This five-song ep is the official debut (to be followed by a full-length album early in 2007) of Abigail Williams, an extreme-metal band from Phoenix, Arizona mixing elements of goth, black metal, and metalcore, a band apparently swank enough to have garnered a quarter-million hits on their Myspace page in under six months and a slot on the upcoming Dark Funeral / Enslaved U.S. tour. They sound a lot like early Lamb of God with a piano to me, but what do I know? I suppose there could be worse things to be. I'm generally not a huge fan of hybrid-genre bands, but this one is at least pretty good and -- especially when they get their motor running and play blinding black metal -- capable of being really intense. (They do a lot to win over the likes of me by having a really good and really fast drummer, one who can still put some weight behind his swing even at hummingbird speed.) The various elements of their hybrid do come together in an impressive manner on "The Conqueror Wyrm," which even manages to end with a sample without sounding forced. Even with the gothic orchestral manuevers in full flower on "Watchtower," the drummer manages to pound his way to the forefront as the vocalist shrieks like a psychotic turned loose on the angry streets. If it's intensity you seek, you've certainly come to the right place with this band. Fair warning: If you can't stand the vocal approach of metalcore or keyboard-heavy gothic stylings, even the presence of a powerful drummer is probably not going to save it for you. Those who don't harbor such issues with hybrid stylings should find this a highly powerful and musically sophisticated album that still manages to be incredibly heavy. I can already feel myself being pulled under the machine, Ahlzagailzehguh started this off excellently. Thick walls of mechanical crackles... so many layers... I almost think I'm hearing some beautiful music being punished, there are moments where it seems as if some classical music or otherwise is being mangled by his effects. It just builds and builds, constantly stalking you from all angles...this just doesn't feel 'safe' at all. Slowly more feedback begins to creep in, along with a really unsettling wobbling low tone... just when you can't imagine it getting any more painful it drops out to silence. Impregnable's side begins with that speaker punching rumble... feedback fights to get out from under everything. Drops away to what feels like strings pulsing in a giant pipeline with heavy traffic above... then BAM, the sound literally pulls the air from you, the layers are more concentrated now, rising, then the floor gives away and you're crashing through glass. Feedback takes over for a moment, offering slight relief... then the noise resumes full-on for a brief moment before a pastoral drone eases the listener to the tape clicking stop. [Dillon Tulk] It's difficult to get much more intense and exquisitely misanthropic than these deeply perverted French nihilists, whose motto ("we hope you die") is featured prominently on the inside of the digipack. The band turned heads in 2000 with their debut, CUT YOUR FLESH AND WORSHIP SATAN, but the follow-up two years later didn't make the right kind of waves, apparently, and a lot of people have written them off. Prematurely, as it turns out, because this is a pretty impressive return to form. Antaeus favor a fast (really fast) and violent form of intimidating black metal, one that approaches an industrial sound at time due to their fondness for harsh, unnatural tones and machine-gun cymbal blasts, but their aggression is wrapped in eerie incidental music and when they slow down, they are every bit as oppressive in low gear. Like their compatriots Arkhon Infaustus, they trumpet their perversity and evilness (rude pictures intimating self-mutilation, BDSM, and an unhealthy fascination for dead things, plus a severely satanic outlook), but Antaeus are less interested in ritual music and a lot less cartoonish, plus their lyrics strike an uneasy balance between the more prurient aspects of Satanism and pure psychopathic hatred for pretty much everything. The production is not quite as hot as it could have been, but it's good enough to get the point across and the playing and attitude are so intense that they make production issues moot. Bonus points for the stylish packaging (including onionskin inserts in the booklet). Perfect listening for those who like their black metal to flatten them against the wall and crush their bones into sawdust. This is Azrael's third release, an ambitious double-cd set (available for the price of one) of progressive black metal that combines elements of folk, jazz, psychedelia, and pure frozen blackness into a form of black metal with more texture and dimension than one normally associates with the cold, grim wing of black metal. This is apparently a continuation of the epic metal schema they began with INTO SHADOWS: ACT I and INTO SHADOWS: ACT II, and for a trio from