We first discovered the awesomely named Drug Honkey a few years back, via their 2008 record Death Dub. And at the time, before having actually heard it, or then, we figured it was probably too much to hope for, that a band called Drug Honkey would actually be good, and not some dumb bad band inside joke, and that a record by said band, called Death Dub, would and/or could actually deliver on the promise of a title like that. Dubbed out death metal? Metallic dub? Some sort of blackened dubbed out weirdness? Well, happy to say we needn't have doubted, these Chicago experimental drug doom space psych heavies did not disappoint, that record a churning morass of noise drenched, dubbed out blackened heaviness, equal parts droned out, pounding almost-industrial crush, woozy, sludge-y slo-mo creep, and crumbling distorto-dub noise rock weirdness. Imagine the Butthole Surfers via Godflesh via the Scientist via Eyehategod. Noisy, druggy, damaged, super intense, and blown out, and heavily psychedelic, the vocals only adding to the WTF level, a super harsh demonic bellow one second, a weird high pitched yelp the next, the vocals bleeding into the sounds around them, and all of those sounds then doused in FX and super processed, into some seriously heady heaviness.
We were never able to get enough copies to review/list, so when we discovered there was a new Drug Honkey,
full length number four if you're keeping track, we knew we had to get copies, and had a feeling it was probably gonna have to be Record Of The Week. And once again, Drug Honkey do not disappoint, if anything, Ghost In The Fire is like Death Dub part two, but if anything, everything we loved about Death Dub has been cranked up even more this time around, it's heavier, slower, dubbier, more tripped out, the production is MASSIVE, the sound filthy and crumbling and blown out, the band unfurling a loping, lumbering super psychedelic sludge-dub that once again sounds a bit like the Buttholes jamming with Godflesh, which is in fact a very very good thing.
Opening with a blast of detuned guitar churn, a pounding motorik rhythm, chiming distorted guitar melodies, looped and lurching, super tranced out and hypnotic, the vocals a bellowy demonic belch, that gets doused in FX and like much of the surrounding sounds, sometimes slows down to a grunting gurgle, other times splinters into weird swirling shards of sound, the music too, subtly dubbed out, but for the most part, roiling and churning relentlessly, the sort of super heavy psych-sludge trance-out, that could easily have stretched out for another 45 minutes and made for a super sweet single track drone-sludge epic.
But these guys have more sonic filth up their sleeves. The title track even slower, and dubbier, the guitars tarpit thick, the riffing spread out over a plodding death march rhythm, the vocals a throat shredding howl, and again, accompanied by various other processed voices, slowed down, sped up, doused in distortion, pitch shifted, like some sort of drugged out demonic choir, all over swirls of gristly effects, and crumbling distorted effects, and all driven by the group's impossibly dense chugging doom-sludge dirge, slipping from driving almost headbangable 16rpm demonic deathdub groove, to fractured, fucked up, psychedelic black-noise drift, but more often than not fusing the two into some seriously unholy union.
Some tracks are way more 'dubby' than others, like "Weight Of The World" which creeps and slithers, the guitars pushed into the background, laying down a softly undulating backdrop of droning rumble, over which a monstrous rhythm, pounds away in slow motion, beneath streaks of soaring fragmented high end melody, and some seriously fucked up and freaky vocals, lots of space and drift, swooping backwards effects, super psychedelic, totally hypnotic and tranced out, about as dubby as these guys get, but then there's tracks like "Dead Days ("Heroin III"), where the core sound is a super downtuned ultradoom sludge, the dubbiness seeping through in the form of the Gibby Haynes like vocals, and the atmospheric swirls, at one point slowing down to a near static drift, the only thing keeping it heavy, a super blown out distorted bass riff, over which all this other tripped out shit swirls and shimmers, and when the weird guitar that sounds like a proggy synth (or maybe a sitar?) pops up, total genius WTF trip out, the song drifting even further into tripped out zoner-psych territory. They even do a Scorn cover, which makes sonic sense for sure, Drug Honkey transforming the dark electronic skitter of the original into what sounds like a spaced out psychedelic sludge metal Necks, super drone out and loop-y, a little bit jazzy, but still heavy as fuck, before finishing off with a final fierce blast of dubbed out, super aggro, speaker shredding, doom-dub psych-sludge dirgery that KILLS. Holy shit. Imagine UK psych-drone space drifters Bong jamming with Godflesh, a dizzying concoction of super tripped out heaviness, ultra abstract sludge and blackened psychedelic dub that anyone into weird heaviness / heavy weirdness will lose their shit over! WAY WAY WAY recommended!
At the risk of quite possibly making our lengthy and floridly descriptive, effusive and over the top reviews totally obsolete, we can pretty much sell this one with one sentence. Grind metal, death metal, spastic drill and bass AND a marching band drum corps. And that's not even really a sentence!
Drumcorps is the work of one Aaron Spectre, who not only shares a first name with the man behind Venetian Snares, he also shares a similar penchant for ultra twisted and impossibly convoluted and mind blowing rhythms. But where Venetian Snares builds elaborate rhythmic tangles out of beats, beats and more beats, Spectre, while a consummate beat maker himself, as Drumcorps, he concerns himself as much with riffs as beats. At its very heart, this is a metal record after all. A snarling, grinding crush of acidic metallic riffs and huge downtuned chunks of chugging death metal grind, with howled throat shredding vocals, buzzing squalls of metallic guitar freakout and pounding blasting drums. But as each track develops, you begin to notice something a little strange about this 'metal.' Every once in a while, here and there, the drums will skitter and splinter into little bursts of ultra complex splatter. Or vocals will get twisted and chopped up into a wildly stuttering rhythm, blast beats will get faster and faster until they're nothing but a buzzy blur. Riffs splinter into jagged digital shards which are then tossed about wildly over a skittering expanse of junglistic beats. This isn't just metal, and it's definitely not electronica. It's like some sort of fucked up avant post metal grind laid over super dense hyper programmed drill and bass. Like Pig Destroyer jamming with Shitmat, or Dillinger Escape Plan with Venetian Snares on drums! In fact a quick listen to track three, the aptly titled "Pig Destroyer Destroyer" lays it all out for you. Beginning with a killer drum corps snare workout, that builds into a mesmerizing chopped and looped vocal guitar grind, eventually building into a full on blast of metallic fury, but all tangled up with sputtering, hiccuping strands of head spinning drill and bass.
The amazing thing is, that Drumcorps doesn't sound like some sort of DJ mash up, where some clever fella with a wicked record collection just assembled and sequenced. No, these are real songs, with melodies, atmosphere, riffs, parts, choruses, it seems impossible that Spectre composed and performed a whole metal record only to electronically fuck it up, but if these are all purloined riffs, which at least some of them must be, then it had all the metalheads around here completely fooled. And LOVING it.
But it's not all just furious jungle metal weirdness (although most of it most definitely is!). A few tracks are droning ambient soundscapes, with huge cavernous rumbles washing over brittle complicated snare drums, others are almost funky jungle jams peppered with crunchy clipped riffs, and still others are moody midtempo jams, assembled from slowed down pitchshifted vocals and crumbling distorted guitars, sheets of feedback, and awesome Maiden-ish dual guitar leads. This is another one of those times we almost wish there were actual bands that sounded like this, as opposed to being the mad idea of a single twisted individual, crafting his dream band from a drum machine and his favorite metal records, an impossible metal / drum and bass hybrid. But who cares really, when it sounds this fucking amazing. Fans of past record of the week Drummachinegun should definitely check this out, as should folks into DHR, Venetian Snares, Shitmat and that sort of sputtering spastic drill and buzz (especially if they've got a soft spot for metal). But c'mon, this is a METAL record, so metalheads should absolutely take a chance, and give this a try, but should be well prepared to have their whole world turned upside down.
A miasma is defined as a heavy, vaporous emanation or atmosphere, also used to describe a corrupting influence (thank you, dictionary dot com!). So obviously, Chicagoan Kevin Drumm has been hanging around miscreants Peter Rehberg and Masami Akita and has decided to drop a nasty, pungent aural fart on all of us. Normally, guitarist Drumm crafts near inaudible soundscapes which leave much to be imagined. But "Sheer Hellish Miasma", his first recording for the stalwart experimental electronic jetset label Mego, is just FUCKING LOUD!!!! As to be expected from Mego, there's an abundance of clicks and whirrs, digital chirps and skitters, but I repeat, it is FUCKING LOUD!!!! (!) This'll probably be up for Prix Ars Electronica against Whitehouse. Or not. Who knows what those Ars Electronica people are thinking? The closing "Cloudy", in contrast, builds a simplistic, yet wonderful shimmering drone that ends the disc quite gorgeously. Well done. A necessity for all you pure noise freaks out there. Epic and apocalyptic, much like the work of Zbigniew Karkowski, Boyd Rice as NON, the overdriven sonic capacities of Whitehouse or the more hellish punishments of Merzbow (it's a bit like "Hard Lovin' Man" in its trance-inducing aspects).
Somehow we never managed to review the debut ep from retro new wave poppers The Drums (not to be confused with local double drums duo also called The Drums, featuring members of Oh Sees and Ezeetiger), which is a shame cuz it was one of our favorite records. And then we managed to track down an import version of the full length, but couldn't get enough to review, and were forced to wait for the domestic version, which is finally here, so now we can gush over this fantastic chunk of moody retro pop.
Probably best to skip right to THEE JAM, "Let's Go Surfing", with its whistled melody, its sped up Joy Division bassline, clipped simple drumming, Smiths guitar jangle, handclaps(!), vocal harmonies, fuzzy synth bits and an absolutely KILLER summery sunshiney chorus. Imagine some mix of Echo And The Bunnymen, the Cure, the Boo Radleys and Surfer Blood, if that makes any sense, totally hook filled jangly new wave pop, with just enough modern weirdness to fit in with the current crop of retro pop futurists, but looking way back to the best of Creation and Factory records. "Best Friend" is all spidery guitars, earnest crooned vox, heartfelt lovelorn lyrics, plenty of ooooh's and aaaah's, all wrapped around an almost funky bassline and another stripped down rhythm. "Skippin' Town" is like "Let's Go Surfing" part 2, jaunty melodies, sweet vocals, more oooh's and aaah's, still more fuzzy synths and handclaps, and another dreamy hook. "It Will All End In Tears" is like a jauntier peppier take on Ultravox, "I'll Never Drop My Sword" adds a cool buzzy synth bassline, and some strange lyrics about Jesus, but all wrapped around that impossibly perfect jangle pop and some total minor key Cure synth shimmer. So good!
Totally catchy, impossibly irresistible, breezy and Britpoppy, perfect summery retro dream pop jams that we can't stop listening to...
Full length number two from this East Coast noise rock trio, finally available, self-released on vinyl by the band on their own label, whose recent set at the aQuarius / WFMU South By Southwest showcase blew us all away. An insanely kinetic display of tense mathy crush, pounding feral filth, and blasting, churning, grinding, blown out heaviness. It's hard to translate that sort of live energy to disc for sure, but this new album comes pretty close. The guitars impossibly distorted and in the red, pegging the meters and seemingly transforming into some strange looped and clipped chug, the drums pounding and relentless, the vocals howled and barked and buried in the mix, the band locking into full on feedback drenched hypnorock, before letting it splinter into strange stuttery stop starts, or almost blast beat driven bursts of black energy.
A few of the tracks slow it down a little, but that's about all the respite you'll get, and even the dirgier numbers are still oozing grit and filth, threatening to destroy your speakers and bloody your ears. A couple favorites, "All The Dead Dogs", with its super distorted riffy churn, bizarre blown out percussion, and killer main groove, all chug and thud, with little flurries of all out noise peppering the otherwise tightly controlled crush. "Quality Of My Life", with its opening salvo of layered feedback, pounding drum stutter, and the way the drums and guitars lock into this weird rhythmic throb, before exploding into some serious skull crushing heaviness. But hell, we could pick any of these jams, they're all fierce and fucked up and awesome, the whole record playing out like one massive, multi movement, damaged and demented noise rock epic. Essential ear punishment for fans of Brainbombs, Mayyors, No Balls, Twin Stumps, Rusted Shut, Billy Bao, White Mice, Anals, Liquorball and other similarly unhinged noiseniks.
It's worth noting, though, that Drunkdriver broke up recently, under difficult circumstances, as it turns out there were some serious allegations about DD's drummer and some alleged fucked up shit in his past, and while he vehemently denies everything, and his bandmates supported him (although some online sources report otherwise), the band finally decided they just didn't want to deal with all the rumors and the constant pressure of all that nothing-to-do-with-the-music bullshit, just so you know, even though we figure if you don't have a problem with a band called Drunkdriver to begin with, you can probably separate enjoying the album from any alleged problematic actions of the persons involved in making it, after all the music's still the same awesome noisy punk rock we liked before all this hit the fan.
