicago still speak of them in somewhat mythical tones. Somehow they were able to merge numerous stylistic influences into something else altogether. Among other things, you will probably react immediately to the crazed female vocals stuck within a downtuned sea of no wave sludge... or something. Craziest of all is how musical it all is, in a scary as fuck, I'm losing my mind kind of way. The opening number, appropriately named "Quagmire", sets the stage for Secret Passage with intense, tom heavy drumming, a buzzing guitar riff, some skronky saxophone and awesome female screaming. "Happy Harvest" lurches forward with some strange riffing that seamlessly shifts from both extremes of the fretboard while super distorted bass rumbles nonstop. There's so much tension in the sound, like the band is just ready to take off into some crazy void, but the rhythm section keeps everything, maybe "grounded" isn't the right word, but at least right in your face where you can't ignore it. The insectoid guitars and the cloud of doominess on songs like "Bunny Slope" conjure up all kinds of disturbing imagery, while the forceful rhythms just can't be denied. It's cool how the songs go to all kinds of unexpected places, clearly the result of a band who had spent plenty of time bashing out improv noise into something that no one else could touch, like on "Intentional Community", which makes use of negative space for a truly disconcerting vibe. This is definitely not metal, but when listening, one can't ignore that Coughs were responsible for a truly unique and brutal attack that many metal bands would kill for. Tough luck for them, though. You either got it or you don't, and anyone who missed this the first time around should do themselves a favor and check it out. Highly recommended.
