AT LAST, back in print. We haven't had this crucial black metal album for a couple years now, the original Drakkar version (reviewed on list #203) is out of print. But now Seaon Of Mist has licensed it for a domestic reissue WITH A BONUS TRACK - so if you missed it before, get it now! They just were through here on tour, bloody tour, and hopefully you didn't miss that either... (we did, we were working, it was a list night!). Here's what we said about this Satanic masterpiece originally:
Like Anaal Nathrakh's debut The Codex Necro, we first saw this release reviewed (and awarded Album of the Month honors) in the UK's monthly extreme metal bible Terrorizer, long before we were actually able to track down copies to sell. Our suppliers either didn't know what it was, or had already sold out of the few copies they possessed. But now, we have finally gotten a hold of a few and thought we ought to let you know... Basically, Sweden's Watain are a blazing raw blackened metal monster, thrashing and buzzing and blasting. Sinister melodies bleed from behind cracks in the band's armored exterior. We're strongly reminded of Immortal and especially Dissection, with "Where Dead Angels Lie" haunting these proceedings for sure. At first our reaction was, yeah, this IS pretty good...but then, an undefinable X-factor started to emerge, as the album progressed and Watain's sounds sunk in and we realized that this was more than just pretty good. There's a constantly complex and subtle "shifting" going on Watain's songwriting, a layering of riffs amid the band's blur of speed that just takes it to another level. It's fierce and exquisite black metal mastery on display here. Maybe it's easy to go a certain distance with the black metal thing, y'know initially all you need is the right distorted guitar sound and raspy vocals and occult lyrics, the image and the musical basics. But once those black metal "signifiers" are in place, and a certain standard of competence is achieved, the playing field is level. Going the extra league (with Satan) as Watain do here is rare and impressive. Nicely done (as is the packaging!).
PS there's a picture disc vinyl reissue supposedly coming too, but we haven't gotten ours yet... fingers crossed...
You've fallen victim to Rabid Death's Curse (2000). Casus Luciferi (2004) gripped your soul. After three years, now it's time to become Sworn To The Dark, with the return of Uppsala, Sweden's mighty "black metal milita", Watain. True underground black metal KINGS. One of the few "new" (they started in '98) bands to achieve (and deserve) the same respect lent to this Nordic scene's originators, bands like Immortal, Darkthrone, Mayhem, Emperor, and Satyricon. Watain belong in such illustrious company there's no doubt, but there's one band with which they're most closely linked: Dissection. Still hugely influenced by Dissection in their prime (this is in fact dedicated to the memory of the late Jon Nodrveidt), Watain continue to earn our amazed respect with cold fierce dark riff after riff here on this headbanging storm of an album. They've upped the ante on old school art. Notorious for their blood drenched stage show, Watain's new album brings that blood to your home, spitting from your stereo speakers in an occultic frenzy. Needless to say, recommended to all Watain worshippers... and if you aren't already into Watain, but call yourself a black metal fan, you should waste no time buying this and then bowing down, as you shall.
Another in the recent spate of ESP reissues and easily my favorite of the bunch. Recorded in 1966 and featuring a large ensemble (8 players) on flute, clarinet, cornet, trombone, vibes as well as the mighty Sonny Sharrock on guitar. Much more laid back and a
In the few months since we first gushed about our new found obsession, a weird little buzzy noise pop band called Wavves, it seems like a ton of other folks have been feeling the same way about the urgent, catchy, blown out and energetic sounds this young lad from San Diego has been whipping up. Already following up the great Woodsist debut is a new record on the bigger Fat Possum label, but not to worry the sound is still way blown out and in the red, and the songs still make you wanna sweat and jump and play with your friends in the burning sun. What makes Wavves so great is that they really are drawing from such classic sources yet infusing new life and energy into those sounds. Imagine the best parts of the Beach Boys, the Ramones and the Misfits, all channeled into some buzzy lo-fi shredder and you begin to understand the world Wavves calls home. Since we still have the debut on heavy rotation it caught us a bit off guard to find a brand new full length already, and another self titled one, but we get the feeling that Nate Williams (just 22 years old) is at one of those special creative peaks where songs are just bursting forth with no end in sight. And heck, we're not complaining, not one bit, cause when the songs are this damaged and catchy and kick ass, he can keep cranking them out FOREVER. Here's to a THIRD self titled record, BRING IT ON!!
Hard to beat this disc if you like Beatlesy psych pop from back in the day! Very recommended to all Lennon/McCartney fans. A few years ago we used to stock cd reissues of the two albums released by this early '70s Peruvian outfit, a band who evolved from '60s psych act Laghonia and who obviously worshipped the Fab Four (and their solo efforts, especially, seeing as how they cover both "Band On The Run" and "Bluebird" by McCartney's Wings). It's a bummer that those two discs have been out of print for a while, but we're happy that the Repsychled label (Tarkus, Traffic Sound, etc.) has teamed up with another fave reissue label of ours, Lion, and put out this singles collection, basically a "best of" We All Together! Of the 13 cuts here, eight seem to be included on the band's two albums, leaving five we hadn't heard before. So even if you DO already have those cds you might want this, and if you don't, it's currently the best way to get acquainted with the magic of We All Together's sweet and sad pop psych music. Pepperisms abound, with studio experimentation and backwards guitar ("Soy Timido"), and as well there's some rousing rockers ("Sally"). The use of piercing ARP synth brings to mind that equally Beatlesy Malaysian band Truck whose reissue we reviewed recently... if you liked Surprise, Surprise you'll dig this for sure! Likewise if you like the Aerovons or Badfinger (also covered here). Not that the Beatles are their only influence...both Roy Orbison and Tchaikovsky are cited in the liner notes as songwriting inspirations! The liner notes by the way, are extensive, in English and Spanish, and the cd booklet also includes lots of vintage photos.
A few years back, there seemed to be a glut of dour angular new wave combos, many of which we dug like crazy, band after band of sharply dressed, angular hair-ed rockers kicking out some of the hookiest jams in ages, Maximo Park, Franz Ferdinand, Frightened Rabbit, The Editors, Interpol and the like, and however much of a glut there may have been, we could never get enough. And We Were Promised Jetpacks, not only benefited from having a bad ass band name, but they also seemed to up the ante on guitar crunch, and heavy buzz, and they wedded that extra muscle to some killer songs, often ditching the whole short sharp new wave thing for brooding slow build post rock epics, all underpinned by a distinctly dark, low slung Joy Division gloomy undercurrent, it's like they read our minds and took Mogwai, Godspeed and Maximo Park and created some sort of Frankensteinian epic hook filled new wave band just for us, and then to top it off gave said band an awesome ridiculous name.
Needless to say we were pretty psyched for this new one, and the opening track instantly convinced us that the wait was not in vain, a wild progged out epic post rock opening with tumbling drums and crashing chords, all woven into some dizzying stop start mathiness, then the riff comes in, and it's a killer, and then the band come in and sound crazy heavy, the song shifting to bass / drum verse, peppered with bursts of crunchy guitar jangle, there's even a crazy majestic epic post rock crescendo finishing off in a blaze of new wave buzz and pound. And while we're tempted to proclaim that the best track here, pretty much everyone we listen to becomes our favorite, at least until we move on to the next one, "Through The Dirt And The Gravel", is some seriously heavy noisepop, with some thick buzzing bass, and a hook to die for, and closer "Pear Tree" is dark and heavy and brooding, the perfect new wave slow build post rock hybrid, the sort of song that sans vocals would sound right at home on a Mogwai record, but as is just might be the perfect finish to a nearly perfect record.
Fans of the above mentioned bands, as well as other sonically similar outfits like Kaiser Chiefs, Futureheads, Arctic Monkeys, Art Brut, Bloc Party and the like will go crazy for this. And if you've yet to hear these guys, this is the perfect place to start, just check out that first sound sample, odds are you'll be as smitten as we are.
Record number two from John Samson and his not-so-merry band of bittersweet pop punk minstrels. Samson cut his teeth in political punkers Propagandhi, but left to follow his own particularly personal pop path of minor key jangle, dreamy melody, not-overtly-catchy hooks (but hooks nonetheless) and lyrics that you could never imagine fitting comfortably in a pop song. But they do. Sort of. Like poems by Pynchon or Vollman set to music. Hyper literate but still personal and affecting. Samson's vocals are reminiscent of Robynn Hitchcock, as is his wordplay and penchant for meandering tales of love and loss, while the sound is like a punkier popppier version of recent AQ faves, the Decemberists. A dense and tangly first listen, but as you dig deeper, it grows and grows and starts to feel like a record you just can't live without.
The posthumous debut from (and, thus, swansong of) San Francisco's most cult black metal act, Weakling. Despite their local, non-forested, non-wintry origins, Weakling was a band capable of destroying the best Scandinavia has to offer (as we witnessed upon two occasions, when Weakling had the honor of opening the San Francisco shows by Norwegians Mayhem and Enslaved, and proceeded to make both bands look like punk rockers in comparison! Weakling were so much more epic and intense). All this without any of the ignorant posturing or hackneyed corpsepaint of their peers.
Ghastly, anguished vocals and bloodchilling keyboards combine with dual trebly buzzsaw guitars and inhuman trance inducing drumming to create an atmosphere of utter grinding grimness. Weakling draws upon '90s black metal in the Norwegian tradition (especially the raw and primitive likes of Darkthrone, Burzum and Immortal) and then creates uniquely fucked song structures of epic length (20 minutes per, in some cases).
And, like the best music, Weakling also transcends genre. In some ways, "Dead as Dreams" possesses elements that can be considered akin to the avant garde, experimental creations of the Swans, Skullflower, Steve Reich, or even Yoko Ono. Imagine an extensive, utterly mesmerizing Hermann Nitsch piece, composed for black metal band.
It's a suffocating soundscape of riffing and drone. Subterranean satanic art rock that equals metal. Nihilistic, depressive and never ending.
Featuring Josh from The (Fucking) Champs as well as drummer Lil' Sunshine from local death metallers Sangre Amado. And of course, John Gossard of...well, John Gossard. (And The Gault / Asunder / Iron Vegan.) Local black metal maniac/death rocker extraordinaire. Weakling is largely the result of his devotion to black metal dementia.
We are not engaging in baseless hyperbole when we say: this should be crowned black metal album of the year. Seriously. Essential.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The opening minute or so of "Heal", the first track on Deserve, at first blush seems like it could give very much the wrong impression of these Canadian noise poppers, although the more we listen to Deserve, the more it seems like maybe it was in fact ultimately the all together RIGHT impression. The record opens with a squall of swirling feedback, what sounds like multiple guitars unfurling layer upon layer of feedback, and even when the song kicks in proper, it's mostly a crumblingly distorted single chord, over pounding caveman drumming, until all of a sudden, that noisiness coalesces into some impossibly perfect pop, a twisted chunk of nineties style indie rock jangle, wistful and super melodic and crazy catchy, albeit, plenty noisy and fuzzy, distorted and blown out, and from there on out, the song swings deliriously from lilting, loping, Sebadoh-style lo-fi pop, to a full bore, buzzing psychedelic sort-of-chorus/refrain, howled vocals over one of those chord changes that gives you chills, the sort of thing most bands struggle to come up with, but throughout the course of Deserve, these guys seem to toss off those moments like there was some limitless supply, and who knows? Maybe for these guys there is. Deserve gives us no reason to think otherwise. But before we can get to more of those moments, the band finish off "Heal" with a full two minutes worth of abstract psychedelic feedback noise drenched drift, almost as if in the studio, they just leaned their guitars against the amps, and stepped out for a smoke. But it's that willful, listener baiting noisiness, and the fact that of "Heal"s six and a half minutes, less than three is proper 'song', that helps balance the group's popsmithery, with a sort of sneering punk rock energy, that as you might imagine, finds its way into even the poppiest moments here. And there's something about two minutes of droned out noise, that when the second track "Set Me Back" finally explodes, there's a sense of sonic relief, that only adds to what is yet another glorious slab of blown out fuzz pop, big guitars, deep crooned vocals buried in the mix, melodies to die for, and another one of those choruses, that sounds like it was plucked right out of some classic Dinosaur Jr jam, but Weed's sound is more muddy and murky, and all the better for it, swirling and psychedelic, every song here, sounds like one of those songs or one of those bands that should have been huge, but instead, stayed your little secret, the best band nobody else knew about, understood, or in most cases had ever even heard, or heard of. And that totally taps into something most music nerds hold near and dear, and positions Weed, no matter how popular they get, as the sort of band, that could easily become YOUR band.