Pressed on super thick vinyl, packaged in really nice heavy jackets...
Another strange and mysterious collection of lost and forgotten musicks, perhaps the last volume (of four) in this series of archival recordings, collecting the very few existing performances and recordings that fall under the umbrella of a mysterious movement of musicians and composers known as�The Guild Of Funerary Violinists.�
Pierre Dubuisson was France's foremost Funerary Violinist, having made his name in the great funerary duels that became a bit of a fashion for a brief spell, where the deceased would leave a bit of melody to be performed after his death, two violinists would then improvise on the theme doing their best to wring more tragedy from the notes than their opponent, the winner of course was the one who drew the most tears from onlookers. Dubuisson eventually became president of the French branch of the Guild Of Funerary Violinists, and helped to integrate Funerary Violin into the Catholic ritual before disappearing under dubious circumstances during the infamous Funerary purges.�
These recordings were made by Pierre's grandson Jacques, who after running away from an abusive home and an overbearing father, was discovered playing some of his grandfather's pieces at a concert in 1913, by an archivist from the Biblioteque Nationale De France, who convinced Jacques to make wax cylinder recordings of some of his grandfather's recordings. Jacques is of course not the player his father was, or his grandfather before him, but the pieces carry their own powerful emotion which easily overcomes any sort of deficiencies in the performances.�
Oh, right, we always seem to forget the most important part, none of the above is true? Not a bit. Or is it? Hard to say. Or so a few of us think. Some here choose to believe (Mulder?) since the mythology is almost as fascinating and nuanced as the recordings, and imagining this lost art is so much more fun, while others are just happy to listen to this amazing music. And amazing it is. Perfectly and beautifully rendered to sound as old and antique as it most likely is not. Wailing, plaintive funereal laments on solo violin, sad and morose, lilting and so completely lovely, bathed in all manner of grit and hiss, fuzz and antique distortion, sounding like the old wax cylinders these recordings purport to be. Imagine some old timey violin music treated by Tim Hecker, and spun� in some ultra morose DJ set by Philip Jeck...
The music is so evocative, of dark clouds at dusk, rain swept fields, huge brooding stone houses, lush gardens beneath grey skies, and of course, funerals, and the slow stately trudge of the funeral procession to the grave site. We've gushed about pretty much every volume so far, and by now are probably just repeating ourselves, but we just love these discs, read the other Funerary Violinist reviews for more on the music and the mythology, and you'll realize just why it seems impossible to us to not fall totally in love with such a well executed piece of what ultimately amounts to performance art. The music, dark and delicate, creepy and so beautiful, even removed from the mythology is totally amazing, the story and the text is as well (there's even a book you can track down, detailing the entire recorded history of the Guild) but the two together, are simply magical....
We're not sure what the deal is with this Canadian band, who they are, if they're folks from other bands, if they're part of some scene, but it hardly matters, the music of Duchess Says is totally fucked up and freaked out and AWESOME. Totally reminiscent of a bunch of other stuff we like, but stuff that shouldn't and probably doesn't actually fit together all that well, but here, those sounds are twisted and pounded until they do fit together. The result is a sort of mathy, new wave-y riot grrl disco prog. Or something.
The opener begins with some super disco drumming, and burbling space bass, but then launches into some fractured Melt Banana stop start mathgrind weirdness, in between these bursts of whatthefuck, the band employ rubbery bass, hushed wordless vocals, and whirling synths. The second track begins like a new wave "Tom Sawyer", with washed out synths, and simple rock drumming, peppered with bursts of super blown out bass buzz, a dirgey groove, that quickly transforms into a super propulsive dancefloor destroying groove, but still way to thick with distorted synths, fractured riffing, and angry grrrrl vocals. Elsewhere the band stretch out into some Liquid Liquid style jamz but those too eventually morph into furious frenzied blasts of metallic new wave. Folks who remember that Black Bug 7" from a while back, this almost sounds like the full length they should have (or maybe will) make. Or maybe imagine a slightly dancier VSS with a female vocalist, or a female Six Finger Satellite - they even cover 6FS's "Rabies (Baby's Got The)", this is just fucking awesome! These folks must be so amazing live. Heavy and funky and fuzzy and new wave and angular and mathy and metallic and punk rock and fucked up and fun. Quickly becoming one of our new favorite records...
Full length number three from 'hypnogogic pop' outfit Ducktails, aka Matthew Mondanile, whose day job is playing guitar in lo-fi pop combo Real Estate, and whose records as Ducktails tended more toward the murky and druggy and hazy, a tropical infused low fidelity avant pop warble, but on Arcade Dynamics, Mondanile has definitely jettisoned much of the murk and moved his side project a bit more toward the more traditional pop of the Real Estate mothership. That said, it's all relative, things in Mondanile's world of Ducktails is still warped and woozy and warbly and dreamily druggy, but this time around, the guitars are more jangly, and chiming, the sound is more sunshiney and sun dappled, and most noticeably, there are way more vocals, less meandering experimentation, and more proper songsmithery, and it definitely suits him.
The record begins with a more traditionally Ducktailed mini jam, instrumental and a little bit tropical, a simple beat under effected jangle and swirling melody, but as soon as the second track starts up, it's easy to hear something has changed, the song a bit more brooding, still rife with gorgeous hooks and melodies, but the sound is more measured and hypnotic, the vocals hazy and reverby, but not at all to the point of distraction. "Sprinter" is a total eighties throwback, with gorgeous tangles of guitar harmony and muted thumping percussion, and while "The Razor's Edge" does find Mondanile dipping back into the more experimental side of Ducktails, it's actually pretty great, a brooding minor key almost sci-fi sounding bit of glitchy twang and motorik throb. "Killin' The Vibe" is a hazy bit of sunshiney psychedelia wrapped around a stripped down electronic pulse, and rife with hand claps and gorgeous multitracked vocals, while "Art Vandelay" might be the highlight of the record, reminding us of recent Record Of The Week Public Service Announcement by Purling Hiss, the same sort of lo-fi retro classic pop sound, with a big chorus (big for Ducktails at least), flanged steel string strum, and another skeletal programmed beat, all wound into an impossibly perfect chunk of hook-heavy lo-fi jangle pop.
And like some of the other Ducktails records, it seems Mondanile likes to finish off with lengthy experiments, and III is no different, a sprawling 10 minute stretch of minimal reverbed guitarscapery, warm and shimmery, hypnotic and mesmerizing, laced with strange percussion and mysterious field recordings, a beautiful and chilled out finish to what is most definitely our favorite Ducktails yet!
The vinyl version comes with a free download, which includes a bonus track NOT on the cd, an alternate version of "Killin' The Vibe" featuring Panda Bear from Animal Collective!
PS vinyl coming February 1st!
Ducktails is another one of those bands that went to zero to sixty in no time, in terms of releases. Before, it was a tape here, maybe a 7" there, now every week brings a new slab of Ducktails' twisted tropical pop, but hell, we're not complaining one bit.
Especially this time, as Landscapes might just be one of the strangest Ducktails record yet, The first track is what we've come to expect, and dig big time, swirling lo-fi, tropical soft fuzz pop, antiquated drum machine, warbly synths, playful woozy sun dappled melodies, plenty of tape hiss and amp buzz, definitely raw and muddy but also weirdly lush.
That, however, is just the first song, from there on out, Ducktails bounces wildly from sound to sound, all held together by a strange hard to describe thread that runs through all the songs here, keeping this from being just a mish mash of sounds and songs, and instead smearing it into a crazy yet cohesive dizzying drift through some seriously tweaked eighties retro future fuzz Ducktails dream pop. Weird buzzing Eastern sounding new age gives way to some groovy hard pop, with warped guitars, lots of flange, rad leads, like an alternative dimension instrumental lo-fi Loverboy (?), before switching gears and unfurling some looped almost African sounding warble, which then transforms into fuzzy jangly blissed out garage pop, then falsetto crooned jangle and swoon, then a bit of bluesy bedroom slow jam and finally a wicked, twisted late night infomercial soundtrack, all of the sights and sounds in Ducktails' soundworld hazy and shimmery and otherworldly and gloriously washed out.
And as promised last list, when we made the reissue of seventies Mexican psych legends Los Dug Dug's 1971 self-titled debut a Record Of The Week, here's their equally Record Of The Week worthy second album, 1972's Smog, now also reissued on both cd and, for the first time, vinyl! And as we said then, we love this band! Why? 'Cause Los Dug Dug's kick out jams that are part garage rock grooviness, part Beatlesy bliss, part power pop, part proto-metal, and part prog (with flute!!). What's not to love? And we haven't even mentioned the heavy dosage of FUZZ they supply, either!
Unlike the debut, which was Mexico's first rock record sung all in English, Smog is sung in Spanish, and sees Los Dug Dug's stripped down to an amped up power trio format, led as always by guitarist/vocalist Armando Nava (he's on the right in the cover picture, with the dyed grey long hair and beard, looking like some pensive psychedelic wise man or wizard). Pretty sure he's also the one playing the flute here, pumping up the progginess in a hard rock context that could kinda be likened to Jethro Tull meets the MC5, yeah, and reminds us of Italian prog faves Osanna, too.
Smog is one smokin' album, it's hard to pick favorite tracks, as they're all so good, but we'd have to mention both the lovely ballad "Voy Hacia El Cielo (Voy Hacia El Sol)" and the motorcycle revving, ecological protest rocker "Smog". Yep, just like their self-titled debut, this one's got plenty of both the heavy rockers and the gentler, poppier stuff, but leans towards the former, and seems more '70s than their first album, which had more of a '60s feel to it.
Air pollution is certainly a '70s theme, also something that any band based in Mexico City would be concerned about, and the title Smog gives this a heavier vibe than if they'd called it something like Flowers & Incense, eh? In keeping with their new style and attitude, they do a Spanish-language remake / update of the debut's frantic garage beat number "Let's Make It Now", stretching it to almost 12 minutes, as a totally progged out, flute-fortified five part suite, now titled "Hagamasolo Ahora (2a. Parte)", while retaining all the energetic excitement of the original. The energy level of this entire album is exhilarating, there's a couple pleasant acoustic numbers but otherwise it's quite rough, rhythmic, and riffy.
As we said when we reviewed the reissue of the debut, we've listed this album (and several others by the band) before, but it was always tough to keep enough of 'em in stock, they were Mexican imports and never reliably available, seemingly going in and out of print in quite random fashion. Hopefully these new editions will be around longer, and remain easy to stock. Also, these reissues are the very first time we've seen any Dug Dug's reissued on VINYL, yay!!!
As with the self-titled debut, the new cd version of this comes packaged in a handsome plastic-protected miniature lp style sleeve, complete with obi strip. Other than the text on the obi, there's no liner notes for this reissue, which we're told is a result of the difficulties inherent in licensing a release like this from a major label (it's owned by Sony BMG). In any case, we're glad it got reissued again, at all, and it's nice enough! Sooo recommended, equally up there with the debut, maybe even better, especially for folks who dig the cowbell-knockin', fuzz rockin' action.
This nice new reissue - and first time reish on vinyl - just HAD to be Record Of The Week. Boy oh boy do we love this band. An old, old favorite - in more ways that one, since these guys hail from the '70s. When we first discovered them some years ago, via their track on the Love Peace & Poetry: Latin America compilation, and then got their reissued albums on import cd, we were like, why aren't they famous?? Well, perhaps they are, or at least were, in Mexico where they're from (they're called Los Dug Dug's on account of being from the city of Durango, in the Mexican state of Durango).
Los Dug Dug's are, for us, a perfect blend of rock n' roll things we love: garage rock, psych-pop, power-prog. Lotsa cowbell, fuzz guitar, and flute, yes flute (especially on their second album, Smog). Part Tull, part Beatles, part Kinks, part Kiss...pretty darn kick ass really.
This self-titled album was their first, from the magic musical year of 1971, though sounding very sixties, and features English language vocals. It includes some of our favorite Dug Dug's songs, including the brilliant "Lost In My World" (also heard on the Mexican installment of the Love Peace & Poetry compilation series). There's also the frantic fuzzfest "Let's Make It Now" (which also boasts a drum solo), the groovy jangle of "I Got The Feeling", the equally groovy "It's Over" (with a nice JB's style intro), the very Beatlesy "Going Home", the lovely, spaced out "Sometimes", and the flutey, fanciful "Who Would Look At Me?", among other great flower POWER tunes. And when we say great, we mean really great. As in, this album is all-time favorite stuff for those lucky enough be clued in. Sure there's lots of wonderful obscurities out there, but Los Dug Dug's are one of those bands, like Q65, or Flower Travellin' Band, who you'd be hearing all the time on classic rock radio if they'd come from Detroit instead of Durango.
