I can tell you this about Priestess: they're one kick ass live rock n' roll band. I saw 'em on a bill not long ago with heavy metal revivalists The Sword -and- Early Man (both of those bands hotly tipped, and by us too!), and y'know what? Priestess simply DESTROYED both The Sword and Early Man, good as they were. Priestess were just the better live performers, working the crowd and wowing with musicianship and showmanship both. They had rock star swagger, and the skills to back it up -- guitar pyrotechnics, harmony vocals, and some darn catchy real riffy rock n' roll songs. Oh yeah, and a really frickin' good drummer, whose non-sucky *drum solo* definitely put Priestess over the top (in more ways than one) in competition with their tourmates that night.
I'd never heard of 'em before and was pretty darn impressed. Turns out they were from Montreal, and had an album out in Canada, not yet out in the States... well it's here now, this is it. I bought the Canadian version at the show, and didn't even listen to it for a long time 'cause I figured that they couldn't really live up to that live experience. And it's true to some extent, the album doesn't blow away Early Man's album, for instance, the way they did to the band in person. But it's definitely a good, honest-to-God hard rock album that you'd want to blare loudly from your (hypothetical, in all likelihood) Camaro as you put the pedal to the metal.
And having said that, get this: it's non-ironic too, near as we can tell, which also might explain why they had the advantage over those other two bands at that show (and by the way, it wasn't just that show, I saw 'em again opening for Dinosaur Jr. and Comets On Fire, and they were pretty good too, though suffering from the usual opener's lack of energetic crowd response, specifically due to the lack of a crowd at that early hour). Now how can a band like this be non-ironic, you ask? A band so partial to the cowbell, and clearly with visions of stadium-sized showmanship already hard-wired into their songwriting? Maybe 'cause they're Canadian? For whatever reason, their punchy and emotional three-minute pop hard rockin' songs are presented with more authentic feeling (to these ears) than, say, obvious comparison Wolfmother does it.
More about their sound: despite their name (which, unfortunately, conjures the image of an all-female Judas Priest cover band, doesn't it?) they're far from being an '80s retro metal band. More bluesy '70s, and less metal than that. The stoner/grunge thing is closer to the mark. Yeah, a bit White Stripesy at times like Wolfmother, also all AC/DC and QOTSA at others. Can't wait to see 'em again! In the meantime, we'll be spinning this...
On the same Italian label that brought us that lovely Luciano Cilio disc in 2004, here's more import-expensive but totally worth it amazing archival material (in ultra-nice digipackaging to sweeten the deal) from the Italian '70s sonic art underground, specifically Roberto Laneri's Prima Materia vocal drone ensemble. This is some heavy stuff here -- and heavy can mean a lot of things, AQ list readers have come to realize. In this case, it's heavy the way that Tibetan Buddhist Rites From The Monasteries Of Bhutan double disc reissue we listed last year was heavy (so said our distro rep when we ordered this, and he was right!). And this mesmerizing, yogic drone-fest does have a monkish sound, being produced entirely by live human voices, gargling and moaning and droning. Though if you didn't know that, you might think it was in part electronic. It's the sound of wind and weariness, sorta spooky and haunted, wavering and weaving, building and building, with overtones galore, a howling of souls into the Universe. Like a bunch of Tibetan monks or Tuvan throat singers wordlessly saying woe is me... and we're pretty sure that one of 'em at least sounds a heckuva lot like Elmer Fudd!! Seriously, though, it's really good and intense and magical... if you're a trance/drone fan (maybe digging stuff like Grouper, that has a vocal component), you should listen to this!
We're told that "the musicians of the group Prima Materia individually researched and developed unusual vocal techniques (originally used in Tantric rituals in North India, Mongolia and Tibet), based upon the use of overtones coupled with a special state of inner concentration, which was the essential condition for both the emission and control of long-sustained and complex vocal sounds. Their capacity to sustain a note for what seems an eternity, and then continue to provide endless variations generated a continuous and sustained drone of sound, in which the overtones are clearly perceived." We believe it.
The Tail Of The Tiger LP was originally released in 1977 as a private pressing by a small label run by Laneri, Alvin Curran and Giacinto Scelsi. Now, this digitally remastered cd reissue features the 33 minutes and 30 seconds of music from the original LP plus another 42 minutes of live performance recorded in Berlin in 1974 and Rome in 1976. And it's packaged not just with a booklet of liner notes but also 16 pages of "visual overtones", beautiful full color prints on tracing paper. Yup, nice! And it case you're still unsure, the blurb on the cover sticker contains high praise from none other than Terry Riley, who knows his drones.
Empires fall, Rome burns, and the heathen tribe that is Primordial sing a gallows hymn, both grim and grandiose, from their rugged emerald isle... gosh and begorra, these Irish metallers have outdone themselves on this, their sixth album. It's sweeping, weeping, epic wall o' metal, some serious shit indeed. You can get a good idea of the mood To The Nameless Dead conveys just by perusing the song titles, several of which we referenced in the first sentence of this review. Ancient pride and the sadness of loss mix masterfully on this album, the barbarians at the gates of the fallen empire knowing that their pagan glories too are fated for ruin and doom in the end...
Primordial are a band that doesn't fit neatly into any category. Perhaps black metal comes the closest, with a folky vibe and a fair share of aggression. Primordial's vocals are sometimes clean and melodic, sometimes quite harsh, always super emotive and stirring -- as is their music. They're certainly heavy, so let's just call them an Irish extreme heavy metal band that can stand tall next to the likes of Scandinavia's Opeth and Enslaved.
A lot of the time the black metal we recommend is all about being the quote unquote most fucked up ever. But once in a while, tribute must be paid to a band like Primordial whose massive and melancholic art -isn't- brutally primitive or inadvertently avant garde, but is just plain excellent, from writing to performance to production. In all respects, powerful.
Just in case you were wondering, there IS a universe. A universe in which a band from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley released a privately-pressed lp in 1975 containing some crazy sci-fi jazz fusion prog rock jams. You may not have heard that record yet, but you live in that universe, too. That band was called Probe 10, and that lp was called There Is A Universe.
Imagine an underground hippie space rock band, with plenty of acid rock guitar and fuzz bass, teaming up with a groovy trumpet playing jazz cat who wandered in from some '60s nightclub. It's like Herb Alpert, smoking a lot of herb (ha).
Usually when obscure private press reissues are billed as long lost psych/fuzz gems, especially when there's any sort of 'jazz' component, you have to be skeptical. But, in this case, it's actually pretty cool artifact. Super over the top with chops, and with the fuzz. The band, obsessed with the likes of Return To Forever, get busy with hectic tempo changes and rollercoaster song structures, brassy attacks, and flute too, lots of flute. And there's a big drum solo on here as well, part C of the five part suite "Invasion Of The Malladroids". Just ridiculous, really. And when they aren't conjuring jazzy sci-fi space battles with their instruments, they get all new agey, check out the babbling brook and spiritual spoken word on "To Improvise A Dream", and then there's the very first song, the title track, the only one with singing on it (courtesy guest vocalist Susan Rudelich), shrill and sweet at the same time, misleadingly melodic and hippified though, setting you up for a surprise as the band kicks into the first of the Malladroid invasion cuts immediately afterwards, some of the fuzziest, freakiest prog fusion absurdity we've ever heard.
Nicely packaged in a miniature lp sleeve, the cd booklet featuring personal liner notes from two of the band members, Jim McGee and Barry "Buzz" Bachman. Also, there's five unreleased bonus tracks on the cd (a vinyl version of this reissue is forthcoming too, btw).
Eagerly awaited, at last it's now here, the new import disc from South American doom overlords Procession - and we say overlords without a doubt, even thought his is just the second cd from this crushing Chilean underground act, and in fact can be considered their debut album - since the one we highlighted previously, The Cult Of Disease, was technically an ep, with bonus tracks from an earlier demo. One of those demo tracks, to these ears already a doom classic, "The Road To The Gravegarden", reappears here, redone (with special guest guitar leads/harmonies courtesy of Peter Vicar, ex-Reverend Bizarre). The five new tracks are equally awesome, Procession trudging forth resolutely into eternal darkness, bearing aloft their hymns of glorious despair.
What we said before about Procession certainly applies to this album as well. It's magnificently heavy, the majestic, morose vocals and fuzz laden guitar work are world class (both provided by the same talented gentleman, obviously a doomed soul). Destroyers Of The Faith is possessed of such a serious, sorrowful, doom feel. All the songs except the intro are long (and slow!), but never dull, being both moody and moving. Procession may just be today's truest torchbearers of utter, epic doom, certainly they're way up there with The Wounded Kings, Lord Vicar, Black Oath, Griftegard, and fellow Chileans Condenados, among newer bands well versed in the old ways, carrying on the tradition of Candlemass (who are still at it as well), taking things to an emotionally effecting extreme... defending the (doom) faith, really, not destroying it. And incorporating some interesting, darkly psychedelic textures too, so that this might be the "epic doom metal" band fans of sludgier/artier fare like Cough and Orthodox could really get into as well. Join the procession, and doom on!
Are you feeling doomed? Play some Procession and you will! And you'll dig the doomed feeling too, if you're like us. Hailing from South America, Chile to be precise, this obscure trio dish out the ever-lovin' doom metal on this their debut full-length (technically, they call it an ep, 'cause three of its six songs are taken from an earlier demo tape, but it's 48 minutes long and works as one coherent album). The band's logo and the cover art may make this look like a black metal release, and IS quite dark and serious and Satanic, but it's definitely slo-mo true doom in the old school vein of Reverend Bizarre and The Gates Of Slumber and of course Saint Vitus and Black Sabbath, with lyrics about such abysmal subjects as plagues, gravegardens, and dying ancient empires. The inevitability of disease, death and decay, and loss of faith, are what Procession acknowledge and embrace. They do so sincerely, with much grace and majesty - and sheer heaviness, the guitars dragging you down with their lugubrious riffs and insalubrious tones. There's weird atmospheres, occasional uptempo surges, and no lack of morose melody. Freakin' EPIC. The band's guitarist/vocalist Felipe Plaza Kutzbach sings with all the grandiose power of classic Candlemass, but in a lower register, and with more of a rough, anguished edge. He's definitely Procession's biggest draw, both his vocals and guitar playing - not just churning riffage, there's also some really interestingly effected leads heard here, strangely psychedelic and melancholically beautiful, and his doomy talents are ably supported by the solid bass and drums. Procession (great name, by the way, we imagine doomed souls marching into the underworld, or cloaked monks in some ceremonial, uh, procession) prove themselves a force to be reckoned with. We've listed some excellent doom debuts lately, Garden Of Worm, Crowned In Earth, Griftegard, but THIS one is possibly the best. Certainly the troo doom minded here have been listening to this A LOT. And considering how much cool new music (doom and otherwise) we are inundated with here every week at AQ, that's saying something. Can't wait for the new one we hear is in the works...
Incredible, Magickal, Historickal ritual soundscape new-wave solo concept album, created by the drummer for the Texas occult metal band Absu. A beautiful digipak with music unlike anything else. It tells a story set in Medieval Scotland but is influenced less by Black Metal than by the Art Bears (so Proscriptor claims) and Flock of Seagulls (the album closes with a cover of their hit "I Ran", paradoxically the most metal moment on the disc...) Highly recommended! Listen to this alone at night with candles burning.