And while there's nothing nearly as chaotic and freaked out as the opener, there is most definitely no shortage of fuzz pop bliss. "Gun Shy" is rollicking and punky, but again, crazy catchy, mixing droned out guitar, furious buzz, tangled melodies, and some super heavy, almost emo sounding noiserock blowouts. "Silent Partner" almost sounds like a slightly punkier, more youthful Swervedriver, and that shoegaze vibe surface throughout, giving all of Deserve a fantastically dreamy, druggy vibe, a sound that shifts easily from hazy, fuzzy drift, to grinding punkish pound and back again, often settling somewhere right in between, and again, amidst all this noisiness and sonic chaos, all this crunch and fuzz, blast and pound, is some of the craftiest popsmithery we've heard in ages, the sort of thing, that recast, and super polished, could have the potential to be the next big thing, thankfully, these guys seem to have no interest in that at all. The poppiness of these jams more like some sonic artifact, the seemingly random result of nothing but loud guitars, sweaty, bloody basement shows, lots of booze, youthful exuberance, and just fucking rocking, it's the perfect mix of that classic nineties indie rock sound that we can't ever seem to get enough of STILL, home brewed fuzz pop, and wild, chaotic noise rock crunch, all woven into something more fresh and and raw and punk and poppy, and it's just about the best thing we've heard in forever.
Even being the sort of person who knows almost nothing about drugs, I do know the usual preferred delivery method for pot is inhalation, not ingestion (to the lungs, not the stomach). Not that you can't cook it up in a brownie, but the guys in Weedeater sound like they just shovel handfuls of weed straight into their gaping jaws, like some sort of drug crazed harvesting machine, or like a stoner rock engineer dumping coal into the engine of a locomotive, which makes sense, as it's obvious these guys need enough weed to power the relentless, downtuned, full bore stoner metal crush found on God Luck And Good Speed.
A relative stoner rock institution, Dixie Dave and company have been spewing their filthy, crusty, blown out, drug rock for going on 10+ years now, and before that Dixie fronted the equally heavy and even crustier Buzzov-en, so this man knows his way around a stoney riff and a druggy groove, and this shit sounds just as good now as it did a decade ago, and I don't even smoke pot. So I can only imagine how amazing this must sound high�
But even NOT high, Weedeater destroy! Like some impossible crossbreeding experiment gone hellishly wrong, one part Eyehategod, one part Sleep, one part Corrosion Of Conformity, one part Bongzilla, guitars tuned so low the strings drag along the ground, amps stacked so high, they need a ladder to crank those knobs to 11. The vocals a harsh demonic mewl, almost more black metal than stoner metal, the drums simple but massive.
Recorded mostly by Steve Albini, except for one track by CoC's Mike Dean, and that track is the weirdest of the bunch, just bass, banjo and baritone crooning, a creepy stoner country ballad, which somehow sounds right at home amidst the crushing low slung heaviness surrounding it on all sides.
Plus song titles like "Wizard Fight", "Weedmonkey" and they even cover Skynyrd's "Gimme Back My Bullets"!
Packaged in a cool mini gatefold lp-style sleeve, the art embossed and printed in gold metallic ink, with a little hymnal inside with all the lyrics, just like a mini stoner bible.
This is record number three for Greg Weeks, and the one that's really finally gotten our attention. His previous disc on Ba Da Bing! was a stripped down, boy-and-his-guitar folky singer-songwriter kinda record, and while he is still essentially playing folk
New ep from AQ fave Greg Weeks, on the tiny Spanish label Acuarela. "Slightly West" takes up right where Weeks' totally amazing "Awake Like Sleep" record left off. More lonely low key psychedelic folk (ala P.G. Six, Charalambides, Tower Recordings, etc.), wrapped in a wash of thick warm analogue-sounding synths, making for a sort of dark and melancholy, alien folk music.
Dreamy and gauzy, ethereal and wispy, warm and summery, but not in a Beach Boys-surfing-USA-fun-in-the-sun sort of way, more like a last-day-of-summer-before-the-girl-you've-spent-the-past-two-weeks-falling-in-love-with-leaves-forever-late-nights-wrapped-in-blankets-in-front-of-a-roarin-fire-crashing-surf-moon-reflected-on-the-water-broken-hearted sort of way. Gently plucked guitars and mournful sad-boy vocals (with occasional angelic female background vocals) weave gorgeously simple tales of love and loss, while tinkling pianos glisten on the surface and gossamer keyboards, sustaining on 2 or 3 notes, turn simple pop songs into dreamy late night psychedelic soundscapes (the same way keyboards transformed Yo La Tengo's "Painful"). Also features some really disturbing/amazing/sexy/demented cover art by Tracy Nakayama, featuring naked young people and a woman strangling an ostrich with a belt!
MPEG Download: "One Summer Night" [/audio/gweeksonesummer.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "One Summer Night" [/audio/gweeksonesummer.m3u]
The first thing we thought when we threw this one, was that these guys remind us quite a bit of the Rock-A-Teens, which is never a bad thing. They have the same sort of Southern gothic swagger, thick reverbed guitars, yowled throaty vocals, a little Southern rock, a little rockabilly, but jammed into more of a noise rock sound. The record opens with a serious blast of jagged distorted garage stomp, with plenty of stops and start, some noodly leads, but all wrapped around a hook that won't quit, and some killer guitar harmonies. But right after that the band slows it down to near-ballad territory, all lilting strums and chiming bells, until the track fractures into a weird rollicking buzz drenched sort-of-jig, that explodes into a rollicking rocker, with deep crooned vocals and sharp crunchy guitar chug and a total pogo rhythm and more leads squiggling all over the place.
The vocalist has some Nick Cave going on for sure, which perfectly suits the bands sharp noisy downer rock, like a super charged Dirty Three, or even a less Irish Pogues, or maybe a less fucked up Lubricated Goat, and of course the aforementioned Rock-A-Teens. We also hear some Paw, but odds are that one's too obscure and unlikely for most folks, which is probably for the best. But stir in some serious Southern rock tendencies, a little punk rock, polish it up a bit and you have the Weeks. Supposedly the average age of the Weeks is 18, which is pretty nuts considering that these guys sound like way more like old bearded dudes from the South sporting big old skull rings, and wearing pointy toed boots and rumpled old seersucker suits...
Before Ween were the soundtrack to every frathouse in the land, Windy and Andee worshipped at the altar of God Ween Satan. Less poppy, and WAY less polished, God Ween Satan is their first record and is full of catchy sloppy punky silliness and stupidly
We've been trying to track these down for ages, a mysterious set of dubstep 12"s, some of the coolest, darkest, grimiest dubstep we've heard, all housed in plain white sleeves, no info except for a stamp of either a larva, a pupa or an adult Weevil, that symbol designating which of the three Weevil Series 12"s it is. We decided it was probably better to sell these as a set, as they were difficult to track down, and had to be shipped overseas, and odds are if you want one, you're probably gonna want the set.
Originally a customer sent us a link to some samples online and all it took was about 30 seconds and we were hooked. Dark and creepy, ominous and menacing, the sound rough and textured and raw and not at all slick or glossy, the beats, slipping from dubstep stutter to almost jungle skitter, the background a swirl of spaced out effects, deep bass swells, mysterious voices, and when the beat drops, it drops hard, the bass buzzing, thick and corrosive.
The first volume, Larva, is seriously grimy, muted buried rhythms and roiling black clouds, the beat gradually growing more intense, the drop huge, the beat nearly knocking us over, the dubstep definitely a little jungly. The second track offers up some super effected distorted dancehall style toasting over an echo drenched beat, and warped bass warble, and the drop here too is fierce, the bass a fat fuzzed out wobble, the beat jagged and stuttery, a super raga style dubbed out groove that kills. The final track gets a bit more darksteppy, the tempo cranked up, definitely more jungle than dubstep, the beat wreathed in clouds of squelch and synthy squiggle, and peppered with bits of African Head Charge like ambience. So good.
And the second volume, Pupa, is just as good, starting out with a clipped lurching groove, and some vocals that are chopped up and transformed into a weird sort of bassy hiccup, almost like a croaking frog, the beat stripped down and minimal, all skitter, wreathed in clouds of swirling psychedelic hiss and whir, and haunting black ambience, a strangely off kilter hip hop-ish chunk of dark dark dubstep. The second track mixes it up again, setting the beat against a backdrop of woozy synth swirl, wrapped around a skipping chunk of warbly bass buzz, wrapped in swirls of glitch and static, the sound more laid back and droney, hypnotic and washed out, which leads into the final track, a big block rockin beat, laid over fuzzed out bass, and all sorts of dubby effects and extra percussion, again, with some swirly synths laid down in the background.
Finally, the set finishes off with part three, Adult, which shifts gears again, the first track a murky bit of super minimal droned out mesmer, the beat, muted and buried beneath a field of static, and blurred low end fuzz, laced with random bits of clatter, like some super abstract Chain Reaction Heroin House take on lo-fi dubstep, crusty, and sinister, and abstract and haunting and AWESOME.
The second track continues in the same direction, similarly minimal and stripped down, not nearly as murky, but with a seriously clinical, motorik clipped beat, surrounded by Geiger counter like chitter, all over little flurries of high hat, and subtle bits of dubbed out FX, super hypnotic and WAY too short.
Finally, the closing track picks up the pace, that creepy processed raga like toasting returns, over metallic clouds of billowy bass, the beats laid back and stripped way down, the thick buzzing bass pulse driving the groove, everything surrounded by what sounds like field recordings of a forest or jungle, a darkly psychedelic bit of dubbed out bass heavy murk. So good. We haven't stopped listening to these since we first got them in. Dubstep jam of the year? Last year? This year? Any year? Hell yeah!!
Each 12" is limited to 300 copies, hand numbered, and hand stamped, all in plain white sleeves. And remember we're selling all three 12"s together as a single set.
Chicago university professor Deena Weinstein unleashes the revised edition of her 1991 scholarly study of heavy metal!! We loved her on NPR's Anthem talkshow, playing Emperor and other metal, and discussing the differences between speed metal, thrash metal, and black metal, in an intellectual, but genuinely enthusiastic manner, unlike some of the 'ironic' poseurs featured on the same show, who shall remain nameless.
Weinstein's book is a balanced and academic look at heavy metal music, its fans, and its role in society. This new edition adds a new 'Metal in the '90s' chapter, as well as an updated list of '100 Definitive Metal Albums' that now includes Arcturus and At The Gates, In Flames and Hammerfall, etc.
Essential for all serious fans of either cultural studies or heavy metal, preferably both!
The return of the groovy, fuzzy sixties psych rock side project of John McBain formerly of Monster Magnet, and Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden. But those formerly's can only mean one thing, that Wellwater Conspiracy is a side project no more! We've sort of known that for a while now, but it becomes more evident with each successive record, as they just keep getting better and better.
A ragged, psychedelic sixties jangle groove filtered through Cameron and McBain's elite stoner/space/cock rock pedigree with lots of meandering, spacy shimmer, bizarre production, loping, walking bass lines, lots of super affected, weirdly squiggly leads, harmonies, tamborine and even bongos. Think a slightly heavier, more well produced Kinks, Who, Blues Magoos, Fuzztones or Pretty Things. Heavy enough to still hit the spot for all you Monster Magnet / Soundgarden fans, but druggy and psychedelic enough for all you Ptolemaic Terrascopers / lo-fi psych-folkers!
Not sure if the distinctive arrow-in-a-circle on the cover is meant to reference legendary label No U-Turn, but it had us expecting some sort of throwback jungle, some dense tech-step style drum & bass, but instead, Signals is a modern take on classic dubstep and grime, sounding a bit like a slightly less minimal Burial, if that makes any sense, it's still all slo-mo and murky, but the beats are a lot heavier, and there are a lot more vocals, mostly fragmented snippets, which are all over the brief intro, but when "Galactic" kicks in, it's a fierce fucker, all stuttery skitter, beneath weird monk like chants, a twisted little metallic melody, the various sounds and samples in constant flux, slowing down, speeding up, the whole thing a lurching, lumbering, woozy creep, that mysterious little Close Encounters melody will stick in your head like crazy, and then in swoop some strings, and suddenly it's some sort of symphonic dubstep epic, and it's so good. Listen to the sample, if that doesn't do it for you, we don't know what will.
