Not sure how we had gone this long without hearing this weirdo Rhode Island black metal / metalgaze / depressive ambient horde, especially considering that a quick check on the Metal Archives site reveals that these guys (this guy?) have released SIX full lengths, and about 20 or 30 demos and splits and eps. But this latest, Withdrawals & Candy Heavens, didn't take long to convince us that we have been seriously missing out. Based on the title alone, you might envision this as something that easily could have ended up on Khrysanthoney or Starlight Temple Society, and you'd be right. Dhampyr's sounds as much blissed out shoegaze jangle, and trancey blackened buzz pop as black metal, the anguished, tortured vokill mewlings, the main tether tying the sound to actual black metal. Otherwise, the sound soars and shimmers, dreamily stumbling through sundappled post rock, and spidery minor key clean guitar buzzscapes, the opener, a sprawling near 18 minute epic, is all you really need, heady and hypnotic, droning and dirgey, trance-y and hypnotic, darkly poppy, and moodily melancholy, the first ten minutes, pure post-black metal bliss out, and then the song collapses into a sonic black hole of gnarled, tangled buzz, all blurred and smeared into a hazy psychedelic ambience, buried samples add a strange garbled alien vibe to the proceedings, all the while, the guitars unfurl achingly melodic peals, buried beneath the strange sampled softnoise dronescape, emerging on the other side, a lumbering dirge, replete with deep dramatic vox, and more wails, and a black buzz fade out finale. The rest of the tracks are much shorter, but no less dramatic or twisted, the second track, delivers a raga-like blast of fast picked soaring guitar riffs, the sans drums or vocals, almost sound like some strange avant garde experimental guitarnoise, and when the rest of the instruments swoop in, it only gets weirder, with some strange fractured rhythms, distorted drumming, and more of those wild whooping vocals, the sound blown out and on the verge of crumbling. The last two tracks split their time between, murky lo-fi drones, noisy post rock mathiness, tranced out black-psych mesmer, the final track impossibly melodic, sounding like it could be some lost demo from some obscure math/post rock outfit from North Carolina in the nineties, albeit a bit more blackened, and with some wild double bass drum blasting.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! Only FIFTY COPIES!!! We have a bunch, but they won't last long, and once they're gone, that's probably IT!
So this is the new Diabolical Masquerade album and it actually IS an "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" (not one of those 'soundtrack to an imaginary film' things) for a film about a man who somehow cheats death, and his mind is seperated from his body and he is forced to try and free his mind from the 'not alive' netherworld and rejoin it to his body. Sounds pretty cool. Doubt
Here's a question that gets tossed around here more and more in recent months: Is this new or old? Given how many bands who make druggy, atmospheric ritualism could have produced those sounds in 1972 or 2009 with equal aplomb. The Amen Dunes record Dia (2009) and Warlus' Songs album (1975) make for an interesting case study. Over the past twelve months, there's been another resurgence of black clad, post-punk thanks to some of the dour Goth reissues from Sacred Bones, which fit neatly next to the spunky Joy Divisionisms of Blank Dogs and the moping, black eyeliner tunes of this weeks ROTW Soror Dolorosa. Those could also be addressed with that same question: is this old or new? In the case of the dark, moody sounds of Dial M For Murder, the answer is, as hard as it might be to believe, "new."
Citing Joy Division and the Chameleons as their references, Dial M For Murder end up in a place remarkably close to Interpol. The vocalist David Ortenlof really does come across like Interpol's Paul Banks on a good chunk of the tracks, and almost like Mark Edwards from My Dad Is Dead on the others. Musically, the dark jangliness of the guitar and the punchy basslines situates around tight drum machine programming coming across like Ratatat reworking Joy Division singles. Gothic and haunting, but propulsive and poppy, really really cool stuff for sure.
We're still perplexed how Dialing In, AKA Rieta Piecuch manages to make such a gorgeously thick guitar drenched concoction WITHOUT any guitars. Ever since her first record on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, we've found ourselves returning to her music again and again. There's just so much to hear, and so many sounds to discover. It's definitely noise music, but a sort of noise music that we rarely encounter. Beautiful noise. Listenable noise. Mysterious noise. Thick and gritty, harsh but gently harsh. Cows In Lye continues on from where Ketalysergicmetha Mother left off. Each track a dense sonic journey rife with looped found sounds, voices and inadvertent rhythms, instruments and snippets of songs, all beautifully tangled up into absolutely breathtaking miniature worlds of sound. It's like Jeck and Basinski, Hecker and Marclay all playing at the same time. It can be that confusional, but can also be that compellingly complex.
Thick corrosive washes of crumbling sound that so distinctly resemble blown out downtuned guitars cover everything, beautiful looped melodies, strange disembodied vocals, rumbling bass lines, everything an abstract beautiful fragment doused in a crackling gritty patina. Like a supercharged, sludgier Oval, or some beautiful ambient record played on a broken old tape player, and broadcast through a set of busted up high school loudspeakers. echoing off the concrete walls until the natural reverb piles up into a whole 'nother layer of murk and hum.
We really can't think of anyone making music this weird and mysterious and so strangely beautiful.
There may be a future Dialing In release on Andee's tUMULt label, but for now luxuriate in the gorgeous soft cacophony that is Dialing In.
Diamatregon are a French black metal band who specialise in violently thrashing, ultra chaotic, on-the-verge-of-losing-control, over-saturated, super distorted and noisy, TRUE black metal. Fast and furious with the occasional midtempo breakdown and a once-in-a-while doomy dirge. But they also happen to have an amazing way with melodies, as 1000 mile an hour blasts can get pretty tedious, pretty quickly. So even though the songs sometimes sound like a black metal band being hurled down a stairway (a good thing, mind you) the songs stick in your head more than you would think possible. And the occasional midtempos, full of fuzzed out guitars and simple relentless drumming, definitely bring to mind the mighty Burzum. A thick, hyperspeed and hellish brew of harsh, inhuman howls, amp melting, overdriven guitars, thrashing drums with a lo-fi, but remarkably heavy production. They even cover the Misfits' Death Comes Ripping, turning it into a 90 second blast of sinister, speaker shredding, head banging, church burning high end brutality.
Blasphemy For Satan is eight metal thrashing mad tracks clocking in at 45 minutes.
Twenty of those minutes just happen to make up the crushing final track, an extended doom epic, equal parts, moody post rock, Sabbathy dirge, and all out noise assault, complete with bizarre samples, found sounds, and super complex arrangements, and as reminiscent of old AMREP bands as it is Norwegian black metal.
Diamatregon actually sent their cd to Andee/tUMULt because they were huge fans of the label as well as Circle and Acid Mothers Temple and lots of decidedly non metal music, and were really wanting to release their record on a not-specifically-metal label, which seems to work well with tUMUlt's good-music-is-good-music mantra and their mission to expose non-metalheads to metal, and metalheads to non-metal!
But whether you're a metalhead or not, Diamatregon spew forth some amazingly heavy, undeniably catchy, and totally intense blackened sounds.
It's hard to believe it's been almost SEVEN years since we've heard from French black metal horde Diamatregon. Their last record, Blasphemy For Satan, was an absolute beast, fucked up and frenzied, furious and insanely noisy and chaotic. Released on Andee's tUMULt label (as is this one, although the vinyl is on Paragon), Blasphemy still puts to shame most other black metal, past or present. And somehow, Crossroad, as impossible as it may seem, is poised to one up Blasphemy in almost every way.
In the preceding years, a few things in the Diamatregon camp have changed. Thankfully, the band are still the furious frenzied blackened juggernaut they always were, a band whose sound we once described as "violently thrashing, ultra chaotic, on-the-verge-of-losing-control, over-saturated, super distorted and noisy, TRUE black metal", and that definitely still applies. But Diamatregon's rhythm section has been moonlighting in both the alchemical post rock outfit Aluk Todolo, as well as in wild psychedelic combo the Gunslingers, and that has definitely influenced their sound. Not to mention that Crossroad is in fact a sort of black metal homage to the blues, the title referring to the legendary crossroads where many a musician struck a deal with the devil. And we can only assume these guys have bought into some similar sort of bargain, as Crossroad is mind blowing, still black metal at its core, full of buzzing insectoid riffing, pounding blasting beats, and raspy demonic vokills, but the arrangements are epic and convoluted and so complex, the various riffs and beats often seeming to melt into each other creating long droned out buzzscapes, the textures too are weirdly murky and washed out, tons of reverb and delay, seemingly lo-fi on the surface, but that low fidelity is just another tool in the band's extensive sonic arsenal. And then there's the blues aspect, this is after all a tribute to the blues, and close examination does in fact reveal some surprising bits of bluesiness, deftly woven into the corrosive black fabric of Diamatregon's freaked out grim buzz. A casual listen will reveal no blues at all, but strap on some headphones and let that swirling blackness swallow you whole, and suddenly the songs open up, revealing layer after layer, and within all of that buzz and rrroooar there lurks subtle blues structures.
But that's not all, the songs constantly shift gears sometimes, the guitars drop out completely, leaving just a garagey bass heavy groove, other times the guitars soar and sing, chiming and ringing out, eventually collapsing into yet another black hole of sound. Here and there the band slow things down, and get a bit depressive and Burzumy, loping and melancholic, woozy and warbly, but even within a fairly well defined sound, Diamatregon fuck it up and make it all their own, infusing warm whirring major key melodies, adding all sorts of drones and layers, the vocals a deep ominous rumble, before slipping into some post rocky clean guitar, beneath some twisted Orc-ish vox, and a jam that is total loping post rock, mathy, and minimal, a bit blackened, but it's not difficult to hear and feel the link between Diamatregon and Aluk Todolo.
The title track is the record's centerpiece, beginning with some crumbing lo-fi guitar, soon lurching into a lumbering bit of chaotic blackness, the drums WAY up in the mix, the vocals strange and strangled sounding, the guitars thick and corrosive, the sound of the whole song seeming to warp and warble, until everything drops out minus the guitars which are left to drone and rumble and reverberate, creating thick sheets of chordal buzz, so gorgeously minimal and hypnotic, eventually joined by soaring slow motion leads draped over the top, before exploding into another stretch of chaotic pounding blackness.
The final track, "He Was Not A Believer", is probably the heaviest and harshest of the bunch, a pounding relentless blackened onslaught, but even here the band infuse all sorts of melody and texture, and again, let the song break down into an abject doomic crawl, all grunted anguished voices, monstrous drum plod, warped guitar, droney moodiness, eventually getting almost Sabbathy, before slipping back into an even more frenetic black blast, and finally finishing off with a long stretch of blackened distorted crumble and ooze, that seems to slip slowly away.
Blasphemy For Satan was so extreme, so overdriven, so insanely distorted blown out, that there was really nowhere to go, but deeper, darker, weirder, and yeah, maybe bluesier. Crossroad has so much going on, it definitely plays out like grim blasting black metal, but it's so much more, a sprawling expansive experimental landscape of abstract blackness and deconstructed rock tropes, a constantly shifting soundworld of convoluted heaviness, of layered drones and crumbling abstract otherworldy ambience, at once heavy and brutal and grim, but also rhythmic and melodic, a twisted, outsider, idiosyncratic slab of fucked up and brilliant black metal, that manage to stay true and kvlt while seeming to disregard any and all sonic restrictions placed on the genre. So fucking amazing.
