Record number two from this new wave dreamgaze ambient electro wave songstress, and just like the first one it's a dizzying blend of synthed out electro, dark witch house-y creep and shoegazey 4AD style dream pop, all woven into a gorgeous, groovy bit of electronic skitter and stutter, but unlike the first record, this one seems to be mostly instrumental, the only real vocals seem to be sampled, and then processed and manipulated, conjuring up the same sort of murky abstract soul as Burial or How To Dress Well, but here, that's wedded to something much more upbeat and propulsive, record opener is serious groover, all hazy layered vocal samples, skittery big beats, and wooshy synths, not to mention some buzzy basslines and washed out shoegazey ambience. The second track does have vocals, but it's more like she's using her voice to make layers of sound, long tones held forever and wreathed in echo and delay, while beats careen undeneath, and all around shimmery melodies whirl and swirl, it's the one song here that most resembles the first record, channeling a little Zola Jesus, Tamaryn, etc.
Track three, "Head" starts out all glitchy and minimal, before exploding in a psychedelic squall, only to dissipate leaving a super minimal, skeletal heroin house pulse, while "Speed Of Rain" is the most polished and new wavey, heavy on the swirly dreamy 4AD shimmer, only to quickly give way to the 9 minute title track, which is low slung and ominous, taking some of that Goblin / Carpenter soundtrack sound and fusing it to something much more groovy and druggy and later night, and then finally there's the closer, "Strength In Free Space", which is the dreamiest of the bunch, another vocal driven song, but even more then the other one, this one's all hazy and gauzy and washed out and dreamy, like a much less lo-fi dancefloor friendly Grouper, which is most certainly not a bad thing.
Wow, for a band that legendarily never really made, like, any "official" albums, certainly no studio ones, we sure have written a lotta reviews of releases by 'em! Not that we're complaining, we'll happily gobble up whatever obscure documents by these gents that reissue labels like Phoenix manage to dig up. After all, these Japanese Seventies psych subversives are one of those bands that inspired an entire scene, it seems, with all shades-wearing Tokyo psych acts of the modern era (Fushitsusha, LSD-march, Up-Tight, Miminokoto, etc. etc.) owing them allegiance. Themselves inspired by the dark urban psych of the Velvets, plus a dose of oddly enough Motown rhythms... and an even bigger dose of hiss, distortion and feedback. All noise / psych rock freeks definitely should delve into the mystery and murk of Les Rallizes.
This one, named for a 1970 Sam Peckinpah western (?), is a soundtrack to a live VHS video (we've never seen) released back in 1992, compiled by Rallizes leader Takashi Mizutani himself, a "best of" of sorts, demonstrating that these psychedelic hermits have sounded always as blisteringly blown-out and otherworldly rockin' and rollin' since their inception in 1967... it could be '72, it could be '79, it could be '83, it could be '92, it doesn't matter, when Les Rallizes take the stage they're in their own universe anyway, where time and other natural laws (musical ones too) operate differently. Where were we in '92? Just discovering Fushitsusha, probably, not yet hip to the true godhead that is Les Rallizes.
At first, when confronted with the heavy duty, distorted throb of the first few tracks, you might think, cool, but this does sound like stuff you already have heard by Rallizes, so do you really need more? Well, first off, if you're like us, you probably do... and anyway, wait, 'cause this is a sprawling double cd set after all, and eventually it reveals some sides to Les Rallizes that seemed new to us. Stuff that's so amazingly echoed-out, it's practically dub music. Beyond dub music, even. (Hmm, that'd be interesting, if someone did a dub version of a Rallizes track... would it collapse in on itself somehow?). There's also moments that have to be some of the most melodic, prettiest Rallizes to ever grace our ears... and some of their heaviest stuff is here too.
'Cause this is sort of a "greatest hits", the tracks that sound familiar are of course performances of songs we've heard in other incarnations on other Rallizes releases, and again they are as 'perfectly' realized (Rallizesised?) as any renditions you'll hear.
So, yeah, Cable Hogue easily winds up in the "essential" category... with almost all the other Rallizes records we've heard. Limited, numbered, cardstock "wallet" packaging.
8-bit, Nintendo, thrash metal. We're putting those keywords up at the start of this review to grab your attention, just in case you've never heard of Lich King before. Or even if you have, 'cause this ain't anything like the usual record by 'em. Massachusetts' zombie-lovin' Lich King are a New Wave Of Old School Thrash band, one of many these days (there's quite a glut), and they're pretty good. Although we've never felt compelled to actually review any of their albums before, some of the metalheads here do own a couple Lich King discs themselves. Even moreso than some other current retro thrash revivalists like Gama Bomb and Municipal Waste, Lich King are probably best known for their overt sense of humor. They write songs with titles like "Black Metal Sucks", "Behaver", and (they deserve an award, or at least a chuckle, for this one) "Attack Of The Wrath Of The War Of The Death Of The Strike Of The Sword Of The Blood Of The Beast". There's a tradition of fun and humor in '80s thrash metal after all (Anthrax! S.O.D.!), so their silliness makes 'em all the more authentic, especially since it doesn't stop 'em from spitting out some totally legit riffage, in the vein of Slayer and Nuclear Assault and Exodus, et. al.
With this release, for their own amusement mainly, the boys in Lich King decided to get even sillier, and recorded a bunch of their own tunes 8-bit chiptune '80s video game style!! Perhaps they were inspired by the internet-only fan band 8 Bit Mayhem's black metal covers (whose "De Mysteriis Dom Supernes" album is well worth Googling). Or maybe AQ fave Xexyz (if you liked that, you want this!). Certainly they were inspired by their own childhoods, playing Nintendo. In any case, a cool idea. With Super Retro Thrash, it's revealed just how catchy Lich King's songs really are. Stripped of vocals and guitar distortion, here it's all about the "riffs" and rhythms. And they're relentless, mind numbingly mesmerizing, we're lovin' it.
There's 9 songs here, including two unreleased as yet tunes from Lich King's next, upcoming proper album. And yes, among the "hits" they've selected, you get an 8-bit version of "Attack Of The Wrath Of The...", along with chipped-out takes on "ED-209" (their Robocop themed song), "Combat Mosh", "Toxic Zombie Onslaught", and more, including also the aforementioned "Black Metal Sucks".
The ironic thing is, not only is this the first Lich King album we've ever reviewed, we're also honestly more into it than any other of their "actual" albums, having listened to it lots more already (it's addictive!), AND surely will sell lots more of these than we would of any other Lich King release ever. We pretty sure it will be a big AQ hit like the Xexyz, or the Iron Maiden electro album. Meanwhile, it's something THEY thought only a few fans would want, it's limited to just 299 numbered copies!!! We got a bunch, but dunno if we'll be able to get (m)any more. The graphics are great, parodying an actual NES cartridge (we love the little lo-res Lich King guy depicted on there, rushing around Mario-style), photographed like it's sitting on a shaggy green carpet in someone's family room back in the '80s.
Fuzzed-out, jangly garage-pop dreaminess from SF's Lilac, new project from guitarist of local favorites Bridez. Heavy hitting distorted guitars strummed under dual male/female vocals, distant organ haze fluttering about, amp melting leads sailing over bratty lyrics and pure punk rock attitude, all thrown together into a super catchy, blurred-out rock and roll bonanza.
This document of raw and primitive American black metal has been resurrected and reissued on vinyl by the Dais label. An unlikely choice, considering the rest of the Dais catalog, but in its own way, this collection of outsider blackness is a pretty good fit. This Kentucky one man band recorded only two cassette demos, between 1993 and 1994, only one of which was ever released. Originally thought to be a joke, the liner notes in this new edition state explicitly that "the hatred radiating from these recordings is real!", and while the man behind these sounds was known as Roach back in the day, he now goes by the name James Brown III, and is a member of LA black metallers Harassor (and is responsible for the awesome Moon Knight tape we reviewed a while back)!
Eleven blasts of blasting, pounding blackness, primitive and raw, fierce and feral, the guitars buzz maniacally, the drums super lo-fi, boomy and rehearsal space sounding, the vokills so awesome, a sick demonic croak, all woven into short sharp bursts of true black metal grimnity, the songs slipping from mid-tempo plod to furious blast and back again, the sound fantastically lo-fi, blown out, murky and muddy, buzzy and black.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, incredible packaging, black matte finish sleeves, with red metallic foil stamped artwork, the lp is one sided, with a cool satanic etching on the B side, inside is a huge 12"x12" booklet with lyrics, photos, and two interviews with Lord Foul from way back in 1994.
The last few months have given us a flurry of Mamiffer releases, first a split with Aaron Turner's House Of Low Culture, then another split with dark drone-noise heavies Oakeater, and now a brand new full length. With a pedigree that includes members of Everlovely Lightningheart and These Arms Are Snakes, and a crew of guests that has included folks from Isis and Helms Alee and others, you think this band would be sonically in line with their Hydrahead brethren, but instead, Mamiffer do their own thing entirely, which is not at all metal, and certainly not heavy, at least in the traditional sense. Instead, Mamiffer traffics in sprawling expanses of piano driven ambience, epic soundscapes the drift and shimmer and smolder, sometimes hushed and abstract, other times dense and dark and ominous and yeah, a little bit heavy.
This brand new one, released on Aaron Turner's new label Sige, finds the band perfecting their sound, creating a collection of songs that sounds like a more sinister Godspeed, the arrangements intricate and complex, the long songs drifting through multiple movements, all deftly assembled into these mini epics.
Take Mare Decendrii opener, "As Freedom Rings", which begins with a hazy layered bit of shimmery drone, before haunting piano joins the fray, then it's like some sort of haunted chamber music, eventually some heavy guitar comes in, but instead of launching into some crushing doom, the rest of the band switches gears and play something that sounds like the Rachel's, over which someone has laid thick swaths of crumbling distorted guitar. There are drums, and when they come in, the song gets marginally more propulsive, and a bit more proggy, in come strings as well, super cinematic and soundtracky, chantlike vocals, its like some strange Three Mile Pilot / Master Musicians Of Bukkake hybrid, brooding, and haunting, and mysterious and fantastically epic.
The rest of the record follows suit, varied for sure, but all woven into an elaborate and ever shifting tapestry, from soaring female vocal driven minimal chamber rock dirge, to shimmery hushed high end ambience, to creepy apocalyptic folk (at moments sounding like a piano-fied Woven Hand), to dark drifts of solo piano, to slow building doom flecked post rock churn, to barely there minimal low end thrum, to dreamy drifty abstract soundscapes...
Good stuff, another strange and mysterious, haunting and beautiful collection of heavy avant sonic abstraction from these audio alchemists!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
What else needs to be said about Mississippi Fred McDowell really, a legendary blues icon for sure, whose music is not rare really or difficult to come by, but we imagine part of the purpose of these Mississippi reissues is to introduce a whole new generation to these artists and sounds, and to make them available on vinyl. These recordings are the very first McDowell ever made, recorded at his home, a farm north of Como, Mississippi, in 1959 by the legendary field recordist Alan Lomax, and demonstrate McDowell's unique guitar playing (with a homemade bottleneck slide) and distinctive voice. Minimalist and powerful, raw and deeply moving, McDowell would become well known for being covered by The Rolling Stones and playing at the Newport Jazz festival in 1964, but it's these early tracks that display the true magic of his music. Essential blues!
Housed in nice thick sleeves, and includes an insert with liner notes.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
A gorgeous unearthed gem from Mississippi records, two tracks from Mauritanian singer and guitarist Hadrami Ould Medeh, a member of L'Orchestre Nationale de Mauritanie, the first modern Mauritanian musical group, this single originally pressed up in Lebanon and released in 1970, or more accurately, given away free to friends and family, this new version is an exact reproduction of that original single, right down to the label, and the fact that there's almost no English text on the sleeve or the label. But throw it on and you'll be blown away. If like us you didn't know where Mauritania is, it borders Mali, which makes sense sonically when you hear this. You've likely heard similar sounds on some Sublime Frequencies comp, and in fact, anyone into SF stuff will want to nab this quick, fluttering flutes, muted wah wah guitars, shuffling drums, and the vocals, emotional and oh so lovely, another comparison would be the Ethiopiques series, as this definitely sounds similar. No sound sample, but check out this video, and you'll be sold:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTbQfcY7N1A&NR=1
And while you're at it, check out this one too:
http://youtu.be/ud8fm-Pjbd0
As thriving as the garage rock scene is in San Francisco, it's important to note there is some pretty amazing pop being crafted in these parts as well. We loved what we heard on the debut 12" by Melted Toys on Underwater Peoples that we listed a few months back, so we were super excited to get a brand new track of their low-key, yet so infectious breezy and subtly washed out pop.
Dominant Legs, we first heard when they opened for Girls at a breathtaking show at the Swedish American Hall a couple years ago. In fact, the band's main man, Ryan Williams Lynch is one of the guitarists in Girls, and there has always been something about him on stage that made us keep our eyes locked on him, as we knew there was something pretty special about his presence. Along side Hannah Hunt, and a full band with super strong chops, they create such a wonderful version of 2011 boy/girl cuddle-core. Think Belle & Sebastian meets The Softies doing Roy Orbison covers.