Much of the rest of the record is a bit more low slung, more blissed out, the electro-drift of "Lunar", adds a sort of washed out kosmische vibe, while "You Know" adds some female vox to the mix, but then "Persian" kicks in, all electro-murk, laced with cool Middle Eastern melodies, the result is haunting and mysterious, almost like a dubstep Muslimgauze. A bunch of the tracks have a hip hop vibe, big beats and serious swagger, albeit run through a cracked techno/dubstep filter, but others, like "Time", remains stripped down and skeletal, laced with brief bits of vocals, and weirdly psychedelic atmospheres, or the title track which is straight up grime, wound around a seriously jungly groove, the vocals chopped up and swirled into a dizzying beat heavy mix, which reminded us how much we love grime! Speaking of which, record closer "Play Your Corner" is a serious sick slab of classic grime, with some killer vocals over a sinister bed of strings, draped over tangled rhythms and wound up with a dizzying production. Love it!
A while back we listed a killer chunk of ultra sludge from Irish doom-mongers Wreck Of The Hesperus, whose particular brand of doom fell more in line with Eyehategod than Esoteric. A sort of blown out slithery not quite groovy drugged out sludgey bile spewing stoner doom. Phew. We dug it very much though. But who would have thought that under all that blown out distortion and downtuned swagger, lurked a shimmery droney drifting soft side. Certainly not us, but here we are, sinking deep into the dolorous embrace of Wereju, the dark ambient drone side project of one of those Hesperians. Not so much black ambient as dreamy droney drift, although that may just be splitting hairs. Hard to say what the sound source is, we're guessing guitar, but the end result is pretty and shimmery, dark and billowy, slow soft swells of rumbling whir, steel string reverberations smoothed into muted abstract melodies. At it's most fierce, you can hear some Sunn 0))), as the tones distort and overload the poor speakers on our computer, but more often than not Wereju occupies a sonic space somewhere between the hushed minimalism of Niblock and Coleclough and the slightly more active and blown out doomdone ministrations of the more aggressive proponents of dark ambience. Two discs, loooooong songs, every one a slow shifting hypnotic slab of mysterious darkness and ur-drone divinity.
Way Recommended.
Black metal records with nature sounds are a dime a dozen, in fact it might be easier to come up with a list of black metal records that DON'T have dubbed in sounds, wolves, wind, goats, whatever grim picture the band is trying to paint, whether it's some pagan ritual with goat sacrifice, or some grim corpsepainted horde playing in the middle of a black forest communing with wolves, a sound effects record makes it all that much more impressive. Or so bands seem to think. There have been bands who supposedly went out into the snowy forest and recorded there, most notably Ulver's Nattens Madrigal, but we're pretty sure that's just a rumor, most likely spread by the band to make the record seem cooler (and probably to explain the impossibly tinny sound), and then there's the fact that even if it WAS true, you can't really -hear- it. Which brings us to When Bitter Spring Sleeps, a black metal horde who hail from the grim frosty abyss known as Cedar Rapids, Idaho, and whose whole identity, nay existence, is based on musically communing with nature. This entire record was performed and recorded in a nature preserve! So all the sounds, all the dripping water, chirping insects, rustling leaves, all of that stuff is captured along side the bands drone-y buzz. We do have to wonder how the band manage to blast and buzz without disrupting the sounds of nature, you know how a field full of frogs and crickets immediately go silent when you walk amongst them. We like to think the band set up, and then just stood there, motionless, for minutes, maybe hours, until the insects and other forest creatures decided the coast was clear, and the band slowly began to play.
The result is pretty compelling, the songs start out all minimal and hushed, usually just guitar, the sound of cicadas and dripping water, croaking frogs, practically drowning out the band, and when the band do kick in, the sound is super raw and tinny (a la Nattens Madrigal, there is a reason bands record in studios after all), the drums are a tiny pound, buried in the mix, the vocals a barely audible croak, the guitars a blurry shimmery cloud of sound. The tracks are epic too, with tons of parts and lots of interludes, where the band drops out, leaving just a single spidery guitar line, and the symphony of insects and creatures.
Super cool, the metal itself is not hugely distinctive, but in this context it works in the record's favor, as the sounds of the instruments are equally balanced by the sounds of nature, almost as if an act of supplication, a musical acknowledgment of out tenuous position here on earth.
Obviously, folks into fucked up far out black metal are gonna NEED this, but if you're into weird Jewelled Antler sort of musical / field recording hybrids, odds are this might be the only black metal record that fits the bill.
SUPER LIMITED. Gorgeous packaging, each one hand made, the printed covers, burned around the edges and scorched all over. The smell a heady mix of flowers and fire. So cool.
A while back we made a record by a Chinese duo called White+ our Record Of The Week. And folks flipped for it. So much so we could barely keep it in stock. A dizzying collection of droned out psychedelic krautrock style grooves and experimental electronic hypnorock. A drummer and a synth player with all kinds of weird FX and noisemakers. Originally described to us as sounding like Neu crossed with Yellow Magic Orchestra, to us it ended up sounding much weirder. Ever since that review, we'd been wanting to list this, an earlier record from these two, but only just now did we manage to get enough. Talking more to our friends in China, we're beginning to think this band is simply called White, and maybe that other record is titled White PLUS. But really, it hardly matters, we'll keep calling them White+, and keep digging their crazy sounds, which are even crazier here, processed vox, churning sheets of synth thrum, clouds of swirling FX, buried pulsations, shimmering strings, minimal percussion, some tracks dense and dizzyingly dark ("Space Decay"), others dreamy and almost raga-like ("Spring House"), some tribal and percussive, angular and abstract ("Conch Crunch"), some like kraut-age electro-pop ("Build A Link"), and some others minimal and rhythmic, rife with junkyard percussion, and mysterious vocals/FX ("Train Song").
Fans of the other White+ will want this for sure, and really, anyone into tripped out electronic minimalism, psychedelic krautrock, experimental ambience, and twisted rhythmic hypnorock, this will definitely be a new fave. We have a bunch, but once we run out, we have to get more from China, which can sometimes take a while, so please get one quick, or be prepared to wait patiently. We also have a few copies in stock if the other White+, you can find it elsewhere on the site, or just ask if you want one of those too...
We make a LOT of things "highlights" on our list, you've doubtless noticed. So, what if we separated out a special section of MEGA-highlights? We're not gonna, but if we did, this would definitely be one of this list's MEGA-highlights, indeed. Our pal Brian from WFMU turned us on to this band a while back. So we were stoked to finally see a (vinyl-only) reissue now! Why so excited? 'Cause this oddly named band from Toledo, Ohio made one of the odder, yet enjoyable heavy metal rarities we've ever heard, this their only album, originally released in 1980. Well, it's nominally "heavy metal", though at times it's a bit like Devo doing heavy metal, with geeky sci-fi new wave inflections (as on "Sector 387"). At other times, it sounds more '60s and psychedelic, in fact psychedelic enough to get a review in that Acid Archives tome we just listed. Really White Boy and The Average Rat Band ought to appeal to anyone into the stranger side of late '70s hard rock, post-punk, proto-metal, poverty grind.
It all begins with a shimmering synth "Prelude", then... "Neon Warriors"! A tumble of drums, followed by a rapidfire, flash-rockin', fuzzed out riff onslaught, kinda like a low-budget Judas Priest. Oh yeah, that's the other thing, there's an ass-ton of FUZZ on here. Probably that's how they wound up in Acid Archives. "Maybe I'm A Fool" sounds more like Motorhead... sorta... then "The Prophet Song" harks back to Hendrix... and they even do a weird, broken down acoustic blues jam instrumental called "Blue Moon" before the record's over. Both rockin', and bizarre enough, to make both the AQ and WFMU warped hit parade for sure. Heck, they were basically making NWOFHM music (a la Steel Mammoth and Krypt Axeripper) long before those Finns came up with the idea. Or, imagine early Manilla Road meets George Brigman, maybe... Also probably for fans of Zolar-X, Todd Tamanend Clark, and the Happy Dragon-Band, amongst other eccentrics. Though this IS more metal than those. Closest perhaps to the likes of Dwarr, not that there's much like Dwarr.
This reissue on Roach is limited to 400 copies, by the way.
First we've heard from these sixties psych channeling, garage pop retro rocking locals since last year's awesome Cyclops Reap (and not counting the recent equally awesome Live In SF disc). Cyclops Reap took White Fence's already twisted sound and somehow made it even more far out, while at the same time upping the ante on pretty much everything else (song craft, production, etc.), and now on For The Recently Found Innocent, WF mainman Tim Presley teams up with his buddy Ty Segall and drummer Nick Murray (Mikal Cronin even pops by to play a little piano), for a record that continues Presley's quest to craft some impossible sixties beholden, modern retro-psych masterpiece, and gets closer than he ever has. In the process, Presley and crew dial back a lot of the weirdness that defined the sound of Cyclops Reap, and come up with some of the best WF songs yet. Certainly the best sounding, the production is massive, just check out "Anger! Who Keeps You Under", which somehow sounds properly from back in the day, but modern as well, jangling guitars, soaring vocals, hooks galore, powerful drumming, all sorts of effects and textures, the sound lush and majestic, a little bit fuzzy and crunchy, and so so catchy! And it pretty much doesn't let up, every track here a fuzz pop retro garage gem, "Like That" features Presley's keening falsetto, with some fantastic harmonies, all set amidst lush jangle and some pitch perfect sixties-isms, what we really need to do is get Presley together with Matthew Melton (Warm Soda, Bare Wires)!
But until that happens, we get to revel in Presley's alternate sonic sixties, conjured up here and now, with all the musical references to might imagine, Bee Gees, the Monkees, the Zombies, some of the tracks here do genuinely sound like they were plucked from some reissue compilation, while others find WF indulging in some experimentation, but even then, they manage to make it sound totally genuine. As always, fantastic stuff, and pretty sure we probably say this every time, but might be our favorite White Fence record yet!
In case you missed it on our Record Store Day "in-between list" last Friday... but these are going fast! At this rate, gone within the week, if not sooner...
Last year - or maybe it was the year before - we told ourselves, hey, Record Store Day is awesome and all, but what would make it even more awesome? Maybe if we had our OWN release for Record Store Day! Something that, then, we could make sure our devoted mailorder customers wouldn't miss out on, also something that we could be absolutely sure we'd have, utterly unique to our store, amidst the chaos and uncertainty of all the other RSD releases.
So, this year, we did it! With the help of our good friends, Brooklyn's psychedelic space rockers extraordinare, you know 'em, you love 'em, White Hills. As those of you who live here in San Francisco may remember, White Hills brought their spaced out sounds to aQuarius for a fantastic instore on October 1st, 2010. Actually, they performed under the somewhat obvious pseudonym Black Valleys ('cause the venue they were playing that same night didn't want them doing another show the same day). In any case, their "Black Valleys" set turned out to be quite a bit different than an "ordinary" White Hills performance, being a drumless, droned-out duo performance specifically tailored to our space, trying (though probably failing!) to keep the volume low enough not to disturb our neighbors... but still hypnotizing us all with their nonetheless heavy sounds. The show was recorded, and it turned out GREAT.
Over a half hour long, the first few minutes of which are filled with shimmering, pretty pulsations and subtle sonic textures, as if this was the White Hills' version of Pop Ambient. It's both mesmeric and miasmic... Eventually waves of grinding fuzz enter the scene, and this slow building sonic juggernaut of throb and drone and drift takes on more massive proportions, propelled by what we can only say are almost ghostly riffs, giving this something of an Earth 2 vibe. We could go on and on, but somehow don't think we need to, since we know what White Hills fans are like (and you're all White Hills fans, right?).
So, digging the recording, White Hills gave us the go-ahead to release it as a special limited edition cd, for Record Store Day this year. And boy are we stoked.
LIMITED TO 300 hand-numbered copies, packaged in slim, dvd-style cases, with cool Op-Art inspired cover graphics by our pal Nathan Berlinguette, printed in black on fancy silvery paper. NOT sold in stores - except for ours!