Now, we love ALL the Dug Dug's albums, and are happy to tell you that Smog (1972) will soon be getting the same reissue treatment by Lion/Get On Down soon, we should have it in a few weeks, and it'll probably have to be a ROTW too. Hopefully they'll also be reissuing Los Dug Dug's other albums Cambia, Cambia (1974) and El Loco (1975) eventually as well, one of these days.
Like we said, we've listed this album (and those others by Los Dug Dug's) before, but it was always tough to keep enough of 'em in stock, they were Mexican imports and never reliably available, seemingly going in and out of print in quite random fashion. Hopefully this new version will be around longer, and remain easy to stock! Also, this is the very first time we've seen any Dug Dug's reissued on VINYL, yay, and they've done a fine job of it.
Meanwhile, the new compact disc edition comes packaged in a nice, plastic protected miniature lp style sleeve, complete with obi strip... unfortunately beyond the brief blurb on the obi, there's no liner notes for this reissue, which is too bad 'cause we'd like to know more about this band who should be much better known north of the border. The obi alludes to the band's "failed trip to NYC" where they were hoping for their big break, that didn't work out but then they went back to Mexico and recorded this album, starting a sterling career regardless. We'd like to know more... according to Wikipedia, apparently they had some problems with the musician's union in New York, but upon their return to Mexico, bringing with them the music of the Beatles, they became one of the country's biggest rock acts, leaders in the new youth culture there. So it's unfortunate that some knowledgeable liner notes couldn't have been arranged, we're sure the Dug Dug's story is a fascinating one, but at least in all other respects the packaging is top-notch (though it would have been nice to have the tracklist someplace other than just on the obi, like on the back cover the way it is with the vinyl). In any case, it's the music that matters, and regarding that the obi has all the facts: "must have"... "essential".
One of two new blasts of "True Sheffield Black Psychedelia" from one of our favorite labels, UK weirdo sound stronghold Frequency 13, the True Sheffield Black Psychedelia descriptor covering a whole lot of sonic territory, from groups as varied as Black Vomit (whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), Ice Bound Majesty, Rape Rack, Skultroll, not to mention these guys right here, Dukkha, whose latest, the awesomely titled Grim Disco, is a single, 70 minute sprawl, that merges Butthole Surfers like atonal guitar melodies, with thick swaths of churning low-end, and looped propulsive programmed rhythms, into something heavy, hypnotic and WAY tripped out.
A dirgey, murky, krauty groove, submerged in a sea of chug and buzz and crunch, wound up with all manner of spidery melodies, the 'riff's a sort of blurred black metal, tangled up with something much dirgier and noise rockier, the sound slipping from caustic distorted buzz to weirdly tranced out cyclical churn, but that's only the first 6 or so minutes, the rhythmic pound and chug fading out into a cloud of glitched out digital shimmer, a bit like Oval, hazy and hypnotic, before splintering into something much more ominous, a whirling cinematic stretch of buzzing epic synthscapery, all soaring low end buzz and haunting majestic melody, thick and lush and layered, seriously dark and creepy, before it too fades out, this time into a field of glitch and glimmer, which gives way to some Melvins-y detuned dirge-y pound, the guitars gradually growing more and more chaotic, streaks of feedback, shards of fragmented riffage, moaning melodies, jagged atonal crunch, swirling low end murk, all wound around some tribal rhythmic pound, a doomy, downtuned final sludgey, weirdly groovy coda.
Killer stuff, as always. CRAZY LIMITED too, ONLY 40 COPIES!! we got 20 of those, which are bound to go fast...
One of three new releases from local label Acephale Winter, this one possibly the most notable, as it's the debut release from the man behind the label, and apparently, he almost didn't let us hear it, but did once he was assured that our tastes in black metal ran very much toward the damaged and demented, and while this might not be as fucked up as Benighted Leams (but then what is!), it is pretty strange, and seriously far out, definitely a primo slab of outsider blackness, as is evidenced but the first few minutes, an intro of sorts that involves field recordings of rain and storms, dense rumbling drones, haunting synths, moody piano figures, a killer swath of crumbling distortion, even some strange samples, all of it leading up to the first song proper, which is a noisy, chaotic beat, EXTREMELY lo-fi, the guitars an insectoid swarm, the drums a barely there pulse, mostly just the snare audible over the churning blackbuzz din, but then some even weirder stuff starts to happen, the sounds blur and bleed, the buzzing becomes suffused with organ thrum, the vocals transformed into a sort of cult-like chant, the whole thing woozy and psychedelic, before lumbering back into more blasting stumble and howl.
Some of the other tracks are much more straight up raw black primitivism, but others are wild concoctions of atonal clean vocals, programmed machine like rhythms, and squalls of guitarnoise, there are weird lullaby like stretches that almost sound like renaissance faire children's music, there are haunting dronescapes, there are warped, blown out slowcore dirges that almost sound like Nirvana's Bleach demos, slowed way down, and doused in blown out distortion, and the record bookends with another blast of stormy field recorded ambience and a seriously confusional brief bit of sonic schmaltz right at the end. Killer stuff, warped and WTF for sure. Definitely excited to hear more...
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!
Latest from this local one man band, the project of the man behind black metal cassette label Acephale Winter, and one of two new tapes from AW offshoot imprint Psalm 88. This 3 song demo is much more raw and primitive than the last Dunnock - the opening track is a furious blast of old school drum machine driven blackness, swirling and chaotic, the vocals a hellish howl above a backdrop of relentless riffing and machinelike drum churn, still plenty atmospheric for sure, but definitely reminiscent of the old days. As is the second track, which cranks up the distortion to dangerous levels, the sound reaching Japanoise like levels of crumbled distorto-garble, but just the sort of tweaked, twisted shit we love. there must be some riffs, and maybe even drums in there, but it's buried beneath layer upon layer of blurred guitar buzz, and howling, FX drenched vokills, everything bleeding and oozing, into one thick, corrosive, churning morass of bliss black noise, and blissful it is, for all its caustic crunch, it's also warm and woozy, and sort of psychedelic. Even though demos are generally raw versions of finished tracks, we're hoping this is the direction Dunnock is heading, cuz we're digging this like crazy. Then finally, the all too brief demo ends with a brief bit of atmospheric blackness, cinematic, creepy and hauntingly melancholy, a soft swirl of synths beneath more harrowing demonic vokills.
But probably the coolest part of this tape is the B side, which features a spaced out ambient synthscape, INDIVIDUAL TO EACH TAPE, as in Dunnock recorded EIGHTY EIGHT tracks, one for each tape made, with every tape containing its own individual and unique B side!!!!!
LIMITED TO 88 COPIES!!!
Is Duster from the San Joaquin Valley? I'm not too sure, but they really could be the mope-rock, dressed-in-black distant cousins of Grandaddy. The lackadaisical indie strum of Grandaddy does certainly play a part in Duster's "Contemporary Movement," but Duster also incorporates the high tension atmospheres from driving percussive rhythms and minor chord chugs not unlike the classic Factory sounds of Joy Division, Crispy Ambulance, and the Abecedarians. But balanced with a warm and fuzzy, low-fi home recorded, strummy, breathy, whispery sort of Pavement-on-codeine. This may be the perfect lonely, late night slowcore sad-rock(read 'goth'?) that the emo kids and the Slinty people have been waiting for.
Eccentric outsider doom metal from the '80s, from waaaaaay down underground. Now hold up, if the words "doom" or "metal" make you think, not for me, think again (maybe). This isn't like any metal you've ever heard, really. More like spaced out '60s heavy psychedelic guitar rock (one song's called "Heavy Vibrations", man), overloaded also with shrill synth symphonics and trippy effects... That's where the "outsider" tag comes in, Dwarr being a one-man band, all the work of South Carolina multi-instrumentalist (but especially guitar!) Duane Warr (hence the name Dwarr), whom we get the impression is quite a character. It's so DIY that the cds have his phone number on 'em, in case you want to get in touch. His privately pressed music comes off like a cough-syrup dosed mixture of Black Sabbath and Todd Tamanend Clark (whom you should know from the double cd anthology we raved about a few years ago). Or, The Happy Dragon Band playing Pink Floyd, from beyond the grave. Maybe a lo-fi Captain Beyond, on even more drugs than Captain Beyond were ever on. Or imagine if Bobb Trimble was an '80s metaller, perhaps (and worked out in the gym a lot more?). Sorry to use so many almost equally obscure references, but it's hard to compare this confusional beast to anything else.
Look at that insane cover painting, a surreal post-apocalyptic landscape (that's a malevolent-looking Statue of Liberty sunken in polluted looking water next to a cave populated by long-haired, skull-faced cannibalistic mutants, with an avatar of Dwarr himself, we're guessing, striking a heroic he-man pose in the upper right hand corner). The music itself is as surreal and apocalyptic and ridiculous as that image, matching up to it much more than most other "metal" albums ever match up to their cover art, both in subject matter and, ah, execution.
Just from the cover painting, let alone the music, this Dwarr album is SO perfectly Aquarius, you'd almost think we made it up. But no, Dwarr's for real, something we'd vaguely heard tell of and been curious about for years, and finally went to the trouble of tracking down (not so hard, thanks to the Internet, now that everybody and their grandmother's bands are on MySpace). And lo and behold, it turned out Dwarr had issued ALL four of his albums (two from the '80s, two from the '00s, believe it or not!) on compact disc. So we had to get a bunch of this one, his second, from 1986, probably his best and "heaviest". A Record Of The Week, easy.
There's 13 tracks, each one incredible (or incredibly strange). There's nothing that's NOT freaked out about this. Even the poppiest songs (like the title track "Animals") are full of sluggish grooves, druggy lyrics, buzzing electronics, melodic stoned vocals, acid rock guitar (and acid WTF synth). Elsewhere it gets away from rock/metal song structure entirely, with interludes of eerie atmospherics, spacey soundscapes overlaid with ominous whispered declamations, and weirdass instrumentals, like the squirrelly, proggy bombast of "Chocolate Mescalyne", a track that if you sped it up a lot would almost fit in on a Orthrelm album.
And then there's the DOOM. Oh yeah, while it's not "normal" doom it IS doom. Sludgy, Sabbath-riffed doom indeed, despite the trebly production. "Ghost Lover", for instance, gives us the feel of both the Sabs' "Iron Man" and "Electric Funeral", and Duane's vocals are particularly Ozzy-ish on the uber-heavy "Evil Lures" too... Great stuff if you really really appreciate the stranger, more psychedelic aspects of true doom artistry, the spirit is HERE.
Three cheers for avant garde new wave downer rock hippie heavy metal weirdness! That gives special thanks "to the Columbia High School Band for the use of their percussion instruments". We are so pleased to play a role in sharing this culter than cult classic with you, which by the way comes in fairly no-frills packaging, the cd in a thin cardboard sleeve with full-color album art front and back but no lyrics, liner notes, nothin' like that. It's pretty cheap though. Not that you should need any further incentive to pick this up, after reading our ravings above...
First release on a new label, co-conspirators as it were with long time aQ faves Paradigms, whose roster, as most aQ peeps know by now is a truly esoteric collection of metal, psych and drone: Hjarnidaudi, Titan, Utlagr, Amber Asylum, The Angelic Process, Wraiths, Ondo, Gnaw Their Tongues. But as Paradigms seems to be moving away from the metal side of things, it makes perfect sense that they would team up with a label that specializes in "jet black cutting edge extreme metal esoterica".
And thus we have Eichenwald Industries, who in some strange way do compliment the wide ranging Paradigms catalog, and with two new releases, show a surprising amount of breadth themselves.�
Elsewhere on this list you'll find the epic occult psychedelic doom metal of The Wounded Kings, while this right here is the debut release from Dwellers Of The Twilight, a French duo who channel the hateful blackness of groups like Anaal Nathrakh and Carpathian Forest (the bands that the label references), but also plenty of super clinical heaviness a la countrymen Blut Aus Nord, as well as a bit of that classic Scandinavian sound, we hear a lot of 1349 in the mix actually, with the impossibly furious drumming (programmed not played) and lightning fast riffing. The production is super tight and polished, the sound is massive and heavy, the band shift effortlessly from blazing blasts of black, to lurching doomy grooves, to long blown out guitardrones, to crushing megadoom, the fast bits rife with fucked up mathy twists and turns, the slow parts peppered with dissonant chords and woozy Deathspell like arrangements, and while there are plenty of experimental flourishes, the trippy ambient guitar buzz of the record's closer, the awesome stretch of murky muted full band rocking closing out "Domus Mundi", the abstract guitar drone dirge of the title track, as a whole, this is less experimental, and more a fierce and furious head shearing super technical black metal blast from below. Way recommended, for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, and pretty much anyone into the classic sounds of both French and Norwegian style buzzing blackness.
