The letter that came with this three-song demo claims the band is "industrial-infused dark melodic rock," but they can't fool me -- this is progressive goth metal, or something like that. (The endless splitting of genres has kind of left me confused; I long for the days when rock was either "metal" or "not metal.") The band's attack is pretty straightforward: Crunchy metal guitar and a no-frills (but metronome-tight) rhythm section with soaring keyboards and an equally operatic female singer. The production on the first two tracks is a tad thin (the guitars could be louder and the drum sound more detailed), but the last track largely corrects those problems, and there's no problem with the band's performance. While they sound like a metal band, I suspect their songwriting chops are derived far more from industrial and goth bands, and Maria's singing probably has as much to do with Siouxsie as it does with that woman from Lacuna Coil everybody is all hot and bothered by lately. Ailanthus has a major leg up on a lot of the goth and metal bands clogging up the market right now, though, because their songs are actually good and they actually know how to play those funny-looking things with all the wood and wire. The grinding death metal guitar sound on the first track ("Someone Else") is truly swank, not to mention the unexpected burst of double-bass drum hell in the third song ("Malum"). And for a goth band (the industrial / goth influence becomes a lot more obvious on the second track, "Siren's Cry"), they sure seem to be following Impaled Nazarene's keyboard rule (to wit, "Only touch the keyboard when absolutely necessary, just to remind people that it's there"). The third song is also the best, and the one where you can clearly hear in the quiet parts how well the band plays together. They play regularly around New York and New Jersey (they're from Brooklyn), and if you get the chance to check them out, you'd be well-advised to do so. Six tracks of full-on, gadget-intensive power electronics. "Stuff is Noise" is an insanely loud collection of screeches, crashing gadgets, and crunchy thumping about, all drenched in a fat layer of sonic filth and battered with even more damaged sounds from time to time. At times it sounds like a dark-ambient track run horribly amok; at other times it resembles two trains colliding as an airplane falls out of the sky. There's a similar aesthetic at work on "Postchordance" -- lots of screeching, wailing, jet airplanes falling off a cliff -- but the noise energy is focused in different directions this time around. Death by feedback and ear-frying white noise is what you find on "Specialismo" -- probably the most severe of these tracks -- whereas "Vertigonal" and "Momentus" are more varied and not quite so focused on power through pain. The last track is also the strangest: On "Holes In My Soul," long stretches of silence are punctuated by brief noises, then the background is taken up by the sounds of conversation at home as noises swirl around. The piece builds in density and intensity in waves, and conversation samples drift in and out of the mix, before it finally ends in an abrupt avalanche of crumbling noise that quickly dies away. The overall effect is embodied through layers of damaged sound and conversation, and the results straddle the divide between tape collage and junk electronics. It's also appropriately loud and destructive. Good stuff. This is just ridiculous. I think if I were a different person I'd be angry I spent five dollars on a little over a minute of music... but this is too good! Like I said, three tracks clocking in at just over a minute... but they fucking RULE. Track one, "As If," is a quick live screamer with creepy lyrics. Mark introduces the song, the synths start beating the shit out of you, some shrieks... it's done. Second song, "A Song For Lisanne, A Young Model," is a studio effort that shows off the psychedelic aspect of the band quite well. Synth noises, lots of feedback, buried vocals... trippy fade-out, awesome! Track three, "Baby," is another live freak-out. Mark introduces the song then BOOM. Fucking PAIN. This one is my favorite I think, some chaos, shrieks... more shrieks. It's over, you just got mugged. Another awesome bit of the power electronic pain we've come to love from these crazy Chicago leather-dudes! [Dillon Tulk] This disc, peculiar even by CO's standards, consists of two long tracks of cut-up collage art built around perversely annoying Casio rhythms. The first track, "The World of the Pillaged Sound," is twelve and a half minutes of irritating, flanged-out rhythms over which strange sounds swoop and glide. As the piece progresses, slices of conversation, found sound, gadgets, and other noises drop in from time to time, rarely hanging around for long. This collision of tape collage and techno would be more bearable if the Casio weren't quite so annoying, although once you get used to it the rest of the sounds more than make up for that unfortunate bit. Eventually the sound mutates into brooding, dark ambient soundscapes and crunching, then it's just a steady flow of sounds arranged to suggest sinister possibilities. There's all sorts of strangeness afoot during these dark segments, which sound very much like the sound and efx loop for some degenerate action flick overlaid with the symphonic soundtrack of a high-budget horror film. Irritating sounds and rhythms eventually make their return, as the piece cycles through difference vistas of sound. The second track, "Ill-Treatment Endlessly," starts out sounding closer to CO's earlier sound -- droning feedback, damaged machine noises, snippets of found conversation -- and then the developing audio scenario is rudely crushed by thudding, flanged-out beats. The rest of the song is an exercise in corrupt beats, damaged sounds, and other shifts in mood. As with all of CO's other work, the manner in which sound flows is the real key here, more so than the actual sounds, and the flow is nice. It would have been nicer without the Casios, yes, but still... nice. The band consists of John Olson (Wolf Eyes, American Tapes) and his wife Tovah O'Rourke (Wooden Wand, Vanishing Voice) creating compositions based around erratic machine rhythms and other forms of noise clattering away in the background. The execution and intent probably aren't all that too far removed from suitcase-electronics bands like Wolf Eyes, but the sound that results from their tinkering is often far more unearthly and ambiguous than the average power-noise track. This particlar release contains five untitled tracks of hallucinatory machine noise, all about the sound of dying gadgets breaking down, a loud mechanical cancer of the coming apocalypse. There are some powerful moments of full-on electrofuzz or power drone, and plenty of clattering noises and execptionally crepescular sound transmission strategies as well, buried in the machine rhythms and electronic death hum. Strange, eerie, unsettling stuff. This is available on cd and lp, probably both in extremely limited quantities; the inside of the insert lists a truly ridiculous number of other, even more obscure, cassette / vinyl / cd releases by the band. Even without the list it's pretty obvious they're not new to this, and while I have no idea how it compares to the rest of their catalog or live sound, this is a pretty swell noise disc and well worth seeking out on the playback format of your choice. This is old-school psych, stripped-down American garage-rock psychedelia with some heavy drone action and beautiful / brooding / witchy vocals from Lee Ann Cameron, who also plays rhythm guitar and wrote all the songs except the Roky Erickson cover "Unforced Peace." The group describes itself as "psychedelic folk goth -- male, female, and in-between," which is absolutely true (when I saw them live, they not only lived up to the description, but actually covered the Sun City Girls), and not exactly a huge surprise, given that the band includes alumni of several well-known / legendary Austin-area psych and experimental bands like ST37, Primordial Undermind, Roky Erickson and Evilhook Wildlife E.T., Triplewide, Olive, and Politicians Psychedelic folk goth. So these are old-school acidheads, which means their songs actually sound like songs instead of strange noises (noise is the new psych, dig?), but they drift off in strange directions and weave through billows of drone and minimalist guitar, with Lee Ann's sweet but mysterious singing riding the waves. These are not fast, short punk songs by any stretch of the imagination; the six-song cd-ep