The *other* classic PE album, from 1990.
THE classic PE album. Best album of 1988? Probably.
Rick Rubin-produced 1987 debut from everyone's favorite rappers Public Enemy.
Here's the record that was never released on account of the Manson murders! (More on that in a second.) This double cd contains all the recordings of Public Nuisance, an obscure (but pretty great) teenage garage/psych band that got together in Sacramento circa 1964. As befits their punky name, they looked like a bunch of hoods, decked out in all-black outfits, with two of 'em sporting proto-Ramones style long hair. That, plus the fact that we read they were like an American version of the wild and crazy English freakbeat bands, piqued our curiosity big time. Supposedly, also, they were as "heavy as the Stooges". The truth is, that's a bit of a stretch. Some of this *is* at least heavier than, if not the Stooges, the Stones, but they do a lot of lighter, Beatles-y stuff too. They perform a nice cover of the Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping" in fact. So they were as much a pop-psych band as they were a down and dirty garage combo. On the other hand, their song "Love Is A Feeling" sounds EXACTLY like the White Stripes! The 28 tracks here actually cover quite a wide spectrum of sounds from sweet, harpsichord and theremin laced pop to raw, primal R&B stomp w/ plenty o' fuzz. This collection mainly consists of 1969 sessions recorded for an LP that never came out 'cause their label was owned by Terry Melcher, the guy who also owned the house where the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate! After the murders, Melcher, afraid for his life, went into hiding and his label folded... But now, decades later, here are those unreleased sessions plus some rare singles tracks recorded under the band's earlier moniker Moss & The Rocks. Maybe a single-disc "best of" would have been more uniformly killer, and cheaper, but we can't really argue with getting to hear it all. The super thick, colorful, photo-filled cd booklet is full of essays written by Mike "Ugly Things" Stax, Clark Faville, and others -- including notes about each and every song!
Definitely something for fans of the Seeds, Stones, Creation, and "Nuggets" stuff in general to check out. Even if they're not quite the "unknown Stooges" we'd hoped for, Public Nuisance are pretty cool.
From jaunty opener "Eye Bath" onward, this album is one that surprises and delights and offers so much interesting DIY recorded avant-drone *texture* along with its actually quite catchy indie-pop song-iness! We always knew we liked the music of New Zealander Stephan Neville, aka one-man-band Pumice (also a member of The Futurians), he's definitely been in there amongst all the cool, home-taped dronological sounds appearing on obscure cds, cd-rs, cassettes, lathe-cut vinyl and so forth from his entrancing island home that we've been geeking out about over the years. But all the releases tend to overwhelm. Not just Pumice's, but Birchville Cat Motel and Omit and Peter Wright and Antony Milton all the rest. We can't always devote our full attention. And actually, Pumice's previous album, Yeahnahvienna, released a year or so ago on Soft Abuse was a bit ho-hum we thought, we didn't even ever get around to reviewing it. A lot of it was too stripped down and acoustic, revealing too much of the vocals which aren't really Mr. Neville's strong suit. But we're glad we didn't miss this new album! It's different, dense, infectiously fuzzed, and really really good (one of those albums that gets all the AQers coming up to the counter to see what's playing when it's on). Actually our interest in Pumice was rekindled by the recent underground NZ comp on Xeric, Need For A Crossing. Neville, along with Pseudoarcana's Antony Milton, curated it, and it featured several cuts by Pumice and other projects of his, which were quite striking. So suddenly were were like, hmm, Pumice, hey let's be sure to check out this new disc Pebbles. And lo and behold, it's a winner.
Like we said, Pumice makes lo-fi indie rock, the Dead C and the Velvet U are both likely influences, also all the rich history of NZ indie awesomeness from labels like Xpressway and Flying Nun, artists like The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and Alastair Galbraith. The music here is damaged, reverbed, distorted, as much about sound as song. Regarding Pebbles, Pumice claims Moondog and Simply Saucer as inspirations -- while we might not have thought of those disparate outsider references, they're not so outlandish when we think about it. And although Neville has a reputation for gloominess, the sheer pop umph buried beneath the lo-fi grit and noise of these tracks can't be denied, and tends to balance the depressive effects of the doleful droniness also much in evidence. Yeah, there's moments of rollickin' destroyed rock as well as an experimental folkiness that Richard Youngs fans will dig... and again if you like ye olde Xpressway style NZ indie stuff this is gonna be a blast. Another reminder for us here at AQ that we need to make a New Zealand section in the store again, like we used to back in the day!
For the last 14 years, New Zealander Stefan Neville has been issuing a steady stream of cassettes, lathe-cuts, cd-rs, 7"s and other assorted slabs of mysterious small-run skronk under the Pumice moniker. Somehow through it all Neville has managed to find a comfortable spot nestled in between two very distinct strains of NZ music-making. At their heart, the songs he writes are pop songs obviously indebted to the legacy of Flying Nun, The Tall Dwarves and The Clean; that said, his willful disregard for fidelity, his love of tape hiss, wow and flutter, garbled vocals and blasts of harsh drone are a tip o' the hat to kiwi noiseniks like Birchville Cat Motel, Dead C, and Antony Milton. It's a compelling combination, as it allows his records to be both densely textural and supremely melodic - for every piece of blown out headphone candy, there's a memorable vocal or frighteningly catchy guitar riff. It's this incredible tug-of-war between (as we put it in our review) "doleful drone" and "sheer pop umph" that made us flip out over the last Pumice full-length, Pebbles, and we're happy to report that Neville's latest, Quo, finds him refining the Pumice formula in all the best possible ways to create a record full of impish charms, slack anthems, rambling bedrooms hiss, and speaker fried drone assaults!
Quo opens with "Pumice Quo," a song that hints at what is to come on the rest of the album: fuzzed-out, atonal guitars klang and skree like some sort of netherworldly faux-sitar over a ragged, swinging stomp that effortlessly mutates back and forth with a breezy, expansive, half-time swagger. Rhythmically and structurally it's all angular and math-y but it never sounds cold or analytical - it's like some incredible mix of Doc At The Radar Station and Celebrate The New Dark Age where you can't tell if it's Beefheart covering Polvo or vice versa, but everything sounds perfectly fucked up and damaged but so inexplicably catchy at the same time. Likewise, "World with Worms," a creeping, rumbling, blown-out, billowing sea shanty that mixes Neville's signature, mannered (almost goth, really) vocals with a teetering melody pounded out on some sort of half-broken chord organ or accordion.
The first half of the record continues to cast a few different lines - "Fort" sounds like some sort of classic mid-'90s B-side pop anthem you'd expect from GBV or Boyracer buried under 10 feet of shrieking keyboard noise; "Thermos in the Studio" is a winsome bedroom pop instrumental that would sound right at home buried amongst the ruins of Pavement's Westing (By Musket and Sextant) with lyrical slide guitar melodies that are simple, gorgeous and over in an instant; "Pebbles" is 2 minutes of rambling, shuffling, ramshackle pop. However, everything starts to come together with the second half of the record, as "Whole Hoof" looks back to the Polvo/Beefheart battle royale of the album opener but this time ads layers of distorted howling vocals. It starts out like Simply Saucer plowing through some freaked out rockabilly jam but mutates into something completely creepy and sinister at the end.
The album's second half is incredibly strong and manages to focus the scattershot elements of the first half without sacrificing any of those songs' chimpy playfulness. There's a darker element that emerges, but it never overwhelms the whole proceedings. "Sick Bay Duvet" starts out like a lost Fahey side being played back on a broken down gramophone, all rumbling, twanging, echoing, and slightly out of tune. When drums, melodica and a low, throbbing drone finally kick in at the end, it changes into something completely different - a kind of dour, anti-anthem that leads perfectly next track, "Dogwater," whose warbling, garbled take on Blackheart Procession's western goth vibe manages to come as both tongue-in-cheek and gracefully mannered. Things get stronger still with the last three songs: "Heavy Punter" is a solemn funeral shuffle built around a fractured Beefheart/Polvo riff filled out by ghostly keyboards that woosh and drone in and out of the background and fantastic, layered, pseudo-goth vocal stylings; "Battersby" is almost like Pumice's stab at punk rock with Casio tweeters battling against four on the floor drums and stumbling, disaffected vocals that wouldn't sound out of place on a Fall record (the whole thing comes across like some weird mashup of a NZ cd-r salvo and something off of a Messthetics comp - bizarrely catchy and certainly one of our favorites!); and album ender "Beak Remedy" is 7 minutes of blissed out, see-saw chord organ drone, ghostly tape loops, fluttering, stuttering ambient flickers of feedback, hum and hiss with percussive clomps that sneak in toward the end until the whole thing trickles out with choppy puffs of feedback and static.
All this adds up to a brilliant mix of pop songwriting and freaked out fuzzmongering that has been perking the ears of both customers and staff since it first arrived. We're confident that Quo is going to show up on many of our year end best-of lists, and we think you'll feel the same way about this blissed-out, smashed to pieces, melodic, thoughtful, mannered, playful and thoroughly recommended record!
The demise of legendary doomlords Reverend Bizarre had two strange but positive after effects, first, there seemed to be a flood of posthumous RB releases, more we think than when they were actually a band, a from-beyond-the-grave release schedule to rival Biggie or Tupac, as is further demonstrated by yet another new Reverend Bizarre release reviewed elsewhere on this week's list! The second outcome was the more inevitable one, a whole slew of new projects from RB mainman S.A.Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder), whose voracious need to rock would obviously need a new outlet, and thus we have The Puritan and Opium Warlords. Both born of Hynninen's newfound obsession with ultra doom, with sludge, especially of the Japanese variety, Boris, Corrupted, Solar Anus, Hynninen set forth on a mission to create some serious Japanese style ultra doom sludge. We'll have the Opium Warlords disc for next list, but for now, we shall celebrate The Puritan, and Lithium Gates, which compiles two previously released, now out of print vinyl lps, one of which we never had, the other which we had in extremely limited numbers.
We've become convinced, that Hynninen must be somehow related to Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo. They're both Finnish, they both front or fronted kick ass heavy rock bands, and both have totally twisted senses of humor, which finds its way, however subtly (or not) into their music. So while the Puritan was originally inspired by Japanese doom and sludge, by the time it worked its way through Hynninen's cracked Finnish filter, it had been transformed into something else entirely. Something heavy and brutal, but warped and far out and brilliant.
This is no ordinary doom. And is far removed from the doom of Reverend Bizarre. Although on first listen, maybe not so far removed after all, beginning with the first Puritan lp, The Untitled, the sound is ultra heavy, downtuned, spaced out, melodic, with a distinctly classic strain of classic doom running through it, the opening intro could indeed be the opening salvo from some doom classic, and the follow up too does not sound that far our, awesomely epic and troo vocals over a lumbering slow motion dirge, but then the record shifts gears, and "The Sulphur - Coloured Clouds Are Hurrying Through the Lithium Gates" explodes like some nineties noise rock juggernaut, loping bass, crumbling guitars, jagged riffing, only to gradually slow to a nearly complete halt, before slipping back into slow motion ultra doom dirgery. "The Sepulchral God Holding a Speech for the Moribund" sounds almost like some extra heavy slowcore, with some dramatically crooned Slough Feg like vox, before a strangely haunting outro, with clean guitars, whirling ambience, mysterious sampled voices, including a classic Charles Manson rant, all hovering beneath thick washed out guitars and lilting sweetly sorrowful melodies. Then it begins to get even weirder.
