Chaos theory and whole-grain pop goodness collide on this disc, usually in a lo-fi and noisy way. The twelve tracks here incorporate sunny pop hooks (via keyboard, guitars, pedals, and anything else with melodic potential lone member Corey Gingerich can find), percolating techno beats, and a shifting approach to noise and chaotic background sound. The result is a sound that drifts from techno to noise to pop, sometimes bringing all these genres and more together at once. There's lots of emphasis on heavy repetition, especially of the good 'n catchy parts, which never hurts. There's also plenty of strange noises and experiental sound-fu to keep things in the "other" category, musically speaking. At times the sound is one of a techno goth band with lots of highly esoteric influences, many of which creep into the band's sonic palette. One thing's for sure: There are some seriously whompin' beats on this disc, and for a band with a serious devotion to the DIY / lo-fi aesthetic, this is pretty well recorded, too. You'll be shakin' that booty while listening to this one, no matter how bizarre it may sound. The cover artwork may suggest hippie vibes and country death folk, but the sound is severe and rockin' -- the band sounds like they could have toured along with Unsane in the early years, but is nowhere near as narrow in their vision of how to achieve sonic immolation. At times the chaotic influence of bands like Die Kruezen, Birthday Party, and Jesus Lizard turns everything into exercises in surreal, spastic musical motifs and lots of pained howled, but the ass-crushing riffs and pounding drums make it clear there's plenty of metal in whatever curdled milk of sonic violence they were weaned on as wee'uns. They fit in perfectly with the heavy chaos-theory aesthetic that's been brewing at Crucial Blast for a while now, with music that's all over the map and assembled in peculiar ways, but unquestionably heavy and weird and definitely not your father's fucked-up metallic psych rock. The thing is, they're capable of actual melodic content and even pretty playing (check out the beginning of "Elk Takes Night," for instance), but what they prefer (and do best) is the heavier, weirder, flanged-out stuff (see the rest of the same song, natch). The closest they come to traditional heavy rock is probably on "When I'm A Ghost," with its swaggering post-Sabbath growly guitar riffing and hard rock beat, and even then things get strange in a hurry. They never get so caught up in the weirdness and burnt-weenie psych moves that they stop being interesting, however, and they never forget that their main purpose is to rock out, which they do as often as possible. You'd be surprised how accessible this is, too, in spite of its unpredictable tendency toward pure ornery weirdness. This disc is not quite as persistently monolithic and constant as The Rita disc reviewed later, at least in its devotion to the blinding wall of sound approach to noise, but it's close, real close, and probably more listenable to all but the more hardcore noiseheads. It's also capable of moments of pure ear-frying audio sadism, to be sure, but here the approach -- while plenty heavy on the sonic brutality -- is a bit less monochromatic and geared toward moving these long pieces in an actual direction as opposed to gearing up into maximum-death mode and just sitting there like an endurance test. The Black Leather Jesus track "shelter" is nearly twenty minutes long, but there's a definite progression of sorts in the variation of different noises and varying degrees of layering happening at any time, and while there are periods that creep toward being more static, ultimately the piece never stops moving. There are a wide variety of sounds, textures, and levels of pure intensity, not to mention deliberately wild fluctuations in volume and panning at times, plus a tendency to steer toward processing combinations that threaten to spiral wildly out of control until the chop-shop layering technique carries the piece into a new direction, ready for its own exploration of spiraling sonic chaos. Heavy, crunchy shit abounds, especially around the eight-minute mark, where it starts to sound like the whole track is being savagely squashed and overcompressed, then subjected to crackling harsh noise hell. This is nasty, sinus-cleaning stuff that operates at two basic volumes, Really Fucking Loud and Even Louder (Goddamn!), and it will turn your eyeballs into pasty li'l marbles if you're not careful. And then there's the Incapacitants track, "yellow silk buddha," which is not exaclty likely to be mistaken for a lounge band outtake anytime soon. Like most of the original wave of Japanese noise bands, the Incapacitants have roots in lots of stuff other than noise (mostly, I suspect, lots of hardcore, psych, and jazz), not that you'd ever readily guess any of this from their basic sound, which is generally best described as a screeching metallic roar augmented by overloud junk noise and pounding, usually on found metal scraps and using contact mikes. This track is no exception, and while it doesn't really "go anywhere" (at least not in any traditional sense of the concept), it has a core sound that fluctuates in tone enough to keep from being totally monotonous, and the band achieves a certain ebb and flow to the vigor and intensity of their frantic pounding and gadget-fu that goes a long way toward helping the piece evolve in a highly engaging fashion for thirty minutes. As the piece goes on, the constant pounding and wailing screech is joined by even more high-pitched attempts at pure sonic irritation, and the band, over time, achieves the not inconsiderably feat of becoming even more obnoxious as they go. The intensity level rises in such subtle increments, though, that listeners unaccustomed to such joyously blinding onslaughts of pure audio artillery may just find it oppressively loud and thick from start to finish. Their track may be more monochromatic than the previous one, but it still offers plenty of entertaining variations in its gradually evolving sound. The packaging is just as monochromatic and deceptively simple yet elegant -- black and white cemetery shots on the outside, black and white portraits and minimalist design on the inside, and a subtle sense of restraint that leaves you totally unprepared for the balls-out audio death that awaits. This is what you call essential stuff, especially given that Richard Ramirez hasn't been in the best of health in recent years (or, as a result, as prolific as he might be under other circumstances), and this is one of your best chances to hear the Incapacitants -- normally available only on highly expensive import cds for lots of $$$ -- for something reasonable. Not to mention that this is an inspired pairing, and its cumulative effect is one of pure noisehead nirvana at a volume capable of sterlizing mice upon contact, if not killing them outright. This is what they call essential listening, by the way, just in case you were wondering. Slo-mo evolving drones and spare beats, now that's my idea of a good time. Some of the drones border on being actual riffs at times (especially in "Locomotive"), but otherwise the formula is pretty similar from one track to the next -- one source of happenin' beats and one source of drone-o-rific fuzz 'n reverb (among other things). The execution is simple, leaving next to nothing to go wrong, and the results are often hypnotic and ass-shaking. When they're not making the earth move, they peel off some mean power drones to go with their boss beats. Throw in a wee bit o' glitch electronica now and then for seasoning, and you have the perfect disc to throw on at your next party to insure everybody gets up and starts wigglin' around like they suddenly discovered their spines were made of tofu. (That's how you get people close enough to make babies, just in case you hadn't guessed.) Sexy beats, sexy drones, and a sound that isn't far removed from being a rhythmic, instrumental analogue to an early Siouxsie and the Banshees record. The already-high listenability quotient is significantly increased by the attention to harmonic and melodic detail in tracks like "King James," especially the use of poppy-sounding chords for the drones and