plays out in under 35 minutes, and all but two are in the six to eight minute range. The songs are slow to mid-tempo, all the better to absorb all the swell drones and background details. The entire disc is great, but the best song is unquestionably the last one, "The Professor," nearly eight minutes of simple, repetitive riffs, lots of reverb and drone, minimal but sharp drums, and a great vocal performance that includes call-and-response chanting. The disc sounds like it could have been recorded in the sixties and released on some obscure European psych label -- but instead, it's new and available and waiting for you to hear it and see it. As well you should. Justin Chris Meyers, the guy behind Devillock, is my kind of guy -- a noise / tape junkie who has been releasing a flurry of limited-edition tapes and cd-rs, many in handmade packaging. His earlier stuff is driven by damaged tape electronics, and here, on his first official cd, it's more of the same (just in a somewhat more "hi-fi" presentation). The disc contains four long tracks, two long and two short, all recorded live in May / June of 2005. The first one, "The Blood From," also includes Freedom From label mainman Matthew St. Germain on bass; the entire album was mastered by Pete Swanson (D Yellow Swans). There's a lot of repetition and a heavy drone element to all of the tracks, but some are grittier and more alien-sounding than others. The first track, "The Blood From," is one of the long ones, and it lurches around in various directions before gravitating toward moments that sound like bad shortwave transmissions from radio towers frying on a barren plain during a cyclone, and is often powerfully disorienting. The title track is short (a little over a minute) and filled with disturbing, bass-heavy grinding noises, like a horde of machine-made wolves circling each other, growling and malfunctioning at the same time. "Weigh Forever" is another high-pitched and droning churnfest, one that goes on for nearly fifteen minutes. The closing track, another brief snippet called "On Rotten Creatures," makes a nice (and concise) coda, all melancholy droning, subdued glitch noises, and hovercraft sounds that come to an abrupt end almost without warning. Not "new" or insanely electrifying, but still pretty good (and well-paced) death-drone glitch noise. The cool graphics don't hurt, either. It would be a wise idea to investigate. Max was nice enough to trade me this piece of awesome for one of my pieces of shit. Oh my fucking god guys... you have GOT to get this DJ Dog Dick tape. Sputtering skree, inhuman high-pitched synthy bleats, sputtering gunk... a weird drawn-out bit featuring a sample of something I can't tell what is, but makes me laugh, kind of? So good. The first side makes you all pumped, then the second side just fucking BRINGS IT. Are you ready for the Dog Dick? I don't think you can fucking handle the Dog Dick! Dude... the mutli-cosmical display of rhyming skills on the second side will leave your 50 Cent-loving ass wishing you hadn't slept on the psychotic spank of "the dog dick crumble." Hell yeah, gimme more. [Dillon Tulk] Yet another savage release from Dead Teenager Records. Filthy Jim bring big detuned riffs and yowled vocals; think Mountain by way of Killers-era Iron Maiden, with a touch of Sleep. It's not the most original sound, but they do it quite well. [N/A] This is the Gang of Four, the funky-ass UK agitpop group who shook up postpunk with the release of their first two albums, ENTERTAINMENT! and SOLID GOLD, in 1979 and 1981. They were a huge influence on everybody from the Band of Susans to REM and were a legendary live act, but the band always had issues, leading to the band breaking and reforming again and again. The most recent reformation, with the original lineup, has probably been the best one. The band went back into the studio and re-recorded fourteen of the band's best tracks with modern production, and released a studio album that sounds like a live one. (Live they remain invincible, judging by that footage I saw of their show at Emo's in early October.) The sound here is far more "modern" -- not to mention loud -- than the original releases ever were, and there's a vicious, metallic intensity to their attack that makes the new versions real interesting to hear. The best tracks, not surprisingly, are still the best-known ones -- "Anthrax," "I Love A Man In Uniform," "What We All What," "At Home He's A Tourist," "We Live As We Dream, Alone" -- but everything, even the lesser work, is solid here. There has been grousing from some quarters that this compilation is kind of unneccesary (which it is; the band has already released one compilation, A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, and some of these songs have been re-recorded or recorded live before), but it works really well as a beginniner's audio text for those who are still not familiar with the band. These recordings are at least as good, and in some cases much better, than the original versions, and the compilation itself is a pretty smart assembling of songs, plus they give you a sticker whose back tells you how to go online and find a bunch of free MP3s from the band to download. Supposedly there's a limited or import version with an extra cd of remixes, but you probably don't need that unless you're a diehard fan (and if you are, you almost certainly have it already, right?). Recommended. Pick it up and shimmy around the room while delving into the history of postmodern rock. This three-inch cd-r contains seventeen short (some very short indeed) bursts of fractured glitch electronica. The title is apt, since many of the tracks sound like one or more machines in the last stages of traumatized mechanical freakout, rocking and thrashing around the room until the batteries run down. There's no real rhyme or reason to the sounds, or their arrangement, or the track listing (seventeen songs in just a little over seventeen minutes), or anything, but that's okay; the audio transmissions are usually pretty entertaining, and even when they hit on something that doesn't necessarily move you, the bits are so short that they'll move on to the next one before you can get too annoyed. The brevity of these pieces work in their favor -- GMN tinkers, latches onto a sound, gives it a good run, then abandons it and moves on to the next one. This is a good way to proceed with glitch electronica -- it keeps things from bogging down. This short release is nevertheless a pretty potent testimonial to the endless cornucopia of sounds that can be made with a handful of damaged or willfully perverted gadgets. There are also points that will make you wonder if your cd player or the disc is damaged, which is always a nice touch in a glitch endeavor. Swell, swell stuff. Probably not something you're going to want to listen to over and over and sing in the shower, true, but fun to hear and play loud, nonetheless. Now THIS is fucking killer. The best band you've never heard of (yet) rips your brain out, get totally mad-scientist on that shit, then slop it back in all fucked with some staples or something. Another review done while pleasantly shrooming and paying extra-close attention while the music blares from my stereo... this release literally SOUNDS like it is trying to bury you. The band gets into some real rocking moments at points, but knows how to control their chaos and revel in the feedback and madness. I would've been freaking out if I was in the crowd at this show... some parts sound like they're walking on their instruments and howling or something. Truly rad shit. [Dillon Tulk] I've been told this is Joe from Holiday Stabbing's thing? It says Holiday Stabbings on it though... I believe they like to keep their little collective umbrella / tentacles close. Anyway, this rules. Packaging was this neat envelope-type thing with some sick artwork on it, wrapped up in twine. The sounds contained within are guaranteed to leave your mind with a feeling somewhat similar to being kicked around inside a dryer with some rocks and nails or something. The track "Cops Versus the Homeless" has so much feedback I was gritting my teeth at points. The good kind of feedback that really buries itself up in your brain. Plenty of hell-breaking-loose crunch as well. Allright Joe! Way to make my cat think my apartment is a fucking black-hole or something. [Dillon Tulk] Oh how sweet. A new Holiday Stabbings release! This is a fucking stoned-out feeling jam featuring traditional instruments, electronics, bells, TV, etc... some improvised trippiness that ends a bit too soon