Wow. This first domestic release by veteran German pomp-prog-power-metallers Blind Guardian kinda blew us away (Andee and Allan that is). Expecting ultra cheese in the vein of Hammerfall, we instead found this to be immense, amazingly produced (like, 124 track) epic concept album, at once lush, melodic and aggressive. Imagine a more metallic Queen doing a record about J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, and that's what you get here! No wonder they're so huge overseas.
Experience the chilling terror of.... BLIZARO! Thrill to the nightmarish sensation that is... BLIZARO!
Enjoy the lovely melodies of... BLIZARO! Space out to the swirling sizzling synths of... BLIZARO!
Puzzle at the schizophrenic doom-prog-metal-soundscapes conjured by... BLIZARO!
Oh yeah, we've been waiting for this one for a while! Keen readers of the AQ list might recall mention of Blizaro in our review of the debut Crucifist release on Profound Lore, earlier this year. We mentioned that the guitarist from that blackened death-thrash entity, John Gallo (also of true doomsters Orodruin), had an awesome, eccentric synth-based side project called Blizaro, whom we'd experienced via some self-released cd-r's. Thus we were looking forward to Blizaro's upcoming full-length cd, and at long last, it's finally here! Like a mad scientist's lo-fi, DIY mashup of Goblin and Black Sabbath, Blizaro is right up our dark and creepy alley. Yours too we might imagine. It almost makes up for that Tony Tears album having gone out of print.
There's definitely plenty of metal bands who have taken inspiration from the classic Italian horror/suspense "giallo" cinema (and soundtracks), we're thinking Necrophagist, Hooded Menace, Cathedral, Moss, Acid Witch... and of course other musicians too, recent good examples being Zombi, Majeure, Magda, and Umberto. (Oh, and NightSatan, whose album we should soon have, too.) But Blizaro kind of take it to another, weirder level of worship. Blizaro is bizarro, yes that's for sure. Their sinister synthesis of Goblin/Sabbath has some off-kilter, confusional, sorta Sun City Girlish elements to it as well. It never really gets very metal, actually, but also stays away from the disco thing too.
Divided into two halves, one "Physical" and one "Mental", this disc offers up a deranged range of strangeness, from the fuzzed out Sabbathy psych riffage of "Midnight Lurkers" to the purely synthesized spacey suspensefulness of "Violet Cosmos". The eight minute opening epic, title track "City Of Living Nightmare", is a progged out tour de force of both gentle, eerie melodies and jagged martial metal riffage. It certainly sets the stage for what follows... cinematic symphonics, whispered vocal incantations, organ drones, monkish moans, sickly grooves, acid guitar soloing, druggy atmospheres... with song titles like "Eyes In The Caskets", "Catacomb Man", "Portallucinations", and "Ceremonial Bone Ritual". And then, at the opposite end of the album, as if to give credit where credit is due, Blizaro wind up the disc with a spot-on cover of Goblin's theme to Suspira! Almost unnecessary, after what's come before, but a nice touch nonetheless.
Quite recommended, especially to those who dig, say, both Osanna and Witchfinder General, or Fabio Frizzi and Paul Chain (all artists, among many others, that Blizaro cite as influences). Man, if only this were an actual soundtrack to an obscure old giallo, in the tradition of Argento and Fulci, we'd sure love to see that movie!!
So, people, if you dare, feel the embrace of the purple-hued, witch-haunted horror that is... BLIZARO!
To quote ourselves, prepare again to "feel the embrace of the purple-hued, witch-haunted horror that is... Blizaro!"
Yup, in reviewing this double disc journey into the violet cosmos of the prog/doom/soundtrack obsessed, mostly-one-man-band Blizaro, we would find it hard to top what we said about 'em before, in our review of the album we made a Record Of The Week back in 2010. That disc, City Of Living Nightmare, we likened to a mad scientist's lo-fi, DIY mashup of Goblin and Black Sabbath - a hybrid of psychedelic doom metal, synthesizer prog, and Italian giallo soundtracks that totally blew us away. That was followed by a split with female-fronted occult doom-deathsters Wooden Stake, also really great.
But what came before? Well, several homebrewed cd-r's worth of Blizaro music preceded the compact disc debut we had made Record Of The Week. Some of us here had tracked down copies of those, and ever since we've been hoping they'd get reissued so we could share 'em with you. In fact, we liked 'em so much, we got in touch with the man behind Blizaro, John Gallo (guitarist for Rochester, NY doom metallers Orodruin), and were "in talks" with him to re-release the these cd-r's together on a proper cd, via aQuarius, like we did with our White Hills and Carlton Melton Record Store Day discs! But then the Italian label I, Voidhanger stepped in and snatched Blizaro away from us - which is perfectly okay 'cause they really did such a great job putting together this nicely appointed package, which they expanded to two discs, not just one, incorporating not only the material from Blizaro's three pre-City cd-r's, but also a more recent recording we hadn't yet heard, plus a whole bunch of unreleased bonus tracks too.
Disc one of Strange Doorways consists of the tracks from Blizaro's The Old Wizard Of Winter (2009) and Black Magicians (2012) cd-rs, along with three extra unreleased tracks. Disc two's got the Horror Rock (2006) and Blue Tape (2008) cd-r's, and five extra cuts. 40 tracks in all! It's quite a varied array of material, all of it proving how amazingly talented and creative John Gallo is as a musician and songwriter. The music here ranges from creepy groovy stuff in the Goblin-y realm, to full on '70s hard rockin', to quirky prog epics, to strange synthesizer experiments, to classical guitar styled fantasias, and even echoed-out synthbass bunkurfunk. Lots to listen to, lots to like. The Old Wizard Of Winter stuff is heavily synth-based (originally recorded as a Christmas gift for relatives!!), mostly all Moog and organ, whereas elsewhere Gallo puts his electric guitar and quite a few other instruments to good use, his voice too, and gets a bit of help from friends, including his bandmates in Orodruin, and members of Revered Bizarre. BTW, Blizaro now has a membership of three, Gallo plus a drummer and bassist, so here's hoping they go on tour and we get to see 'em!
The thick cd booklet features pages and pages of track-by-track liner notes from Gallo himself, discussing his ideas, inspirations and equipment, how each track came together. Kinda writing his own review, he namechecks everyone from Goblin and Paul Chain to Vangelis and Tangerine Dream to Atomic Rooster and Arthur Brown. We can hear it all, for sure. Wow. We've heard plenty of bedroom recorded indie pop and electronica, black metal too, but eccentric progged-out proto-metal? Blizaro does that - and more - quite convincingly. Highly recommended of course.
Ukrainian black metallers Blood Of Kingu continue down the lefthand path, as their sound continues to move ever further from their earlier folk flecked roots, and if anything this latest one might be the best, and weirdest of the bunch so far, the new sound darker, and more denser, seemingly more raw and minimal the production too, lo-fi, but not shitty BM lo-fi, instead, all the sounds blur and bleed and ooze like some huge squirming slithering hell borne entity. But it's not just buzzing and blasting, although there is of course plenty of that, there's also some weirdly majestic percussion, just check out the opener, which seems locked into some seriously mesmerizing black buzz murk, even the vocals, are closer to a monstrous death metal cookie monster bellow, but all of those sound, when combined with the production, transform into some twisted dizzying psychedelic blackness, that at one point, explodes into something surprisingly (and subtly) melodic, complete with bombastic percussion booming in the background, while the guitars wind around each other into epic trills, and there even seems to be some buried shred, and then again, the song switches gears, and somehow gets faster and more furious, relentless and mesmerizing. Some of the coolest, weirdest, most original black buzz we've heard in ages.
And fear not, they haven't ditched their obsession with Sumerian and Egyptian mythology, nor have they totally abandoned the folky interludes, but you'll be hard pressed to think of any of that stuff once you're immersed in BoK's fucked up outsider black metal soundworld. Check out the second track, beginning with some haunting folkiness, but soon explodes into some seriously intense buzz, but when the vocals come in, they're a weird sort of choral croon just below the surface, and then later on, most of the buzz is peeled back, leaving but booming percussion, paired with relentless double kick drumming, some moaning guitar melody, and minimal vokills, it's crazy effective and evokes the creepiest of atmospheres, before swooping right back into it. Holy shit. We had forgotten how much we love Blood Of Kingu, and yeah, sure we love Drudkh, and Hateforest, and Lucifugum and Kladovest, and Astrofaes, and all the other bands these guys have played in, but Blood Of Kingu just might be the coolest, and the weirdest. And this record just might be our favorite so far...
It's been a while since we heard from Ukrainian black metallers Drudkh (and all of their albums seem to be currently out of print sad to say) or ambient side project Dark Ages (and of course Hate Forest, another band featuring the same members has been split up since 2005). So what has Drudkh mainman Roman Saenko been up to for the last little while? Why crafting an epic black metal album based around Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian mythology and histry of course! And this is it. Blood Of Kingu, a swirling blackened blast of buzzing guitars, blasting drums, buried vocals, soaring melodies, and the occasional traditional folk interlude. The root sound is not that far removed from older Drudkh or Hate Forest, but imagine that sound a bit more lo-fi, a little more drenched in buzz, the riffing more looped and cyclical, the mood more majestic and epic, and you'll get an idea of the Blood Of Kingu sound.
Each track is a drone drenched slab of relentless riffery, furious and lightning fast, the drums careening chaotically beneath a thick layered wall of frenzied buzz, the vocals chanted and almost like throat singing, super low in the mix, giving the proceedings a sort of ritualistic vibe, with each song made up of only really one or two parts, creating a super tense, ultra hypnotic black metal mesmer, with the guitars swirling occasionally into gorgeous surprisingly melodic harmonies, while below, the track continues to churn and thrash violently.
Fans of Drudkh and Hate Forest and other Ukrainian black hordes absolutely need this, as do folks who love their black metal drone-y and hypnotic and trancelike.
Second, also classic album from the famous late '60s jazz/R&B/rock group. Includes hits "You've Made Me So Very Happy" and "Spinning Wheel", plus their cover/jam on Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" and interpretations of themes by Erik Satie! Now digitally remastered, with two live bonus tracks and new liner notes.
Besides having an awesome band name (that perfectly suits their sound), and killer song titles ("My Ice Cream Fell On The Ground And Someone Ate It!", "Rotten Demon Shit", "Boo Boo Halloween"), these NY knuckle draggers specialize in the sort of down tuned caveman creep we can't ever seem to get enough of. Thick, gristled guitars that ooze, loooong songs that rumble and lumber, the sound lo-fi but still heavy, shrieked almost black metal sounding vokills, landing somewhere between the Body, Noothgrush, Megaton Leviathan and Prizehog, or like a way more home brewed punk rock Corrupted, these guys deal in abject doom sludge misery, but one that's shot through with all sorts of sonic weirdness, be it long stretches of hushed drift, weird breakdowns of barely there drums and distant guitar twang, or wild almost psychedelic squalls of swirling feedback and black noise skree. Oh and did we mention the creepy monk like vocals, or the strings, the free jazz drum splatter? At times sounding like No Neck Blues Band, at others like some strange minimal experimental soundscape, and at others sounding like some slow core dirge gone haywire. Twisted, trippy, heavy and KILLER. Super limited of course, swank packaging too.
Back in the nineties, for a while there, it was all about No Depression. Or Alt-country, or perhaps the worst genre identifier ever, Y'alternative. Painful to even type. Whatever you call it, modern country folks bands were everywhere, born of a love of punk rock, and classic country, blue grass and indie rock. THE No Depression band was of course Uncle Tupelo, who would go on to spawn Wilco and Son Volt, but back in the day, Uncle Tupelo were the shit, heavy and super rocking, raucous and wild, but always with plenty of twang and able to strip down to straight bluegrass at the drop of a hat. Their album No Depression is where the genre got its name (and that record of course was named for the Carter Family song), and Uncle Tupelo and their record, and the legion of bands that followed in their wake even inspired a magazine covering all the various No Depression bands. Richard Buckner, Whiskeytown (featuring Ryan Adams), Freakwater, Old 97's, Bad Livers, Jayhawks, Waco Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys, Pernice Brothers, Robbie Fulks, �Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Handsome Family, the Sadies, Tarnation, Be Good Tanyas, Split Lip Rayfield... We could go on and on, many of those bands continue to play today, a bunch broke up but various members went on to record on their own. Then there was Blue Mountain, a band that had brief flirtations with success, but seemed to continually hover just shy of the mainstream, which is a huge shame, as they were (and are, as far as we know) just as good as any of those other bands, if not better.�
Fronted by the husband and wife duo of Cary Hudson and Laurie Stirratt, Blue Mountain hewed sonically close to the No Depression blueprint created by Uncle Tupelo, that killer mix of crunchy guitars and classic twang, but where UT came from a much more punk rock background, Blue Mountain seemed to be much more purebred country. Hudson and Stirratt's vocals sounded perfect together, amazing harmonies, crunchy guitars, incredible hooks. Blue Mountain's first proper record, 1995's Dog Days, still ranks as one of the best record of the whole No Depression era. Some of the songs were dark and brooding and heavy, others were twangy and acoustic, folky and almost straight bluegrass, most were a mix of the two. But like always it was all about the songs, and the songs here are fantastic, totally catchy and timeless, and on top of the killer songs, Hudson has one of the best rock voices since Jay Farrar. Listen to the sound samples. If you dig Uncle Tupelo and any of the above mentioned bands, odds are you're gonna dig this. Definitely sounds as good as it did in 1995.�
The reissue tacks on a whole mess of bonus tracks, new liner notes, extra photos, and comes housed in a slipcase.