strums. Cool, cool stuff of which I greatly approve. Now this is interesting... it's not really an album of "songs" in the traditional sense, but more a collection of minimalist soundscapes built on dark and repetitive explorations of processed pedal-fu. The vague idea behind this was to provide the soundtrack to a story about space travelers escaping from a post-apocalyptic, dying Earth, and the sounds are certainly alien and spacy enough -- droning motors, weird metallic whines, clattering machine noises, and other unnatural sounds dominate the six longish tracks here. Titles like "Orgone Crash Landing," "Missing the Home Planet," and "Waves of Dark Matter" hint at COTA's experimental leanings (and probably a not-so-secret fondness for Voivod), while more paranoid excursions like "They Have Found Us" and "Capture Torture Despair" are not only heavier and more gruesomely possessed of a serious, throbbing low end, but at times actually approach enough actual music to tenuously connect them to the downtuned sludge-rock aesthetic that dominates the thinking of heavy bands from the South. The approach may have more in common with Stockhausen and your more drone-obsessed noise band, but the attitude is much closer to guys like Buzzov.en and Eyehategod, especially in the sample choices that crop up here and there (although COTA is considerably more restrained than the likes of sample-happy Buzzov.en). Exotic sci-fi subject matter + heavy drones + forbidding aura of ominous approaching doom = much sick swellness. Limited to fifty copies, and you'll have to contact COTA directly, at least for now.... I like the idea here of combining classic country and folk music with experimental rock and free jazz, and yes, it sounds pretty out there at first. The first track, "Away With the Tide," features guitarist / singer / songwriter Nick MIllevoi singing and strumming like a lonesome country cowboy straight off the stage of the Grand Ole Opry... while, uh, an incredibly hyperactive free jazz band plays behind him, all pure chaos and clattering beats behind a droning wall of sound that could be an organ, bagpipes, who knows? The rest of the songs reference Marc Ribot and John Coltrane just as much as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Johnny Cash, and the whole vibe is very much like an impromptu meeting of a bunch of old-school country and jazz cats all waiting around with nothing much to do at some studio. The seven songs here do a fine job of straddling the fine line between the unmistakable rhythm and vocal delivery of country and the free-for-all feel of improvisational rock and jazz that's happening at the same time. Once you get used to the concept, it's actually an extremely intriguing sound, offering the possibility of a new branch from the long and winding body of country and folk music, one that incorporates new sounds and textures from genres far removed from the country idiom. The seven songs here are a nice series of theoretical proofs demonstrating that you really can mix wildly disparate genres and still emerge with something highly listenable. Highly recommended. It's about time somebody reissued this legendary but oh-so-hard to find album by San Francisco's 1980s post-hardcore band Clown Alley. Formed by guitarist Mark Deutrom, vocalist Dave Duran (also of Jerryz Kids), Justin Clayton on drums, and bassist Lori Temple Black, the band released this one LP on vinyl in 1986, on Deutrom's own Alchemy label (later home to important releases by Melvins, Poison Idea, and Neurosis). The band didn't last long for various reasons, and the album soon went out of print, and when Black (under the name Lorax) and Deutrom took turns playing bass for the Melvins on critical albums like OZMA, EGGNOG, HOUDINI, and HONKY, the album's stature as an obscure and and legendary "lost" artifact was cemented for good. Which brings us to the present, and to Southern Lord, the swell cats who have reissued the album on cd (for the first time), complete with a bunch of bonus live tracks and a radio interview from 1986. The album sports spiffy, brand-new artwork courtesy of Stephen O'Malley and a shiny new remastering job from Jerry Tubb at Terra Nova right here in Austin, and the results are excellent. It's also quite reminiscent of the Melvins, which is hardly surprising, given the shared influences and members. For those interested in the chronology, this album, the Melvins debut (on C/Z), and the classic first Melvins full-length GLUEY PORCH TREATMENTS (on Alchemy) were all released in 1986; within two years, Clown Alley would be defunct and bassist Lori Black would be in the Melvins, making her debut in that band on OZMA. When she was eventually kicked out during the HOUDINI sessions, Mark Deutrom followed in her footsteps, appearing on a whole slew of Melvins releases, right up until he was kicked out shortly before the Melvins moved to Ipecac and found former Cows member Kevin Rutmanis to take his place. So in light of the fact that half of Clown Alley has played on at least ten Melvins albums (and Deutrom produced two of them before that), it sort of makes sense that the Clown Alley album bears a lot of similar to the Melvins. Except Clown Alley were generally faster. A lot faster. Their singer was also a lot closer to traditional hardcore than Buzz ever was, and while there's a demented and proggy vibe in the convoluted posthardcore song structures and often turbocharged tempos, their brand of weirdness was built more on an obsession with complexity than irritating minimalism, a familiar Melvins trope for much of their early career. As for the burning question of whether the album lives up to the years of hype, then answer is yes, sort of. At this stage of the game, there's nothing on the Clown Alley album that you haven't heard on a good Melvins album or any of the numerous bands cribbing heavily from early Melvins and this particular album, but it's really good from start to finish, and even now still a lot more entertaining / interesting / weird / perplexing than most of the albums it or either band inspired. Bonus points for the loud 'n raw bonus live tracks, recorded in 1986 at San Francisco's Clubfoot, and the radio promotion / on-air stuff as well. Hearing this for the first time confirms one thing in my mind, to be sure: I much prefer Deutrom as a guitarist than a bassist. Hear and decide for yourself. This disc collects up a number of tracks from obscure sources: One track from the Declawed / Yellow Swans split cassette on Tone Filth, one from a split cassette with the Skaters on JYRK, one from a split cassette with Sex With Girls, and two tracks from the Damaged Yellow Swans cassette on 23 Productions. As usual, the miscreants responsible for all this antisocial death drone are GMS (guitar, electronics) and Pete Swanson (electronics, vocals); the tracks appear to have all been released in 2005. The tracks here are more about endless droning fear than massive earrape (although there is certainly some of that here and there); these tracks fall less into the full-bore death by power electronics aesthetic than into the endless appeal of big, fuzzy things droning on for a really long time while other shit happens. The disc isn't as intense as some of their other work, to be sure, but it's probably more listenable for anybody save the most hardcore noisehead, especially since there's some really perverse sounds to occupy your attention (and maybe even make you wonder how they got those twisted sounds in the first place). Extra props for the mysterious cover art. Five untitled tracks of synapse-frying white noise by Yellow Swans, recorded live in the first two months of 2006. The first track is a formless but formidable burst of sonic uberviolence, but it's the second track that really sets the mood for the album. Chunky sounds, metallic clanging, and faraway pained vocals reminiscent of the first Godflesh ep quickly resolve into an abstract landscape of fear and uncertainty over a grinding noise-hum rhythm; eventually a fragmentary beat even briefly pops up in the sonic fog, but it's that hypnotic wall of noise that remains the focus of attention, regardless of its volume or prominence in the mix, threatening to shave your eardrums down to tissue paper. For