for me. You have to play it ultra loud to hear everything, and then when you do other parts become overbearing and it really shakes things up! Solid release in my opinion, except I personally could listen to this for an hour and it kinda halts after some killer parts leave you salivating, wanting more Holiday Stabbings. I guess thats the point? You bastards! [Dillon Tulk] Ichabod's second full-length continues in the vein of their debut; dark, moody metal in the vein of Acid Bath and DIRT-era Alice in Chains, and Mindfunk. This sound (which I think is great) may be a bit of a stumbling block for the band. Like Solace, who work in a similar territory, Ichabod run the risk of being considered too heavy for the average hard rock fan and not "heavy" enough (those melodic vocals) for the average underground metal fan. It's a shame, because these guys should be in the top tier of the underground metal world. [N/A] It took them three tries to get a live gig down where all the equipment (and the performers) worked properly, but the results speak for themselves. Recorded in Helsinki, Finland before what sounds like a crowd of totally rabid fans of the Drunken Ones, this is the first full-length live document of one of the longest-running black metal bands (they prefer the term "nuclear metal" themselves, which is probably actually more appropriate at this point, really). The fact that it exists at all is a monument to the band's rigorous live aesthetic -- most black metal bands never even get around to playing live at all, and the ones that do quite frequently blow goats. Not the Nazarene, though. Once you get past the cheesy synth-drone intro, the rest of the album is just pure chaos: Mika yells at the crowd between songs in a mixture of Finnish and mangled English, and they're off to the races, bulldozing through song after song at a breakneck speed, plowing through 26 songs (okay, 25 if you leave out the intro) in a little over an hour. The songs themselves cover the band's entire history, including all the must-hear tracks like "Goat Perversion," "We Are Satan's Generation," "1999: Karmageddon Warriors," "Sadhu Satana," "Sadogoat," "The Lost Art of Goat Sacrificing," "Motorpenis," "Let's Fucking Die," "The Maggot Crusher," and "Total War -- Winter War." The band (including new guitarist Tumio, who replaced the guy who fell off a mountain while drunk shortly before the recording of their last album, ALL THAT YOU FEAR) has their shit together far more than you'd ever expect of a bunch of raging drunks, and on song after song they sound like the world's biggest steel door slamming shut on your head over and over while the world ends around them. Now that's what I call class, mon. Bonus points for Mika's cheerfully indecipherable ranting and the crowd's enthusiastic response each time (I guess it helps when you're Finnish and actually understand what he's saying). The album is available as a plain old boring cd OR a limited-edition (500 copies) double-10" on colored (sort of) vinyl and housed in a nifty-looking gatefold sleeve. Guess which one I got. Iovae's second full-length "pro" release (after a cd in 2004 on the German label Zarek and a pile of cd-rs and splits, including material on American Tapes, the label run by John Olson of Wolf Eyes) is a series of damaged machine dreams. The "band" is actually Cincinnati's own Ron Orovitz, who has been creating noise-collage sound improvisations since 1988 using turntables, tapes, various other gadgets, and especially an oscillator. At 35 minutes and five tracks, the album is either a long ep or a short album, I'm not sure which, but it's crammed full of whole-grain noise goodness. Note that this is generally glitch-electronica and damaged gadget noise, not shrieking, howling white noise, which means there's lots of fuzzed-out low end, the occasional high-end shriek, and plenty of shuddering amp hum. The oscillator gets a workout pretty frequently, especially on "Formi," where it provides the rhythmic bedrock over which other strange noises happen. 'Enlightenment" features lots of high-pitched trilling and ugly glitch noises designed to disturb your senses (not to mention your ears). These two tracks, which share similarities at times with the sounds of Dead Machines and Mammal, are less songs than cycles of noisemaking, where the noises and gadget-fu are presented as a series of linear events. Things get a bit more chaotic on "History of the Deafening," which was apparently recorded live and starts out like it intends to fully embrace full-blown power electronics, only to rapidly devolve into a squalling anti-music bundle of hiss and static like the sound of metallic cockroaches electrocuting themselves while trying to escape from a jar. The sounds on "Grinder Erupt" are subjected to swooping changes in volume before settling into an oscillator drone that slowly but surely decreases its pitch until the sound is nothing but a crumbling electronic rumble... and then the pitch and the speed begin to slowly but surely ascend. "Ode to Schadenfreude" is built over samples of soundtrack music, and what starts out sounding relatively "normal" soon becomes chaotic as samples are stacked on top of each other and are accompanied by glitch noise, then overtaken by it. Iovae's approach to tape collage and glitch electronica is interesting and in a lot of ways more subtle than the approach taken by a lot of other bands in this genre, which is refreshing. If you've been looking for an entry point into Iovae's world of perverted sound, this is it. If you're hep to Rubble, the new improv / noise-rock band centered around former Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffee, then you may already be aware of the eye-popping and highly entertaining sight that is guitarist Shawm McMillen when he's onstage. His histronics are hardly any more restrained in the Iron Kite, the unpredictable psych / improv band he shares with drummer Blake Carlisle and bassist B.C. Smith. This full-length cd (just under 44 minutes) is the uncut live recording of their appearance at Beerland on 9/19/04, and it's pretty happening -- the show that night wasn't quite as transcendent or revelatory as the night I first saw them during Yeast by Sweet Beast (a performance that probably wasn't recorded live at all, boo hoo), but it got the voodoo-machine running pretty good, all right. Hypnotic drumming, understated but potent playing, and an extended, minimalist approach to drone make this swell to hear again and again. The sound quality isn't fabulous, but it's clear enough and you can tell what's going on, which is plenty. You can thank Shawn for the twisted art that pervades (maybe even perverts) the booklet. Dare to soil your mind! You need to hear this, trust me. Now someone just needs to drag them into the studio so they can make some titanic masterpiece that will define the new millenium or something equally goofy like that, okay? Now this is interesting -- "four tracks designed to test your hi-fi system for optimal bass response." They aren't kidding, either; with the exception of some vaguely midrange screech at the beginning of "Heat Death" (recorded live at Mahall's 20 Lanes in Lakewood, OH), the sounds on this short 7" ep are intensely subsonic in nature. The band is just Jeff Curtis (bass, vox, formerly of My Dad Is Dead) and K. Stewart (Farfisa, bass, vox), and the four tracks are exactly what the title indicates -- bass-heavy action with a warbling Farfisa (most noticeable on "[Bolt] Hex"), a sound that frequently resembles the rumble of a passing train, assuming one of the boxcars was open and occupied by someone playing a Farfisa. The poop sheet that came with this mentions a lot of no-wave and noise bands, but the most operative influences at work here are probably Flipper, Public Image Ltd., Swans, and DNA (whose classic "Not Moving" they cover on the A-side). These bass-heavy tone poems are also heavy on the minimalism tip; "Anglegrinder" is nothing but a sprightly ping-pong bass riff repeating over and over as other bass action (or is it the Farfisa?) rumbles like the aforementioned subway train. The DNA cover is just as minimalist and filled with howling bass noise under the riffing and shouting, and -- most beautiful at all -- basically sounds like a DNA record playing at the wrong speed. The recording is not quite as hi-fi as some might like, but that's not completely unexpected, given the difficulties of recording extreme bass and noise in general, and lo-fi has never been a big issue to me, anyway. Besides, we're talking about a band rooted in gross bass