Minnesota, of all places, they sure have a sold grip on the sounds of the frozen north. Fans of early Ulver and Bethlehem will particularly appreciate the oblique intelligence of the psych and drone elements they bring to the darkened forest of grim metallic riffs. The first disc is nominally black metal, especially where the drums and guitar sound are concerned, but there's plenty of neo-folk interludes and hallucinatory non-metal stylings to add to the texture without turning it into something else entirely. The moments of pastoral reflection may make it unpalatable for those into the no-frills, raging metal sound; those people will probably be happier with the second disc, which retains some of the first disc's otherworldly, near-jazzy feel but is significantly heavier (if just as strange). Two complete discs may be a bit much for the neophyte to wade through, but at least it's good stuff, well-executed and more varied than most black metal. Bastard Noise, formed in 1991 by a couple of key members of Man is the Bastard, is so underground that even in the Internet Age, information about them is hard to come by. Their early output, an endless slew of splits and singles on both the 7" and 12" -inch format, is even harder to find. Well, thanks to Housepig, Bastard Noise fans now have a compelling reason to rejoice, for this 3-inch cd contains a reissue (first time on cd) of "Three Dollar Date," originally issued on the German A.I.P.R. label, and bonus material in the form of the band's tracks from a rare split 7" with Hermit. To top it off, the cd comes in a scaled-down replica of the original packaging from "Three Dollar Date" and a miniature magnifying glass for your assistance in making out all that Eyestrain-O-Vision print. The first seven tracks are from the "Date" single, all oscillator-fu and crackly noises and harsh grunge everywhere, abrasive and ugly and alienated without being full-out noise terror. As you might expect from material that was originally contained on a single, the tracks are short bursts of grinding, whining oscillator rhythms, irritating noises, and unsettling samples that usually come to an abrupt and unexpected end. One of the shortest tracks, "Palm Springs," is nothing more than an unidentified woman crabbing about people wasting water on their lawns; the only "noise" content is the electronic manipulation of her voice. The other five tracks, done with assistance from Woe Is Me and Namanax, are harsher and more consistently filled with rumbling junk noise, not to mention to a lot of horse-throated shouting. There's some nice reverb-heavy rumbling in the canyons happening in "interstellar victory march"that makes it clear to me, for the first time, the link between Bastard Noise and Unicorn (the amazing dark-ambient side-project of one the guys at work here), but the tracks build toward an intense sort of ugliness that ends with a lot of crunchy noise hell and screaming on the final track, "the fascination for human roadkill." This is limited to 500 copies, so if you're down with Bastard Noise, you need to get this RIGHT NOW -- seriously, the Nyarlathotep release reviewed later is already sold out, so... you snooze, you lose, doom childe.... Talk about beautiful packages hiding horrifying contents...! The presentation here is totally swank, one of elegant minimalism -- high-grade white vinyl housed in a plain white sleeve with a color silkscreened cover and a large b/w insert on stiff paper. The first side, an untitled work by Austin, Texas noise perverts Blast Beat, is a lot of howling and heavily-processed destructo-noise that sometimes goes away for long periods only to return in new and more deliberately irritating forms. There are some pretty radical volume shifts designed to keep you on your toes, along with the occasional not-quite-random pop snippet in the background to distract you, if only momentarily, from their goal of leading you to a killing pit where they can crush your skull with grinding sheets of sonic ugliness. Bonus points for the pure antisocial perversity inherent in much of their deliberately chaotic and willfully confrontational sound. The flip side, from the recently-formed but insanely prolific Torturing Nurse, is the sound of an extremely agitated, even tortured man grunting and howling and moaning and shrieking and basically making a hell of a racket while vaguely fuzzed-out electronic noise happens behind him, what sounds like an electric fence shorting out or an oscillator with a bad battery dying. This is lo-fi, primitive, but really unnerving noise employing both human weirdness and cheap electronics to make extremely unsettling antimusic. They favor the yelling and crunchiness of early Incapacitants and Merzbow, but bring their own uniquely Chinese pespective to things. (I'm dying to know about the band's background, actually.) Fans of old-school Japanese noise who like the always-intimidating sound of agitated Asian dudes yelling just as much as hearing