The second half of Lithium Gates contains the entirety of The Black Law, the second Puritan lp, which begins with some old timey organ, wheezy and lo-fi, some lost in time parlor music, lilting and melancholy, until everything is flattened by a massive wall of downtuned guitars, exploding into a plodding doomic dirge, which is not really funereal, or even all that slow, a plodding lurching doom that reminds us of Midwestern pigfuckers Killdozer more than anything, which as far as we're concerned is good news for sure. The chuggy midtempo crunch pounds and churns while the vocals howl and bellow, there's a distinctly AmRep / Touch And Go vibe to the doom on display, the main riff locked into a loop that seems to go on and on and on, giving the proceedings a sort of Gore vibe as well. The riff eventually gives up the ghost leaving a tranquil, almost ambient fade out, all soft streaks of feedback, delicate melodies, distant slabs of slow moving sludge, all smeared into a weirdly dreamy drift.
From there on out, the record continues to devolve gloriously with some bizarre gnarled super distorted guitar weirdness, completely panned so it careens from speaker to speaker, ear to ear, until the riff finally kicks in, a big ol' filthy doomy dirgey riff, the drums and guitar locked tight, while in the background, the WHOLE time, the moans and groans of a lady seemingly in the throes of violent passion(!), the whole track endlessly looped and cyclical, the only variation being the woman's voice, here the Gore vibe is undeniable, a killer riff, just pounding away, over and over, very hypnotic and strangely minimal, but that's only the first track. The second revolves around a muted chug, spread out over a layer of seemingly constant buzz, with more deep crooned dramatic vocals, the production reverby and very new wave sounding, a little like Joy Division or the Cure but way heavier and dripping with doooooom, the wind-down at the end laced with bursts of super epic and melodic drama, turning the outro into some sort of doomic Godspeed.
Needless to say, fucking awesome! And essential listening for any one into sounds slow and low, doomy and heavy, fucked up and far out.
We know a LOT of you are familiar with the band Jerusalem, one of thee ultimate holy grails of '70s proto-metal, thankfully reissued by Vintage/Rockadrome a couple years ago. We made it our Record Of The Week at the time, and still sell 'em steadily, every week!! And this list, you'll also find the vinyl version of that reissue, repressed. One of the heaviest, doomiest proto-metal finds ever, coming closer to the gods Black Sabbath than most, but with their own primitive, almost punk charm!
Jerusalem only put out that one rare lp, but that's not the end to the story. Rumor had it that there was a second album in the can, never released. Well, as we mentioned in our Record Of The Week write-up, the actual fact was that when Jerusalem broke up, sometime in 1972, 3/5ths of the ex-members immediately formed another band, Pussy, and what we've got here is Pussy's entire recorded output, finally seeing the light of day!!
Not to be confused with another British band called Pussy, a psych pop outfit from the '60s (what's with these young men liking Pussy as a band name so much? Cat fanciers, huh?), this Pussy were a power trio, consisting of Jerusalem's rhythm section plus their lead guitarist. Apparently, the lead singer and 2nd guitarist from Jerusalem had wanted to go in a more progressive/polished direction, which lead to the split, and resulted in the formation of Pussy, by those who wanted to keep things rather more raw and rockin'. However, Pussy do sound somewhat different from Jerusalem, and not just 'cause bassist Paul Dean took over on vocals (on the other hand, he was also always the main songwriter in both bands).
While their songs are full of throbbing rhythms and crunching distorted guitar riffs, Pussy don't come across quite so doomy and dark as did their previous incarnation. There's a bit more of a poppy "glam" thing going on here, Pussy sounding something like a heavier T.Rex at times! Banging a gong, getting it on, boogying down, complete with handclaps and cowbell. Slade and The Sweet could be other influences/comparisons, which means this has something in common with the proto-metal treat we listed last time, by Incredible Hog... Some songs remind us of Stray ("I Keep Remembering You"), others of early UFO ("Moonshine"), and one ("Pig Mansion") even hints at a proto-metal version of early Brian Eno. There's even a number on here that Andee thought sounded like something from the first Duran Duran album, though we're not sure if anyone else thinks so. These rollicking tracks are all energetic and fuzzed out, with lots of bouncy, rubbery riffing. Definitely a good time, and thus getting played in heavy rotation here at the store ever since it showed up!
There's a total of 16 tracks on this cd, including both sides of their only previously released record, a 7" single from 1972, the great "Feline Woman" (inspired by Sabbath's version of "Evil Woman"?) backed with "Ska-Child" (definitely NOT a ska number, though it does feature groovy hard rockin' horns!). Then there's four more songs from demo sessions circa '73, plus the ten tracks, with a new guitarist, from what was meant to be their full-length album, all produced (as was Jerusalem) by Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, who also sings some backup. So cool that this long lost gem is finally available! The 20 page cd booklet includes lyrics, photos, and detailed liner notes about the Pussy story...
We can never get enough Boredoms. But unfortunately, there's never enough Boredoms. We hate waiting years between releases. Thankfully there are plenty of side projects and offshoots to hold us over. One such Boredoms related outfit is Puzzle Punks, featuring Eye from the Boredoms, along with his PP partner Shinro Otake. We carried the limited picture disc of this release years and years ago, but for some reason were never able to get the cd. We recently discovered that there is a NEW Puzzle Punks record (we're not sure if it is indeed new, or just a new collection of old material, but we'll hopefully have it in time for the next list) and at the same time we discovered we could finally get this, the cd version of the Puzzle Punks' 2nd album Budub.
And we forgot just how great this stuff was. Even after a decade the sounds on Budub sound fresh. Weird and fucked too (it is Eye after all) but fresh enough that you could be forgiven for thinking this was some weird Excepter record or No Neck side project. Which just goes to show you how much influence Eye and his gang had and still have on modern music.
The sound of Budub is less caustic and spastic than the first Puzzle Punks records, or the Boredoms records released around the same time. Instead it's a series of experiments in rhythm, maybe hinting at the direction Eye would take the Boredoms on late albums.
Imagine some impossible jam session between the Boredoms and This Heat, or a lobotomized Hawkwind left to jam with the infant versions of the No Neck Blues Band. Or even a room full of musical toys, possessed and allowed to run amok. Dark and deliriously playful. Sometimes creepy and dark, but more often sort of strange and hypnotic. And always some bizarre world of rhythm and rhythmic wonder. Every track a strange sonic trip: analog synth squelches over dreamy chimes and tinkles, processed fuzzy krautrock grooves beneath strange chanted and muttered vocals, murky percussive plod and thud, over which a tiny sped up voice drenched in reverb mews and warbles, haunting vocal and percussion duos, very tribal and mysterious, thick washed out expanses of fuzzy spacerock FX and distant feedback, skittery almost techno shuffles, with bizarre vocalizations, deconstructed melodies played on a toy guitar, accompanied by a slowly wound jack in the box, a grinding wash of super thick distorted throb, a wall of low end whir, a murky world of jungle sounds like a lo-fi Perry And Kingsley and every random rhythmic stop in between.
Boredoms freaks who never picked this up NEED THIS BAD. And all you modern free folks and random rock weirdos into No Neck, Excepter, Sunburned Hand and the like might just dig this a lot!
Unbelievably grim and blown out Burzumic black metal buzz from a Korean eighth grader! Recorded over a couple years and finally released when he was 14 years old! It's true. tUMULt has been trying to get this out for ages, and it's finally here. Black metal record of the week? The year more likely. Perhaps maybe EVER.
It took almost two years to track Pyha down, and then almost four more to sort out the eventual release of this grim depressive black masterpiece. Here's how it started:
Longtime aQ pal Steven Schultz (he of Puny Humans and Stalin Claus Superstar infamy) was studying in Korea and bought a bunch of records. None of them really impressed him that much, except for one mysterious disc, by a 'group' called Pyha, which in Korean means 'ruins'. He later discovered that Pyha was the work of one man, er, kid actually, a 14 year old eighth grade black metaller! Needless to say, WOW. Anyway, on returning, Steven passed the cd on to Andee who was BLOWN AWAY. Completely floored, so much so that he knew he had to release it. More people HAD to hear this. So the hunt was on. How to track down a 14 year old kid in Korea. Pre-internet it would have been impossible. But another aQ pal, Jason, was actually living part time in Korea, weirdly enough he's a minor television star there, and offered to try and track down Pyha. Which miraculously he did, and we then discovered that there were in fact 4 albums, all recorded when Pyha was between the ages of 14 and 17! All of which are amazing, and all of which should eventually be released on tUMULt.
But this is THE ONE. The essence of pure inspired ultra personal musical expression. Powerful and intense, blown out and buzz drenched, depressive and melancholic. Andee sent a cd-r of the record to a writer at Terrorizer, who was so impressed, he reviewed the sans-art home burned cd-r in that magazine and gave it a TEN. It's that fucking mind blowing. We mentioned in our recent review of the Wrath Of The Weak record that it was maybe the buzziest black metal record ever. Well, it has nothing on Pyha. Totally in the red, digital distortion, crumbling and furious. The vocals anguished wails and tortured howls, the drums simple programmed beats, weirdly clipped and processed, also wreathed in distortion, keyboards offering up more buzz and shimmer. Long stretches of creepy ambience, samples of speeches and warfare, of wailing weeping mothers and children, all woven into Pyha's buzzing black tapestry. Total bedroom lo-fi production, but completely idiosyncratic and inspired. No blast beats or furious thrashing, instead, the tracks are either midtempo, or no-tempo, with some tracks eschewing drums all together, just a wall of ultra distorted riffage all tangled up with demonic howls. But it's not just howling and screeching, the vocals sometimes emerge as a weird wailing croon, other times as a hushed whisper, while other times a mumbled moan. In fact, a few of the tracks almost sound like some weird black metal Sebadoh, super lo-fi and dripping with distortion, the vocals weary and worn, buried beneath swirling squalls of blacknoise. Others have a distinct shoegaze quality too, that is if you can imagine a shoegaze Abruptum, the drums loping and laid back, the guitars washed out and blurred, the vocals SO distorted they swallow up all the other sounds and become another layer of super saturated sound. Sometimes they even morph into fucked up harmonies, so loud and lo-fi they crackle and splinter, without losing any of their alien beauty. There are long stretches of ambience too. Crackling campfires, crickets, warm whirring synths way off in the distance, ghostly gurgled disembodied voices, whipping wind, all interwoven with tape hiss and buzzing synths, creepy noises, and all manner of sonic detritus.
Three of the tracks here are bonus tracks, recorded later, and manage to fit perfectly with the original disc. One is especially of not, as it's maybe the most melodic of the bunch, thick keyboards drift over a sea of pulsing cymbal sizzle, and barely audible guitar, the drums buried way down in the mix, the vocals growling and hissing and howling, the whole thing very dreamy and drifty and otherworldly. Until the end, when everything drops out leaving just shimmering synths, and the sounds of war, speeches, soldiers, sirens, weeping mothers, crying children, so intense and anguished and moving. Which brings us to the lyrical content. Pyha is staunchly anti-government, anti-war, anti-military, he's a pacifist and an anarchist, and has chosen black metal as the medium to express his message. The packaging is covered in images of Korean wartime atrocities, all of which is even more ironic and sad, when you learn that Pyha (now that he's old enough) is currently in the Korean Army, as military service there is compulsory.