thunder from bands like the Swans -- what do you expect, Journey? Cool bass sounds, and a welcome respite from all the noise bands who are so intensely fixated on the high-end ear damage. The best part of this EP? It's meant to be played at 45 rpm, but if you drop the speed to 33 rpm, it sounds exactly the same... only slower. I'm telling you, this is the mark of greatness.... Kare's debut album SIDEMAN was so stunning that it was hard to imagine how he could ever top it. And while I'm not sure he surpasses it here, precisely, he certainly proves that his rhythmic skills and keen but eccentric melodies were no fluke. This album was recorded with the touring band he employed in support of his first album, but rather than write songs and hold regular regular rehearsals, they opted to use the studio to build songs and soundscapes to weave in and out of each other. Eventually their sound grew so ambitious that they abandoned the idea of attempting to recreate the songs live, and plunged headlong into even more complicated sonic chaos. The results are brilliant, and while there's nothing quite as hands-down electrifying as "Frank Furius" on this one, the songs as a whole all consistently good, with layer after layer of beats, melodies, and rhythms forming a complex and shifting series of musical moods and sound environments. Many songs hover right on the edge of having just enough structure to be actual songs or just loose and improvised enough to creep into the territory of free-form jangle pop and world beat free jazz; all of them have a tripped-out psych sound at the core, no matter what modern sounds may creep in. That ambiguity is what keeps the album moving. The psychedelia that began to first bloom on SIDEMAN arrives here in full flower, and the opening tracks "Don't Don't" and "Jupiter in Flux" could be lost Beatles tracks, shelved for the crime of being "too out there for the kids," and now found and reinterpreted by hyperkinetic young Norwegians. One of the best tracks is "Offline Nocturnal Transactions," with a funky and hypnotic beat and equally throbbing bassline -- the band plays it down a bit when the verses are happening, but otherwise their improv hand is strong, boyee, and the song's long exit is filled with all sorts of swank solo jazz and polyrhythmic drumming. Dreamy droning instruments and a steady (but not necessarily as simple as it seems) techno rhythm make "The Rats" a pleasure to hear. The band knows how to rock out when it wants, though -- "Too Soon, Too Fast" features metallic guitars, truncated riffs lifted from Judas Priest, and more psychedlic pop buried under the hard rock swagger, and there's plenty of punked-out motion in "TV Dreamy." There's even a full-on pop song, "The Sideman," that manages to channel the Beatles, Jesus and Mary Chain, and Pink Floyd. The final two tracks, "Kaleidoscope Street" and "Love Each Other," are straight-up classic psych, the sort of tripped-out space jams that just beg for everybody to curl up on the floor in a big puppy pile around the hookah and just bliss out. Final verdict: Ten swell tracks of psychedelic pop rock nirvana. Consume at will and in plentiful amounts. The KPO is an "electronic art brut experiment" based in Switzerland that combines noises generated and modified via computer, field recordings, and other esoteric sounds in a rumbling and vaguely noise-laden flow of sound, perhaps akin to a more controlled version of Contagious Orgasm. The band generally prefers to release its work as MP3 files on its own site, although this one disc does exist for the benefit of listeners like myself who are too lazy to go download files. The seven tracks on this short album frequently sound like near-ambient field recordings of power plants and city streets -- it's an aesthetic that's definitely more rooted in the sounds of urban sprawl rather than nature -- and the sounds are frequently gritty and textured, as on "Needle Pleasure." Things get a bit more exotic-sounding on "Obscene Morning," with chittering noises in the background and lurching bursts of sound up front, but the sounds return to something more subtle and derived from what sound like mechanical sources on "Empty Dog." Tracks like "Frozen Monk," with its hollowed-out pipe sound and screeching reverb, provide a break from the minimalist focus of the other tracks, but largely this is a subdued exercise in mutated ambient noise. Interesting stuff, and worth checking out. From the very beginning of this disc, with Alan Dubin's horrified shriek right up front and in your face, Khanate make it clear that their previous masterpiece, THINGS VIRAL, was no fluke. If you, like myself, wondered if it was even possible to top such a doomed, bleak, psychopathic record... it turns out the answer is yes. The band returns here with two long, oppressive tracks ("Capture" and "Release") that clock in at over 43 minutes, meaning that even though this is technically a single, it takes an album's length to play out. The songs are not necessarily any slower than those on the previous album (I'm not sure that's even technically possible, anyhow), but they are even more ruthlessly focused, the riffs and notes more clearly articulated, the hellish crackling death drone more completely captured in the recording process. This album, more so than any of the previous ones, makes it clear that the band has far more in common with Alvin Lucier, Alan Lamb, Steve Reich, and Terry O'Riley than with the usual metal clods they're normally compared to all the time. Sure, there's plenty of Sabbath in their beyond-subterranean doom avalanche, put there's a lot of stuff in there too that Sabbath never even came close to imagining existed even when they were so fried out of their fucking eyeballs. The band kills on every level imaginable as Dubin hones his tortured, shrieking delivery into the audio equivalent of a straight razor and slashes away at your throat, and the sound is every bit as heavy as that grand piano featured on the cover. Everybody is pulling their weight pretty equally on this release, too -- no one element (guitar, drums, bass, vocals) is too predominant, and all of the material is performed (slowly) with great care and precision. Of course, the stunted tempos and harsh, beyond-extreme delivery are guaranteed to shut out a lot of potential listeners, which is okay -- Khanate's bag is strictly for the wee few who can hang with such forbidding, oppressive, and unimaginably slow exercises in draining, tortured minimalism. Way, way better than anything by that other band guitarist O'Malley plays for, even if they do get considerably more props and attention.. So far Khanate continues to bat a thousand. Keep it up, guys! The band's name apparently means "Shy Society at the Bird Parade" and they've been around for two decades, in spite of the fact that I've never heard of them (I must have been too busy rocking out to Slayer and Celtic Frost when they started to get their groove on). This cd is a collection of unreleased, alternate, rare, and live tracks, 22 of them in all on one disc. Even by European avant-garde standards, this is a deeply strange band -- half the time they sound like an even more eccentric French cousin to the Nihilist Spasm Band, and the other half the time they sound a band playing four or five different songs at once. The singer exhorts in French, yells, caws like a bird, and frequently does everything but actually sing; the other players employ just about every instrument under the sun, some using them to make a mixture of actual music with a strong grounding in jazz and classical sound even as other players are apparently disemboweling their instruments to see what kind of funny noises they'll make in the process. The result is a series of highly unpredictable experiments in sound that never quite turn into actual songs, even when they're making a token attempt to be "tuneful." The sounds on this album are interesting (and all of it is well-recorded; this may be chaos, but it's carefully-controlled and well-produced chaos), and there's an intriguing flow to the sound that starts to make sense after a while even when it's way out in left field. I'm guessing this is how Sun Ra must sound to people who don't understand Sun Ra. This is one of those albums that's damn near impossible to describe, although the poop sheet makes reference to bands like Hector Zazou and Etron Fou Leloublan (and if you recognize these artists, you're doing better than I am here). Suffice to say that it's challenging and unpredictable music in the spirit of "rock in opposition" that usually