them break electronic gadgets should be all over this. Limited to 200 copies, and trust me, you need this. This is harsh power-electronics minus the politics, just four slices of efx-abuse and piercing white noise, perpetrated against unsuspecting ears using a wide variety of strategies, tones, and shifts in texture and / or volume. Mostly, though, it's just real loud and abrasive and kind of punishing, about as far removed from pop music as you can possibly get (which was probably the point). The first track, "They," is a twenty-minute exercise in raw noise muscle, powered by a full-bodied roar of overamplified junk noise once the track really gets rolling, a roar that continues pretty much unabated for about six full minutes before breaking off into spiraling loops of high-pitched wailing and more sonic chaos and an extended bout of hocus-pocus squealing before descending into the junk-noise abyss once again. "Walk" explores the outer limits of the pure annoyance potential of high-pitched noises, while "Preacher Gorgo" (another long one, this one 21:18) returns to wallowing in a river of corrosive, grinding noise, some of it extremely painful and grotesque. The last track, "Android Flock," is a landslide of electronic noise with a much different tone and texture than the previous pieces, one that periodically resolves into great, wailing ripples of feedback before fading back into the screeching sound of a wind tunnel being blown apart. It also contains some of the most ear-shattering feedback on the album, ow! Hardcore power-electronics / white-noise devotees should check this out. Gothic metal from Austria with a sound like October Project backed by an extreme-metal band. This is the band's third disc for the label and the first with new vocalist Stephanie Luzie, and it's a solid melding of gothic themes and a poppy form of extreme metal. Soaring, operatic vocals and romantically-inclined keyboards create a dramatic layer of sound that is anchored in pure heaviness by the pounding, straight-ahead rhythm section. Darkwell is not the first (or, one suspects, the last) band to do this, but they're one of the few to do it this well, and without sounding forced. The gothic and metal elements mesh together well, largely because the songs are arranged in a simple, open manner that allows the two disparate genres plenty of room to find common ground and lock up in sync rhythmically. The result is both accessible and powerful, a sound that retains plenty of gothic appeal without becoming too overblown for the average metalhead. When you think of old-school, first-wave death metal, Germany's Destruction are one of the first names that come readily to mind. Their 1984 album SENTENCE OF DEATH was one of the earliest releases to establish Germany as a prime breeding ground for thrash, and if contemporaries like Kreator and Sodom managed to steal their thunder one way or another, it certainly wasn't on musical grounds. The band has had its ups and downs over the twenty-plus years since, but their intensity and dedication to all that is metal has not diminished over time. The evidence is here, on an album intended to keep the band's fans sated until the release of the forthcoming new studio album. Bookened between two new recordings ("Deposition (Your Heads Will Roll") opens, "Profanity" closes; both are intense and spine-crushing), are thirteen newly-recorded, high-intensity versions of the best songs from their lengthy back catalog. Destruction were one of the first bands to demonstrate the power potential in being both insanely fast and insanely heavy at the same time, an Olympian feat aided considerably by their Teutonic delivery and pure blinding speed; cut from the same musical cloth as Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax (before they developed an ill-advised idea they were secretly a rap band), Kreator, Slayer, Celtic Frost, and other fast 'n heavy bands of the early 80s, but with few exceptions, were generally far heavier and more adept than all but a few (Coroner, Celtic Frost, and Slayer come to mind, assuming we're talking about the last one before or after a break for six-packs). One of the advantages of a compilation such as this is that with a band this good and an extensive catalog to draw from, it's possible to assemble a really powerful showcase for the band. This is one of those albums; there are fifteen tracks including the two new ones, and there's no deadwood here, just a psychopathic lust for speed, absurdly technical motifs, and a bruising physicality to everything (but especially the drums). If you're a fan of old-school thrash, it's probably worth picking this up just to hear a good, powerful thrash band properly recorded while playing some of its best material. If you're a Destruction fan, you definitely need this -- the album is amazing from start to finish, including the bonus tracks. Stellar stuff, and good to see from a band that's been around this long. They'll be touring