After a whole mess of crazy limited cd-r releases, this is only the 2nd proper, actual cd release from these East Coast blown out garage psych space rockers. Avid readers of the list will no doubt by now, be hip to these guys, their wall of guitar, Hawkwind meets the Stooges meets Monster Magnet meets the Heads is tough to beat, every song drenched in wild outer space FX, the drums pounding beneath an avalanche of psychedelic guitar, the vocals, shadows flitting across the molten surface of these tracks, barely audible just another layer of dense fuzz.
So how does this record stack up to the rest? We mentioned that the last release, the tour only Abstractions And Mutations, was the band's fiercest yet, but Heads On Fire might have us reassessing. Cuz this has to be exactly what it would sound like if your head was indeed on fire.
The opener is a heavy as fuck space rock romp, right out of the gate, a wall of buzzing wah wah guitar is loosed, and all you can do is hang on for the ride, it's like Spacemen 3 on speed, that same sort of billowy tripped out warm guitar buzz, but souped WAY up, supercharged, a blinding supernova of freaked out garage rock psychedelia. But the track right after that is way riffier, a serious Stooges-y stomp, plenty of guitar crunch and psychedelic squalls, but the vocals are more present, a sort of Wyndorf style lord mother fucker drawl, wrapped in reverb and draped over the jagged riffing and pounding drums.
Then there's "Don't Be Afraid", which begins with whipping wind and distant foghorns, ominous and mysterious, a phone being dialed, ringing and ringing, the band gradually coming in, a slow lope, simple tribal drums, a laid back guitar line, soft fuzzy swells of sound in the background, a lugubrious slow build, the vocals howled and spacey, reverbed and dripping with delay, the guitar getting gradually more and more jagged and distorted, until everything drops out, just wind, and muted electronics, muffled FX, the bass line creeping along steadily, bits of melody drifting by, the vocals come back in and BAM the band takes off, the guitar spitting flames, the drums falling down a mineshaft, a huge tangle of psychedelic space rock chaos, and then nothing, a weird, barely there, 5 minute outro, bits of guitar, creaking and buzzing, more wind, and finally silence.
And in case that last 30 minutes, and those last 5 in particular, had you forgetting just where you were, the band shuts things down with 4+ minutes of furious fuzz and pummeling pound, thick and corrosive, and so distorted the riffs seem to melt into each other, the vocals sung from the bottom of a well, a bit of start stop dynamics, replete with creepy giggling children, and then the perfect send off, a sky full of psychedelic fireworks, multicolored streaks of white hot guitar, a blinding ear full of sonic pyrotechnics like staring straight into the sun.
Holland's Roadburn festival has become THEE ultimate heavy rock music festival, be it doom, sludge, psychedelia, space rock, whatever, the fest consistently offering the sorts of lineups most of us could only dream about, super hyped new bands, legendary older bands, total unknowns, next big things, nobody curates festivals like these guys, and it definitely shows, every year, selling out sooner, and luring folks from all over the world to fly over to take it all in (heck, our own Allan even went a couple years ago!). Roadburn also decided a while back to chronicle some of these performances and release them, so the rest of us sorry suckers unable to make the journey could get a little taste of what it is we've been missing.
Which brings us to this, a document of last year's Roadburn, in particular, a performance by aQ faves, Brooklyn heavy psych rockers White Hills, who definitely KILL it, with one of the heaviest sets we've heard from them. In fact, the disc opens with the band in full on heavy riff mode, almost like someone just pushed record mid-set, our imaginations have us picturing opening 8+ minute blast "Three Quarters" just the last chunk of an hours-long mega blown out super psych jam. Regardless, the band churn and roil, the riffs distorted and in-the-red, the drums wild and chaotic, of course everything wreathed in thick swirls of effects, the vox gruff and bellowed, definitely giving the sound some serious rock heft. "Under Skin Or By Name", sees the band slipping back into some more meditative drifty krautpsych territory, but within a few minutes the band have exploded again, with wild endless leads, lumbering motorik grooves, total drugged out heavy psych bliss of the highest order.
And so it goes, the band never letting up, the songs sprawling, slipping from Stooges-y stomp, to Hawkwind like druggy drift, to hazy psychedelic shimmer, to near Monster Magnet like metallic chug, the bass groovy and melodic, those drums pounding fiercely, courtesy of occasional WH skinsman Lee Hinshaw, bassist Ego Sensation even offers up some vocals on one track which gives it a cool sort of True Widow vibe, the band unfurling epic expanses of druggy FX heavy drift woven into more crushing space-metal riffery, finally finishing off with a killer version of the title track from their most recent full length "Hp-1", which if anything takes the original and makes it even more epic and heavy and gloriously spaced out.
Sweet packaging too, full color six panel digipak with some killer psychedelic live shots of the band in action at Roadburn.
Latest full-length from these Hawkwind worshipping drug-drone psychedelic space rockers from New York, after their killer long players Heads On Fire and Glitter Glamor Atrocity, as well as 7 or 8 other kick ass cd-r's AND a couple 12"s, all leading us here, quite possibly their heaviest and most full realized record yet.
Beginning with "Dead", a track we're already pretty obsessed with, as it was the teaser track from the last 12", and even after spinning the 12" to, um, death, it's still a doozy: fuzzy, druggy, looped and hypnotic, with dreamy soft singing, beneath billowing clouds of distorted guitars, all hazy and super space rocky, definitely channeling the spirits of Loop and Spacemen 3, totally hypnotic, like a blown out krautrock jam drenched in tons of effects, you can almost hear the flashing strobes, and clouds of glowing smoke, the track just oozes druggy bliss.
And druggy bliss pretty much describes the whole record. "Countin Sevens" is a slow burning meander through some otherworldly landscape if prismatic clouds and barren moonlit expanses, the drums tribal and motorik, the guitar strummy and jangly, the bass throbbing and dense, all wound up into yet another seemingly endless sprawl of psychedelic excess, hazy, bleary and so utterly enthralling.
"Three Quarters" is the first track to get TRULY riffy, a sort of Stooges / Loop hybrid, the band locked into a churning loping rhythm, the vocals weirdly processed, exploding occasionally into even heavier double time downtuned grooves, before slipping back into that opening lope, before breaking down into 4 minutes of droned out space psych drift, wild tangled leads, long sheets of rumbling buzz, streaks of feedback, the bass and drums locked into a super heavy groove, another track that could (and probably should) go on forever.
"Let The Right One In" is one of two tracks that crack the 12 minute mark, beginning with field recordings of street sounds and tolling bells, dogs barking and whirling wind, all set a top a washed out bed of murmured guitars, a simple spidery bassline, shuffling drums, a soft focus shimmer, a brooding ballad, that gradually grows more and more post/math rocky, but never truly letting loose, until the last few minutes, but this time the psych freakout is reeled in, and instead the band just get a little epic and majestic, with thick looped riffage, soaring chords, repeating mantra like as the song finally unwinds. "We Will Rise" is a super minimal stretch of gurgling effects laden murk, with some spare drumming, soft squalls of guitar glimmer and a warm liquid bassline running through it, leading directly into "Glacial" which is in fact glacial, a thick whirring drone, muted buzz, and grinding downtuned whirs wound tight into a softly pulsing minimal drift, with some seriously SUNNO)))-like doomic swells off in the background, haunting and hushed and seriously ominous.
Which leads perfectly into the epic closer, "Polvere Di Stelle", fuzz bass, big drums, weary ethereal vocals, and guitars galore, a hazy washed out drug rock space out, more tangled leads, swells of super distorted wah wah riffage, the drums wild and forceful, the whole song a massive lurching beast, building to a super chaotic psychedelic blowout, a speaker melting crescendo, drums colliding like atoms, the guitars whirling and howling, the vocals another hazy layer, everything locked into a churning hypnorock sprawl spreading out into the cosmos...
The cd comes in a cool mini lp style full color gatefold sleeve, the lp is housed in an eye popping super elaborate psychedelic silver foil metallic sleeve and is EXTREMELY limited....
Record number three from these Canadian punks, whose first two records were big faves around here even though they never made it onto the list. Their sound seems loosely aligned with Perfect Pussy, in that they're noisy, and have a bad ass female vocalist, but where Perfect Pussy embraces abrasive noisiness, White Lung are much more concerned with melody and songcraft, reminding us of a super charged Team Dresch, which is most definitely a good thing. The production on this new one is massive, the guitars heavy and almost metallic, splintering into shards of keening high end, swirls of angular crunch, all wound around a super tight rhythm section, and of course, vocalist Mish Way, who flits easily from feral how, to throaty croon, and the songs, so catchy and well crafted, the multiple guitars winding multiple melodic lines into killer harmonies, the sound dense and lush and layered, making for something that definitely transcends punk rock, it's anthemic, epic and majestic, but also super personal, and emotional, not hard to imagine White Lung being primo mixtape material, particularly vitriolic breakup mixtapes, it's got that sort of anger and energy and passion. So killer. Odds are you'll end up wanting the other two records as well (and we can get em for you, just ask!)...
The latest release from local label and psychedelic powerhouse Valley King is the latest record from stoner psych space rock visionaries White Manna, and like the two Holy Mountain records that came before, Come Down Safari, is another gloriously tripped out sonic sprawl, all hazy, buzzy throb and tranced out heart-of-the-sun mesmer, looooong tracks that seem to unfurl endlessly, the drums and bass weaving lush languorous backgrounds, that seem to pulse and ooze, over which the guitars soar and howl, melodic streaks blurred into heaving washes of chordal shimmer, riffs stretched out into druggy sonic mantras, the sound slipping effortlessly from churning psychedelic heaviness, to soporific, dream-drone drift, WM channeling the sound of their psychedelic forefathers, into heady, abstract sonic rituals, that manage to take the sound of classic early space rock and fuse it to a more modern take on retro psych.
Fans of the usual suspects (the Heads, White Hills, Mammatus, Carlton Melton, etc.) should already be WAY into these guys, and if they're not, this should fix that pretty quick.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, eye popping psychedelic picture disc artwork by Alan Forbes!
More heavy duty jammage from these Arcata hard psych space rockers, whose sound is often described as Hawkwind meets the Stooges, and not sure what else we can add cuz that's pretty dang spot on. This new one on UK psych/space label Cardinal Fuzz is a live set from Europe, recorded on tour in 2013, and finds the band unleashing their particular brand of heavy space rocking, all epic druggy sprawls of fuzzed out stoner stomp, and droney motorik fuzz rock drift, woozy, super melodic Sabbath like basslines and some seriously muscular drumming, all wrapped up in squalls of freaky guitar-noise and crunchy, buzzing riffage. The vocals are drawled and echo drenched, and surface throughout, but really, like most bands of their ilk, White Manna are all about the jams, and like their last record, Come Down Safari (originally a picture disc on Valley King, recently reissued on cd by Captcha) the band can jettison 'the song' at any point, and head for the heart of the sun, or the outer reaches of the cosmos, or the depths of some subterranean pit, filling whatever space they end up with oodles of psych freakout ("Acid Head"), but they can just as easily lock into straight up droned out, hard rocking psych pop ("Evil"), or sometimes that above mentioned Sabbathy vibe gets pushed right to the fore, with some super doomy heaviness ("X Ray"). Needless to say, heavy psych nerds and space rock headz are gonna want to grab one of these quick, before they're gone, and it's SUPER LIMITED, and on Cardinal Fuzz, so odds are they'll be gone before you know it.
Housed in a cool acid blotter sleeve. Includes a download too!
The return of White Medal. And that's MEDAL not METAL. There's nothing god fearing or white or light or positive or hopeful about the sound this grim horde spew forth. We had their 7" a while back, and it was a primo slab of blown out almost industrial sounding blackness. Like a black metal Godflesh, crossed with maybe some of the more raw stuff like Bone Awl or Ash Pool, but with a bit of post rock epic-ness mixed in. Not sure how all that stuff worked together but it did. We dug it big time.
So now here's release number two, this time a super limited cassette / patch combo, limited to 100 copies, and finds the band going in a bit more of a raw, old school black metal direction. Beginning with an awesome washed out creepy ambient intro, all clean guitar shimmer and dark moody creep, the band soon launch into a full on buzzy pound, the guitars murky and muddy, the drums a buried in the mix plod, the vocals weirdly effected, the whole thing gloriously gurgly and lo-fi, almost d-beat sounding at times, with some cool languid and woozy folky interludes.