just two guys (Pete Swanson, in charge of electronics and howling, and GMS, exerting control over art-damaged noise guitar and even more electronics), they make an awful lot of racket (this is good, by the way). The wall of sonic filth gets chunkier and denser on the third track, which is not quite as intense but just as willfully obnoxious. The fourth song almost sounds like an actual song happening in the background (way back there, to be sure) while hooligans break shit over fuzzy brown noise while wrecked on cheap booze and cough syrup, or perhaps like an auto accident being played back in slow motion on cheap, malfunctioning equipment. The final track returns to the hypno-noise voodoo and slow creeping doom, gradually growing from a hypnotic but relatively restrained dark-ambient vibe with some metallic clanking going on to terrifying canyons of drone as implied (and sometimes not so implied) bursts of violence drift like bursting clouds in the background. And then there's the shrieking, high-pitched buzzsaw of sound that permeates the increasingly sick sound, the equivalent of scraping your inner ear with an icepick. Heavy, heavy stuff, doom childe, and likely to make you deaf, maybe even sterile, in the process. Fresh from a recent cassette on Hanson Records and a single on Bloodlust!, this obscure but effective Midwestern synth abuser (actually David Reed of the Snip Snip label) returns with a four-track cd that's filled with the synth equivalent of cinematic heavy-breathing. You've probably never heard synths sound this noisy, though, or this bombed-out and gritty. In a lot of ways this probably qualifies best as a dark-ambient album, but it's a really sand-filled and abrasive one; the droning, drugged-out sound on "sounding" is never violent enough to qualify as seriously confrontational noise, but it is so dissonant, so slow and droning, so alienated in its sound, that it ends up being just as disturbing as a blasting-powder noise meltdown in its own way. There's plenty of monster drone (and some really heavy tremelo abuse) in "ensnarled" and "siege," more wavelike journeys into drifting, tidal motion, like boats rising and falling on endless waves in black water under moonlight. There's an almost cathedral-like vibe to the final track, "titans," where the rising and fading mechanical drones take on a dark tone even as the most important drones achieve a higher pitch and more otherworldly feel. The entire album is one devoted to tone and drone, to shifting and drifting, a series of layered synth-driven ambient soundscapes with more bite and texture to them than one might normally associate with the genre. Perverse but interesting stuff, like manna from heaven for the dark-leaning dronehead. The fifth album by this band from Atlanta, Georgia, first formed in 1998, continues the band's tradition of straddling the divide between doom and black metal. Originally debuting as a straight-up doom band, the band has since evolved into something encompassing the best of both genres. The stunted tempos, mercilessly heavy riffs, and lumbering rhythm section are all straight out of classic doom territory, but the vocals and warbling, wasplike guitars and histronic aesthetic are pure black metal. It helps that the band is tight, the songs relatively well-written even when chromatically leaning toward simplicity, and the vocalist helpfully sounds like he's heaving up his stomach when he "sings" -- plus the guitar sound is totally evil and obviously inspired by the likes of Burzum, Xasthur, Mayhem, Bathory, and other old-school black metal minimalists. The band has a fondness for atmospherics as well, not to mention plenty of heavy doom riffage up their sleeves. There's a droning evil in the hypnoriffs of "A Strange and Fitful Presence" that borders on pure Mayhem worship, but the slow wasting doom is coming from another, colder direction entirely. Not everything on the album is slow -- "What the Moon Brings, Pt. 2" bursts forth at a pretty speedy clip, full of pummeling drums and blurred-filth guitars, creating a wall of fury that breaks down without warning into slow, pounding doom as the singer shrieks over what sounds like a well-timed earthquake with a serious groove. Keyboards in a blaring black metal mood introduce several of the songs as well, always a suave move as long as the sounds are good (and they are, plus brief enough to keep from turning cheesy). This is progressive metal by way of Bathory and Celtic Frost, raw and borderline primitive but capable of majestic grace in the slow moments and pure writhing blackness at higher tempos. Swell stuff for fans of the doomed and horribly bleak sounds of tortured metal. What you get here are nine heavy jams from stonerific alley cats Bob Bruno (Polar Goldie Cats, Uphill Gardeners) on guitar and keybaords and Jeremy Villalobos (Wives, Neon King Kong) on drums, nine tracks of whacked-out instrumental heaviness. Their sound is pure stoner rock (I hear lots of Sabbath and maybe even some Trapeze in there), but the way they put things together, leave other things out, and incorporate both noise and drone has a lot more to do with noise, free jazz, and maybe heavy drug consumption. That's definitely true on "Blood Venus," where the drummer plays a real simple, subdued, hypnotic beat while the guitarist clangs and bangs in an extended, minimalist fashion, sounding for nearly five minutes like an intro waiting for something to happen (which finally does, at nearly the five-minute mark). Other tracks are just as weird in their own way, often leavened by amp hum, strange noises, and long passages of very little happening, but it always turns into something, usually a rocking kind of something, when they stop frigging with your mind and decide to bring the rock. One of the cool things that makes them a bit different from other whacked-out instrumental duos, or at least those working in a hard-rock vein, is that here the drummer gets most of the attention (and space in the mix), a nice change of pace over all those bands where the drums are drowned out by guitars. The drummer is a pretty good one, so it would be a shame not to hear him... but hear him you can, all over the place, and the dude with the guitar sounds like he's jumping around a lot, and at the best moments they resemble a collision between metal, slowed-down hardcore (especially during the slower parts), and psychedelia heavy on the improv tip. (Hell, "Anaconda Vise" even manages to capture the intensity and pure slo-mo fuzzdeath of Corrupted when the song opens, before turning into something more akin to stoner rock.) The band's name refers to a particularly vicious species of tarantula, apt in light of their tendency to sound like they each have eight limbs instead of just the usual four. Bonus points for the endlessly heavy and tranced-out album closer "Daioujou," whose Sleep-like vibe takes over thirty minutes to play out. Heavy is as heavy does, brutah. The one-man black metal band Heresi is the brainchild of the apparently-notorious Swedish metal dude Skamfer, who seems to have the same kind of misanthropic and disturbed reputation as that guy from Rudimentary Peni. This quote from Skamfer neatly sums up his worldview (not to mention Heresi's basic sound): "It is always the right time to do lots of drugs and die." Well put, dude! Obviously the man is a genius, and even if the quote didn't exist, the evidence would be there in the form of all those satanically violent and unspeakably catchy riffs (especially on the opener "Liothe," which is absolutely fucking full of them). The album is new but the sound is strictly old-school, raw and brooding and full of tortured dissonance, unholy melodicism (usually swaddled in a gloriously excessive amount of reverb, the TRUE way), and big-ass drums. Bonus points for the really, REALLY abrupt and violent volume shift in "Dionysesinitiationen" and the genuinely creepy (and undeniably Bosch-influenced) artwork from fellow devotee of the black arts, Wrest (of Leviathan fame). There are tragically only five songs on this EP (available in three formats on as many labels -- Total Holocaust Records for the cd, End All Life for the lp, and Satanic Propaganda for the cassette -- and distributed to the masses via