the U.S. for the first couple of months in 2007, giving everybody plenty of opportunity to see them bring the hammer on stage and in the flesh. This is the kind of symphonic, bombastic, operatic European-style metal that I thought had gone the way of pointy guitars and color-coordinated stage outfits, but apparently not. This is baroque, arty metal for people who grew up listening to ELP, Yes, and classical music instead of AC/DC and Judas Priest. Formed in 1993 by Richard Lederer of Summoning (the band's name translates to The Banished Children of Eve), the music is nominally metal-tinged darkwave, but its genuinely Wagnerian bent and obvious grasp of classical stylings result in a sound more thematically rigorous and naturally dramatic than most pomp-metal. Operatic and sweet-voiced Greek singer Christina Kroustali has a voice and range perfectly suited for the band's majestic, deliberately-paced songs. This is the kind of thing that has been going on for years overseas, but has been slow to catch on in America, because there are no wild drum solos or freakouts or guitarists demonstrating way too much practice time -- no, it's just melancholy music from a baroque classical perspective, hardly likely to go over well with the Slipknot and Korn crowd. Too bad for them, because this is dark, haunting stuff, and not so far removed from the more operatic moments of those classic early Celtic Frost albums, either. Not "heavy" in the usually accepted sense, but brooding and well-executed, and of obvious interest to Summoning fans and followers of the more baroque and classically-tinged wing of darkwave. Brooklyn electronic breakbeat manglers Digital Geist is Alex K with help from Newt (especially live), and their electro-pulsin' bag is all about the beat, daddy, the big bumpin' BEAT. Formed in 1999 as a bedroom 4-track band, the band has moved on through several demos and many live performances to reach this, their first official full-length album. The nine original tracks (augmented by three remixes by Front 242, Neotek, and Timid) were written, assembled, and sculpted into the staggering march of inventive beats and rhythms that propel this album forward from the moment it begins. The band's approach and feel owe a lot to the first wave of EBM acts like Front 242 and Cabaret Voltaire, with a mad emphasis on the beat and a fondness for simple but muscular rhythms. They spent a year working on the material, and it shows in an attention to detail (even in the background) and the lack of weak parts, which I would presume were weeded out over time and endless replays. What you're left with are nine tracks of prime meat and fat beats, clattering industrial rhythms like a throwback to the golden age of the cheap and simple beatbox, and an energy level that never flags. Great stuff, and extremely well-done in every aspect, from the recording and samples to the art and packaging. The three remixes at the end aren't bad either, although after such a commanding and unrelenting onslaught of pure damn BEATS, I'm not sure how necessary they are, even if the one by Front 242 does add all sorts of unspeakably cool efx and beat-happy drama. The beats you need playing on the speakers when you're looking for the booty you want in Clubland, doom childe, although they'll sound just as good at home. "Dirty black 'n roll" from this one-man (Wrath) band from Greece, with major emphasis on the "black" half of the combination. This is strictly no-frills, lo-fi, old-school stuff, with lots of blurry tremelo guitar and hideously tormented shrieking. There is a bit more of a rock vibe happening than in most old-school black metal (and yes, the grinning spectre of Motorhead floats up through the sonic mung more than once), but mostly it's all about the raw, primitive feel, the simple but effective riffs, and big sheets of pure blinding guitar. The final track, "Wrath," dispenses with the drums and speed entirely for a brooding, vaguely melodic squall of distortion and hateful vocals, with a sound and feel like crawling through five miles of barbed wire at night while invisible shooters try to fill your head up with bullets. With five tracks (one less than a minute long) in a bit under forty minutes, Dodsferd makes a pretty convincing argument for being a band to watch. Note that the first 3,000 copies come bundled with a free copy of the label's "Death Cult" sampler, with 19 tracks from various albums on the label, including tracks by Horna, Khrom, Masochist, Fear of Eternity, Azrael, and Leviathan. This exercise in sparse, open sound and birdlike playing is the solo guitar work of Bryan Day, head banana of Public Eyesore, everyone's favorite purveyor of the new improv and all that. The first side (the "sagebrush" suite, in three pieces) is minimalist, relatively subdued, and moves at a deliberate pace, with the pieces recognizably different without deviating too much from the original feel and game plan. I think he's playing guitar, but