Finally, the very first cd release from Northwestern blacknoize terrorists Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, not a proper full length exactly, more a collection of odds and ends, a selection of out of print tracks, culled from various 7"s and 12"s and tapes, as well as a couple previously unreleased jams.
Those new to Blue Sabbath Black Cheer should definitely beware, the sound this dastardly duo conjure up is more noise than music, more drone than metal, yet it manages to be all of those things at once. They described their sound as "black acid bog death, blackened noise volume assault", and it most definitely is that, it's the sound of SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and Organum, mixed with black metal and dark ambience, power electronics and minimal dronemusic, and somehow molded into harsh and harrowing blackened buzzscapes, veering from full on caustic assault, to hushed mysterious creep, often in the same song.
One of the tracks here is from the Borre Fen lp, and of the various micro-releases represented here, that was the only one that we ever managed to get in the shop, which means for many folks, ourselves included, this is practically a new record.
From the opener "Untitled" (most of the tracks are titled "Untitled"!), a swirling buzzing cacophony of crumbling industrial whir, peppered with buried percussion, howled voices lost in the mix, keening sheets of feedback, and a fierce white noise blow out, to the follow up "Untitled", a much more minimal, bit of cinematic drift, still pretty ominous and spooky, but here it's about the drone, and the strange processed gurgling sounds underneath, the heartbeat like pulse, the fragmented melodies and the overall hellish vibe, to another "Untitled", another wash of minimal scrape and creak and groan and grind, shot through with minor key moodiness, and wreathed in warm layers of deeeeeeep whirring rumble.
The record's centerpiece is the 17+ minute track from Borre Fen, which oozes to the surface, a long death march trawl some bleak black underworld of sound, a roiling pit of blackness and despair, thick layers of black drone, processed tapes, field recordings, disembodied voices processed into still more drones, distant streaks of feedback, gurgled grunted 'vocals', rumbling, grinding stretches of abstract sound, fragments of melody drifting in a churning black sonic sea, creepy and dark and desolate and downtuned and very very evil. Besides the above mentioned bands, we also hear bits of Lustmord, Stalaggh, Wolf Eyes, Za Frumi (mostly for the Orc like vocals), Abruptum, Anenzephalia, MZ412...
The record finally finishes off with another "Untitled" track, which eschews all that low end for a 5 minute stretch of horror movie high end, stretched to its breaking point, some definite difficult listening, like some sort of boiling teapot / dog whistle dronejam, all over a grinding bit of crunchy rumble, finishing off the record, if not with a bang, then an ear piercing shriek.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Housed in super cool black on black cardboard sleeves, and for those that care, mastered by Herr Hans Grusel, of das infamous Krankenkabinet!
As more and more folks (foolishly & unfortunately in our view) choose to forgo physical media for immaterial downloads, it seems like it's as important as ever to make records special, as much collectible objects and storage devices for sound, as much cool tangible artifact from a band we care about as simply a conveyance for that band's music. And we're constantly amazed at the sort of incredible and unique packaging we see pass through aQ. Perhaps none more so that Equation Records who are constantly pushing the design envelope, with no regard for profit, hell, no regard for even breaking even, for them it's all about the art, the object, every release something special, that will be treasured, both for the sounds within, and all the amazing craziness that surrounds those sounds.
Which brings us to this. Amazing and crazy just scratches the surface. Three years in the works, an extended production rife with problems and complications, some deftly (and cleverly) incorporated right into the artwork. The record is in fact being sold significantly -below- its actual cost, which was appropriately exorbitant, based on the ridiculous and fantastical packaging. But before we get to that, let's talk music. This extreme packaging couldn't have been paired with a more appropriately extreme band, the Seattle doomdronedirge duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, whose infamous live Halloween night set is the focus of this release, presented here on a one sided silkscreened lp, a sidelong expanse of harrowing blackened minimalism, crashing gongs and billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, buzzing metallic thrum, that reminds us of an Organum record gone haywire. The metal buzz gradually processed into deep rib cage rattling drones and ominous low end tones, eventually melodies creep in, and the sound is transformed into an abject tarpit doom, peppered with blown out blasts of percussive crunch, and bursts of Merzbowian white noise, but always settling back into a deep, ominous thrum. Lion roar rumbles give way to keening moaning black buzz, downtuned and crumbling, all weirdly mournful and melodic, the whole thing laced with tortured vox, seriously harrowing and amazing. And as if that weren't enough, there's also a single sided 7", with an etched B side, the music a crumbling wall of super distorted power electronics style crunch, grinding slabs of corrosive textures and heaving buzz blurred into a weirdly meditative, but still seriously corrosive drone. And as if that STILL weren't enough, there's also a cd (not a cd-r), collecting a handful of rarities from various tape releases and splits, as well as some unreleased jams, the sounds varying from percussive post industrial pipe fight bombast, to droned out feedback drenched ambience, and from militaristic minimalism, to grinding blacknoise blowouts. Phew.
NOW we can talk about the packaging, which we should preface with the word MAGNETS!!! ("Fucking magnets, how do they work?!"), more on that in a second, but if you want a visual accounting of the packaging, check this out: http://youtu.be/ZthdRUqd68w
So yeah, there is a one sided lp, with a silkscreened B side. There was an issue with the silkscreening, so there's an insert affixed to the sleeve, explaining the situation. There's also a red vinyl 7", one sided, etched on the B side, and the aforementioned cd of rarities. The 7" comes in a proper picture sleeve with two 7"x7" pro-printed card inserts, the cd comes in it's own proper sleeve as well. Also includes is a silkscreen turntable slipmat, as well as a 12" by 24 poster. Add in 4 stickers, a 2-sided 12" pro-printed card insert, and two separate silk screened covers, each one affixed with magnets, the two sleeves magnetically adhered! There's also a 2" pin, a numbered certificate, all of this is housed in a thick PVC sleeve, sealed with a circular sticker, and on the front, is a sticker, with a description of the record in Latin, and a translation in English. Wow. Needless to say, this is a beauty, an extravagantly conceived and executed labor of love, that is even more impressive when you hold it in your grubby little paws.
LIMITED TO 235 COPIES!!! Guessing this won't be around for long!
Originally released as a super limited cassette (only 50 copies), this 10" (also way too limited at 300 copies) teams up our favorite demonic duo, with the awesomely monickered Dried Up Corpse for some deep dire noise drenched heaviness.
The BSBC side is about the prettiest thing they've ever done, which means it's still vile and sick and murky and ominous and fucked up, it's just that it's not so harsh, more muted and blurred and black ambient, than some of their other outings. A sprawling deeeeeeeeep doomscape, creeping black rumbles, demonic gurgles, distant foghorn like melodies, bits of muted percussion, plenty of buzzing grit and distorted feedback, but all smeared and woozy and subterranean sounding, a darkly demonic drift, that infuses what might otherwise be warm shimmering blackened ambience, with some seriously abject miserablism and gloom.
Dried Up Corpse counter BSBC's sensitive side with a caustic chunk of chaotic crunch. Beginning with some deep whirring rumbles, the track soon splinters into full on blunted white noise, skittery and fractured and totally blown out, all the while underpinned by that initial rumbling whir, eventually the noise peels back leaving a long stretch of deep softened buzz to play us out.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!! Gorgeous super thick hand screened sleeves, with nice two sided printed inserts.
Anyone paying attention will know that in the past few years, the unlikely nation of France has been churning out some of the most progressive, intelligent, and best black metal around. There's Deathspell Omega, Peste Noire, Spektr, and of course, the mighty Blut Aus Nord, a shadowy group who seamlessly blends synthy ambience with a relentless, yet interestingly controlled black metal assault. Seasick guitar riffs, plodding, often midtempo drums, and vocalist Vindsval's vile black metal rasp (and occasional operatic chant, no shit) meet up in an unholy union of strangely structured songs that are at once hallucinatory, majestic, and beautiful.
Blut Aus Nord possess a unique, cyclical style of songwriting, and even though we have no idea what they are saying, it is evident through titles that each song fits within a well defined philosophical theme. With names like "This Formless Sphere (Beyond the Reason)", "...the Meditant (Dialogue With the Stars)", and "Elevation", it's clear that the band's interest goes beyond any sort of juvenile take on Satanism, instead seeking to make sense of an endlessly unfathomable universe. Their albums seem to exist as esoteric and surreal dream worlds, and the band's intense, psychedelic approach isn't as much furious as it is contemplative. Within this potent mixture, they are also surprisingly "rocking".
Memoria Vetusta II - Dialogue With The Stars (part I, Fathers of the Icy Age, was released waaaaay back in 1996) starts with "Acceptance (Aske)", a GORGEOUS synthscape that sets the moody atmosphere for the next hour. It was interesting to watch customers enter the store during such a beautiful and melancholy piece, only to be hit with the loping, super blackened approach that kicks off the next track, "Disciple's Libration (Lost in the Nine Worlds)", which over the course of 9 minutes, manages to perfectly encapsulate everything that is so great about this band.
The impeccable production on this album certainly adds to its greatness. Clear and spacious, the music within sounds as if it has existed forever, created by a group of immortal mystics, not, you know, a couple of guys from France. In the end, we are presented with what will undoubtedly be one of the best metal records of 2009.
It's only been a year, but it feels like forever since we've heard from beloved French black metal weirdos Blut Aus Nord, so we were super psyched to discover this 4 way split with 3 unreleased BaN tracks, and even though the tracks aren't brand new (they're from a super limited 2004 10"), they definitely hit the spot. In a big way.
But besides the BaN tracks, this comp also features a new Blut Aus Nord side project called Karras that totally destroys as well. And as if that all weren't enough the other two bands are just as amazing and fucked up if not more so.
Let's start with the Blut Aus Nord tracks, what else do you need to know, three tracks, you've never heard em, they are gorgeously twisted and blackened, the guitars slithery and spidery, everything wrapped in a warm cocoon of prickly buzz, long stretches of bleak black ambience, haunted rumblings, mysterious warbles, epic blasts of buzzing blackness, swaths of seasick synths, creepy minor key melodies, very dark and depressive, mournful and almost cinematic, definitely ranks up there with some of our favorite Blut Aus Nord stuff ever.
The Karras track, an massive 11 minute blast of confusional chaos, takes the already damaged and demented sound of Blut Aus Nord eve further, everything more twisted and convoluted, the drums a blasting splatter, guitars swirling everywhere, thick sheets of buzz, creepy processed vocals gurgling and growling, twisted squiggly melodies all over the place, the guitars buzzy, but also murky and muddy and thick like tar, this roiling black madhouse, peppered with long stretches of totally tranquil near static ambient shimmer. But that's not all, huge chunks of industrial pummel, more vocals croaking and mewling, the drums a never ending torrent of spastic beats, blasting and pounding, finally breaking into a funeral doom dirge right near the end before spinning off into a cloud of black hiss. Holy shit. We NEED to hear more Karras. A totally mindblowing and physically exhausting schizophrenic doomed and damaged black metal assault.
Like we said before, that would most definitely be enough, but there are two other bands to dig into. First, blackened Spaniards Bloodoline, whose blasting blackness is peppered with awesome moaning string bends and slippery riffage, that makes their tracks sound all funhouse mirrored and weirdly warped, especially the first track "Voyage Till Death". The beginning of their second song even sounds a bit like Chavez, with dual tangled highend guitar melodies, eventually exploding into a relentless keening crush. The third just seals the deal with another black hole slab of black mayhem, but with a strangely melancholy and poppy undercurrent.
Finally, there's another French outfit, who appropriately shared that abovementioned 2004 10" with Blut Aus Nord. Their sound is more in line with BaN's modern metallic melancholic murk. Slightly industrial tinged, mournful with lots of blurred buzz. Plenty of black metal riffing, but the sound is washed out and near ambient, huge expanses of doomic misery, bookended by gnarled black riffs, much of the two tracks spent drifting through a black haze, or plodding machinelike through some abject blackened sonic wasteland. Creepy growled and chanted vocals, thick swaths of chordal fuzz�
Way recommended obviously, as we think would be anything else that can be tracked down by all four of these bands (and fear not, you know we're already working on it�)
At first we were thought maybe this was gonna be a collaboration and not a split, either way it would be a pretty perfect match up really, of two weirdo industrial tinged French black metal outfits, and a split it is, offering up three songs from each band.
The tracks from long time aQ faves Blut Aus Nord incorporate everything we love about these guys: woozy, psychedelic riffage, haunting spectral vocals, and chaotic, intricate drumming. The opener is surprisingly slow and melodic, bordering on epic doom, especially when the soaring, melancholic leads swoop in, and that depressive doominess bleeds right into the second track, with a gloomy, slowly descending main riff, and monk-like chant vox, draped over stuttery double kick drumming, and another bed of undulating riffage, smeared into something bordering more on hazy black psych, and again, the song blossoms into an aching, mournful doom, plodding and depressive, culminating in the final BaN track, which cranks up the temp a bit, and gets super proggy, without shedding the doomy sonic pallor, instead, it's a twisted prog-doom dirge, rife with haunting melodies, lush textures, and twisted, constantly shifting arrangements, the final moments driven by some super creepy demonic vox, over moaning guitars, and sputtering rhythms.