The flip side is much more frenzied and furious and somehow even more-lo-fi, total washed out black buzz murk, everything wreathed in hiss and distortion and buried in an all mids and lows and no highs mix, making the sound almost sludgey and doomy even though the band is blasting frantically. So blurred and smeared, that the buzz and blast gets smudged into droning epic blackness, that occasionally slips back into crunch and chug, but more often swirls and shimmers, if the sound was even a tiny bit more washed out or even a little bit more lo-fi this could have ended up an awesome blackdrone record. Killer stuff. We definitely need to hear a full length from these guys one of these days.
Comes with a cool cassette sized embroidered black and white patch, featuring the band name, the legend: Tread The Earth, and a cool image of a strange skeletal figure wielding a scythe over a garden of what appears to be body parts.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!!! We got about 20, and after that we will not be able to get more.
Everyone into Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, Spacemen 3, Loop, A Place To Bury Strangers, Swervedriver, Black Angels, The Heads, White Hills, Lumerians, Mugstar, Monster Magnet, Serena-Maneesh, Telescopes and similarly drugged out, psychedelic hypnorock, best make some space in your music collection for this, the latest addition to your blissed out space-psych drug rock section (what? doesn't everyone have one of those?), the debut from Welsh space rockers White Noise Sound, who pretty much sound exactly like a heavier, modernized Spacemen 3, all it'll take is a couple minutes of record opener "August", with its motorik drum machine, sung/spoken vox, looped psych guitar mesmer, and then when the band kicks in proper, heavy guitars and propulsive drumming, explosive and hypnotic and if you're anything like us, which we're guessing you probably are, you're done for, just let yourself be pulled under, and dragged along through thick billowing clouds of psychedelic effects, of gloriously bleary drugged out churn and chug, surprising female harmony vocals, wild squalls of psychedelic leads, buzzing sitars, whirring synths, heck there's even some glockenspiel! To be honest it took us a while to get further into the record, as we found ourselves playing that first jam over and over and over.
But it's worth the effort, the whole record is gorgeously lysergic, slipping from propulsive drone rockers like the opener, to tripped out blissy drifts like the follow up "It Is There For You", with its tinkling chimes, clouds of cymbal shimmer, skeletal guitar strum, and motorik pulse, spaced out and spacious. But even those mellow ones build to serious freak outs, the guitars exploding in shards of prismatic shimmer, coruscating sheets of feedback drenched melody, Hawkwinded heart of the sun jams that could (and should) go on forever and ever. In fact, the record for all its explosive moments, definitely spends more time in hazy, druggy, dreamy bliss out mode, letting the synths and sitars weave gloriously gauzy expanses of weightless sonic shimmer and softly pulsing kosmische drift, which only makes the heavier parts that much more dramatic and kick ass.
We first discovered French electro-grind-metal-psych-whatthefuck duo Whourkr a year or two back when we got their debut record, Naat, which totally blew us away, it sounded like a malfunctioning metal record and a freaked out techno record, all scrambled up together, tangled up and spit out, a skittering, skipping, looped, grinding chunk of electronic metal weirdness. The vocals would howl, but then get processed and looped and would become something else altogether, the drums and guitars were so gnarled and stretched and twisted up, that the band could explode into flurries of rapidfire mathematical grind, way faster and more complex and convoluted than any human could possible play. It was a total headfuck. Like the fastest freakiest grind, made even faster and freakier, but with a little techno thrown in for good measure. Remember the Drum>MachineGun compilation, of insane drum machine driven grind? Whourkr makes that stuff sound so so tame in comparison.
We tried and tried to track down copies for the store, but never had any luck, and then we heard that Crucial Blast would be releasing the NEW Whourkr, so we waited and waited, and now it's finally here, and it's totally different than the first one (or at least how we remember the first one), way poppier and more melodic, like the band are now actually composing songs instead of throwing all the sounds in a blender to see what comes out (not that we don't dig that too!), it's way poppier, catchier, but still totally and utterly freaked out and glitchy and fucked up beyond belief.
Chugging guitars and shrieked vox are chopped and spliced into a hyperspeed deathmetal Melt Banana, all the sounds constantly shifting, the tempo changing, the rhythms colliding and hiccuping, occasionally coalescing into full on grooves, other times splintering into bursts of electronic freakouts, and there are serious hooks happening too, it doesn't seem possible that music like this could be listenable, let alone catchy, but it is. Big time. We'll be the first to admit, that the other Whourkr record was difficult listening, brutal and to many ears annoying, and yeah, the same might be said for Concrete as well, but the band are so much better now, in terms of composition and songwriting, that once you're immersed in their fucked up and freaked out soundworld, it becomes surprisingly easy to acclimate to the rapidly and constantly shifting sounds and rhythms, in order to enjoy the songs themselves. Plus the vocals seem to play a much larger role, not just howls and shrieks, there are plenty of clean vox, soaring almost operatic, low AND high, wrapped around frenzied riffing, wound up into spiralling psychedelic freakouts, or like the instruments, chopped into crazed stutterscapes.
Take the track "Santo", with its deep crooned vox and acoustic guitars, sounding almost like Circle, the electronic effects very subtle at first, before the track lurches into full on doom, the voices and guitars just slightly glitched, eventually giving way to gorgeous delicate piano, only to be obliterated by the next track "Skovsnails", a little burst of drums, and a crazy clipped main riff, it almost sounds like some insane DJ remixing Orthrelm, the song stutters and lurches and hiccups, totally frenetic and relentless. The record dips its toes into all sorts of weird sounds, loping moody electronic downtempo, albeit a little fractured, head spinning hyper grind, shot through with unlikely pop hooks, glitched out death metal, soaring slow building post rocky drama, and more Melt Banana-esque grind pop, but nothing here sounds thrown together, or hodge podge, this is a baffling collection of sounds, but one that is meticulously composed, performed and recorded, and for those in the market for something truly demented, insane, extreme and heavy, not to mention out-there, and pretty much entirely unlike anything you've ever heard before, be next to impossibly to top Whourkr. Definite contender for metal record of the year, even though calling it a metal record is selling it WAY short. Regardless, absolutely recommended.
And, for a limited time (next couple of weeks, until February 2nd 2010), we'll be selling this for a special $2 discount off the regular price, which would normally be $13.98.
Those who worship at the altar of all that is slow and low and heavy and sludgey and doomy and droney, you must now bow before a new lord, the duo from New York known simply as Wicked King Wicker. After three records, each heavier than the last, comes Borne Black, a sprawling black sun explosion of creepy crawly riffage, lumbering lugubrious tempos, tarpit sludge, and spaced out abstract buzz and shimmer, if you fancy Moss, Bunkur, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, SUNNO))), Wolf Eyes, Khanate, Skullflower, Human Quena Orchestra, Monarch, Corrupted, Otesanek, Habsyll, and all the various other denizens of the inky black dronedirgedoom underworld, and have yet to hear WKW, you are in for a treat. That is, if a treat for you is two guys all dressed in black, mere shadows, pummeling you to within an inch of your life with bloodied guitars, tossing your limp form into a freshly dug grave, before toppling a Guitar Center's worth of amplifiers into the hole, then burying you alive, before pushing the amps, the bloody guitars and your mangled corpse across an endless expanse of blackened filth and debris with a massive demonic KILLdozer. That's kind of what it feels like listening to Borne Black, five lengthy tracks of ultra slow riffing, and black ambient soundscaping. And while these guys can lean their guitars against the amps with the best of 'em, conjuring up thick black clouds of noxious low end slither, they are also masters of the RIFF, and most of these songs do in in fact contain riffs, not always right up in front, but the songs are driven by the riff, giving them more weight, more heaviness, and making them sound way more METAL than most of their contemporaries.
Just have a listen to album opener "There Is Only Pain", a crushing descending, depressive doom riff, that just churns relentlessly, pounding away, a gloriously miserablist sonic trudge, all amidst a constantly swirling field of white noise, static buzz, and caustic feedback. Over the course of 10 + minutes, the riff, and the demonic vokills that accompany it, sing slowly into the abyss, as the swirling clouds of noise around it grow more and more thick, the main riff eventually crumbles into a tangle of what sounds like drum machine and electronics, before finally disappearing completely in a doomic haze of black psychedelic power electronics. Woah. We could stop right there, and you'd definitely be getting your $12 worth. But there's nearly 40 minutes of 'wickedness' to go...
Woozy washed out shimmer gives way to ultra distorted crunch, which in turn gives way to some post industrial noise drenched pummel. Murky groaning ambience spreads out like some black fog, underneath which delicate melodies struggle for air, the textures shift and the layers roil, before an insanely distorted riff emerges, the distortion so thick and crumbling and blown out, it's difficult to discern the actual notes, that riff plays out, transforming as it goes from sharp caustic crunch, to muddy murky mumble, always wrapped in bellowed vox and a steady barrage of FX-saturated noize, until finally, the 13 minute noise doom dirge of album closer "They Are Suffering Alone And Terrified", a feedback slathered stumble through a field of erratic metallic buzz, chugging grinding guitarnoise and weirdly dubbed out drums, a twisting tangled bout of abstract heaviness, so corrosive and chaotic, any semblance of metal can only be glimpsed through a constantly heaving haze of blackened fury.
Fucking awesome, and definitely some seriously difficult listening, but for the legions of the slow and low, who can't ever seem to get enough glacial, near static, demonically riff-ed, doom-ed blacknoize, then Borne Black is yet another gloriously grim missive from the darkside, another black sonic stone to hurl at the heavens, as let these sounds drag you further into the fiery deep.
WAY recommended!!
We had never heard of this NY band before but HOLY SHIT. A serious new contender for sure in the ever expanding world of crushing slow motion ultra doom-dirge-dronemusick. Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, SUNNO))), Skullflower, Khanate, Wolf Eyes, Bunkur, etc. Any of those names get your blood boiling, then WKW just might be your favorite new band.
Flydust is WKW's latest offering, two tracks, both taking up a whole side, each a harrowing black expanse of crumbling, buzzing, churning heaviness. A sprawling, bottomless sea of throbbing, pulsing downtuned lowend buzz, roiling distorted drones, all murky and muddy and smeared into constantly shifting layers and textures, abrasive and chaotic, but washed out into a single heaving organic black expanse. Over the top, a weirdly motorik drumbeat, locked into a neverending rhythm, looped and hypnotic, and over that, super creepy vocals, equal parts death metal gurgle, and tortured anguished howl. The sound is mostly monochromatic, but the sounds shift and the textures transform, moments of melody surface here and there amidst the long stretches of near static blur and buzz, the vocals almost like another instrument, another black layer, all tangled up into an abject, blackened and brutal otherworldly kraut-doom. Harrowing, mesmerizing, buzzing, grinding and blown out, fucked up and abrasive, but simultaneously hypnotic and in its own brutal and punishing way, strangely beautiful.
VINYL ONLY. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one has a hand drawn inner sleeve, customized (i.e. scribbled on) by the band, every one unique.
Brand new slab of extreme ultra low end slow motion doom-ed brutality from this NY outfit, whose last few records have left us beaten and bloodied and jonesing for more.
These guys have been around for a while apparently, but we only discovered their beautifully caustic downtuned din last year, with two records, their s/t debut (re-listed elsewhere on this week's update) and their second record Flydust. Both pushed all the right buttons, SUNNO))), Skullflower, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Khanate, Bunkur, Moss, just unbelievable heavy and sludgy, blackened and glacial, dripping and oozing with atmosphere, textures and drones, not just run of the mill sludge, or boring, lean-the-guitar-against-the-amp guitardrones, no, this was a band, rocking out full force, albeit insanely slow, and crushingly intense. So here comes record number three, another super limited lp only release, two sidelong tracks, and hell, if it doesn't leave the other two in the dust.