Released by the French label, Atelier Cesium, the 7" comes with a digital download.
We first heard Australian one man black metal band Moon, on a three way split with Nekros Manteia and long time aQ fave Nekrasov. At the time, we described Moon's sound as merging black metal atmosphere with more contemplative noise elements, resulting in a creepy, unsettling droned out chunk of twisted experimental blackness.
Caduceus Chalice seems to be the fully realized vision of what was only hinted at on that one track, a sprawling songsuite equal parts murky blown out riffage, and blurred blackened ambience, a spectral black soundworld, the guitars, woozy and lugubrious, sounding at times like they're being played in slow motion, the stretches of atmospheric ambience, only a step away from Philip Jeck or the Caretaker, that same sort of of washed out, faded feel, and Moon does deliver the blackness, the riffing is blurred and smeared into whirling streaks of sounds, layers of softly undulating black gauze, wrapped around surprisingly poppy guitar melodies, and the drumming, muted and buried until it's just a heartbeat like pulse, the only TRULY black metal element is the vocals, but even those are hazy and seemingly wordless, wreathed in effects, that lets them seemingly melt into the sounds around them.
A lot of Caduceus Chalice almost sounds like the record was recorded at 45, and then pressed to disc at 33, everything exuding a sort of haunted drag, as if the sounds were trying to extricate themselves from some black sonic tarpit.
There are moments where that murky atmosphere is shrugged off, for the most part, and Moon can engage in some proper buzz and blast, but even them, there's a gauzy patina over everything, muting the sounds and dulling the sharp edges, which only makes everything seem that much more mysterious and ominous. Minus the vocals, this almost sounds like some sort of experimental shoegaze blackdrone record, drifting and hovering, lumbering and loping as much if not more then buzzing and blasting. "Caduceus" might be our favorite of the bunch, a mournful midtempo lament, that were it not for the vokills, would be the prettiest saddest doom pop song ever, but with the vox added, just sounds that much more anguished and abject.
The record finishes off with the 19 minute "Chalice", a lumbering balladic dirge, the drums simple and Swans-like, the guitars whirling amorphous chordal clouds, processed vocals adding a haunting choral quality, reminding us a bit of Skepticism, but again, sweetly melancholic and darkly melodic, no vocals either, so this could totally pass for some blackened dronepop ballad, even though it's actually a washed out ghostlike slo-mo black metal lament.
Fans of Xasthur and Moloch and other purveyors of mournful, ambient, buzz drenched blackness would do well to explore Moon's mysterious soundworld...
If we had to pick THEE most warped and bizarre and musically confusional motherfucker out there, we just might have to pick Nondor Nevai, sometime member of To Live And Shave In L.A., but with a pretty sizable catalog of completely fractured and fucked solo recordings, not to mention he plays in a duo with Mick Barr, which is like a free-metal freakout, which really has to be heard to be believed. As does this, the latest outing from NN, self described as "murderous freeblasting klassikill" performed on "an amplified organ so distorted and piercing it is painful", which is pretty much spot on, but there's way more going on. The provenance of discovering this record might put it in perspective. Someone sent us an amazing video, featuring Nondor Nevai, in a snowy clearing in the middle of a dark forest, next to a tree with a severed deer head tied to it, NN in black jeans and suspenders, shirtless, huge shaggy mop of hair, arms covered in blood, wildly headbanging as he lights an upside down plywood cross and chugs alcohol, and most importantly, getting all up in the camera, menacingly brandishing his iPhone! That phone clutched in his outstretched hand 'invisible orange' style. And the music, suitably warped, blasting buzzing weirdness, check it out for yourself:
http://nandornevai.com/movies.html
So when NN got in touch we ordered a bunch of this new record, a super limited (only 250 copies) 180 gram 12", housed in a super thick, gatefold sleeve, with a killer patch affixed to one side, featuring a strange image of some sort of demon hovering over the earth, glowing silver hands holding arrows crossed in front of this hooded visage, bearing the legends "Overshadower Kommand" and "Kolder Than Heaven". Once you finally make it past the eye popping art and the confusional text, you'll discover a sprawling collection of what can only be described as electro classical black prog doom whatthefuck. Buzzy super distorted melodies, twisted processed vokills, heavily panned so they stutter swinging wildly from speaker to speaker, the songs alternately plodding along menacingly, lumbering and lurching or occasionally slipping into ferocious blackened blasts. There's plenty of Goblin-y ambience here and there, but even those bits are wrapped around wild octopoidal drumming, the sound not really black metal, but definitely black, and occasionally metallic, instead it's like some twisted carnivalesque black prog, which to us sounds like a dream/nightmare combination of ELP, Vondur and Orthrelm, which needless to say, means this RULES.
Baffling and brilliant, totally recommended for folks who like their heaviness as fucked up as possible, total outsider black prog bliss.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!
Omit is the longstanding project of New Zealand's finest electron technician Clinton Williams, who dropped out of high school close to two decades ago and holed himself up in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere New Zealand to wrangle with analogue synthesizers, 8-track tape decks, unruly drum machines, and a small army of effects pedals. There was a time in the '90s when Williams' output was ridiculously prolific, through countless cassettes in tiny editions and a handful of lathe-cut singles. His work caught the attention of the Dead C's Bruce Russell, who was so taken by Williams' work that he collaborated with the man as Dust/Omit and released a handful of discs through Russell's seminal Corpus Hermeticum imprint. Upon the release of the 1997 3cd boxset Quad, Williams' Omit project began to slow down tremendously. The quality of work had certainly continued, but the wealth of releases was considerably diminished. In 1999, there was Interior Desolation, brilliant with its squealing pigs adding to electronic claustrophobia. Then Anomalous released Rejector in 2002; and Helen Scarsdale had the honor of releasing the epochal darkness of Tracer (2005), and now the skeletal rhythmicist drones on Interceptor.
Working in isolation has lead Williams to develop a language which is entirely his own, yet exhibits a curious convergent evolution with many of the other greats in DIY electronics - most notably Chris Carter from his days in Throbbing Gristle, Mika Vainio and his early hyper-minimal phaseshifting experiments in post-techno, and the gaping proto-industrial paranoia of Klaus Schulze. His work is simultaneously ponderously huge and effortlessly simple, as his sounds hover along intertwining sweeps of synthetic ambience grafted to simple rhythmic structures. The saddest melodies in the world poke through Omit's cold and barren surfaces, accenting the isolationist tendencies already inherent in these sounds. Interceptor is a slight detour in the Omit aesthetic, and the detour was by design as Williams had ventured outside of his hometown of Blenheim in search of a job. But he also brought two suitcases of gear with him to continue his recording. The frustrations he felt in his failure to secure employment are matched in the bleak gestures found on Interceptor. Williams had stripped away much of the grandiose sweeps of ambience and shadow, leaving behind a life-support system grid of overlapping, phase-shifted blip and click. An undertow of hypnotic tonalities pulls those rhythms towards a crepuscular gloom, which as with all of Omit's work are effortless in their compositional appearance. Anybody, and we mean ANYBODY, who has a passing interest in electronic music - contemporary, historic, surreal, arcane, Warp-ish, Kompakt-ish, or otherwise - has got to do themselves a favor and investing the time into Omit. The rewards are infinite from this under recognized, autodidactic genius.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
We've been swamped with a barrage of new Mississippi releases, all of them amazing, including this, a gorgeous bit of music from Mali, from the Orchestre Rail Band De Bamako, a sun dappled bit of Latin/Cuban influenced African jazz recorded in 1970. Orchestre Rail Band De Bamako were one of the most popular bands in Mali, melding Afro Latin jazz with traditional African music, incorporating Western instrumentation, mixing horns, and soaring vocals, electric guitar and African percussion into a truly unique sound. Fronted by legendary vocalist Salif Keita when this album was recorded, the Orchestre Rail Band De Bamako had a constantly shifting lineup, launching the careers of many famous performers, and they continue to perform today. But this 1970 recording might be their most famous, and perhaps their best, warm and lush, the vocals so beautiful, and the instrumentation and arrangements gorgeous, the sound so evocative it almost transports the listener right back to seventies Mali. Dreamy and divine.
As with all Mississippi releases, packaged in a nice thick full color jacket, no insert this time, just the original liner notes reproduced on the back of the sleeve.
One of four new releases from UK weirdo tape label The Tapeworm (three this list, the 4th on the next), and as always, a baffling selection of sounds, this one from an entity/artist known as Othon, and the label description makes it seem like we should know Othon, this is in fact the first we've heard, and it's hard to tell if this is indicative of his usual sound or not. The A side, as the title might suggest, is solo piano, and is quite lovely, the original is dramatic and dynamic, slipping from lilting and melancholy to bombastic and intense. The side finishes off with two interpretations of pieces by Chopin and Mendelssohn.
The B side features Othon's oldest recordings, captured live during his final recital at London's Trinity College back in 2006, and features a super dramatic bit of operatic bombast, with Othon on the first track pounding away, unfurling dense flurries of notes on the piano, accompanied by fluttering flute, and all supporting some super intense operatic vocals, while the second track is more hushed and low key, but dramatic in its own way, but here you can hear the crowd, camera shutters clicking, feet shuffling, adding a strange bit of ambience to the very intense musical drama playing out before them.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!
A while back we made eighties Alaskan heavy metal band Pandemonium's 1983 debut album Heavy Metal Soldiers our Record Of The Week, and as we mentioned then, all three of their records were great, and we were essentially making ALL THREE albums ROTW. And most people did what we would have done, and bought all three, cuz they are really incredible, standing head and shoulders above what was going on at the time musically. But since we didn't technically review/list the other two, we figured we oughta just in case. For the folks who might have missed our review of Heavy Metal Soldiers, or who didn't buy all three thinking we'd review the other two eventually, well, here you go. First the lowdown on Pandemonium:
The history of music is littered with could have been's and should have been's, and of course what ever happened to's? We all have a favorite band, that for whatever reason never quite made it, or perhaps did make it, but never got nearly as popular as the hundreds and thousands of seemingly less talented bands that did. Unfortunately, it's never just about the music when it comes to critical and commercial success. But it is ONLY about the music when it comes to the joy of creating that music, and the pleasure of listening to it, and the fun of mixtape making, and DJing and all the various other ways we share the music we love. But sadly, that love does not always coincide with the ever important 'right time, right place', and of course, there's so much going on behind and beyond the music. Bands poised for greatness often implode, creative differences, arguments over money, tragic accidents, lack of support from a label, then there's the fickle winds of change, the ever shifting tastes of the public, and well as cultural shifts, be they MTV or grunge or radio or downloads. In some ways, we're lucky, that folks are constantly looking back, and rediscovering music that was overlooked the first time around, or simply giving people a chance to discover something that perhaps happened before they were born, or when they were too young to enjoy it. There's also the regional aspect, there was a time before the internet (did such a time even exist???), where a band could be hugely successful in their hometown, but literally unknown a town or state away.
Back in the eighties, THEE place to be a band, especially a metal band, was Los Angeles. The Sunset Strip. Motley Crue and Poison and glam and hair metal. Los Angeles was the epicenter, and spawned band after band, Guns And Roses, Faster Pussycat, L.A. Guns, Great White, and if you lived in Southern California, there were about a million other bands you could see and hear, all trying to make it big. And bands would come from all over the country, and the world, to Los Angeles, where they could find fame and fortune (oh, and girls and booze and drugs!). Which is precisely what a band of brothers from way up in Alaska did, moved to LA, made a handful of records, achieved moderate success, and then called it quits. That band was Pandemonium, and for us, they were THAT band, the one we were discussing in the first paragraph. A band that looked great, sounded amazing, wrote incredible songs, were ready, willing and able to go for it, who seemed poised for the big time, ready to sign to a major, play stadiums, tour the world, but for whatever reason, it just never really happened for them. And yet, they were always one of our favorite bands of the time. Their three album rank amongst our favorite eighties metal records, so much so, that when Andee and Allan, were planning on starting an eighties metal reissue label, with Pandemonium being one of the first releases (Rogue Male being the other!), Andee even got in touch with the band, and things were in the works, and it looked like it might actually happen, but then alas it did not. But at last, the band DID finally end up reissuing all three on hard rock reissue label Retrospect (who were responsible for that crazy hair metal festival Rocklahoma), and finally, these three records are available again, with new liner notes and even BONUS TRACKS, so after years of playing these records to death, and making tapes for everyone we know, and buying every copy we ever came across used to give to friends, we can now express out undying love for these records, so hooky and heavy, and like we said, some of the best eighties metal records you've probably never heard (or even heard of!).