This is the first we'd heard from these guys, but holy shit were we thrown for a loop. The fact that the record is on Top Shelf, home to former Record Of The Week-ers Piano Become The Teeth, had us expecting some sort of frenzied post-metal screamo heaviosity, but when we threw it on, it was anything but. Total catchy as fuck, super produced heavy pop that RULES. In fact the first track here, "Cannonball" is one of those rare jams, that immediately become the only thing we wanted to listen to (full disclosure, we being mostly Andee, but you probably figured that out). And thus, we've listened to that song, and this ep, 5 or 6 times a day, every day, for the last two weeks, basically since we first discovered it. And while this is not the group's newest (a new ep JUST came out), it is the first we heard, and it's still just about all we can listen to. Somewhere between the bombastic prog pop of Muse, the fuzzy post-stoner arena rock of Queens Of The Stone Age, and the poppiest parts of later Cave-In records (or maybe more accurately, any of CI frontman Stephen Brodsky's solo records), but maybe more than anything, we're reminded of a long ago aQ fave and previous Record Of The Week from a band called Open Hand, and like that band, Diamond Youth manage the impossible task of balancing impeccable, super polished pop-smithery, with some serious metallic heft, and hard rocking punk rock bombast. But metalheads and punks will most likely find Orange WAY too poppy, the rest of us though, just might have ANOTHER new favorite band. Every song here practically perfect, from the aforementioned opener, to the woozy, softly psychedelic, insanely catchy "Come Down", to the fuzzed out crunch of the title track, that almost sounds like Rocket From The Crypt, given a power pop makeover, to the broody, lilting minor key closer, that sounds like it could have been a Posies B-side. So good.
And we're psyched there's another new Diamond Youth record to obsess over once we've finally played this one to death... which doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon!
It seems a bit weird to review this double disc demo compilation from French black metal freaks Diapsiquir before we've reviewed their record proper. All the cvlty metalheads we know loved that record, Virus STN, and it came out way back in 2005, but somehow it just never made it onto the aQ list. So we'll try to make up for that oversight by raving about this here comp, which collects the band's first two demos from 1999 and 2001, both even freakier and more raw and more fucked up than the full lengths that followed.
And this stuff is indeed bizarre, it's hard to know even where to start. They definitely sound French, a sort of frenzied buzz, mixed with hints of industrial, soaring Nordic style melodies, but all tangled up in a totally chaotic lo-fi churning chugging doom laced black blast. Sabbathy riffs are pulled apart, while the vocals grunt and howl, the drums stumble and pound, blast once in a while, the vibe is definitely punky and d-beat here and there, but the whole thing is infused with a haunted doominess, and when the band launches into hyperspeed it sounds more bizarre and fractured than fast and furious. Riffs loop, rhythms stutter, totally ridiculous keyboards surface every now and again, adding a bit of a circusy vibe, but everything is always drenched in buzz and harsh satanic atmosphere. Never goofy, just confusing and brilliantly twisted. Diapsiquir almost sounds like a less technically adept, WAY more drug addled Blut Aus Nord, blending creeped out ambience, industrial crunch, with buzzing blackness, but as with most stuff like this, it's as much about the mood and the vibe and the feel and the atmosphere as it is about the music, and the feel here is simultaneously grim and harsh and hateful, but also woozy and warped and unhinged. The band employ an insane arsenal of sound effects which thy liberally sprinkle amongst the churning riffage, the soaring buzzscapes and the crushing doomic pound, plenty of fractured keyboards, fucked up samples, the 2001 demo strangely enough is the more brittle and lo-fi and fucked sounding.
The older demo from a couple years earlier is much more traditional sounding, definitely heavier, the sound super thick and corrosive, the drums pounding, and some awesomely demented vokills. There are some weird keyboards, and the song structures are definitely complex and convoluted, a definitely Deathspell vibe for sure, but overall, the sound is heavier and blastier and blacker, and ends up being a good foil for the utterly depraved sonic sickness on the first disc...
Imagine the soundtrack to some strange, and apocalyptic planetarium show, all celestial and cosmic, but exploding in a supernova of looped mesmer and cyclical psychedelia, or picture Steve Reich or Terry Riley composing for minimal electronic trance music, or even the music of doomdronelords SUNNO))), transcribed for processed guitars and synths, and reduced to their rhythmic essence. Record number three from composer / guitarist Mario Diaz De Leon, is a little bit all of those, a dizzying collection of processed synths, and looped abstract guitars, all woven into sheets of blurred crystalline power electronics, smoldering slow build looped minimal majesty, and abstract epic heaviness.
Not metal precisely, but still quite metallic in places, and most definitely HEAVY. Too dense and noisy and chaotic to be strictly minimal, but in composition and arrangement, it has more in common with modern minimalism than anything else really. It's as much about texture and tone, as it is about melody and rhythm, the sound is at once atmospheric and cinematic, cosmic and abstract, pieces drifting through space only to explode into churning thrum, and alternately grinding away like some blurred tarpit spacedoom only to blossom into a kaleidoscopic series of dizzying synth swells.
Opener "Oneirogen" starts off with a flurry of layered synths, a dizzying big of melodic swirl, that immediately begins to gain momentum, blossoming in slow motion like some sort of sonic supernova, before exploding in a soft cacophony of prismatic melody, the synth sounds more distorted and frenetic, managing to strike a fine balance between hypnotic and intense, the sound pulsing and throbbing and buzzing before blurring into a soft focus cloud of gloriously blissed out dreamdrone shimmer, only to build right back up again to something much more caustic and corrosive, yet still somehow ethereal and spacey. "Consumed" displays Diaz De Leon's other more metal side. unfurling thick grinding downtuned gouts of guitar rumble and keening high end melody, all over streaks of pulsating synth, the result sounding a bit like Jesu as performed by Steve Reich, that sort of thick, blissed out, warm whirling guitar heaviness, but arranged in layers and loops, a heaving heaviness that blossoms into some sort of blackened minimal shoegaze drone-psych doom, that will have Nadja fans losing their minds.
The rest of the record finds Diaz De Leon flitting from churning downtuned crush to flurries of celestial synth, in most cases combining them to great affect, "Hypnocaust" fills the sky with wild tangles of sci-fi synth melodies and stuttering chips and chitters, while beneath, a strangely processed guitar rumbles and thrums, unfurling a crunchy bit of oozing disembodied riff-borne dronedoom, while "Cinerum" is something else all together, a hushed bit of hiss and hum wreathed drift, the shards of synth left to float weightless, over a warm woozy swath of lush chordal thrum. "Kukulkan" begins life as a noisier take on the current crop of psychedelic space synth retro futurism, but quickly (d)evolves into almost like an abstract black metal, with fast picked riffage blurred into clouds of droned out drift, before exploding into a kaleidoscopic squall of thick low end swells and pulsing synth swirls, and "Dissolution" revisits the sound of the opening track, again sounding like that planetarium show gone haywire, perhaps signaling the end of Diaz De Leon's dizzying sonic journey. But our favorite track might just be the 8 minute "Faithless", with its hazy, washed out intro, all lush blurred shimmer, and more stuttering synth throb, but here it's much more dreamlike and serene, laced with ghostly voices, definitely reminding us of Zombi, Majeure and the like, super cinematic, but then gradually, those sounds begin to transform, the sound intensifying, and then at about three minutes in, in a squall of high end skree, a thick ribcage rattling slab of low end surfaces, heaving and softly roiling, while the synths continue to churn over the top, it's the abstract minimalism equivalent to THE DROP in electronic music, it raises the hairs on the back of our neck, a sudden burst of energy and emotion and sonic power, which dissipates as quickly as it began, disappearing in a swirl of hushed shimmer, before splintering into a blast of caustic chaotic noise, processed vokills, low end synth buzz, all tangled up into a blackened squall, before finally fading out in a static wreathed drift of soft focus synth and almost Caretaker like melancholia.
Utterly fantastic.
As we mentioned in our review of the teaser ep that preceded this full length, unless you are seriously disconnected, you no doubt have seen or heard Die Antwoord (which means THE ANSWER), who are one of the most baffling, brilliant, raddest, silliest, goofiest, most exciting rap trios we've heard in ages. South African rednecks, one a tall gangly track suit wearing rapper called Ninja, covered in homemade tattoos and prone to performing in just boxers and sneakers, his 'hypeman', an ultra cute diminutive helium voiced elfin pixie called Yo-Landi, and finally DJ Hi-Tek, whose inclusion in the group was based on the fact that he "owned a PC computer" and made "next level" beats. And the best part about DJ Hi-Tek, a chubby baby faced dude, is that if you see them now, DJ Hi-Tek is inexplicably a tall skinny good looking guy, which is the first clue that everything is maybe not on the up and up.
When we first saw one of their videos, besides being totally blown away, and immediately crushed out on Yo-Landi, all we could think was "please be real, please be real" cuz, c'mon, it seemed way too weird and awesomely fucked up to be genuine. Some research revealed that Ninja and Yo-Landi are long time partners, who supposedly have a kid together, but more importantly, have been performing for years, in various permutations, different groups, on TV shows, art collectives, there are some amazing videos you can dig up if you know what to look for, but the bottom line was sadly, that Die Antwoord was all an elaborate prank, but which somehow really actually just made them that much cooler.
There was only two ways it could go after all, it was impossibly real, or it was the most perfectly executed art project / prank ever. And to be honest, either way, we were gonna be totally into it. But really, none of it would work if the music didn't rule, they are a band after all, and $O$ seals the deal, regardless of who they are, and where they come from, these jams slay, "Enter The Ninja" is the video that launched their career, having been viewed about a gazillion times, and with bands like this, the videos are so good, and so over the top, and they're such characters, that sometimes none of that translates to the music, but that definitely is NOT the case here, and the "Enter The Ninja" song sans visuals still slays, and yet it's not even the best jam here.
And actually, to pick the best jam would be a tough one, so much good stuff here, there's the Diplo produced "Evil Boy", which also has a head spinning over the top video, but the song itself is all over the place, featuring a young South African guest rapper and Ninja and Yo-Landi on fire, rapping about penises and underpants and whatever other weirdness they can whip up, and besides Yo-Landi's chorus refrain, her closing rap is KILLER, sexy and sinister, all delivered in her strange squeaky chirp.
There's also "Rich B***h", an awesomely stripped down synth driven groover, woozy and low slung, "Beat Boy", most notable for the 'swinging Dark Side Of The Moon boxers' video, but which features an awesomely twisted off kilter production, some robotic electro shimmer, and another killer Yo-Landi chorus, or the heavy synth raver "Wat Kyk Jy?" with a crazy anthemic chorus and cool brooding minimal verses, fuck, they're all so good. The closer, is some sort of wheezing accordion driven chunk of sea shanty cabaret, which leads into a few minutes of silence, which hides a secret bonus track that's killer and sounds like Zombi, all super sci-fi Carpenter / Goblin synth disco.
Believe the hype. Overdose on the videos, and play this record to death.
BTW: Allan and Andee saw them play an instore at another record store in SF, and they DESTROYED, whipping a crowd of hundreds into a near riot-ready frenzy, A + A included!!
What really needs to be said about Die Antwoord at this point? An elaborate art-prank, that turned into a YouTube sensation, but rather than a brief flash in the pan, South African rap duo Die Antwoord have managed to make some pretty amazing records, to go with their next level batshit genius videos. For most groups who traffic in similarly image heavy hype, the music is secondary, and exists simply as an excuse to create elaborate visuals, and while few bands reach the level of Die Antwoord when it comes to whatthefuck videos, their records are still manage to be routinely pretty goddamn great. A mix of old school hip-hopisms, and twisted modern weirdo electronica, it helps that the two members of Die Antwoord, Ninja and Yo-Landi are both crazy cartoon characters, who have at this point essentially totally disappeared into their characters, Ninja, a gangly, tattooed thug, who is usually clad in just a pair of boxers, and the extremely crushworthy Yo-Landi, a seriously stacked pixie, with a weird shaved head / mullet, and a whispery sexy flow, the perfect compliment to Ninja's twisted gangsta delivery, and then the music, sometimes minimal electro, other times over the top, rib cage rattling big beats, some tracks relentlessly high energy, buzzing synths over stuttery beats, others sounding like some redneck South African Eminem, and others like the 'hit' on this record "Pitbull Terrier", impossibly catchy, twisted electro-hop blowouts, with a production that rivals most better known producers, and might just be a big part of why this band has the legs it does. That and the videos of course. Seriously, if you've been living under a rock, and have somehow missed out on Die Antwoord's videos, all it will take is one or two to win you over, and once those get burned into your brain, you'll find the records doing the same thing to your ears.