The record closes with one of the most powerful tracks on the record. A seven+ minute blow out, as black as anything else on the disc, and definitely the fastest, as close to a blast as Pyha gets. But it's still loping and woozy. The drums and cymbals are recorded super hot and lay a gauzy layer of hiss over the proceedings, keyboards pick out a delicate minor key melody, hovering weightless like ghosts over the roiling blackened churn below. It almost sounds like Wold at times, as if there was some old 78 playing beneath the wash of black buzz. The track gets heavier and heavier, the vocals more and more demonic and monstrous, the intensity building and building, the main riff, remaining impossibly haunting and majestic as it sinks deeper and deeper into the sea of noise drenched blackness, leaving more and more of that mysterious underlying melody, to drift off and eventually fade away.
Rare is the record, black metal or otherwise, that evokes such intense emotion, that gives the listener chills. Beyond the blackness and the buzz, lies a record of impossible depth, full of emotion and passion. So much so, that it's easy to forget that it was conceived, composed and recorded entirely by a little middle school kid!
Gorgeously packaged in a 6 panel gatefold digipak. Brown and gold sepia toned, with metallic ink, the outside a tranquil Korean landscape, inside a garish gallery depicting the human cost of warfare.
After all that, it might seem like overkill, but this is, without a doubt, THE BLACK METAL RECORD OF THE YEAR. And for some of us, one of the best black metal records ever. What the fuck were you doing when you were 14 years old?!
This album has the word "synthesizer" emblazoned on its cover, in letters as big as either the artist name or the album title. And when you hear it, you will know why. This album is all about Pyrolator putting his several synthesizers through their paces. Inland was the debut lp from Germany's Kurt Dahlke aka Pyrolator (also a member of DAF and Der Plan), originally released in 1979 on his own Aka Tak label, and its synth-noise experimentation belongs both to the spacey electronic krautrock genre and to the (currently in revival) '80s minimal-wave scene. Think DIY Kraftwerk. It encompasses the abstract experimentation of someone like Asmus Tietchens, as well as other stuff that's much more melodic and Cluster-y. There's shortwave static, distant schlager transmissions, rhythmically buzzing glitchwerks, musique concrete tape edits, some blissed out white noise soundscapes... For folks who like difficult, mad scientist music, you've got squelchy distortion laced with whining, high end tones ("Inland 1"), and for the new wavers, there's trax with burbling sequenced beats, pulsing like something Zombi or Majeure might do today ("Minimal Tape 3/7.2"). Indeed, Inland is a veritable cornucopia of such ear candy for those of us enamored with the minimal coldwave synth sorta thing, the more experimental side of which, especially. You could file this with your Axxess album (that recent Record Of The Week) though a lot of this is scarier than that - Inland apparently intended as cutting edge "protest music" (those were radical days in West Germany, the Red Army Faction running rampant). But its claustrophobic character is abstract enough for us to enjoy today without any explicit political aspects made plain. Another good reference, perhaps, being Bernard Szajner.
The compact disc version of this reissue comes with 6 worthwhile bonus tracks. Oh, and Bureau B has another early but much poppier Pyrolator reissue we'll try to get to soon...
Q: Do you love '60s psych/beat/garage stuff?
Q: Do you have any Q65 records?
If your answer to Q1 is Yes, and your answer to Q2 is No, then YOU MUST BUY THIS, NOW! It's that simple.
Q65 were Holland's version of the Rolling Stones, seriously just as good. They had the hair, they had the hooks, they had the attitude. Even though they somehow never got huge outside of their own small country. Other good comparisons would be to the Yardbirds, and especially the Pretty Things. If you like the Pretties, make sure you get hip to Q65, and here's just the ticket. This brand new compilation brings together 24 crucial cuts from the Q65, spanning their career from early 1966 singles and their magnificent debut album of killer R&B freakbeat entitled Revolution, to the even more mindblowingly psychedelic stuff they cut afterwards, up through '68. It's a true labor of love from Q65's fans at Rev-Ola, as you can tell from the fancy full-color, 22 page cd booklet, and you'll know why when you hear their songs. There's 24 good reasons here that the back cover blurb so accurately states: "You need this cd more than you need food"! From crunching garage fuzz stompers like "Cry In The Night", "Summer Thoughts In A Field Of Weed", and the Who-ish "I Got Nightmares" with its Bo Diddley beat to the much moodier, more melancholic vibes of the likes of "World Of Birds" and "Sour Wine"... wow, man. Feast on this.
They could easily compete with any of the British bluesrock acts of the era (witness their fine covers of "Spoonful", "I'm A Man", etc.), and also any of the most savage Nuggets action out there. When they tripped out in post-Sgt. Peppers agonized ecstasy, they were just as effective. With the tough but melodic vocals of Wim Bieler leading the charge, backed by the wailing axe of guitarist Frank Nuyens (responsible for the post-Q65 solo album Rainman, the reissue of which we highlighted here not long ago), Q65 were a raw, energetic, psychedelic force to be reckoned with. We recommend you reckon with them now if you haven't already.
Last list (#249) we reviewed the reissue of Quartz's amazing 1977 debut album. For those who 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 Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi produced that first record of theirs, helping Quartz create what amounts to a great lost late '70s (pseudo-) Sabbath album: same guitar sound, same songwriting vibe, same riff magistery. Hearing that, who wouldn't want more? Hence, now we're listing this, the cd reissue of Quartz's second studio album, originally released in 1980. And 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.
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.
BLACK SABBATH! There. Got your attention. Now let's explain.
We thought we were pretty up on all the bands that followed the Sabbatherian path: Witchfinder General, Angel Witch, Trouble, Saint Vitus, Cathedral, Candlemass, Pentagram, etc. etc. But we'd missed out on one -- Quartz, from Sabbath's hometown of Birmingham, England, in fact. Turns out that this New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) band definitely also deserves a place in that list -- because they're very, VERY Sabbathy and also an awesome band! First off, this, their self-titled debut LP from 1977 (ok, predating the NWOBHM explosion by a couple years actually, though their later records were in the thick of it) was produced by none other than Black Sabbath's riff king Tony Iommi!! And, also, one of the Quartz guys, Geoff Nichols, ended up playing keyboards for the Sabs later on...
Yet Quartz don't sound very much like any of those other aforementioned Sabbath-worshiping bands. Not at all. That's because, with Iommi at the helm, this takes after what Sabbath sounded like at the time, albums like Sabotage (1975), Technical Ecstasy ('76), and Never Say Die ('78). If you're familiar with those, you'll definitely hear their influence here! This later '70s Sabbath sound isn't as often emulated, being so much more proggy and polished than their rawer, earlier, doomier LPs. Which is great, 'cause it's not a done-to-death sort of Sabbath sound. As the Sabbath clones proliferate, even today, -these- guys still sound fresh. It also helps that they seemingly share the Sabbath attitude that they're just playing rock music, not something as strictly defined as 'heavy metal'. There's no metal formula being followed. So while this IS heavy and metallic '70s style, there's bombastic prog and pretty pop and acoustic folkiness here too, with Tony Iommi contributing an uncredited flute solo to "Sugar Rain". (Ozzy apparently also sang back-up on that track!) Furthermore, Quartz, formerly known as Bandy Legs, had their roots in '60s psych-pop (featuring members of obscure acts Idle Race and World Of Oz). Though sounding -most- like Sabbath, you'll also hear Yes and Queen and Rush and the Beatles and more...
But if it's Sabbath parallels you want, you got 'em: their vocalist exudes sincerity and emotion, echoing Ozzy's loss-of-control laments. And Tony's mid-seventies guitar (and synth) sound is reproduced perfectly...apparently he's playing on a couple tracks, in fact. The riffs on here could have been written by the man -- "Around and Around" sounds like it should have been on Sabotage! And leadoff track "Mainline Riders", one of the heaviest here, sounds remarkably like Sabbath's "Heaven And Hell" even though the latter wasn't recorded until three years later... hmm, who was influencing whom?
Ultimately, Quartz' debut is a great, varied, hard-rockin' album that uniquely captures all the energetic yet melancholic charm of the latter days of Ozzy's original tenure with the Sabs, unlike any other band ever did. A lost classic for sure. We wish someone had told us about Quartz before, which is why we're duty bound to tell you about 'em now that we have this new reissue!!
Just who the heck is Israel Quellet? Somebody who sent a really cool home-recorded cd-r in to the Sub Rosa label that's who. The back cover of this digipack contains text all about finding Quellet's demo in their office slush pile, giving it a listen, and realizing, hey, here's something that really doesn't sound like anything else! And thus, it's now a Sub Rosa release.
Quellet's intimate and unique sound-world is built from simple sounds, generated by ordinary means like striking a metal oil tank, dragging a bucket across the ground, tapping a telephone keypad, or playing with a noise-making toy. Quellet's French-speaking voice, laughter and "throat sounds" also are heard to much mysterious and evocative effect. But actual musical instruments? Who needs 'em? About the only "real" instrument appearing here is his Swiss town's church organ, and even that still fits into his "field recording" aesthetic. (Oh, and there's also several percussion instruments here too: a bass drum, gong, timbales etc.)
As depicted on the cover, which features a photo of a stereo-mic'd electric sander, Quellet's REAL instrument is the microphone and with it he zones in on a level of a level of blown-up, microscopic detail that makes "saturation" (or distortion) another common and crucial element to his "music". He then mixes and edits these recordings of his various sound-ingredients, musique-concrete style, never adding too much, keeping it simple, focussing on just a few specific sounds and employing them to their fullest. Some tracks are percussively rhythmic, others distorted and droning, some simply bursting with joyous cacophony. All these pieces are carefully constructed, though, never randomly noisy. It's about method, not madness.
Something this abstract needs verve and vision to be a good listen, and this has all that to a fascinating degree. Always bold and surprising and alive. Recommended.
We're so happy to have been introduced to the idiosyncratic experimental sound-worlds of Swiss artist Israel Quellet, via his several releases thus far on Sub Rosa. This is his third disc for the label and is as fantastic as the first two. When the first one, Oppressum, came out in 2007, we were like, Israel who? But upon hearing it, we quickly became fans of his home/field recorded, non-academic "musique concrete", microphone-as-instrument compositional technique, Quellet's mysterious, percussive music being both intriguing and original. 2009's Soni Sclavus was also great, and now at last here's Rhythmes d'Etain, to which we say, yay! And yep, Rhythmes is rhythmic all right, in fact some of the tracks here, like "L'Ere des Anches a Sonne" ("The Age Of Reeds Is Upon Us"), bordering on a sort of DIY, accidental techno.
One of the few conventional instruments, as opposed to non-instrumental sound-producing objects, heard on Quellet's debut was his town's local church organ. A church organ plays a much bigger role here, along with human voices singing in Latin, giving this something of a liturgical feel - but not as much as you'd expect, perhaps, because the organ is used more as a source of sampled sounds, for its majestic drones and tones, rather than being played as an organ normally would; and the voices, while suggestive of monkish murmer, are almost always manipulated or processed in some way, "sped-up, slowed-down, doubled-up, played backward" as he explains. The use of Latin is meant to create an abstract wordless-ness to the vocals, deliberately without meaning, the singers not affected by any understanding of what was nonsense Latin text to begin with.