We're listening to it at 33, which sounds perfect, but it sounds pretty bad ass at 45 too, and still slow and sludgey, EVEN at 45, but slower is better, and this is slow and thick and viscous and so so so heavy. All built on a super stripped down bass riff, the bass super distorted and crumbling, unfurling an impossibly slow doom-ic anti-groove, over and over and over, cyclical and hypnotic and trance like, ultra minimal, but in no way boring or simple, just mesmerizing, while all around that riff, the rest of the band fills up whatever empty space is left with, massive sheets of buzz and whir, distorted effects everywhere, layers upon layers, drones and textures, feedback and incidental melodies, all being dragged along in the wake of that main bass riff behemoth. Not sure how they do it, but the sound, beyond heavy, and drone-y, is super musical, and while not quite melodic, there is some melody buried under all that murk and grime, it's like super blown out space rock, slowed down to 3 or 4 rpm, still retaining some of it's blissed out spaciness, but setting it amidst a roiling sea of black sonic tar and creeping, lurching, lumbering heaviness.
The flipside, another side long black drone sludge doom epic, seems to have been birthed out of the same grim black sound hole that produced the first side, the same lugubrious creep, the same grim blackened atmosphere, but here that riff has been pulled apart, whatever black beasts lurk in the shadows has torn it to pieces, leaving just shards and fragments, a swirling churning chaos of dense processed low end, crumbling distortion, deep fractured drones, more atmospheric and ambient than the first side, but just as harsh and hellish and heavy. Imagine building a massive roaring fire, then taking a load of guitars and amps, all plugged in, cranked, and howling and moaning and feeding back, and tossing them into the fire, letting them twist and ooze and smoke, recording the sound of the guitars and amps dying, melting, slowly fusing into one charred blackened heap of blistered and blown out buzz. It's kind of like that.
Awesome packaging too, thick clear plastic sleeves, silkscreened in white, over a red slab of vinyl with no labels, and a printed single panel insert, with three tiny Dore woodcut cards bearing the band's initials. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
We had never heard of this NY band before but HOLY SHIT. A serious new contender for sure in the ever expanding world of crushing slow motion ultra doom-dirge-dronemusick. Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, SUNNO))), Skullflower, Khanate, Wolf Eyes, Bunkur, etc. Any of those names get your blood boiling, then WKW just might be your favorite new band.
This WKW's self titled debut, and is in some ways even heavier and more blown out than Flydust (reviewed elsewhere on this list). The root sound is similar, a heaving morass of crumbling superdistorted guitars, but where as Flydust is murky and muddy and washed out, the sound here is prickly and cacophonous, abrasive and sort of sharp. The sound is also more propulsive, more distinct riffs, dripping with in-the-red distortion and twisted FX. The opening track is one single ascending riff, looped over and over and over and over, pounding its way through a dense cloud of impossibly thick buzz, the drums a buried plod, the vocals, barely audible through the churning mass of unfurling riffs and a constantly expanding wall of sound. The strange thing is, there is a definite groove lurking underneath, loping and lurching, but groovy nonetheless. Think Godflesh or Pitchshifter mixed with Ramleh and Wolf Eyes, but super charged and revved up, and dipped in a psychedelic concoction of tripped out prismatic psychrock filigree and blown out amp destroying drone drenched doom.
But the second track is a whole different beast altogether, a stretched out slowed down distorted riff, unfurled in slow motion, very reminiscent of Earth 2, but peppered with simple spare drumming, only barely, until about halfway through when the sound is swallowed up but a wall of distorted sound much more like the opening track, and suddenly the sound is transformed into a blown out acid-doused blast of crumbling blacknoise.
The last two tracks offer up more of the same, varying degrees of forward momentum, of spaced out ur-drone, of in-the-red effects, pounding abstract percussion, all draped over near static whitenoise buzz, weird krauty grooves, woozy metallic crawls, pulsing metallic ambience, and heavy heavy hypnotic dirgedoomdronemusick.
The lp is limited to 490 copies, pressed on purple vinyl, the cd is limited to 1000 copies.
It's been ages since we've reviewed anything from aQ beloved soundmaker Simon Wickham-Smith, but A Seventh Persimmon is the perfect way to get reacquainted. Three long tracks, totalling over 60 minutes, all three minimal and delicate, the first mostly piano, gently and barely effected, the notes allowed plenty of time to drift and hover and decay, very Eno-esque for sure, but filtered through that distinctly DIY, underground cd-r filter, adding grit and texture, some lo-fi whir and hiss, to an otherwise gorgeously ephemeral drift. The second track is even more minimal, a symphony of barely there buzz, processed and sculpted into strange abstract shapes, as if W-S composed the track using just the buzz of various household appliances, the fridge, the computer, the heater, all emanating that whispery hiss, but then, strange glitchy almost-vocals surface, burbling up from below, peppering the otherwise microscopic landscape of muted buzz.
The closing track is epic, a tumbling multicolored array of warm glowing tones, underwater textures, tangled dizzying melodies, like a symphony of calliopes playing on the ocean floor, or that first track looped and layered over and over and over, skittery, warped, warbly, woozy, streaks and blurs and smears, processed and looped, shimmering and swooping backwards and forwards, soft focus, a meticulously jumbled bit of underwater psychedelica, nods to Oval for sure, rendered in a slow sifting stasis, a waking dreamstate, where sounds and colors and shapes merge into sweet sweet music.
What would a cd-r label be without a contribution from AQ fave Simon Wickham-Smith? And it seems like he can do no wrong. Two 35 minute tracks of shimmering, crystalline, high end tinkle, keening synth melodies, and warbly low-end pulses. Track one sounds like Sunroof! playing Ravi Shankar, or a raga version of Tubular Bells played by the Dead C. or something. A static, drone ritual with superdistorted vocals that wail otherworldly spirituals over the gorgeous din.
There's that kind of song / piece that I never get tired of, those epic, endless high end modern ragas, all wailing feedback ans upper register shimmer. That thing that Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Sunroof!), Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel), Neil Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra), and a few others seem to be able to unleash effortlessly. Well, if you hadn't already, add Wickham-Smith to this exclusive group of noisemakers and use the second track on Dyro to make your case. This has everything you could want. Gorgeous, droning, gauze-y, otherworldly, transcendental and just fucking perfect.
Sometimes the true test of a record, is how many times you can listen to it in a row, and the first time we threw on the new EP from East Coast dream folk duo Widowspeak, we ended up laying it nonstop for at least an hour. Every time it ended, all we wanted to do was start it over again. Like the Almanac full length before it, The Swamps, is dark and lush and luxurious, the opener, dirgey and swampy, stripped down and wreathed in weird FX and field recordings, but after that, it's back to that fuzzy, dreamy, drifty sound that has us so in love with Almanac. The vocals breath and ethereal, floating above acoustic guitars, minimal percussion, and soft swirls of gauze-y ambience. Hooks galore too, and impossibly lovely vocal harmonies. The slower tracks are definitely reminiscent of Mazzy Star, check out "Calico", all wasted and woozy, and darkly dreamy, a strummy, sun dappled dream-folk dirge. The rest of the ep splits the difference between jangly pop, and more laid back dirge-folk, culminating in the closing title track, which is a haunting backwoods ballad, lush and layered, the music a softly swirling, elegantly strummed backdrop for those angelic vocals. Dreamy. And we're gonna listen to the whole thing, again, right, NOW...
Wigrid is a one-(Ger)man band that plays raw black metal definitely influenced by the notorious Burzum. Indeed, as you become enveloped in the depressive, distorted, plodding fuzz-forest of Wigrid's imagination, you'll be convinced that such unending grimness hasn't been inflicted upon the world since before the incarceration of Varg Vikernes, aka Burzum. Wigrid's massive, murky wall of fuzz, with desperate, screamed vocals lost behind it, marches slowly ever onward, with primitive, minor-key melodies subliminally effecting your soul. The sparse, pulsing drum machine hits are similarily buried in the repetitive guitar riff-stortion. Nothing fancy, or that original (the cover drawing even looks suspiciously like it was borrowed from Burzum's "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss"), but wholly satisfying if this is a mood that interests you. Submitting to Wigrid's monotonous yet majestic misery and cold, cold anguish is a release. It's trancey and hypnotic and ambiently ear-grinding. For fans of "Hvis..." / "Filosofem" era Burzum (duh), Weakling, and other troglodytic, minimal dirge metal.
You know we love the fucked up black metal here at aQ. This is sooooo up our alley in that regard. DIY, lo-fi, totally outsider WTF? stuff. Makes Striborg and Abruptum and Ildjarn and the rest sound like the Tonight Show band. Twisted, raw, black primitivism, only for the true klvt worshippers of blacknoize ritualism and caveman blackbuzz.
We first encountered Wikkid - and seriously, "encounter" is the word, we know we talk about outsider this and that, but this guy is legitimately strange, we know we've met him, and really when he comes in the store, we get a little bit starstruck, you might say, more so than we would for a "real" black metal celebrity. Heck, he invented his own religion called The Black Ism (?!?), more on that later on. As we were saying, we first encountered Wikkid when he brought us a release called The Intro, and we wrote up a big review of it, but he never ending up bringing us more, so we couldn't list it even though we really wanted to - though we did get to eventually list a disc by Wikkid's ambient alter-ego Alturaz, and a Wikkid/Alturaz split too.
But now The Intro has at last been repressed (though mysteriously minus two tracks), in the form of a double cd, paired with another, new Wikkid recording entitled Chapter 1. And, on top of that, there are now also TWO MORE double cds of other Wikkid material. We suggest you get them all. You have to get them all. Particularly since they're so cheap (and by the way, we might have accidentally sold some at a higher price, if you're one of those people, please get in touch).
So, here's the review we originally wrote for The Intro disc: We were sold on this one before we heard a single note. Based entirely on the cover art. Which is essentially a crude cut and paste, black and white Xerox, of the band name, which is Wikkid by the way, on there twice, along with the title, The Intro, also in two different places, a white smudge and some sort of cut out grid, and most telling of all, a ready made description of Wikkid: 1 Man Black Metal Band, Bay Area California. At first we weren't sure if that was maybe part of the title or what. We're still not sure. But we were psyched. We had been missing home brewed DIY black metal, and this is most definitely that, primo outsider one man BM, raw and primitive, super lo-fi, abstract and trippy and seriously goddamn grim and kvlt. The guitars are sharp and angular, brittle and buzzy, the vocals a monstrous bellow, black shadowy exhalations, the drums stumbling sort-of-blast beats, the music a dense, noisy, chaotic black tangle, lurching and lumbering, collapsing into dense swirls of nearly free blackness, before the second track lurches in, a creeping slo-mo black doom, the drums WAY up in the mix, the vocals too, the guitars a brittle insectoid buzz that's barely audible, minus the occasional shredding squall. And so it goes, the next track ramps it back up to buzzing blast, again, lumbering and on the verge of collapse, the vokills here a garbled, grunted speaking in tongues, the guitars murky and blurry black smears, the tempo fluctuating constantly, the sound woozy and washed out, pure underground blackness, that's so underground, it's seemingly from a DIFFERENT underground than the rest of the stuff we hear.
So, we wrote all that about what's now the first disc of the The Intro/Chapter 1 2cd release. We won't delve so fully into the other Wikkids, except to say, they're equally insane and amazing. More stumbling drums, more distorted vox, more disturbing thoughts, more murky guitar drone. If you get one Wikkid, you need 'em all, they're definitely a set, all of 'em basically having that same crude cover design, slightly altered from The Intro's template in ways that almost don't even make sense. Again, sheer WTF? genius. And super duper confusing. Then, one realizes that each disc in each double cd set is really short. Really, really short. Like, five or six minutes! (And the last track on one of 'em even ends with almost a minute of silence!) All six discs probably could have fit on a single cd. (But, they ARE cheap.) And again, in part, that's kind of what's so brilliant, there's just so much WTF? to Wikkid, it's astonishing. Wikkid is almost the black metal Fastest, if you know what we mean.
Oh, to give you a little bit more of an idea about what Wikkid is all about, on his website, there's a page of "definitions", here are two particularly helpful ones:
THE BLACK ISM - A new religion of black/dark musics & money for laws & guidance. Realism, Naturalism, Shamanism, Selfism & Wikkism as core beliefs.
WIKKIDISM - Playing a wicked black metal track on repeat at highest volume until you reach "ISM".
Aha, maybe that's why these discs are so short - you're supposed to play each track on repeat, anyway!!
You know we love the fucked up black metal here at aQ. This is sooooo up our alley in that regard. DIY, lo-fi, totally outsider WTF? stuff. Makes Striborg and Abruptum and Ildjarn and the rest sound like the Tonight Show band. Twisted, raw, black primitivism, only for the true klvt worshippers of blacknoize ritualism and caveman blackbuzz.