Initially we wanted to make all three our Record(s) Of The Week, selling them as a bundle, since in our minds, they were sort of one epic collection of songs that we had been listening to all together for the last nearly 30 years, but then we figured we wanted folks who might not be that inclined to check out some obscure eighties hard rock, to give Pandemonium a chance, so we picked the first one, the one that made us lose our minds for these guys in the first place, maybe the catchiest of the bunch, but as the band progressed, they moved away from hair metal and that Sunset strip sound, getting darker and heavier, and who could argue with that?!
Hole In The Sky was record number two, originally released in 1985, and pretty much picked up right where Heavy Metal Soldiers left off, and while sonically, the shift wasn't super dramatic, it's easy to hear that something had changed, within the first few minutes of opening track "Eye Of The Storm", the vibe is way more sinister, the riffing distinctively darker, even the drumming, the sound seeming to straddle the more poppy metal of their debut, and the more progressive strains of speed metal, the guitar solos too much more fierce and intense, and while lyrically, even on the first record, the band didn't shy away from heavy topics, things definitely got more serious on Hole In The Sky (named for the Black Sabbath song, another indicator of what these guys were maybe shooting for). But that all said, they still didn't shy away from anthemic choruses, and big hooks, it was just that the vibe was different, "Look Of Death" on the surface, sounds like a fist raising head banging sing along, but mix in the wild solos, the cool minor key melodies, and it transformed the song into something else entirely. Then there are tracks like "Imprisoned By Snow", which definitely found Pandemonium channeling Sabbath, lumbering, almost doomy, epic and heavy, all of which is balanced by their killer cover of Trooper's "Boys In The Bright White Sportscar", but even that chunk of metallic poppiness sounds a little bit sinister here.
The perfect progression from Heavy Metal Soldiers, and the perfect bridge between the more poppy sound of that record, and their final, and perhaps hardest and heaviest, 1988's The Kill.
This reissue tacks on a couple of bonus tracks from their 1982 demo, which definitely hints at the bands heavier roots, even in the beginning, with a sound before the first record that was a bit darker and more brooding, but no less hooky. Also included are liner notes, tracing the history of the band by guitarist David Resch, loads of photos too. And sadly, vocalist Chris Resch passed away in 2007, even as the band was gearing up to maybe record new material. But what a legacy all three records are to him, his brothers, and the dream that almost was. And the records that were such a huge part of our lives, as a teenager, but also an adult.
Not sure what else to say, for 3 decades we've been listening to these guys, and we have yet to get tired of these songs, in fact the second the reissues showed up, we threw them on and have basically been listening to nothing else since. After all that, do we even have to say it? TOTALLY AND ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED! If you dig eighties metal and hard rock, or wonder what a NWOBHM band like Witchfinder General would sound like if they were from LA (via Alaska), this is a no brainer, but if that has never really been your thing, think about giving these records a try anyway, it's just poppy and catchy enough that you might be surprised. Check out the sound samples too, if you're anything like us, you might become equally obsessed.
A while back we made eighties Alaskan heavy metal band Pandemonium's 1983 debut album Heavy Metal Soldiers, our Record Of The Week, and as we mentioned then, all three of their records were great, and we were essentially making ALL THREE albums ROTW. And most people did what we would have done, and bought all three, cuz they are really incredible, standing head and shoulders above what was going on at the time musically. But since we didn't technically review/list the other two, we figured we oughta just in case. For the folks who might have missed our review of Heavy Metal Soldiers, or who didn't buy all three thinking we'd review the other two eventually, well, here you go. First the lowdown on Pandemonium:
The history of music is littered with could have been's and should have been's, and of course what ever happened to's? We all have a favorite band, that for whatever reason never quite made it, or perhaps did make it, but never got nearly as popular as the hundreds and thousands of seemingly less talented bands that did. Unfortunately, it's never just about the music when it comes to critical and commercial success. But it is ONLY about the music when it comes to the joy of creating that music, and the pleasure of listening to it, and the fun of mixtape making, and DJing and all the various other ways we share the music we love. But sadly, that love does not always coincide with the ever important 'right time, right place', and of course, there's so much going on behind and beyond the music. Bands poised for greatness often implode, creative differences, arguments over money, tragic accidents, lack of support from a label, then there's the fickle winds of change, the ever shifting tastes of the public, and well as cultural shifts, be they MTV or grunge or radio or downloads. In some ways, we're lucky, that folks are constantly looking back, and rediscovering music that was overlooked the first time around, or simply giving people a chance to discover something that perhaps happened before they were born, or when they were too young to enjoy it. There's also the regional aspect, there was a time before the internet (did such a time even exist???), where a band could be hugely successful in their hometown, but literally unknown a town or state away.
Back in the eighties, THEE place to be a band, especially a metal band, was Los Angeles. The Sunset Strip. Motley Crue and Poison and glam and hair metal. Los Angeles was the epicenter, and spawned band after band, Guns And Roses, Faster Pussycat, L.A. Guns, Great White, and if you lived in Southern California, there were about a million other bands you could see and hear, all trying to make it big. And bands would come from all over the country, and the world, to Los Angeles, where they could find fame and fortune (oh, and girls and booze and drugs!). Which is precisely what a band of brothers from way up in Alaska did, moved to LA, made a handful of records, achieved moderate success, and then called it quits. That band was Pandemonium, and for us, they were THAT band, the one we were discussing in the first paragraph. A band that looked great, sounded amazing, wrote incredible songs, were ready, willing and able to go for it, who seemed poised for the big time, ready to sign to a major, play stadiums, tour the world, but for whatever reason, it just never really happened for them. And yet, they were always one of our favorite bands of the time. Their three album rank amongst our favorite eighties metal records, so much so, that when Andee and Allan, were planning on starting an eighties metal reissue label, with Pandemonium being one of the first releases (Rogue Male being the other!), Andee even got in touch with the band, and things were in the works, and it looked like it might actually happen, but then alas it did not. But at last, the band DID finally end up reissuing all three on hard rock reissue label Retrospect (who were responsible for that crazy hair metal festival Rocklahoma), and finally, these three records are available again, with new liner notes and even BONUS TRACKS, so after years of playing these records to death, and making tapes for everyone we know, and buying every copy we ever came across used to give to friends, we can now express out undying love for these records, so hooky and heavy, and like we said, some of the best eighties metal records you've probably never heard (or even heard of!).
Initially we wanted to make all three our Record(s) Of The Week, selling them as a bundle, since in our minds, they were sort of one epic collection of songs that we had been listening to all together for the last nearly 30 years, but then we figured we wanted folks who might not be that inclined to check out some obscure eighties hard rock, to give Pandemonium a chance, so we picked the first one, the one that made us lose our minds for these guys in the first place, maybe the catchiest of the bunch, but as the band progressed, they moved away from hair metal and that Sunset strip sound, getting darker and heavier, and who could argue with that?!
The Kill was was the group's final album, originally released in 1988, and most definitely finds the band at their most aggressive, and the opening track, "Your Evil Ways" might just be a contender for favorite Pandemonium song EVER, which considering the competition, is definitely saying something. The perfect mix of incredible hooks, and seriously kick ass riffage, the vocals so powerful and the harmonies perfect, the drumming thunderous, and the guitar solos, how David Resch did not become a total guitar hero is utterly beyond us. We've probably listened to this sound hundreds of times, and even now, it's hard to stop and get into the rest of the record, but once you do, it never lets up. "Cold Night" is dark and dirgey, with another to-die-for chorus, "Last Star" also gets seriously dirgey, with some thick crunchy riffage, and still more amazing solos. The whole record, it's tough not to go track by track, but needless to say, this is the one to get if your tastes run more toward the truly hard and heavy. The band also tackle a couple of killer covers, Golden Earring's "Radar Love", which gets heavied up quite a bit, and Sabbath's "Snowblind", which sound soooooo good, and definitely gives an idea of where record number four might have taken them.
This reissue tacks on a a bonus tracks from their 1982 demo, the song "Pandemonium", which is another killer, and definitely has us wondering why it didn't make it onto the first record, a super dynamic start stop groove that has some of the craziest kick ass drumming, and another one of the band's hook filled surprisingly poppy choruses, not to mention, still more kick ass lead guitar.
Also included are liner notes, tracing the history of the band by guitarist David Resch, loads of photos too. And sadly, vocalist Chris Resch passed away in 2007, even as the band was gearing up to maybe record new material. But what a legacy all three records are to him, his brothers, and the dream that almost was. And the records that were such a huge part of our lives, as a teenager, but also an adult.
Not sure what else to say, for 3 decades we've been listening to these guys, and we have yet to get tired of these songs, in fact the second the reissues showed up, we threw them on and have basically been listening to nothing else since. After all that, do we even have to say it? TOTALLY AND ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED! If you dig eighties metal and hard rock, or wonder what a NWOBHM band like Witchfinder General would sound like if they were from LA (via Alaska), this is a no brainer, but if that has never really been your thing, think about giving these records a try anyway, it's just poppy and catchy enough that you might be surprised. Check out the sound samples too, if you're anything like us, you might become equally obsessed.
Latest from the always awesome Khrysanthoney label, who so far have given us killer records from Sleeping Peonies, Clair Cassis, Velvet Cacoon and Necktarium, as well as, in their previous incarnation as Starlight Temple Society, records by Lonesummer, Marsh, Schrei Aus Stein, Nightbringer, Temple Of NOT, Void Of Reveries, Hamnskifte and Roba El Khaliyeh, a pretty varied and musically elite lineup for sure, and yet this new group, a one man band with the cryptic monicker Petrychor, seems to be the perfect addition, another outfit that manages to appeal both to the true grim hordes, while pushing that sound to its very boundaries, creating in the process a distinctly original variant, which us why this stuff is so appealing to the sonically adventurous extreme music obsessives. It's definitely black metal. Frenzied and hyperspeed, blurred riffage, frantic blastbeats, this true grim blackness melded to avant experimental abstraction, conjuring up a sound like a more warm and less wintry, woozy and washed out Paysage D'Hiver, or a less crusty, more melodic Wrath Of The Weak, or even, perhaps more accurately and definitely less distinctly metal, like a drum machine driven, demonic vokill-ed Lovesliescrushing, with a sound that slips from delicate and haunting, all spidery steel string guitar, and what sounds like mandolins, to lush layered choral ambience, and mysterious droney drift, to full on dense blurry blackness.
But the sonic devil is most definitely in the details here. The pretty acoustic parts are not just run of the mill haunting minor key strum over creepy keyboards - it's obvious Mr. Petrychor is an incredible guitarist, unfurling what sounds like some Fahey style Appalachia one second, some wildly percussive, densely strummed Michael Hedges like mesmer the next, even some flamenco style workouts, the (im) perfect and unlikely foil for the heavy parts, which are super distorted, and strangely murky, with the drums weirdly produced, blown out and in the red, sometimes almost like a techno beat, the way they pulse and pound, clipping constantly and creating strange decayed rhythmic thuds that seems to drive the swirling chaotic sonic maelstrom, other times slipping into something that sounds like an IDM style electronic skitter, but buried beneath layer after layer of buzz and thrum and whir. Meanwhile, the riffs are less 'riffy' and more indistinct and amorphous, those 'riffs' seeming to ooze and smear into lush chordal swells, often wreathed in a swirling minor key haze, or roiling beneath warped, churning melodic tangles, rife with haunting synths and what sounds like strings, with a subtle gypsy folk vibe seeming to surface here and there, Petrychor's blast beat-ed whir and thrum less about black metal and more about some sort of abstract blackened ambient buzz, the fierce and obviously intense propulsive crunch deftly transformed into something almost dreamy, without losing any of it's grim energy and chaotic ferocity, culminating in the 14+ minute final track, that again finds blurred riffage, and swirling keyboards held together by a dense Teutonic techno sounding pulse, the sound growing more and more buzzy and murky, before splintering into a wild blacknoise buzzpsych crumble, before slipping into a lush, hushed ethereal outro.
SO incredible. We can definitely see this being our black metal record of the year (and maybe yours too!). The perfect balance of blackened heft and dreamlike shimmer, of buzzdrenched skull caving crush and thick blurry blissout.
And as if that wasn't enough, also included is a second disc, which contains Petrychor's first demo, Dryad, three songs, 23 minutes, a slightly rougher and more raw, but no less blown out and blissed out, version of Effigies And Epitaphs, the same sort of frenzied riffage, blurred swirly melodic heaviness wedded to haunting acoustic guitars and deep dense dronemusic, but the title track here might be the most epic and majestic of the bunch (both records in fact), sounding like a blackened Godspeed playing in triple time, the melodies seeming to spiral heavenward in thick churning clouds of buzz all wreathed in frantic wildly intertwining melodies, while the closer finishes the whole set off with gorgeous and downright creepy chunk of dense black rumble, a thick, undulating sprawl of tarpit blackdronedrift, underpinning haunting piano plinks and some incredible steel string strum, like some seriously sinister otherworldly cinematic black Appalachia.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!!! Housed in a cool 6 panel full color eco-wallet style sleeve with printed insert. Also included is a link to a free download of a third record, a companion release called Artistry Of Exhaustion II.