Along with the organ and the voices, Quellet has restricted himself to just one more significant sonic element on this disc's compositions - that being, of course, percussion. Listed inside the digipack are a host of symphonic and improvised percussion instruments, including tympanies and bell-like tubular idiophones; the toms, cymbals, and hi-hat from a "deconstructed" drum kit; a bass drum and large skin drum; as well as "brutally shut drawers, slammed doors" and other ad hoc percussive devices.
So you can be sure it doesn't sound like you're in a church, when the beautiful, glorious pipe organ is accompanied by the rhythms of slamming doors, etc.! Or at least it would be a very unusual sort of church, filled with screwed-and-chopped choirs. 'Tis true too, the clink-clonk of the percussion sometimes takes on a carillion-like character, as if ringing from the church tower. Often lovely, quite dreamlike and mesmeric, all these sounds layered and looping, Quellet comes up with tracks here sometimes dominated by the playfully active rhythmic elements, at others by the ominous drones of the pulsating organ sub-bass frequencies (Quellet recommends listening on appropriate headphones), or both at once. Despite the varied character of Quellet's carefully constructed tracks, the focus on organ, voice, percussion gives this a definite cohesiveness, often calming into head-noddingness amidst eerie atmospheres.
Israel Quellet's 2nd album for Sub Rosa is not the unexpected surprise from an unknown artist that this Swiss sound-maker's debut disc was (for both us, and the label, read our review of it to see what we mean, we started off by saying "who the heck is Israel Quellet?"). But, that's because THIS time 'round, when we saw Quellet's had a new recording coming out, we were already eager to hear it. Much like its excellent predecessor, it's about compositions (improvisations? explorations?) limited to specific sound sources, each track featuring the use/abuse of a certain instrument or two, or perhaps a non-instrument, and to Quellet, his methods are his music, this is the focus, to the extent that the tracks are identified thusly... For example, track 1 is "for organ and percussion". Track 3 is "for fitness rower". Track 7 is "for footsteps and knocks on stairs, and vented carbon dioxide". He makes use of organ on here quite a bit, as well as percussion and less frequently voice, electronically treated (and in French). Actually much of this seems electronically treated, or in some way distorted, with "saturation" factoring into several of his pieces, occasionally achieving Merzbowian levels of noise (on track 6, "for percussions and saturation" especially!). All in all, this disc can be heard as one man's playful but moody, quasi-industrial homebrewed take on 20th (now 21st) century classical music. With so much somber organ and repetitive thunderous percussion, many of these tracks seem quite ominous, you can start imagining DIY Nitsch-style "aktions" happening in Quellet's backyard.
As with Quellet's prior album, this is varied and fascinating throughout, and surprisingly listenable. Truly experimental (and successfully so) music for curious ears made by someone with curious ears too. Recommended!!
Oh, and by the way, on our list this week there IS a cool Sub Rosa disc from a hitherto unknown (to us) artist, look for Pierre Berthet's Extended Loudspeakers, it's also AQ recommended.
We're always grateful to hear more from the uniquely creative Swiss experimental composer / sound-recordist Israel Quellet (see our rave reviews of his previous Sub Rosa releases on our site). His heavily percussive soundscapes, utilizing an unusual mix of instruments and non-instruments, are always especially curious and evocative. This new disc does not disappoint. Once more, Quellet gets very much into church organ and church bells here, which tends to give this disc a somber, sometimes even ominous mood - somber but not staid, that is, what with the clockwork clanging of the metallic percussion that's upfront on several of these tracks. Other parts have more of a drifting, quasi-ambient feel, still rhythmic in their way but more rumbly, distant & abstract.
The five tracks on this disc constitute a single composition, an overture followed by four movements, for a specific list of "instruments" including, among other things, Tibetan and homemade horns, anvil, metal tank, symphonic drums, and the aforementioned church bells and organ. It's also noted that only natural reverberation is applied - we have to assume this was recorded in a cathedral, then, or a large cavern! Especially at one point in the 2nd movement when you can hear echoing footsteps�
The deep bombastic horns, organ drones, and rhythmic sensibility provides portions of this with a "Moondog marching off to war" kind of vibe, if you can imagine that. If you want to go on imagining, here's another notion: the beats + the drones + the liturgical instrumentation make us think Cut Hands performing as part of a Herman Nitsch aktion, at times. Ok, not sure quite how accurate those comparisons really are, but we're trying to get folks unfamiliar with Quellet (which would be lots of folks) to give this a go, it's great!
It may be difficult to believe at this point, but we don't actually love everything from Finland. Nor do we love everything from Japan. And what might be equally hard to believe, is that we don't love every band with a crazy name, a monicker equal parts ridiculousness and ultraviolence, Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars, medieval and futuristic. Nor does the presence of flute supersede all other sonic considerations. And being chaotic and damaged and heavy and downright baffling is not, on its own, enough (although it's very very close).
But, and this is the very big BUT we must concern ourselves with here, we do love EVERY SINGLE band we've heard who hail from Japan, via Finland, with an awesomely over the top super metal name, who are heavy and noisy and mathy and fucked up and sort of black metal, and have tons and tons of FLUTE. But then again, there's only one band that fits that description. Japan's Quest For Blood. Released on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label, championed by Reverend Bizarre's Albert Witchfinder (who also did the artwork and wrote the band's bio on the Ektro website), who create a dizzying complex bombast of proggy heaviness, of complex arrangements, of blackened metallic majesty, all gnarled riffing, furious drumming, riffy and groovy and buzzy, and flute everywhere, and it's the flute that defines the sound of Quest For Blood, whose sound is both metal and some sort of jazz, equally composed and abstract, black and buzzy, epic and deliriously dense, heavy yet folky and free. Quest For Blood began life as a slightly more traditional black metal band called Magane, but after a chance meeting with Yukihiro Isso, who had in the past played with Tatsuya Yoshida and Keiji Haino, the band changed direction, and blossomed into something else entirely, creating a sound never really heard before, and a sound that we now realize is one we had been fantasizing about for ages, black metal, Japanese folk, wild free flute, blast beats, weird chanted vocals, well, okay, we -would- have fantasized about it, had we ever imagined a band like that could actually exist. Well...
If you're anything like us, you'll be hooked after the first track, which begins with what sounds like Jew's harp and marimba, before launching into some blackened post metal riffing, over which a flute flutters and soars over the top, at once intense and melodic, but also airy and ethereal, it's like super dense metallic math rock meets black metal meets jazzprog, until suddenly the band drops out, leaving just solo flute, for 2 plus minutes, wild free jazz fluttery, folky, freaky, the melodies chaotic and complex one second, gentle and lilting the next, squeaks, skronks, wheezes, whistles, the sound falling somewhere between traditional Shakuhachi folk music and manic free jazz. Until finally, the band return, with some Japanese chanting, and epic Viking style riffery, the flute flitting right along, in its own way as aggressive and intense as the riffing beneath it. The second song follows suit, a roiling churning melee of riffs and blast beats, of serpentine riffing, of buzz and crunch, the flute again weaving dense tangled webs of melody draped over everything, a constant fluttering flitting sonic presence, relentless and breathless and truly dizzying.
The whole record is truly relentless, the flute in full on wild solo jam mode continuously, as the band wind and weave various metallic frameworks underneath. And while the sound is dynamic in its own way, it's also utterly ferocious and unrelenting, occasionally allowed some space, when the song unwinds and the flute is left to drift in long stretches of abstract shimmer, or the band slips into something slightly less manic, but for the most part, this is a gloriously mind blowing progjazzmathmetal onslaught.
As if the record wasn't already weird enough, it gets even weirder, and more varied, near the end, as the songs become more dynamic, the arrangements more stop / start, the various woodwinds offering up underwater gurgles and squiggly manic melodies, than more traditional flute sounds. "Yayema" sounds almost gospel-y, very melodic and dramatic, a little over the top, the melodies major key and majestic, but of course peppered with bursts of furious blasts and wild squall of flute freakout. "Uchina" begins like many of the other tracks, a jazz metal blow out, this time with raspy creature-like vocals, and some pounding piano, until the band drops out, leaving just drums and flute and vocals, reminding us a bit of a more freaked out version of that Dave Lombardo plays Vivaldi record, but with far out chanting, distant raspy vocalizations, all very tribal and weird, with a definite Ruins vibe, before launching back into full on metal mode, now with wailing guitar leads all tangled up with the wild flute.
The final track begins with solo flute, before the band joins in, all rough and raw and lo-fi, pounding out a simple mesmerizing riff, almost Circle style, the drums a murky thud, the flute ethereal and transcendent, eventually, the drums sputtering into some wide open space, before getting all wound up with streaks of scrabbly off kilter guitar in some sort of Ginn-ish guitar drum duel, laced with atonal piano pound, fiery flute and crumbling noisy chaos, finally finishing off in a blaze of metallic murk and abstract black jazz whatthefuck.
So awesome. And confusionally genius. Some seemingly impossible mix of black metal, free jazz, Italian prog, traditional Japanese folk, math rock and noise rock; a mind bending, ear melting mash up of Osanna, the Ruins, Absu, Solar Anus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Comus, Cromagnon, Ghost, Finntroll, Jethro Tull, Circle, Xynfonica, and who the fuck knows what else.
Needless to say, or perhaps worth saying over and over and over. WAY RECOMMENDED. And another contender for metal (or whatever) record of the year.
We first heard this beautiful, hypnotic recording when it was reissued on compact disc back in 1997, on the Dexter's Cigar label that Jim O'Rourke used to do, via Drag City. It was one of the best Dexter's Cigar releases we remember, but sadly has been our of print for many years. But, we're certainly not the only folks to consider it a classic, as now Important has reissued it again on cd for those who missed it before. It's an album of minimalist electronics, sounding way ahead of its time, recorded in 1967 in the studio of Swedish Radio, Stockholm, by a young composer (and former jazz trombonist) named Folke Rabe. There's two tracks here, the second a half-speed (and thus, one octave lower) version of the first, for advanced exercises in drone-absorption. The first 25 minute version of "What??", originally released on vinyl by the Wergo label in 1970, consists of gentle, wavering drone-tones, shimmering blissfully, continually morphing, forming pulsating, fluttering "beats" as the various vibrations interact. The subtle shifts of these pulsations seem somehow to come into being from nowhere, even though your ears must be perceiving the gradual changes. This is active dronework, there's a lot going on here, over time, despite the "minimalist" tag. We suspect a Terry Riley influence on this piece, and not just because we know that Rabe was an associate of Bo Anders Persson, of Parson Sound/International Harvester/Trad Gras Och Stenar, also big Terry Riley fans.
Not that the first track by itself wouldn't be enough to transport you to drone nirvana with its pulsing shimmer and glimmer, but the second version of "What??" found here, 50+ minutes long, slower and lower, and if anything even more glowing, will REALLY send you into a trance!
It's so great to have this deceptively simple, but so effective, obscure avant-electronic classic back in print.