This thoroughly bizarre album from the obscure Russian duo Die Blutleuchte becomes even stranger once you realise it was released on the Finnish electronic label Sahko, which is known for the pristine techno minimalism of Mika Vainio's earliest monikers (Philus and ù�in particular). Conceptually, "Rus" -- Dis Blutleuschte's first and only album -- is a fictional soundtrack to specific moments in Russian military history, starting back in the 15th century with the invasion of Mongolian tribes into Russia and moving onto Peter The Great's war on Finland, both World Wars, the abduction of political dissidents to Siberia, and the development of contemporary Russia through the philosophies of Glasnost. Perhaps to those with an understanding of the Russian language, this might appear overly didactic and obvious with all of the vocal samples which appear in various patinas of distortion and megaphone production; however since we here at Aquarius do not possess such skills, "Rus" appears as an impressive abstraction of history as a collision between grandiose technologies and indigenous folk languages. For example, there would be the juxtaposition of sampled recordings of the clattering of horse drawn carts over cobblestoned roads (pointing to apocalyptic horsemen for one reference, Mongolian invaders for another) with obtusely morose folk songs for guitar, flute, and drums, not unlike the Dead Raven Choir with an oblique sense of timing and emotional bleakness. While the folk songs remain more or less consistent, the references to industry and technology take on more militant references with blasts of megaphone shrieks and harsh mechanical noise. Die Blutleuchte might warrant references in this synthesis of technology and folk to Laibach, Blood Axis, or Moon Lay Hidden Behind The Clouds; however, "Rus" is far weirder than any of those references. A very surprising record!
MPEG Download: "Track 09" [/audio/dieblutleuschte09.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Track 09" [/audio/dieblutleuschte09.m3u]
Two strange releases on this week's list from local black metal label Acephale Winter Productions, the other is a twisted tape of blackened industrial ambience from a UK outfit called Synsophony, and this one, which somehow might be even weirder, a collection of Joy Division covers from an Israeli black metaller called Die Entweihung, who manages to transform these classic tunes into something slightly blacker, but only slightly, just check out his version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart", which minus the raspy vokills, and the programmed drum machine rhythms, is not that far removed from the original, in fact, the chorus is even clean vocal crooned, but the bridge does get a metallic makeover, and there are little flurries of robotic double kick drum, so ultimately it's a pretty faithful rendition, with some blackened filigree, which is fine with us. And that said some of the other covers do get a bit more far out, the metallic component cranked on some, the synths getting a bit krautrocky on others, and one or two get almost punky, sped up and frenzied, the synths all swirly and way up in the mix. "Warsaw" is furious and blackly grim, so is "They Walked In Line", those tracks balanced by some of the others, since clean vocals are far more prevalent than the howled demonic rasp, so it's sort of split right down the middle, the perfect balance between faithful renditions, and warped weirdo reworkings, both of which we ended up digging a bunch.
This metal-math-core band's first full-length album destroys with completely unbelievable musical dexterity combined with crushing riffs, blazing speed, calculus-style time shifts and a barely-under-the-surface jazz fusion obsession. Relapse's ads for this release have trumpeted the fact that the Dillinger boys were just taken out on tour by Mr. Bungle, and I can imagine that fans of that band looking for a metal fix might really be blown away by DEP!
From the same label that brought us recent bouts of brilliantly fucked black metal from Wolok and Lorn as well as classic releases from Blodulv and Glorior Belli comes this killer split, featuring two grim legends from the Swedish black metal underground.
The awesomely named Dimhymn do some impossible to describe black doom classic rock? Or something. Not sure what else to call it. Super blown out distorted black chug, haunting high end guitar licks, and incredibly catchy little bridges, a plodding dirge that sort of lopes along before the music suddenly screeches to a halt and is replaced by some classical piano, only to immediately be stomped on by a huge black cloud. A massive furious riffy freakout, guitars in the red and crumbling all over the place. The drums so hot that the cymbals' sizzle threaten to overwhelm everything. And before you know it the music blinks out again and in its place a haunting alien ambience that bloops and bleeps before once again the blackness descends. The song ends with mournful reverbed trumpet that sort of drifts off into the ether. WHAT THE FUCK? So awesome.
The second track is a huge chunk of black drone, pointillist piano dropped into a bleak soundscape of thick grinding fuzz and insect like melodies.
The final track starts off with melancholy guitar melodies before launching into a SUPER catchy groovy black thrash, with soaring melodies, and massive almost Nirvana like breakdowns, the sound still totally overblown and in the red. And again, the weird reverbed trumpet pops in without any warning, disappearing just as fast. The track ends with more of the classical piano from the first track. Wow. So amazing. We hear lots of weird black metal, but Dimhymn's half of the split has catapulted them damn near right to the front of the fucked black metal line!
Tough to follow up something like that, so fellow Swedes Hypothermia don't try to out-weird Dimhymn, but somehow manage to be just as bizarre but in an entirely different way. Epic fuzzed out glacial dirge, thick riffs spread out in a black smear, the drums a caveman plod, and some of the most fucked vocals ever. From weird, something-caught-in-the-throat sort of strangulated grunts and mewls, to guttural growls that occasionally break into falsetto-y squeaks as if the vocalist hit puberty right in the middle of recording. Sounds funny, but the overall effect is more creepy than anything. The finish the disc off with an epic 16 minute midtempo buzzscape. Looped riffs, totally repetitive and hypnotic, occasionally the drums break into a not-so-fast blast, but for the most part this is drone drenched monochromatic black dirge rock. Almost like a grim black metal Circle, or a blackened Spacemen 3, all stretched out fuzz guitar and endless trancelike riffing. So great.
A pretty much perfect split. Two more impossibly damaged and absolutely essential outsider black metal bands to add to the ever growing list!
Okay, true grim metalheads, scoff all you like, but we can NOT stop listening to this. Not because it's a great black metal record (although it sort of is), in fact, this is barely black metal at all really. There was a time where Dimmu Borgir were Norwegian black metal royalty, but they committed the ultimate offense, which was to become popular, as in mainstream popular. And instead of fighting that popularity, they embraced it, and in the process became even MORE popular. In fact, the new record, at least special versions of it, are only available in your local mall via Hot Topic! And if there's anything less kvlt, we'd be hard pressed to think of it. But. And this is a very big but, for what DB has shed in true black metal cred, and classic black metal sound, they've made up for by transforming into something totally other and else. Sure there's still some blasting beats, some buzzing riffage, sick vokills, but where DB used to employ orchestras and orchestral filigree for bombast, and sheer epicness, that orchestral side of DB seems to have lapped their BM side, and now they sound like a black metal score to the most amazing pirate/adventure/action movie that could never live up to such an epic over the top soundtrack. Which means this is fucking FUN, and ridiculously bombastic, and now the guitars take a back seat to the strings, and you know what? It suits them.
Check out "Born Treacherous", which sounds remarkably like their Norwegian brethren Khold, sort of groovy and grungy, but then the strings come in, and the flutes, the horns, the percussion, but before the can launch into it, the explode into some serious black metal, but even then, that buzz and blast is wrapped in strings and soaring dramatic swells, and there are plenty of stops and starts so the strings can soar dramatically. This is power metal writ WAY over the top, super intricate and proggy and pretty brilliantly orchestrated, but it's not until about halfway through that the brilliance is driven home, by a dizzying breakdown, a super dynamic stop/start interlude, with creaking ship's riggings, chantlike vocals, sampled spoken word, grunting pigs, choirs, even Tuvan throat singing, and then it comes together, descending pizzicato strings, dense swirling swells, launching directly into another almost trad sounding burst of black metal, but again soon the orchestra takes over. It's overwhelming and exhausting and totally thrilling. If we were designing a video game, this record would be the soundtrack, it's so evocative and over the top and you can't help but feel like you should be battling or swashbuckling or something.
And beyond the music, DB always had the craziest outfits, the biggest spikes, the most ridiculous costumes, and for this new record they've totally outdone themselves, ditching black entirely, now clothed entirely in white leather, all dusted with what seems to be powder, strange rams horn helmets, long white leather dusters. Check out the video for "Gateways" on YouTube (it's also included as a bonus here, the special 'cross' digipak version of Abrahadabra, which we'll have til they run out), it's easy to see why these guys are so popular, in fact, it makes us wonder why they're not ever MORE popular. Fuck the boring jeans and sneakers shoegazers, if we pay $20, we want flames, and bigger than life characters, and ridiculous drama, and that's pretty much what you get with Dimmu Borgir, especially on Abrahadabra. AWESOME!
Available on vinyl for the first time since the original lp on SST way back in 1988! Limited to 2000 copies on Baked Goods, the label of Dinosaur mainman Jay Mascis.
Wow. Never thought we'd be reviewing a Dinosaur Jr. record. I mean, they are one of those bands that were always around. We all loved them. Had all of their records (at the time). Had the cassettes on the floor in the frontseat of the car, just a quick lean from the driver's seat, ready to pop in for the next long drive. They definitely stopped being relevent (and -good- some might argue) after Bug, their third record. But for three or four years there, Dinosaur Jr. took everything we loved and stuffed it into one perfect little indie rock package. Punk rock snarl, metallic crunch, indie jangle, squiggly guitar solos (!), and a Neil Young like whine in the form of frontman J. Mascis' stoned drawling vocals. You can definitely hear the influence Dinosaur had on Nirvana, Polvo, Swervedriver, and about a million other late eighties rock bands! Lou Barlow, bass player for Dinosaur Jr., would go on to send indie rock from the studio back to the practice space and launch a million bedroom rockers with his home recorded 4-track project Sebadoh (whose first official release was actually a track on the second Dinosaur Jr. record You're Living All Over Me) while Mascis (formerly of punk sludge outfit Deep Wound and metal weirdos Upsidedown Cross) would go on to more commerical success before dropping off the face of the earth and giving up music altogether. But for those first three records, Dinosaur Jr. were the shit. And damn if these records don't sound just as good now almost a decade later! All three re-issues have liner notes by Byron Coley and bonus tracks!
Bug was what you would call Dinosaur Jr's breakthrough. Or maybe sell out record. But who really give a shit what you call it. This was the ultimate kick ass indie rock record. Period. Heavy and catchy, melodic and weird, totally derivative and totally original! The song "Freak Scene" is what did it. A perfect pop song if there ever was one. AND the best use of expletives in an indie rock song ever. Even people who didn't know the song, would sing along to -those- parts: "So fucked, I can't believe it", and "Just don't let me fuck up will you, cuz when I need a friend it's still you", at the top of their lungs. And why not? Every inch of that song was a stone cold hook, the chorus, the verse, even the guitar solos. Track two, "No Bones" is maybe as Neil Young as Dino Jr. got, a totally unforgettable riff, and perfectly drawled vocals. Then there was "The Post", a doomy dirge that somehow morphs into into a perfect little pop ditty, wrapped around one of the most kick ass rock riffs ever and some wicked leads on top! This is maybe the first (and only?) truly perfect Dinosaur Jr. record. The sound is still buzzy and heavy, guitars are big and distorted, but the pop songs are just too strong to stay buried and against all odds, and often battling crushing guitars and freaked out noise, they rise to the surface and shine brightly through swirling shroud of distorted psychedelic haze. So so so great!!!