Another blast of fuzzy, jangly, distorto surf garage pop, that will no doubt appeal to fans of Wavves, Drums, Best Coast and the rest of the current crop of retro poppers. Plateaus' sound is all crunchy drums, fuzzed out guitars and lazy, laid back beach boy vox, there's a definite sixties vibe, plenty of reverb, and a warm beach-y sonic haze, but it's way more crisp and crunchy than many of their reverb dependent brethren. The opener's a short sharp chunk of blissed out 3 chord jangle pop, while the second track on the A side manages to sound a bit punkier, but also a bit power poppier. The B side is the reason to grab this though, a super hooky, ultra power poppy jangly gem, killer melodies, a chorus to die for, sounding a bit like Eat Skull crossed with The Fresh & Onlys which is most definitely not a bad thing at all.
If we had to rank our favorite nineties math/post/indie rock bands, it would be pretty tough to pick a favorite. Rodan, Slint, Archers Of Loaf, Pitchblende, we could definitely go on, but rest assured, Polvo would be up there too, most definitely vying for the top spot. But as much as we love Polvo, were were definitely a little nervous about a brand new record. It's been a long time, and there are pitfalls either way. It would be sort of disingenuous to make a record that sounded EXACTLY like you did back in the day, but that's sort of what people want. Cuz if you make a record that sounds NOTHING like the good old days, people will definitely be confused. In the case of Polvo, it sounds like maybe they split the difference. The new sound is actually quite different, but enough Polvo-isms abound that it could really be nobody else, and while we weren't super into it on first listen, it's definitely grown on us, and we're digging it quite a bit now.
"Heavy Detour" starts off with what sounds like the theme from S.W.A.T. all jangly guitar and high hat, but once the band kicks in, that gnarled riffage could be no one else. Although there is a bit of 'groove', as the song progresses, that groove seems to make more sense, and then there are the strings, these big bursts of almost symphonic strings, a weird bit of bombast that takes some getting used to. As do the raspy way up in the mix vox, the sound surprisingly accessible for a band, we always thought never really was, but the second half of the song fixes that, sort of, with some layered riffage, some serious metallic chugging, and tangled guitar harmonies, before returning to the chorus. The second track is a bit more low key, but is again all about the vocals, which are strident, and pretty much drive the jams, which is WAY different that the Polvo of old, when the vocals were buried in the mix, but once you get used to that, these songs begin to stick, and the Polvo-isms definitely become more prominent, especially on the rocked out instrumental stretches.
The 7" comes with a download coupon, which includes the single tracks as well as a bonus alternate mix of the B side which might be even better than the song proper, laced with handclaps, electronics, and way bigger, more bombastic drumming.
Another day, another new Wino band! Not that we're complaining. The stoner / doom metal scene's version of Lemmy (total lifer!) Scott "Wino" Weinrich sure keeps busy. He's most legendary for being the front man for The Obsessed and Saint Vitus back in the day (and for subsequent reunions), and has released records in recent years with such outfits as Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand, Place Of Skulls, the supergroup Shrinebuilder, and as just plain Wino.
His latest combo, Premonition 13, is just about what you'd expect. The man's distinctive vocals and guitar tone are in full effect, as are his, umm, paranoid conspiratorial lyrical themes. Of course musically it's riffy heavy rock, in the timeless Wino tradition. Doomy stoner metal with trace elements of both prog and punk. What's a bit different with P13 compared to, say, The Hidden Hand or The Obsessed is that Wino isn't the only guitarist/singer in the band, there's also a fellow here by the name of Jim Karow who also does both, holding his own with Wino, which allows for dual guitar interplay and some trading off on the vocals as well (so it's a bit like the Wino/Victor Griffin team up in Place Of Skulls).
The nine minute opener "B.E.A.U.T.Y.", encompassing both lumbering riffs and mellow moody interludes, sets the stage for the album as a whole. Karow brings a bit of Southern twang to the track "Modern Man", and album closer "Peyote Road" is suitably druggy and psychedelic sounding, kinda Pink Floydish. "Deranged Rock N' Roller" is Wino's proud, Ozzy-like, never-gonna-stop-rockin' autobiographical statement here ("I wanna die / sweating on the stage"). Let's hope that doesn't actually happen any time soon, although we appreciate his dedication.
So, with Wino + the extra axeman, P13 provides plenty of downer riffage and spacey psych guitar richness for all fans to enjoy.
This great NWOBHM album was reissued a few years ago on cd, then went out of print. Now it's been reissued again by another label, as a limited, numbered digipack, and we're glad to have it back. Here's more or less what we wrote about it before, if you missed it:
...we've got two words for ya: Black Sabbath! Quartz were pals of the Sabs, hailing from the same industrial city in England's grotty midlands, Birmingham. And their self-titled 1977 debut was in fact produced by Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, helping Quartz create what amounts to a great lost late '70s (pseudo-) Sabbath album: same guitar sound, same songwriting vibe, same riff magistery. The same holds true on this, Quartz's second studio album, originally released in 1980. It's definitely another slab of classy bashing from this shoulda-been-big, Black Sabbath meets New Wave Of British Heavy Metal sounding bunch.
The title cut is an vigorous, must-hear NWOBHM classic if there ever was one. That's followed by "Charlie Snow", which we'd be forgiven for thinking was song stolen from Sabbath's Born Again sessions! And we should also mention the grinding "Wildfire", which you could slag for being re-write of "Megalomania" from Sabbath's Sabotage album (yeah, the riff is certainly similar!), but while it's playing you'll certainly be banging your head - and besides, Sabbath seemingly borrowed one of Quartz's tunes themselves on another occasion. Then there's the bonus track, a B side called "Circles" that features uncredited guitar work from Queen's Brian May, and uncredited vocals from Ozzy Osbourne!! That's some b-side! Heck, everything on this disc is pretty killer, driving metal rockers with few peers outside of Sabbath's albums of the era. "Can't Say No To You" is the only sorta skippable track here, veering dangerously close to Foreigner or Bad Company territory. Not to say that's bad, but their Black Sabbathy stuff is way better... and this album is indeed recommended to all who appreciate the brilliance of later '70s, early '80s (end of Ozzy era through Dio and Gillan) Black Sabbath! And also the best melodic n' heavy NWOBHM stuff as well, of which this is a prime example.
From the same label that brought is the amazing Starfuckers collection Ordine, and the My Violent Ego ep collection of blissed out shoegaze, comes this strange collection of home recorded 4 track artpunk gloompop noiserock from Paolo Miceli, a one time member of abovementioned shoegazers My Violent Ego, but as the title of this collection makes clear, this stuff was recorded back when he was 21 (circa 1998-2000), channeling the spirit of, as the label suggests, "Distorted Pony, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Christian Death, Unsane and The Cure", which is indeed a motley lot, but does definitely hint at the nineties vibe and twenty something sonic angst on display here. More modern references would most definitely be Total Control, Night Control, Pink Noise, and if RVK were around today, there's a good chance they'd end up on Sacred Bones or Captured Tracks.
The guitars are buzzy and blurry, chugging and churning, sometime warm and washed out, other times super sharp and jagged, the basslines are woozy and wandery, a definitely gloomy Joy Division vibe, the drum machine is buried way down in the mix, more a pulse and pound than a proper rhythm, and the vocals, they're pretty down in the mix as well, a sort of nineties sad boy croon, the songs themselves, slipping easily from crunchy propulsive rockers to more midtempo almost dirges, the production gloriously blown out and in the red, the first few tracks are ultra lo-fi and murky, but somewhere around track 5, something happens, and the guitars get HUGE, the sound is essentially the same, a sort of shoegazey post punk gloom rock, but the guitars are thick slashes of fuzz and buzz, almost Dinosaur Jr style, but more minor key and blurry.
The record drifts all over the place, occasionally slipping into drugged out slo-mo psychedelic drift, or locking into some seriously propulsive chugging hypnorock, or some epic metallic guitarscapery, or even some murky buzzy tangled guitar dirge. But as the record progresses, chronologically we're guessing, the sound seems to shift from angry punky gothy to something more blissed out and poppy, maybe foreshadowing his eventual tenure in My Violent Ego, and as the sound gets glossier, his home studio skills improve markedly, so alongside these hazy dream pop jams, are plenty of twisted sonic experiments, drones and drifts and glimmery guitarscapes, this fuzzy blissed out second half perfectly balancing the low slung dirgey gloomy first half.
30 songs in 58 minutes, a collection of fleeting super short brief blasts of gloomy fuzzpop shoegaze postpunk noiserock, and within all these bursts of buzz and jangle and crunch, lurk plenty of hooks, and loads of melody, RVK displaying a surprisingly sweet pop sensibility, that informs even the least poppy jams here.
Killer stuff, and totally recommended for anyone into loner psych, bedroom post punk or fuzz drenched shoegaze gloom pop...
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
How can you resist a Scientist record called Heavy Metal Dub? Especially with some of THEE most amazing cover art ever, a musclebound barbarian, in reggae colored loincloth and boots, dreads sticking out from under his Viking helmet, wielding an exploding sword, standing on the wing of his red, green and yellow spaceship, there's also some aliens, some other spaceships, a weird flying reggae lollipop man, and of course 'Heavy Metal Dub' is written in a cool video game font. And oddly enough, the song titles mostly seem to reference Star Trek: "Having Fun With The Klingons", "Conversations With Khan", "Party Time On The Enterprise", "Dread In A Remulacks Dub", among others. You can't resist. So really, why even bother trying? Now here's the rub, there's nothing remotely heavy metal about this record at all outside of the cover. Even opener "Watch The Sound Of The Metal Dub", is just straight up classic Scientist dub, but hell, we're not complaining, cuz as far as dub records go, this one is a doozy, slithery basslines, minimal guitar, simple rhythms, bizarre wordless vocals, everything DUBBED to high heaven, the songs sounding like they started off as classic reggae jams, but the Scientist goes nuts, sending beats spinning into the ether, guitars spiraling into stuttering swirls, the whirring organs following suit, the tracks flitting from groovy laid back reggae to total tripped out psychedelic dub and back again.
And while that cover promised so so much, this is probably way better than any actual 'heavy metal dub' record could ever be anyway. At least that's what we keep telling ourselves...
Record number two from these Canadian krautdrone drifters, featuring one half of aQ faves psychedelic dronerockers Solars. We raved about SP's first release, a super limited (and now out of print) cd-r called Ghosts, describing it as sounding like "Flying Saucer Attack collaborating with Andrew Chalk" which still pretty much applies. Right out of the gate, SP launch into some thick heady dronemusic, blustery swells of heavily layered buzz, warm washes of blurry chordal bliss, that grows thicker and louder as the track progresses, easing into full on Nadja metalgaze territory, sans the propulsion, instead this dreamlike heaviness is allowed to drift and shimmer.
The label mentions Popol Vuh, and in spirit we can hear the comparison, but these guys (or this guy) are more about deep, heavy dronemusic, building layer upon layer, and letting the overtones and the shifting sonic colorations lend movement to these otherwise near static sprawls. There are rhythms, but you have to dig deep, they've buried way down in the mix, more a distant pulse, or a strangely textural shuffle, but when the rhythm locks in, like on "Still Return", it changes the feel completely, even the melodies seem to coalesce into dark abstract pop, the vibe way more shimmery and shoegazey, but just as kosmische and blissed out as the rest of the record. The rest of the record in this case playing out as a series of dronepsych drifts, slipping from warm, washed out, muted pop ambient blur, to softly strummed folky dirge, to thick blown out psychedelic squall, to lush gauzy dronescape, and finally to a hazy bit of choral thrum, laced with buried melody, and blurred into a fantastically blissed out smear of dreamy druggy drift.
Gorgeous stuff, and probably crazy limited like the cd-r, so you know what that means...
A pretty good match up, and not just based on the band names (although it doesn't get much more perfect than that). Our beloved Texas by way of the UK by way of Texas drum heavy rhythmic noise rockers Shit And Shine start things off with some super lo-fi, looped and repetitive dubbed out minimalism, weird echoey vox draped over a surprisingly super mellow bit of drift and drag, creepy and spaced out, a little skittery and shuffly, at least until it EXPLODES in a blast of grinding distorto noise and howling feedback, transforming the sound into some sort of blacknoise power electronics industrial stomp, yet for all it caustic noisiness, it remains surprisingly rhythmic and hypnotic, the sound SO distorted it seems to be crumbling and decaying as the track plays, replete with all manner of glitches and drop outs, which makes it almost sound like Shit And Shine covering Faxed Head!
We had never heard of Expensive Shit before, but it definitely sounds like the equipment they're using is anything BUT. They counter with their own sort of lo-fi noise rock dubbiness, a twisted, murky, FX flecked dark sonic churn, laced with all manner of clatter and crunch, all over a roiling spaced out dronescape. After a brief blast of noise, the track settles into a slithery, skeletal bit of abstract industrial noise dub, that sounds like Throbbing Gristle recording at King Tubby's and as that might have you imagining, it sounds pretty damn good.