Everyone's always trying to be more extreme, whether it's ass piercing, eye gouging or penis splitting, bungee surfing or rollerblading or in-line vert bio para-gravi-sailing. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of heavy metal. Every band, in every interview and every article, claim to be the heaviest and most extreme. And for the most part, they never are. But Dying Fetus -- they actually stand a chance. And having recently witnessed them live, I have to say that so far they've got my vote. Super blazing fast, impossibly complicated and convoluted songs that somehow manage to be kind of catchy, as well as being maybe the tightest band I've heard in forever. And absolutely the most unbelievable drummer I have ever seen. So fast, I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it, and still managing to hit really hard! The record doesn't quite do them justice (the main problem being a snare drum that sounds sort of like 'doink', kind of losing some of its power) But other than that, this record is fucking awesome, super heavy and totally essential.
THIS LP IS COMPLETELY OUT OF PRINT AND WE WILL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN BUT WE THOUGHT WE'D LEAVE IT IN THE CATALOG FOR POSTERITY'S SAKE. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is the shit. Earth were the masters of the downtuned slow motion dirge, boasting both Joe Preston of the Thrones and Kurt Cobain as one time members. Their second record, 'Earth 2' (which we also carry) is an absolute classic and essential for lovers of doom, metal, sludge, or any sort of heaviness.
This lp collects an alternate version of their first album as well as the two ultra rare '16 rpm' 7"s. It is clear vinyl, housed in a breathtaking hand screened clear sleeve, and limited to 360, of which we only got 20. So don't dawdle or you'll be kicking yourself later.
Crushing and glacial tar pit metal. Like your Melvins records at 6 rpm. Like listening to Black Sabbath on a walkman with dying batteries at the bottom of a swimming pool. Like the last 10 seconds of your life, played out in slow motion, as tons of 'rock' crushes you to death.
You must buy this.
Totally fucking essential if you already like Earth, but definitely for fans of the Melvins, Corrupted, Esoteric, Skepticism and the like.
(For some reason we never listed this before, so rather than just adding it quietly to the website we thought we'd put it on our email, timely since we're also listing the reissue of Earth's "Sunn Amps..." cd.)
Earth. The band that launched a thousand drones. The band that started it all. The heaviest band ever (maybe). Earth was the singular vision of only-permanent-member Dylan Carlson, the long haired guy pictured on the back cover wearing the Morbid Angel longsleeve (whom you might remember from the Kurt & Courtney movie). For 1993's Earth 2, Dylan's guitar was joined by the bass of Dave Harwell, who is pictured holding a cup of coffee on the back cover (and who would go on to disappear completely).
All you kids who thrive on an unhealthy diet of the Corrupted, Boris (who even borrowed the Earth 2 tagline "Special Low Frequency Version" for the Southern Lord version of their "Absolutego" album), the Melvins, Thrones, and sludge like that, as well as you avant-art rockers who enjoy 'dronology' and stuff like Mirror and Jonathan Coleclough and even those of you who sit at home in front of your dream machines and wallow in the historical drones of Angus Maclise and Tony Conrad, need look no further than Earth 2 to experience the drone the way it was meant to be heard: huge downtuned guitars playing riffs so slow that each one lasts forever, LOW END that slides and lurches like a blackened glacier of fuzz and hiss, slow motion notes stretched so far that they become a single note washing over you like a sticky wave of tar and molasses, melodies that are indistinguishable because the notes are pulled so far apart they threaten to come apart completely. When we tell someone that a record is heavy, Earth 2 is the barometer by which all other supposedly 'heavy' music is measured. Even recent AQ faves Sunn 0))) are an Earth tribute band (they will even say as much) named for Earth's amp of choice. There are very few records that are 'classics', that stand the test of time, that remain as vital now, as when they originally came out, ten, twenty, or even thirty years earlier, that have influenced so many bands so much, or that have been unequalled, even with so many people trying so hard to be the heaviest or most extreme. The drug addled, accidental brilliance that is Earth 2, to this day remains a complete and utter classic.
Kind of a holy grail for those who didn't pick up the long-out-of-print original version of this when it was first released, the 1991 debut cd by the Pacific Northwest's late great drone/doom masters Earth. Originals sell for big $$$ on eBay. And those who DO
Earth on this disc consisted of mastermind Dylan Carlson (guitar/vocals) plus Dave Harwell (bass) and Joe Preston (bass/percussion). Joe of course later went on to fame and fortune in the Melvins, and later, his one man band Thrones.
Oh, and this is the Earth record that one Kurt Cobain plays on as well, which I know confused and dismayed a lot of frat/jock guys back in the day!
Holy crap, a new Earth album! Since the full-scale return (and reinvention) of Dylan Carlson's Earth project with last year's highly regarded studio album Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method (a Record Of The Week here at Aquarius when it came out) and subsequent tour, fans of the slow and low have had plenty to be happy about. That album took the extreme drone-metal Earth invented in the early '90s (a sound appropriated by SUNNO))) some years later) and turned it into a bleak n' desolate hybrid of post-rock and country-western! Spacious desert drone dirge with lap steel, something like Low meets Calexico meets the old Earth. Most Earth fans, ourselves included, had to give Hex a spin or two just to be sure we were hearing things right. But then, we all knew we were hearing it right and right it was. Such a great album.
What manner of follow up then is this new Hibernaculum? Well, some of it is gonna sound familiar...yet different. Since Earth's approach has morphed so much over the years, Dylan and co. have decided to revisit and re-record some old Earth compositions in the style of Hex, the way they've been playing 'em on tour, like when we saw them here in SF last year. Not a bad idea at all! You get to hear 'em do the classic "Ouroboros Is Broken" from their 1991 debut Extra-Capsular Extraction, "Coda Maesoso In F (Flat) Minor" from their final Sub Pop album, 1996's Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons, and the obscure "Miami Morning Coming Down" from a 1997 compilation on the Ash label called Scatter. These tunes all get the Hex treatment and wind up as windswept and lovely as you'd expect. There's also a fourth track, a new mix of the 16+ minute "A Plague Of Angels" which originally appeared last year on a very limited edition split vinyl release with SUNNO))). All of these pieces are simply gorgeous. Minimalist, Morricone-cinematic, twangfuzzdrone. Glacial twilight shimmer, velvet-hammer heavy. Droning deep and dark but uplifting as well. Weirdly we realize that Earth now sounds more like Bohren & Der Club Of Gore than Bohren & Der Club Of Gore ever sounded like Earth, if you know what we mean. And their instrumentation is a lot more like Bohren's now, including Hammond B-3, piano, upright bass, and trombone among other things (not the typical doom arsenal).
And, as they say, that's not all -- this comes with a dvd disc as well! A documentary film by graphic artist Seldon Hunt entitled "Within The Drone", shot on tour with Earth and SUNNO))) in Europe in 2006. Lots of live performance footage, intermixed with scenes from the road, and interviews with Dylan Carlson, who proves to be charmingly laid-back, plain spoken and (yes) down to earth. He talks about LaMonte Young and suchlike inspirations, but he's got no pretentious theories of "the drone" to espouse, though he does opine interestingly that for him, the more complex music becomes the closer it is to noise. So a simple sound, slowly repeated -- a drone -- is much more to his liking. Aha. Hmm. But it's clear from watching the scenes of Earth in action though that simple does not mean "easy". Supreme precision and feel is needed. To play music this slow, they've got to be good -- and they are.
More sludge trickles down from heaven, giving all you Earth fanatics another reason to live. This is a one sided, live lp, recorded at the Hyperstrings Festival in Vienna in July of 1996. Anyone who bought one of those limited clear vinyl 12"s from a few months back, obviously needs one of these. Crushing tarpit sludge from the masters of all that is slow and heavy. Former Earth-lings include Joe Preston of the Melvins and the Thrones and Kurt Kobain! This is their first 'official' release since their last (Pentastar) on Sub Pop. This is VERY LIMITED. Not sure how long we'll have these.
Y'know, we've never ever listed this Earth album before. It's the last one they recorded for Sub Pop, back in 1996, and until pretty recently seemed likely to be this seminal sludge-drone band's swansong. One that wasn't even all that well-regarded at the time when it came out, either. (Not that any of Earth's albums were all that popular back in the day -- they're definitely much more appreciated now!) And so perhaps it's time to re-evaluate Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons.
Especially since we just sold a ton of the recent Earth remixes album on both cd and vinyl, and chances are a few of you'll also want/need this, seeing as how one of those remixes (Autechre's) was of a song from this here record. Silly to have the remix but not the original, eh? Plus we figure a lot of you Earth fans might have overlooked this one, or simply thought it was out of print or something.
Back in '96, Pentastar was kinda regarded as Earth's "sell-out" album, the one where Earth mainman Dylan Carlson got himself a real band and attempted to make some honest to goodness rock n' roll music, with, y'know, vocals and melodies and songs and everything. They even do a Hendrix cover! But of course being Earth this was still (kinda) super heavy and (mostly) droned-out. Let's take a closer look, track-by-track...
"Introduction" certainly sounds like Earth of olde, a doomful commencement to the proceedings that could just as easily be the work of Boris. But then track two, "High Command", is more like some sort of slowed-down psych-grunge with the haunted by the ghosts of the Velvet Underground. A real nod scene, sure, but not exactly the Earth we knew and loved. Listening to it now, though, it's not bad at all. Sounds a bit like Steel Pole Bathtub. Then there's "Crooked Axis For String Quartet" that takes us into spaced-out krautrock territory... not heavy, but nice! The blown-out rumble of "Tallahassee" returns us to the realm of heaviness but again rocks more than Earth is or was "supposed" to. That's then followed by the rather lovely interlude of "Charioteer (Temple Song)", before the heavy Hendrix worship of Earth's take on Jimi's "Peace In Mississippi" stomps into view. Seems pretty cool now. The experimental side of Earth then surfaces with a seven-minute minimalist piece for *piano* entitled "Sonar And Depth Charge". The many moods of Dylan Carlson, eh? Lastly, the album closes with the epic instrumental "Coda Maestoso In F (flat) Minor" that finds what we might term Earth-y riffage (same as the "Introduction") graced with an honest-to-God heavy metal style melodic guitar solo!!
We can understand how some folks (some of us!) were disappointed when this album first came out. The extremity of old Earth was tamed. A lot of this was at least twice as fast and/or half as heavy as we'd expected (or wanted) from them. But giving it another chance and taking it on its own terms, this is a fine album of stoner rock indeed, sounding not unliked AQ faves Los Natas at times. Or the "heavy rocks" side of Boris. Or the Melvins, who of course have made fucking with their fans expectations a big part of their career. And if we'd heard this *before* hearing Earth's previous albums, we'd probably have loved it right away! Indeed, if you got into this album first (as assuredly some folks did) and then went back to Earth 2 or Extra-Capsular Extraction, whew! that would be a interesting/confounding experience.
We're now convinced that the underrated Pentastar does indeed proudly belong in any Earth fan's collection! ...Now someone needs to start a letter writing campaign to get Sub Pop to bring Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions back into print (from which three of that remix album's tracks were taken)!
We'd been hearing a lot of gripes about this new Earth record, and seen more than a few bad reviews, most of them based on the fact that this is the first Earth record to feature singing, and not just any singing, but from guest vocalists, as in Mark Lanegan, and Rabi Shabeen Qazi of Seattle psych rock outfit Rose Windows, and heck, speaking of guests, even the guy from Built To Spill plays guitar! But don't get to freaked out, the sound is most definitely very Earth-like, and if anything it's a lot heavier than the last few records, it's still all twang flecked and glacial, a woozy, loping sprawl equal parts SUNNO))) and Morricone, and this time around, it actually sounds like the went all the way back to their 1996 Pentastar record for some inspiration, the opener, is dense, and heavy as fuck, with a killer main riff, not to mention lots of extra guitars keening and winding their way around the proceedings, the drums more of a minimal pulse, but the sky full of swirling guitars, sheets of feedback, down tuned chugs, it's fierce and fucking fantastic, and we'd have been happy if that was the only song and it just stretched out forEVER.
So let's get to the vocals by starting with the fact, that we'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't think Lanegan has a killer voice. Sure some of his record have been a bit blah, but his voice is fantastic, weathered and worn, raspy and emotional, expressive and passionate, his low rumbling croon easily swooping into a wail, and really, it's not hard to imagine why Earth chose him, his voice is perfect for Earth's slow burn dirge metal blooze, and like the first track, the sound is massive, lots of feedback, and tangled melodies, a plodding behemoth of a rhythm, and Lanegan's voice, which transforms it into the heaviest Screaming Trees song that never was, which is absolutely a good thing. The there's Rabi Shabeen Qazi, who sings on "From The Zodiacal Light", the track that had been making the rounds before the record's release, and it's gorgeous, languorous, smoldering and sultry, twangy, bloozey, a little dirge, dusky, dusty, and Qazi' vocals work perfectly, he voice smokey and sultry, and powerful, sounding a times a little like Perry Farrell too which is strange, but makes sense, that timbre of voice paired with heaving heaviness, at times we expected thing to explode into "The Mountain Sound", but instead, the track unwinds gradually, a heady, heavy, psychedelic slow burn that really, it's tough to find anything not to like about it.