Which leads us directly into the P.H.O.B.O.S. tracks, which begins with something that sounds more like some blackened Wax Trax 12", all fractured rhythms, over a swirling backdrop of curdled black blur and tangled, mutated melodies, it's really only the gurglingly demonic vokills that make this black metal at all, otherwise, it's some mutant strain of blackened electronica or black industrial, but it is cool, and creepy. The second track introduces some proper riffage, but it's all looped and layered, sounding more like the Young Gods than proper black metal, but again, it works, tripped out and hypnotic, the smeared riffage wound around an almost-breakbeat, gloomy and atmospheric, spaced out and heavy, those vox again the blackest element, which is true of the closer too, and there, even the vocals are more washed out, reverie and echo drenched, but eventually, that track builds to an almost Godflesh sounding crescendo, pounding and metallic, but that metallic pound sounding way more like some lost nineties industrial jam than modern French black metal. So yeah, while we dig this a LOT, metalheads might be a bit disappointed by the lack of actual METAL. That said, fans of either/both of these bands should know by now to expect the unexpected...
It's been eight long years since we last heard from this much loved but mysterious electronic duo and every new release always seem to bring a lot of fanfare and debate. It's always a difficult proposition to have a highly anticipated release from a band with a devoted, perhaps even cultish, following, as it seems that everyone wants it to sound different enough from their classic sound yet still retain the same qualities that endeared you to that band in the first place. And of course, if it leans too close to either side of that spectrum, division occurs. Folks either find comfort in the familiar, or are completely indifferent. Or are thrilled by the new direction, or angered by it. Case in point, the last My Bloody Valentine record.
Boards of Canada have never deviated much from what they're best at: well composed and structured melodies that have a worn, warm and warbled sense of nostalgia. Aged library sounds, abstract organic design and educational nature film scores were often the heart of the bands reference points. On 2005's Campfire Phases they added more folk music atmospheres with delicate guitar work, but it wasn't significantly different from their most heralded and beloved release 1998's Music Has The Right To Children. Both records even had similar cover art, which of course had some fans crying foul!
So it's 2013 and we finally have a brand new record and it's definitely their most mature and complex record to date. We're also happy to report that it's fast becoming one of our favorite releases this year. While it has certain touchstones that make it sound distinctly like a BoC record, the feel overall is much darker, tense and moodier, reading like a score to some environmental science fiction film like Idaho Transfer or Phase IV (or more recently, Beyond The Black Rainbow!). Just check out some of the song titles: "Reach For the Dead", "Cold Earth", "Sick Times", "Come To Dust". Even the album title and the cover shot (of San Francisco, taken from the Alameda Naval Shipyards) gives off a Soylent Green vibe. The nostalgic quality that permeates the band's sound has a more toxic feel this time around too, as if hearkening back to a place now poisoned, a kind of daylight horror dread.
The opening track, "Gemini" starts out with a crackly filmstrip fanfare like from some old seventies educational film, and that sort of faded, gristly, sci-fi vibe pervades throughout the first track, a dark, blurred, fuzzy field of pulsing synths and ominous atmospheres, it's immediately evident, that the new BoC is a much darker beast than the group who brought us the pastoral, autumnal Music Has The Right To Children. Even when the second track kicks in, the sound remains shadowy and sinister, the pulsing rhythm wreathed in a field of crackle. The sound does eventually lighten a bit, processed voices drift in (reminding us of The Conet Project!), rumbling bass melodies surface from below, until eventually some of the old BoC returns, big beats, a churning propulsive rhythm, locked into a disjointed, but weirdly hypnotic groove. But almost as soon as it gets going, the track ends, leading directly into another haunting cinematic sprawl of swirling synths, and pulsating melodies, sounding like an alternate soundtrack to the aforementioned recent throwback surreal sci-fi art house film Beyond The Black Rainbow, conjuring up all sorts of lysergic images and psychedelically induced fever dreams. And so it goes, BoC fusing the old loping, meandering beat driven dreaminess, to something a shade darker. Some tracks locked into tranced out smoldering grooves, draped in chiming softly distorted melodies, others, brooding menacingly, some peppered with creepy processed voices, only adding to the seventies creepy sci-fi/horror flick vibe, and still others blossoming into time-lapse slow motion sprawling expanses of experimental rhythmic textures, shifting dreamily, tonal colors bleeding into each other, woozily prismatic, like the music from some old crumbling, planetarium show. While the old BoC sound surfaces throughout, Tomorrow's Harvest, definitely exists in a much bleaker soundworld, where Tomorrow's Harvest is perhaps meant as a cautionary tale, these sounds the score to a future world scorched and barren, a world of faded memories of what once was, and what could have been, had it not all gone terribly wrong...
Way back in 2009, we reviewed a record by a band called Body Hammer, a brilliantly dizzying hybrid of damaged hyper grind, blackened dronescapery and frenzied math metal, all housed in a dvd case, wrapped in a sumo cloth. Now here we are five years later, and the man behind Body Hammer, just walks into aQ, having moved to the Bay Area to attend Mills, and in hand, a new Body Hammer record! And while we'd like to say it's way weirder, or way more fucked up, we just can't cuz the first one was pretty demented and damaged, but what we can say, is the new one is just as tweaked and twisted, which all we could have hoped for, hell, even the first track is pretty difficult to describe, a sort of psychedelic industrial blowout, all metallic percussion, and wild electronic squiggles that could be guitar shred, but is likely something else entirely, a dizzying rhythmic workout that leads directly into a 33 second blast of furious metallic grind, only to then explode into a nearly as brief burst of power electronics, which again in turn, transforms into a blurry bit of collaged field recordings and short wave broadcasts, and then�
Well, before we go track by track, it should be noted there are lots of brief tracks here, some ambient, some blacknoise, some grinding metal, some all three combined, the metal parts are totally frenzied drummachinegun style blowouts, while the more abstract tracks are all over the map, eventually as the track lengthen, the sound becomes more harrowing, the terrifying sample laced atmosphere of "A Presence", the churning black buzz ambience of "A Disappearance", laced with buried vokills and tangled guitar shred, or the slo-mo doomdrone of "The Church", but peppered throughout are dense bouts of Godflesh-like industrial metal churn, all robotic deathmarch and machine like lumber, barely there soundscapery, cinematic and haunting, tripped out psych-noise, blasts of guitar clang, and billows of hazy FX, symphonies of feedback, and finally, a hazy long form sprawl of field recording flecked, murky industrial drift, a strangely disturbing coda, for a fantastically fucked up record.
Finally!!! New music from The Body, who at one time, might just have ranked as one of, if not THE, favorite heavy band around these parts. Their self titled debut is incredible (and sadly out of print), a dizzying mix of post rock, ultra doom, and sludge metal, with a penchant for mathy rhythms, lots of space, and some seriously anguished vocals.
They released a super limited cd-r a bit later (which we have more of for a very short time, see elsewhere on this list!) which was more of the same, and included a totally over the top Judas Priest cover, the original totally transformed, which then leads us to this, a brand new tour ep, ALL covers, and not the sort of covers you might expect from a band like the Body, which is precisely why we love these guys so much.
Crass, Danzig, Black Flag and, wait for it, Sinead O'Connor. Yep. Hard to believe but it works, and they don't just turn it into a pointless sludgefest, they have obvious affection for the original. But before we get to "Black Boys On Mopeds", let's run through the other covers first.
Crass's "Do They Owe Us A Living" is all buzzing low end, and tribal drumming. The vocals a processed feral bark, the whole thing lurching and lumbering and seriously harrowingly intense. Makes the original sound like a lullaby. The Danzig track is a loping low slung groove, with a fierce downtuned riff, and hysterical shrieking vocals, the band totally own it, and again, add untold heaviness and harshness to the original. Black Flag's "Police Story" is pulled apart and gutted, before exploding into a punk rock frenzy, who knew a sludge band could rock so hard? It's a muddy, murky free for all, not that far removed from the original other than the downtuned guitars and the insane vox.
And finally, "Black Boys On Mopeds", a gorgeous sprawling dirge, and wisely the band opted to get some help with the vocals, a gorgeous female voice, underpinned by howled shrieked back up vocals way off in the distance, the bulk of the song a single buzzing throbbing note stretched out into a thick undulating drone, the rhythm a metronome like clack buried in the mix, the end gets all trippy and dubbed out, but damn if this isn't creepier and prettier than the original.
The Body is back, and we couldn't be happier. Now someone just needs to sign these guys and give them tons of money so they can finally put out a new full length!!!!!
We've long been fans of burly bearded post doom crushers The Body, their sound like the classic two man pummel of godheadSilo expanded into something even more majestic and sprawling, black hole heavy, infusing their ultra doom glacial sludge with plenty of post and rock mathisms, the cinematic tension of groups like Godspeed, and heck, they even cover songs by folks like Crass, Danzig, Black Flag and Sinead O'Connor! For a two piece, these guys pretty much transcend and obliterate any sort of limitations that lineup would pose to most mere musical mortals, but that said, plenty of two pieces have seen fit to expand, say to a trio or a quartet, maybe just to record, get a few guests, or even permanently, ditching the duo which sometimes gets focused on more than the music. But few bands (dare we say, practically none) expand further than that, say from 2 members to THIRTY TWO! But that's exactly what The Body has done for All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood, their second proper full length in ages, one that marks ten years as a band, and more importantly, marks a serious sonic shift. No longer are they scrappy DIY punk rock noisemakers, setting their sites above and beyond, these guys have gone for it, meticulously crafting an album of extreme heaviness, of sonic mystery, haunting, and epic, metal for sure, even going so far as to include an actual 13 member choir, and not just for little random bits here and there, nearly seven minutes of the ten minute opening track, is just choir, lilting and angelic, lovely and otherworldly, only making the sudden shift from ethereal vocal harmony to crushing downtuned ultra doom all the more jarring. But the coolest part, is that the parts aren't clearly delineated. The choir continues on into the heaviness, so the howling churning crush, is peppered with gorgeous hymn like vocals, creating some sort of strangely liturgical sounding swirly sludge. And it's not just the vocals, there's saxophone, samples, piano, plenty of noise. And that pretty much sets the template for the whole record.
Besides the Assembly Of Light Choir, who are featured on almost every song here, the record also features Robert Lowe of Lichens offering up some additional vocals, not to mention the other 15 or 16 guests who contribute, beyond the core Body duo of drums, guitar, samples and vocals, a pretty crazy array of soundmakers, more vocals, saxophone, sousaphone, guitar, piano, keyboards, Moog, baritone saxophone and more drums. LOTS more drums. In fact, on the final track, "Lathspell I Name You" drummer Lee Buford is joined by EIGHT extra drummers!!! More on that in a moment.
The second track "A Curse" begins with a loping post rock beat, swirling synths, a melancholy melody, soaring chiming guitars, very moody and slow burning, before the band explodes into full doom, the sound shifts too, the crystalline clearness, becomes big and booming, the sound blown out, but more sort of warm and muted than in the red, the drums massive and pounding, while the guitars swirl in little chordal clouds, and the anguished vocals howl and wail, which gives way to "Empty Hearth", which sounds like some abstract experimental Swans style track, looped sample of what sounds like speaking in tongues, lurching mechanical crunch, glitched out electronics, shrieking vox, the whole song occasionally stuttering to a halt, as if the song was being remixed or was gloriously malfunctioning, there's also some awesome guttural throat singing, laced underneath the start stop, sample skitter, and super distorted bass buzz.
"Even The Saints Knew Their Hour Of Failure And Loss" starts with tarpit riffery and blurred hiss, strangely atmospheric, the drums skeletal but subtly mathy, the choir adding their gorgeous harmonies, an epic spiritual doom, tolling bells, everything dropping out, leaving just the booming drums, the shrieked vox, those bells, until a thick layer of low end washes over everything, and the track unwinds as some classic funereal doom.
"Song Of Sarin The Brave" begins all blown out and tangled up, sheets of feedback, huge heaving bursts of titanic metallic crunch, mysterious voices, finally the band launches into the song proper, and things get really weird, the drums stripped way down, the whole track slathered in strange murky blur and melting effects, while underneath, a strange sampled voice drifts, through clouds of other voices and mysterious sounds, totally creepy, and beautiful, and so mesmerizing, it goes on forever, and could have gone on way longer, but instead finishes off in a minute long blaze of shrieking black doom sludge crush.
"Ruiner" is another smoldering slow starter, haunting, downtuned minor key riffs ring out, doomic drums pound out a barely there rhythm, again, all underpinned by a strange staticky cloud of hiss and gauzy atmospheric hum, the track starting out super spare, but gradually growing more and more dense, more and more doomy, gathering momentum, not rhythmically so much as sonically, the progression laced subtly with strings and horns, little streaks of psychedelic guitars, until finally exploding into a lumbering dirge, the instruments blackened and crumbling, less riffy than a throbbing organic black buzz, pounding and pummeling before blinking out abruptly.