In the handful of exceptional records from concrete/drone composer Matt Shoemaker, the field recording has been central to his work. Take the aggregate tumblings of minerals from Groundless or the woozy humidity from Spots In The Sun, Shoemaker's use of the field recording in his pieces is miles apart from the pastoral use of bird songs or a gentle rainstorm to offer something 'natural' for an electronic ambient record. No, Shoemaker amplifies the more threatening aspects of nature with insects emitting nightmarish chorales, beetles aggressively scurrying towards hapless prey, and the air of a landscape so heavy and pungent with decay as to be impossible to breathe. For Shoemaker, the world may be nasty, brutish, and short; but he's discovering a weird beauty way out there amidst the grotesqueries of the world.
On the last two records from Shoemaker, a greater emphasis on synthesized psychedelia shot through his tense drone constructs; so with Tropical Amnesia One, Shoemaker has built an album that's just field recordings, without much of the atypical filtering, gizmos, and effects that turn Shoemaker's studio into a scientific laboratory. All of these recordings came from a two week residency Shoemaker spent deep in the Amazon forest, where silence was never afforded amidst the constant buzz of insects, torrential cloudbursts, and burbling streams all teaming with life. Watery sounds introduce the first 20 minutes to this album with all sorts of sodden creaks, slurping movements, and mud-sucking events amassed together. It's as if the vantage point to Shoemaker's sounds were just below the surface of a stagnant body of water next to a muddy embankment, crawling with leeches, skin-breaching worms, and any other parasitic creature that could come to mind. Shoemaker then shifts his attention for the remaining 44 minutes upward to the tops of the trees, where the insects have conspired to broadcast an ominous nocturnal hiss worthy of horror film sound design. A few insects and birds puncture the swarming noise, making the environment seem a lot less threatening that Shoemaker has contextualized it to be. A powerful, sublime recording, and what looks like to the be first in a series of recordings from the Amazon.
The legendary long running Matthew Bower led noise rock outfit continues its trajectory into a world of black noise and raw black metal primitivism. Having made a multitude of stops along the way, proto industrial pound, rhythmic psychedelic riffery, meandering free noise, blacknoise raga, blistering spaced out trance, and plenty more in between, not to mention the various sonic offshoots (Total, Sunroof!, GHQ, Voltigeurs, etc.), it seems that Skullflower, and its Captain, have set course of the heart of some black star, with a crew now numbering four, this outfit conjures up gouts of primal black energy, that out of context could rival classic Japanoise for sheer crushing onslaught, and the early days of black metal, for pure sonic nihilism. Which is definitely a combination Bower and Co. seem to be well aware of, seemingly attempting to fuse a murky sort of black metal buzz, to speaker shredding power electronics, while somehow managing a bit of melody and momentum. Opener "Hanged Man's Seed" seems to manage the impossible by wedding some lo-fi wheezy NZ style bedroom Casio drone, to a pulsing muted rhythm, and explosive shards of blackened skree, the result though is surprisingly lovely, in a sort of brutal punishing noisy way. It almost sounds like Merzbow jamming with Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos.
"Viper's Fang" takes a similar tack, but this time taking proper psychedelic riffage, and submerging it in a roiling cauldron of black sonic pitch and coruscating crush, and there are definitely drums happening here too, buried in the murk, but again, surprisingly melodic, and again looking to NZ for a comparison, the Dead C come to mind, simultaneously at their very poppiest, and very noisiest.
But "Defiling Their Temples With Bestial Lust" takes care of that melody stuff, or does it. Sure on the surface it sounds like a blast of blacknoise, but underneath, there's a definitely woozy minor key melody, a drifting pop element all but obscured by the streaks and shards of corrosive crumbling noise above.
To be fair, there is a stretch, the next three songs in fact, where the noise wins, pretty sure there's still stuff going on in there, riffs and melodies, drumming, vocals, whether it's droney pop or buzzing black metal, but it's nearly impossible to tell. The buried sounds definitely inform the noise, but again, the noise wins, but even noise is not infallible, letting brief bits of hidden sound to escape their black tarpit prison. And then there's the closer, which brings the sound full circle, offering up a sort of melancholic blackness, a primitive pound, wrapped in super dense tangles of guitarnoise and grinding sonic chaos, but here, like on much of the record, the two seemingly disparate elements seem to bleed into each other, creating a whole that is WAY more than its constituent parts, a buzzy, melodic, noise drenched blackness that sounds like what we imagine these guys were aiming for all along.
There has been much talk about this being SF's harshest record ever, we have politely disagree (that honor most definitely belongs to Strange Keys To Untune God's Firmament). Sure it's brutal and black, punishing and pummeling, but it's also weirdly poppy, darkly melancholy, and to our ears a pretty perfect mix of blacknoise, black buzz, and mysterious melody. Definitely our favorite Skullflower record in a while...
Yet another fantastic release from country reissue label Omni, this one is immediately striking for the cover image, which is just a hangman's noose, on a field of red, beneath the record title Songs Of Tragedy. Doesn't get more country than that. But that's just what these two records are. Tales of sorrow and misery, the stories of murderers, drunks, prisoners, and as the liner notes helpfully point out "bereaved parents and pet owners".
Snow's fascination with tragedy could very well stem from his abusive childhood, which resulted in him running away from home at the age of 12 to get away from his violent grandmother, ending up a cabin boy on a fishing trawler, which is where he discovered country music, hearing Jimmie Rodgers on the ship radio.
The rest of Snow's life is equally as fascinating, there's the fact that he was managed by Colonel Tom Parker, and was instrumental in getting a certain Elvis Aaron Presley signed. It's also reputed that the character Haven Hamilton in Robert Altman's Nashville was based on Snow. But for all the success, Snow's career was definitely full of hard luck, which is perhaps why these songs resonate so strongly, these heartbreaking tales of death and destruction, loss and loneliness, delivered in a darkly dramatic, stately baritone, over lush instrumentation, gorgeous harmony vocals, even subtle sonic colorations like vibes make their way into the mix. The song selection, drawn from the tragedy songbook of the '20s and '30s, is pretty impeccable as well.
"Walking The Last Mile", is a mournful lament about that walk to the gallows, "Old Rover" is the xylophone laced tribute to the loss of a man's best friend, "The Letter Edged In Black" is a gorgeous country dirge wrapped around a wheezing organ and some sweetly sawed fiddle, and of course, it's all about the postman delivering that titular letter. There's the strangely spoken word "The Runt", a tale of a tragic bullying, super melodramatic, we could go on. More tales of tragedy, a surprising number about pets, but plenty about the plight of the condemned man, whether condemned to death, or to a life of loneliness.
As with all Omni releases, this comes with a massive booklet, loaded with pictures and lp sleeve reproductions and well as extensive liner notes, detailing Snow's life and career, as well as the creation of the songs collected here.
Wow, did you know that the debut record by purported Peruvian princess Yma Sumac (1922-2008), was the biggest selling release of 1950? This isn't that album, Voice Of The Xtabay, though, rather it's her 1971 (yes, once again, 1971 blows the mind) rock-oriented comeback attempt, Miracles, this remastered reissue being the first time officially on cd for this rare record, which didn't stay in print very long originally, due to legal differences between Sumac and her label. So not so many folks heard this one, but now they can, if they dare!
While one could perhaps imagine something even more far-out from Sumac in '71, her fabled five octave range offering tantalizing possibilities for Yoko Ono or Brainticket style freakouts, this is definitely NOT your father's lounge music, either! Before titling it Miracles, they almost called it Jungle Rock, and it was definitely an attempt to introduce Yma Sumac to a new generation of fans. In this effort to be hip and happening, the inventive orchestration and contemporary rock band backing (fuzz guitars, swirling organ) come close to being as wild as her voice.
Interestingly, this album found the "Queen Of Exotica" once again teamed up with the "King" - Les Baxter, her collaborator on Voice Of The Xtabay! He was brought in to compose and conduct, and is responsible for writing all the tracks here but one (a cover of popular Peruvian folk number "El Condor Pasa").
These songs, with titles like "Medicine Man", "Flame Tree", "Azure Sands", "Zebra", and "Magenta Mountain", certainly showcase Sumac's remarkable voice - soaring altissimo, deep growling, startling squeaking, everything in between - as accompanied by swinging, fuzzed out psych rock grooves and otherworldly arrangements. Downright "lysergic" as some would have it. Others might call the combination corny... some of this sounds like the most unhinged nightclub act ever.
Leadoff track "Remember" sets the pace, Sumac's band ready to rumble, guitars crashing in like maybe she's gonna start singing "Jumping Jack Flash" but her vocals are all wordless whoops and warble (like a human Thermin) and ludicrous, Muppet-like grumble. Crazy stuff. This even reminds us a bit of the sort of Third World garage psych now being comped on such recent collections as Thai? Dai! and The Sound Of Siam, an interesting synchronicity. Who was unintentionally inspiring who?
It's hard to know what Yma Sumac purists will think about this over the top, modish Incan instro-hipster act. (Are there Yma Sumac purists?) This album's certainly a strange one, all right, utter extreme eccentric exotica. Exotic for the "jungle" themes, and all the more exotic now for its dated psychsploitation angle.
Brought to us by one of our favorite reissue labels, Australia's Omni Recording Corporation, who make sure provide extensive, fascinating liner notes (touching on this album's kinship with other albums of "psychedelic opportunism" of the era like Muddy Waters' Electric Mud, Bo Diddley's Black Gladiator, and Chubby Checker's New Revelation) in the colorfully illustrated cd booklet. Also, three previously unreleased bonus tracks have been added to the disc!
Brand new chunk of hazy, druggy, dubbed out psychedelic groove from Sun Araw, aka Cameron Stallones, and it's a doozy, still dipping heavily into reggae and dub for inspiration, with wah wah guitar, woozy groovy bass, and now with what sounds like African high life style vocals, all draped over a wavery droning synth, which adds a weird bit of tension, the sound a dizzying hybrid, but one that kind of works, the guitars grow more active, getting crunchier, adding texture and melody to the proceedings, but all still wedded to that main groove, which pulses and undulates seductively the whole time. If you dug the last few SA records, this jam will be right up your alley. The weird thing here is the B side, which finds Stallones covering Teenage Fanclub, and utterly transforming it into some strange tropical dubbed out power pop jam, all gauzy and shimmery, laced with bird sounds, all sorts of FX squiggles, still underpinned by that droning synth tone, but there's real riffing, and real singing, but tenuously wrapped around all the murky swirl and dubby drift underneath, but again it kind of works. If you weren't familiar with the original, you might not even realize it's a cover, but if you are, you might just like this version too.
Latest blast of blurred blacknoise brutality from this SF duo, whose records seem to disappear in a heartbeat, every one a ridiculously limited microedition, this new 7" no different, already sold out and out of print, we got 20 copies, and will most likely not be able to get more.
Which is a shame, cuz this is maybe SH's most melodic and distinctly black metal record yet. Frantic riffing beneath super distorted vox, a blurred tranced out almost blacknoisedrone, until the drums kick in, but when they do, it's less like a blastbeat, and more like another layer of blurred low end buzz, the guitars churning relentlessly within a cloud of black/white noise, super repetitive and cyclical, but the melodies continue to seep through, mournful and minor key, buried beneath thick swaths of roiling blackness, the sound murky and muddy and surprisingly warm for being as intense and blackened as it is.
The flipside is another surprise, all echoey and industrial, more processed vokills, this time though draped over clean guitar strum and a clattery machine like rhythm, the overall vibe brooding and downright doomy, a sort of creepy black ambient industrial maybe? There's an even more surprising second half, laced with clean, post rock-ish guitars, some death march ultradoom plod and creepy, cinematic piano-like melodies, the oozes and drifts darkly before disappearing in a haze of Merzbow worthy buzz, a thick swirling cloud of roiling blackness.
LIMITED TO 253 COPIES!! We have less than 20, so grab one before they're gone...
In the past we've taken every opportunity to rave like crazy about this band of British noise/space/psych/drone rockers, and with the current lust for all sounds psychedelic and spaced out, and the popularity of a new wave of psychedelic space rockers: The Heads, White Hills, Carlton Melton, Spyrals, Wooden Shjips, etc, it seems like the perfect time for folks who somehow missed out on the Telescopes to figure out just what it is they've been missing. And what better way than with this, a reissue of their very first full length, originally released way back in 1989, a year after their debut 7", a split with aQ beloved dronerockers Loop, and just the fact that they shared a split with Loop should tell you most of what you need to know. With a sound that veers from hushed, droney, druggy drift, to full on heavy, noisy, distorted dronepsychspace crunch, the Telescopes were like a super charged version of Spacemen 3, injecting some swaggery Stooges-y stomp into their hazy psychedelic mesmer. Think the classics, Hawkwind, Loop of course, Monster Magnet, Spacemen 3, F/i, but then mix in some My Bloody Valentine, and some Jesus And Mary Chain, a little Swervedriver, and the aforementioned Stooges, and what you're left with is a big beautiful noisy chunk of blissed out hypno-heaviness.