Wow. Never thought we'd be reviewing a Dinosaur Jr. record. I mean, they are one of those bands that were always around. We all loved them. Had all of their records (at the time). Had the cassettes on the floor in the frontseat of the car, just a quick lean from the driver's seat, ready to pop in for the next long drive. They definitely stopped being relevent (and -good- some might argue) after Bug, their third record. But for three or four years there, Dinosaur Jr. took everything we loved and stuffed it into one perfect little indie rock package. Punk rock snarl, metallic crunch, indie jangle, squiggly guitar solos (!), and a Neil Young like whine in the form of frontman J. Mascis' stoned drawling vocals. You can definitely hear the influence Dinosaur had on Nirvana, Polvo, Swervedriver, and about a million other late eighties rock bands! Lou Barlow, bass player for Dinosaur Jr., would go on to send indie rock from the studio back to the practice space and launch a million bedroom rockers with his home recorded 4-track project Sebadoh (whose first official release was actually a track on the second Dinosaur Jr. record You're Living All Over Me) while Mascis (formerly of punk sludge outfit Deep Wound and metal weirdos Upsidedown Cross) would go on to more commerical success before dropping off the face of the earth and giving up music altogether. But for those first three records, Dinosaur Jr. were the shit. And damn if these records don't sound just as good now almost a decade later! All three re-issues have liner notes by Byron Coley and bonus tracks!
Dinosaur was not only the name of their debut record, but was actually the name of the band before they added the Jr. (after the release of Bug and a threatened lawsuit from SF hippy leftovers Dinosaur). Sloppy and chaotic, noisy and snotty, Dinosaur is the record that introduced us to what would become a hugely important band, and who by melding melody, punk rock blast, and metallic crunch would end up being massive influences on a decade of indie / college rock. Mascis' lazy, whiney nasal drawl is definitely present, but hasn't become the focal point it would be on later records. Lots of reverb, big distorted guitars, a beautifully clumsy, strummy indie rock with plenty of wah guitar, bursts of angstful harcore grrrr and the occasional metal guitar freakout. Diamonds in the rough include the glimmer of Dinosaur to come in "Repulsion" and the indie jangle love song "Severed Lips" that definitely made it on every indie geek's mixtape in 1985. Bonus track: "Does It Float (live)".
NOW ON VINYL!!!
It's weird to think that in the current climate of rock reunionism, there's probably not a single band you loved when you were younger that you can't imagine reuniting, touring, even making a record. It's even weirder to think that once that band did get together, they might make a record the rivals any of their classics from decades earlier, and while Farm is no Bug or You're Living All Over Me, it's really not that far off. Especially considering what you might expect from a band making a new record nearly 25 years since their debut. Even harder to believe with a band like Dinosaur Jr, whose acrimonious (to say the least) breakup had most of us assuming they would never speak again, let alone write and record and tour.
But here it is, record number two since the original Dinosaur lineup reunited. 2007's Beyond was great, and Farm just rules. It's heavy, catchy as hell, the band are tight, Mascis' voice sounds exactly the same, his leads are wild and all over the place, and while we never thought we'd be hankering for some seriously jammed out guitar rock, Dino Jr. makes us wonder how we did without it for so long. Some of the tracks on Farm ("Pieces") are so catchy and so rocking, they sound like they could have been Bug outtakes. Farm is even more like an old Dinosaur Jr. record as bassist Lou Barlow (Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Folk Implosion) contributes a couple of his old songs, and unlike the old days, when his tracks were gorgeous sad boy 4-track loner folk gems, his two tracks here are dense and intense, super heavy, super catchy melancholy rockers, that sound like kick ass Sebadoh jams, and have us hankering for a new record from those guys too!
We're getting tired of reunions like everyone else. Not every band we loved needs to come back from the dead, and most already have a catalog that's pretty perfect without adding some modern sub par attempt at relevance, but fuck, it's tough to argue with a record as good as Farm, and a band who still kick as much ass as Dinosaur Jr.
It's weird to think that in the current climate of rock reunionism, there's probably not a single band you loved when you were younger that you can't imagine reuniting, touring, even making a record. It's even weirder to think that once that band did get together, they might make a record the rivals any of their classics from decades earlier, and while Farm is no Bug or You're Living All Over Me, it's really not that far off. Especially considering what you might expect from a band making a new record nearly 25 years since their debut. Even harder to believe with a band like Dinosaur Jr, whose acrimonious (to say the least) breakup had most of us assuming they would never speak again, let alone write and record and tour.
But here it is, record number two since the original Dinosaur lineup reunited. 2007's Beyond was great, and Farm just rules. It's heavy, catchy as hell, the band are tight, Mascis' voice sounds exactly the same, his leads are wild and all over the place, and while we never thought we'd be hankering for some seriously jammed out guitar rock, Dino Jr. makes us wonder how we did without it for so long. Some of the tracks on Farm ("Pieces") are so catchy and so rocking, they sound like they could have been Bug outtakes. Farm is even more like an old Dinosaur Jr. record as bassist Lou Barlow (Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Folk Implosion) contributes a couple of his old songs, and unlike the old days, when his tracks were gorgeous sad boy 4-track loner folk gems, his two tracks here are dense and intense, super heavy, super catchy melancholy rockers, that sound like kick ass Sebadoh jams, and have us hankering for a new record from those guys too!
We're getting tired of reunions like everyone else. Not every band we loved needs to come back from the dead, and most already have a catalog that's pretty perfect without adding some modern sub par attempt at relevance, but fuck, it's tough to argue with a record as good as Farm, and a band who still kick as much ass as Dinosaur Jr.
While they last (not long we're guessing), we have the deluxe version, with a 4 song bonus track, which includes two Dino originals, a Zombies cover, and a cover of a psych pop classic by Elyse Weinberg.
The first we heard from Dirty Beaches, aka Alex Zhang, was a recent split 7" with US Girls, which found Zhang doing a sort of super grimy lo-fi RnB, we also mentioned Johnny Cash, and that the sound like a murkier and less well produced How To Dress Well, which most definitely still applies on Badlands, but where on that single, we were feeling a sort of RnB vibe, here, it's more a classic rock and roll, as in the fifties, as in more specifically Elvis. Sounds weird, especially when you consider the sort of hype Dirty Beaches has been getting but, these tracks essentially sound like super low fidelity bedroom recorded Elvis jams, doused in murk and grit and grime, or draped over a looped loping churning chunk of crumbling low end.
Like some bedroom noise rocker floor core purveyor was tagged to pack up some classic crooner. Zhang's vocals are total Elvis, maybe there's a bit of a Cramps vibe, but that's essentially a goth Elvis anyway. Some of the tracks take what sounds like a snippet of some fifties rock and roll, and then loops it into a weirdly hypnotic chunk of murky minimalism, over which Zhang snarls and croons, it doesn't seem like it should work, or even sound all that good, but it does, and these songs end up sounding like weirdly timeless classic rock and roll jams from some alternate dimension, or like the perfect soundtrack to the best movie David Lynch never made.
First off, DIRTY LUST? Wow, what an amazing name! They must be a metal band -- and indeed they are, but a weird one. We discovered this very heavy, very cool, very strange Spanish band on the internet (thanks to the www.customheavy.com site -- hi Chris!) and
At the risk of slipping into hyperbole, which we do pretty much all the time anyway, so fuck it, the Posies were probably one of the best modern power pop bands EVER. Alongside Jellyfish and a few others, the Posies were one of the few bands who made record after record of nearly perfect pop, the Posies in particular crafting the sort of pop that we can never get enough of, heavy, crunchy, fuzzy, big guitars, killer harmonies, and hooks galore. If you're resistant to the idea, or for some crazy reason have never heard the Posies, take a second and go check out Frosting On The Beater, or Dear 23, or hell, almost any of their records. Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer were one of those Lennon/McCartney caliber partnerships, their voices perfectly matched, their songwriting styles so complimentary, their collaborations resulting on some of our all time favorite songs and records.
They may still be a band, but for all intents and purposes, the band is over, and while both Stringfellow and Auer have made a handful of solo records, as well as playing with other bands, it wasn't until Stringfellow hooked up with some European rockers and formed the Disciplines, that anything post-Posies has even come close. The first Disciplines record came out with so little fanfare we almost missed it, but when we did finally hear it, we were blown away, it was like the next Posies record that never was, but somehow even more rocking and heavy.
So when this new record came out, we knew there would be some pop fans out there, who might have missed out on these guys completely, so here you go, Posies obsessives, stop reading now, and just buy this, you won't be sorry, everyone else, heck, you should probably do the same, but especially if you love big, crunchy power pop, buzzy guitars, pounding drums, with a bit of a punky edge, the Disciplines, are super rocking, heavy, hooky, with Stringfellow's distinctive vocals and knack for melody and harmony transforming what could otherwise have been something much less vibrant and special into something seriously AWESOME. Every song here, super catchy, with a sound that slips from soaring jangly power pop, to crunchy urgent punkish fuzz pop, a bunch of the songs dead ringers for Posies jams, and Lydia Lunch even guests on one track, with a snarly spoken word, but seriously, pop fiends, this stuff rules, and is probably gonna be one of our pop records of the year!
Wow! Given the acrimonious break-up of Disco Inferno after their aesthetically fraught album Technicolour in 1996, we're a little shocked, yet totally stoked to see anything from Disco Inferno back in print, let along the rare EPs reissued here. This London trio formed in 1989, releasing three albums and seven eps that amounted to a brilliant mish-mash of sample-based technology, post-punk intensity, and a profoundly British mope that hangs throughout their catalogue. The first recorded forays by Disco Inferno found the group wearing their influences proudly on sonic sleeves - Joy Division, Wire, Durutti Column, and The Smiths - with the band twisting those influences into a narcotized torpour through an elliptical rhythm section that grounded the suitably delay-riddled, arppegiations and repititions from guitarist / vocalist Ian Crause. The band quickly took to MIDI technology, often sampling Crause's own guitar and alchemically rendering those into percolating satellites of effervsecent sound that orbit the song with peculiar trajectories and angles. Over time, the sampling became more and more of the focus in the band, appropriating sounds outside of their studio and fracturing all of those sounds into a more and more bizarrely splintered electronica that mutated into something grotesquely baroque, all the while hanging onto the core principles of the pop-art melody. This emphasis on sampling was an obsession for Crause after reading what David Stubbs and Simon Reynolds were championing in NME, as those two fixated on a technological thread that ran through My Bloody Valentine, Public Enemy, and The Young Gods. Crause was single-minded in his pursuit of figuring out how technology could be seemlessly integrated into the context of a British art-rock band, in frantic anticipation of what anybody might be doing elsewhere in the world. As such, Disco Inferno and Robert Hampson's post-Loop project Main were at the vangarde of ostensible pop bands disintegrating themselves before their audiences' eyes and ears. Where Hampson did achive escape velocity from rock's heavy gravitational pull with little to show for it after Motion Pool, Disco Inferno's internal disputes over where that technology needed to go caused so much strife as to destroy the band, with none of the members doing anything memorable since.