Which leads us to the final track, the 14 minute, multiple drummer-ed side long "Lathspell I Name You", a heaving, expansive ultra doom epic, a churning looped riff and some busy drumming start the track off, not doomy at all really, more noise rock or post rock, with some gorgeous folky melodies woven in, the choir offering up their lovely harmonies, but in this context, they sound less angelic and slightly demonic, locked into their own looped pattern mirroring, the motorik metal loop underneath, which gives way to a weirdly records, noise drum blowout, voices and instruments hissing and buzzing while a cacophony of drums pound and crash, mesmerizing and hypnotic, before the glacial chug resurfaces, along with the choir, and the band lock into a seriously slow motion, abrasive cathartic doom sludge crawl, the sound growing more and more blown out until every drum hit pegs the needles and distorts everything, making the sound that much more caustic and emotional and intense.
The roots of The Body's sound may be in doom or sludge, or even simply metal, but All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood has taken that sound so far beyond, transforming sludge and doom into something way more transcendent, way more difficult to immediately categorize, it's melodic, and poppy, and mathy, and drone-y, and electronic, and experimental, epic and majestic and mysterious, while somehow still remaining brutal, and pummeling and heavy as fuck. Fans of the usual suspects will probably dig this big time, Moss, Bunkur, Khanate, Monarch, Nihill, Otesanek (in fact the liner notes read: "All Praise To Otesanek And Man Is The Bastard"), Eyehategod, Habsyll, Fleshpress, but be prepared to look beyond the realms of traditional doom, or of conventional heaviness, because The Body are anything but traditional or conventional, and All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood just might be the coolest, weirdest, most original doom record EVER.
Incredible packaging too, heavy vinyl (3 sided, the 4th side is blank), thick, gatefold sleeve, with some chillingly striking artwork, a printed 12" x 12" insert silver reflective ink printed on black cardstock, liner notes and lineup on one side, lyrics on the other...
We've been huge fans of Rhode Island two piece sludge doom duo The Body for years now, and have raved about every recording we could get our hands on, at one point even lamenting the fact that we were dying for a proper full length, and then BAM. Their self titled full length debut hit, and it DESTROYED. Then a few years later, and the band unleashed their epic, and seemingly universally acclaimed All The Waters Of The Earth Turned To Blood. A chunk of sludgy doom unlike anything we'd heard before, sure there was massive downtuned riffs, and bellowed and shrieked vox, pummeling drums, but there also happened to be a full choir, not to mention multiple drummers, strange electronics, programmed rhythms, strange samples, all wound into a bizarre and brilliant collection of avant heaviness, and finally it seemed the world caught on, and The Body began to get the love they so obviously deserved.
The bummer is, that while All The Waters IS incredible, so are all the weird and super limited cd-r's and singles that came before, so folks who discovered The Body via that record, were missing out on a whole world of heart stopping head caving sound, that is until now. This little collection, compiles pretty much everything the band has ever recorded minus their two full lengths (the older of which is sadly out of print), including split singles, tour cd-r's and even tacks on some unreleased stuff to boot.
Their 2008 tour cd-r might be one of our favorite recordings from these guys, and definitely displayed the band's dizzying mix of post rock, ultra doom, and sludge metal, as well as their penchant for mathy rhythms, lots of space, and seriously anguished vocals.The coolest part was that it was in the context of cover songs, and maybe not the sort of covers you'd expect from a sludge/doom outfit. Crass, Danzig, Black Flag and, wait for it, Sinead O'Connor. Yep. Hard to believe that last one works, but it does, and they don't just turn it into a pointless sludgefest, they have obvious affection for the original. But before we get to "Black Boys On Mopeds", let's run through the other covers first.
Crass's "Do They Owe Us A Living" is all buzzing low end, and tribal drumming. The vocals a processed feral bark, the whole thing lurching and lumbering and seriously harrowingly intense. Makes the original sound like a lullaby. The Danzig track is a loping low slung groove, with a fierce downtuned riff, and hysterical shrieking vocals, the band totally own it, and again, add untold heaviness and harshness to the original. Black Flag's "Police Story" is pulled apart and gutted, before exploding into a punk rock frenzy, who knew a sludge band could rock so hard? It's a muddy, murky free for all, not that far removed from the original other than the downtuned guitars and the insane vox.
And finally, "Black Boys On Mopeds", a gorgeous sprawling dirge, and wisely the band opted to get some help with the vocals, a gorgeous female voice, underpinned by howled shrieked back up vocals way off in the distance, the bulk of the song a single buzzing throbbing note stretched out into a thick undulating drone, the rhythm a metronome like clack buried in the mix, the end gets all trippy and dubbed out, but damn if this isn't creepier and prettier than the original.
Also included in this collection is Even The Saints Knew Their Hour Of Failure And Loss, another killer cd-r of that immediately recognizable Body style abstract sludge doom. Think a more skeletal Khanate, with dubbed out drums, but replace Alan Dubin's vocals with a even more hysterical shriek bordering on Bathtub Shitter territory. Weird but so fucking cool and creepy. Massive sheets of blacktar guitars, sometimes a grinding trudge through a viscous cloud of noxious grime, at others, a slow motion stumble through stark post rock territory, one track features a doom dub breakdown, where the snare sort of careens lazily in a wide open space before eventually being stomped flat by a wall of anvil guitars, another track is peppered with creepy soundbites, adding to the paranoid creepiness. And they tackle another cover, "Here Come The Tears" by Judas Priest, and turn it into a blown out white noise drenched dirge, crumbling and crushing.
These guys love their covers, as is evidenced by their Cop Killer / Dead Cops single also included here, a double dose of dead cops. The Body dump their sludgy doom all over "Cop Killer" by Body Count and "Dead Cops" by M.D.C.! The originals are barely recognizable, the original riffs, transformed into cesspools of filthy sludge. Again, comparisons to Khanate and Moss and are apt, but they definitely twist these jams all up into their very own blackened shapes.
As if that weren't enough, the collection is filled out with their track from a split 7" with Get Killed, and another unreleased track from 2004, as well as their very first demo, originally released as a super limited cassette on Armageddon, which displays the band, even in the early stages, capable of unleashing thick torrents of shrieking, lurching, avant doom, the sound a dizzying mix of slo-mo mathiness, low slung sludge, and blackened post rock, all blurred into epic swaths of black hole heaviness and skull caving crush, without losing their sense of melody or mood. Awesome.
Super striking visuals/packaging as always, spare and austere, with the liner notes printed on a cool white on black mini poster insert.
The Body return with another sprawling epic of avant experimental doom, after having recently relocated from Rhode Island to the Pacific Northwest. While their last release, a sort of stopgap ep called Master, We Perish, found the band mostly ditching all the experimentalism of their debut, All The Waters Of The Earth Turned To Blood, instead offering up something much closer to actually seeing these guys live, as in pure, physical brutality, blown out ultra doom-noise crush. But here, the band continue to push the boundaries of doom, their Assembly Of Light Choir in tow, for a record that is the perfect follow up to All The Waters. Just check out the opener, and you'll be sold. After a brief ambient intro, "To Attempt Openness" unfurls a bit of hazy static, before in come the drums, the churning riffage, and the choir, all blurred into something strangely hymn-like, as if it were the music for some bizarre religious sect, a twisted pagan offshoot of some strange arcane faith, the music blurry and blackened, laced with all manner of noise, industrial buzz and caustic whir, buried melodies, constantly shifting textures, super dynamic, noisy and off kilter, the guitars dropping out at one point, leaving just shrieked vox way back in the mix, and pummeling drum pound over a field of glitch and gristle, before eventually devolving into full on noise.
And of course it doesn't end there, nor does it get any more typically doomy. "Melt Away" drapes samples over lumbering tribal drumming and glimmering shimmer, haunting and ambient, and even when the doom drops, it again is more sort of spectral and chorale-like, the choir way better integrated on this record, less singing intros and outros and now woven into the Body's blackened sonic fabric, the song unwinding as a harrowing dirge. "An Altar Or A Grave" introduces strings, transforming the song into a strange chamber music slow core crawl, that's as lovely and melancholic as it is downtuned and brutal, the sound lurching back and forth between shrieking ultra-doom and that chamber sludge loveliness.
The songs are WAY shorter this time around too, allowing the band to flit from sound to sound, a 3 minute blast of face melting sludge gives way to some female vocal driven blackened ambience, churning feedback drenched industrial doom lumber collides with ultra slow doom-drone-drift dreaminess, all ethereal vox and processed drums, electronics and rumbling whirring synths, fields of hushes static give way to churning psychedelic kraut-doom creep, until finally, "Bearer Of Bad Tidings", one of the two longest songs here at about seven minutes, closes things out with a field of tangled guitar noise, that explodes into a full on blast beat, everything distorted to the point of structural failure, grinding, blown out psych-doom-noise, that splinters into some seriously avant, out there, electro-doom, black noise dirgery, reminding us of Bastard Noise or aQ faves Geronimo. Some seriously next level doooooooooom that we are digging like crazy.
We discovered experimental doomlords The Body via their 2004 self titled debut, a crushing slab of slo-mo dirgery, that at the time we compared to other sonically like minded bands like Conifer, The Ocean, Pelican, and Isis. It was all pounding moody mathiness and churning downtuned doom chaos. But it was really on 2010's All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood, where the Body transformed into something way more than doom-dirge knuckle draggers, expanding their sound to include multiple drummers, electronics and samples, and a full female choir. That record definitely set a benchmark for avant-doom, and with each release since, the band seem dead set on continuing that drift into the outer realms, although odds are you won't find a more twisted and sonically abstract corner of the doomworld than I Shall Die Here, which finds the Body submitting to a serious sonic makeover from Haxan Cloak, who transforms the sound into something bleak and abstract, the resulting sound something that seems like it might be more at home on Tri Angle or Blackest Ever Black, so no surprise we're flipping out big time.
The opener sets the template, with fragments of the original sound recast in a whole new context the big crashing drums, super distorted and blown out, laying down a mesmeric tarpit groove, the guitars muted and muddied, and blurred into a soft swirling, distorto churn, at this point, it could still be a proper doom record, the weird shrieked vokills swoop in, howl abjectly in the background, buried in the mix, and then suddenly, a cloud of digital glitchery erupts, the guitar churn peels back, those shrieked vocals become a disembodied loop, in come deep bass pulsations, and the song settles into a super minimal electronic creep, skittery, and glitchy, and staticky, and so heady and hypnotic. It ends way too soon, would have loved to see that final part stretch out for another 10-15 minutes of moody electro-murk, but instead, the process begins again, distorto drums, this time dubbed out a but, more buzzing riff-blur, wailed high pitch screeches, and then right back into another sprawl of electro-doom minimalism, this time eventually erupting into a wild, gristly squall of blown out tribal drumming, and layered drones, sounding a bit like a million copies of Tusk being played at 16 rpm.
And so it goes, some tracks are dirgey stretches of oozing black riffage, spread out into slowly churning landscapes of crumbling distortion, others fuse warped psychedelic techno with grim, gristly buzz, and still others actually sound a bit like the recent Coil / Nine Inch Nails 'collab', heaving industrial weirdness and fractured electronic experimentation, here of course fused to gargantuan black doom crush. The final track spends most of its time drifting moodily, a spare stretch of dreamily divine ambience, peppered with hushed pulsations, before it too eventually explodes into one final burst of pounding, howling, blown out electro-doom pummel. Awesome.
You might not expect a band featuring former members of Whitehouse and Sutcliffe Jugend to sound a bit like some twisted noiserock hybrid of old Today is The Day, the crushing bombast of the Swans, and the ominous brooding doom and gloom of Joy Division, but that's precisely what Bodychoke conjure up on this, their long out of print final album, circa 1998, now reissued by Relapse.
We always assumed we didn't like Bodychoke all that much, the other records we heard we really not that good, and their version of "Painted Black" was even left off the tUMULt comp featuring multiple version of that iconic song, but holy shit has this record knocked our fucking blocks off. There's plenty of noise for sure, jagged and processed and crumbling and crunchy and blown out, but noise is just one element here, the band in full on noise rock / post rock. Unfurling low slung bass lines, jagged riffing, some cool complex drumming, the arrangements super dynamic, the vocals slipping from ominous deep Michael Gira like croon, to strangled punkish wail.
Opener "Control" pretty much has it all, beginning with a weird cacophony of fractured fragmented noise, the band soon slip into a minimal bass groove, before the guitars kick in and lock in with the snares, the song transformed into a brooding almost Angels Of Light sounding jam, until the chorus, which EXPLODES, and the noise from the beginning returns, wrapping the churning loping crush in a swirling field of feedback and crumbling grit and grime. It's just so intense and heavy and weirdly catchy, and so much better than we ever remember Bodychoke being.
And so it goes, the rest of the record continues to display a sound that's almost more slow building post rock than noise, but most of the tracks are laced with heaping doses of caustic crunch. There's also a cello player in the band, who offers up some gorgeously moaning ambience, and subtle strings here and there. Many of the tracks spread way out, sprawling lugubriously, expansive minimal post punk soundcapes, skitter and whisper, burning slowly until the song is engulfed in tangled riffage and wild tribal pounding, and even the noise, it's so deftly crafted and well placed, it's hard to imagine anyone into heavy music being put off at all, it's just like another layer of heaviness, another level of dynamicism, it's weird, we all had the exact same response when this record came on. "Oh I don't like Bodychoke", but gradually, it seemed everyone was listening to this, ALL the time, even now, as this is being written, not only is it playing on the stereo in the back room, but also in the store, this record just slays. So dark and heavy and brutal and melodic and epic and AMAZING. Based on nothing but how often this gets played in the store and how often we've listened to this since it came in, we're beginning to think maybe we should have made this Record Of The Week, so consider this an EXTREME highlight, and thus overwhelmingly recommended!