Here at AQ, we're well acquainted with multiple 'o's. Most often used in reviews of ultra doom records, you know Moss, Monarch, Asunder, Catacombs, Celestiial, Bunkur, and usually used to denote -more- doom. The slower and the filthier, the sludgier and the more buzzing and trudging, the more 'o's. So describing a band as doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom is not at all unheard of around here. But we rarely see multiple 'o's anywhere else. So what's the deal with Raccoo-oo-oon? What are all of those extra 'o's for? Do they mean anything? And what about the hyphens? What the heck are they all about? Is that how you pronounce the band name, ra coo OO oon. 4 syllables. Or just the more traditional two, as in the middle 'oo' is silent?
No matter how you interpret the 'o's and hyphens, it's strange and unusual and not a little bit confusing. Which pretty much perfectly captures the essence of these guys' sound. A dizzying collision of free rock splatter, jazzy skronk, stumbling outsider folk, and full on noise. What makes Raccoo-oo-oon special is the fact that they somehow manage to sound like all of those things at once. An ultra dense blitzkrieg of sounds, that impossibly manages to be heavy and free, skronky and melodic, spastic and pretty all at the same time.
We've listed a few other releases from these guys, a clutch of lps and a cd, all of which kicked our asses big time, but as much as we dug those discs, Behold Secret Kingdom trumps them all. Songs, sound, it's all so much more focused, the melodies are catchier, the blown out blasts are even more caustic and abrasive, the vocals are much more 'present', a strange sort of howled primitive wail, the guitars are heavier, more dense, the rhythms, groovier, a surprising amount of 'swing' for a noiserock combo.
With Behold Secret Kingdom, Raccoo-oo-oon have sort of emerged as super distinctive noisemakers, in a scene rife with same sounding combos, these guys don't really sound like anybody else.
Right out of the gate, the sound is a wall of thick guitars, swirling and keening, loads of buzz and squealing feedback, the drums a dense tribal blow out, the vocals drifting over the top, some strange invocation. It's equal parts krautrock, noiserock, and post rock, all smeared and tangled into a glorious blast of super fresh, garage-y psychedelic free rock whatthefuck. The next track veers into some angular synth drenched new wave noisiness, with squiggly synths, droning high end guitars, thick buzz swaths of sound, relentless, almost funky drumming, and moaning atonal speaking-in-tongues vocals. As hard as it might be to imagine, it sounds a bit like some impossible mash up of Crash Worship, Excepter and Faust, but with some weird new wave-y sheen.
The songs are definitely rhythm based, the propulsive drumming guiding everything, the vocals sort of trailing after the drums, the guitars, at once riffing and defining the shape of the songs, but at the same time drifting and swirling totally free, unmoored from any sort of traditional song-based structure and wrapped around the jams like thick tangled ropes of sound. There is occasional sax, which is where a lot of the skronk element comes from, but even sans sax, the songs retain a bit of skronkiness, angular and atonal as often as warm and melodic (maybe more often in fact.
Occasionally, the band -really- let loose, the guitars erupt in acidic squalls, the drums splattery and abstract, everything spinning wildly, the result a huge dense cloud of super distorted psychrock freakout. And just as often, they lock into some strangely new wavey garage rock stomp, like a less misanthropic, more groovy and druggy Brainbombs, and as if that weren't confusing enough, they also often just let loose and engage in endless dopesick jamming space rockery, a roiling blown out FX drenched space rock pound, relentless and so goddamn good. And like we mentioned before, the magic here is that Raccoo-oo-oon don't just switch gears from space rock to weird free rock jam and back, all of those different sonic sides bleed into each other, and all over each other, one at a time but then ALL AT ONCE, a slithering, shimmering, constantly shifting, shape changing organic sound sprawl that is as amazing to hear as it is difficult to describe.
And if we were in fact, to apply the same sort of rules regarding the extra 'o's, to these guys, that we do in our doom reviews, then we might as well begin calling these guys Raccoo-oo-oooo-oo-ooooooo-oo-o-o-o-ooo-oo-oooo-ooo-oo-oo-oo-ooooooo-oon. Fuck yeah.
We REALLY like Viennese instrumental glitch-groove trio Radian. This, Chimeric, is their first album in four whole years. And it's awesome. So it deserves a glowing review from us. We're having trouble writing it, though. The problem is, we made the mistake of going back and looking at what we wrote about their previous albums, and feel like we already said it best about 'em then, can't really top lines like these: "Y'know how in subatomic reality, seemingly solid objects aren't solid at all, but filled with empty space interspersed with electrons and protons and such? Radian's music is kind of like that, atomized, spacious, abuzz with crackling energy", and "There's a jazz/improv element as well, but rather than rock/jazz fusion this is more like fission, breaking down elements of both musics, and releasing volts of energy in the process."
See? Good stuff, eh? And those sentiments apply here as well. Though, it's not like this is just the same as Radian's earlier work. No, their computer-processed live improv post rock electro-acoustic sound (whew!) has definitely developed, Radian themselves considering Chimeric to be more "Free", though what they mean by that we have to guess, perhaps it's why this Radian record does seem rather more noisy, raw, chaotic, rocking, & heavy than ever before, though.
Which is much to our liking, as it brings 'em even closer to sounding like some bands to which we've compared 'em in the past, a "sliced-up Circle" and, especially, a "sci fi This Heat", that uniquely rhythmic British experimental prog-rock unit from the '70s, who are really one of our "touchstone" bands here at AQ that we're always referencing in reviews, always hoping to hear something new that reminds us of 'em (we're the same way about the likes of Comus, Goblin, Earth, Magma, Black Sabbath, and Circle too). Thus, one reason we dig this Radian album so much (and Radian's other efforts too) is 'cause we can hear a lot of This Heat goin' on here. This Heat gone electronically futuristic in some mad scientist's laboratory, that is... The fractured structures, jumbled rhythms, distorted guitar stabs, and rumbling textures found here are totally hitting the spot. We mentioned it's been 4 years since their last album, and it's about time. We NEED more music like this, thanks Radian!
Buzz whir click crackle throb. Skittery drums, lovely drone. It's Glitch, but it's Rock. Post rock, anyway. It's the new disc from Radian, the computer-aided instrumental post rock trio from Vienna. Radian have previously released two cds -- a full-length and an ep -- on the Mego and/or Rhiz labels over the past few years. Now they show up with a new full-length on Chicago label Thrill Jockey, enlisting Tortoise's John McEntire on recording/mixing duties. Drummer Martin Brandlmayr lays down the fractured beats, bassist John Norman fills out the pulse, and synthesizer coloration is provided by Stefan Nemeth. And together they use computers to process their real-time playing. Hard disc edits, electronic effects, layered textures, done with a great sense of timing and placement. At times "Rec.Extern" is propulsive and rhythm-driven like a sci-fi This Heat or sliced-up Circle, at others it's atmospheric, the background radiation of a haunted laboratory, with the sounds of burbling beakers and hissing Bunsen burners quietly rising and fading. Sudden silences, sudden sounds. We like it when today's electronic artistes step out from behind their laptops to play real instruments, and Radian falls in line with the likes of Markus Schmickler's Pluramon project and Dean Roberts' "Plays The Grand Cinema" disc on Ritornell as electro-acoustic computers-meet-rock successes. We're also put in mind of the abstract sounds n' silences of Supersilent or Starfuckers (the latter who can be much more 'out' and abrasive than Radian), and recent Dead C. We certainly liked Radian's other releases, but "Rec.Extern" seems to be even better, there's just more to it. Recommended.
Huh, now this is a pretty cool, totally unexpected collaboration! Austria's Radian, longtime aQ faves who specialize in their own unique strain of instrumental, improvised, computer-processed post rock, have teamed up here with Tuscon-based indie singer-songwriter Howe Gelb of Giant Sand fame (both artists are Thrill Jockey alumni, that's probably the connection). So you get the desert-country-folk-Americana stylings of Gelb, set amidst the abstract, electronic, glitch-and-distortion infused, fractured soundscapery of Radian. Aesthetically & methodologically, this record is definitely Radian's; yet Gelb's acoustic guitar, piano, and especially voice are crucial components, spiced and edited into Radian's atmospheric, oddly rhythmic sonic constructs. It works really, really well, Gelb adding a very human, ghost-in-the-machine element to the proceedings, with his melodies, hushed spoken commentary and non-sequitur storytelling. Always intriguing, often moodily beautiful, with a sometimes-sinister undercurrent, this reminds us a bit of mysterious UK post rockers Reigns at times, also a bit of Bill Callahan's recent dub album, in a way. Highly recommended!!
Thank you, Sub Pop! It's about time these classic Radio Birdman tracks got a decent Stateside reissue -- this their first in over 20 years! One can always quibble with "best ofs" but this really IS pretty much the essentials: at 22 tracks, 70 minutes, it's
It's about fucking time! This is one of the best and most overlooked hard rock/metal records of the past 15 years, a big fave of Andee and Allan here at AQ. Its obscurity might have something do with the fact that that they were, as frontman Greg Strzempka
But the bottom line is always the songs. And Raging Slab, at least on this record, has SONGS coming out their ass. Unforgettable hooks and sing-along choruses. So catchy and fun (and funny) without being stupidly ironic. Bizarre lyrics that are sung so forcefully and with such emotion that you find yourself singing along full force: "GET OFF MY JOLLIES!!!!" or "I can bust a gut on Heebie Jeebies and holy rollers poppin wheelies", or "Just try and shave my wooly bully, I'll use the fur as fuel for folly." In fact all the lyrics are almost nonsensical but oddly satisfying and completely compelling (especially when you're in full on air-guitar, or 'air lead vocalist' mode). This should have been the "Nevermind" of groovy boogie stoner hard rock, but the money and success and fame somehow didn't happen. But now with this reissue, folks have another chance to catch on to this slab of truly unique, Southern-fried metal-rock nirvana.
Rainbows Are Free? Did they really name their METAL band that? Really? Well, they are on the psychedelic/stonery side of things, so that sort of thing kinda makes sense, just like the local band called Glitter Wizard, but still. You gotta really kick ass to pull off having a name like that. And, they do! Bottom heavy, fuzzed out, swinging riffage explodes out of the gate on opener "Slow Train". They don't really let ever let up, with wild, even more fuzz-filled soloing and a vocal style that surprises by morphing from a stoner drawl into what sounds more like a frothing rabid Rob Halford from Judas Priest! Really, on the second track the singer busts out a gruff, staccato style that's more metal than thou, over the top like Halford singing "The Ripper" with a frog in his throat, not at all what we were expecting but pretty damn awesome. That's actually when we knew we really liked this band, that they were willing to roam outside the standard stoner rawk template, the singer especially, screaming and/or crooning as the mood strikes, while the band RIPS right along. As a result, there's moments here that remind us of everything in the stoner/psych/doom/grunge realm from Kyuss to Reverend Bizarre to Skin Yard (or Gruntruck) to Goatsnake to Danava ... From their name on down, it's hard to peg these guys, but we like 'em and their chunky grooves and freaky ways. They get particularly far-out and bad-trippy on "Sinking Ship", and the singer's yowl on "Are You Dead?" even conjures up the shade of Saint Vitus' Scott Reagers.
Recommended to anyone into all the killer stoner stuff we've been giving the thumbs up to lately from the MeteorCity and Small Stone labels, for instance the Solace we listed last week. And, everyone who dug Freedom Hawk oughta dig the heck outta this too!!