the sounds are often birdlike, so... who knows? The bird sounds play off percussive sounds as quiet, bell-like guitar bits trill beneath the bird 'n beat noises. The flip side, the "deimos" suite, is similar in execution but a bit different in sound, maybe even recorded at a different time under different conditions. The three songs there are more of the same -- spare and crafty improvisations involving extended spaces and minimal playing, with unusual motifs and unpredictable sounds dropped into the mix at irregular intervals. Interesting and spartan stuff that nevertheless contains plenty to hear for the listener paying attention to the details. Now this is what I call style: 180-gram virgin metallic gray vinyl (50 copies on metallic gold) in a heavy gatefold sleeve, with the vinyl housed in a printed sleeve. (Bonus points for the swank pix of the guitar hardware.) For those not already in the know, FFB is actually the solo guitar drone project of vidnaObmana, who spent the past couple of decades helping invent the dark-ambient, isolationst, and experimental drone genres. Having decided to give his main band a rest for a while to recharge his batteries and call more attention to the back catalog, he has taken to touring and recording under this name. The first side is one long track ("i'm one of those monsters...") of drifty, droning, slo-mo tremelo guitar augmented by additional drones and harmonics that ends in clouds of harmonic drone, a sound that falls somewhere between My Bloody Valentine, Steve Reich, and Sun Ra. The song is built around endless repetition, incidental drone, and a melancholy feel, played a slow and deliberate pace; the minimalist ethos and volume allow for a lot to happen, harmonically speaking, without doing very much, resulting in pure and unaffected moments of transcendent drone. The second side, the side-long track "(... numb with grace"), is just a continuation of what was begun on the same side. Lengthy sheets of heavily amplified guitar drone = a good time for you and me. Even if you were never particularly enthused by or hip to vidnaObmana, this is highly recommended, especially in light of the impressive presentation. This is a vinyl-only release limited to 399 copies, so get it while you can. This obscure release (in a limited run of 49) is a C10 featuring two short (duh) but potent slices of junk noise nihilism and the occasional burst of high-pitched earhate along with interesting, unexpected diversions into the freedom of feedback (from the throne of drone). Moments of silence (or close to it) are broken by explosions of harsh noise and found sound; gadgets resonate in weird, throbbing rhythms over crunchy glitch scratchiness. Sonic violence floating through toxic clouds of contaminated audio. Brief but effective. Screeching, grinding white noise hell from former Scissortail gadget-humper Dillon Tulk, with the crunchy slo-mo sound of a cement mixer getting ready to disgorge a good ton of the hard stuff. No titles, no songs, no explanations, just speaker-crushing walls of jagged junk noise and exploded ambient sound. This will probably make your eyeballs hurt if you play it loud enough. The sound is a bit monochromatic by comparison to some of his earlier stuff in other incarnations, but it's certainly punishing in a very physical and intimidating sort of way. A blinding avalanche of nonstop junk sound, like a pleasant blast from the past; the slow and bruising sound of self-immolation is the dark and grumpy soundtrack for pulverizing concrete blocks underwater. Full of all the roughage and audio fiber you need for that perfect sonic colonic. You'd think by this, their third full-length album, that it would have gotten easier to describe them... but no, they still really do defy all atempts to pigeonhole them. The best I can offer is to suggest that they've managed (against all odds) to successfully weld a neo-pagan aesthetic to a sound that's one part tribal rhythms, one part catchy new-wave hooks, and one part a tendency toward unexpected randomness, and they've couched this aesthetic in a wild and surreal stageshow that's just as important as their albums. The poop sheet that accompanied the disk mentions the Raincoats as an influence, but it just as easily could have been Suicide; the band unquestionably leans toward simplicity and minimalism, despite the band's size (which really comes in handy during the group chants they like so much). Those already familiar with the Flaming Fire saga will be interested to know that their long-running project, the construction of the world's largest online illustrated Bible, continues to this day, with over 2,700 illustrations contributed so far. As for the music, it's a convoluted but insanely catchy string of songs built on spare percussion that falls somewhere between tribal or military rhythms and pure punk, minimalist song structures with abrupt shifts in texture and tone, and the bizarre feel of a backwoods tent-covered religious