The 5 EPs featured here showcase that transition from an artful post-punk project conjuring the ghost of Martin Hannett into a complicated electronica ensemble that predicted how Christian Fennesz would deconstruct the spirit of The Beach Boys, but without the benefit of granulating laptop tricknology. We mentioned above that the band released seven EPs, the first two of which were compiled with their first album on the anthology entitled In Debt. The first EP in this anthology is "Summer's Last Sound" from 1992 and features two tracks that sparkle with harsichord-like patterns from the sampedelica, pulled back down to the ground by the thickly strummed bass from Paul Willmot, not to mention Crause's wistful, unpretentious vocal delivery of his deeply sad lyrics. "A Rock To Cling To" from 1993 finds the band in more of a traditional rock mode with guitars, bass, and drums, whose repetitive groove is offset by soaring bursts of sampled vocals that stretch like vapor trails glowing in moonlight. The B-side to that EP, "The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea", introduces a sample that would become common place in the ever-abstracting repetoire of Disco Inferno, that of shattering glass whose tinkling fragments of sound lock into an elegant Terry Riley patterning of minimalist rhythms. "The Last Dance" (also from 1993) features two versions of the title track, where Ian Crause has penned a damn good song that could have fit neatly in with the Johnny Marr songbook of The Smiths, but with jittery electronics and melancholy appropriations of schoolyard song puncturing Crause's crisp guitar lines. The B-side of "D.I. Go Pop" (the name of their second record, which didn't feature this track, oddly enough) is a manic affair of tape-revving guitar noise, threatening to unravel and unhinge as a spastic dervish. "Scattered Showers" is the other B-side, a beautifully poetic abstraction of British melancholy through sampled motorcycle engines forming the patterned tension beneath Crause's rain-drenched guitar strum. This EP and the next, "Second Language" from 1994, stand as the best material in Disco Inferno's short-circuited career. The title track of the latter single finds the band recycling Crause's sparkling Vini Reilly guitar into enchanting, hypnotic echoes out of which Crause concludes the track with a triumphant Brit-rock riff obviously alluding to the comtemporary bombast of Oasis. "At The End Of The Line" follows the aforementioned "Scattered Showers" as Disco Inferno's penchant for beautiful miserablism cast through refracted guitar lines into shoegaze bliss. The final single "It's A Kids World" finds the band at odds with itself, creating a jubilant kaleidoscope out of the drum crash from Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" with Umbrellas of Cherbourg-esque flute trills of baroque pop guiding this atypically uptempo number. The B-side "A Night On The Tiles" is a Felini-esque collage of vaudevillian records, screaming girls, and smashed glass coming across more like a diabolical Nurse With Wound track than anything else found in their catalogue. Whew!
If you've just so much as glanced in the direction of Stereolab, Notwist, Fennesz, My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized, and/or Animal Collective, you really owe it to yourself to check out Disco Inferno. They really are that good! We can only hope that D.I. Go Pop and In Debt (both of which are long out of print) will see the light of day once again, given the inevitible interest that will come from this anthology from one of the pioneers of avant-rock.
Arguably the greatest grind band ever! Meaning you could argue they weren't, but you would be dead wrong and would summarily lose any argument to the contrary. DA combined impossibly complex composition, with furiously blurred execution, all held together by some of the most creative, innovative and cryptic design we've seen in ages, -especially- from a grind or metal band! They added a hyper intellectual slant to an already politically charged scene, forgoing all the gore and guts and stuff in lieu of, well, ART. The breakup of Discordance Axis was a blow to metal and grindcore freaks worldwide and as always with things like that, rumors started circulating about a lost, unreleased DA record. Well, the rumors were partially true. Two songs, recorded but unreleased did in fact exist, and are finally getting released with loads of extra stuff, in that immediately recognizable Hydra Head / Discordance Axis oversized DVD style packaging. So the good news: the two new songs are AMAZING, fucked up and brutal, dizzyingly and impossibly dense and intricate. The bad news: the two new tracks clock in at a total time of 1:42. But thankfully DA manage to pack in about a jillion changes and parts into that minute and a half.
So then there's the extra bonus material on this here DA 'single'. First you've got ten tracks credited to 'Cide Project' which could be a real band but is probably more likely one of the DA guys fucking around on his computer. That said, these tracks are SO AWESOME, fully rendered MIDI versions of all your favorite DA tracks. Fuzzy computer synths and chaotic drum programming turn these grind classics into buzzing, fuzzed out midi blurs. Like a grindcore Anton Maiden! Then there's a bunch of bands covering their favorite DA tracks, Gate, Mortalized, Noiseear, none of whom we've heard of but who all offer up appropriately thrashing grinding tribute. Then there's Melt Banana's cover, which turns the DA original into a minute of bizarre skronky, bleeping blooping grindpop. Also included is the full version of Merzbow's interpretation of DA's The Inalienable Dreamless, an insanely chaotic mix of Japanoise, spacerock skree, and about a million skipping Discordance Axis cds. And finally, to finish things off, the first song from DA vocalist Jon Chang's new outfit Gridlink, a dense shrieking exercise in turbulent, super spastic grind! Now we can all anxiously await the forthcoming War Chalking record, featuring members of Discordance Axis, Human Remains and Burnt By The Sun (counting some folks twice or thrice!). Yowza!
Yeah, I know we listed this last time, but it sort of got short shrift, especially seeing as this record, and this band are the absolute masters of technical grind, and have taken their chosen form and stretched it farther then anyone could have imagined, creating something furious and brutal and violent and frightening, but absolutley stunning at the same time. And stunning in ways other than musical, which is remarkable for a genre that often shuns the avant garde, or doesn't understand it. The cd comes housed in a DVD box, allowing for more artwork, and the gorgeous minimal cover art certainly benefits. The cover and the booklet, continue the DA tradition of hyper minimalism, obfuscated text, and a wicked eye for design. Sleek and smooth, warm, and slightly sinister. And that subtlety bleeds into the sound as well. You would think that a 17 song, 24 minute cd would be short on subtlety and long on bombast, and maybe you'd be half right. DA temper their lightning speed metalcore bombast with, complex song structures, a breathtaking technical prowess, and fleeting moments of dark ambience, classic metal riffing, and face melting noise. This is about as close to perfection, both visually and sonically, as any grindcore/metalcore I have ever heard or seen. Seriously.
Just the sight of that immediately recognizable underlined, lower case 'd' logo sends shivers up our spine. Some of you already know exactly what we're talking about, and just reading this far has probably got you all in a tizzy as well. For those of you who are new to the lower case 'd', prepare yourself for diSEMBOWELMENT!! Even the name, replete with mandatory case change, conjures up all sorts of bleak lifeforce snuffing, soul crushing sensations, at least for fans of mysterious otherworldly doom and bizarre slow motion grind!!
diSEMBOWELMENT were but a brief flash in the underground doom metal scene, existing for a scant three years in the early nineties, but in that time, they recorded one of the all time classic HEAVY records ever, Transcendence Into The Peripheral. A mind blowing record that somehow melded extreme brutality with delicate beauty, a record that totally changed the way some of us listened to heavy music. Referring to the music of diSEMBOWELMENT as doom might give folks the wrong impression. This is not regular old doom like Black Sabbath or My Dying Bride, it's not even funereal doom like Skepticism or Esoteric, although it definitely spends most of its time a lot closer to the slow motion sludge end of the spectrum. diSEMBOWELMENT most definitely inhabit their own unique sonic space. It's slow, sure, but not always, bursts of pounding blast beats will erupt from a bleak tranquil soundscape, gutteral inhuman grunts, machine like percussion, buzzing riffs, all intertwined into a blazing near-death metal onslaught, but it's not long before big reverb drenched guitar melodies begin to fall like some sort of black rain, the metallic pummel sort of stumbling to a seasick lumber, turning the whole thing into a creepy crawl, lurching, plodding, downtuned guitars and spare, simple rhythms, a crushing slow motion dirge, with haunting atonal clean guitar parts and moaning melodies. And even during these vast expanses of atmospheric tranquility, you can never rule out sudden blast beat, or a throat shredding vocal part, or a sudden crushing riff. The magic of diSEMBOWELMENT though is that somehow the metallic crush and the melancholic ambience are perfectly balanced. The whole thing is a dark and depressive, minor key and mournful masterpiece. But it's all so fucking heavy! Even the not-so-heavy parts manage to sound completely massive and totally crushing! So intense and emotional and just absolutely beautiful. Yep, beautiful. Lovely even. Like few records we can remember, and certainly one of the only records this heavy and brutal that manages to be absolutely beautiful. Sonically it's a bit like Napalm Death's Scum, and Carcass's Reek of Putrifaction, that classic Earache sound, a bit lo-fi, lots of reverb, big drums, buzzing guitars, all boiled down into a viscous blackened sludge, sprinkled throughout with brief melodic flares and occasional glistening guitars, like rays of sunlight just barely penetrating the suffocating atmosphere of thick low hanging riffs and bleak, brutal ambience.
Disc one contains all of Transcendence Into the Peripheral, and hell, we would have been happy with just that, a long overdue reissue of one of our all time favorite discs. But disc two contains the quite rare Dusk ep, as well as a rare compilation track and the five track Mourning September demo, all of it suitably genius! And, for a very limited time, we have managed to get a hold of the "mailorder only" version of this diSEMBOWELMENT reissue (limited to 1000 copies worldwide) that comes with a whole extra, third, disc! Disc three contains an unreleased version of "The Spirit Of The Tall Hills" (from Transcendence Into the Peripheral), as well as rehearsal versions of The Spirit Of The Tall Hills and Your Prophetic Throne Of Ivory (also from Transcendence Into the Peripheral). These versions are a lot weirder than the album versions, faster, with way more deranged and damaged vocals! Also includes a Necrovore (who we'd never heard of) cover, a murky, fuzzy, droned-out thrash workout! Wow.
Obviously totally and completely essential. Like we mentioned before, the three disc version is super limited so we're not sure how long we'll have those. Packaged in an oversized 3cd jewel case, with a booklet of photos and liner notes, including lyrics and a history of the band from drummer Paul Mazziotta. When the 3cd version is gone we will have the 2cd version, which is cheaper and comes packaged in an embossed double digipak.
Long overdue, super deluxe double disc reissue of this long-time Aquarius favorite / black metal classic. After a not-so-great past few years for Dissection, including a lengthy jail sentence for frontman Jon Nodtveidt, and a recent disappointing 'comeback/reunion' record (not yet reviewed here), this black classic returns to remind us just how mindblowingly kick ass Dissection really were. And while of course this is a fave of all the metalheads around here, and our metal-lovin' customers, it's also loved by the less metal inclined -- for instance, former AQ staffer Byram, not normally a big metal consumer, ranks this as one of his favorites amongst the Nordic hordes. In fact, it's one of the few metal cds in his collection. It's that great. It came out originally in '94, reissued as a digipak a few years back, and now sees a super duper double disc re-release with a whole disc of bonus tracks (more on those later).
With Storm of the Light's Bane, Dissection perfected their melodic, blackened Swedish death metal approach -- that means TRUE, original metal, with elements of everything from Morbid Angel to Mayhem to Iron Maiden, suped-up and super-grim, with raspy vocals, wicked drumming (the guy is AMAZING), truly memorable, majestic melodies, and tons of cold winter atmosphere. They take long breaks to let their acoustic guitars gently weep, then tear back into the brutal, razor-edged rifferama. Serious stuff, seriously great. This was to be their last album, a mighty swan song, as Dissection called it quits soon after when their frontman ended up in jail as accessory to murder -- but their -very- tangential role in any of that over-sensationalized Scandinavian black metal true crime stuff has nothing to do with why you should be interested in this band. Like we said, the band reformed last year when Nodtveidt got out of jail, and just recently released a mediocre new record, but it couldn't hold a candle to Storm Of The Light's Bane, nor could most metal records actually. Dissection was a brilliant band, and Storm of the Light's Bane is an all time classic that belongs in every metal collection. If you haven't already gotten this album, here's your chance. And even if you already have one of the previous versions, the extra disc might make it a necessary repeat purchase.
The second disc is crammed with bonus tracks and unreleased material. First up, the Storm Of The Light's Bane unreleased alternative mix '95, which might have been for completist nerds only, but a closer look reveals an extra track not on the album proper. Then there's two tracks from an unreleased 1994 demo. And finally the Where Dead Angels Lie ep, also remastered. Lots of liner notes and packaged in a spiffy slipcover. SO RECOMMENDED!