Second full length blast of psychedelic stoner rock heaviness from these hippy heavies (we can only assume they're hippies with a name like that right?), and like their first, this is another batch of swaggery, Sabbath-y, pounding stoner psych riffery, with even more dramatic vocals that first time around. Give a listen to the awesomely titled "Speed God And The Rise Of The Motherfuckers From A Place Beyond Hell", which displays the band at their bad ass best. The main riff, a stone cold killer, with some seriously wailing leads over the top, the drums, bombastic and beefy, and when those vocals swoop in, totally over the top. Somewhere between the near operatic metallic howl of Mika from Finnish hypno rockers Circle, the classic metal vox of Judas Priest's Rob Halford, and the space lord motherfucker himself, Dave Wyndorf from Monster Magnet. And actually Monster Magnet is probably the best band to compare these guys too. While not quite as space-y, they have the same massive musical balls, every second here oozing major attitude, and maybe most importantly of all, they don't take themselves too seriously. It may be metal, and it may be heavy, but it sounds like these guys are having the times of their lives, and that sort of vibe is seriously infectious, and gives this a bit of a party rock vibe, which helps keep Rainbows from devolving into generic stoner rock, instead, the sound and the songs are loose and wild and wooly and fun as fuck, totally headbangable, groovy and crazy catchy too, there's also some Southern rock going on throughout, which of course reminds us of all time aQ faves Raging Slab, not to mention all the bands we mentioned in our review of the first Rainbows Are Free record (Kyuss, Reverend Bizarre, Skin Yard, Goatsnake, Freedom Hawk, etc.), and fuck, any band that lands somewhere between Monster Magnet and Raging Slab, gets a BIGtime aQ seal of approval!
Never seen this before, maybe it's the first time it's been reissued... a 1970 solo album from Frank Nuyens, who had been the lead guitar player with one of Holland's top '60s beat/blues/psych rock groups, Q65. We've never listed anything by them, but would if we could, they were a fantastic band, we'll keep an eye out for any available reissues. But we're certainly glad to have this Nuyens solo album, it's great too. Super melancholic and melodic, with gentle vocals and a rustic, folkish psychedelic vibe, but also flashes of psych guitar glory. There's snappy drum shuffle and lovely flutey parts too. We hear definite hints of the Beatles, also the Zombies and the Kinks, at their moodiest. We're also reminded of Roy Harper, maybe it's Nuyens' voice and guitar playing and the whole folky-proggy singer-songwriter thing. Check out the track "Vicious Circle" for evidence of that. Another song on here makes us think of Neil Young. And although Nuyens might not be as well known as any of those artists outside of his native Holland, he and Q65 definitely belong in such company. There's been a lot of great '60s/'70s psych/pop/prog reissues lately, and this is one of 'em!! So many good songs here. A really recommended reissue indeed - and it includes a bonus track, a song from a single that didn't originally appear on the LP proper.
Disturbing, verrrrry disturbing.
You might expect that something from Circle and Pharoah Overlord members going under the names Krypt (Jussi) and Rudimentor (Janne) might be sorta metallic (especially after that Krypt Axeripper ep reviewed last list). This silver-on-black screenprinted package certainly looks dark and evil: the illegible logo, the band photo (long hair, spiked armbands), the song titles -- there's just two of them, "Transylvanian Error" (17:45) and "Ultimate Sword" (16.34). And the album title is a nod to Jussi's favorite '80s "metal" act, Jesters Of Destiny.
But we also know to expect the unexpected from our Finnish friends. So while this IS dark and evil, there's not a metal riff in sight. Rather, this duo utilize percussion, voice and effects to create a psychologically sick, rhythmically fucked drone-zone. The two long tracks are black, bottomless abysses both, caverns echoing with monstrous processed vokills and clattering pipe-fights, awash in a dense, drifting electronic miasma.
The label press info references Z'ev (the percussion), Faust (the weirdness), Wolf Eyes (the noise), Darkthrone (the evil) and we hear all that for sure. We'd further compare Rakhim's improvised blackness to black metal experimentalists (and AQ ROTWer's) Abruptum, with some of the screaming sounding like the insane-asylum inmates from a Staalagh record! Maybe like Staalagh on a broken boombox, being played the the corner of a room where spaced-out Circle side project Dr. Kettu are jamming with the Black Boned Angel.
Actually, last year we reviewed an expensive Qbico import LP by Rakhim (weirdly enough, we still have a few copies, if you act fast...) and ever since experiencing the mesmerizing psychedelic murkiness of that debut we've been wanting to hear more.
Disturbing, yes. But we like being disturbed like this!!
The Swedish contingent of the New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal sure is picking up steam, and being picked up by the Metal Blade label, who've recently signed such slayin' Swedes as In Solitude, Portrait, Ghost, and now RAM. As you may recall, we were big fans of RAM's previous, import-only album, Lightbringer, from 2009, and thus eagerly anticipated this, their domestic Metal Blade debut. And we were NOT disappointed.
The album starts off with its title track, a pensively pretty, eerily plodding synth-laced instrumental that proves RAM are not bound to any formulaic "true metal" aesthetic limitations, 'cause here they really sound a lot like, say, Zombi!!
That unusual intro tune past, the album launches into galloping metal mode proper with "Comes From The Mouth Beyond", a surefire stormer that will get heads banging and fists waving within seconds, while also over the course of its 6+ minutes demonstrating that RAM have depth and sophistication and melodic chops that belie this disc's simple, generic title of Death.
RAM's vocalist/mastermind/graphic artist Oscar Carlquist is is capable of shrieking into the stratosphere (reminding us of the dude from Metal Church back in the day), as well as singing in a lower range with more restraint though no less passion. He's got a raspy edge to his voice that also brings to mind the singer from power metal's finest, Blind Guardian. Meanwhile, his band kicks out the catchy riffs and glorious guitar harmonies with plenty of power... damn they're good. This is now their third full-length album, and they're clearly at the top of their game.
RAM have the rare knack among bands in their retro-minded genre of coming across as fresh and vital while simultaneously being obviously & joyfully inspired by ye olde '80s greats like Mercyful Fate, Iron Maiden, Dio, Armored Saint, and Judas Priest. Instantly classic stuff. There's even a doom-laden power ballad of sorts here, in the form of "Frozen", also the longest song on the album.
Easily one of the best traditional (but original) heavy metal efforts of the year so far (though we expect it will face some stiff competition soon when the new Christian Mistress comes out). RAM gets the horns up all right. Recommended!!
Been wanting to list this for a while, one of Allan's top "true metal" faves of 2009, now finally available via domestic distribution channels at a non-import price! We first became fans of RAM thanks to the inclusion of their track "Sudden Impact" on the excellent Earache comp Heavy Metal Killers a year or two ago. This is their second full-length, the first RAM we've been able to track down for the store. And it's quite a piece of work. While they're definitely inspired by a lot of '80s metal, and have recorded covers of songs by the likes Black Sabbath and Venom, RAM tend towards a more original, less overtly retro sound than some of their peers - like, for instance, fellow Swedes Enforcer, the slaying second album from whom we highlighted on our last list. As good as Enforcer is at energetically and enjoyably emulating their favorite '80s speed metal masters, RAM manage to do them one better by putting their old school melodic metal chops in service of something a bit more serious, and darker, and dare we say artistic. While we haven't delved deeply into all the lyrics, we get the idea that RAM's songs have a bit more to 'em than the usual metal cliches, they seem to be opining on occultic or philosophical concepts worth of the more erudite of black metal weirdoes, "religious" ones like Deathspell Omega. Or maybe it's just the stylish and meticulous glyphic art and graphic design, done by RAM's expressive vocalist, and evident visionary, Oscar Carlquist, that gives us this notion of unique genius. Well, the bottom line is the music, and there we're mighty impressed even without reference to the cd booklet (which, by the way, informs us that "this album is dedicated to the glory of the relentless truth").
Including a strikingly eerie and intense, mostly instrumental intro entitled "Crushing The Dwarf Of Ignorance", and similar outro "Prelude To Death" (both featuring text written and recited by Mexican poet Adelaida Caballero), you get ten tracks of varied and powerful metal, surging forth with stellar production values, super heavy, sometimes quite speedy, boasting vocals that soar high, but remain vicious, atmospheres arcane, and raging riffs that are worthy, oh so worthy of your headbanging attention. They do justice to the legacy of such assumed influences as Mercyful Fate and Manowar, Iron Maiden and Metal Church, yet while successfully striving to be their own (and more modern) band entirely. And without succumbing to any of the cheese endemic to the genre, they pump out pure power metal majesty, with tracks like the nine-minute epic "Suomussalmi (The Few Of Iron)" reminding us quite favorably of the melodic bombast of an old AQ fave, Blind Guardian. There's lots to capture one's imagination here, while also, as we said, causing heads to bang.
In a word, RAM rule!
We've been geeking out on, I mean rockin' out to, a bunch of the '70s and '80s hard rock/heavy metal reissues coming out on the UK's Rock Candy label... Plasmatics, Armored Saint, Billy Squier, Ted Nugent, Riot, a whole bunch of old favorites, done up all deluxe with nice packaging and copious liner notes. We've reviewed a few already. Here's another we like a lot.
First-time-on-cd for this 1978 album, the second and last from one-hit wonders Ram Jam. That one hit was their high octane cover of Leadbelly's "Black Betty" from their first album (do yourself a favor and look up the video on Youtube!!). So what has Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Ram got to offer? Well, though it didn't produce any hits, it's the better of their two records by far. With a revamped line-up, Ram Jam's hybrid bubblegum / biker blues roots are a thing of the past, the band now a lean, mean, polished, hard n' heavy rock outfit that fans of other, more popular commercial late '70s American rockers like Aerosmith, KISS, Foreigner, and Starz should dig... though at the time they apparently didn't, this record sales-wise spelling the end of Ram Jam's career. Dunno why, people must just not have heard it, as it's quite the party platter, full of kick ass lead guitar, powerful vocals, and energetic, catchy tuneage that would sound great blasting from your souped-up Camaro or custom-painted van...
But now here's a chance to hear this again (for the first time, if you're like us!) and give Ram Jam's swansong its due! Recommended to all rockers.
A few weeks back we made Andy Votel's amazing mix of prog/funk/jazz/acid rock from the Vertigo vaults our Record Of The Week. Now we're reviewing this, a recently-reissued-on-cd Vertigo album from, ta-da, 1971 that (we don't think) made it onto Votel's disc, thereby demonstrating that even by cramming dozens of little snippets of songs into a mix, he certainly couldn't fully encompass everything awesome that was ever released on Vertigo! This one's not heavy rock, nor is it freaky jazz fusion. Rather, Ramases was a unique one-album-only obscurity playing a kind of mystical pop-prog. I guess it reminds us just a little bit of Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come albums. But it's definitely its own thing, as you might expect from a mysterious psychedelic visionary from South Africa who (perhaps) believed himself to be the reincarnation of an Egyptian pharaoh, who performed these Space Hymns together with his wife Sel, and the assistance of others, including production and guitar licks (and sitar and Moog) courtesy of 10cc's Godley and Creme. The results are really rather catchy and quite strange. Maybe what the second Comus album would have sounded like, if it was a lot better than it was!