So when you were a kid, what do you think your Mom got up to while you were at school, or out playing with your pals? Doing laundry? Cleaning the house? Doing the dishes? A little gardening? Or maybe playing bridge? Canasta? Going to the grocery store? How about collecting and building analog synthesizers? Building a soundproof recording studio in the extra room? Recording strange space-y minimal electronic music on reel to reel tapes? Or building an 'orgon accumulator' in the backyard? Such were the activities of a mild mannered housewife named Ursula Bogner, who in addition to being a pharmacist, as well as a loving wife and mother, just so happened to also be obsessed with electronic music and analog synthesizers, but unlike others with similar interests (were there other 30 something housewives so obsessed?), Bogner didn't just read about electronic music, she attended seminars, followed the activities of various groups and musicians (even apparently sharing her children's enthusiasm for new wave pop!) eventually deciding to create music herself.
She never released any recordings, didn't even really make public her hobby, instead, she simply spent her free time, creating, composing, recording, experimenting, for over 20 years, amassing an incredible body of work. All of that wouldn't merit anything but a cursory glance and maybe a chuckle, if the music weren't amazing, but it is, fantastical and inspired, primitive and raw, playful and childlike, but also, haunting and mysterious, otherworldly, and so incredibly varied, from spare academic sounding minimalism, to Perrey & Kingsley style playfulness, to super stark click and skitter that would be right at home on Raster-Noton, to swirling fantastical spaced out soundscapes that could have been sixties sci-fi soundtracks. The sounds are so evocative, so mysterious, it almost seems impossible that they were recorded by a Mom in a spare room in a house in the suburbs.
The collection opens with "Begleitung Fur Tuba", which indeed features tuba-like tones, locked into a playful grove with a bleepy bloopy rhythm, which is eventually joined by streaks of static, and a warbly main melody. From there, highlights include "Proto" which is kaleidoscopic and groovy with a super minimal click-track rhythm. "2 Ton" is almost like space age lounge music, with it's reverbed guitar like shimmer, and slithery tempo. "Speichen" is another playful number, the burbles and bloops, and definitely predicts groups like James Bong, Luke Vibert, Boards Of Canada and the like. "Punkte" is another minimal groover, with a hissy static rhythm, a bloopy bassline, and all manner of descending and ascending electronic tones, as well as pizzicato bleeps that almost sound like an alien thumb piano. The longest track is "Soloresonanzen" and is maybe the dreamiest, taking the minimal click of Raster-Noton, and draping it over slowly shifting layers of electronic whir and buzz, peppered with bits of click and glitch, textural hiss, woozy melodic fragments, very dreamlike and meditative. And finally the record finishes with a brief burst of tangly scribbly electronic whir and skree, all mad scientist machines gone haywire, but deftly arranged into a pretty alien lullaby, weird and wonderful.
Bogner's music was discovered via some pretty incredible happenstance, Jan Jelinek, who runs the Faitiche label, met Bogner's son on a plane and the two got to talking, Jelinek was an electronic musician, so was Bogner's deceased Mother Weirdly enough, and well, the rest is history. Or is it? There has been much talk that this is all a massive hoax, or more correctly, the ultimate concept album. Carefully crafted down to the tiniest details, photos, back story, Bogner's artwork, everything. In some ways it doesn't really matter, in fact, it's almost more impressive if the whole thing was in fact fabricated, but you know what, fuck it, it's so much more fun to just go along with it...
The cd is gorgeously packaged in a thick book-like digipak, with extensive liner notes from Jan Jelinek, notes on each song, lots of photos, as well as various reproductions of Bogner's various outer space linocuts.
Since we first discovered local primitive black metal outfit Bone Awl, on a tip from Leviathan's Wrest, we've been pretty much totally obsessed. As have most AQ customers considering how fast we fly through their limited cassette only releases.
So finally, two of those long out of print demos (so long out of print in fact that we never actually had ANY) reissued on super deluxe 180 gram vinyl. Two demos, one on each side. Bog Bodies on side A, originally released as a cassette in 2003, limited to 300 copies, now LONG out of print, and on side B, Magnetism Of War, originally released as a cassette in 2002, limited to 150 copies and also long out of print.
So this vinyl reissue, is also of course limited. Only 400 copies. Each sleeve is cut and paste style, to sort of keep with the aesthetic of the Bone Awl cassettes and as you can well imagine, this stuff is SICK SICK SICK. Bone Awl play super lo-fi black thrash, simple throbbing, furious and fucked up. Murky and primitive, just guitar and drums, manned by the brilliantly named duo of He Who Gnashes Teeth and He Who Crushes Teeth! Simple riffs pounded into your skull, a crushing static black buzz, that is totally trancelike in its simplicity. Tape hiss wraps it's blackened tendrils around downtuned guitars, the drums a simple pounding framework, the vocals a guttural demonic howl. Actually, Bone Awl sound strangely like some sort of black metal Brainbombs, and we shouldn't have to tell you how goddamn good that sounds. As far as we know this is already out of print at the label. We have 30 copies, and once they are gone, they are GONE FOR GOOD.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!
For the latest installment in their ongoing, all-analog blackened onslaught,�local raw, primitive, black-thrash duo Bone Awl unleash another full length lp, the third by our count, not including a clutch of limited run cassette tapes and 7"s. And as always, it's another fantastically furious and filthy slab of relentlessly pounding buzz, hateful howl and sheer black force.�
For the uninitiated, Bone Awl are the duo of�He Who Gnashes Teeth and He Who Crushes Teeth, just guitar and drums, but the two are a whirling dervish of harsh negative energy, not so much blasting and buzzing black metal style, as pounding and pulsing, a blown out D-beat style garage thrash pummel. Every track takes a single black riff, and pounds it into the ground, the guitar a swirling cloud of dark energy, the drums some sort of harnessed chaos, hewing closer to the abject blown out pound of the Brainbombs than perhaps any of their more metal forebears. No real blast beats to be found, instead the sound is a blackened punk rock, crusty and crumbling, on the verge of total collapse, barreling hellward with unstoppable momentum.�
Pressed on super thick�180 gram vinyl, housed in a thick cardstock inner sleeve, printed with lyrics, and housed in a gorgeous black and white poster sleeve, that opens to be pretty massive. The whole thing tucked in a plastic jacket with a sticker affixed to the front. And as always, probably crazy limited...
First release from Bones Of Seabirds, aka Ryan McGill, and it's a deft blend of blown out free noise ambience a la Sunroof! and Birchville Cat Motel, dreamy soundscape drift and churning low end doomdrone.
The minimal liner notes inside credit Mcgill with strings and synths, and both, while in full effect, are blended and blurred into a sound less distinct, more ethereal and abstract. The opener is all gritty gristly high end, sheets of feedback, coruscating layers of buzz and glitch, all pulsing and throbbing, melodies buried within, strange harmonies, culminating in a wall of downtuned near static guitar buzz, a blackened blizzard of sound. The second track is a roiling lowendscape of rumbles and blurred drones, off in the distance bits of high end glimmer, shards of crackling grind and chordal whir, dense and ominous but still strangely pretty. The third track, is a haunting landscape of reverb drenched harmonics, long stretched out tones, mysterious melodies, softly heaving textures, bits of electronic tracery, whirring and shimmering, all wrapped in a skein of murk and blur.
And so it goes for the rest of the disc, the tracks dipping into those three sounds, blending and blurring and creating whole new sonic worlds from its constituent parts. Needless to say, most folks who like this kind of thing have already added this to their cart and moved on, but for the rest of you, fans of SUNNO))), Birchville, Vulture Club, Acre, and Tunnels among others, who are into all things that drone and rumble and whir and roil and swirl and shimmer and throb and grind and pulse and drift, will most likely want to pick one of these up PRONTO.
LIMITED TO 138 COPIES! Each one in a gorgeously handmade package, black ink printed on thick cardstock, housed in a hand cut full color vellum overlay, inside a printed vellum insert, with liner notes, each one hand numbered.
The return of Bong! We may have had the amazing Live At Roadburn disc to tide us over, but what we were really hankering for was a brand new full length from these UK psychedelic space doom heavies, and we're not and here it is. Beyond Ancient Space is three loooooong tracks, titled "Onward To Perdondaris", "Across The Timestream" and "In The Shadow Of The Towers" respectively, and described on the cd sleeve as 'unsere kosmischen musik', and after a creepy deeply intoned, reverbed spoken word intro, delivered over a glimmery spacescape of twinkle and shimmer, we are suddenly sucked into the strange world of Bong, as massive guitars come cascading down, a plodding ultra heavy doomic lumber, the drums spare and loose, the churning rumble and thrum laced with some sitar like buzz, which is no doubt the Shahi Baaja, an electrified Indian zither / drone harp with typewriter keys, that figures prominently in Bong's sound.
"Onward To Perdondaris" is a sinister creeping crawl, a nearly 25 minute, tranced out buzzing space doom mediation, the guitars not so much riffing as unfurling sheets of rumbling low end, a sprawling layered expanse of thick blackened thrum, a spaced out dirge, the buzzing Shahi Baaja transforming the sound into something exotic and alien, the vocals too, a monk like chant, long low tones, all very mesmerizing and meditative but still heavy and buzzy and droney, like Hawkwind covering SUNNO))), or Ravi Shankar jamming with Earth, or maybe some blurred confusional mix of the two.
"Across The Timestream" is another 25 minute epic, beginning with a crumbling, rumbling bit of corroded guitar buzz, it's not until nearly 3 minutes in that the drums surface, and even then, they're barely there, a skeletal rhythm underpinning the group's smoldering blackdrone, finally, the Shahi Baaja begins to buzz, and the track locks into a mesmerizing, motorik space psych dirge that will carry us through the whole 25 minutes, this is not headbanging music, this is blissed out drug drone music, a zoner cough syrup space rock soundtrack to some serious innerspace exploration, the track does build gradually, growing more intense, but subtly and slowly, they're called Bong for a reason, it's 25 minutes, but it could be 2500, or 2.5, time does not exist, once you're lost in these sounds, time becomes liquid, it's the perfect sonic tranceout, drifting off, alternate plane, next level, ur-drone ur-dirge bliss out.
Finally, there's the nearly 30 minute final movement, "In The Shadow Of The Towers", which begins with a SUNNO))) like riff, all foghorn moan and blurred slo-mo melody, the drums way more up front here, a slow, meandery lope, pounding away, the rumbling guitar a lush backdrop, the cymbal sizzle spilling over, a slow burning space rock dirge, blurred and bleary, hypnotic and lysergic, druggily monochromatic, it's not until about 20 minutes in that things get seriously intense, the drums wild and chaotic, the sound blown out and in the red, a sonic squall climax, that quickly gives way to a smoldering blackened slow fade outro.
Like all the Bongs that have come before, a heady chunk of krautrocky psychedelic dirge-y doom recommended for fans of SUNNO))), Gnod, The Heads, White Hills, Grails, Sylvester Anfang, Electric Wizard, Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg, Monster Magnet, Black Sabbath, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore and their slow and low doom dirge alchemist brethren
And it's not just us, our customer Glenn was so blown away by the new Bong he felt compelled to send HIS review which is way more succinct than ours:
"Album of the year so far. Absolutely fucking amazing. Imagine if Hawkwind had taken downers rather than acid and you played their albums at 16rpm. A total kosmische trip into another dimension."
Fuck yeah! Bong on!
By now, we're pretty sure most regular AQ customers are familiar with Bong. The name rings a bell, right? (Hahaha.) While there's plenty of stoner/sludge type bands with "bong" in their name, and a lot of 'em are pretty good (Bongzilla, Bongripper, and the recent Belzebong, for instance), this Bong, the one true Bong, have deservedly earned the appellation of Bong by itself without any cute suffixes or prefixes. This UK band's sweet sonic smoke does indeed send the listener into an altered state. On this, their latest, recorded by Esoteric's Greg Chandler, they've come from beyond ancient space (the title of their previous album, also released on the aptly named Ritual Productions) to bring us another two looooonnng tracks of their trademark slomo, spaced out, dronedirge dooooom. Dunno though if we should even be calling Bong doom, or dooooom, actually, though we do. What's heralded here is perhaps something more transcendentally wondrous, psychedelically blissful. Tune in, turn on... the first, 27+ minute track is "Dreams Of Mana-Yood-Shushai", its title referencing the poetic, pre-Lovecraft mythology of early 20th century fantasist Lord Dunsany. Mana-Yood-Shushai is the sleeping god, creator of all, the god of "having done", to whom none may pray, for when he wakes the world will end... Bong do a good job of conjuring the gentle, yet ominous mood of such a god's dreams here, as near as we mere mortals can tell. Heaving waves of down-tuned guitar riffage and rolling, rumbling softly thunderous percussion accompany droning monkish vox doing some sort of seemingly ceremonial chant. The deep, Earth-like bass frequencies emanating mountainously from Bong's amps provide a solid foundation also for the exotic East Indian zing of Bong's secret weapon, the Shahi Baaja (an electrified zither / drone harp with typewriter keys) to play its part in the unfolding phantasmagoria of the endless innerspace odyssey that is Bong's gift to you... Massive, meditative. Sinister, somewhat, and sensuous, the Shahi Baaja contributing to the sense of snake-charmer sway.