revival, complete with snake-handling and visions. The main vocal setup (Patrick Hambrecht, backed by Lauren Weinstein and Kate Hambrecht), makes the B-52s comparisons obvious, but that band was never as far-out as this one. This one has better costumes, too, not to mention a more interesting theology floating through its lyrics. (I'm also pretty sure the B-52s never mentioned anything about chopping people up and tossing the pieces in the river, either.) My personal favorites are "Father Wolf," "Satellite," and "Sister Isis," a hysterical post-disco industrial-funk drone about an ongoing soap opera among the gods, but truthfully, everything on this disc is great. Is this pagan folk-pop music for the apocalypse? I think it just might be. Whatever it is, it's got a beat and you can dance to it, and that's what really counts, right? They must be hip, because no only do they have shit out on Load, but they have three earlier releases available on Thurston Moore's uberhipster label Ecstatic Peace. The mysterious dudes of GW have been in more bands than you can shake a tuner at (including Kevin Shields and The Hospitals), and they lean toward a really fractured vision of music that's sort of like toybox minimalism being destroyed by pranksters weaned on Sun Ra and Sun City Girls. Even by Load standards this is out there, closer to avant-garde experimentalism (or maybe even Fluxus worship) than the postmodern spazzrock once normally associates with the label. Ten tracks of arcane, devolved sonic weirdness coming from all directions, including a few you probably can't even begin to imagine, perpetrated by whacked-out avatars of antimusic and unpredictable shrieking, guys who may or may not be high on paint thinner while making all these godawful noises. Some of the songs, like "soft crust from 00," do actually approach sounding like actual songs (as opposed to methodically chaotic noisemaking, a tactic employed over much of the rest of the album), but songs so weird and loose and fill with mad strangeness as to test the patience of the unbelievers and the merely confused. Last Exit meets Sun Ra in a basement in Orange County, where the participants may or may not be chemically altered in addition to having their stained souls aligned in some unspeakable harmonic convergence of damaged psych folk, abrasive improv instrument abuse, and pure antisocial mindmelt. I'm sure Thurston Moore put out their earlier records because he wishes his own band was as bizarre and out-there as this one. Disorganized chaos has rarely sounded so listenable. Be prepared for hyperactivity and pained shrieking along with the improv madness. And yes, a great many listeners will probably find the title accurate enough Five long tracks of grinding, blinding, senses-obliterating machine noise, recorded (in Brooklyn, 2006) and mastered (by ex-Khanate bass-slapper James Plotkin, god o' ambient rumble) at a ridiculous volume, naturally. The weapon of choice here is an analog synth, and it sounds like it -- the point of a sound like this is not the structure, the direction, or even anything resembling a conventional song, but purely the sound itself, and what a sound it is. Dissonant tones clash with each other at high volume as processed, oscillating blasts of sound vie for supremacy in the mix, lending a highly textured and clearly defined ear-shredding tone to the whole gruesome exercise. This is the kind of sound you can only really get to sound "right" with analog equipment, even if it's recorded in digital, what the beatniks with the funny hats call "the big, sexy headache" and what the rubes out in the stick call "crazy-ass loud shit." "No More Air," the opener of the way, announces itself with no introduction whatsoever, just pure violent loudness -- sort of like a wall of bricks falling on you without warning -- and immediately sets the tone for what is to follow. This is the overamplified sound of power stations in revolt, giant metallic insects descending on robocattle being herded through giant canyons buried in fog and tended by cowboys the size of Voltron, warning signals from the approaching Master Race coming to eat us all like tater tots, all big and loud and shrieking and crunchy too. The corrosive waves of sonic violence will be too much for the weak and the uninitiated, I'm sure. If somebody asks you what it's called, just tell them it's loud fractal noise metal. Bonus points for the swell, swell Megan Ellis artwork, which is both simple and elegant at the same time. This is an intriguing collaboration on many levels, but especially musically and conceptually. As poet Lisa Gill explains in the liner notes, the mere idea of combining carefully-crafted poetry with completely improvised music is a strange one... but as it turns out, one that can work well indeed, under the right conditions. The collaboration came about when improv-inclined trombone player Kurt Heyl read one of Gill's poetry compilations and approached her about