A reissue of these long-defunct Swedish black/death metallers' debut long-player, recorded in 1993 at Dan Swano's studio. It's melodic, with majestic riffs and folky acoustic interludes, but also quite fast, heavy and brutal. Here Dissection established their "blackened" style of Swedish Melodic Death Metal, a sound that they perfected on their next album, the classic Storm Of The Light's Bane. That's the one to get first, and then when you're hooked on 'em, you'll want this one as well. Why is Storm Of The Light's Bane better? It's just the subjective choice of the AQ-staff. Superior songs, we feel. But this is a fine effort too. (By the way, unlike the Nuke Blast reish of Storm, there's no bonus tracks to be found here.)
So by now, you've probably at least heard of Dizzee Rascal. He has been the talk of hip-hop / underground music circles for the last year, having won the 'prestigious' Mercury Prize, made every critic's best of list, all before he turned 20. And as with most things like that we had steeled ourselves to be bitterly and utterly disappointed. Look at that Streets record from a year or two back. We were fully ready to have our socks knocked off, but sadly, the socks stayed on. Way on. So we're happy to report, that Dizzee totally lives up to the hype, and then some! Taking the root of his sound from UK garage (pronounced GAIR-ij, we're not talking White Stripes here, ya know), a bastardized (and super simplified) varient of drum 'n bass, with pounding two step rhythms, fat distorted synths, and huge rolling bass lines, but all super spare and stripped down. Very similar (to our ears at least) to ragga/dancehall. Super repetitive and ultra danceable (in a robotic head banging hip shaking sort of way) each song is basically one or two parts, drilled maniacally into your skull, pounding and bouncing, hiccupping and stuttering, while Dizzee flows crazily, in his high pitched Jamaican / Cockney drawl. So crazy and so wickedly addictive. Fairly sample free except for the amazing "Fix Up Look Sharp", which is built entirely from a Billy Squier song, complete with the vocals! We know we don't tell you this often, so please believe us when we say, believe the hype.
Oh man, have we been waiting for this!! Scud is the master of dirty, noisy, fuck-shit-up, big beat hardcore dancehall/digital hardcore/gabber. And his label Ambush has been the place to look for forward thinking, speaker shredding, ass kicking electronic mayhem. Grungy and lo-fi and totally addictive. Funky enough to make you want to dance your ass off, but hard enough to make you want to beat the crap out of EVERYBODY! From the old school, two-step drum-and-bass-recorded-on-a-four-track of V.I.P Pressure Pt. 1 to the pounding, super distorted dancehall jungle of Kill Or Be Killed to the ghetto blaster dance party drum and bass of Jungle Warrior to the freaked out Lesser meets Panacea noise clash of New World. This is the only shit that matters anymore. Vibrant and exciting, fucked up and totally pummelling. Puts Alec Empire's by-the-numbers digital hardcore to shame.
Major complaint: Nine tracks?!?!? C'mon. There's at least five or six 12"s and three or four 7"s that are just begging to be collected all in one place. Why choose nine songs from random comps when there could've been a wicked double or triple complete Ambush collection?!?! Bitching aside, this is THE SHIT!
MPEG Download: "Kill Or Be Killed" [/audio/scudkill.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Kill Or Be Killed" [/audio/scudkill.m3u]
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been meaning to list this for a while now, but we kept selling out of it, over and over, we could barely keep it in stock, and for good reason, as far as modern mixers and DJ's go, DJ /Rupture is one of our faves, so when he offers up a mix heavy on the dubstep, you know it's gonna rule, and rule it does. Bunch of new names, some old ones too, some surprises as well, here's who we know: Scuba, Timeblind, Shackleton, Ghislain Poirier, We, Lloop, Ekkehard Ehlers, and here's who we don't: Baby Kites And Nokea, Clouds, Istari Lasterfahrer, Maga Bo, ATK12, Ekstrak, Frescoe, Iron Shirt, Jenny Jones, Stalker, Filastine, Brent Arnold, Quest, Moving Ninja, Dead Leaf and Prefessor Shehab.
But heck, it hardly matters what songs and which artists, if Rupture picks 'em you know they're good (this man must have a mindblowing record collection), and then all mixed up they're transformed into a constantly shifting dubbed out bass heavy groove that goes on and on and on. Lots of thick fuzzed out synth bass, various permutations of THAT dubstep beat, some toasting here and there, Ehlers offers up some swoonsome strings, there's some Eastern skitter, some chopped up and stuttery techno, a little ragga, some murky mumbly doom-step, a bit of dreamy downtempo drift, some slow motion old school jungle, but it's all held together by a dubstep framework, so no matter what tripped out tangent the mix takes, it always finds its way back to the dub. Killer mix as always, and as with most Rupture stuff, WAY recommended.
Newset release on the so far flawless Lex hip hop label, and while this is of course another winner, it's way less OUT THERE than the first few releases, and way more pop. Which is not a bad thing. Not at all. Just means if all things were fair, this shit would be HUGE and all over MTV. I mean c'mon, the DJ, Dangermouse, wears a huge furry mouse costume! How cool is that. And the tracks he comes up with are amazing, bizarre sample, soaring strings and angelic choirs, all layered under funky basslines and simple BIG beats. And Jemini's flow is so smooth, but still manages to be really unique, spitting all sorts of random madness. And there's plenty of actual hooks and REAL singing. Reminds me a lot of Outkast with their penchant for writing real songs instead of the tired old looped sample/beat structure of almost all hip hop. But as much as I do like Outkast, I like DM and Jemini way better. It's just a little bit weirder, and catchier, and more fun. Which is saying a lot. Features guest spots by Tha Liks, Organised Confusion and the Pharcyde! And of course there's the packaging....Lex's packaging is easily the best we've ever seen. But this record is just unbelievable, even for Lex. Embossed, metallic gold ink on weirdly textured black paper of a huge pile of crystals/jewels, a cat jeweller, and a reclining mouse with some swiss cheese bling. Really hard to explain. But pretty much everyone who has seen it says something along the lines of "Holy fuck!"
I used to think Ice Cube had the most evil voice in hip hop. The voice I picture the devil having or some evil beast that returns to reign terror on the earth. But DMX may have finally outdone Cube. I mean his voice was always gravelly and deep and completely
Most folks know Jimmy Tamborello as one half of electro poppers The Postal Service, with Ben Gibbard from Death Cab For Cutie, others might remember his electropop outfit Figurine, and a few folks might even recall an emo rock band called Strictly Ballroom, that also featured Mr. Tamborello, but we were first introduced to him via his experimental electronic outfit Dntel, who released a handful of records on the Pthalo label back in the late nineties.
This triple disc collection gathers up two of the long out of print Pthalo releases, as well as a whole other disc of song sketches and unreleased tracks.
Something Always Goes Wrong was originally slated to be released on some Japanese boutique techno label in 1994 as a concept record about "our hero and his arduous journey." (?) The presence of swords, damsels, and an evil king kept this concept album outside of the realm of Sci-Fi - the genre of choice for techno boffins doing concept albums. Something... was a blatantly romantic piece of electronic abstraction which nuzzled itself right in between early '90s legends of electronica in Reload, Biosphere, and chill-out king, The Orb. Lots of processed skitter, stuttering big beats, and warm washes of dreamlike sound. Hard not to also hear plenty of Boards Of Canada and Aphex Twin, as well as hints of what Tamborello would be doing later with the Postal Service, although this stuff is obviously more homebrewed and a bit more low fidelity, which is in no way a bad thing. The original release tacked on two remixes, both present here, as well as two totally unreleased tracks exclusive to this collection.
When it was first released, back in 1998, we described Early Works For Me If It Works For You as "one of the catchiest IDM-based electronica records in the last long while, bringing pop hooks full of tinkling little melodies to the digital swoop and skitter of deconstructed Amen breaks, spasmodic algorithms, and powerbooking electrocrunch." We also recommended it to fans of Lesser, Reload and Aphex Twin and it still pretty much holds true. This stuff still sounds vibrant and crucial, and only a little bit dated, but not at all in a bad way, in fact, we've really missed this era of electronic music, and this is totally hitting the spot.
The bonus disc here, Early Works For Me If It Works For You II, as mentioned above, is a collection of sketches and unfinished works, and is way more raw than the other two discs, but that doesn't mean it's not super cool, skittery and bloopy, woozy melodies, drifty and droney, plenty of glitch and crunch, but also some acoustic guitar (definitely foreshadowing the Postal Service again), processed vox, intense drones, dreamy washed out synth drifts, all of it very warm and muted and sun dappled and dreamy, gorgeous stuff, even in their unfinished state.
Fans of that era, of Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, who somehow missed out on Dntel, will be in for a surprise, and folks who love the Postal Service, might be excited to hear what came before. Us, we're just digging these sounds, this retro, stuttery, swoonsome, electronic dream pop, amazed that it still sounds so goddamn good. Killer packaging too, a massive 8 panel digipak, full color on black, with some fancy reflective spot varnish filigree.
Oh how we wanted to hate this band. The hype. The blogs. The cheeky name. The fact that they were signed to a huge record deal based on two MySpace tracks. We're sure there are more reasons, but for now that's plenty. The glut of total dancey electronic bullshit, overhyped blog-house, it's killing us. Not to sound like old men, but remember when bands played instruments and wrote songs, and spend months, maybe years working on albums, recorded in studios? Yeah, we don't either actually.
But fuck it, we wanted to hate it, but it would be foolish not to just accept the fact that this record rules. We can't stop listening to it. The opener is a dancefloor destroying banger. Huge fuzzy synths, lots of squelch and grind and buzz, tearing a page straight out of Justice's playbook and scribbling all over it with dayglo crayons. But that's the only track on the record that sounds like that. The rest of the disc is all over the map, angular dancepunk, total cotton candy synth pop, and in fact, most of the disc is much more song-y, verses choruses, crunchy guitars pounding drums, wild howled vocals, and HOOKS everywhere. But fear not synthies, there is still plenty of electronic weirdness and synth overload, but that stuff is deftly woven into actual songs.
The second track is a killer as well, super grindy guitars, funky propulsive drumming, howled vocals, super proggy arrangements, swirling synths, dense and heavy, but still funky and groovy. The next track veers back a bit toward the vibe of the opener, but this time it's all vocodered Kraftwerk worship, peppered with sweeping synth buzz and funky cowbell, and a pretty irresistible hook.
Our favorite right now (although it changes every time we listen to it) is probably "Dawn Of The Dead", a total eighties pop jam. Sounding like it came straight out of a John Hughes movie, soaring and bubblegummy, big guitars lush harmonies, it dangerously close to being cheesy, but it's so fucking awesome.
Later there are some surfy carnival organ jams, more eighties technopop, some unabashed total Daft Punk worship, some angular jangle guitar artpunk, flecked with skittery drum machines, and a massive hook filled chorus, the record is almost so scattered that it threatens to be a total mess, but somehow, the songs all sort of fit together, forming some dizzying sugar rush of technicolor techno flecked pop punk synth fuzz bliss.
We're gonna go blog about it. Right now (ummm, not really, just kidding, we SWEAR...). Though I guess this comes close.