Next, track two, "Trees Grass And Stones", we must assume is a nod to legendary Swedish psychsters Trad Gras Och Stenar! Certainly not just the name, but the somewhat more pastoral feel of the mesmeric music, supports such an interpretation. If not, then it's a case of great minds... some sort of psychic psychedelic communion between two of our faves. In any event, it's a thick, 19 minute slab of sturdy, stately krautdrone hypnorock, that stirs up a mite more rhythmic umph than what came before.
Once again, highly recommended by all of us here at aQ, especially of course to fans of Bong (or the use of bongs), Megaton Leviathan, OM, Earth, SUNNO))), Hawkwind, and all other bands that could have used the name Bong but didn't, leaving it to this groop to take up the challenge, and succeed. All bow down and pray to Mana-Yood-Shushai! (Whoops!)
It always seems to happen this way, we spend ages and ages trying to track down recordings from an elusive band, hearing rumors about 7"s and cd-r's and tapes, and then suddenly, BOOM. Or in the case of these guys, Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom... the recordings come bursting forth, and again, in this case, the sounds spew from speakers and headphones like some viscous black torrent. Which can only mean one thing, the return of drugged out sludge drone mavens Bong. If ever a band was more appropriately named, Bong are ready to take them on. In fact, the only way a band could prevail monicker-wise, they'd have to be called Bong Blood Hell Froth, or Bladed Bong Skullorb, or something, and even with a name all ready for battle, it's doubtful their pathetic sounds would be any match for Bong's thick, sprawling doomscapes of sitar like buzz, churning bottom heavy crunch, and at least on one of the tracks here some serious drum pummel.
Three discs, five tracks, three hours, recorded in pubs, under bridges and in restaurants, one can only imagine the smoldering ruins these guys left in their lumbering drug-doom wake. Their live sound much more rocking then their doomed out minimal records might lead you to believe.
The opener on its own is worth the price of admission, a relentless buzzy, space-y sludgey groove, with some killer drumming, chaotic, mathy, but locked in pretty tight, the cymbals offering up a layer of warm swirling sizzle, the vocals a haunted demonic chant, the rest of the sonic space taken up by woozy washed out buzzing sitar like strings, a sort of Sleep meets Circle meets SUNNO))), a downtuned krautrock crunch, smeared into an endless drug drenched space rock groove. The second half of disc two offers up more of the same, with the drums even more frantic, the band rocking propulsively, not so sludgey as heavy and fierce, the song slipping into a tranced out sonic tarpit partway through, before exploding into a tangled doom-math outro.
The two tracks on the second disc see the drums pulling back a little, letting the guitars and vocals interlock, the result some sort of ritualistic groove, albeit wrapped around some serious percussive heft, the second of the two tracks blissing out pretty nicely, the band slipping comfortably into something a bit more meditative and slowcore sounding, but still the guitars smoke and smolder, the drums, while restrained, still sound urgent, the track seething with dark intensity, and minimal doomic menace.
The final disc, a nearly 40 minute single song set, is the heaviest and densest of the bunch, somehow fusing the blown out ur-drone of groups like Sunroof! with a fuzzed out garage doom space stomp. Think White Hills, the Heads, Monster Magnet, this is the sort of doom that's bursting with barely restrained psychedelia, like watching some black star explode, swirling red and yellow gouts of sonic fire spilling forth from a heaving black hole of sound. The sound lo-fi, lots of noise and reverb and distortion and ambient noise, the sound crumbles and breaks apart here and there, the band slipping easily from ponderous trudge to blissed out shimmer, often merging the two into some soul shearing psychedelic doom.
A few of these tracks were already released, but as a cd-r in a limited run of 50 or something crazy like that, so odds are, like us, you never even saw 'em. These are proper, real cds (NOT cd-r's), packaged in a dvd style case, with printed inserts. And is also limited, this time to 300 copies!
Oh Bong. How we have longed for thee. Ever since we first go wind of a stonery slow motion doom sludge outfit called BONG, we knew we had to have it, even the non-bong inclined around these parts became disturbingly obsessed with tracking down the BONG. Finally it's here, so prepare to partake.
Before we get to the music, they're called Bong, two sidelong tracks, one called "Wizards Of Krull", the other called "The Starlit Grotto". The cover is gorgeous a washed out painting in all blacks and browns of some creepy alien landscape, and some strange looking flora or fauna (hard to say with). No info anywhere, except the names of the songs, the last names of the players (one of whom happens to be an aQ mailorder customer!) and the word BONG.
Deep buzzy layered drones, peppered with little bits of banjo-y (?) buzz, creepy and minimal and abstract, cymbals sizzle over the undulating black backdrop, the bass a simple single deep thrum, and then the vocals, deep and ominous and (almost overly) dramatic, which when we first heard them reminded us the Mighty Boosh. The guitars thicken, the drums begin to pound, and suddenly the shapeless miasma begins to take the shape of some seriously drugged out stoner doom sludge. Distorted and downtuned and Sabbathy and sloooooooooooow, that voice begins to chant, the banjo returns only now it's a sitar, and we're neck deep in some primal doomdrone stonersludge ritual and sinking fast!
The second side / track is more of the same, beginning with a smattering of drums before the guitar slither in and the track becomes another plodding chunk of druggy doom, the drums are brief blasts, the riffs so slow they're barely riffs at all, that reverby croon returns, but this track explodes in the second half, the guitars going wild, unfurling swirling clouds of warped and wild wah wah drenched leads, tangled and frenetic, drifting over the churning sludge below, all woven into a dense and drug addled chunk of blown out lysergic and psychedelic dooooooom.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been dying for more Bong. Ever since we got our ears around their long awaited debut lp a little while back, two side long tracks of crushing Sabbathy slow motion dooooooooom, we've been jonesing for another fix. Which has finally arrived, in the form of this split 12". Bong on one side, and fellow (new to us) doomlords Quttinirpaaq on the other.
Bong sound even heavier and more sluggishly propulsive than on their debut. Like space rock slowed waaaaaay down, Bong unleash a dark, dense roiling dirge drone doom, that slowly and gradually, and yes, druggily develops into something super rocking and ultra heavy. Crushing low end, lugubrious stoner doom riffs, pounding drums, and this time around some buzzing sitar (or at least it sounds like a sitar), adding a woozy Eastern vibe to the otherwise sludge-y proceedings. This is a total druggy lumbering stoned slow motion doom groove drug jam, channeling Monster Magnet, Black Sabbath, SUNNO))) and especially some Electric Wizard. The second half gets pretty rocking, seriously upping the churning downtuned chug, and upping the tempo from plod to rocking plod! It's heavy for sure, but still lo-fi and murky and muddy and mysterious - and that sitar, playing the same melody over and over and over the whole track gives it a super hypnotic and trancelike vibe. So good.
The flipside belongs to the impossible to pronounce Quttinirpaaq who counter with their own chunk of ultra low doom exploration. Beginning all blissed out and space-y and krauty and new age-y, with swirling effects and soft synths all shimmering and glistening over deep sweels of muted feedback, the band easily slip into some serious dronedoomdirge, kicking out a thick wall of downtuned buzz that will have SUNNO))) fans frothing for sure, and then the drums kick in, and the band lock into an impossible slow, ultra doom jam, the drums not so much a rhythm as occasional accents to the crushing crunch of guitars, beneath the surface, headphones reveal all sorts of weirdness going on, strange sonic events, mysterious voices, all churning and roiling underneath the layers of buzz and that impossible slow drum plod, think Khanate, Habsyll, Bunkur, Moss, that sort of thing, but more spaced out and abstract. Killer stuff for sure, and a perfect match for the mighty Bong!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Plain black sleeves with paste on red and black front cover.
We've long been fans of these Midwestern instrumental psychedelic drug obsessed doom dirge heavies, their Satan Worshipping Doom record was a huge seller around here, the first time around a couple years back, but we could barely keep the recent reissue of that record in stock either. The doom fans around here went to great lengths to track down every single one of their (mostly self released) cd-r's, and ever since we've done what we could to get enough to review/list, so the rest of you could revel in Bongripper's gloriously tranced out heavily psychedelic drugdoom epics.
Thankfully, it seems as if there's a Bongripper reissue campaign afoot, the aforementioned Satan Worshipping Doom a few weeks back (we're hoping Hate Ashbury and Hippie Killer will be reissued soon too!), and now the even more awesomely titled The Great Barrier Reefer, a sprawling, epic nearly eighty minute psych-doom tripout that most definitely gives Sleep's Jerusalem / Dopesmoker a run for its single-track-stoner-metal money. But unlike the more Sabbath beholden heaviness of Sleep, Bongripper ditch the vox, and spend a lot of time locked into tranced out repetition, just check out the first EIGHT minutes, which is spent drifting along, a muted, cyclical strum, mesmerizing and stripped down, beneath a subtly garbled, effected sample of a preacher, the result is seriously creepy, and it's easy to forget this is in fact a doom record, but eventually, the band kicks in, exploding into a droned out dirge, crumbling downtuned riffage, and blown out drum pound, the band lacing their metallic churn with spidery melodies, loads of texture, streaks of feedback, the guitars deviating from the main riff BIG time, splintering into weird angular fragments, or woozy looped strums, drifting over smears of distorted buzz and slithery basslines, the sound shifting from head caving pummel, to dark droney muted metal mesmer, to intricate tangled mathiness, and we're still only 25 minutes in!
The sound is in constant flux, at times it sounds nearly improvised, the band spiraling into weird stretches of near kosmische drift (albeit, still swaddled in crumbling buzz), or hazy almost classic rock sounding clean guitar dirgery, rife with slippery slide guitar melodies, channeling the Allman Brothers or maybe recent aQ faves Blackwolfgoat, weaving a sort of FX flecked droney riffscape, a little bit twangy, a little bit psychedelic, backwards guitars swooping in the background, beneath a cloud of echo drenched harmonics, fading out to near silence, before bursting into a massively heavy chug-fest, that over the course of the remaining 25 minutes lurches from grinding heaviness, to weirdly melodic poppiness, to tarpit sludge, before finishing off with a stretch of washed out feedback, and detuned slo-mo bass buzz.
Fuck yeah. Super psychedelic eye popping cover art too, much like the crazy cover of Satan Worshipping Doom, although this time featuring some sort of underwater sci-fi tentacled monsterscape!
The new album from Will Oldham & friends is simply wonderful. And we know we rave about Oldham a lot, from his work with Palace Bros to the solo material, but really we mean it -- this is one of his best records. In fact, I think that without the charming but sometimes syrupy twang prevalent on his earlier efforts, Master and Everyone has finally launched Oldham into the same lofty, hallowed territory as other iconoclastic folk practitioners such as Townes Van Zandt. Yeah, this is that good.
The new record has the same kind of low-key charm as his last offering, Ease On Down the Road, although while that record had a sunny back-porch vibe and moments of sly, naughty humor, the laconic, mellow sound of Master And Everyone is tinged with melancholy -- as is much of Oldham's recorded output -- but doesn't try to reach into the inky realms of cathartic intensity found on I See A Darkness (which is one of the best records he's made). Instead, the feeling is familiar and comforting, as Oldham wraps a honeyed falsetto or low, secretive whisper around distant stories of love and lonelines, filtered through the phrasing of early god-fearing folk balladeers. Female harmonies add to the sweetness. Gone is Oldham's faux Appalachian hillbilly guise, and the tenuous, always-cracking vocal warble, and the sometimes pointlessly peurile lyrics, and in its place is a warm, muted, dark folk record. Very reminiscent of seventies British folk, especially Nick Drake, with gorgeous female vocals perfectly complementing Oldham's warm languorous voice. A perfect drifiting off record.
Probably the best testimonial to the goodness of this record is not the fact that the AQ staffers who're already Bonnie Billy fans like it, but the fact that Andee, a.k.a. staunch Oldham naysayer (likes nothing after the Palace Bros debut), LOVES this record too. And that's saying somethin'!
Not sure if they still do Peel Sessions now that John Peel is gone (R.I.P.), but some of our favorite recordings over the years were Peel Sessions (the Loop one comes to mind!). Almost any band you can think of from the last few decades probably ended up recording a Peel Session, and it probably ruled. Bands would record live, often trying new sounds, redoing old songs, whatever stuck their fancy at the time.
This new Bonnie 'Prince' Billy record is not in fact a new record, but instead collects some vintage Peel Sessions from back in the day. And finds Will Oldham, aka BPB, in fine fettle, that instantly recognizable creaky vocal warble crooning achingly over stripped down versions of Palace / Oldham / BPB songs, including some definite fan faves ("Trudy Dies", "Stable Will") as well as an amazing cover of "The Cross", from Sign 'O' The Times by Prince (the other Prince!), and goddamn if it doesn't sound like a Palace Brothers song proper. The instrumentation is mostly acoustic guitar, or low volume electric, with the occasional vocal harmonies, but really, the sound is super intimate, with a sort of back porch / campfire vibe but beautifully record. Absolutely essential listening for fans, and not a bad place to start for beginners too.