Lanegan returns again closer "Rocks Across The Gate", and more than the other track, this almost sounds like a jam from one of Lanegan's solo records, albeit a bit heavier, and again, it works, perfectly. Wouldn't be surprised if he joined Earth on a semi-permanent basis, we sure wouldn't complain, that's for sure.
Either way, musically, it's more of the Earth we love, a bit heavier, but essentially, more blown out twang flecked metal blooze, the vocals add a whole 'nother dimension, that we are digging a LOT.
The lp version includes a bonus track not on the cd, which is a sort of sonic bookend to the opener, another slow-blooze heavy psych crawl, this time with some extra fuzz and FX, but a pretty perfect finish for sure...
FINALLY! The most recent Earth album on vinyl, but this ain't just any old vinyl, even by Southern Lord standards, this is so deluxe it's off the charts. Metallic gold ink on faux leather hardcover, like an old fashioned, and very big Bible, inside the lps are attached like pages in a scrapbook, loads of full color artwork, but the most important thing about this limited vinyl version, and perhaps the most frustrating, is the extra bonus track, available only here. More gorgeous sunbaked gospel flecked blues, languorous guitars, minimal drums, with horns and slide guitar, so beautiful and fits perfectly with the record proper. And again, only available here. Limited to less than 5000 copies, which seems like a lot, but for Southern Lord, and Earth in particular, it's probably not nearly enough. Here's what we had to say about The Bees when it first came out:
Our beloved Earth return, and continue to move ever farther away from their pioneering slowmotion riffage, into a world much more stately and elegiac. A sound that more and more resembles A Cormac McCarthy novel rendered in notes and chords. In fact, some forward thinking movie exec, might consider having the modern incarnation of Earth score the next (inevitable) McCarthy movie adaptation. Blood Meridian? Would be pretty amazing. And almost overkill. As the sound of Earth evokes all of those images all on its own. The heat rising off sunbaked desert highways, animal carcasses beneath leafless tress, carrion circling overhead, old farmhouses burnt out and abandoned. The sky thick with a haze of campfire smoke, a dusty path stretching out forever into the horizon.
The sound on Bees is not a huge departure from Hibernaculum, more a subtle progression. The first track sounds as if since the last record, the fields have grown more fallow, the creek dried up, the youngest passed away and is buried in the backyard, beneath a pile of stones so the coyotes don't dig her up, the factory in town closed down, everything quietly and sadly fading away, leaving nothing but ghost towns and weed choked fields.
But the music on Bees, is not all as dour as that, it's also strangely hopeful, glimmers of sunlight through the slowly parting clouds, the chords major, the melodies, sweeping and majestic, it's hard with Earth to not think in cinematic terms, like coming over the hill to discover a verdant valley, a rushing river, and cows grazing, fattened on the bounty of the land.
The guitars on Bees are thick and full, but not distorted or heavy really, just massive, paired up with piano, and organ, thick ropy bass, leaving plenty of space, lots of drift and shimmer, the drums not so much a pound as a soft insistent shuffle, the music moving in waves, like a heavier Low playing country music, or Godspeed slowed way down, darkened and simplified. Earth is now a four piece and it shows, the sound is definitely more expansive and sprawling, cinematic and subtly complex. They're even augmented by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on a few tracks.
Fans already know they need this (and probably already have it), but folks who have yet to check out Earth, or found their doomdrone trailblazing unappealing, might really dig this, as might fans of the Dirty Three, Calexico, Friends Of Dean Martinez and other outfits who traffic in the twangier strains of dark dolorous slowcore.
While we're not always fans of made-up genres, which we know is ironic since we make up LOTS of genres, some rankle more than others. The most obvious being 'metal-gaze'. And what's even worse is when one catches on to the point that you sort of HAVE to use it. We've used metal-gaze once or twice, but we much prefer genres like doomdeathdrone or wooden metal.
Gaze is probably the most abused descriptor suffix in made up genres, anything slightly blissy or blown out gets tagged with the -gaze suffix. Rockabilly-gaze, adult contemporary-gaze. Sound silly yeah? Well, metal-gaze is not all that different. But recently a handful of our favorite bands all gathered under a new genre, one we're sort of tickled by, and might be forced to appropriate. SHITGAZE. How great is that, blissy and druggy, but lo-fi and crappy sounding. Times New Viking. Psychedelic Horseshit. Total shitgaze. Got a nice ring to it, pretty evocative, and not all that far off the mark. So the latest band we feel belongs among the ranks of the shitgaze elite is the awesomely named Eat Skull from Portland, who offer up the same sort of fractured damaged noise drenched pop as TNV and PH, but with their own twist. They definitely sound a bit like the bastard sons of vintage Guided By Voices, there is some solid hook filled pop in these here tracks, but it's nearly obscured by super jagged crumbling distorted guitars, howled vocals recorded into a dictaphone, trash can drums, all recorded so in-the-red, your speakers might melt. The thing about Eat Skull is they seem less arty and more punky, more rambunctious and random. Offering up spurts of furious noisepunk one minute, weird twangy jangle the next, then some awesome perfect pop the next, but always buried under layers of grit and buzz and tape hiss, fuzz all over the place, tons of high end, as if the bass knob was broken off so they just replaced it with ANOTHER treble knob, thick swaths of surfy organ, blown out until it's a wall of warbly sound, lots of random tape loops everywhere, overdubbed vocals way up in the mix, totally unhinged and off kilter and ultra chaotic, but catchy and wild and sweaty and over the top and fun as fuck!
For fans of the above mentioned bands as well as stuff like Sic Alps, Oh Sees, Coachwhips, Strapping Fieldhands.
ALL HAIL THE NEW WAVE OF SHITGAZE!
Something happened to Eat Skull on the way to making Wild And Inside. It seems like only yesterday we were extolling their ramshackle fucked up-ness, their last record Sick To Death, a serious bid to rule the burgeoning 'shit-gaze' scene, populated by folks like Times New Viking, Psychedelic Horseshit, and similarly fucked up noisepop deconstructionists. So we were sort of expecting Wild And Inside to be even MORE damaged and fractured, fucked up and noisy, but instead, it's jam packed with perfect pop gems, lo-fi for sure, and definitely still ramshackle, but jangly and catchy and dripping with irresistible hooks.
Similar to how Further worshipped unabashedly at the altar of the Beach Boys on their Golden Grimes record, on Wild And Inside, Eat Skull seem to be flitting from pop group to pop group, whether it's Guided By Voices, the Lemonheads, Strapping Fieldhands, dour eighties new wave or those Nuggets psych pop collections, it seems like the band spent all the time between records just absorbing all sorts of nineties indie rock, old school jangle pop, classic power pop, and whatever else they could lay their ears on, and now they're just letting it all sort of ooze out, and in the process they've most definitely made it their own.
In interviews, Eat Skull frontman Rob Enbom claims, this is what they were shooting for all along, that the first record sounded the way it did because they were broke and were stuck with super shitty equipment, and while that may be true to a certain extent, there's some seriously superior pop smithery happening on Wild And Inside, it's not hard to imagine what this record might have sounded like with all the grit and grime cleared away, and if they had recorded in a real studio, but who the hell would want to hear that? Eat Skull sound fine just the way they are, noisy and poppy and sloppy and lo-fi, every song a gorgeously hook filled sunshine-y effects laden fractured and fuzzy noise pop gem.
Folks who were into the sheer mayhem and caustic crumbling noise damage of the first record might be a bit disappointed, but so what, there's plenty of that to be found elsewhere these days, for the rest of us, it's kind of refreshing to get a glimpse of the pop magic so often obscured.
We continue to be obsessed with the darker side of techno and house music, the strains that are all murky and shadowy and mutated, the four on the floor beats slowed down to a dying-heartbeat pulse, most of the dancefloor sucked out of the sound, leaving just the twisted skeletal remains. Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a new record from Lucy, whose sound is just that sort of dubbed out techno-murk we can't get enough of, but this new one from Echologist is something else all together. We just discovered this is the TENTH record by Brendon Moeller, aka Echologist, but the first one we've heard, and we are totally smitten. Not nearly as murky and dark as much of the stuff we dig, what Moeller does is, is something similar to The Field, creating super lush, layered repetition, little blurts and pulsations, bits of glitch and static, sculpted and woven into deep undulating electronic soundscapes, that only sound tangentially like proper techno, and instead, sound super tripped out and psychedelic, almost like some sort of avant experimental noise music, but in the guise of techno.
The opener here "Frequency Of Love" pretty much lays it all out, exactly what is so amazing abut Echologist and why we knew this had to be Record Of The Week. A dense field of pulsing squelch, all hazy and gauzy, some alien machine language transformed into sound, a glorious blend of droned out raga-shimmer, and percolating electro, droney and trancey, and less about the rhythm, as the texture created by the rhythm, and when the low end drops out, as it occasionally does, the sound becomes some sort of airy drift, before the low end swoops back in and the sound gets, well heavy again, for lack of a better word. But then heavy is the word for what happens next, when the sound begins to thicken, the tones all gradually descending in pitch, those sounds suddenly coalescing into a thick, buzzing drone, which grinds away malevolently, before dropping out completely, leaving just a field of glimmering chiming melody, and a hazy keening high end drone. Fuck! We say it a lot, but that track, could easily have been the whole record, and we still would have made it Record Of The Week. We're guessing it'll take some serious will power to keep from setting that track on repeat play. But you know, fuck it, go for it. Still worth the price of admission if you never make it any further in.
But if you do, you'll be rewarded with more of Echologists, haunting, propulsive and mesmeric machine music, from churning industrial crunch, to loping tranced out techno, and from squelchy and cinematic low end deep dub, to gristly static drenched skitter, and from lush, almost poppy, drone-gaze electro, to stuttery sci-fi glitch-buzz groove. But those thumbnail descriptions are only part of the equation, cuz once Moeller sets the scene, lays down the beat, loops the sample, whatever electronic voodoo he does, it's all about how the sounds develop, and pro/re-gress, tone and timbre in constant flux, the background sounds a dizzying, hyperactive soundworld all their own. The sound impossibly immersive, the sort of rare electronic music that manages to be weirdly dancefloor appropriate, while still the perfect bliss out / chill out / come down soundtrack, and equally rare in that sonically, it's way more than 'dance music' or 'techno', it's a fantastically next level mutant strain of electronica, or even more specifically, some modern minimalist avant electronic experimental soundscapery, that just happens to involve elements of techno and house music, and that we find utterly and endlessly addictive. We're guessing most of you will too...
A few years back, we were enraptured by a strange alien sound, one that opened our ears to a whole genre we had ignored for the most part up until then, an offshoot of techno that eventually became affectionately (and surprisingly accurately) referred to as 'heroin house'. A strangely propulsive sound mired in dense fields of hiss and murk, of fuzz and blur, the beats relegated to a distant pulse. The label was Chain Reaction, and its tiny stable of bands, Fluxion, Matrix, Hallucinator, Substance, Vainqueur, Porter Ricks, Monolake and a few others, completely changed the landscape of techno, and had us all in a frenzy. Albeit a nocturnal druggy soporific one.
Chain Reaction folded, but the sound lived on, in the abstract dub of Rhythm And Sound (the same producers behind the Chain Reaction sound), in the sound of German Chain Reaction acolyte Pole, and the Pop Ambient of Kompakt, but as much as we love all that stuff, it wasn't quite the same. The sounds were similar, each twisted into some new shape, but there was just something so special about those Chain Reaction releases. So mysterious, the sound so haunting and otherworldly, like a rave on the ocean floor, barely audible through the walls of your submarine, further obscured by the hiss and low level buzz of all the onboard machinery. Or some DJ playing microhouse into the wee hours, 5 or 6 floors below you, or better yet, in the old concrete bunker across the street, the only hint of anything going on the muted throb felt more than heard.
It's one of THOSE SOUNDS we always go on about. Like old school ragga jungle or black metal buzz, a sound that is so pleasing to our ears, we could almost listen to a simple loop of those sounds forever. The Chain Reaction sound is another, gorgeous and creepy, moonlit and languorous, the perfect music to drift off to, or to troll the dark rainswept streets of some mysterious European city.