The record opens up with the very Spacemen 3 beholden "And Let Me Drift Away", with it's chiming melodies and simple acoustic strum, all hushed croon and sun dappled glimmer, laced with elegiac piano, violin and even French horn, a definite Velvets vibe happening too, but before you lay back and prepare for a warm whirling druggy drift off as the title implies, DO strap yourself in for the next track, "I Fall, She Screams", a pounding noise rock freak out, wild raspy vocals howled over wild squalls of tangled psych guitar, pounding drums and tons of FX, occasionally locking into some droned out repetition, but then veering right back into wah wah drenched sonic chaos. But then the sound shifts gears again, "Oil Seed Rape" wraps gauzy clouds of distortion around a strummy acoustic lament, all woozy and washed out, but of course peppered with brief blasts of full on noise rock crunch.
And so it goes, the record deftly juggling those two disparate sides of the Telescopes' schizophrenic personality, managing to fuse the two into something simultaneously heavy and heady, dense and dreamy, noisy and hypnotic, offering up some of THEE best droned out psych rock ever: the very Spacemen 3-like "The Perfect Needle" (a nod to Spacemen 3's "The Perfect Prescription?) alongside some of the hookiest heaviness of the era: "Please, Before You Go" which seems to foreshadow the punked out pop of Nirvana or the sludge pop of Torche, alongside full on extended amp destroying psychedelic space rock workouts that rival the masters: the 8 minute chaotic freak out "Suicide".
This reissues trades in the live tracks that were included as bonus material on the last reissue of Taste for the three tracks from The Perfect Needle ep, the band's 1989 ep, and it's a doozy, and is essentially cut from the same sonic cloth, "Sadness Pale" is a brief blast of slipper slide guitar laced Stoogesy stomp, while "S.H.C. Burn" opens with a wild blast of psychnoise before settling into something a bit more droney and hypnotic, but really never getting any less noisy, and finally, "You Can Not Be Sure" a twisted soundscape of wildly sawed violin over a woozy slithery bassline, wrapped in a haze of washed out shimmer, and pelted by a barrage of strange noises and shards of grind and crunch. Awesome.
The last we heard from industrial black ambient terrorist Temple Of Not, was on a split with black metallers Nightbringer, which makes perfect sense as the man behind ToN, Alcameth, also fronts Nightbringer. But in ToN, Alcameth crafts gorgeously grim expanses of heaving blackened drones, and decaying industrial crumble, the tracks on the split with Nightbringer definitely bucked the black ambient trend by adding all manner of fucked up sound, noise and texture and samples, and on this new one, the method seems to be similar. In fact we were sort of expecting some shimmery black drift, but ToN offers up a sound much more corrosive and aggressive and creepy than typical black ambience, with thick streaks of howling horror, or crumbling distortion, alien voices, inhuman howls, pounded atonal piano, industrial creaks and groans, sounding more like the orchestral black doom weirdness of Gnaw Their Tongues. Sure there are stretches of hushed shimmer, and creeping black sprawl, but those are just brief respites between squalls of sonic crunch, stretches of undulating black terror, clouds of haunting ghostly voices and heaving slabs of blown out buzz.
LIMITED TO ONLY 150 COPIES!!
Joey Jordison from Slipknot is this issue's cover star, but don't let that deter you (actually the interview might be interesting, the pull quote on the cover is "I am close to losing my mind"). Elsewhere this ish, there's pieces on Cave In, Kvelertak, Cannabis Corpse, Decapitated, Sepultura, Karma To Burn, In Flames, Shining, Deven Townsend, and a feature on the return of thrash's "Big Four": Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax. Plus all the usual other good stuff, reviews, news, bonus cd sampler (hear some of that new Morbid Angel here), etc. As always, recommended reading for all metalheads.
Latest from these Louisiana heavies, and while it's not a 'proper' new album, it is another fucking fantastic collection of crushing sludge dirge bliss. The highlight of which, for us, might just have to be their cover of Nirvana's "Something In The Way". And yeah, Thou have covered Nirvana before (on Baton Rouge, You Have Much To Answer For they took on "Sifting") but the difference there, was that "Sifting" was already pretty heavy and sludgey, so to hear one of Nirvana's prettiest creepiest brooders transformed, is pretty awesome, and thankfully, they don't just play it straight, the verses are still hushed, the vocals a crooned whisper, the guitar and bass slithery and low slung, but when the chorus kicks in, it's MASSIVE, the best part being that they somehow mix throat shredding howled vox with warm clean "oooohhh"s, managing to keep the song broody and moody, while still letting it pummel and pound.
Also included are a handful of tracks from the Summit sessions, as well as covers of two songs by a band called Pygmy Lush, from an aborted split, and like on past Thou outings, the band lace their downtuned dirgery with all manner of unlikely instrumentation, mournful trumpets, clouds of cymbal shimmer, symphonic percussion, but woven into long stretches of droned out drift, of rumbling crumbling low end, and almost post rock-y slow builds, as well as epic skull caving riffery, NOLA style sludge grooves, bursts of frantic double kick drumming, heaving avalanches of tarpit doom, but laced with surprising melodies, and lots of subtle textures, much like The Body, these guys are taking ultra-doom into whole new directions.
"Cold World", one of the Pygmy Lush covers, sounds like an even more sludgey Melvins, with its super distorted riffage, and maddeningly repetitive structure, but it's crazy hypnotic in its own way, and then the piano comes in, and it manages to sound strangely haunting and pretty, while still churning and pounding away. The 2nd PL cover "There There" is another creepy crawl, that has us kicking ourselves for never checking out Pygmy Lush, cuz this one sounds like a weird little pop song transformed into something filthy and crusty, and hell it's Thou, so right in the middle there's a pretty little interlude all spidery clean guitars and shimmery ambience, even some violin it sounds like, but before long, it's right back into it, finishing off in a blaze of feedback doused churning black crush.
And Thou always do it up packaging-wise too, and this one is no exception, a spot gloss printed old school tip-on style sleeve, with some super striking artwork to boot!
We had never heard of Dutch blackened dirge/drone outfit Torture Corpse, before, but we have to say, with a name like that we were most definitely intrigued, and the fact that we first heard about them via a wholehearted recommendation from one half of aQ faves Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead, and if someone responsible for that sort of bleak heaviness and abject ambience says they thing something is scary and heavy and amazing, well, then odds are it probably is. And it only took a few seconds for us to be converted, starting out with some softly caustic crunch, only to shift into a bit of hazy ambient drift, the record then really takes off with TC unfurling what sounds like some buzzing blackened riffage, all droned out and blurred, over a mysterious field of rhythmic glitch, and what sounds like buried vocals, singing in tongues, a textural garble that only adds to the chaos. Almost as soon as you're utterly entranced, TC jettisons all the noise and buzz and crunch, leaving, just a shimmery field of soft chordal thrum, and hushed sonic swells, tranquil and warm and woozily washed out, a blissfuly bit of dreamy drift, with the sounds seeming the grow gradually more distorted, but very subtly so, eventually fading out and leaving a strange and ominous industrial landscape, laced with thick speaker rattling low end, all manner of clatter and crunch, a blurred post apocalyptic creep through some sonic wasteland, slowly building to a lurching lumbering almost doomic blackened trudge, almost like Wolf Eyes doing sound design for a remake of Pitch Black, a machinelike, black industrial ambience that manages to be haunting and heavy, but also weirdly melodic and mysterious. There are strange vocal samples too, wreathed in reverb, draped over strange percolating anti-rhythms, laced with bits of creepy melody, the sounds throughout the tape seem to be constantly shifting, no single song sounds like the next, some are crushingly heavy, others breathlessly beautiful, but they're all woven into something epic, a super cinematic slab of grim black beauty.
Sweet packaging too, intricate designs on both the inside and outside of the heavy cardstock J-card, as well as a printed insert with liner notes and sing titles.
This new band on Fonal with all the double-u's in their name is of course Finnish, and in fact is something of a super-duo: Fonal boss Sami Sanpakkila (Es) and recent Wire magazine cover star Jan Anderzen (Tomutonttu, Kemialliset Ystavat) are the two collaborators here (at last!). The name they've chosen is apparently a play on the humorous Finnish phrase "tuusan nuuskana", which means something like "total shambles" in English. Ok, well, but while the abstract, intermittent, fractured soundz & rhythms heard here could lend themselves to that description, Sami & Jan are actually exercising a fair amount of control, and the tracks here, while not your usual sort of "songs" are most definitely music, not noise. Instrumental, full of sweet sweet drones and distortion, shining shimmer... we think most fans of both Es and Tomutonttu and other Finnish/Fonal acts on the more abstract edges of soundmaking will appreciate this quite a bit!!
The five long tracks find this project getting out of the usual "Finnish forest folk" thing we associate with Kemialliset and instead seem much more sci-fi and electronic, synth zips and zaps transmitted from a mad scientist's laboratory. Some of the sounds remind us of sferics, that spooky VLF radio noise phenomenon of the Earth's magnetosphere we used to sell whole cds of (Stephen P. McGreevy's Electric Engima and Auroral Chorus II, wish they were still in print). Somehow those sorts of sounds - however produced - are woven into a detailed, textured sound world that's at once both pleasant (really) and intriguing. Finnish forest science lab fans won't be surprised.
And, the usual obi-strip with which Fonal packages their cds is cleverly been utilized here to enhance the cover art with a simple form of animation. Designed by Shogun Kunitoki's Jari Suominen, it's a clear acetate strip printed with narrow stripes, that interacts with the cover art to create a pretty cool optical illusion of motion (a flickering, spinning pinwheel) when you slide the obi across the cover. Neat! (We haven't opened the lp, but assume it must also contain a similar insert.)
Kind of confusing, this is a new (but not really new) release from Long Island's warm pop peddlers Twin Sister. The A side tracks were originally released as a gift to their fans in digital form back in 2008. So now they've given those tracks a proper release, as well as a whole other side of music which contains alternate versions of those tracks. Dreamy pop that ranges from Elliott Smith influenced introspection to a more shoegazed sensibility.
If you haven't checked out Twin Sister yet, we urge you to explore their awesome record from last year Color Your Life, and if you're already a fan, you're gonna want to grab this.
Q: What album contains the best heavy metal song ever written about a snow leopard? A: This one!!
Virginia's TTD has been around for a long time, in the "true metal" underground, with releases going as far back as 1996 (a split 7" with cult doomsters Cold Mourning in fact) but this is the first album of theirs that's really blown us away. Maybe it's their new, improved vocalist. Maybe it's the injection of seemingly arena-ready '80s metal POPPINESS that he's brought with him, y'know, catchy choruses, even amidst all of TTD's usual OTT speedy shred action. Or maybe it's the inspired cheesiness of the cover art (featuring that aforementioned snow leopard) and the "Snow Leopard" song itself. You gotta love a song with lines like "I'm a snow leopard, I live a wild and crazy life" and "I'm calling all cats to sink some claws in some backs", not to mention the soaring chorus that goes "Snow leopard run! Run snow leopard run!"
With this unabashedly bold, bright and energetic album, TTD catapults into the top of the "New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal" pack, next to the likes of Cauldron and Enforcer, where maybe they belonged all along. Pick it up and revel in the power and the glory. The vocals, an in-your-face falsetto. The guitars holding hints of classic Thin Lizzy, and of course Iron Maiden. Total singalong power metal, gallant and galloping. We're lovin' it.
Just found we have five (5) copies of this Acid Mothers Temple related compilation, that we'd never listed on our site before. AMT members (and pillars of the Japanese psych/prog underground) Atsushi Tsuyama, Tatsuya Yoshida, and Kawabata Makoto show off their chops n' weirdness here, each one solo and also together in various combinations. There's 7 audio tracks here, recorded live, and also 7 more mp4 video clips you can watch on your computer (and which reveal how much these guys revel in their silliness).
The cd starts off with some kind of broken-down freak-folk twang and psych shred from Atsushi Tsuyama, who sings a bit like Tom Waits transformed into a cartoon bear. Next, Kawabata Makoto contributes eight minutes of FX-laden outer space drone bliss. Chaos erupts with Yoshida's Ruins Alone track, a battle between his drum kit and video game zips and zaps it seems. Then, all three of these fellows sing in the comedic a cappella combo Zubi Zuva X, a crazed chorus that elicits much laughter from the audience - or perhaps that's part of their performance. Akaten (Atsushi + Yoshida) offer up what sounds like someone eating a meal, which turns into an improv session, and then devolves into echoed insanity... The track by Zoffy (Kawabata + Atsushi) is the most "rock" thing on here, so far, though of course also quite nutty. And then all three gentlemen, in the form of Acid Mothers SWR, wrap thing up with a display of their tight, mathy prog.
Limited to 300 copies produced for a 2008 European tour. Apparently we've had 'em hidden away here since then! Better late than never to list these, grab 'em while you can, AMT fans...