Excellent! Now this is the sort of stuff Mo'Wax should be putting out, this is what those yuppie lounge bars should be playing instead of fuckin' Kruder and Dorfmeister. Boom Bip may be familiar to you through his Four Tet remix and collaborations with Dose One (Them, cloudDead), but you'd be forgiven for thinking he might be on Mo'Wax -- this record's got all the trademark spacious open wide sonic vistas, echoey breakbeats, movie dialog samples, hip hop reverence, and melody galore. A different take on the whole rock meets electronica thang that only a few bands can pull off well (Fridge, Tarwater, DJ Shadow when he's sampling guitars), Boom Bip mixes space rock with electronica absolutely perfectly, and grounds it with hip hop, lest the thing get too cerebral. There are slow breakbeats, sweet chamber strings, throbbing epic bass, dubby echo, unabashedly rock-based chord progressions, and eccentric scratching. Plus lots of dynamic changes -- the record never gets boring. There's even a finishing track that makes use of Felt-like or Durutti Column-ish tinny guitar. Now, it's not a "weird" record, not even ultra challenging, but it does what it does perfectly. I am very impressed!
Oh, it must also be said that this disc has got artwork we're fairly wetting our pants over -- brown coffee cup stains on neutral cardboard, with gold foil pressed graffiti logo, and a die cut thru which shows the barcode. And then the insert incorporates the barcode stripes into all these pretty loops spelling out Boom Bip. Wow.
There's white metal, there's UNblack metal, and then there's unabashed Christian black metal, all of which we find endlessly fascinating, due in no small part to the fact that black metal by definition is Satanic, certainly evil and grim, so reimagining black metal as something holy, something celebrating the Lord, is tantamount to blasphemy, if you can in fact blaspheme something inherently blasphemous. The other strange thing, is that unblack metal and Christian black metal, at least in our experience, seems WAY weirder. As if that was one way to create a separate more virtuous strain of black metal, the sound, the production, the arrangements, it always seems so much more bizarre and fucked up. And heck if there was anything that might lure us over to the other side, it would be a record like this, the debut from Dutch duo Borgazur. And yeah, beyond being buzzy and heavy and black, this is one weird record. Let's start with the non-musical elements. The record is called 2P3" Alchemists Earth Of Aeon A.C. Not really even sure what that means. The two members are called Kildreth The Elder and Knight Ilithrir. Some song titles: "Preface To Our Cogent", "The Repeat Of Underestimated Allures", "Prognostication Of Victorious Travail", and how about this one: "Alchemy Of Alleviation When A Fib Is Prevaricated"!! The cover art is a crazy collage of skulls and lions and Hitler and coins and all sorts of other stuff, superimposed over some mystical forest. The lyrics are printed within, and heavily footnoted, referencing various books of the Bible, even their names are culled from the Good Book. Phew. But then there's the music, which is equally bizarre.
Fast and furious, and almost symphonic, super complex and mathy, the drums lightning fast, the riffs gnarled and buzzy, tons of lurching stop start arrangements. There are some haunting clean vocals drifting in now and again, some clean folky bits, even some blackened drones, but for the most part this is frenzied epic blackness, like Solefald or Borknagar or Dimmu Borgir but mixed with a little Deathspell, or S.V.E.S.T., a strange blend of symphonic heaviness, and grim black buzz, but even then, totally its own black beast, a sound fucked up and fractured, dizzying, confusional and seriously and awesomely OUT THERE.
Ok, here's one for all the AQ customers who we know are always hankering for the state-of-the-art in "drone-metal" (i.e. those who can't get enough of the likes of Earth, Melvins "Lysol", Sunn 0))), Corrupted, Esoteric, etc.). Thanks to noted label-of-doom Southern Lord, we've got the new domestic reissue of the 1996 full-length debut from this amazing Japanese band. We actually used to stock the import version back when it first came out, but never were able to get very many and it's been unavailable for a long long time. Souther Lord's new "Super Low Frequency Version" features new artwork and (doubtless much to the annoyance of the three or four people who manged to get the original import) a seven minute appropriately named bonus track, "Dronevil2". That makes this a 73 minute, two-track disc, as the title track itself is one of those rare, slow motion, maximum riff glacial drone songs that stretches out over (previously) the entire length of the cd! Heavy duty stuff indeed. It makes sense that the name Boris comes from a Melvins song. And also that one of their other albums is a collaboration with Japan's king of dark psych guitar, Keiji Haino. Now we're waiting for their fantastic second disc, "Amplifier Worship", to get reissued domestically as well (watch this space). Recommended, doom freaks.
Yowza! We are *so* excited to finally have stock (and at a nice price, too) of this masterpiece of heaviosity by the amazing Japanese band Boris, who have become big AQ-faves over the past few years. The more-than-aptly-titled "Amplifier Worship" is their
A good shorthand description of "Amplifier Worship" would be to say that it sounds like a cross between the low-end riffage of Boris' obvious heroes the Melvins, and the more recent, rhythmic trance experiments of their countrymen the Boredoms. Psychedelic punk metal, utterly crushing. Pretty much essential to anyone who is into "heavy"! If you like the dirgey sludge of Corrupted and Earth, as well as the more rocked-out sludge of Sleep and Melvins (circa "Ozma" and "Bullhead"), you'll love Boris! Recommended!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Good news, Boris fans. Thanks to Southern Lord, we now finally have stock again AGAIN of this masterpiece of heaviosity and former AQ-record-of-the-week by the amazing Japanese band Boris, who have become big AQ-faves over the past few years. The more-than-aptly-titled "Amplifier Worship" was their 2nd full-length release (after their mighty one-song drone-slab "Absolutego" but before the mind-blowing, semi-acoustic "Flood" and the stoner-rockin' genius of "Heavy Rocks"); it originally came out in 1998 and has been, on and off, pretty much unavailable in the US. Man's Ruin was going to release it domestically a while back, actually, but that fell through because of that label's sudden, unfortunate demise. Now our friends at Southern Lord, who made "Absolutego" available over here, have gotten around to releasing "Amplifier Worship" in the States. A happy day indeed. It's cheaper than the import, we should be able to keep it in stock for more than just a week, and, of course, it still rules!!
A good shorthand description of "Amplifier Worship" would be to say that it sounds like a cross between the low-end riffage of Boris' obvious heroes the Melvins, and the more recent, rhythmic trance experiments of their countrymen the Boredoms. Psychedelic punk metal, utterly crushing. Pretty much essential to anyone who is into "heavy"! If you like the dirgey sludge of Corrupted and Earth, as well as the more rocked-out sludge of Sleep and Melvins (circa "Ozma" and "Bullhead"), you'll love Boris! Recommended!!
And don't feel too bad if you already bought the more expensive Japanese import version. First off, you're that much cooler. Secondly, there's no bonus tracks or anything on this edition to make it any better. Thirdly, the redesigned, green-tinted package, while striking, happens to incorporate a GUMMI WORM in the spine of the jewel case. I'm sorry, that's just not a good idea... But if you don't already have the import, this is a must-have and a bargain even with the gummi worm, which should still be edible when you get your copy and so thus is easily dealt with.
It's that time again. When AQ regulars start coming in every day like junkies looking for a fix, "Do you have it yet? C'mon man, when are you gonna get it?" And in fact, they are junkies, only they're looking for their HEAVINESS fix. That fix that only Japanese sludge/doom gods Boris can provide. We were pretty into Boris' recent Akuma No Uta cd ep, that added all sorts of sonic weirdness to their new found super-charged Stooges, stoner rock sound (a la Heavy Rocks). But some of us were still longing for a return to the glacial, slow motion doom/drone days of old: Amplifier Worship, Absolutego (sadly now out of print) even the comparatively serene Flood (Allan's favorite). And while we can't tell you this is entirely that return, it's darn close, and we'd say it's easily one of their best records yet. At Last (aka Feedbacker) is a breathtaking, 50 minute epic, split into five movements. Things start with a slow slow build, drones and rumbles and huge sheets of distorted guitars, weaving a heaving tapestry of sonic unrest, a static buzz that towers over you like an ancient stone wall, threatening to heave forward, bricks of sonic sludge crushing you beneath their suffocating weight. The big surprise though comes in the second movement as the wall of sludge dissipates into the ether, leaving a smoky hazy gauze, through which Boris emerge, as an almost-pop band, simple spare drumming, heavily reverbed shimmery chords, subtle muted wah guitar with a distant swirling backdrop of wind tunnel effects and howling feedback. Then vocalist Takeshi joins the fray with mumbled, keening sad boy vocals reminding us of Greg Dulli in his Afghan Whigs days, and then drums get all dubbed out, and suddenly everything is druggy and trippy, like the whole record was soaked in cough syrup. All the while Boris' guitar goddess Wata spits out super distorted leads, all melancholy and emotional, strings bending, feedback threatening to overwhelm the notes. The mellow parts definitely remind us of Codeine, which is a VERY good thing. Also, Windy and Carl, the Wipers a little, and even that eighties Homestead records sound. But it wouldn't be Boris if things didn't get HEAVY. And they do. Really heavy. The rest of the record is an aural tug of war between Boris' Earth/Sunn 0))) doom tendencies and their gorgeous, shimmery, druggy psychedelia. Imagine Godspeed You Black Emperor, raised on doom metal and seventies psych, and fronted by a female Hendrix! It's that fucking amazing.
As you may know, Boris are perhaps Japan's number one Melvins worshippers! But that's not to say they're unoriginal, rather the opposite, since the Melvins themselves are so unpredictable and eccentric. But in terms of heaviness, Boris measure up. If you
Japanese doom/sludge titans, turned psychedelic hard rockers, turned weirdo J-pop iconoclasts Boris, have long been favorites around here, and with each new record never fail to surprise, or baffle, or confuse, and this new one is no different. While we all have different opinions about which Boris records are the best, around aQ, we were always partial to those earlier records, that sonically situated themselves alongside groups like Earth, SUNNO))), Corrupted and the like. But once their sound shifted toward something more 'rock', we found ourselves constantly debating the merits of different records, with some of us never quite being won over by their 'new' sound, and some of us embracing it big time, and only a few of us digging their weirdo electro/J-pop record the best.
This new one is bound to divide once again, as right out of the gate it reveals itself to be a sort of heavy, electronic flecked, psychedelic metal prog epic, the closest comparison being maybe later period Cave-In, around Jupiter, where that band, also previously sludgy and metallic, shocked folks (bumming out plenty) by transforming into something more like a heavier Radiohead. Opener "Melody" here, is a dead ringer for Cave-In, and to be fair, it's not all that removed from the last few Boris records, but something about it, the sound is much more focused, managing the tough task of being both poppy and catchy, hooky and heavy, laced with squalls of wild wah wah guitar freakout, and sprinklings of electronics, soaring vocals, wild drumming, it's total heavy-psych pop-prog bliss out of the highest order. And while the second track seems to slip right back into the fuzzed out riffage of past Boris efforts, it immediately opens up into another prog-pop epic, all tangled soaring leads, lush crooned vocals, layered textures, plenty of slow burn majesty, speaking of which, "Ghost Of Romance", sounds a bit like Boris channeling Les Rallizes Denudes, all super distorted and blown out, but dreamily poppy, a blown out ballad that explodes near the end into a fuzz drenched psych pop freakout. That smoldering balladry bleeds into "Heavy Rain" as well, that takes that prog-poppiness, and blurs it into a hazy, wasted dream-drift psychedelic dirge.
Then there's the record's centerpiece, the nearly nineteen minute "Angel", which begins with glimmering harmonics, subtle percussion, and hushed melodies, almost 8 minutes of whispery soft focus drift, before blossoming into a gorgeous field of soaring psych guitar and swirling synths, before transforming into another brief bout of proggy pop, before finally devolving into a tranced out field of blissfully blurry, glimmering guitar noise, like a softer, dreamier Sunroof!
Finally, the record finishes off with the super metallic, hard rocking heavy psych prog of "Quicksilver", furious and frenzied, with some seriously tripped our vocals, and wild tangled arrangements, flecked with some crazy catchy poppiness, before the 3 minute final come down, a barely there soft focus shuffle, all dark twang, hushed rhythmic skitter, all drenched in echo and reverb, like a downer psych Earth.
Great stuff, and as far as a bunch of us are concerned, finally a return to form, and quite possibly the best record we've heard in a while from these guys (and gal)...
Amongst AQ customers, another Boris/Merzbow collaboration is most certainly a rock dream. But folks who don't enjoy 'noise' in their 'rock', or don't necessarily want to hear Boris classics transformed, might just find this to be a rock nightmare. That said, Rock Dream is really pretty cool. With a surprisingly subtle Merzbow adding his own world of sound FX to Boris' blown out dronegroove heaviness.
On their first matchup, the brilliant Megatone, these two outfits meshed perfectly, offering up a dense and thick drone record, not so much heavy as intense, Merzbow adding a gritty grind to Boris low end rumble circa Flood. A record that was pretty and mysterious as well as being massive and crushing.
The lp only live document 04092001 was a less successful pairing. A live show with Boris playing their Stooges-y rock jams behind an impenetrable wall of Japanoise, cool and weird, heavy and fucked up, but definitely on the harsh side, at times sounding amazing, but at times, more like a super lo-fi damaged noise band.