working together. He ended up sending her a cd-r of 55 short solo pieces, each one approximately a minute long, just long enough to sync up to some degree with her short poems. The collaborative process became more complex over time, culminating in a recording session at Heyl's house. The final result is 25 short poems, none much longer than two minutes and many under one, accompanied by Heyl improvising with trombone, mouthpiece, and various accessories, making chittering, squealing noises that frequently act as counterpoint (or act in perverse agreement) with the poetry as Gill reads the words. The interaction between her reading and Heyl's improv moves are unexpected and often amusing, and nowhere near as "intrusive" as one might expect upon initially considering the concept. Consider this a scaled-down, free-jazz version of the aesthetic offered up by the Golden Palominos on DEAD INSIDE, the harrowing death-poetry album narrated by Nicole Blackman over ambient death-funk. This isn't anywhere near as funky or commercially accessible, but for experimental performance enthusiasts, it should be an interesting listening experience. The short tracks are followed by one long (9:46) epic, "The Complaint," which in turn is followed by the album's closing statement, the 1:41 "Solo" from Heyl. Bonus points for the lovely understated art. With a title like that, you'd be excused for expecting black metal or something, but what you get is a something closer to conventional hardcore or extreme metal. I've always had a minor problem (at least where my personal listening habits are concerned) with metalcore bands because of their overuse of the whole stop 'n start aesthetic, and this band is no different in that respect, but these guys are at least good at what they're doing, and unquestionably heavy and intense. The album pretty much lives up to its intimidating cover; there's no sissy behavior going on anywhere here, just lots of galloping beats, heavy downtuned guitar thunder, and much hoarse shouting about violence and other equally unsettling topics. Thematically (and sometimes even tonally) they share much in common with sludged-out doom bands like Eyehategod and Crowbar, especially in their vocal approach and heavy riffing vs. twisted, tweaking guitar lines, but their hyperactive drumming and relatively speedy tempos will probably make their sound far more listenable to metalcore fans. Relentless and filled with intense riffing, there's plenty of energy on this disc, but those not already heavily into metalcore (or extreme metal in general) will probably find it a bit on the monochromatic side. Are all Finnish bands required to worship Motorhead from a very young age? There's plenty of that band's loud-as-fuck minimalist guitar snarl on this album, the latest offering from the eternally-busy Horna (formed in 1993, with over thirty releases including comps and splits; the name means "abyss," which perfectly suits their sound, believe me). That's about their only connection to Lemmy's esteemed band, though; Horna applies that fried-amp guitar sound to grind through four long tracks of aggressive minimalist riffing and supremely evil shrieking, fusing old-school black metal, heavy trance, and pure misanthropy into endless epics of freezing audio hell. They aren't particularly fast here, and there are heavier bands (not many, true), but their sound is subtly different from most old-school black metal --they prefer a slightly different tonal range, especially where the guitars are concerned -- and their execution is both persisently aggressive and thoroughly convincing. The album is a "concept album" in that the songs are about the "Yersinia Pestiis curse that triumphed over Europe in the 14th century" (in other words, the Black Plague) and the sound is strictly old-school, with long songs containing as few riffs as possible and a cold, trancelike vibe, culminating in the 22-minute title track, a steadily-escalating exercise in cold, grim fear (and pounding drums, lots of steadily pounding drums) that ranks up with the best of early Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone, or even the first couple of Bathory albums. The lyrics and titles are all in their native language, but that's okay -- in black metal, attitude is far more important than the actual words, and Horna have more than enough attitude for you, trust me. You don't need to be Finnish to understand "fuck you," right? Helpful tip: The black side goes down. Yes. The black side. The disc plays much, much better with the black side down. Anyway... um... yes. the black side goes down, and then the disc plays, and what you get are ten untitled processed-guitar jams, the first four recorded in a bomb shelter, the rest at Delta of Venus. The tracks recorded in the bomb shelter are great, heavily-reverbed waves of ghost guitar and droning psych melodies, with a spooky and reverential sound reminiscent of John Fahey's last few albums (especially RED