For a long time, this record was a Japanese psych holy grail, originally a super limited double lp, later a double cd, originally released to commemorate the closing of a club in Tokyo called Oz, where presumably all of these bands were recorded. The main reason this was such a sought after artifact is no doubt the presence of not one, but TWO all time Japanese psychedelic legends, Les Rallizes Denudes and Taj Mahal Travelers. In fact those of is who did manage to track down a copy, never even really listened to the first disc, since the second disc was so goddamn good. And odds are, most aQ Japanese psych obsessives stopped reading about two sentences ago and lunged for the 'add to cart' button. Cuz while this is/was quite a rarity, we just discovered a source for a bunch of copies, incredibly cheap too, and snapped 'em up, cuz we figured that there were enough folks out there like us, who would definitely be keen on more from either/both TMT and Les Rallizes.
Juts in case you actually need to know what it sounds like (as if you couldn't guess), Les Rallizes offer up their usual dose of super distorted psychedelic blues, opening with a droned out guitar thing, before slipping into a surprisingly pretty and folky, and distortion free bit of strum and croon, might be a big surprise for Les Rallizes fans out there, in fact it almost sounds like a Japanese Grateful Dead, until about the last minute, when the guitars come out, offering up a surprisingly, sweetly distorted lead. The second track too, opens up with a wild squall of distorted guitar, only to slip right back into mesmerizing bit of dirgey folky drone rock, this time sounding more like the Velvets, with some seriously emotional wailed vox and more sweet psychedelic leads. And then finally, the appropriately titled "The Last One", find the band returning to much noisier distorted realms, thick wandering basslines, super distorted guitar crunch, pounding drums, an explosive intro, and while the rest of the song dials it back again, it's awesomely dirgey and droney, laced with lots of tangled guitars and swaths of distortion.
Taj Mahal Travelers do what they do best, unfurling a long minimal dronescape, all sawed violin, distant chanted vocals, swirling muted melodies, wheezing harmonicas, all blurred into lush sonic swells, Kosugi's violin driving the sound here, but with all the other various instruments contributing their own more subtle elements, a hazy, drifty, tripped out bit of druggy psychedelic drift that is perfectly divine.
Like we said before, worth it just for the second disc, but heck, there's a whole other disc, which we actually never dug into until NOW. Up first is Miyako Ochi, who are a sort of Group Sounds, Beatles worshiping rock band, all British style rhythm and blues, the songs could very well be covers, one sounds exactly like "Twist And Shout", then there's Minami Masato, who are a lot like Miyako Ochi, at least with their Beatles-esque opener, but after that, the sound shifts to a more contemplative folk music, again looking to the UK and the US for inspiration, subtle simple strummed acoustic guitar and woozy croon, again quite cool, but a strange mix to be paired up with Les Rallizes and TMT. But then there's Acid Seven, who we were already hoping would be a bit more bad ass based on the name alone, and while they are ANOTHER band that is doing that Group Sounds sound, they manage to inject it with some grit and swagger, shouted gang vocals, super distorted production, wild psychedelic leads, and a vocalist who has a pretty bad ass raspy bellow. The following track is a strange sort of jaunty sing along, with some rad slippery slide guitar and there's even a KAZOO SOLO! Finally, they finish things up with a bit of brooding dark folk, urgently strummed acoustic guitar, and some heartfelt almost anguished sounding vocalizing, surprisingly pretty, especially considering the wild biker rock bellowing that preceded it.
All in all pretty great. Japanese psych obsessives NEED this, and heck for $12, dabblers can definitely afford to give it a chance. But don't dawdle, pretty sure we got every copy our distributor had, so not sure when/if we'll be able to get more. Packaged in a slim sleeve with brown paper wrapper, duplicating the presentation of the original lp.
For as much as we love music that pushes the boundaries, and music that truly takes sound in new directions, sometimes it feels like music can get too diluted, too far removed from the sounds that made us love that music so much in the first place. Maybe it's just that our trve grim tendencies (since they obviously don't apply to black metal, our love of the multitudes of twisted BM variants quite obvious at this point) are reserved for musics like dubstep. Cuz as much as we love the various directions dubstep has moved over the last few years, we STILL can't get enough of that good old school classic dubstep sound. That distinctive stuttery beat, the huge rib cage rattling bass wobbles. Which there is PLENTY of here. If your dubstep proclivities tend toward THE HARD, and THE HEAVY, then there's lots here to dig. In fact, some of the jams here are easily THEE hardest we've heard, with crazy blown out distorted bass, thick swaths of crumbling rumble, in-the-red synth buzz, all wrapped around lurching lumbering beats that KILL.
And while we're reveling in all this big beat crunch and buzz, there is actually a surprising breadth of sound here, dipping liberally into the more soulful, house-y, and techno sides of dubstep, and while those tracks are cool, and some of them definitely rank amongst our favorites, they are in the minority here, with artists old and new pushing the bass HARD.
Dubstep legend Skream offers up "Heavy Hitter", which true to its title is in fact one, with a lurching stop / start beat, and a seriously caustic crunchy bassline, while 16 Bit's "Frzr9000" is some of the sickest buzziest blown out dubstep we've probably heard, tons of different buzzing synthlines all tangled up, not to mention some surprising melody. Flux Pavillion's "Bass Cannon" sounds like it was created using one, with the usual bass wobbles transformed into thick blasts of almost Merzbowian buzz. And while across the two discs, there is tons of low end destruction and a constant barrage of dancefloor destroying beats, it's those aforementioned variants that keep things interesting, Icicle gets all low slung and woozy, sounding like dubstepped Portishead, with a weird bit of chiming melody, Kryptic Minds & Youngsta also take it slow and low, for a brooding bit of bass heavy moodiness, while Distance remixes Above & Beyond, transforming a soulful bit of electronica into something way more buzzy and fierce. Elsewhere, Wondering kicks out some thick swaths of synth swirl and black rocking big beat crunch, Oshd unfurls some buzz drenched dreaminess, sweetly soulful vocals wreathed in black buzz, and sounding like a super distorted Lamb, Doctor P transforms his dubstep into a twisted bit of fuzzy buzzy synth squiggle, with a crazy drop that might be one of THEE best moments on the record, Nero does his best dubstep Daft Punk, and the set finishes with Commix's very Burial like "Be True" (which IS a Burial remix, we reviewed the 12" a while back), a gorgeously blurred and murky bit of soulful deep dubstep ambience.
We probably say this every time, but this just might be the best dubstep comp yet...
Another triumph brought to us by Tompkins Square, this 3cd collection is overflowing with 56 amazing songs from Ottoman-American artists who found themselves in the bustle of American life from 1916 right before America entered WWI until 1929, when things became a little more silent during the Depression. Oh, and we're not just talking Anytown, USA, but specifically New York City, with most of these songs recorded on the island of Manhattan. Scores of inhabitants from Anatolia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Levant fled Europe and settled here, bringing forth a brilliant cross pollination of cultures which we can now enjoy as the treasures they are. Places like Little Armenia and Little Syria sat alongside a Greek neighborhood around 8th Avenue and 30th Street, and musicians would mingle in the cafes and streets while no doubt absorbing other elements of what the city had to offer. In the process, they developed something vibrant, new, and exquisitely beautiful.
Separated by disc into the three categories: Naughty Girl (Dances and Joys), I Wish I Never Came (Nostalgia, Yearning, & Pride), and Notes From Home (American releases of music from Ottoman emigres, some of these songs were actually recorded outside of the states), this compilation covers a vast range of the human experience while also focusing on culture-specific events like genocide, war, and travelling across the world to a strange new land.
Without exaggeration we can say that what labels like Tompkins Square do is important for all of world culture, and the detailed liner notes help to give a better understanding of these exotic sounds which can overwhelm with their beauty but become EVEN BETTER when you know something, even just an anecdote, about the performer. Most of these musicians are unknown names to us - an exception being Marika Papagika who we became acquainted with thanks to Mississippi Records - with some in fact being listed as simply "unknown performers". While their names are lost to time, at least we still have these unbelievable sonic portraits of a rapidly changing moment in world history.
It takes a lot to be "controversial" these days, even if you are a black metal band, and it's unlikely at this point that we would have to be the ones to tell you about all the craziness that has shrouded Velvet Cacoon since God knows when, so we're just not going to bother. What we can tell you is this: Atropine actually does exist, we got it, and while it may not be exactly what anyone was prepared for, it is no doubt an intense piece of work, one that cannot be listened to as mere background noise and instead requires lots of focus and patience for the full, um, "experience". The biggest surprise here is the absolute, 100 percent absence of any actual metal, with Velvet Cacoon's droning ambient side taking over for a colossal two hour suite of dissociative, druggy as fuck BLISS. Atropine's subtleties are also its greatest qualities (though to be fair, they are its only qualities), because this is only going to make even the slightest amount of sense if you stick around for the whole trip, and there's no way that will happen if you're blasting it in your car on the way to work. You're probably gonna want to turn off the lights, break out some sort of mind altering substance, close your eyes, let the tones take over, and contemplate your complete nothingness in the universe. It's difficult to imagine what exactly is influencing Velvet Cacoon (other than a whole lot of drugs), because this stuff is clearly coming from somewhere else, and whatever bullshit may or may not be true, at the end of the day it only really makes sense to judge them by their music, which is powerful and evocative in ways so many other bands will never achieve. Then you realize that the mysteries surrounding the duo are pretty much legitimized by the strangeness of their music alone.
"To find out how, insert." With these words printed on disc 1, we did just that, and we were off. Opener "Candlesmoke" kicks off the long journey, beginning with a low rumbling and semi-rhythmic white noise followed by a slowly creeping spectral ambience. Things are calm, but dark, and possibly a bit sinister. Your mind conjures thoughts perfectly captured in Velvet Cacoon's artwork: hazy images of lonely trees in unfathomable wildernesses, bits of nature peering out of grey expanses. It's hard to discern what instruments are actually making the noise, but none of that really matters, because before long it's like your floating in a mountain lake looking up at the stars. The piece is murky and majestic, and just as you begin to detect a pattern resembling an actual "song", things simply fade away into eternity. With "Funeral Noir," we were expecting Velvet Cacoon to rip our faces off like in the good old days, but nope. The song begins to bloom out of the cavernous ambience with static-y background crackles and super slow fuzzed out heaviness way off in the distance. The emphasis, however, is on the blankets of atmosphere, and though the song is pretty much formless, it manages to sound incredibly sad and evoke feelings of loneliness and separation from the world. "Graveside Sonnet," writhes with movement, but definitely not within the traditional methods of songcraft. Rather than trying to control the music and color it with any traces of human personality, the band instead appears to accept the will of its subconscious and let the song simply go where it will. The first disc closes with "Dreaming In A Hemlock Patch," which begins the first moments of its 37 minute (damn!) existence with almost total silence. Then, true to its title, you fall into a trance and journey deep into thought, as stuttering sounds, uh, stutter about, moving you forward and sending you way off into the atmosphere. A barely noticeable pulsing rhythm comes in around the six minute mark, but you are now totally lost and removed from time and location. And guess what? No one else exists. Crackling sounds continue, and a foggy drone takes over everything in its path. The song is a bit reminiscent of the minimalism of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas, but even more minimal. Even so, it's scope is massive and sleep inducing, and if for some reason you wanted to stop a 37 minute track, say, 20 minutes in, you can't, you can only accept it. The noises change shape and shift to other directions, and an undefinable but very psychedelic sound takes over, moving like a heartbeat before slipping away. Pretty cosmic stuff. And, holy fuck, that's only disc 1!
The second disc begins with "Nightvines," which perfectly exhibits Velvet Cacoon's ability to establish a sound that would best be described as "nautical." With a vaguely bell like drone and a sound that seems to emerge out of a thick mist, you get the feeling of drifting evenly along in unknown waters. A definite coldness prevails, and the sound has a quality that is almost like breathing. "Nocturnal Carriage" is the sound of being lost, its catatonic drones sounding like a ghostly choir buried deep under layers of fog. It brings to mind Popul Vuh's "Aguirre," only stripped of all its melodic definition with just the ambience intact. It's like that last moment of consciousness before sleep sets in, with that last moment being prolonged for 27 minutes, like walking around in total blackness, and it fades out like a dream that will continue forever. The shortest track, "Earth And Dark Petals," makes you think of forces from within the earth trying to make their way out of the ground and into the world, struggling to define themselves within the overwhelming hugeness of nature, only briefly before the final track, "Autumn Burial Victoria," which seeks to sustain the drones all the way to infinity. At around the 10:30 mark, there is a muted percussive crash, just once, but that's really the only other thing that manages to seep out. The album concludes very softly with sounds that are almost not there. When it ends, maybe you'll wake up, or maybe you won't.
