As hopefully you fondly recall, just a few weeks back, we made a double cd entitled Might Of The Planet Eater, by this eccentric Finnish outsider blackened industrial / electronica act, our freakin' Record Of The Week. 'Twas a sprawling and utterly bizarre set, part Pan Sonic, part power electronics, part (ir-)rhythmic occult ritual, apparently what happens when a Finnish black metal weirdo does DIY industrial experimentation. Weird and primitive and (to us) utterly awesome.
While we absolutely LOVE Will Over Matter, we'll readily admit they're, uh, possibly a difficult listen (but then, compared to some other things we sell, maybe not really). And fortunately a lot of you folks seemed to dig it! So, of course, we thought you'd want us to list this one too, an earlier album from Will Over Matter, also on Bestial Burst.
This disc is actually the first WOM we ever heard, preceding Might Of The Planet Eater by a couple years. What happened, is not long ago one of us came across a Will Over Matter track on the internet somewhere, got kind of obsessed, and was happy (and amused) to find that we actually already had one of their albums in stock!! That was this one, 9 To The Moon, which we'd apparently ordered from Bestial Burst a couple years ago (2009) when it came out, but never reviewed. The next time we did a Bestial Burst order, we also got the newer double cd, and, our obsession growing, decided to make it Record Of The Week. So all of you who liked that one, you want this too!
Again, outsider electronic electro-dirge, chock a block with squeaky squelchy static-y sounds, stuttering irregular rhythms, noisy glitchy distortion damage. Bloop zwoop zip zap. Buzzing electricity. Sinister analog synth. Computers gone haywire. The occasional disembodied, drugged out voice buried in the mix (heard on the plodding "No Waste Of Sorrow" and elsewhere). Yes, the blown out, black and white, lunar landscape (?) cover art is so appropriate for these alien, bleak, brutal sci-fi sounds, that are both confusional and compelling.
To recap, WOM is a one-man band, a project of Harald Mentor from equally insane AQ faves Ride For Revenge, allegedly a "black metal" act. WOM is not black metal (though Beherit did dabble in this direction once upon a time) but anyone who really appreciates Ride For Revenge, as well as anything totally fucked up, ought to enjoy it. And the esoteric themes of these songs (they ARE songs) are as out there as any black metal weirdness ever. The song titles aren't even provided, but the internet knows what they are.
While it's not a double disc like the other one we listed, there's 9 tracks, all of 'em long... with grand finale "The Burning Logic" building and building for over 8 minutes of crinkum crankum, industrial electro-dirge hypnosis. The whole thing is possibly dangerous headphone listening all right!
All kinds of awesomeness here on this new Zebulon Pike album, their fourth, and the Minnesota instrumental math metal stoner doom post-rock space-rock (whew!) combo's first full-length in like three years. It's also their first ever to be released on (double lp gatefold) VINYL as well as compact disc. If you're already a big ZP fan like us, and we know lots of AQ customers are, then you're automatically super stoked at this news and we should just get outta the way and let you "add to cart" without further ado. But, we realize that (for some strange reason) not everybody in the whole world knows who ZP is or just why they're so great. So unfair (for them) and unfortunate (for all their potential fans), 'cause as we've said before, they should be HUGE... at least signed to Hydra Head (instead of their own label) and touring with bands like Baroness, hyped by all the cool magazines and blogs and whatnot. Not sure why that hasn't really happened yet, but if we have anything to say about it, someday it will.
Soooo... this album, being to our ears arguably their best yet, would be a great one to get into for the first time, for those who haven't yet been exposed to that special "Zebulon Pike radiation" we've referred to in the past. Not sure we can out-do any of our previous reviews in the hyperbole dep't., we've raved about 'em before for sure, and it will be hard for us to come up with anything better to say here, of course we'll pull out the old standby that they're kinda like Pelican meets The Fucking Champs, combining lumbering sub-bass heaviosity, surging melodicism, and stunning dual guitar harmonies - definitely a band playing music for music's sake ("Hats Off To Music" as the Champs would say, paraphrasing Led Zep's feelings about Roy Harper).
With spiralling leads and chugging riffage, ZP is definitely into metal, but also 20th century classical (Steve Reich?), and prog, that's more from whence their extended song structures arise - the five tracks here are mostly long, all the double digits except one. Crucial for an instrumental band, they not only come up with good riffs, but also concentrate on interesting, extreme sonic textures, getting into avant garde areas at times. Like, what's up with the crazy chorus of "wheee wheee wheee" sounds (somehow produced by the guitars, we assume) cacophonously closing track one, "Spectrum Threshold"? We don't know, but we like it. The drummer gets into the avant-action too, there's stretches of percussive soundscapes, dense drum storms and spacious skitter. You definitely don't miss there being a vocalist, this definitely keeps your attention, as long as the songs are, with twists and turns, first hypnotizing with crushing riff repetition, then plunging into a droning abstract celestial otherworld or a quiet jazzy pretty passage, like the tinkling music box midsection dropped into "Echoic Worlds" that sets you up for the heavy angular riffage set to surge forth immediately afterwards. And this album never bogs down, there's always a sense of strong, propulsive forward motion, even with the ambient detours.
Compared to earlier albums by these guys, we sense even more emphasis here on the '90s post rock part of the ZP equation. Lots of that loud/soft stuff a la Slint and Mogwai, but way more metal... some other bands that come to mind while listening to this, from moment to moment, include Don Caballero, Yob, Iceburn (circa Hephaestus, an underrated classic we'd love review someday, if it ever comes back into print!), Megaton Leviathan, forgotten AQ faves Fuehler, early Pharaoh Overlord, Isis, Boris, Conifer, Sardonis, and more... but they sound like ZP and only ZP at the end of the day.
One sign of a good album is that it immediately compels repeated plays from the sometimes jaded, overwhelmed listeners here at AQ, this one sure did and that's why we made it Record Of The Week. Space Is The Corpse Of Time is pushing our buttons for what we like in "this sort of thing" while also springing plenty of surprises.
So if you like your post rock to be heavy and sludgey, and you like your sludgey heavy rock to be instrumental, and you like your sludgey heavy instrumental post rock to be both super melodic and sonically adventurous, almost scientifically advanced, well heck then you sound like our sort of customer and we highly recommend this Zebulon Pike album to you! It's an epic feast of might and majesty and MUSIC.
FYI, if you get the vinyl, it comes with an mp3 download card. Obviously if you get the cd, you don't need that.