manages to be compelling in spite of its arcane otherworldliness. More proof that the French are even weirder than I ever imagined. This is all you need to know: If Jus Osborn and Lori S. ever hooked-up and had twin daughters, and those twin daughters formed a band, that band would be Lozen. Fucking brilliant. [N/A] Shawn is a busy guy lately -- between playing live dates in Austin on a regular basis in both Iron Kite and Rubble, he somehow found the time to record this mysterious and mesmerizing solo album. There's a definitely a Middle Eastern influence at work here, especially on "noon," where his not-quite-random guitar notes and the occasional burst of brief rhythmic drive ebb and flow over an ocean of bell-like chimes and droning flutes. On "glass neighbors," layers of mutated, processed guitars drone and squawk with the sound of a cathedral organ recorded on a tape that was left out in the sun too long; every once in a while, the sound of plinking strings and a guitar being molested in unnatural (but quiet) ways rises to the surface, only to be washed away by the drone again. Toward the end one slow and ringing bell-like note plays over and over as the drone swirls and grows, then recedes before dying out completely. These two songs are highly reminiscent of Iron Kite minus the rhythm section, but "the lawn," the song that closes the first side, has more in common with early John Fahey, with gentle fingerpicked guitar playing over a lonesome, wailing feedback drone. The flip side (yes, this is a real live 12-inch LP -- remember those?) opens with the sparse (and short) "old bullets," with more delicate picking and strange, jarring sounds, including the occasional cymbal crash, happening in the background (sometimes loud enough to move up to the foreground). The rest of the flip side is taken up by the lengthy piece "Quintanna's head dress," where he's joined by Iron Kite cohort Brian Smith on bass and Matt Martinez on percussion. Opening with dying piano notes and minimalist percussion, the clatter slowly but surely grows in volume and density as flutes, shakers, and other forms of sonic effluvia are gradually introduced into the mix. There are also great moments of ringing guitar feedback amid the clatter; as the song progresses, the guitar drone becomes distinctly more prominent, and eventually a shuddering bass rumble appears to fatten up the sound. The overall effect is the sound of an exploded song trying to reassemble itself again. Brilliant and otherworldly stuff that frequently sounds as if you're standing on the edge of a swamp and listening to music spilling out of a distant roadhouse on the other side of the water -- by the time it passes through the humid air and bounces off the water, you know that what you are hearing is merely the ghost image of the original sound. Bonus points for the heavy, heavy vinyl and the cryptic, obsessive-compulsive artwork (there's more of it on the LP labels, which list no other information whatsoever). Man, I hate to think of how many bottles of tequila Shawn managed to put away while doing that wraparound cover.... This three-inch cd-r is the second release featuring the collaboration of Nesin and Lap Dancer, and contains fifteen minutes (five tracks) of "porn noise." I'm not terribly sure who did what or how they did it, but in essence they have sampled and tweaked various porn noises (moaning, bodies slappin' like fish, sucky sucky slurping, etc.) and used those sounds to construct haunting, paranoid loops of distorted anti-vocals. There's a rhythmic quality to the sounds and loops even when there's no explicit rhythm, and the sounds are frequently so processed that you would never guess their origin without being told. The results are frequently spaced-out and hypnotic, with a serious noise element in spite of the fact that this is not really classic harsh noise or power electronics. There are times (particularly on the third track) where they remind me of Contagious Orgasm. This is not a bad thing. There's no question that porn as a sound source has already been severely played-out, but these guys still manage to do something interesting with it by minimizing the overtly sexual content of the samples and retaining only the more suggestive sounds, providing the tracks with a subtle layer of sleaziness that doesn't detract from the odd and noisy soundscapes beneath the samples. Not as pornographic as you might think, but still just sordid enough for that jaded palate, and the soundscapes here are generally engaging enough that the issue of where the sounds came from isn't particularly important anyway. Fans of audio-collage noise like Contagious Orgasm and Telepherique will want to check out this one. The band with the brain-scouring name is from Sweden, five cryptic dudes using junk metal, traditional and found homemade instruments, ambient recordings, and other bits and pieces to form thirteen short but oddly visceral soundscapes. The sound of these pieces is firmly rooted in dark ambient, but there are traces of Neubaten, Organum, NWW, and probably plenty of obscure early black metal scattered like gray ash throughout the power-electronic dirges. All the titles (as well as most of the liner notes, in fact) are in Swedish, so you'll have to either know that language or guess as to their artistic bent and intentions. Their sound neatly straddles the gray area that separates the fringes of black metal, dark ambient, found sound, tape collage, and improvised experimental music. The hollowed-out pipe organ sound they dominates the album is nice too, especially when it's enshrouded with reverb. The band's sound is a bit more mysterious and ritualistic than the sound of most noise bands, which is kind of interesting, and their tendency to let things segue and mutate into new musical shapes and forms hints at an improv background for at least some of these players. At once highly unusual and yet one of the most accessible releases, perhaps, to appear yet on SNSE. This is the band's first full-length U.S. release (after a handful of self-issued cassettes, compilation appearances, and a 2004 debut cd on the Swedish black metal label Total Holocaust), and one of the more intriguing things to show up on SNSE since I've started hearing from the label. Note that this is available on both LP (in a run of 300) and cd (in a run of 425), and given its high quality and low press run, is sure to disappear in a hurry. Better get on it if your fancy's piqued, guv. Denver's Orbit Service play what can be best be described as psychedelic sadcore. The vocals and lyrics are mournful, the music dark, brooding and downtempo, with subtle electronic flourishes. Slow and mournful can turn soporific very quickly. The band avoids this with crafty arrangements and canny sequencing. Several of the songs ("Dark Orange Sunset" and "Thought You Should Know") have a sweeping quality that gives them a bit of a jolt. [N/A] This band is a side project of the better-known glitch-noise band Devillock, and here the emphasis is more on feedback and ambient drone than anything else. Justin Chris Meyers abuses and perverts the signal chains of an organ, tapes, and electronics over four untitled tracks. The first one, around eight minutes long, sounds like a static loop of starlight wave interference and a cyclotron over a shifting screen of droning ambient feedback; the second track, a little over a minute long, is a scratchy bed of strained junk fumbling and an edgy drone that grows in volume steadily until it seques into the third track, where opposing feedback drones rise and fall around each other like wind howling through giant pipes, broken only by intermittent bursts of scratchy electronic filth. The final track, over seven minutes long, begins with a pulsing drone that could be a keyboard, could be a damaged machine, but comes and goes as glitch sounds slowly weave around it even as it grows in volume and intensity. Piercing feedback and reverb abuse make this simultaneously soothing and chillout. The sound of horror soundtrack music on repeat, or perhaps noise with drama. If you're down with Devillock, you ought to appreciate this. I can't recall exactly how their earlier stuff sounded -- it's been a while since I heard it -- but I'm pretty sure it didn't sound quite like this. The band, currently a trio of Aarne Victorine on bass, Breazu Silcio on drums, and Christian Campagna on guitar and vocals, has morphed into a spacy but tight improv / jam-rock band somewhere between Phish, Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor! (the first album, at least), and