This new reish in Repertoire's Vertigo series (we hope to bring you some other titles soon) is nicely deluxe, packaged in a gatefold digipack cd jacket, adorned with Roger Dean's great church steeple/rocketship cover art. It boasts four bonus tracks as well (alternate mixes and b-sides). Recommended if you want to check out some unclassifiable cult tuneage, weird and folkish and electronically Eno-arty, with sci-fi hippy themes perhaps worth puzzling over.
Some "supergroups" ARE indeed super... some not so. (Zwan? The Firm?) But lately there's been some good ones. (Twilight, Shrinebuilder!) Here's another, Rangda, named after a Balinese child-eating deity... and with these guys, we weren't too worried about 'em not living up to expectations. Probably just telling you who they are will be enough for a lot of you to wanna pick this up (and we say, do it!): "Sir" Richard Bishop of the Sun City Girls, Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance, and Chris Corsano of heck lots of things. Geez, we'd probably be interested even if this turned out to be a recording of the three of them having conversation over lunch, or playing Rock Band together, or something equally ridiculous. But, even better, this instrumental guitar/guitar/drums trio does pretty much exactly what we'd want 'em to do on this recording, mixing far out free improv with gorgeous psychedelic daydream meanderings, making for a satisfying variety of moods (melodic, mayhemic, mesmerizing) across this disc's six tracks...
It opens with "Waldorf Hysteria", an all guns blazing, room-clearing furore, but that's just a 2 minute warm-up, and not what you get for the whole disc, never fear (though some would be happy with that, and they do return to these levels of "Hysteria" at times later on the album, though there's no more bad puns attached). Track two, "Bull Lore" shows some more restraint, it's a noirish, jazzish, ominously cinematic rumble, with martial drumming underpinning the unleashing of an electric guitar solo that's equal parts beauty and terror, worth the price of admission alone if you're into this sort of outward bound six-string wrangling (which you should be, if you're interested in this group at all, this definitely for fans of the likes of Sonny Sharrock and Nels Cline). Not quite sure if that's Bishop or Chasny or a tag-team approach, both men are quite capable of sublime soling, and reality-ripping distorted skree as well, we know. And, when the two of 'em want to amp it up and bash it out, drummer Corsano is right there with them. The sheer monomaniacal intensity of the very next noisy track, "First Family", attests to this. It sounds like Yoshi Wada sitting in on one of Masayuki Takayanagi's Mass Projections! But then that's followed by the wistful loveliness of "Sarcophagi", which itself is quite different from what comes next, the aptly titled "Serrated Edges", gettin' stop-start hectic and tangled like something Mick Barr might dig his talons into. And then, False Flag's finale "Plain Of Jars" brings things down again, for a 15 minute, slow-building epic of gentleness, with Bishop trinkling into the track some delicious piano plinkings... Leaving us wanting more, we hope Rangda is one of those supergroups that's a real group, and keeps on goin'. The way these three seemingly embrace spirituality and chaos together, sound-wise, seems like it must be a good thing for them as well as us. Definitely, their debut gets our recommendation, combining as it does so potently the SCGs' unfettered exoticism and the most Freely Agitated krauty bliss ever conjured by Six Organs, not to mention summoning storms as strong as any previously navigated by Corsano's drumkit.
Another entry in the NEW WAVE OF FINNISH HEAVY METAL, aka NWOFHM, comes modern Finnish thrashers Ranger, who not unsurprisingly, don't sound modern at all, and in fact, even though the label describes them as thrash, a lot of the time, they almost sound more like classic eighties true metal, the title track opens with the sort of epic harmonized guitar majesty, you just don't hear anymore, and then the band launches into some ridiculously over the top drumming, a barrage of pick slides, and BAM, chugging riffage, blasting beats, soaring divebomb leads. At this point, the sound is definitely thrash, we're hearing lots of early Anthrax for sure, even a little Slayer too, but Ranger are way poppier, the grunted sung/spoken vox punctuated with wild falsetto wails, the eighties vibe is huge, the drums all reverbed and boomy, the song flitting from lightning fast punked out thrash, to chugging classic metal and back again, and then of course some wild soloing, dueling epic shreddery, for folks our age, this is like musical manna from heaven (or hell?). And as yet always, especially with Finnish bands, and from the Ektro camp in particular, we're faced with the nagging possibility, that these guys could be taking the piss. But really, even if they are, they're so good, it hardly even matters, total eighties heavy metal radness, that really sounds like it could be from back in the day. The serious metal majesty and fierce metallic fury balanced by plenty of hooks and some serious poppiness, as well as some serious goofiness (but then what great metal bands didn't have some of that? Venom anyone?). The vocal delivery is awesome and ridiculous, more spoken than sung, but delivered like a true metal warrior, you can almost imagine both his hands holding up the invisible oranges, and of course lots of trilled 'r's, and let's not forget the sound effects, like the revved car engine when the vocalist sings the line "V8 engine screams!!"
But fuck it, metalheads who treasure the golden age of metal (that's the eighties btw) and can't get enough of that sound, this is about as good, and ridiculous, and amazing as it gets. Especially what might be the most epic track here, the closer "Knights Of Darkness" (featuring the aforementioned revving engine sound effects), a galloping tour-de-force, with some amazing harmonized guitars, killer shredding leads, and a vocal performance, that had us once again, thinking it could be Mika from Circle in metal drag. So goddamn great. Death to all but metal!
Steve Albini, post-Big Black. A classic.
Always something interesting being dug up by those Alchemy archeologists! This archival release from a Kyoto-based band called Rasen Kaidan ("Spiral Staircase" I believe) is a very moody and lo-fi, contemporaneous Japanese take on the UK post-punk sound of the early early '80s, a la Joy Division, Comsat Angels, and The Fall, maybe. Also of note, this trio included guitarist Jojo Hiroshige, who was soon to form seminal Japanese noise act Hijokaidan (and also went on to found the Alchemy label).
What you'll hear from Rasen Kaidan here are recordings from two live performances, dating from 1979 and 1980. The 1979 tracks are more witchy and gloomy, with plodding bass and female vocals. The first cut from '79 actually makes us think of a sedated Bardo Pond slogging through a droned-out "Iron Man"! We're reminded of some old NZ stuff like Dadamah as well. The 1980 material makes a switch to male vocals, getting more into that post-punk thing, but still with a weird, almost mystical atmosphere. Murky, raw, psychedelic new wave art punk, yeah!!
Back in 2004, this underground Australian epic metal band put out a pretty cool self-released cd, called Choose The Dark. But it seemed nobody really knew or cared about them, back then. Nearly ten years later, probably nobody still does, these guys aren't exactly on the radar of anyone not super geeked out about cult, epic, true doom metal. Yet somehow, for this, their long-awaited (?) second album, they scored a deal with big time US metal label Metal Blade! Well good for them. Perhaps pacts with the devil do pay off. Or the time was just right. Who knows? Not that they don't deserve it - this is a pretty rad album for those into, like we said, cult, epic, true doom metal, which would include quite a few aQ customers!
This disc, which includes a couple songs from their debut (redone?), totals twelve tracks, full of fuzzy, rollicking riffage in ye olde heavy metal mode, solos shredding, the production definitely NOT slick or high-budget, in fact, it's kinda weird and lo-fi but works for this, for us. Key to Raven Black Night's peculiar sort of magic is their singer, "The White Knight", who belts it out superbly, his ballsy and slightly bizarre vocals wailing in the upper register, kinda reminding us of Bruce Dickinson, or Ian Gillan circa Sabbath's Born Again - not a bad thing!! Messiah from Candlemass would be another good comparison, probably even a better one. Raven Black Night do kinda sound like a weird hybrid of Candlemass and Manilla Road - again, not a bad thing.
One bad thing, though, is that they chose to do a cover of infamous Black Sabbath piano ballad "Changes" for some reason. That's a song that even a lot of hardcore Sabbath fans loathe, so it's pretty nervy of RBN to cover it, we'll give 'em that, but even if you like the song they don't do much with it. (If you wanna hear a good cover of "Changes", go check out the ultra-heavy interpretation Fudge Tunnel did years ago.) So be warned about that, and it's not the only slow and ballady-song here, they do a few originals along those lines as well, but we like those a lot better, they're more "Planet Caravan" than "Changes", spacey and sorta psychedelic.
RBN are at their best though when boisterously galloping along like riders of doom, The White Knight's battle cries ringing forth, on slaying tracks like "Fire In Your Eyes" and "Morbid Gladiator". All in all, they manage to be both rockin' and doomy and just have damn cool weird epic heavy metal vibe to 'em. Glad they didn't give up after that first album so long ago, but kept working diligently on their arcane sorcery in a secret tower somewhere so we'd get to hear this eccentric second strike!
This raw Swedish progg-punk band, whose name, delightfully enough, means "fox piss" in English, got their start back in 1970, a bunch of teenagers drinking beer and jamming and doing the occasional Black Sabbath or Jimi Hendrix cover. As they got a little more serious, they wrote more original songs, but jamming remained a big thing with them. They were part of the Swedish underground music scene in the '70s, playing the summer free festivals and hanging with freaks and anarchists and so forth... also they were friends with such better known bands as Guidbrallan and Samla Mammas Manna.
It wasn't until 1976, not long after they'd started calling themselves Ravjunk (named after some terrible coffee the drummer had been confronted with one morning), that they got around to recording an album, Uppsala Stadshotell Brinner, made on the cheap in their own, primitive but functional home-built DIY recording studio. They pressed up copies of the record themselves, and distributed it as best they could, indeed getting some good reviews and radio-play. It was to be Ravjunk's only album, but they did follow it over the final years of the decade, before their dissolution in 1981, with a number of 7" singles (not included here), the band apparently pursuing more and more of a heavy punk rock sound... which you can already hear hinted at on their album.
The album itself, is a heavily fuzzed out mix of bluesy jams, Hendrixian guitar wailing, krautrockish drone, and plenty of garagey proto-punk attitude, all recorded mostly live, with a raw, lo-fi sound... all the more charming for it, really. It's all here on this deluxe digipack double disc cd reissue, along with unreleased material from the Uppsala Stadshotell Brinner sessions, and recently discovered demos and even rawer live tapes, the complete recorded works of Ravjunk circa 1976-1977. It would have been cool if they had included Ravjunk's 1978-1980 singles too (one of which was banned in Sweden for political reasons), but there is -plenty- of music here, almost two hours of it, from the gruff blues punk of "Hey Little Girl" (something you might imagine the Baby Grandmothers would sound like if they'd heard Motorhead) to the brooding title track to the calm and blissful spacerock of "Nasten (Den Tysta Skogen)"... the krautrock of Can and the like is definitely an influence on these discs' many sinuous, rhythmic instrumental psych excursions like "Vi Ses (Vid Taj Mahal)". Other obvious inspirations include the Stooges, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Cream, the Groundhogs, Hawkwind, etc... the MySpace page for the (recently reunited) band even cites T2, Joakim Skogsberg and Magma! If you're into gritty '70s underground sounds, then this could definitely be your cup of fox's piss! Perhaps grittiest on the non-album material included, such as the 21 minute endless jamming rant and rave of the bonus track that ends disc one, "Naturbarn". (Meanwhile, the second disc ends with a 10+ minute live garage-psych punk stomper, a version of David Peel and the Lower East Side's "Who Killed Brian Jones? Was It One Of The Rolling Stones?"). Very cool.