Hydra Head and the ultra-special super-secret and magical world of licensing), which is too bad since they are raw and violent and primal and basically make me want to hold people down and skull-fuck them in the eye before setting them on fire. This is raw, primal stuff, crammed full of riffs that will make you flail wildly around the room doing the air-guitar thing yelling "DUDE!" right up until you fall out a window. Take my advice and stay seated while listening, you'll find it safer. If you're like me, you went into serious boo-hoo mode when Khanate announced last month or so that they were breaking up. (Who to blame for what appears to be a serious breakdown in communication within the band depends, as usual, on who's speculating and what you believe.) Fortunately, while Khanate guitarist Stephen O'Malley's main band Sunn O))) continues to move closer with each new release to new levels of accessibility, Khanate bassist Jim Plotkin -- veteran of such wildly different guises as OLD, Phantomsmasher, Null collaborator, etc. -- continues to move radically in the opposite direction. Khlyst (the name refers to an obscure religious sect founded in Russia in the 17th century; Rasputin was once supposedly a member) is an intriguing experiment in extreme audio terror and psychodrama. He's aided by partner in sonic damnnation Runhild Gammelsaeter (Aghast, Thorr's Hammer, wife of one of the dudes in Emperor), whose shrieks of the damned evoke Diamanda Galas, Patty Waters, and Junko Hiroshige in an even more bleak context. This actually sounds like a direction in which Khanate could have gone after CAPTURE & RELEASE -- the difference here is that Plotkin is playing guitar, not bass (plus drums and gong), and his approach has taken on a much different feel. It's a more textured approach, a sound that is often subjected to more frequent (and often extreme) processing, and the space that would have been filled by O'Malley's guitar (which was already becoming a smaller part of Khanate's sound with each new album, if you ask me) is now filled with abstract dark-ambient drone, weird samples and noises, and the endless reverb of Runhild's pained shrieks. Some tracks are very different, but pretty much everything sounds like it was recorded in a deep canyon -- there's plenty of groan 'n drone in the deliberate overuse of reverb. The album is divided into eight tracks, titled simply I - VIII in true minimalist fashion, and opens with some grotesquely tortured bass-heavy noise and Runhilde shrieking like she's being prodded with a hot iron as demented percussion turns everything into a big rumble of thunder. The track after that, though, is a fractured version of the dark-ambient sound he first explored on AURORA, the legendary and ground-breaking isolationalist collaboration with K. K. Null -- it is the sound of a few doomed notes here and there droning endlessly and repetitively in a cavernous space while other glacial sounds reverberate, with some wild jumps in volume just to keep you on your toes. It's dark, spacious, and oddly reverential, even beautiful. Of course, just as you get used to that, the third movement arrives and Runhild is shrieking in your ear again while Plotkin wrestles really perverted noises from his guitar. The fourth movement is a return to the isolationist sound, but darker and heavier, with wordless shrieking mixed in with the feedback in the background. Runhild retreats for a while in the next movement while percussion sounding somewhere between trucks falling down a hillside and the first rumbling bursts of thunder in a terrifying storm generates an enormous clatter, with droning wind-hell running through the rhythmic chaos until Runhild rises to the foreground again like a demented harpy flying through the clouds just to periodically dive-bomb the valley far below. The sixth movement is a return to (or perhaps a variation on) the second, with more shuddering and near-stationary bass drone and ambient swirling sounds to provide a chill-out zone between tracks of heavy abstract ranting. The seventh movement opens with grinding, too-loud riffing and squeaking, then Runhild hisses like a baleful devil-doll, and eventually the density level and volume grow, with a gross but totally mesmerizing sound akin to a black metal version of Arab on Radar. The final movement is something of a summation of all these approaches and then some, with slow pounding death in the percussion department, heavy guitar action and weird noises aplenty, not to mention lots of the otherworldly and often omnipresent Runhild, all mixed with the levels to the ceiling for maximum impressionability. Think of it as black metal noise opera if you like (I wouldn't be surprised if the actual release, unlike the meat 'n potatoes promo version, comes with a libretto or something similar), or just another out-there album involving Plotkin, but don't be fooled by the artiness factor -- this is at once one of the most extreme things sonically and conceptually you could ever hope to hear, but at the same time, it's executed with such attention to sound, structure, and detail that it's far more accesible than you would ever initially suspect. It invokes the spirit of Khanate and Aghast more than anything else, but still remains clearly its own new thing. If I can't hear new Khanate anymore, it's at least a good thing this is happening (assuming it's something more significant than a one-off release, which remains unclear). Bonus points for the dark but elegant cover art. Comparisons to bands like Totimoshi, Jumbo's Killcrane, The Mass, and Spackle are kind of inevitable given the band's location (San Francisco) and pedigree (members have previously played in Spackle, Model, and The Rail Gun Ensemble, and vocalist / guitarist Andrew Lund also plays bass in The Mass), not to mention their history of touring and playing local shows with these bands and even more like them. Hell, they're even a trio. Fans of those bands, and of convoluted riff-rock that often sounds like it was composed by hyper, clever, and overly bright mathematicians after drinking far too much coffee, will find much to love here -- the band is fearsomely tight, fond of really complex structures, riffs, rhythms, and melodic constructs, sort of like a much heavier Jawbox at times, but still definitely metallic in both sound and approach. They are certainly capable of mondo heaviness, though; "Desperate Signs" in particular is a grinding, remorseless slab of dense metal crunch that eventually opens up into spidery bass runs straight out of mid-period PiL and country-jazz feedback guitar before the heavy crunch factor returns in earnest. The hollowed-out bass, laid-back guitar, and restrained drums that open "Slay Tracks" (after a brief spoken-word sample) prove that they can operate with subtlety; the whacked-out guitar sound that follows and leads into a growing level of heaviness shows that this does not make them wimps. The ten songs here are filled with all sorts of unexpected, even jazzy (in a metal sort of way) moves and complex structures that should take plenty of listens to fully sink in. Their latest release is a highly energetic and listenable affair, to be sure. There's a lot of Arab on Radar in the wave transmissions emanating from this malfunctioning shortwave tower, if you know what I mean. Actually, the band (a trio Pittsburgh, PA, home of noise-gods Macronympha, which is probably relevant in an abstract way, although this is not technically a noise or power-electronics record) has an aesthetic somewhere between the more sonically violent Chicago and Skin Graft bands (Flying Luttenbachers, Mount Shasta, Yona-Kit, You Fantastic!, etc.) and the dissonant ass-backwards math metal of Providence-area bands like Arab on Radar. The ten songs on this disc play out like aggressive, hyperactive blasts of revved-up freejazz motorbreath anarchy, mixing traditional heavy sounds (pounding drums, fast fuzzy guitars, pneumatic bass lines) with all sorts of anarchist goofiness (strange sound effects, abrupt shifts in tempo / tone / texture / everything, strange moments of stagnant riffing that turns into something else entirely, and all kinds of sonic violence). Their sound is frantic, chopped-up, but still entirely human