Hawkwind, only with a bright and poppy center. Needless to say, this is swell stuff to hear. "Hunting the Dingo" is a brief pop song buried somewhere in the middle of over nine minutes of escalating free-form interstellar overdrive, complete with driving bass and drums, psychedelic guitar and feedback, and an amorphous song form that twists and turns until there's no way to predict where it's going anymore. Twangy guitar riffing and a brilliant, propulsive rhythm section open "Jeff Goldblum," a near-instrumental with some lovely chord changes and drone happening right before the dense layer of sound that accompanies the verse, then return when the verse ends. The tone and structure of "Elizabeth" reminds me of Tone -- it starts out as a hypnotic riff and eventually morphs into something out of a spaghetti western soundtrack, and by the time the verse comes around, the sound has become sparse and ambient. Like the previous two tracks, "Unfortunately, You've Lied Again" is relatively short (5:34), at least within the confines of a reasonable pop song length, and probably the closest to an actual unadorned pop song on this disc, filled with heavy but dreamy drone guitar and pounding bass to go with some of the busiest drumming of the album. The final track, "Skies Filled With Wizards," is a long (21:12) jam-intensive freakout that begins with pretty (and heavily reverbed) guitar and is reminiscent of King Black Acid in its lovely sound and flow. Without going into a measure by measure description, suffice to say that it starts out pretty and grows increasingly psychedelic (and musically busy) as the piece unfolds. This is frankly amazing stuff, and completely unexpected -- the surprise of the issue, probably. Droneheads and fans of poppy-sounding improv need to hear this. If you've been reading DEAD ANGEL for a while, then Random Touch's name is probably familiar. While they've spent the past several years documenting their work in multimedia and various improvised formats, on this, their sixth release, they have returned to the live (more or less) configuration of guitar, keyboards, and drums that they employed in recording A PARADE OF DUSTY HOBOS, one of their best releases. They're back down to a trio again (Christopher Brown on drums, James Day on keyboards, Scott Hamill on guitars), and they sound good and unpredictable. Where their last couple of albums have favored a kind of dreamy and laid-back style, this time they're very upfront and basic, a live trio improvising on the fly with no holds barred... and the results can get pretty chaotic, starting with the album's first track, "Evidence of Ignition," which gets a little bit out there a minute even for them (at the end one says, "That was a bit disconcerting," and he's not kidding, either). I really like the guitar sound that they're getting on this album -- all of them sound good, but Hamill's guitar frequently sounds like it's being beamed in from another planet, probably one where their idea of melodic scale is reeeeeeal different, buddy. At times they sound almost like Painkiller with keyboards and more interest in melody, no matter how fragmented. There are still dreamy, atmospheric moments such as "Soundtrack to a Thought" and "Before a Flickering Flame" (which is dominated by what sounds like tubular bells), but most of the album is devoted to unexpected bouts of interplay between the instruments and exotic sounds. There's a nice rhythmic swing to "In an Elegant Arc," not to mention some swell Eddie Hazel-gone-avant guitar squealing over the keyboard washes. The drums really swing and stand out on "These Frictions Propel," too, but what's nice about the band's approach is that even when one particular instrument starts to occupy the listener's attention, the other two are nicely balanced in opposition. The band's sound is open (and essentially democratic) enough that they all get equal time and no one player ever truly overpowers the others. Stellar improv with a true genius for the infinite possibilities of sound exploration and a total lack of ego-tripping -- now that's what I call improv. Swell, swell stuff; once again, Random Touch does not disappoint. Twenty minutes of pure noise fury in one long, ear-scraping avalanche of sonic destruction. The album's title is pure truth in advertising when it comes to the level of audio violence at work on this three-inch cd-r. This is the sound of suitcase electronics at its most physical. Dillon Tulk thrashes away madly at the enormous array of efx pedals in his oversized suitcase and terror emerges from the speakers in clouds of sonic decay, the audio equivalent of broken concrete and shattered glass. The volume of this outing is also sufficiently loud enough to rupture your skull, especially if you listen with headphones. There's plenty of crunchy textures and ear-raping feedback, along with obscene machine throbbing and other forms of pure audio anarchy. Much of it calls up images of buildings being blown up by heavy artillery. Noise for the apocalypse. This is what the world will sound like after Ragnarok, at least until the power stations run dry and the machines fall dead for the last time. Being a fan of zombies, I was stoked when Randall traded me this sick piece of audio filth. Killer artwork from "The Walking Dead" comic book featuring some gross dudes with peeling faces and a hunger for brains. Seplophobia's track starts off with the best fucking opener ever... "CHOKE ON 'EM!!!"... then it's all synth-muck and dense rumbling drone noise. This shit is so psychedelic... I listened to this all lurched out on too much Benadryl and it couldn't have been better! Serious developing madness, starts off with the rumbles that leave nice boot-prints all over your skull and develops into the more assaulting high-pitched skree later on, but still with the nice droney KSSSH going. Post-Mortem Junkie's attack is similar, but not, if you know what I'm saying. Not even giving you a moment to catch your breath, P-MJ takes an axe to your face and doesn't apologize. A thick and meaty soup of sub-atomic shakes and electronic growls for a solid, disorienting 15 minutes. Sweet. [Dillon Tulk] The Silverman is Philip Knight, and Philip Knight is the guy in the background on stage twiddling knobs and activating gadgets for the Legendary Pink Dots, which probably has a lot to do with why Edward Ka-Spel is providing the vocals, hmmmm? But this is definitely not a LPD outing, and despite the fact that Edward's present, he's quite frequently not doing anything -- this is mostly Phil's show. After all, it is his latest solo album. Not just any solo album, either, but one of the greatest pure-drone albums I've ever heard, on par with Alan Lamb and Alvin Lucier. The album is divided into two long songs -- the total running time is just under 45 minutes -- both largely electronic in nature and heavy on the drone. Operating with a fairly limited palette (old and new synths, an American Indian flute, wind, and Edward's big mouth -- heavy water figures into this too somehow, but his helpful diagram inside the cd cover reminds me of failed physics classes, thus I am too frightened to study it closely) and a tendency to take his time about getting wherever he's going, Philip creates two lengthy, minimalist drones full of warmth, texture, and intriguing background sounds. The trick here is in letting simple stuff happen and keeping it clear enough that background sound can bleed through; Phil does that well here. The first track (both are untitled) is based on long drones, odd background sounds, and an evolving density and complexity of sound. The second song is less about the funky noises and far, far more about the keyboard drone. Both are long enough that you can zone out to them easily, with our without the assistance of recreational drugs. The end result is excellent; the lovely cover and boardstock gatefold cd-packaging just makes the whole package that much more attractive. The first 700 cds / 200 LPs come with a bonus cd, WOODLAND CALLING, that is one 65-minute track that's every bit as good and hauntingly drone-o-rific as the formal release. If you've never heard of the Silverman, or heard him (or LPD), this would be an excellent opportunity to check out what the fuss is all about. If you're already down with the Silverman, you badly, badly need the second disc too, trust me. Grab those sweet rolls while they're hot, son! This band is a new one to me, in spite of the fact that they've been around since 1995, with a slew of EPs, singles, compilation tracks, and even a Polish cassette release to