Rock Dream sounds like the 04092001 refined, with Merzbow's Masami Akita taking a much more active role in these songs, instead of just spraying dense gouts of buzzing screeching sonic gore all over the place, or smearing drones and riffs with walls of crumbling sound, here his touch is deft, offering up delicate glimmering sparkles as often as skull crushing streaks of white hot noise. It's like a Boris greatest hits record, an epic live show, but with Merzbow's Masami Akita rounding out the trio to a quartet, and we have to say, they almost sound better than the originals. Beginning with the 35 minute "Feedbacker". A long slow build, with Akita adding texture, and strange little sonic events to the proceedings, waterfall like hiss, clouds of tinkling chiming high end, smears of fuzzed out whir, never interfering, always complimenting the song, and when the band explode into full on planet caving heaviness, Akita somehow manages to make it sound even heavier, taking Boris's extended space jams and adding a million more layers, the outro to every Hawkwind song and a roiling swirl of malfunctioning Acid Mothers Temple effects, the track culminating in a kick ass drum splatter, alien FX, amp destroying feedback freejam. In fact, most of the songs sound like some strange mix of Boris groove, and Acid Mothers Temple freakout. Which is most definitely good thing. "Rainbow" here sounds like a female fronted Wooden Shjips jamming with Wolf Eyes, "Evil Stack" (a previously unreleased track as far as we can tell!) is a blinding supernova of freaked out effects and damaged drum chaos, and "Black Out" is a dirgey doom trudge, through thick clouds of crumbling, grinding buzz and keening psychnoise guitars. And that's just disc one.
Disc two starts off with the furious garagepsychbuzz blast of "Pink", Akita just adding an extra layer of buzzy hiss. The hiss just gets louder on "Woman On The Screen", at points threatening to take over completely. Disc two is definitely the more ROCK of the two, at least the first half, furious and freaked out rollicking and totally rocking, just sounding slightly noisier. But once we get to "The Evilone Which Sobs", it's back to ultra heaviness, a loping grooving dirge, the guitars wailing, the drums pounding, this time the Merzbow component taking the driver's seat, a gorgeous chaotic swirl of corrosive noise, swirling and whirling, never quite obscuring the jam behind it, but making the background rock sound that much more mysterious. There's a bit more RAWK, with "Just Abandoned Myself", a super rocking, hyper distorted, garage psych blowout, again with Akita's wall of sound adding all sorts of new texture and extra heaviness. Finally, Rock Dreams finishes up with the almost arena rock sounding "Farewell", epic power chords, majestic vocals, triumphant melody, all wound up in a glimmering field of brilliant buzz and crumbling shimmer.
This version, released on Southern Lord is limited to 5000 copies, each disc numbered. Awesome miniature gatefold lp style packaging, with cool die cut front cover so you can see the printed full color inner sleeve inside, designed by none other than Stephen O'Malley...
There is a Japanese version, much more expensive, with super deluxe packaging, very much like the artwork for the Japanese version of Jesu's Conqueror record, the multi paneled digipak with the clear plastic printed slipcover. BUT, the music is exactly the same, so unless you need the fancy Japanese packaging (which some of us do), you won't miss out on any of the music if you pick up this domestic version. If you do want the Japanese version, just email us and we'll order you one...
AQ faves Boris (masters of Melvins-esque slow-motion dirge metal) team up with sometime AQ fave Masami Akita (who as Merzbow basically invented 'noise' as a genre) to unleash this three track cd of monster drone! Both camps represent with some of their most gorgeous work. Boris contribute what sounds like the prettier more minimal stuff from their moody album "Flood", with guitar only evident on one track, and even then it's slowed down, stretched out and buried under a thick blanket of Merzbow-y haze and Boris-y rumble. Akita keeps his noise side in check (although there are some truly caustic moments) opting instead for dark, processed low end with the occasional sonic flare. Created using guitar, e-bow, space echo, Powerbook and feedback conduction (!), "Megatone" finds itself situated closer to the drones of Coleclough or Karkowski than it does to the metallic pummel of the Melvins or the Corrupted. The opening track is a deep 20+ minute rumble, with white noise spread thinly above, while Akita's Powerbook gradually becomes more and more sonically intrusive and the processed guitars form subtle melodic overtones, throbbing and pulsing in ultra slow motion. The second track is constructed out of far away, psychedelic, Keiji Haino-esque guitar leads, buried under some Merzbowian ear piercing skree, allowing Akita to unleash some of that 'noise' he is so famous for. The final track lets the guitars do the talking one more time with huge walls of distortion, still heavily reverbed and distant sounding, but much more serene and almost ambient, with Merzbow's noise contributions much more complimetary and distinctly less harsh. A massive, gorgeous totally enthralling collaboration from two of the most exciting artists in music today!
Borknagar record number four I think (maybe 5, but who's counting?) and I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is maybe my favorite Borknagar record so far. The sound has changed quite a bit thanks to a new singer, a new keyboardist and a new
Record number two from this mysterious Bay Area black metal horde, a group whose sound is as heavy on the Louisville math rock is it is on the black buzz, and on record number two, they stretch out even further, exploring their math/post rock tendencies in ways that were only hinted at on the first record. And as one might expect, the mix of black buzz and meandering post rockisms sounds much more organic this time around, where as the first time the separation between the two sounds was more jarring. The production is much improved too.
Just take the opening track, "Volume Two Chapter One", with its darkly dynamic opening, all start stop minor key minimalism, a melancholy minor key melody played out over a series of chords, left to ring out, the drums crashing in time, the only hint of the blackness to come is a howled vocals way way off in the distance, it's two minutes before this crashing moodiness segues fairly smoothly into some frantic blackened blasting, the drums not your typical blastbeat, instead offering up all manner of unlikely fills, the result a little off kilter, and a good balance to the otherwise more traditional back buzz guitar and shrieked vox. And then with about 2 minutes to go, the buzz seems to dissipate leaving just a churning, chuggy chunk of palm muted math rock, that sounds more like Don Cab than Darkthrone, pounding out the final minute in a tangle of mathy rhythms.
The post rockisms are much more subtle in "Marie In A Cage", which plays more like your standard buzzing blackness, but there are those wild chaotic drums, not to mention a killer part midsong where the band switch into a brief bit of proggy mathiness that KILLS, but it's brief and soon the band are galloping along again, never fully shedding that mathiness, but instead incorporating it into the black buzz. "The Lampless Hours" is another track that starts out sounding like some lost mid nineties Touch And Go record (minus the flurries of double kick drum), before launching into a stretch of 'proper' black metal. "The Death Posture" is a churning doomy plod, peppered with burst of blasting black metal, and again here, the band are much more subtle with their deployment of post and math rock elements, which ultimately makes for some truly idiosyncratic black metal. And finally, the record finishes off with the 11+ minute "Why Am I So Lovely? Because My Master Washes Me.", which again sounds on the surface traditionally blackened and buzzy, but the post rock undercurrent seems to seep through every chance it gets, finally shouldering the blackness out of the way at about the midway point for a stretch of gnarled mathiness, that manages to not sound out of place, instead, it's drawn in shades of black, that make it that much easier for the band to slip back into the furious buzz that finishes off the record, until the last minute when the recording seems to go haywire, everything blown out and distorted finishing off in a wild squall of Merzbowian white noise.
Definitely less post rocky than its predecessor, but again, the trade off is that the post rock element doesn't sound as much like a gimmick, instead sounding more an actual intrinsic part of BdN's sound, and while black metal dabblers may not be so inclined this time around (although they should be), true grim metalheads might just find their horizons being expanded, whether they realize it or not.
Another mysterious missive from the verdant realm, which can only mean one thing, the return of THE BOTANIST, our local eco-terrorist drum and dulcimer black metal band, who in fact, have actually expanded into a proper band, and have been playing shows throughout the US recently, which we have witnessed and are pretty incredible. We can also say, that in some ways, they're even better than the records. Odds are you've likely never heard dueling hammered dulcimers, amplified and projected at great volume, accompanied by blasting drums and wheezing sruti box. But ultimately hearing the strange metallic tones of the dulcimers are extreme volume, it's kind of transcendent.
That's not to take away from the records at all, this new one, the fifth in three years (and that's not counting a split with Palace Of Worms, or the fact that they/he skipped number five for some reason), is another fantastic , psychedelic, bizarre and beautiful assemblage of sounds, most of which at this point are really only tangentially black metal. Vokill rasps, check. Furious blast beats, check. But beyond that, Botanist tend to explore some other sonic world entirely, one that's droney and atmospheric, minimal and MAXimal at the same time, the melodies of the dulcimers, no matter how much they're meant to emulate blackened riffing, sound way more alien, and abstract, in some ways it reminds us of the just intonation black metal of Jute Gyte, but the furious flurries of notes, the harmonics and the overtones, all blend into one glorious, constantly shifting organic field of sound, that's utterly mesmerizing and totally immersive, as if all the other elements are just window dressing for these thick, hypnotic, psychedelic swirls of sound. And very much like on IV: Mandragora, the songwriting seems to continue to follow a similar path, one that gets less and less black with every release, with many of the tracks here downright melodic and lovely, sans the harsh vokills, they sound more like Mono or Mogwai, epic and majestic, sun dappled and hopefully, burnished with some inner light, the melodies glowing, the sound emotional and lush, prismatic and heart wrenching. And yeah, sure there are moments more grim, but those just offer shadow, to the rest of Flora's sonic light.
Our favorite local one man arboreal black metal band returns with a brief split to tide us over until the impending release of both V and VI, in the seemingly (and thankfully) unending barrage of material oozing up from the verdant realm. And like the last few Botanist releases, the tracks here find the sound drifting every further away from the black metal that, only barely, defined the sound of those recordings. Minus the vokills, the three tracks here are super melodic, a little bit blissy and shoegazey, and sound like some avant post rock you might find on Temporary Residence. Even with blast beats and a healthy heaping of buzz, the tracks here soar and chime, you can almost envision some wistful sad boy vox and suddenly, this is total teenage mixtape material, which is not a bad thing at all. And when the blacker elements are woven in, it becomes something truly strange and wonderful, and just further demonstrates, why the rest of the world, particularly the non metal portion, have been flipping out over this stuff.
Palace Of Worms on the other hand, is something all together more metallic and grim, their opening track a creepy doomy sprawl, all woozy minor key melodies, haunting ambience, the sound slowly building to something much more epic and majestic, a black buzz, but one that's muted and swaddled in swoonsome synths, giving the sound a sort of washed out and sun dappled quality, which makes it a good match for Botanist. But those moments of wispiness, are more than made up for by some more intense, growly, metallic black buzz, the sound deftly balance between the two, songs flitting from grinding downtuned churn, to synthy shimmer, to crystalline post-metal drift and back again.
Great great stuff from both bands, and some seriously awesome cover art to boot!
Two different Silkworm related releases on this week's list, a new one from Joel Phelps, an early member of the group, whose super distinctive vocals defined what might be our favorite Silkworm records, and this one, the latest from Bottomless Pit, the post Silkworm project of Andy Cohen and Tim Midgett, and of the two, it's the one that sounds the most like where Silkworm would have headed, and perhaps ended up, had the band not broken up after the tragic death of drummer Michael Dahlquist. And like the last Pit record we raved about on our list, Shade Perennial is another fantastic collection of emotionally charged indie rock, dark, and brooding, heavy and rocking, introspective but aggressive, in fact, the opening track reveals the band sounding heavier than ever, the guitars thick and distorted, Cohen's guitar dense and psychedelic, the rhythm section locked tight, letting the guitars and vocals swirl over the top, the result is haunting and harrowing, tense and intense, as I'm sure we said about the other Bottomless Pit records, they just don't make music like this anymore, except these guys do, and it sounds incredible. We described Bottomless Pit as sounding a bit like a heavier My Dad Is Dead, which is still pretty apt, although, at this point we'd imagine less people know who the hell MDID is than Bottomless Pit, but if you do remember MDID, then a heavier version is definitely a good thing.
Imagine the darkest, moodiest moments of the later Silkworm records, crank up the distortion a bit, and that'll give you a rough idea of Shade Perennial, but like all the BP records, and the Silkworm records too, there's lots going on, and tons of subtle touches that make those records so mysterious and special, the melodies, the textures, the lyrics, the phrasing in the vocals, the arrangements, it's all impossibly meticulous without sounding like it. Much of Bottomless Pit seems to exist in the shadows, a dark, brooding record, even the seemingly upbeat rocking tracks, still seem to be infused with a melancholia, a fantastically depressive modern indie rock classic, with some of the best songs we've heard from both Cohen and Midgett. We've been spinning this pretty much constantly, along with the old Silkworm records it reminds us of...
Ohio metal/punk combo, busy making the devil-sign with their hands held high, however with their tongues firmly in their cheeks... But while the vocals betray their punk lineage, the riffs and licks are truly the devil's music. Hot rockin' Flying V worship, that should go down well with fans of Motorhead, Drunkhorse, Lost Goat...in fact, this kicks the ass of The Hellacopters and their ilk, 'cause of the metal element here, however silly it might be. Includes their earlier vinyl-only "The Rage Of It All" lp as bonus tracks. Smart people making dumb metal sometimes doesn't work out so well, but we like this despite the irony.