Whew. Listening to Atropine, as in "really" listening to it, takes some dedication, but the results are rewarding enough for anyone up to the task. There will most likely be a serious bitchfest in the works from those expecting the blown out shoegazing fury Velvet Cacoon built their name on. But crying over something like that overlooks just how essential the more subdued sounds of Velvet Cacoon have been since the beginning, and in the event that it's not a total hoax, the band should be delivering an actual "metal" album in the near future. Until then, zone out and give yourself up to the unexplored regions of your mind with Atropine.
Alright, this is a confusing one, but we figured that Velvet Cacoon obsessives, and we know there are lots out there (ourselves included), would definitely be into this. A reissue of the very first Velvet Cacoon record, which was already reissued on Full Moon Productions, with a bonus disc, featuring 70 minutes of extra material, all ambient. BUT, they left two tracks off the record proper. Not sure why, but there you go. So Khrysanthoney has reissued Dextronaut, sans the 'superfluous' ambient bonus disc, but with the original record restored to its proper 10 song length. In addition to that, the new version of Dextronaut is UNmastered, so while it sounds quite similar, it's definitely a bit more raw and brittle, which actually suits VC quite a bit. So yeah, if you missed this the first time around, you NEED this, and if you already have it, and LOVE it, and need those extra tracks, well, hell, $9 for 9 minutes of extra music, not a bad deal really, and the extra songs are pretty kick ass, "Starlit Seas Of Angel Blood" has some of the sickest vokills ever, over frantic buzz and wild drumming, loads of reverb and all sorts of bizarre sounds (most of them vocal we think), while "When The Purest Flesh Is Alive", is super distorted and heavy on the effects, sounding like the bands blasting through a field of glitchy electronics, the sound weirdly melodic, and those vocals, still sick and inhuman and alien, everything dripping with buzz and fuzz. Still no idea why they left them off, but here's your chance to get the 'complete' Dextronaut. But be quick, it's limited to just 150 COPIES!!! Here's what we said about the Full Moon version, which all still pretty much applies, just everything is a tad more brittle and buzzy, and there are those two extra tracks (much of this is background on VC, since it was their first record and everything)...
Very few bands have as convoluted and controversial a back story as Portland's black metal weirdos Velvet Cacoon. First the name, Velvet Cacoon. Spelled C A C O O N. According to the band "The name originated back in 1996 when we formed the band. Velvet is one of many names applied to the chemical dextromethorphan, and CACOON are the initials of a catacomb just outside Portland city limits where we usually go to write music." It also happens to be the seed from some tropical vine. But let's continue. There was also the band's political alignment, supposedly they were some sort of super reclusive, "eco-fascist" collective. Okay, sure. Then there's the sound. And it's the sound that really matters. And oh what a sound, an impossibly lush orchestra of black buzz, thick and mesmerizing and blurry, the fuzziest buzz we had ever heard. But how does a band achieve that sort of impossibly glorious buzz? Well, by inventing and playing an instrument called a "dieselharp", a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. So okay, how could we not love them, the sound was black buzz nirvana, and they were some weird eco forest freaks. Supposedly. _A little time passes, and it comes to light that it was all a scam, not the music obviously, but everything else, the politics, the dieselharp, all designed to fuck with the black metal community. The band is revealed to be one guy and his girlfriend. He's got short hair, they listen to Nina Simone and drink tea, and black metalheads are pissed. We of course think it's hilarious, and while we were duped as well, so what, it's a great joke, and fuck, the music still totally destroys. At one point if you went to the VC website, all you got was a link to an Air MP3?!? And still the only photos are of a woman in candlelight (presumably the girlfriend). And there were various reports that some of the songs were stolen from another artist who was uncredited and not compensated. Phew! It's the sort of story that would ALWAYS be on the cover of the black metal version of US magazine!! If there was such a thing (oh why oh why is there not?!?!).
The record begins with a dreamy bit of pastoral ambience, before bursting into some ultra fast, blown out black buzz drenched black metal. Melancholy and moody, but swathed in super thick swirls of BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. If anything, the stuff on Dextronaut sounds a bit more traditional than either of the other two releases, but a more traditional VC is still leagues weirder than most other BM outfits. Most of the tracks are blurry smeary buzzscapes, the melodies and drums and vocals, smothered under gloriously suffocating layers of, yep, still even more BUZZ!!! The best track, and also the weirdest, is the loping midtempo "Perched On A Neverending Peak". A blast of Burzum-worthy buzz, the guitars dense squalls of blown out fuzz, and all of this buzz and fuzz wrapped around an impossibly sad melody, but with a series of strange drop outs, where all the fuzz abates, only briefly, giving us a brief glimpse behind the veil of buzz, before it's quickly swallowed up again by the black wall of fuzz. How many times can we use 'buzz' and 'fuzz' in a single review. LOTS!
Retrospect, the label that put out those 3 awesome Pandemonium reissues (the '80s Alaskan rockers whose Heavy Metal Soldiers disc we made a Record Of The Week recently, the other two highlighted this list) has done a lot of other '80s metal and hard rock reissues too, many of 'em leaning towards the hair/glam/AOR side of things though. Lots and lots, it's kind of insane. Especially since, most... well... we hadn't heard of them, and probably for good reason! Atomik Cocktail? Bad Candy? Ginger Roxx? Nasty Nasty? Sidekixx? But, in scouring their catalog, we did turn up a few gems. Cubic Zirconia, perhaps, but still gems! Here's one we had to share, originally released on Epic Records in 1982, the only album ever from Detroit's Vendetta, a trio led by African-American vocalist/guitarist Niki Buzz.
Certainly it's one for all you Citay fans (sort of) - 'cause the very first song, "Night Time", goes something like this: "Night time, is the right time, in the citaaaay!" And it's damn catchy, we like how Mr. Buzz throws in a sudden little screech when he sings the word "night". Yep, totally cheesy stuff but fun fun fun. The exuberant second track is even cooler, it's called "Jet Eye Knight", and we're pretty sure that's an intentional pun (or whatever) referring to the Jedi knights from Star Wars, then a quite current pop culture reference (Return of the Jedi came out in '83). Even though the song otherwise has nothing to do with Star Wars, it's more or less nonsense. But again, good times. The other songs here follow suit, with titles like "Deadly Like A Rose", "Bite Your Lip", and "Bablyon Rocks". With powerful wailing vox, big beat '80s production, and some really rather heavy riffs & shredding leads for this sort of melodic quasi-metal stuff, this is total cruising around in the car, summertime in the citaaaay music - and we've done just that! Plus, if you're gonna listen to some '80s guilty pleasure cock rock glamminess, why not make it something super obscure like this to keep yr music nerd cred up? So you can still be all snobby with fans of Foreigner, Billy Squier, Sammy Hagar, etc.
Bottom line: we're reviewing and recommending this 'cause we can't stop listening to it, and we're not afraid to admit it!
We had never heard Vessels before, a 5 piece from the UK, this record just showed up one day in the mail, so we threw it on and BAM, were totally BLOWN AWAY. We're tempted to say they don't make music like this anymore, but then we're not really sure they ever did. Like a supercharged modernized big beat-ed post rock maybe, starting out with woozy Konono like melodies over big distorted Tortoise like drums, and when the track kicks in, the sound is impossibly dense, everything wrapped in thick buzzing synths, a propulsive, almost groovy slab of super rhythmic, post-kraut hypno rock, imagine maybe if Black Moth Super Rainbow were making records for Thrill Jockey in the nineties, this is sort of what we imagine that might have sounded like.
But in some ways it's too modern, the sound impossibly lush and polished, the arrangements too, balanced delicately between progged out and intricate, and super repetitive and hypnotic, with some of THEE most kick ass drumming we've heard in ages. All woven into some seriously heavy and epic modern post rock. Just check out opener "Monorform" which we basically just described, except for the super heavy final movement which finishes things off with a totally majestic blast of blown out Godpeed worthy heaviness.
The Tortoise vibe is big too, with the band getting post rocky and jazzy all over the place, that combination of delicate instrumentation and big booming drums, what we liked so much about the early Tortoise recordings, but again here, Vessels crank it up, and make it impossibly heavy, the sound dense and layered and gloriously and melodically cacophonous, super dynamic too, the band deftly switching gears from full on bombast to hushed intricate skitter, from churning dirge to washed out drift, often in the same song. The vocals are minimal, and when they do pop up, they work perfectly, otherwise Helioscope is mostly instrumental, and Vessels are smart enough to know that sans vocals, the music is everything, and the music here is incredible, just check out the sound sample and see if you aren't as blown away as we were. Most definitely a new favorite!
We just got in a whole batch of new releases from Starlight Temple Society, home to Velvet Cacoon, Clair Cassis, Lonesummer and others, and Canadian one man black metal horde Void Of Reveries sounds right at home, an epic slab of blasting depressive atmospheric blackness, the sound murky and washed out and heavily reverbed, the drums simple and solid, the guitars a blurred black mass, the vocals, anguished and dripping with effects. The end result is something less grim and buzz, than sort of shoegazey and drifty and softly smeared, give it a moodier less metal vibe, which is not at all a bad thing. Our pals at the Chronic Youth blog posit that VoR sounds like a nineties screamo band gone black metal. Which makes sense, it's got the same sort of depressive, super emotional, gut wrenching urgency, but to these ears if that's true, it sound more like an Orchid 7" slowed way down, to a doomy blackened crawl, and then when the band does crank the tempo, they somehow manage to speed that Orchid record back up, but without shifting the pitch, so it becomes a gloriously blurred sprawl of black blur and super emotional buzz and blast.
Raw and minimal, lots of frantic distorted buzz, but also plenty of spidery clean guitars, and hushed ambient interludes, the perfect balance between grim miserable buzz, and dark contemplative shimmer. We dig!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!
We're not usually that into "live" albums. BUT, this is Voivod, the French-Canadian sci-fi prog-thrash metal geniuses. And even though founding guitarist Denis "Piggy" D'Amour sadly succumbed to colon cancer a few years ago, the remaining three original members (Away, Blacky, and Snake) along with new guitarist Daniel "Chewy" Mongrain, prove with this release that Voivod yet lives. Seriously, it's the kind of ripping live recording that makes you really, really wish you'd been at the show (which was in front of a rabid Quebec crowd), but still glad you get to hear what it sounded like on your own stereo at home. So energetic and vital, wow.
The last two Voivod albums - Katorz and Infin - were bittersweet affairs, constructed using guitar parts recorded by Piggy before his demise, posthumously turned into finished songs by the surviving members of the band, the results often too grunge or even pop-punk sounding to really fit our notion of Voivod-ness, though they had their moments. But Warriors Of Ice, with tracks spanning much of the band's career, is once again the Voivod we know and love - and in fact makes us want to go back and reevaluate those last two albums, 'cause you know what? The two songs from Infini heard here, "Global Warning" and "Treasure Chase", are sounding damn good and fierce, even alongside the many Voivod classics included in this set, like "The Unknown Knows" and "Tribal Convictions"!
They do everything here from the early raw thrash attacks of "Voivod", "Nuclear War", and "Ripping Headaches" (but, oddly, not "Warriors Of Ice"), to their later alt-metal prog of "The Prow" and "Panorama", closing with a version of Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine", as originally covered on Nothingface. Of course, with such a lengthy and varied discography from which to draw, material from some albums gets ignored entirely - there's nothing from Negatron or Phobos, which is ok (and no surprise, since Snake didn't sing on those albums), and nothing from the 2003 self-titled album or Katorz, which is ok too, but we'd have liked to have had some songs from The Outer Limits, darn it. But their other albums are all represented... and heck we're just happy to get to have this at all, sounding so good, and we think all Voivod fans will agree.
New guitarist Chewy (from tech metallers Martyr, he's also played in Gorguts and Cryptopsy) has some big shoes to fill and definitely pulls it off. Piggy would be proud. In addition to making us eager to once again see 'em live, this gives us lots of hope for the new studio album to be recorded with this new, reborn Voivod lineup. Voivod's always been about the future, and now it seems that they once again have one!!!
Yet another band from Brooklyn channeling the past, this female fronted trio though skips over the whole sixties girl group era and steers clear of the cheesy eighties MTV new wave vibe and lands squarely in the nineties, with a sound that's often a dead ringer for hazy dream poppers Mazzy Star, due in no small part to vocalist Molly Hamilton's warm sultry croon, as well as a lush, hazy washed out production. The instrumentation is pretty spare as well, the guitar a little bit twangy, a little bit strummy, the drums super simple, what sounds like just a kick, a snare and maybe a floor tom, laying down lazy shuffles, and minimal skitter, the songs swoonsome and sweetly melodic, a little bit wistful and minor key, the A side here "Gun Shy" wraps swaggery almost Morricone-ish guitars around those dreamy vox, and a crazy catchy hook, surprisingly propulsive and a little bit rocking, the guitar with a little bit more crunch/bite than you might expect, definitely a track that will have you playing it over and over.
And just to seal the deal nineties-wise, the B side is a cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game", which musically is darn near a dead ringer for the original, but with Hamilton's vocals in the mix, it sounds like Mazzy Star covering Chris Isaak, which is actually pretty great.