Herzog! Weed! Swearin'! Milk Music! You've probably been noticing us freaking out over a whole mess of new bands heavily influenced by the sound of the nineties underground, so we figured it was the perfect time to heap some serious praise on a couple actual records from the nineties, and not just the underground, the WAY WAY underground, in fact, if you didn't live in central Illinois, you likely had never heard, or even heard OF these guys, but goddamn, now that we have, we're kind of obsessed! And we were warned. The guys at the Bird Dialect label had been talking up this nineties Chicago grunge/noise/power pop outfit for ages, we had never heard of them, and hadn't heard a lick of music, and were thus a bit skeptical, cuz really, what label DOESN'T hype their next release? But holy shit, these guys are amazing. It's hard to imagine a band like this not making it big. Cuz they had it all, heavy and hooky, killer songs, a vocalist with a seriously rad raspy yowl, the band whipping up a sort of grungy, glammy power pop, but with shades of classic Twin/Tone bands, and early Homestead Records, if we had heard these guys in the nineties, no doubt they'd be one of our favorite bands. Swaggery glam punk meets garage pop, fuzzy grunge meets ramshackle noise rock. The label calls them Peoria's answer to Urge Overkill, and we can definitely hear that, but imagine UO without all the kitsch and smarm, and add WAY more grit and punk rock swagger, we also hear tons of early/classic Aerosmith, there's a huge Seattle grunge vibe a la Green River/Mudhoney or actually more like grunge lesser knowns like Swallow, we also hear lots of Skunk (pre-Chavez), and heck maybe some Chavez too, definitely Soul Asylum as well, back when they were AWESOME (which they were, for a long time), not to mention Finnish grunge/glam wastoids Smack, and heck, if we're going totally obscure, they reminded some of us of the band Clumsy, whose Center Of Attention Deficit Disorder is a mostly unheard nineties classic. So yeah, these guys, at least sonically, seemed poised for the big time, and listening to this now, it's almost criminal that more people haven't heard (of) these guys.
Their 1994 debut Corvette Summer is a stone cold classic, opener "Kick The Ball" opens with a grungy, blown out riff, the sound is sort of power pop in punk rock clothing, like a meaner, noisier Cheap Trick, it's the sort of jam you can imagine inspiring some seriously sweaty crowds to go apeshit, the song lurching from chugging noise pop, to tangly noise rock and back again. "Timi Yuro Song" ups the pop ante, but that grunge vibe still shines through, especially when it slips into a low slung chug/dirge/swagger, and that voice, cigarettes and whiskey definitely played a part, and here we're definitely hearing some Love Battery, which is most definitely a good thing. "Half A Chance" is total Aerosmith worship, all woozy guitar shimmer, a total slow build ballad, like Dollface's "Dream On", and yeah, we don't make that comparison lightly, and we should mention the part where the vocalist sings "make them scream" and in the background, you can suddenly hear the sound of a wildly screaming crowd. Brooding, intense, minor key, some serious pathos heavy hard rock for sure. We could go track by track, but odds are you know by now if this is your thing, and if you're ANYthing like us, it most definitely is. The band do mix it up - there's the the power pop bounce of "Opportunities", the fuzzy almost psychedelic jangle of "Valentines Day", the playful pop punk of "No Duh No Doi", there's even hand claps on a few tracks, not to mention some seriously anthem worthy choruses, as well as some goofy, but pretty funny lyrics, all of which is well balanced by the bands grungier, more hard rocking side. This is fast becoming a new favorite, and definite contender for reissue of the year!
Herzog! Weed! Swearin'! Milk Music! You've probably been noticing us freaking out over a whole mess of new bands heavily influenced by the sound of the nineties underground, so we figured it was the perfect time to heap some serious praise on a couple actual records from the nineties, and not just the underground, the WAY WAY underground, in fact, if you didn't live in central Illinois, you likely had never heard, or even heard OF these guys, but goddamn, now that we have, we're kind of obsessed! And we were warned. The guys at the Bird Dialect label had been talking up this nineties Chicago grunge/noise/power pop outfit for ages, we had never heard of them, and hadn't heard a lick of music, and were thus a bit skeptical, cuz really, what label DOESN'T hype their next release? But holy shit, these guys are amazing. It's hard to imagine a band like this not making it big. Cuz they had it all, heavy and hooky, killer songs, a vocalist with a seriously rad raspy yowl, the band whipping up a sort of grungy, glammy power pop, but with shades of classic Twin/Tone bands, and early Homestead Records, if we had heard these guys in the nineties, no doubt they'd be one of our favorite bands. Swaggery glam punk meets garage pop, fuzzy grunge meets ramshackle noise rock. The label calls them Peoria's answer to Urge Overkill, and we can definitely hear that, but imagine UO without all the kitsch and smarm, and add WAY more grit and punk rock swagger, we also hear tons of early/classic Aerosmith, there's a huge Seattle grunge vibe a la Green River/Mudhoney or actually more like grunge lesser knowns like Swallow, we also hear lots of Skunk (pre-Chavez), and heck maybe some Chavez too, definitely Soul Asylum as well, back when they were AWESOME (which they were, for a long time), not to mention Finnish grunge/glam wastoids Smack, and heck, if we're going totally obscure, they reminded some of us of the band Clumsy, whose Center Of Attention Deficit Disorder is a mostly unheard nineties classic. So yeah, these guys, at least sonically, seemed poised for the big time, and listening to this now, it's almost criminal that more people haven't heard (of) these guys.
Lights The Pilot!!! was the band's second record, originally released in 1996, and like Corvette Summer, it's a hard rocking doozy, just give a listen to "Destiny, Oh Destiny", which sounds like some lost Nirvana B-side, right down to the vocalist's inflection, and the weird chugging grunginess, in fact, anyone who digs Nirvana (and modern Nirvana worshippers like Roomrunner) will lose their shit for this. It's like the weirder, darker, noisier side of Nirvana, which was sort of always our favorite, super melodic busy basslines, crumbling distorted guitar jangle and crunch, two and a half minutes that you'll likely find yourself playing over and over and over. But the rest of the record is not too shabby either, slipping from the pogo-y punk pop of "Rods And Cones", to the fuzzy, noisy, grunged out power pop of "I Breakdown And Cry", with its killer woozy bridge, and the awesome, about-to-crack vocals, and from the crazy catchy, chugging jangle pop of "Atlantis", to the the twisted experimental new wave weirdness of "I Light The Pilot, and so it goes. We hear some Rocket From The Crypt, some Hot Snakes (especially on "Monkey House"), lots of familiar sounds for sure, but all wound up into a pretty unique package, one that pushes pretty much all our nineties rock buttons, and along with Dollface's Corvette Summer debut, these are getting played around here like crazy!
Math rock / post rock / noise rock nerds, celebrate! Henry Owings and Chunklet once again deliver a sonic holy grail that we didn't even know existed. Most recently it was a killer collection from late great unsung Chicago noise rock minimalists Tar, and now comes a whole unreleased record from nineties math rock legends Don Caballero!! And holy shit is it a doozy, recorded in 1991 at Carnegie Mellon as a three piece, the sound is super raw, ultra fierce, crazy heavy, and mathy as fuck, a furious frenzy of wild octopoidal drumming, chugging distorted guitars, fuzzed out low slung bass, the songs already twisted and tangled, and weirdly catchy, the sort of head nodding matched out heaviness few bands then or now could match, and the recording only makes it sound that much better, blown out and in the red, fierce and in your face, relentlessly rocking. A bunch (but not all) of the tracks would show up in different forms later, on early singles and their debut full-length For Respect, but they almost sound even better here, more raw and intense for sure. Fans of this group, this era and this sound, grab one of these before they're gone, cuz odds are these are the only ones we'll be able to get.
Housed in a full color gatefold sleeve, includes a download of the whole record, as well as the band's second ever live show as a bonus (and that's even more raw and blown out!!)...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally a reissue of the long lost lps from San francisco's unsung pop heroes, the Donner Party. Boasting future members of Quasi and the S.F. Seals, the Donner party, crafted perfect and absurdist little ditties, silly and fun, full of wide eyed innocence and mundane platitudes, and with hooks that could stop a train.
Championing that 80's college radio sound (R.E.M., Homestead Records, etc.) the Donners never seemed to get the attention afforded their peers. This two cd set compiles the first two lps, as well as an unreleased third lp, plus some live tracks to boot.
Some of the best jangley pop ever, for fans of Quasi, Built to Spill, Halo Benders, They Might Be giants. Worth it just for the song 'Boxfull of Bones', one of the most beautiful and heart breaking pop songs ever.
These Baltimore noise rock weirdos have always been super difficult to describe, and this new record doesn't make it any easier. The opening 1-2-3 punch though might be some of the best stuff we've heard from them. The intro explodes with a wild barrage of drum damage, like some drum corps gone haywire, an opening that sounds like a Buddy Rich solo by way of the Boredoms, before the guitars swoop in, all grungy and noisy, a little bit sludgy, but laced with plenty of melody, sounding not unlike a less bass heavy Lightning Bolt, the same sort of frantic, spastic sonic energy, a wild squall of distorto rhythmic churn. That bleeds right into "Repo Man", which sounds like Dope Body doing their best Nirvana / Wipers, all hushed minimal verses, and heavy, chugging bridge, the vocals world weary and laid back, with a killer, crushing, drum heavy, chorus, that reminds us of Karp or Unwound, the classic indie rock soft/loud soft/loud and repeat, but somehow, through Dope Body's twisted sonic lens it's ultra catchy, noise rock bliss. And then "Hired Gun" harkens back to past records with the band unleashing dizzying fields of distorted harmonics that end up sounding like a metallized Konono No.1, mixed with the hypercharged Weezer worshipping metallic pop crunch of Jeff The Brotherhood, all wound up in some spiky AmRep noise rockiness. Sounds good so far. And it IS.
And from there on out, it stays good, and continues to hopscotch from genre to genre with very little regard for the listener, but it's sort of what makes this stuff so appealing, the stripped down blooze swagger of "Echo", the frenetic, fizzed out pop flecked grinding punkiness of "AOL", the almost groovy, Primus channeling (???) noise-funk of "Rare Air", the furious, wiry, metallic post punk crunch of "Day By Day", the downtuned noise rock dirgery of "Toy", and so it goes. Furious freaked out heaviness rife with seemingly out of place poppiness, the sort of band math that rarely works, but that in the case of Dope Body makes pretty much perfect (non)sense.
Massive double lp opus from this mysterious drone rock ensemble. Maybe drone rock is a bit misleading as there is very little rock to be found. So let's just say drone, shall we? After numerous cd-r's and limited lps the Double Leopards return with this gorgeous and expansive low end exploration. Rumbles and hums, shimmers and thrums, this is as perfect a piece of meditative, mesmeric drone as you're ever going to find. Like all great drone records, Halve Maen is a dense, thick nebula made up of layers and layers of sound slowly shifting and unravelling, revealing new sonic details on each listen. Murky wisps of rhythm, shimmering piano, distant chimes, warm reeds, and fuzzy static all surface occasionally. As the record progresses, the minimal spaciness intensifies, gets darker and gets louder, as the misty spectral instrumentation gathers steam and takes form, with propulsive rhythms and ghostly vocals emerging from the haze. So nice. Limited to 1000 copies. On nice thick vinyl in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve.
This all time beloved AQ tresure, out of print for ages, finally gets reissued, in time to give as a gift, to ANYONE you know who might not have this, because everyone should own these records. Some of the most breathtakingly lovely folk music EVER. Now with new artwork, and with the addition of the recent Nick Drake documentary A Skin Too Few. To make room for the dvd, they bumped the odds and sods collection Time Of No Reply, but is not such a loss, as much of that stuff has surfaced in one form or another in the recent spate of collections gathering up anything and everything Drake ever recorded.
But here, in addition ot the movie, you get everything you need, all three classic albums: Pink Moon, Bryter Layter and Five Leaves Left. Breatless, intimate, heartfelt, tragic, lovely, dreamy, wistful, heart breaking, personal, intense and mysterious folk music that sounds as otherworldly as it does timeless.
In a super nice box, with a new 100 page book. Absolutely essential.
Who knew so much pure evil lurked deep in the depths of (supposedly) sunny California, especially right here in San Francisco. The legendary Weakling (R.I.P.), the ungodly blackened evil of Leviathan, the blazing, bleak torment of Crebain (also coming soon on tUMULt), and now the grim, funereal, majestic savagery of Draugar's From Which Hatred Grows.