show for it. Despite all that activity, this is actually the band's first full-length album. The band is essentially four guys with amusing names (Prince Kodiak, The Fantasticality, Lord Lion Frenzy, and just plain Don -- he must have been passed out somewhere sleeping off a hangover when they handed out the swell names) playing within a traditional framework of guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards, with singer / keyboard player Libby (aka Contessa Von Bismarck) wailing over them, but the way they approach playing is anything but traditional. The songs are loud and frequently frantic shapeshifters, as the band's sound mutates from devolved pop to extreme metal to power-electronics violence to other forms they probably don't even have a name for yet, switching gears so fast that it's nearly impossible to keep up with them... and far above the clatter, Libby wails and shrieks like an operatic pop singer possessed by the spirit of Patty Waters. Even for a Crucial Blast release, this is deeply strange shit. Their scattergun approach and churning bursts of heaviness often remind me of labelmates The Mass, and when they're really thrashing away (as on "Cadavertising") they're just about as heavy, but where The Mass is all about impossibly technical musical insanity, this band is more concerned with genre-hopping (not to mention chaos and pure confusion). Imagine an American version of Melt-Banana on steroids after sitting through back-to-back shows by Napalm Death and Diamanda Galas and the blurry, too-fast-for-words picture begins to come into sharper focus, does it not? "King Diamond in the Rough" is pure blinding extreme metal (after being severely bent out of shape, naturally) with Libby warbling in operatic fashion through what sounds like a canyon of reverb; "Chausson Chansson" opens up like heavy metal dudes playing new wave before breaking into avant-noise chaos; "Contusion Schematics" is driven by furious metallic riffing and pounding drums. The rest of the songs (ten in all) are just as whacked-out and over the top, and it frequently sounds like they actually recorded twenty or thirty songs and just piled them on top of each other. Bizarre but perversely engaging... is the beginning of the rise of extreme opera metal? Whatever it is, those who are hep to the spastic and constantly evolving sounds of bands like Jumbo's Killcrane, The Mass, Painkiller, and Melt-Banana, but still like a bit o' the sugar-sweet pop goodness mixed in with their bitter metal poison, should look into this and definitely see the band live. BEATS! You want 'em, Sonic Radiation's got 'em. Sonic Radiation is actually Todd Last plus a bunch of keyboards, and the eleven tracks here are a romp through old-school techno / ebm along the lines of Front 242 and Front Line Assembly minus the agitprop messages. There's no deep thinking here to distract you from the booty-shakin' groove, which is not a bad thing at all. The sound is basic and uncluttered, incorporating elements of techno, ebm, house, trance, and other dance styles into a nonstop groove machine that burps and percolates to layers of insanely catchy beats. Where most techno / ebm bands run into trouble is when they either can't come up with the goods beatwise (a crime akin to a metal band playing lame, nancy-boy riffs) or they go totally overboard and shovel on so much stuff that it turns into a sonic omlette; Sonic Radiation avoids both of these traps with ease. The relentless beat fury does get a tad repetitive after a while -- I truly believe techno / ebm works best in short bursts, via either 12" singles or EPs -- but this is all good stuff, and best of all, there are no vocals (outside of the occasional nifty sample) to obscure the beats jumping out of the speakers. Bonus points for being a Texan (Sonic Radiation is based in Dallas). Get down, get down, shake your can-can around and around.... Terrorist Other is Hannah, Bobby, Mike, and Damion. They are from Cleveland, and this six-song cd-ep was recorded there at Magnetic North Studios in 2004. They thank Ralph in their brief, cryptic liner notes. This is the sum total of what I know about Terrorist Other. From the sound of their disc, I'd venture to guess that they are coffee drinkers and familiar with no-wave, grindcore, and punk. In terms of sound and energy they remind me in passing of the Dirty Sweets, except Hannah sounds sober (whereas the singer for Dirty Sweets was very, very pickled the last time I saw her sing). This band would not have been out of place on a bill in the eighties with, say, The Contortions, DNA, Live Skull, Public Image Limited, Romeo Void, or the Dead Kennedys. There are echoes of the Scissor Girls and Arab on Radar, too, in their frantic, fractured song structures, hyperkinetic tempos, frenzied shouting, and truly strange guitar riffs. The songs are short and springy, often filled with moments of crazed runaway energy, and driven by bizarre yet catchy riffs that frequently devolve into something else entirely. At times they sound like a hyperactive and technically complex hardcore band that's been speeded up even further, but at all times their storm of chaos remains firmly under control. I have no idea who plays what, but the band as a whole whips up a pretty wild sonic attack that fuses elements of free jazz, no wave, punk, and pure raw power to a more modern noise-rock aesthetic. All of which means: This is great stuff. Hopefully somebody will pick up on this and put it out (I'm pretty sure it's self-released) so more people get the opportunity to hear it. Canadian metal legend and all-around renaissance man Jon Mikl Thor continues his triumphant return with THOR AGAINST THE WORLD. All you can really do with a Thor record is put it on and let the rock majesty overwhelm you. THOR AGAINST THE WORLD brings the rock in many flavours; from the AC/DC by way of The Dictators stomp of "Creature Feature," to "Glimmer" with its Damned-vibe, to the dark QotSA / Danzig inflected "Long Time," to the full on metal of "The Coming of Thor." The only real misstep is the cringe-worthy ballad "Turn to Blue." [N/A] Tot Rocket was a NYC band formed in 1979 by Robert Poss (guitar, vox), Ron Spitzer (bass, vocals), and Andrew Halbreich (guitar, harmonica, vox) that eventually mutated into Western Eyes. That band broke up around 1984 after releasing one EP on Trace Elements, after which Poss and Spitzer moved on to the considerably better-known Band of Susans. During its brief existence, Tot Rocket released one single ("Reduced / Fun Fades Fast in the USA") and two EPs (EVICTION and SECURITY RISK), all of which have been out of print for many, many moons. This LP (yes, it's vinyl, and no, I don't believe it's available on cd) collects all of that material and tacks on two previously unreleased tracks, "Shroud of Turin" and "Television Rules," both taken from a Manhattan cable broadcast. The album looks great, sounds great, and comes with a brief history of the band on the back cover, so we can all be grateful that the Italians have enough reverence for old-school postpunk obscurities to put this out, hmmm? This will obviously be of interest to Band of Susans fans, but those expecting that band's triple-guitar attack and droning wall of sound will be most disappointed. While there are hints of the shape of things to come in Robert's guitar playing and on songs like "Fun Fades Fast in the USA" and "Employment Line," the only real similarity between this band and Band of Susans is that they are both firmly grounded in rock (especially where the drums are concerned, which is pretty amusing since Spitzer didn't play drums in Tot Rocket) and they share a related sense of propulsion and drive in their song structures and rhythms. Outside of that, this album has far more in common with the Clash, the Jam, Iggy Pop, and other icons of the punk era; their sound is a cross between hard-edged pop and slashing, angular punk. The band's output may have been sparse (although that was par for the course at the time -- putting out your own albums wasn't quite as simple back then as it is now, natch, which is why some great bands like the Screamers never got around to doing it at all), but it was certainly consistent; in spite of several lineup changes, the band's sound remained remarkably well-defined, and the songs (mostly written by Poss and Spitzer, with a couple by or co-written with Halbreich) are sharp, focused, generally insightful, and as a whole, just as good as anything else happening back then. If you never got the chance to hear them when they were around and you're