Thus we come to this debut full length from Echospace, the duo of Rod Modell and Soultek's Steve Hitchell, both legendary techno producers, who released a handful of 12"s at the tail end of the nineties, and who were taking the Chain Reaction sound in their own new direction. Years later, the duo returned to THAT SOUND and goddamn if it doesn't sound like being transported right back to mid-nineties Berlin. Using only old school analog equipment: Roland Space Echo, Echoplex, Korg tape delay, vintage signal processors, noise generators, Sequential Circuits 8-bit samplers and analog synthesizers, the sound these two have conjured up hews crazily close to Chain Reaction, but manages to make it sound modern and new at the same time.
All the tracks here are super creepy, slow motion, underwater muted blurs of abstract techno, where the beats seem like more a byproduct of the soundmaking than the reason for it. Some tracks do thump and bump but others merely drift in a thick haze of hiss and crackle. Basslines are deep and rubbery, drenched in reverb and pulled apart into super spare space dubs, bits of percussion are sent careening into a black void, but it's the textures and the ambience that make this record so special. The opener spends the first half of its 6+ minutes offering up huge slow motion crashing waves of surf like static, of buried melodies and off fuzzy shimmer, before any beats even surface, and when they finally do they pulse and throb for a couple minutes before they're swallowed up by the wash of soft white noise. In fact, in addition to sounding underwater, it sounds like the whole disc is being broadcast over a radio between stations, all the sounds wreathed in sonic gristle and buzzy static, but all smeared into huge billowing clouds of sound.
Most of the tracks definitely have a groove, a super slithery abstract alien funk, but more often than not, it's buried beneath gorgeous layers of constantly shifting sound, offering up some barely audible thump, a four on the floor framework for the glacially shifting tectonic sonic plates above. But there are some that don't, like the 11+ minute "Ocean Of Emptiness", a muted smeared ambient drift, that sounds like standing on some vast windswept snow covered plain, under a black sky, watching the snow fall, each snowflake a tiny bit of hiss or crackle, coming in epic waves, glistening and glimmering but strangely warm and inviting. Our favorite track might have to be "Winter In Seney", which sounds like a more dubbed-out Gas. A warm swirling hissy gristly minimal smear, sprinkled with bits of record crackle, and haunting echo drenched bits of glitch and melody, the whole thing wrapped in a gorgeously hypnotic, super spare rubbery bassline, the notes blurring into each other, spreading out like a thick black cloud of dub, totally and utterly mesmerizing.
There's been so much amazing techno lately, lots of Kompakt action, The Field, Gui Boratto, the last Pop Ambient comp, then there was the long overdue Vladislav Delay Chain Reaction reissue (C'mon! Someone reissue ALL those out of print CR discs!!), but this disc has been OWNING the cd player. At work, at home, and has quickly become the new drifting off, late at night, chill out, space out, record of choice. WAY recommended!
We've mentioned this before, probably in a bunch of reviews, as much as we love us out black metal buzz, and strange animal sounds, deep dark drones and whatever other sonic weirdness that is tickling our ear drums, it's hard not to always come back to pop music. And certain records in particular. And there are all sorts of processes we go through to pick AQ highlights ands records of the week. But sometimes, you just have to go with the record you listened to the most. Even if it's not the weirdest, or the coolest (and it's usually not), and for me (Andee) that record is without a doubt, the new one from The Editors, a disc I found myself listening to 4 or 5 times a day (maybe much to the chagrin of coworkers) but screw it, An End Has A Start is pretty much perfect as far as I'm concerned, poppy, hooky, moody, rocking, catchy, dramatic, just so so good.�
Though often accused of being an Interpol ripoff band (and sure their sounds, especially the vocals, are dangerously similar) the Editors always seemed to have some important things that Interpol didn't. And don't get us wrong, we love Interpol, even the new one, but the Editors, somehow always seem less concerned with the cool factor, the tight suits, and the sort of emotionless sheen, instead, they revel in their emotions, they may be as dapper on the surface as their Interpol brethren, but inside, their hearts are broken, they have butterflies in their stomachs, they're willing to open up and be vulnerable, to loosen up that tie and to crawl, to weep, to wail, and that's sort of the magic of these songs.�
Their sound has gotten even more polished since the last record (positioning them closer to Coldplay probably than Interpol), but the songs have followed suit, getting even more razor sharp, the hooks impossible to resist, the melodies big and melancholy, the riffs kick ass, and the vocals, epic and throaty and super dramatic, emotional and sort of emo actually. None of that laid back cool that Interpol traffics in, this is heart on the sleeve stuff.�
And it's not just the songs, the lyrics are amazing as well, clever and sharp, emotionally resonant, and it helps that they're delivered in that irresistible croon.�
Shit, just listen to the opener, "Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors", easily the best song Interpol never wrote (or could write), simple and loping, with an amazing epic soaring bridge, and a chorus that manages to be super moving in its simplicity, the sort of progression, music and lyrics together, that totally gives you a lump in the throat, and then the super crazy hook of the second half of the chorus....�
The the second song, the title track, might be even better, more new wave, with a propulsive groove and practically perfect lyrics, jangling guitars and throbbing bass, and a chorus that KILLS...
Every track on An End Has A Start is a gem, dark and brooding, buzzy and propulsive, catchy as all get out.�"The Weight of The World" is another song Interpol should have written, but in the hands of the Editors it become a super soaring minor key lament, and then there's the�"Escape The Nest" with one of the most bad ass guitar riffs ever, a weird processed angular grind surrounded on all sides by muted gloom, making it seem even more epic and intense.�
After listening to this for the hundredth time or so, it became obvious that it would just get harder and harder to explain why it was so great. One of those records that just makes you want to review it with a single sentence: "Just buy it! It's amazing. Been listening to it nonstop. My record of the year without a doubt!!!" And while for a few people that might actually be enough, for the rest of you, read the above, listen to the sound samples, and decide for yourself, but yeah, pop record of the year without a doubt.�
From the same label that brought us music from Bethlehem, Costes and the debut/swansong recording from SF's The Gault (featuring members of legendary SFBM outfit Weakling) and which just so happens to be run by the guys in Diamatregon (who have a record out on Andee's tUMULt label, and a new one on the way!) comes this bizarre black beauty, the debut full length from bizarre German black horde Egonoir.�
The label mentions the usual blackbuzz culprits in their description of Egonoir:�Burzum, Leviathan, Bethlehem, Strid, Manes, and while it does have much in common with those obvious influences, it is somehow so much more. Darker, moodier, more melancholy, prettier, and definitely weirder.�
The root sound is a slow crawl, a barely midtempo buzzing Burzumic plod, with harsh vocals, and blown out guitars, but the whole thing is wreathed in a strange smoky production, making everything fuzzy and murky and muted and strangely lovely. The tracks often drift into swirling ambience, with the buzzing guitars transformed into amorphous clouds of foggy blurry guitar, a backdrop to the lilting melodies in the foreground.�
Then there are the vocals, that range from harsh howls, demonic growls to haunting crooning, but the strangest thing, and what makes Egonoir sound so unique, is the bizarre humming/crooning that lurks beneath the more traditionally blackened vocals, almost like American Music Club or Crash Test Dummies or Leonard Cohen, drifting darkly and melodically beneath the buzzing crawl... at some points female vocals drift into the picture, and suddenly it's a black metal Mazzy Star, almost, it's these creepy beautiful vocals that make this sound like some ultra depressing black metal lounge band, performing at some blackened dive perched on the edge of the abyss, flames licking at the foundation, the facade illuminated by buzzing black neon signs, and packed with a motley crew of hellish beats and down on their luck, southward headed earthlings.�
Lots of acoustic guitars (a couple tracks are mostly acoustic), muted wandering bass lines, gorgeously sorrowful melodies, those crooning humming vocals, loping seasick tempos, arpeggiated guitars, hushed monk-like chants, snippets of German wartime speeches, all wrapped in thick swaths of buzz and reverb, slowly drifting, like some buzzy black dream.�
Fans of all things depressive and slow, blackened and Burzumic, fuzzy and washed out, will freak for this. If Make A Change... Kill Yourself, Burzum, Xasthur, Nortt, Inferi and the like are your late night�downer black metal soundtrack, Egonoir might just be perfect for those bleak early morning hours after a long night of misery and hopelessness...
Or as the label so succinctly puts it: "Total psycho dark metal,�noir, noir, noir."
A little while ago we gave a thumbs (and pointy spikes) up review to an album called "Green Hell" by a French black metal band known as Mystic Forest. As we mentioned then, Mystic Forest's main guy, one Stefan Kozak, has another band called Eikenskaden ("Oaken Shield") which is almost *exactly* the same. The line-up is different, but the songwriting, production, and even the graphic design bear marked similarity. Apparently Eikenskaden is the project in which Kozak blows off steam and indulges even further in ridiculous black metal concepts, and it's true that of the two bands, this one is perhaps the best, though it's a close call. "The Last Danse" is Kozak's second Eikenskaden album, and is as amazing as anything else he's done -- totally frenzied, quirky, and Burzumic, more distorted yet more melodic than you could imagine.
I was listening to this at home the other night, and my housemate thought it sounded like two things playing at the same time. The very pretty, baroque sounding keyboard lines coexist bizarrely with a hellish wash of fuzz and distortion. Raw yet extremely melodic. You can hear in Eikenskaden (and Mystic Forest) the gothic black/doom "pop" of Katatonia, as well as the neo-classical shred of Windham Hell. It's a weird combo, maybe, but it works really well. Imagine Burzum or Khold possessed by Mozart or something, with Immortal/Popeye vocal growls too. Really, it's so insanely full of reverb and distortion it's crazy -- HSShshshhHZZHZZCH!!!
Also new in stock and recommended: Mystic Forest's third album, "Waltz In the Midst of Trees" ($13.98, see review elsewhere on this list/site).
Metalheads, buy this! Author Daniel Ekeroth, a Swedish death metal expert (and Swedish death metaller himself, from the band Incision) has collected and presented an invaluable resource with this book, a weighty tome indeed. Due to a dearth of information on this fairly specific subject, the material within was compiled via a practical attempt to synthesize an accurate retelling of the history of Swedish death metal, based on varying accounts in zines and such, then by bouncing those stories back and forth in interviews with key band members, label bosses, etc. The book itself begins by outlining the myriad of influences behind the Swedish sound: San Francisco Bay Area thrash, NWOBHM, and the Tampa Bay Florida scene. Keep in mind, this was well before the internet, so tape and zine trading, and word of mouth, were the only ways to find out about music. Thus some of these band members were true metal geeks. There are accounts of various artists' own early exposure to metal and some really interesting stories about a few of the early Swedish bands, obscurities crossing over from the hardcore punk scene and so forth. Gripping reading for anyone into the book's subject matter. The second half of the book covers the pinnacle and strength of the scene at its brightest. But then there was black metal, and Ekeroth details how it helped usher out the popularity of old school death metal. He also delves into subgenres like grind, death n' roll, and of course the melodic Gothenburg sound.
And then in the back, there is an incredibly useful, opinionated encyclopedia of (possibly) all Swedish death metal bands. Awesome! Complete with band members and releases, where Ekeroth substitutes the term 'deathography' for discography. And this book covers not only the big shots, like Dissection, Unleashed, Entombed, Marduk - hey their first record was recorded with Dan Swano and their first singer was the guitarist from Edge of Sanity - but there are tons of lesser known bands that the Ekeroth goes into detail about. Graphics-wise, there are tons of flyers, demo tape covers, cool pictures, and everything else relevant that you could possibly want in print. It's pretty sweet.
There's not much else to say, really. You know who you are. There are those that would read a 456 page book on the Swedish death metal scene, and there are those who would not. If you are one of those people who WOULD, or just want it as a rad reference point, you need this. In a word, it's totally fucking killer. Recommended! And by the way, this is the new, expanded (and cheaper than the import) US edition, with extra art and interviews.
Danish noise-rocker Nicolas Kauffmann spits out a Dead C-ish free rock pummel. Guitars squeal and howl and roar into a dreamy din of chordal dissonance. Feathery, frothy soundscapes of drone-flecked brutality. The epic thirty minute final track is a slow
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
What a breath of fresh air! As if a new Circle album wasn't enough (see "Prospekt" elsewhere on this list), there's also a new release from this Circle side-project. A side project staffed *entirely* by members of Circle, we might add. Hence, there's an unavoidable but definitely welcome similarity between the two bands.
Ektroverde are kind of like Circle's alter-ego -- less intense (and yet, still really intense!), sometimes jazz, sometimes fucked up hi-NRG pop. The trademark Circle rhythmic hypnosis remains, but the sometimes austere riff-mongering and prog-rock precision is mostly superseded by a generally more playful and groovier approach, certainly nothing as heavy or "rockin'" as what's found on "Prospekt". Gorgeous, psychedelic instrumental explorations, even venturing into the realms of primitive techno electronics at points (Ektro-house?)... There's actually many moods to this record, some parts silly and some downright spooky. To get a sense of the album's range, please listen to all three soundclips. We are especially enamoured of the track "Gradient" with its baa-ing sheep (this must be heard to be believed!) and Pansonic-like pulsations, and equally in love with the following track of creepy drone-effects, more like an Organum piece. In fact, this disc at moments reminds us of everything from Goblin soundtracks (creepy keyboards) to Van Halen's "Jump" (well, that only briefly). Very highly recommended!!