at the core (even if the humans in question are looking for some mighty strange kicks). Perplexing, punishing stuff that most will undoubtedly find confusing, but a select few will recognize as prime sonic weirdness. This is black metal by way of those diabolical jokers (who were never really joking) Devil Doll, a bizarre and deliberately surreal fusion of metal, dark folk, experimental collage, and above all, horror soundtrack mania. The artwork looks like pure straight-up old school black metal, but within minutes reveals itself to be a much more complicated and downright peculiar beast. Beyond a brief, ominous intro that's over before it really even gets started, the five remaining tracks lurch from ghastly doom and black metal stylings to creepy chants over a toy piano to authentically cheesy horror-film organ drones to one damn thing after another, without ever sounding silly (frankly, the effect of the entire cd is one of constant unease and an alienated kind of pure otherness that may well leave you more than a little bit disturbed). In true black metal / minimalist style, simple motifs are repeated endlessly as other sounds and / or instruments come and go, but the strange juxtaposition of sounds and often surprisingly traditional use of traditional instruments brings the album more in line with experimetal music that has nothing to do with metal whatsoever. The vocals are the most unusual aspect of the album, as the singer delivers his lines in a crooning, high-pitched drone, like a drunken monk reciting his chants through an echo chamber. All these elements come together, thanks to subtle but highly effective songs and an uncluttered approach to weirdness and minimalism, to act as a promising soundtrack for a horror film yet to be filmed. This is great, truly out-of-left-field stuff, sort of like an avante-garde / black metal answer to Tinsel, and definitely something worth seeking out. This hardcore band from Philly has some lofty goals, if you believe their site and the poop sheet that came with this, and while I'm old 'n cranky and deeply cynical about the effectiveness of mixing music and politics (do any of these earnest, well-meaning bands ever actually save the world?), there's no question these guys are really serious about what they do and really intense about how they do it. Hardcore doesn't do much for me personally for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with the bands, but these guys are certainly real, real good at what they do. They're very heavy, very intense, and incredibly tight, with well-crafted songs and excellent production; their lyrics are a bit too politically-inclined or overly introspective for my taste, by at least they sound like they were written by intelligent human beings (it helps to have a singer who could make a grocery list sound apocalyptic), plus I really like the art direction on this disc a lot. There's no end to the pure heaviness on this disc, with many of the songs played at a breakneck pace -- you may not be able to tell what the singer's shouting as everybody else speeds on by, but you'll know it's intense. Hardcore fans looking for a seriously intense jolt of metallic energy should check this band out. The latest audio assault from Prurient (for the next fifteen minutes or so, at least) turns out to be a lateral move in a somewhat different direction. The squealing, piercing wall of white-noise microphone feedback and harsh, processed vocals are present as always, but the addition of rhythmic blocks of noise and the decision to push the feedback into the background and bring the vocals up front results in something even more unnerving, even horrifying, than earlier works. The effect is somewhere between a really worked-up Sutcliffe Jugend and Khanate on "military road" (the first of four long noise soundscapes), and closer to the grossed-out noise aesthetic of Dead Machines on "earthworks / buried in secret." Then there's "outdoorsman/ indestructible," which opens with not frightening noise or howling but instead a cryptic sound fragment that's repeated endlessly as an ominous drone sets in; when the voice finally arrives several minutes later, after some additional muted sonic transgressions, he's not howling but delivering his lines in a doomed, sociopathic voice bathed in cathedral-like reverb. The track is brooding, ominous, and filled with moments that make it seem as if everything is finally about to explode into an orgy of white-noise hell... but it never happens. The final track "apple tree victim," by contrast, is ridiculously loud and tinny, with sounds that echo and vibrate out of sequence with each other, growing noisier and more deliberately irritating as the track progresses. Definitely one of the more varied and interesting Prurient releases, with no signs of going soft anytime soon. Now this is what they call heavy -- guitars tuned down to something so subterranean the bass has hair on it, big and ponderous drums, and intense, unnerving vocals. Tragically, it's also the final document by this now-defunct Israeli band with a tendency to sound like a Middle Eastern answer to Unsane. This posthumous release collects a lot of loose ends in the band's brief discography -- their single "Timeless" from the 2005 split single with Sourvein; two tracks, "Mind Eruption" and "Unmanning Your Planet," recorded in 2003; two live tracks ("Too Much Is Never Enough" and "Golden Female Ring," both recorded in Jerusalem); and two 1997 tracks from the an unreleased ep, "God Damn" and "How Low Can I Get." The collection makes it possible to have all of the band's material on just three discs (this one, their 1999 homeland debut FOR THE VOMITING TRACTOR DRIVERS -- surely one of the greatest album titles ever -- and their one album on Relapse, 2001's LET THE SOUL OUT AND CUT THE VEIN), and you should want to have all three, because this was one seriously heavy band. Like the Unsane (in terms of general tone and intensity) but reflecting life in Israel rather than New York, their approach to grim and unrelenting heaviness has a bit more prog-rock influence (but not enough to turn this into something odious like "art rock") than most of the sludgy, doomed bands like Eyehategod and Grief operating in this same sonic neighborhood, but they never forget that they're first and foremost all about the doom. This is all high-quality material, played and recorded well and often bridged by samples (I guess they must have been Buzzov.en fans). There are supposedly quality control issues with the tail end of the recording for "Unmanning Your Planet," but I can't even tell what the fuss is supposed to be about without listening for it, and even then it's not a major issue. Everything else sounds brilliant (not to mention more than a wee bit scary). It's just too bad that every time I find a new band as intense as the classic postpunk / doom bands like Unsane, Grief, and Sourvein, I find out they've broken up already, arrrrrrgh...! I dunno what Rent Romus has been up to lately, but this is apparently his first release since 2000 with the Lords of Outland, a constantly evolving group of players. This latest release is an attempt to straddle the divide between extreme improv and flat-out nosie, as produced by an intriguing lineup -- Romus on alto sax, zitherod, and voice, C. J. Reaven Borosque on no-input electronics and guitars, Ray Schaffer on six-string electric fretless bass, and Philip Everett on drums, percussion, and autoharp. (The occasional guests include Jim Ryan on tenor sax, Darren Johnston on trumpet, Scott Looeny on piano, and Damon Smith on double bass.) There's plenty of energetic and wide-ranging free-improv exploration going on here, along with covers of the Albert Ayer songs "Universal Indians" and "Saints," but the real excitement happens when they go ballistic with the noise. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, the combination of experienced free-improv players and blinding white noise is revelatory indeed. The rest of it isn't too bad either, although definitely not for the uninitiated or those expecting coherent, predictable structures to their listening experiences. If you've ever wondered about the possibility of hearing a collision between beatnik free jazz and power electronics, then your prayers have been answered. Even if you weren't, it probably wouldn't hurt you to check it out anyway, right? This is exactly what it says on the back of the album: "Recorded live. Source sounds form Great White Shark cage diving, underwater and from the deck." Sounds promising, doesn't it? What that doesn't tell you is that said source material was then processed, layer after layer and with more volume than you can even begin to imagine, into a dense and crunchy wall of shifting white noise worthy of early Incapacitants or Merzbow or Hijokaidan, something hardcore and fearsome like that. This is a truly obnoxious piece of work, not just for its exquisitely baroque layers of harmonic noise buried in the sound of broken concrete exploding, but for its sheer ridiculous length and intensity (nearly an hour of continuous soul-crushing trash compactor noise). This is the old-school sound and attitude, the idea of creating a terrifying leviathan of pure dense sound, something loud and abrasive enough to physically assault people like a sonic weapon, and turning it up as loud as possible and playing as long as possible until someone turns you off or beats you to death or everybody leaves. ATTITUDE, doom childe! That's what you need and what The Rita has in spades. Plus a truly monolithic wall of cascading noise, like an endless avalanche evolving like a fractal far beneath the surface noise. I just wish I knew what the original source material sounded like before it was overprocessed into this grinding wall of sonic death. This was recorded live, by the way, and engineered / mastered for maximum ear damage. You know you lust for The Rita to own your shriveled li'l soul, right? I don't know much about this (or the band, in spite of hearing the name checked by others for years), but this is pretty nifty -- a collection of four long, noisy psych-addled death drones, recorded in March of this year and packaged in hand-crafted low-tech digipack sleeves. There's not much to get real specific about (this is mostly just lots of power drone and static-filled power electronics for texture), but the sounds are hypnotic and entertaining, and while the approach varies from one track to the next, the results are always interesting. This is mantra music, full of repetitive sounds, thundering reverb, slo-mo notes that take forever to decay, and a feel that owes an awful lot to psychedelic drugs. There's a lot of siren-like wailing in the background from time to time, too, a droning foghorn sound that gives everything a particularly desolate quality. The bass sound on "ecuador thorns" is nice 'n nasty, too, all tinny and droning while the siren wails helplessly. The emphasis on repetitive blocks of sound keeps the album's tracks at least marginally unified, as does the texturized noise aesthetic that keeps the songs sounding like drones taking place in a dusty, rust-eaten junkyard whose air is clotted with the dust and and grit of exploded metal and metallic dust. It's strange and drone-fixated stuff with a dark and mysterious vibe, one that's augmented from time to time by some seriously crunchy noise texturizing. Given the handcrafted nature of this, I wouldn't be surprised if it's limited. Worth tracking down if you're severely jonesin' for the dronin' or already hep to Robedoor. Roman Torment is the alcohol-fueled expression of sexual fetishism and pure volume lust of two audio deviants from Los Angeles, Jeff Witscher (of Impregnable and Deep Jew, not to mention head skull at the Callow God label, if my gnomes whisper correctly) and Evan Pacewicz (of Moth Drakula and the Swampland Noise label). Their purge their angst and wallow in their lurid fantasies of sexual fetishism and aggression with titanic mushroom clouds of junk sound and white noise, like the endless of exploding munitions factories. The seven tracks (35 minutes in all, mastered at a naturally ridiculous volume by Thomas Garrison) are remastered material from their early BLACK SPRING and BEWILDERMENT cassettes with new sonic poo thrown in. All of it is like submerged in a cement mixer being electrocuted by giant angry robots. There's nothing particularly new or revelatory happening here, but it's certainly over the top enough for me. This is the sound of real old-school monolithic power electronics, and it crushes.... This album -- a genuine collaboration between the members of Sunn O))) and Boris, recorded in October of last year with all players present for the recording and playing together, like the physical merging of two complete bands -- is one of the best releases by either band, a fusion of everything that works about both bands into one startling entity. The bearded ones add some serious droning heaviess to the sound as Boris render their sound considerably less staid and monochromatic, and the results are... if not complete and total genius, then at least something fans of both bands can enjoy. The first two tracks ("Etna" and "NLT") are nice combinations of noise, drone, and psych that are pleasant enough to hear but don't really expand much on either band's sound, but "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)" is a significant departure for both bands, a darkly psychedelic country-rock tune buoyed by the ethereal and sensitive vocals of guest singer Jesse Sykes. He is not the only guest appearing on the album -- Joe Preston (Earth, Melvins, High on Fire, Thrones), who brought the two bands together in the first place, appears on the bizarre and buzzy "Akuma No Kuma," while former Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil adds extra guitar to the closing track "Blood Swamp." Bottom line: If you're heavily into either band, you'll want to hear this. Available on cd or vinyl (with an extra track featuring Earth guitarist Dylan Carson); for a brief period, probably until the first pressing sells out, Southern Lord is making a two-cd version available that includes the aforementioned 28-minute track with Carson, among others, on a second disc. Check it out, doom childe: The first full-length release from Canadian harsh-noise adherent Sandy Saunders, aka Torso (who will also be appearing next spring on a split with Unicorn). What the release offers is eight tracks of brooding ambient power electronics, presented in varying slices of audio nihilism. The sounds are harsh (as are the vocals, mixed in to sound like part of the noise much of the time), but the attack is not full-on; rather, many of the tracks feature a thick layer of processed ambient noise within which other sonic ugliness happens, or some relative variation of this strategy. Rumbling electronic sounds play an important part of Torso's aesthetic as well, along with the passion for dark-ambient stylings and field recordings. In some ways (especially structurally and tonally) this has more in common with free-jazz than noise, strictly speaking, but free-jazz was rarely ever this loud and fond of microphones feeding back. Plenty of variation, plenty of nastiness on display here. Fans of the Unicorn and Sky Burial discs mentioned a while back will probably find this of considerable interest. Half the battle in describing Totimoshi to the uninitiated is in making people understand that they are not, despite what some might believe, the second coming of the Melvins. What they are, in fact, is a highly disciplined and focused band whose sonic direction sounds like impressionists triangulating their signal between the points of stoner rock, old-school industrial (with its ties to the Fluxus movement, noise, and free-improv), and Latin music. The first two are what get them compared endlessly to the Melvins and any other heavy and "quirky" trio that actually rocks; the third is what makes them radically different from all those other bands, and way more interesting than most. They come by the Latin influence naturally -- guitarist, main songwriter, and head visionary Antonio Aguilar is Chicano, the son of migrant farm workers, and bassist Meg Castellanos is half-Cuban -- and it shows up everywhere, most obviously in the artwork (the artwork for this release is incredible, by the way), the lyrics (when you can make them out), and most of all, the music. It's their subtle Latin approach to the