We first encountered Wikkid - and seriously, "encounter" is the word, we know we talk about outsider this and that, but this guy is legitimately strange, we know we've met him, and really when he comes in the store, we get a little bit starstruck, you might say, more so than we would for a "real" black metal celebrity. Heck, he invented his own religion called The Black Ism (?!?), more on that later on. As we were saying, we first encountered Wikkid when he brought us a release called The Intro, and we wrote up a big review of it, but he never ending up bringing us more, so we couldn't list it even though we really wanted to - though we did get to eventually list a disc by Wikkid's ambient alter-ego Alturaz, and a Wikkid/Alturaz split too.
But now The Intro has at last been repressed (though mysteriously minus two tracks), in the form of a double cd, paired with another, new Wikkid recording entitled Chapter 1. And, on top of that, there are now also TWO MORE double cds of other Wikkid material. We suggest you get them all. You have to get them all. Particularly since they're so cheap (and by the way, we might have accidentally sold some at a higher price, if you're one of those people, please get in touch).
So, here's the review we originally wrote for The Intro disc: We were sold on this one before we heard a single note. Based entirely on the cover art. Which is essentially a crude cut and paste, black and white Xerox, of the band name, which is Wikkid by the way, on there twice, along with the title, The Intro, also in two different places, a white smudge and some sort of cut out grid, and most telling of all, a ready made description of Wikkid: 1 Man Black Metal Band, Bay Area California. At first we weren't sure if that was maybe part of the title or what. We're still not sure. But we were psyched. We had been missing home brewed DIY black metal, and this is most definitely that, primo outsider one man BM, raw and primitive, super lo-fi, abstract and trippy and seriously goddamn grim and kvlt. The guitars are sharp and angular, brittle and buzzy, the vocals a monstrous bellow, black shadowy exhalations, the drums stumbling sort-of-blast beats, the music a dense, noisy, chaotic black tangle, lurching and lumbering, collapsing into dense swirls of nearly free blackness, before the second track lurches in, a creeping slo-mo black doom, the drums WAY up in the mix, the vocals too, the guitars a brittle insectoid buzz that's barely audible, minus the occasional shredding squall. And so it goes, the next track ramps it back up to buzzing blast, again, lumbering and on the verge of collapse, the vokills here a garbled, grunted speaking in tongues, the guitars murky and blurry black smears, the tempo fluctuating constantly, the sound woozy and washed out, pure underground blackness, that's so underground, it's seemingly from a DIFFERENT underground than the rest of the stuff we hear.
So, we wrote all that about what's now the first disc of the The Intro/Chapter 1 2cd release. We won't delve so fully into the other Wikkids, except to say, they're equally insane and amazing. More stumbling drums, more distorted vox, more disturbing thoughts, more murky guitar drone. If you get one Wikkid, you need 'em all, they're definitely a set, all of 'em basically having that same crude cover design, slightly altered from The Intro's template in ways that almost don't even make sense. Again, sheer WTF? genius. And super duper confusing. Then, one realizes that each disc in each double cd set is really short. Really, really short. Like, five or six minutes! (And the last track on one of 'em even ends with almost a minute of silence!) All six discs probably could have fit on a single cd. (But, they ARE cheap.) And again, in part, that's kind of what's so brilliant, there's just so much WTF? to Wikkid, it's astonishing. Wikkid is almost the black metal Fastest, if you know what we mean.
Oh, to give you a little bit more of an idea about what Wikkid is all about, on his website, there's a page of "definitions", here are two particularly helpful ones:
THE BLACK ISM - A new religion of black/dark musics & money for laws & guidance. Realism, Naturalism, Shamanism, Selfism & Wikkism as core beliefs.
WIKKIDISM - Playing a wicked black metal track on repeat at highest volume until you reach "ISM".
Aha, maybe that's why these discs are so short - you're supposed to play each track on repeat, anyway!!
You know we love the fucked up black metal here at aQ. This is sooooo up our alley in that regard. DIY, lo-fi, totally outsider WTF? stuff. Makes Striborg and Abruptum and Ildjarn and the rest sound like the Tonight Show band. Twisted, raw, black primitivism, only for the true klvt worshippers of blacknoize ritualism and caveman blackbuzz.
We first encountered Wikkid - and seriously, "encounter" is the word, we know we talk about outsider this and that, but this guy is legitimately strange, we know we've met him, and really when he comes in the store, we get a little bit starstruck, you might say, more so than we would for a "real" black metal celebrity. Heck, he invented his own religion called The Black Ism (?!?), more on that later on. As we were saying, we first encountered Wikkid when he brought us a release called The Intro, and we wrote up a big review of it, but he never ending up bringing us more, so we couldn't list it even though we really wanted to - though we did get to eventually list a disc by Wikkid's ambient alter-ego Alturaz, and a Wikkid/Alturaz split too.
But now The Intro has at last been repressed (though mysteriously minus two tracks), in the form of a double cd, paired with another, new Wikkid recording entitled Chapter 1. And, on top of that, there are now also TWO MORE double cds of other Wikkid material. We suggest you get them all. You have to get them all. Particularly since they're so cheap (and by the way, we might have accidentally sold some at a higher price, if you're one of those people, please get in touch).
So, here's the review we originally wrote for The Intro disc: We were sold on this one before we heard a single note. Based entirely on the cover art. Which is essentially a crude cut and paste, black and white Xerox, of the band name, which is Wikkid by the way, on there twice, along with the title, The Intro, also in two different places, a white smudge and some sort of cut out grid, and most telling of all, a ready made description of Wikkid: 1 Man Black Metal Band, Bay Area California. At first we weren't sure if that was maybe part of the title or what. We're still not sure. But we were psyched. We had been missing home brewed DIY black metal, and this is most definitely that, primo outsider one man BM, raw and primitive, super lo-fi, abstract and trippy and seriously goddamn grim and kvlt. The guitars are sharp and angular, brittle and buzzy, the vocals a monstrous bellow, black shadowy exhalations, the drums stumbling sort-of-blast beats, the music a dense, noisy, chaotic black tangle, lurching and lumbering, collapsing into dense swirls of nearly free blackness, before the second track lurches in, a creeping slo-mo black doom, the drums WAY up in the mix, the vocals too, the guitars a brittle insectoid buzz that's barely audible, minus the occasional shredding squall. And so it goes, the next track ramps it back up to buzzing blast, again, lumbering and on the verge of collapse, the vokills here a garbled, grunted speaking in tongues, the guitars murky and blurry black smears, the tempo fluctuating constantly, the sound woozy and washed out, pure underground blackness, that's so underground, it's seemingly from a DIFFERENT underground than the rest of the stuff we hear.
So, we wrote all that about what's now the first disc of the The Intro/Chapter 1 2cd release. We won't delve so fully into the other Wikkids, except to say, they're equally insane and amazing. More stumbling drums, more distorted vox, more disturbing thoughts, more murky guitar drone. If you get one Wikkid, you need 'em all, they're definitely a set, all of 'em basically having that same crude cover design, slightly altered from The Intro's template in ways that almost don't even make sense. Again, sheer WTF? genius. And super duper confusing. Then, one realizes that each disc in each double cd set is really short. Really, really short. Like, five or six minutes! (And the last track on one of 'em even ends with almost a minute of silence!) All six discs probably could have fit on a single cd. (But, they ARE cheap.) And again, in part, that's kind of what's so brilliant, there's just so much WTF? to Wikkid, it's astonishing. Wikkid is almost the black metal Fastest, if you know what we mean.
Oh, to give you a little bit more of an idea about what Wikkid is all about, on his website, there's a page of "definitions", here are two particularly helpful ones:
THE BLACK ISM - A new religion of black/dark musics & money for laws & guidance. Realism, Naturalism, Shamanism, Selfism & Wikkism as core beliefs.
WIKKIDISM - Playing a wicked black metal track on repeat at highest volume until you reach "ISM".
Aha, maybe that's why these discs are so short - you're supposed to play each track on repeat, anyway!!
I think the best part about this movie is the serendipity involved. It was meant to be just your typical "making of our record" documentary. But during the filming, band members were dismissed, the band was dropped, the label that dropped them ended up paying for the record AGAIN and re-signing them, and the record went on to unbelievable commercial and critical success. Which all contributes to making this film, as well as the extra goodies, emminently watchable. Windy thought it was trifle too contrivedly arty, filmed in black and white, very stylized, but I think it really suits the music, and the mood of much of the film. What should have been this exciting joyous occasion, making the best record of their careers, was marred by depressing setback after depressing setback. But as we all know, that makes for good watching!! The film itself is beautiful and slow paced. Lots to take in, but easy to be lulled by the music and the scenery. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Helps that I do love the record as well. The extras are what make this essential. A documentary on the making of the film, the theatrical trailer, a bunch of funny outtakes, some really ridiculous stage banter ("Your Mom is cock!"), some annoying outtakes of Jim O'Rourke hamming it up, meeting with fans and a bunch of other stuff. But it's all the extra music that makes this a must have. 17 additional Wilco songs, some unreleased, some different versions of songs from the album, performed live, in the studio, even in Jeff Tweedy's home while the cameraman's phone keeps ringing. And if I rememeber correctly there's even one or two Uncle Tupelo songs! Also comes with a big booklet full of liner notes, photos and the film maker's diary. And a pretty good deal at 24.00 for 2 DVDs! For anyone who loved Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, or loves Wilco, or loved Uncle Tupelo or who just wants to see a cool movie about a great band making a great record.
Warped druggy psychedelic metallic noise rock trio Wildildlife, who just so happen to features a former aQuarian amongst their ranks, always had a bit of pop in their sound, even at their most tripped out and damaged, when they were channeling Butthole Surfers and Gaye Bykers On Acid and God Bullies and Lubricated goat, their wild rhythmic blowouts were always laced with primo hooks and loads of melody, and it was that subtle poppy undercurrent, that kept them from being just another noisy rock band. But the thing was, before now, it seemed that it was mostly about the heaviness, and they were indeed heavy, sidling up alongside outfits like Harvey Milk, spitting out churning elephantine riffage and skull caving flurries of drum damage, if we had our way, we wouldn't have changed anything about Wildildlife. That is until we heard this.
It's like they're a whole different band. Not sure if it's a natural progression or if it's the influence of their new producer, Jennifer Herema of Royal Trux, but the new sound is downright GLAMMY, swaggery, and power poppy, the vocals, which used to be distorted and sped up and processed into strange chipmunk squeals, is now actual and proper singing, and as if to drive that whole glam thing home, there's sax now, and we generally HATE sax, but this is like Stooges / Hanoi Rocks sax, which means it rules, and it somehow just makes things sound even cooler.
The opening track might just be our new favorite jam, right out of the gate, it's total soaring fuzzy pop, chiming guitar melodies, warm synth swells, and then when the main riff kicks in, we're in classic Kiss territory, suddenly the picture on the back of the lp, that has the band all in white, the lens all vaselined, looking like seventies rockers Angel, makes WAY more sense. And actually, after more listens, it sounds less like Kiss, and more like Redd Kross cover Kiss, which is even better, slithery and swaggery an snotty and hooky but still heavy, but so glammy, right down to the little sexy exhalation of breath in the super short break. And somehow it seems appropriately self defeating that their catchiest and most accessible song is titled "Fuck That".
The follow up "I Want You Out" even furthers the whole Redd Kross / Kiss thing, but we're talking old Redd Kross, circa Teen Babes From Monsanto, when they were still heavy and a little dark, and way drugged out and psychedelic, "I Want You Out" is all big tribal drumming, downtuned riffs, even some handclaps, and more of those new vocals, and lots of bleating/skronking sax, that once the song gets going sounds like a glam metal version of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk". Not sure what the hell happened, but we most definitely want some of what they're having.