Second of two new releases from this Portland black metal horde, the first, Kali, reviewed a few weeks back, was a glorious chunk of epic and majestic, nearly symphonic buzz, three looooong track separated by gorgeous little ambient drone interludes. We still have a few of those left, but in the meantime we just got release number two, and while structured differently, if anything, it's even more massive and grandiose, triumphant and fucking EPIC.
As we mentioned in the review of the other disc, there does seem to be some questionable politics lurking below the surface. Nothing obvious, not in the song titles, the lyrics or the artwork, like most black metal it seems to be more concerned with nature and misery, war and death, but folks who are sensitive to the problematic politics that underscore a lot of black metal, might do well to read the other Eldrig review. But if you can look past that stuff, and as we mentioned it's not really that difficult here, as the band seem more concerned with crafting soaring blackened buzzscapes, and the cryptic lyrics (if you could make them out at all) are cries of war and wails of anguish.
But the music, holy shit. The sound of Eldrig manages to be buzzing and grim and brutal, but at the same time, the riffing is totally majestic, almost chiming, the melodies soaring skyward, the drums a furious thrashing framework, the vocals a barely audible howl, all woven into what sounds like a black metal Explosions In The Sky or a Satanic Godspeed. Spiraling riffage that just builds and builds, the melodies so intense and emotional, everything peppered with swaths of swirling keyboards, but unlike the other Eldrig, here the riffs sound almost like classic eighties metal, little bursts of NWOBHM tangled into much blacker shapes. But the sound is somehow impossible poppy, like if you stripped all the snarling guitars and the demonic rasps, the blasting beats, you'd be left with some sort of simple catchy lullaby, or some perfect pop song, but here it's buzzed and blackened into some impossible black metal hybrid. So fast and furious and black, but so goddamn catchy and moody and melodic, culminating in the near power metal sounding outro to the final track "Death To The Unwilling", with classical sounding keyboard runs, chiming keyboards, and super poppy riffage, all whipped into a glorious frenzy, before it fades out with a strange skipping cd sound, and then returns with a programmed drum fill, only to explode into an even more over the top power/back metal frenzy with epic keyboards, those majestic riffs, all wrapped in wild squiggly leads, only to eventually fade out into some churning, mournful, abstract riffage.
Super limited! We may have gotten all we can get of these, so when we run out, prepare to either be disappointed, or to wait a while for us to track down more.
One of two new releases from this Portland based one man black metal project. And it's a doozy. Been playing this nonstop since we first got it. But as with a lot of black metal records, some questionable right wing politics come into play, so fair warning to those put off by those things. On Kali, that influence is subtle, especially considering the fact that the record is totally instrumental. The song titles give nothing away either, but there's a quote on the inside of the cd booklet, "Creation and destruction are one, in the eyes who can see beauty." Which also doesn't seem any more oblique and grim than text found on other black metal records. But the quote is attributed to Savitri Devi, a French writer who wrote much of trying to synthesize Hinduism and Nazism, believing Hitler was an avatar for the Hindu god Vishnu, among other problematic and bizarre beliefs. Woah. She does seem pretty fascinating, what little we've read about her, at least in a seriously fucked up way, but she was definitely a total loony, and because of her strange beliefs has become a bit of a favorite amongst neo-Nazi's, hence the quote and hence the warning.
But if you can overlook the politics, as subtle as they may be here, this record is intense and beautiful and completely epic. Three loooooooong tracks, blazing buzzing, majestic, almost orchestral black buzz, furious and frenetic, relentless and weirdly gorgeous, separated by brief droning ambient interludes, moaning cellos, deep cavernous rumbles, epic minor key swells, soaring majestic synths, crumbling distortion, a dark industrial ambience with haunting music box melodies drifting over stretches of mournful murk.
But it's the three long tracks, which make up the bulk of this disc, that really make this such essential blackness. And even referring to this as blackness is not entirely accurate, as those tracks soar, the chugging guitars and tangled melodies, the furious drumming and the super emotional melodies all whirled into an epic slab of blissed out metallic beauty. In fact, the first long track, "The Great Destroyer", sounds to us what that Alcest record would have sounded like if it was actually metal. Shoegaze-y and dreamy and blissy, but still fierce and heavy, multiple guitar lines unfurling melodic tangles that stretch heavenward, all sustained and super dramatic, the drums a non stop barrage, perfectly complimenting the dense whirl of dreamy high end buzz.
The second long track, "The Intoxication", begins all slow and meandering, a crumbling distorted guitar picking out a minor key melody, before the song launches into a furious melancholy blast, the guitars continuing to soar and wail, with brief bits of midtempo drift separating the blissy blasts. The final long track, "The Dance Of Creation", is more of the same, but with two awesome interludes, the first, a gnarled breakdown with grinding high end guitars, and convoluted melodies over seasick riffing, the other a haunting expanse of synthesized strings, wavering and whirring before being swallowed up by the drums and guitar crashing back in. Very weird and strangely beautiful, epic grim not-so-blackness. The disc ends with a two minute stretch of ghostly buzz and reverb drenched swells of hiss and whir, creepy and abstract...
And again, while we of course find all that aforementioned political / racial stuff reprehensible, it's hard not to love a record this fucked up and gorgeous.
The packaging is pretty amazing too. Super thick textured paper, the images all washed out like some old parchment, the cd itself, red on the playing side, matching the artwork on the cd face. Cool.
The return of Portland one man black metal horde Eldrig. We have been totally obsessed with the two previous records, Kali and Everlasting War Divinity, both sounding like an impossible mix of Godspeed and Darkspace, furious and relentless and blackened, sweeping, epic and emotional, looong tracks, rife with droning buzz guitars, furious drumming, surprising melodies, all wrapped around some super abstract and far out mythologies, but here, those same strange obsessions are tangled up with a totally new, and seriously demented and unlikely sound.
As we mentioned in previous Eldrig reviews, like much black metal, there seems to be in Eldrig, some somewhat unpleasant political leanings, flirtations with Aryanism, Nietzschism, that sort of thing, which is only represented in the lyrics and the artwork as the music is all (or almost all) instrumental. But the more we hear, and the more we dig into the strange liner notes, the less this seems like some sort of NSBM, and the more it appears to be an all consuming and twisted obsession with all manner of problematic and crackpot theologies, far out mythologies, arcane symbolism, Eldrig revel in exploring the hidden meanings of symbols, both classic and traditional, forbidden and shocking, the music, in some strange way expressing the power and energy behind and within these symbols, the words wrapped around those symbols, and the people who lived and died over ideas and beliefs and yes, symbols. The booklet is gorgeous this time, thick marbled matte black pages, with text and symbols in super reflective ink, each song represented by a symbol, and some notes on the symbol and the music from Eldrig himself, there's a pentagram (of course), the cosmic egg, the AUM, the black sun, and of course the sunwheel (aka the swastika). The text accompanying the sunwheel speaks merely of the 'golden sun' and its abstract symbolic significance. But fair warning, folks sensitive to this stuff should steer clear, it's subtle but it's definitely there (for instance, Eldrig are still obsessed with Savitri Devi, a crackpot who was all about combining Nazism and Hinduism), although the interest does seem more abstract and intellectual than political or social.
But all of that hardly prepares you for the sonic shift Eldrig have undergone since the last album. Where was once, massive stretches of near static buzz and blast, sweeping epic blackened heaviness, there is now, what can only be described as, well, power metal. Black power metal (not BLACK POWER metal, if only!), Symphonic and super melodic and seriously over the top. It's barely even black metal anymore, lots of guitar leads, and squiggly melodies, and lush keyboards, there are vocals this time around, and they are blackened throat shredding vokills, the drumming is insane, the guitar is buzzy and insectoid, but the arrangements are ridiculous, totally epic and major key, the melodies sound sped up, keyboards everywhere. It's like Hammerfall with a black metal makeover. Some of the tracks do dip into doomy black grimness, the guitars thick and grinding, the vocals raspy and hateful, ploddingly along, but without fail, in will swoop some totally nuts guitar freakout, or an avalanche of majestic keyboards, sometimes the tracks slip into full on melodic hard rock, bordering on power ballad, there are even stretches of pretty clean guitar laid over burbling brooks and chirping birds, but those tracks always seem to return to some sort of furious power metal buzz. It sounds ridiculous, and it is, sort of, but it's also completely unhinged and fucked up and GENIUS. Not sure what he was thinking, but with Mysterion, Eldrig has crafted some totally outsider black metal, and be sure, this will definitely not appeal to the the troo and the grim, instead this is for fans of the fucked, the damaged, the so bizarre it blows your mind. And Mysterion most definitely blows our mind. Fucked up blackened power metal record of the year? As if there could possibly be any other contenders...
The Electric Eels were the undisputed bad boy kings of Ohio punk spitting out snarled three minute blasts of noisy, clumsy, snotty seventies punk rock sounding like a retarded Black Flag, which is a *good* thing. Super distorted and super whiny, these Cleveland fuck-ups made fellow Ohioans Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys look and sound like choir boys. Magnets for trouble, the Eels attracted
So, now that we've established that you should probably buy this, which format to get? Well, the LP has six tracks different from or missing from the cd, and also sports extra liner notes and a different cover. At first we weren't sure how essential this was since there was another Eels collection released not too long ago, but eleven of the tracks on the cd are previously unreleased, and there are a few more unreleased/alternate versions on the double LP!
Originally released as a double cd, teamed up with 1995's self titled debut, Electric Wizard's Come My Fanatics, originally released in 1997, gets its own digipak release, re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly two bonus tracks, "Demon Lung" and "Return To The Son Of Nothingness"!!! Here's what we had to say when this first came out (it's the same review for both self titled and Come My Fanatics, since they were paired together the first time we heard them and they still sound like parts one and two of the same record, which is a most definitely a good thing!) :
With a sickly sweet haze baked around half formed thoughts of science fictions and demonic mythologies, Electric Wizard's stoner metal has just enough intellect to roll out the gargantuan post-Sabbath riffs and burnt-out grooves. Dude. This shit is absolutely essential listening for the next time you decide to fire up that bong. (Or not, seeing as how Andee and Allan definitely seem to enjoy this quite a bit and neither have ever "fired up" a "bong" in their lives, "dude". Well, okay, Allan did smoke a joint once but he didn't "inhale"...very much at all.) Especially suitable for all fans of Sleep's immense Jerusalem opus and those AQ-record-of-the-week-winning Esoteric double cds!! Electric Wizard are in fact notorious rivals of Esoteric, as they compete for England's throne of ultimate heaviness. Anyone who's heard Electric Wizard's Supercoven ep (Andee's favorite EW joint for sure!) will know what they're in for: the ultimate bellbottoms doom trip, a Lovecraftian space sludge psych jam that'll do your head in right.
Now available for a limited time on WHITE VINYL (limited to 1000 copies worldwide!), in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with the bonus track "Mind Transferral" which was not on the cd. Here's what we had to say about Dopethrone way back in 2000:
These British lads have the distinction of being, as far as we know, the first (and perhaps last!) *metal* band ever reviewed in the hallowed pages of that popular cutting-edge new music magazine The Wire. But if that makes you expect that the album in question, "Dopethrone" is some sort of pretentious electronica-leaning, intellectual-metallic curiosity worthy of much beard-stroking, you'd better think again! Take a look at the album title, dude! Electric Wizard play super-heavy sludge metal, taking the appellation "stoner rock" very seriously indeed. Satan's even seen smoking a bong on the album cover. Doomy sub-Sabbath riffs, toked-up vocals, spacey fx -- this is primal stuff. This band seems to just keep getting better and better (meaning, they don't change much!). The lyrics celebrate their interests in pulp fantasy fiction (HP Lovecraft and RE Howard both get referenced) and of course the Sweet Leaf: "Dopethrone in this land of sorcery/Dopethrone vision through T.H.C./Dopethrone feedback will free/Dopethrone three wizards crowned with weed." No, not brilliant literature, (and the music's not avant-garde composition for that matter, not intentionally anyway) but "Dopethrone" is still thoroughly enjoyable even by those of us (Andee and Allan for example) who aren't potsmokers (in fact, Andee and Allan are definitely the biggest fans of this record and other "stoner rock" at Aquarius anyways -- I wonder what that means?!). No, you just have to like the sheer heaviness and killer-hippie aura ("Legalize Drugs and Murder" is their slogan, and they're at least half serious)... But if we *were* ever to decide to take up pot-smoking as a casual hobby, we have promised several friends (& Electric Wizard fans) that this album will definitely be the soundtrack to our first "experience". We're tempted...