beat that goes a long way toward separating them from all the stoner-rock bands weaned on the rhythm sections of bands like Black Sabbath, and their commanding grasp of a whole lotta other genres, some of them what Elvis would have called "real real gone," is what puts them on another level entirely. (The ear-scraping sounds about halfway through "The Hide," for instance, sounds very much like the more grinding parts of Neubaten's HAUS DER LUGE.) Luke Herbst, aka "the latest drummer," joined somewhere between MANOLI and this one (he's the seventh, if you're counting), and he turns out to be the drummer they've been looking for all along. His amazing ability to shift seamlessly between rock, country, jazz, and improv structures and beats without sacrificing power or control has taken the band to a new level. This is especially important on this release, where bone-snapping heaviness sometimes resolves without warning into pure old-school country and western dirges, only to abruptly shift into a completely different direction altogether. While the best songs on the album stand out in their own right, the totality of the twelve songs and the album's sequencing makes the album worth hearing from start to finish every time -- rather than presenting a series of discrete pop ditties, they've chosen instead to take the listener on a journey, one less dependent upon words than emotionally charged sounds, and delivered in such an endless series of inventive movements that the developing story and mood are never broken, even by the change from one song to the next. The album's first track, "Ladron," sets the paces by evolving from a bare-bones beat and joyously melodic barbed-wire guitar to... well, lots of different things, including desolate country rock with a twangy solo to full-on buzzed-out rock. The stop-start lurch of "In Virgo" flows into the swinging catchiness of "The Dance of the Snakes," switching moods about as fast as they shift gears within individual songs. The first peak of real heaviness on the album comes in the form of "Viva Zapata," with its vicious, squealy guitar, relentlessly hypnotic bass, and immense beats. "A Weighted Line" comes close to equaling it in the pure heaviness department. "These Meanings" sounds like an old-forgotten country blues song, something a lonesome cowboy on the range with nothing around but a herd of cattle, a campfire, and a real twangy guitar might sing to remind himself of the homestead, but "The Drunken Sun Forever Watching" brings back the heaviness (not to mention a lot of repetition, psychedelic soloing, and lovely viola). The final song, "The Shame," is not only powerful and fiercely beautiful at the same time, but thematically echoes the sentiments heard at the beginning of the album. And all the while, there's that barbed-wire, whirling-shrapnel guitar sound that occasionally resolves into stupendously heavy chords and that shape-shifting voice. The whole band is great, unquestionably, but it's Antonio's highly individual voice (when he bothers to sing, that is) and guitar tone that form the core of the band's sound. Page Hamilton (Band of Susans, Helmet) produced the album (Kurt Schlegel engineered at Lucky Cat Studios), and it's obvious than he and the band got along just fine. His presence is subtle -- mostly confined, I suspect, to general direction, tightening up the nuts and bolts, and a few new sounds -- and this is their sharpest and best-sounding recording to date. Their crushing wall of sound is far more nuanced this time around, and the improved production pays off in clearly articulating what's going on even during the most restrained moments. One of the things I like best about this band is their general lack of interest in spoon-feeding their audience (hell, I'm not completely convinced they spend much time worrying about audiences to begin with). They're often deliberately ambiguous (especially where the lyrics are concerned), not terribly concerned if people don't "get it," and are most fond of artwork and references from Hispanic and Latin culture that are probably totally unfamiliar to at least a portion of their audience. Their approach may be cryptic and heavy on the mystery vibe, but it works, leaving plenty of room for interpretation of their vision and plenty of opportunities for listeners to form their own interpretations of what it all means. They're intelligent, unpredictable, respect their roots, and heavy as hell when it moves them -- all the more reason to pick this up. The latest collection of goat-fondling blasphemy from Urgehal has been clogging up the DEAD ANGEL review pipeline ever since it arrived. Bonus points for the helpful declaration at the beginning of the disc, "This is SATANIC BLACK METAAAAAAL!!!" (Like anybody was going to mistake it for John Denver, right?) Urgehal are old-school black metal, as in "formed in Norway in 1992 with a first demo appearing in 1994, contemporaries of Mayhem / Emperor / Burzum / Abruptum / etc." black metal. This means they are heavily influenced by stuff like Slayer, Motorhead, Sodom, Venom, Bathory, Hellhammer, and lots of other early death / thrash riff royalty. Unlike a lot of old-school black metal bands, they are an actual band, and a good one at that, one that must be eating its Wheaties, because the whole album sounds like getting run over by a steady succession of locomotives. It sounds old-school enough to perfectly straddle the line between pure black metal and early death metal, which means there's plenty of shrieking vocals ("DIE FOR SATAN!" -- an actual line from one of the first two songs -- pretty much encapsulates their worldview, and quite succinctly), reverb-heavy and harmonically distorted black metal guitar (there's some particularly great moments toward the tail end of "Antireligious"), and especially in the slower sections, lots of enormous deathlike riffing over a rhythm section that could have been lifted from any early classic death / thrash record ("Dodsmarsj til Helvete," for instance, sounds an awful lot like REIGN IN BLOOD-era Slayer). This is their fifth album proper (not counting two intitial demos or compilation / split releases), and while nothing here is exactly "new" -- in fact, from the artwork to the pictures to the sound itself, this could easily have been released ten years ago -- it sounds great and is not only completely KVLT!!! but real fucking heavy too. Titles like "Antireligious," "Satanic Black Metal in Hell," and "Gathered Under the Horns" make it real clear where their concerns lie, the band plays like they mean it, and the whole experience is like being violently shaken to death while angry hornets attack your head. There's no sunshine here, doom childe. Just darkness... and Satan... and a lot of really fast double-bass drumming. You know you need it. I'm not sure this completely does justice to the label's breadth and scope, but as a pure-noise compilation, it's certainly pretty amazing. There's a lot of talent (and even a few noise "stars") here, including Prurient, Pedestrian Deposit, Government Alpha, Scissortail (RIP), The Rita, Thirdorgan, and The Cherry Point, and even the bands you've never heard of contribute powerful, sometimes even face-peeling, stuff. There's plenty here to make your ears cry for help, that's for sure. Some of the other bands appearing on this compilation include Black Moonhalo (whose "Blood Everywhere" is one of the best tracks), Maim, Joshua Norton Cabal, Malpa, Ruin Everything (whose "Corpselike Obedience (Repeat 840 Times)" is my vote for album's best song title -- the sound itself is harsh noise and glitch electronica), Rotten Piece, Metaconquer, and Priest in Shit, among others, and the sheer variety of bands and methods of sonic devovlement, coupled with good quality control in the standards department, make this worth hearing. If nothing else, it makes a good primer and starting point for the current state of the art in modern American noise. Plus some of the more impressive displays of audio violence (such as Armenia's "Degenerado Number Dos") have repelling unwanted guests, pests, and other forms of irritating field life. Cool listening for the stimulus-craving noisehead. This cd is a compilation of two eps (SILHOUETTE and their first, self-titled