And the rest of the record unfurls in a similar fashion, classic rock riffs, are all wound up in a glittery haze, hooks are doused in fuzz and buzz and sent spinning into the space rock ether, but the band continue to mix it up, to confuse and confound. "Sometimes" is a folk ballad, dubbed out and drenched in low end synth buzz, acoustic guitars wrapped in reverb, the result a sort of apocalyptic doom folk, glitter style, only to lurch right into "Give In To Live", another Kiss/Thin Lizzy style glamrock groover, but here underpinned by some serious double kick drumming. "Stormbringer" (possibly a Deep Purple cover?) is an epic slow build of distorted vocals, gurgling synths, big drums, but instead of launching into full on glammed out noise rock mode, they lay back, and groove out, a sort of old school Hawkwind style space rock brooder that KILLS, and should have gone on for another 6 minutes. "Shiv" is a low slung, super distorted fuzz heavy churning creep, laced with glammy filigree, and finally, "Permanent Vacation" is the ultimate send off, you can almost imagine these guys on a huge stage, lit from behind with blinding showers of pyro, the drummer standing on his seat, winding up the crowd to clap along, the vocals gnarled and twisted, the guitars chiming and soaring, but instead of launching into the song proper, these guys stretch it out, adding weird rhythmic shifts, bits of mathy weirdness, all the while building and building, totally epic and majestic, before all the sounds are stripped away, leaving a weird warped melody, and some twisted drum machine skitter.
Remember about 1000 words ago we said something about never wanting these guys to change? What the hell were we thinking, sure we might miss the sheer heaviness and drugged out crush of the old Wildildlife, but it seems like a more than fair trade for the new, glammed out, super catchy, weirdo noisepop Wildildlife. Fuck yeah.
While they last, we have the super limited version on AMAZING colored vinyl, they are mostly clear, with weird spurts of color in the middle, mine looks like a bloody egg or something, and all the lps include a download coupon for a digital copy of the record as well!
While we were sad to see our coworker Matt leave us a while back, if it meant helping unleash the true force of the wild beast that is Wildildlife upon the world, then we're happy to have done our part.
As kick ass as their most recent full length was, playing live is where Wildildlife truly destroy, three mild mannered hairy dudes transformed into a fierce six legged, six armed, long haired, face melting, tripped out drug addled behemoth. And while their most recent tour was rife with drama, broken bones, stolen equipment and extortionist cabbies, the shows that did take place were the sort to not be soon forgotten. And while they were on the East Coast, they got to play live on the radio, on Brian Turner's show on WFMU, and this is the proof that it did indeed take place. Hard to imagine a band can kick up such a shitstorm with no crowd to react to, holed up in a little glass room, but Wilildlife bring it, hard.
They open with "Metal", from their full length, and manage to make it sound even more freaked out, the effected little girl vox have them channeling the Butthole Surfers even more than usual, the extended free-jam outro goes on for minutes, letting the band explore the outer reaches, before launching into another downtuned tribal workout. The sound is surprisingly clean, a few folks here like it even better than the record proper. Some of the songs are oldies, revamped and supercharged, some are altered versions of tracks from 6, those creepy high pitched vocals return throughout, and the band is on fire, the songs complex and convoluted but hooky and catchy as fuck, folks who bought the full length will for sure dig this. And if you've yet to discover the mysteries of Wildildlife, this is as good a place to start as any�
Plus there's a pretty funny interview with the trio at the end...
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, in a cool full color, three panel oversized cover, featuring some pictures of the band on tour, including an awesome shot of Matt perusing porn in the van, as well as a band member's button that says it all: "Let's face it... I'm cute!"
From right here in San Francisco, via Boston, comes this debut recording from Wildlife. And in the interest of being totally up front, we should tell you that we do actually have a vested interest in Wildlife, not only can SF always use another killer band to call its own, but we also got another amazing AQ employee out of the deal, Matt in mailorder, but all of that aside, this shit is seriously cool.
Opening with a hushed soundscape of record crackle (we're sold already!), a swirl of hiss and static and pops, underpinning thick bass thrums that shimmer like black clouds, while above this low end miasma hover simple muted guitars and huge drums way up in the mix (where they belong). Suddenly the sound is some sort of abstract slowcore indie doom, with beautiful drifting melodies, lugubrious tempos, all beneath a simple caveman plod and clouds of little effected guitar squiggles. The song eventually erupts into a massive downtuned crunch, thick waves of detuned riffage pile up beneath howled Stooges-y vocals wrapped in thick swaths of reverb, swaggering over the slippery tarpit dirge underneath. The song ends in a flurry of gorgeous harmonics, with shimmery distant angelic vocals, and strange dynamic shifts all tangled up with shards of angular jagged high end scrape and skree. Phew, and that's just the first song.
After a brief interlude, a strange cloud of ambient clatter, made up of blurred bits of fuzz and hiss, clockwork like rhythms as well as distant booming percussion, the band launch back into the rock, with a muted angular groove, not unlike Sonic Youth or Blonde Redhead with dense reverby guitars and simple tribal rhythms that build into a lurching sea sick stumble, with distorted shrieked vocals, swirls of feedback and moaning guitar wail before winding back down into a swirling dense coda of wild drumming and tangled squalls of blown out psych guitar.
The final track is a spare slab of creepy disembodied folk, thick stabs of tangled steel string dissonance wrapped in a bleak doomy ambience. A slow creeping monotone strum, with simple percussion and snarly vocals. The whole thing very sun baked with lots of reverb, a wild and clattery, Jandekian dirge folk work out that manages to be strangely epic and majestic.
We only have about twenty of these so we may run out quick. A repress is in the works, but it might be a while, so if you don't want to wait (and you definitely don't) then don't dawdle...
As hopefully you fondly recall, just a few weeks back, we made a double cd entitled Might Of The Planet Eater, by this eccentric Finnish outsider blackened industrial / electronica act, our freakin' Record Of The Week. 'Twas a sprawling and utterly bizarre set, part Pan Sonic, part power electronics, part (ir-)rhythmic occult ritual, apparently what happens when a Finnish black metal weirdo does DIY industrial experimentation. Weird and primitive and (to us) utterly awesome.
While we absolutely LOVE Will Over Matter, we'll readily admit they're, uh, possibly a difficult listen (but then, compared to some other things we sell, maybe not really). And fortunately a lot of you folks seemed to dig it! So, of course, we thought you'd want us to list this one too, an earlier album from Will Over Matter, also on Bestial Burst.
This disc is actually the first WOM we ever heard, preceding Might Of The Planet Eater by a couple years. What happened, is not long ago one of us came across a Will Over Matter track on the internet somewhere, got kind of obsessed, and was happy (and amused) to find that we actually already had one of their albums in stock!! That was this one, 9 To The Moon, which we'd apparently ordered from Bestial Burst a couple years ago (2009) when it came out, but never reviewed. The next time we did a Bestial Burst order, we also got the newer double cd, and, our obsession growing, decided to make it Record Of The Week. So all of you who liked that one, you want this too!
Again, outsider electronic electro-dirge, chock a block with squeaky squelchy static-y sounds, stuttering irregular rhythms, noisy glitchy distortion damage. Bloop zwoop zip zap. Buzzing electricity. Sinister analog synth. Computers gone haywire. The occasional disembodied, drugged out voice buried in the mix (heard on the plodding "No Waste Of Sorrow" and elsewhere). Yes, the blown out, black and white, lunar landscape (?) cover art is so appropriate for these alien, bleak, brutal sci-fi sounds, that are both confusional and compelling.
To recap, WOM is a one-man band, a project of Harald Mentor from equally insane AQ faves Ride For Revenge, allegedly a "black metal" act. WOM is not black metal (though Beherit did dabble in this direction once upon a time) but anyone who really appreciates Ride For Revenge, as well as anything totally fucked up, ought to enjoy it. And the esoteric themes of these songs (they ARE songs) are as out there as any black metal weirdness ever. The song titles aren't even provided, but the internet knows what they are.
While it's not a double disc like the other one we listed, there's 9 tracks, all of 'em long... with grand finale "The Burning Logic" building and building for over 8 minutes of crinkum crankum, industrial electro-dirge hypnosis. The whole thing is possibly dangerous headphone listening all right!
The awesomely titled Might Of The Planet Eater is the latest from mysterious Finnish one man band Will Over Matter, which just so happens to be the work of a fella by the name of Harald Mentor, who you might know better as the maniac behind avant outsider not-quite-black-metal weirdos Ride For Revenge. So if the low end rhythmic weirdness that is Ride For Revenge is one step removed from black metal, imagine Will Over Matter as about 5 or 6 steps past that. Not black metal at all, but more like some sort of outsider electronica.
Our obsession with Ride For Revenge stems from the fact that over the course of their career, their sound has changed to the point where they are now totally subverting and transforming the idea of black metal into something much more primal and rhythmic, forgoing the buzz and blast and replacing those obvious BM tropes with looped mesmer and tribal pound, stripping the sound down to its essence, and then slowing it down as well, sounding more to us like Aluk Todolo than Beherit. Although the mention of Beherit, another Finnish black metal institution seems particularly apt here, in that Beherit are infamous for their non-black metal output, their experimental electronics, which is precisely what Will Over Matter is. If Ride For Revenge is Mentor's twisted take on black metal, well then Will Over Matter is his skewed attempt at power electronics, or industrial music, channeling the spirit of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Whitehouse, and all the rest, but filtered through some sort of cracked and damaged blackened Finnish lens.
Will Over Matter combines the stripped down rhythmic minimalism of Ride For Revenge with experimental industrialism, melding lumbering beats to fields of spaced out static, wrapping sheets of Merzbowian noise around shuffling low end thrum and machinelike beats, adding distorted alien vox to squalls of glitched out electronics, or winding multiple streams of electronic information into strangely twisted sonic barrages.
The opening track here is a bizarre soundscape of chittery electronics, of twisted feedback and growled super distorted vocals, pelted by grinding crunch and skittering squelches, a strange array of bleeps and bloops, and buried within, a sort of almost rhythmic bit of ever shifting static, which leads directly into the next track, a droned out stretch of pulsing electronic shimmer, which manages to sound spaced out and sinister at the same time, the tone and timbre switching constantly creating, again, it's own sort of psychedelic rhythm. It's not until "Read The Signs", track number three, that the various elements coalesce into what is really the core of WoM's sound, another fluctuating field of static, of strange space-y electronics, bits of glitch and hiss, but wound around a lumbering, skeletal beat, some sort of alien krautrock, before switching gears, and becoming a weirdly propulsive throbbing electronica, but with elements of kraut/post/space rock, at it's most propulsive sounding a bit like Bastard Noise offshoot and former Record Of The Week-ers Geronimo, and at its least, like nothing you've ever heard before. The track offers up strange electronic squiggles, sinister high end buzz, all in the surface of trailing behind that motorik beat, which itself is in constant flux, cymbals popping out of the mix, processed and all dubby, while the various electronics get more and more tangled and frantic.
Then there's the sprawling 24 minute "Stone Cold Heart", a super spare and abstract stretch of blackened rhythms, and distant buzz and shimmer, that buzz, growing ever more insistent, the vocals here not so distorted, more ominous and intense, intoning some sort of ritual, over what almost sounds like a black metal Pole, minus the barrage of wildly buzzing synths, and primitive analog electronic tones.
One of our favorite tracks is the gorgeously droned out and hypnotic "Forever Nameless" that seems to inadvertently channel John Carpenter and Goblin, into something much more dark and sinister, a totally mesmerizing rhythm, wound up in a thick, corrosive buzzing low end melody, while way off in the distance, a Burzum like synth melody plays out, again reminding us of a less noisy Aluk Todolo, totally hypnotic, the vocals here are almost sung, wrapped in a weird warped distortion, the end result like some sort of doomy drone pop slowcore or something.
Throughout the remainder of these two discs, WoM stretch out strangely stiff rhythms, or pull apart robotic electro beats into weirdly metallic anti-grooves, which unwind lazily beneath hazy streaks of static, creating a series of tarpit crawls, often swallowed whole by heaving walls of electronic sound, that seem to emulate the sheer crumbling power of SUNNO))-like doomdronedirge, but are more often left to pulse, and pound, and throb, a strange alien death march, as the label describes these rituals, each ritual an "epic journey through inner knowledge, lunar madness and cosmic superpowers of satanic possession", the twisted bastard child of some dark forest, outer space ritualized mating of industrial music, black metal, power electronics and krautrock, brilliantly baffling and maddeningly mesmerizing, by now, it should be easy for you to tell if this is your cup of seriously spiked tea or not, and for most of you, we imagine it must be. Fans of Ride For Revenge, Aluk Todolo, Geronimo, Mammal, Bastard Noise, This Heat, spaced out ritualistic blackened electronics and fucked up Finnish weirdness, this one's for you...