AQ-faves Electric Wizard return with the eagerly anticipated "Let Us Prey". After their totally wrecked, wretched performance here in San Francisco last year (which we still enjoyed, but as comedy), this excellent, totally competent new album can only beg the
Doom metal doesn't have to be stoner rock, and stoner rock isn't always (or even often) doom metal, but the combination is natural -- and for that nobody beats the Wiz. Electric Wizard's spacey, metallic drug-punk (a mixture of Sabbath, Hawkwind, and the Melvins) features lost, buried, hopeless vocals singing dirgey hymns to the God-Bong amidst bowel-rumbling, super-heavy, super-sludgey guitar and bass psychedelia. What's not to like?
This is the kind of album that lends itself to a track-by-track rundown (why? 'cause there's only six songs):
The disc starts with a classically slow n' massive Wizard song entitled "A Chosen Few", designed to bludgeon the listener into stuporific submission from riff one.
"We, The Undead" changes tactics, being fast and kinda punky (in an Eyehategod/Black Flag way), with a riff that's *very* Saint Vitus.
"Master Of Alchemy" is another slow crusher a la the first track, with a truly EVIL sounding main riff. This song is a relentless juggernaut that eventually morphs (it's a two-part suite nearly ten minutes long) into a mellower, but still quite EVIL, psychedelic drone jam.
"The Outsider" is, if possible, even lower, slower, and more drugged-out sounding, building into a wah wah propelled epic before its nine minutes are out.
Then, out of nowhere, the beautiful, melancholy "Night Of The Shape" (great title) kicks in -- noir-sh piano figures over busy, shuffling drumbeats that sound almost drum n' bass inspired. This could be on a Radiohead record, yet somehow it's totally doomy.
After that lovey interlude, the Wizard get back to their usual business on the epic album closer "Priestess Of Mars". More sludge, more wah, more pot smoke.
And then, three quarters of an hour after you put it on, "Let Us Prey" is over and you'll need another fix!
When we first heard Electric Wizard way back when, we were completely and totally blown away, but we were so filled with glorious doom and gloom, and druggy spaced out stoner rock, that it never occurred to us that anything might have come before. When in fact in one form or another, Electric Wizard had been developing their sound since 1989! This disc collects the two pre-Electric Wizard lps released a while back (and now out of print) as well as super rare recordings from the band that was the original seed for what would eventually become Electric Wizard.
Starting way back in 1989, there was a group of young metalheads fronted by future EW mainman Jus Oborn, who were totally obsessed with Carcass, Bolt Thrower and the like, and thus were appropriately named Lord Of Putrefaction. And their sound suited the name perfectly, a murky grind thrash doom, grunted death metal style vocals, psychedelic freakout guitar over pounding drums and sludgy riffing. Slow and heavy with bursts of not quite blasts and wild squalls of chaotic noise, but all rooted in dense, druggy, doomy sludge. They only ever released a split lp with Mortal Remains, and this here is it. Remastered and heavy as ever. Fans of Winter, diSEMBOWELMENT, Mordor and all that early Earache stuff will be so into this!
Not soon after the end of Lord Of Putrefaction, three of the four lords reconvened as Thy Grief Eternal, who recorded 2 lengthy tracks for a 12" in 1991 which was never actually released. By '91, Jus Oborn and his merry band of metalheads continued to get slower and heavier, hinting at what would come, but still sounding like they'd be right at home on Earache, alongside Carcass, Napalm Death, Godflesh and the like. Pounding industrial sludge doom, with grunted gutteral cookie monster vocals, pounding relentless drumming and BIG RIFFS, very sludgy and crusty, much more akin to the ultra slow, monochromatic dirge of funeral doom, as they had yet to discover the groove that would play such a crucial part in their later sound.
The same 3 members who started out together in Lords Of Putrefaction decided on another name change to represent their continued musical growth and thus was born the simpler Eternal. While Thy Grief Eternal were a crusty bunch of metalheads spitting out blurry blasts of Earache style industrial sludge, a couple years later, with a new name, a new love of mind altering chemicals, and the discovery of the all important GROOVE, Eternal was born, and the sound on their never released EP was only a hop skip and a drunken stumble from the sound of Electric Wizard. The doom and sludge is tempered on the Eternal tracks with a huge heaping pile of Hawkwindish swirling psychedelia and that oft purloined Sabbathy groove that pretty much defined Electric Wizard and the stoner rock movement that followed. Four tracks (one's a Sabbath cover!) including a 16 minute epic that would later become an Electric Wizard track.
Fucking awesome! Comes in a spiffy digipak, with a booklet packed with liner notes, photos, as well as old flyers and demo cover artwork.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Reissued, remastered version of this psychedelic stoner doom metal classic, originally released in '98 on vinyl and cd in their native England by the Bad Acid label. Two bonus tracks have been added to the two from the original ep (one live, one demo). If you have any interest in the sludgy, the doomed, and, um, the super slow and heavy, check this out...
The Wiz returns!!! With another crushing sprawl of slo-mo psychedelic heaviness, that at first blush, sounds well removed from the impossibly catchy last record, Black Masses, which had even non metalheads around here freaking out. At the time, we couldn't really figure it out, what it was about that record that had such wide ranging appeal, but now digging into Time To Die, it's easy to spot the difference in a side by side comparison. Cuz this new record, at least at first, is WAY less poppy, more wasted and slow, the songs not just doomy, but death march drags, rife with tarpit riffage, and a vocal drawl that sounds like Ozzy nodding off on horse tranquilizers. Hell, we're not complaining, we love this sort of wasted, downer doom, and few do it better than Electric Wizard, And Time To Die is overflowing with drugged out ultra-doominess, with tracks like "I Am Nothing", seeming to forego melody entirely, a churning dirgey drag through musty old crypts, but even then somehow, the band will whip out some cool classic metal, harmonized leads, or long streaks of droned out feedback draped over roiling tribal-tom freakouts, and the song is somehow transformed into something transcendent. Still sort of zoned out and wasted, but the vibe is grimly majestic, and absolutely psychedelic.
There are moments throughout Time To Die here the band display a deft (yet subtle) mastery of melody (and hooks), which reveal themselves more and more with each listen, like on the title track, where things get decidedly WAY more melodic, harkening back to the catchiness of the last record, channeling classic Black Sabbath, but filtered through EW mainman Jus Oborn's warped obsession with exploitation flicks and B movie video nasties, bikers and bongs, some surprising catchiness lurking amidst clouds of sonic bongsmoke and swirls of downtuned psychedelic churn. And there's plenty more catchiness lurking elsewhere, it just means sonically sifting through piles of bones, and weed, but even so, after discovering the hidden melodies, our favorite moments on Time To Die might actually be the more abstract, culminating in the totally tripped out psychedelic sprawl of "Destroy Those Who Love God", which sort of sounds like Hawkwind and Monster Magnet slowed down and spaced out, all creepy haunted house organ, endlessly swirling swaths of droned out guitar buzz, wild and loose, almost free jazz drumming, wrapped around creepy samples, and news reports of Satanism and sacrifice, and while that track is JUST that, most of the other tracks, eventually devolve into something similar, jettisoning songcraft in favor of billowing black atmosphere, soundtracks to crumbling castles and rain swept moors, haunted graveyards and dark forests, totally tripped out ambience that seems to eventually, always find its way back to EW's more loping, dirgey, downer doom. All hail the Wizard!
Ok, someone needs to give these guys a medal. First off, there's a song here called "Satanic Rites Of Drugula". Drugula?? That's brilliant. Dave Wyndorf is kicking himself for not having thought of that first!
England's Electric Wizard, the reigning kings (and queen, with Liz Buckingham of 13 and Sourvein on guitar) of utter spaced-out heaviosity (think Black Sabbath + Hawkwind + Eyehategod) also deserve a medal 'cause they are still caning harder and making great albums worthy of their legacy (2000's Dopethrone is an all-time AQ fave of psychedelic sludge stoner genius). It's like they themselves have morphed into the ancient ones from whence all these drugged-out, doooooom metal vibes come.
On their sixth album Witchcult Today, which opens with the sluggish title track, they keep doin' what they do best. Guitarist/vocalist Jus Oborn's wasted wail drifts up from beneath the band's monolithic, mesmeric riffage, as they enact such "Black Magic Rituals & Perversions" as, well, that one, and the other seven tracks here. As blown out and sludgey as it gets (which is VERY) they have an uncanny knack for keeping it catchy and poppy too when they desire. Songs like "Torquemada 71" and the one about Drugula will get stuck in your head, only to slowly drip out like the viscous black tar they are... while "Dunwich" has got to be the grooviest -and- heaviest H.P. Lovecraft-inspired song of the year. As usual, the whole album is getting heavy airplay here in Aquarius, where we're ALL fans even those of us who don't smoke pot, do drugs, or usually listen to stoner metal... we've just been bitten by Drugula is all.
Originally released as a double cd, teamed up with 1997's Come My Fanatics, Electric Wizard's debut, originally released in 1995, gets its own digipak release, re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly two bonus tracks, "IIIimitable Nebulie" and Mourning Prayer Part 1" from the unreleased Doom Chapter Demo!!! Here's what we had to say when this first came out (it's the same review for both self titled and Come My Fanatics, since they were paired together the first time we heard them and they still sound like parts one and two of the same record, which is a most definitely a good thing!) :
With a sickly sweet haze baked around half formed thoughts of science fictions and demonic mythologies, Electric Wizard's stoner metal has just enough intellect to roll out the gargantuan post-Sabbath riffs and burnt-out grooves. Dude. This shit is absolutely essential listening for the next time you decide to fire up that bong. (Or not, seeing as how Andee and Allan definitely seem to enjoy this quite a bit and neither have ever "fired up" a "bong" in their lives, "dude". Well, okay, Allan did smoke a joint once but he didn't "inhale"...very much at all.) Especially suitable for all fans of Sleep's immense Jerusalem opus and those AQ-record-of-the-week-winning Esoteric double cds!! Electric Wizard are in fact notorious rivals of Esoteric, as they compete for England's throne of ultimate heaviness. Anyone who's heard Electric Wizard's Supercoven ep (Andee's favorite EW joint for sure!) will know what they're in for: the ultimate bellbottoms doom trip, a Lovecraftian space sludge psych jam that'll do your head in right.
Finally, the return of the Elemental Chrysalis, the duo of Chett Scott (aka Ruhr Hunter, he also runs Glass Throat Recordings) and James Woodhead, who were responsible for The Calocybe Collection, one of our favorite discs of 2005. A sprawling woodlandscape of dark ominous dronemusick and fluttery forest folk. It's been 3 years but once you hear The Dark Path To Spiritual Expansion, you'll understand what took so long.
A gorgeously packaged double disc set, looooooong tracks, four songs on each disc, the shortest clocking in at 7:32, the longest at 26:55. Gone is much of the drone, leaving their sound much more folky, the focus on the strings, plucked and strummed, buzzing and humming, the sound a mysterious mystical crawl, foresty, funereal, dark and dolorous and dreamlike.
The first nearly 15 minutes of the opening track consist of the same acoustic melody, repeated over and over, like some magical mantra, and it works somehow, the repetition trancelike, the subtle variations, propelling the track forward. Eventually, the track spreads out, the vocals ghostly moans, the strums become more abstract, the sound underpinned by haunting shimmers and whirs.
While these guys do get lumped in with the free folk or freak folk of forest folk movements, on The Dark Path, they are definitely something more akin to classic seventies folk. It could be some lost disc from a mysterious UK hippy commune in 1971. Opening for Comus and The Incredible String Band. This is some serious Wickerman shit. But without all the silliness or overt weirdness. The Elemental Chrysalis have created timeless folkmusic. A sort of foresty country music. Bits of twang definitely inform the band's dark wistful threnodies. The pace is lugubrious, the sound is sprawling and soporific, the voices drawled to the extent that they often sound like just another instrument. And the instrument list again is extensive and massive, a handful we'd never even heard of, but the band don't do the usual, everything and the kitchen sink, instead, they are employed subtly and judiciously, so much that you could be forgive for believing it to be just voice and guitar and a bit extra ambience. There are a few moments, especially on the second disc, where the band stretch out and craft some serious sonic soundscapes, but even then, they tend to drift above that same gorgeous forest floor folk flutter.
A gorgeously languorous countrified folk flecked slowcore, that will no doubt appeal to all the various folks mentioned above, but should also appeal to fans of later Earth, and anyone into dark beauty and haunting musical mystery.
Fantastic packaging, an oversized thick cardstock 6 panel fold over sleeve, green and black, stunning cover art, linernotes and credits, the cds mounted on nubs on two of the panels...