interested in hearing what Robert and Ron were doing before the Band of Susans, then it would be worth your while to pick this up while you can. A roughly ten-minute foray into dense electronic mind-play. Nice droning pretty feedbacky noises. Crackly lava-flow bass rumbles. Emily really knows how to play with the listener... changing the sound and incorporating peaceful drones. A real brain-massage of tones and hiss and crackles... the prettiest part to me was towards the end when she gets these really rad sparks and crackly bits in there... I listened to this on mushrooms. This release gives you a nice idea of what she's capable of, and I anticipate her future releases... if this teaser is any indication they're sure to be mindblowing! [Dillon Tulk] Ulver are one of the few bands that genuinely defy categorization, which makes them great to hear but just a tad difficult to describe. The band originally began as black metal and quickly morphed into something encompassing black metal, classical, jazz, soundtrack music, and techno forms, plus a few that probably have yet to be named. Their last full-length release, PERIDITION CITY, had more in common with jazz and elaborate soundtrack music than with black metal (although hints of the cold, frozen north were still there), and the various EPs they have released since then have been all over the map, but this -- their first full-length release in five years -- makes their black metal roots crystal clear, and in the most grand and forbidding manner possible. This is the album I was expecting Manes to make after UNDER EIN BLOODRAUD MAANE, a move that would have actually made more sense than VILOSOPHE, the album they did release. I am going to tell you upfront that the album is amazing. Imagine necro black metal circa 1992, only with real production, electronic textures, and highly orchestrated musical elements. If this album had been recorded on a four-track in some guy's garage way back when, it would be a classic now. As it is, the sound is considerably more lush and modern, but no less black in its structures and intent. There's also a strong ritual feel to the rhythms, and the vocals are epic and genuinely haunting. While it may appear to have nothing in common with black metal on the surface, the gothic trappings of a song like "Blinded by Blood," with its dark and melancholy sound, hearken back to moments like "Tomhet" from the Burzum classic HVIS LYSET TAR OSS, and the same is true of all the other songs as well -- no matter how transformed they may be through the extensive use of electronic tools, the spirit of these songs remain firmly connected to original creative impetus that made black metal happen in the first place. The opening track, "Dressed In Black," makes it clear where they're coming from: A power drone is gradually joined by drums and other instruments until the track becomes a minimalist tower of sound, a dark announcement of bombastic black metal that is both beautiful and forbidding, cold and epic in its grandeur. Borrowing heavily from modern techno for its sound, but with a feel and structure rooted in the earliest incarnation of black metal, they manage to sound both old and new at the same time. Many of the songs, like "Christmas" and "It Is Not Sound," are majestic and bursting with energy, even on the verge of being potential pop songs were it not for their overdriven sound and unusual choral vocals. "The Truth" is anchored by busy and rhythmically intricate drums, massed droning vocals, and layers of imaginative instrumentation; the song ebbs and flows at unexpected moments, continually bursting with unnerving vitality. The sound on tracks like "For the Love of God" and "In the Red" are occasionally reminiscent of Beherit's experiments in techno metal. Then there's the droning noise intro of "Your Call," which makes a nice segue into the growing swell of keyboards and drone that eventually soar skyward to merge with the vocals and descend again in a cloud of shimmering melody and dramatic keyboards. The album's final track, "Operator," is also perhaps the heaviest, a gale force of relentless beats and rhythmic sound to accompany an increasingly agitated vocalist. Just a handful of spins reveals that the disc is brilliant, and crammed with enough ideas and layers of sound to make it sound equally new and fresh for a long time to come. Unavox take inspiration from ebm, synthpop, and industrial genres, but they also have a far more "live" feel than most dance-oriented band, and their complex and layered arrangements are also considerably more sophisticated than the average body-rock act. Singers Michael Murray and Meggan Cooper (who also plays bass and keyboards) have extremely distinctive voices that provide a lot of vocal contrast, but they also have no problem harmonizing, and the musical bedrock of most of these songs works extremely well with the vocals. As "War of Attrition" makes clear, they are not as rigidly welded to rock / pop cliches, either -- the song takes nearly two minutes to get around to the vocals, and the percolating instrumental backing is really good enough to stand on its own. While the textures, tempos, and rhythms change consistently from one song to the next, their commitment to a hard groove and dance beats doesn't. The opening track "RITR" and the closing track "What Still Remains" are probably my favorites, but all of them are good and since they bill themselves as "a live darkwave project," I'm guessing you can go see them if you're so inclined, assuming you're in Cali. You will dance, dance, dance....
All reviews are by RKF unless noted at the end. Other reviewers are: Amanda, Frankenstoner, Gafne Rostow, Dillon Tulk, and Neddal Ayad (n/a).
AilanthusAilanthus -- s/t [self-released]
Aunt's Analog
Instincto Records
Aunt's Analog -- HOW TO TAPES OPTIONAL [Instincto]
Bloodlust
Bloodyminded -- MOTHERCARE [Bloodlust]
Contagious Orgasm
PacRec
Contagious Orgasm -- FROM THE IRRESPONSIBLE COUNTRY SOUNDS [PacRec]
Dead Machines
Dead Machines -- FUTURES [Troubleman]
The Devil Bat
The Devil Bat -- YARDWORK LUDDITE [blue circle]
SNSE
Devillock
Devillock -- THESE GRAVES [SNSE / PACrec]
Oceans of Missouri
DJ Dog Dick -- OCEANS OF MISSOURI [Oceans of Missouri]
Dead Teenager Records
Filthy Jim
Filthy Jim -- RIDE WITH DEATH [Dead Teenager Records]
Gang of Four (US)
Gang of Four (UK)
Gang of Four -- RETURN THE GIFT [V2 Records / Sony BMG]
Instincto Records
Gym Mat Nap -- CONVULSION [Instincto]
Holiday Stabbings
Holiday Stabbings -- BURIED IN EDMUND [self-released]
Holiday Stabbings
Holiday Stabbings -- HUMAN SEXUALITY ep [Umbilical]
Holiday Stabbings
Holiday Stabbings -- RUN YOUR FINGERS THROUGH THE GROOVES IN MY SKULL [Umbilical]
Rootsucker Records
Ichabod
Ichabod -- REACHING EMPYREAN [Rootsucker Records]
Osmose Productions
Impaled Nazarene
Impaled Nazarene -- DEATH COMES IN 26 CAREFULLY SELECTED PIECES [Osmose Productions]
SNSE
Iovae -- CIVILIZATION [SNSE]
Twlight Flight Sound
Iron Kite
Iron Kite -- NO EYEBROWS [Twilight Flight Sound]
Coffeehut Records
Iron Oxide
Iron Oxide -- BASS RESPONSE ep [Coffee Hut]
Kare Joao
Jester Records
Kare Joao -- 2 [Jester Records]
Krabatof Philharmonic Orchestra
Krabatof Philharmonic Orchestra -- INSECT'S BRAIN [Enough Records]
HydraHead
Khanate
Khanate -- CAPTURE & RELEASE [HydraHead]
Beta-Lactam Ring Records
La STPO -- LE COMBATE OCCULTE [Beta-Lactam Ring Records]
Lozen
Lozen -- EYE TO EYE [Silent Queef Records]
Emperor Jones
Shawn David McMillen -- CATFISH [Emperor Jones]
Green Ox Sound
Nesin / Lap Dancer -- THE VANITY REMIXES [Green Ox Sound]
SNSE
Niellerade Fallibilisthorstar -- HALRUM [SNSE]
Orbit Service
Orbit Service -- TWILIGHT [self-released]
SNSE
Panther Skull -- SLOTHWAVE [SNSE]
Presley
Presley -- ELIZABETH [self-released]
Random Touch
Random Touch -- THE ELEGANCE OF FALLING [Roadnoise]
Green Ox Sound
Scissortail -- STABBED AWAKE [Green Ox Sound]
Stop-Eject
Seplophobia
Seplophobia / Post-Mortem Junkie -- split cs [Stop-Eject]
Beta-Lactam Ring Records
The Silverman -- NATURE OF ILLUSION [Beta-Lactam Ring Records]
Crucial Blast
So I Had To Shoot Him -- ALPHA MALES AND POPULAR GIRLS [Crucial Blast]
IUnknown Records
Sonic Radiation
Sonic Radiation -- THE 121 PROJECT [IUknown Records]
Terrorist Other
Terrorist Other -- T.O. [self-released]
Smog Veil
Thor
Thor -- THOR AGAINST THE WORLD [Smog Veil]
Rave Up Records
Tot Rocket and the Twins -- TELEVISION RULES [Rave Up Records]
Triskaidekaphobia 13
Triskaidekaphobia 13 -- FIRST RECORDINGS [self-released]
Jester Records
UlverUlver -- BLOOD INSIDE [Jester Records]
Unavox
Unavox -- ANGELS DANCE UPWARDS [New Army Studios]