Haunting and atmospheric, brutal and buzzing, blighted and black. Fingerpicked acoustic guitars explode into roaring, soul-shearing riffs, pounding drums demarcate hazy blackened soundscapes of misanthropic brutality and gorgeously melodic impurity, damaged and demented arrangements underpin hellish profane howls of utter anguish. Yeah, black metal at its best with nary a glacier or fjord in sight. Yet, as Burzumically brutal as it all is, you could be listening to this and suddenly forget and mistakenly think you've got some fucked up experiment in lo-fi ambient drone psychedelia on your stereo instead. Keyboards warble WAY above the mix, drums and vocals and guitars are whipped into Merzbow-ic blasts of white noise, blast beats are obliterated into gentle expanses of delicate acoustic guitars and droning ambient hum, the whole thing a gorgously perplexing blast of bizarre blackened sonic experimentation. Much like the infamous Benighted Leams confused and astounded us once upon a time with its outsider genius, Draugar transcends black metal musical norms, making truly abnormal, artistic sound with unknown boundaries. Like Leviathan and our other favorite California black metal act Xasthur, it's the one-man-alone, far from the "scene" aspect that seems to foster a creativity beyond that of many ordinary black metal bands. From Which Hatred Grows is one of those rare metal records that manages to be true and grim, buzzing and black, but also a truly unique sonic vision that should find its way into the collection of every adventurous music lover.
The black ice continues to spread, a grim black metal glacier slowly enveloping all with ears to hear. The West Coast black metal contingent's influence grows steadily, until one day hell walks the earth. Sorry, getting carried away. If the above scene had some sort of hierarchy, Leviathan would undoubtedly be the king. Xasthur would be a prince, or perhaps another king vying for supreme power. Crebain would be a knight, sent to slay all who shall dare oppose, and then Draugar, well Draugar would be the kings ex-vizier, locked in a dark dank dungeon, insane and murderous and demented, from years of no light, eating bugs, lack of sleep, and staring endlessly into blackness. Draugar is definitely the black sheep of this already black family, imbuing his home recorded evil, with the grim buzz of classic black metal, but with a healthy dollop of damged brilliance a la Benighted Leams, Lurker Of Chalice, or Striborg. Buzzy and black, droning and depressive, Draugar more than holds his own amidst the blackened elite, but somehow, everything he touches turns to what-the-fuck? Gentle clean arpeggiated clean guitar melodies are way up in the mix, layed atop a sluggish stream of indistinct guitar fuzz and Whitehouse-ish vocals. Sounding a little like somebody taped Darkthrone over a Slint record on an old C90 that had been in their back pocket for a month. Loping midtempo buzz over buried angelic choruses, like Morricone's The Mission performed by Graveland. Occasional ambient breaks, where guitar melodies wander aimlessly across barren soundscapes of distant rumble and creepy shimmer. Sometimes the riff seems to just splinter apart and what was moments earlier a galloping black metal juggernaut, has become a seasick drone. contructed from fuzzy almost melodies and vocals so distorted and so affected they sound like bursts of radio static. As always, heavy and grim and completely fucked!
Another blast of cassette encased demented blackness this time from a mysterious Brazilian black metal horde called Draugurz, who in the past have shared a split with AQ faves Marblebog.
Draugurz are of the ultra anguished midtempo doom drenched black metal persuasion, with a super buzzy and brittle guitar sound, stumbling drums way up in the mix, fuzzed out murky minor key keyboards and EXTREMELY tortured vocals, the kind that howl and scream and caterwaul...
A Yell From The Past (awesome title!) is a collection, a sort of greatest hits, drawn from two demos and the split with Marblebog, and the whole thing is a gorgeously lo-fi, dark and torturous journey through a black musical wasteland. Slow trudging doom gives way to lurching midtempo buzz gives way to a furious blast that is so blown out it threatens to transform into a smear of Merzbowian white noise. Heavy and weird and mysterious, haunting and heavy and so very dementedly black.
Killer cover too, some sort of cartoonish ghost drifting above the forest.
Warning: the tape has some drop outs and some serious sonic inconsistencies, but just consider that another element of Draugurz's weird world and they sound almost like they belong... ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
The first proper full length from Drcarlsonalbion, the alter-ego of Dylan Carlson, he of twang flecked dronelords Earth, who along with Earth drummer Adrienne Davies, has crafted this gorgeous bit of psychedelic drift, a soundtrack to a film called Gold, and really, fans of recent Earth records might think they've stumbled onto a new Earth record, although the music on Gold is much more spare and minimal, especially considering that mostly it's Carlson on guitar, with just a bit of percussive filigree from Davies. It's a sort of washed out and woozy, sun baked Appalachia, a definite desert blues vibe, most of the tracks here super short, many more like the film cues they are, than proper songs, with Carlson unfurling hazy, bluesy riffs, and letting them ring out, slowly decay, in clouds of reverb and delay, echoey shimmers ringing out like ripples in water, each track here some sort of dark folk ritual, some smoldering and cloaked in shadow, others bathed in sunlight, but most of the tracks here, just Carlson on some back porch, with an old broken bottle for a slide, and playing through a busted old combo, the notes wreathed in soft FX and let loose to drift on the afternoon breeze, or be carried skyward by soft swirls of black smoke, the campfire vibe is huge here too. It's hard to say what the movie Gold is all about, having not seen it, or even read anything about it, but we're imagining some sort of Cormac McCarthy style bleakness, vast expanses of dusty roads, and dilapidated farmhouses, dying crops and slope shouldered workers toiling in the fields. It has that sort of wasted, hopeless feel, endless days, and the brief respite of night. Gorgeous stuff for sure.
Packaged in an oversized heavy weight tip-on style sleeve, includes a download code as well.
Sometimes it's hard to believe that certain records just go out of print. I mean who would let the Conet Project go out of print, or Souled American, or the Incredible String Band. It's even weirder when the record is not old or obscure. Then it's usually some bureaucratic red tape or major label bullshit that keeps people from hearing some great record. Such is the case with the second, ultimate release from San Diego's Drive Like Jehu, originally released on Interscope in 1994. A record Allan and Andee and Jim and Sadie and Windy and quite possibly the rest of the AQ staff would rank as one of the best rock records ever! Easily as good/important as Slint's Spiderland. For those who don't know, Drive Like Jehu was fronted by John Reis of Rocket From The Crypt (who has now reissued Yank Crime on his own Swami label) and featured vocalist Rick Farr (his rock name, he's also known as Eric Froberg) who later went on with Reis to play in the Hot Snakes. Drive Like Jehu also just happened to have one of the tightest rhythm sections EVER. E V E R! Yank Crime is a tightly wound record of 'post rock' (before post rock meant watered down instrumental indie rock bullshit) with head nodding, repetitive grooves, propulsive, ultra concise drumming, and some of the most inventive guitar playing we've ever heard. All topped off with Farr's distinctive high pitched vocals (familiar to all you folks who dig the Hot Snakes) The songs are looooong and hypnotic but never boring. The band locks into totally intense, static grooves, that can go on for minutes before exploding into mayhemic bursts of controlled fury. So goddamn good. Anyone who likes the Hot Snakes MUST own this record. Drive Like Jehu is like a hyper charged, heavier, more intense and complex, MUCH BETTER Hot Snakes. Anyone who likes Feuhler or Don Cab or Slint or Engine Kid or almost any post rock will discover what all those other comers had been shooting for. This is IT. Trust us. An automatic AQ "record of the week" selection as soon as we heard it was finally being re-released -- with three bonus tracks to boot! ("Bullet Train To Vegas" and "Hand Over Fist" from their Merge label 7", and the original version of "Sinews" from a Cargo/Headhunter compilation.) So even if you have the original you might want to get this reissue for those.
If an argument had to be made for greatest modern American hardcore/grindcore band, it would be pretty tough to argue with Rhode Island's Dropdead. One of the heaviest, fastest, hardest, most pissed off and politically righteous punk rock bands EVER, devastating obliticore/blistercore/fastcore/powerviolence that KILLS, total thrashing metallic punk rock fury, beholden to classic Swedish hardcore, and old school UK D-beat, British anarcho punk and of course Japanese crust, yet somehow these guys took all those influences and wove them into something singularly epic and transcendent and about a million times better than pretty much every other punk rock band we can think of. Short, sharp blasts of blasting thrashing chaotic punk rock, the guitars grinding and chugging, the drums a furious flurry of lightning fast beats, the vox howled over the churning punk fury below, the lyrics covering everything from animal rights to pacifism, racism to religion, each record an epic onslaught micro grindpunk epics, most clocking it at less than a minute, many half that, but these guys cram as much musical and lyrical vitriol in a matter of seconds than most bands manage over the course of a whole record. Even after years of listening to metal and punk and pretty much every variation and permutation of both, black metal, doom metal, grindcore, crustcore, whatever, there's still something so pure and honest and intense about Dropdead, raw and primal and at the same time impossibly epic and emotional and personal, the sort of punk rock that was as concerned with changing minds and fighting against injustices as it was with getting the pit moving, and in the process, they somehow managed to make these 30 second blasts of sonic ultraviolence, catchy as fuck.
Any one into any sort of heavy music, who doesn't own these classic albums, is missing out big time. All three records have been reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages, their 1993 self titled debut, their 1998 second album (also confusingly self titled) and their insane and untouchable discography collection, which gathers up singles and comp tracks, as well as Dropdead stuff from splits with Rupture and Crossed Out. Hard to recommend one over any of the others, all three rule and are absolutely essential, if you can buy all three, you won't be sorry, but at least buy one, start with any of them, odds are you'll want the rest. One of our favorite bands EVER.
Earlier this past year we reviewed (and Record Of The Week'd) a crushing slab of druggy psychedelic space doom sludge called Ghost In The Fire, from a band with the VERY unlikely moniker Drug Honkey. Initially we sorta assumed they must be a joke band, but there was nothing funny about the head spinning din these guys whipped up on that record. And as much as we loved Ghost In The Fire, for us it all started with this disc, Death Dub, which we had hoped would be some sort of impossible dub / death metal hybrid, and while it wasn't quite that, it was still seriously warped and fucked up, like a sludgier more metallic Butthole Surfers, sort of. Dirgey, and noisy, and crusty, sludgey and actually in fact, kinda dubbed out. We managed to get a handful of these finally (as well as DH's Hail Satan cd-r, if you want one of those too, just ask!), and now everyone can revel in Drug Honkey's glorious sonic filth, a constantly shifting metallic sound world, that's all churning riffage one second ("The Devil Lasts Forever"), tripped out dubby doom the next ("Death Threats"). The Butthole Surfers comparison is pretty apt, these guys just unfurl these sprawling epics, low slung bass throb, tribal caveman drumming, weird FX heavy vox, bellowed demonic howls that can easily transform into hysterical shrieks, everything wrapped in sheets of crumbling distortion, clouds of swirling effects, total tripped out heaviness, that as the title promises does get dubby, check out the vox on "Death Threats", throat shredding vokills disappear in a field of echo and delay, and go spinning into the blackness, while underneath the band continue to pound out a spacey psychedelic dirge. Or there's "Communion", the vocals sick and hellish, but seemingly being real time processed, so each bellow, launches little flurries of sped up shrieks or garbled grunts, all tether to the bands lumbering, monstrous, downtuned crush.
The sound constantly gets super psychedelic, and sort of krautrocky and motorik, spacey and heavily tripped out, like some weird mutated hybrid of the Psychic Paramount, Terminal Cheesecake and Painkiller, some tracks almost sound like hip hop, albeit some sick, distortion drenched industrial strain (Techno Animal, Ice, God, etc.). In fact the Pathological Records vibe looms large over pretty much all of Death Dub, the whole record an electronic flecked, FX heavy, metallic mindfuck of the highest order. Which obviously means ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!!!