one) that are now out of print, remastered for maximum current sonic potential. Note that it's not all the original material, though; to "make this release as succinct as possible and to avoid punishing anyone who picked up the original releases," the liner notes claim, a few tracks have been left off both eps in assembling the cd. Tracks 1-7 are from the SILHOUETTE ep, originally limited to 55 copies; tracks 8-10 are from the self-titled ep. The music itself is dreamy drone-ambient prog rock in the vein of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mogwai, mid-to-late Swans, My Bloody Valentine, Black Heart Procession, and Sciflyer, filled with beautiful piano, melodic and fuzzed-out guitars, and a tendency toward slow songs drifting by on a grandiose and majestic ocean of sound. The tracks from SILHOUETTE are perhaps a bit poppier and less inclined toware pure majestic drone than the three from the self-titled ep, but not by much. Either way, it's all good. Swell, swell pickin's from the swollen trees in the fields of eternal drone.... This band is not exactly the most original-sounding attempt at goth-metal, but their stripped-down hard rock (complete with solos, and lots of them -- apparently they didn't get the memo about solos theoretically being out of style and all that) has its undeniably catchy moments, and their sleazy goth child singer Scarefina has plenty of the right attitude (not to mention she looks good in a Catholic schoolgirl outfit). The guitarist's day gig is playing in the black metal band Ancient, which has done well enough that he can afford to do this too, which must be kind of tricky since one band's in Norway (I think) and this one is in New York City. His guitar sound and the meat 'n potatoes drumming are what make a lot of this sound like a throwback to punky goth pop as defined in the 80s, and while the songs are occasionally a bit generic-sounding, the energy on these tracks and Scarefina's sneering delivery make up for any such issues. The ten songs here may not make you want to throw out your Sisters of Mercy or Electric Hellfire Club albums, but they'll certainly give you something goth-themed and energetic to rock out to. Bonus points for the really rude lyrics on "Rotten Candy." It sure takes some work to get used to the idea of hearing wailing blues-rooted guitar solos in the middle of goth tunes, though...! John Wiese (Bastard Noise, several million collaborations) and Wolf Eyes join forces again for their fourth collaborative release, and the first to be produced by Wiese. The results are pretty impressive -- the one formal track is called "44:31" and is a audio free-for-fall collage composed of sounds brought in by all the members of Wolf Eyes and Wiese. The track flows from vistas of drone to synapse-frying noise and drifting layers of processed sound, incorporating found sounds, extreme pedal-fu, laptop frippery, repetitive loops of noise, and other sonic mung to eerie and unnerving effect. The volume fluctuates, along with the density of textures and sound layers, as different sound motifs flow by, a river of sound occasionally drifting off into strong currents of sound before ebbing into new waves of noise and screeching. The piece, given its length and large collection of sounds and textures, is ambitious, but the band is successful in creating a lengthy but still involving soundtrack that continues to hold the listener's attention as it evolves, sometimes descending into pure noise hell in the process. It may not be quite as full-bore as some might expect (which would be kind of ridiculous anyway for such a severe length of time), but when the poisoned metallic river of sound and dark ambient grimness coalesces in big, ugly piles of obnoxious audio torture, it's plenty intense enough. The uncredited (and much shorter) bonus track is approximately five minutes of silence followed by somebody making irritating electronic noises or shooting off fireworks for about ten minutes as people laugh and comment, even howl and shriek -- is it live or in the studio? Hard to say, but while it's amusing, the first track is definitely where the meat is on this disc. Hey now, this is swell, swell stuff, blissed-out sludgy doom from what I gather are a bunch of hard-drinking Frenchmen. (Certainly the titles are all in French, and might well be the titles of the band's favorite drinking songs, for all I know.) This reminds me a bit of the Across Tundras disc currently out on Crucial Blast -- both bands favor the same kind of huge, majestically glacial guitar sound and oodles of drone. When YONL start to rock, though, they rock hard -- they may understand how to create great atmosphere, but they're hardly limited to ambient music. Despite the band's unmistakable metal origins, there's plenty of tripped-out psychedelic occultism to make them a bit more mysterious and otherworldly than their American doom counterparts. They rage, they drone, they bust out a goth-doom move like the Sisters of Mercy on steroids at half-speed with an angry banshee recruited for the vocal delivery -- they may be French, but they're no sissies. They also get lots of bonus points for working so hard to make everything sound so much bigger than big, possibly up to the point of being ridiculous to those not obsessed with bigness, but still big enough to crush you into paste no matter what you think. When they're not impressing you with how well they can go with their anger, the droning, floating, processed-sound interludes are highly charged and atmospheric breaks from the skull-frying heaviness happening elsewhere. Their delivery is pretty impressive, too, especially when they're in full-on audio punishment mode. Understated art never hurts, either. Recommended.
All reviews are by RKF unless noted at the end. Other reviewers are: Amanda, Gafne Rostow, Dillon Tulk, and Neddal Ayad (n/a).
A Vague Sound
A Vague Sound -- JIANGLAI [Slanty Shanty Records]
Black Elk
Crucial Blast
Black Elk -- s/t [Crucial Blast]
Black Leather Jesus
Incapacitants
Dada Drumming
Black Leather Jesus / Incapacitants -- A PURPOSE NOT NECESSARY [Dada Drumming]
Imam Records
Bobcrane -- TELEMONGER [Inam Records]
Church of the Apocalypse
Church of the Apocalypse -- UPON EXITING THE ROOTING CORPOSE OF PLANET EARTH [self-released]
Well Below Records
Circles -- WHEN THE BIG RIVER FLOODS [Well Below Records]
Southern Lord
Clown Alley -- CIRCUS OF CHAOS [Southern Lord]
Yellow Swans
PacRec
Doubled Yellow Swans -- GLOBAL CLONE [PacRec]
Yellow Swans
Release the Bats
Dove Yellow Swans -- LIVE DURING WAR CRIMES # 2 [Release the Bats]
Envenomist
PacRec
Envenomist -- ABYSSAL SIEGE [PacRec]
Eyes of Ligeia
Paragon Records
Eyes of Ligeia -- A FEVER WHICH WOULD CLING TO THEE FOREVER [Paragon Records]
Goliath Bird Eater
Not Not Fun
Goliath Bird Eater --BLOOD VENUS [Not Not Fun]
Heresi
Hydra Head Records
Heresi -- PSALM II: INFUSCO IGNIS [Hydra Head]
Khlyst
Hydra Head Records
Khlyst -- CHAOS IS MY NAME [Hydra Head]
Lower Forty-Eight
Monotreme Records
Lower Forty-Eight -- APERTURES [Monotreme Records]
Crucial Blast
Microwaves -- CONTAGION HEURISTIC [Crucial Blast]
One Thirty-Eight
Tuesdays Music
One Thirty Eight -- THE SISTER [Tuesdays Music]
Goodfellow Records
Passion -- THE FIERCE FREQUENCY OF NOW [Goodfellow Records]
Prurient
Load Records
Prurient -- PLEASURE GROUND [Load Records]
Rabies Caste
Dada Drumming
Rabies Caste -- s/t [Dada Drumming]
Rent Romus
Edgetone Records
Rent Romus' Lords of Outland -- CULTURE OF PAIN [Edgetone Records]
The Rita
PacRec
The Rita -- THOUSANDS OF DEAD GODS [PacRec]
Robedoor
Not Not Fun
Robedoor -- SHINING SMOKE [Long Long Cheny / Not Fun]
Roman Torment
PacRec
Roman Torment -- SKIN GAME [PacRec]
Boris
Sunn O)))
Southern Lord
Sunn O))) / Boris -- ALTAR [Southern Lord]
Divorce Records
Torso -- s/t [Divorce Records]
Totimoshi
Crucial Blast
Totimoshi -- LADRON [Crucial Blast]
Urgehal
Southern Lord
Urgehal -- GOATCRAFT TORMENT [Southern Lord]
Dada Drumming
v/a -- LOVE INTERRUPTS [Dada Drumming]
Imam Records
Vopat -- SILHOUETTES [Imam Records]
Wicked Little Dolls
Carnygoat Records
Wicked Little Dolls -- s/t [Carnygoat Records]
Wolf Eyes
John Wiese
Troniks
Wolf Eyes with John Wiese -- EQUINOX [Troniks]
Year of No Light
Radar Swarm
Year of No Light -- NORD [Radar Swarm]