CROSS). The other tracks are less of a single sound and more varied in approach, more like a ride with many unexpected detours than the fogbound wave motion of the earlier tracks. The overall sound of this release is more of a reflective, meditative vibe than most American experimental / psych albums; if I didn't know better and heard this without the packaging, I'd be inclined to think it was obscure dronemuzik from Germany or Poland. Maybe it's just the locations, but there's a dark and kind of mysterious feel to the sound that's extremely compelling, even when the playing is more subdued. (There's also a fairly high concentration of ambient noise / efx pedal hiss in places on the tracks from Delta of Venus, giving the mix plenty of texture.) As I understand it, the tracks were all recorded direct to stereo on a portable DAT recorder, so the sound is very much "live" in both setting and intent. Another worthwhile venture into the magical realm of devolved waves of psychedelic sound and noise. One of the things I like about Housepig is their interesting approach to packaging, especially for limited-edition releases such as this one, which is limited to 100 copies and comes on a hand-inked cd-r in a black digipack with three inserts. The other thing I like about Housepig is their obsession with high-quality death-drone, and this particular release is a stellar example. The band is actually Kopish from Surrounded and Henson from Oblong Box, so already they bring a drone-heavy aesthetic to the studio with them, and here their two styles merge into one titanic wall of steadily-building death-drone leavened by unexpected special effects (such as the "birds" on "gallery 79"). With three tracks stretching out for just under an hour, they have a lot of room in which to develop different aspects of their sound. They open with "anemonie," where glitch sounds and electronic squealing over a constant buzzing hum gradually develop in a slow, grinding wall of dark electronic fog punctuated by squealing and other drawn-out sounds; as time goes on, the sonic fog grows denser, the sound grows more intense, and by the time it ends, it's a very heavy sound indeed. The next piece, "gallery 79," takes a totally different tack. The sound of someone slowly banging on metal, a simple and monotonous sound in of itself, goes on for about a minute and a half over almost subliminal electronics until suddenly a electronic aviary is unleashed, followed by a roaring cloud of sound into which the "birds" slowly disappear. From that point on, the noise content gets considerably higher and denser, even piercing at times, ultimately resembling a slow-moving noise tornado, uprooting power plants and setting off alarms, leaving a trail of scattered refuse in its wake. The final track, "studio cloudy," may be my favorite -- it's filled with drones that ebb and flow, subdued mechanical chittering, sounds that repeat and fade, swaddled in delay and endless reverb... it's a sound that comes and goes as if blown by the wind, a dark cloud of sonic rubble looking for a place to scatter acres of audio trash. More drone-o-rific proof of Housepig's swell taste. I know nothing about this band, but the poop sheet that came with the promo package calls them "German chaos magicians" in spite of the fact that they certainly look old-school black metal (jeans, t-shirts, bullet belts, leather, lots of hair 'n scowls). The art (in red and black, a striking look more akin to ritual music than black metal) owes more to the occult than anything else, and the sound does indeed call up visions of ritual music and chaos magick. This is a band that is probably more inspired by Crowley and the Order of the Golden Dawn than by any kind of strictly religous Judeo-Christian mythology or even paganism. The thing is, whereas most ritual / occult music is more concerned with inducing trance states and thus relatively subdued, these guys have made the excellent decision to play ritual music with black metal's volume, aggresion, and ferocity. The result is a series of heavy, overdriven explosions of rhythm, noise, and weird, draining melodies, but the rhythms have a tribal bent and sometimes even dissolve into clouds of rhythmic noise, everything has a tendency to take off in wildly different directions, and the goal is less to create a icy atmosphere of grim, forbidding evil than to confuse, frighten, and perhaps even induce violent hallucinations. This is intimidating, aggressive, and at times unbelievably fast, but conceptually speaking it's light-years removed from the monochromatic predictability of most old-school black metal. There are moments when the blinding rage dissolves into stretches (some long, some startlingly short) of ambient sound and noise, but those are just rounds for everyone to take a deep breath before they return to hammering their way through the speakers and into your skull. Weird, occult, and savagely ferocious -- this is a must-have for anybody who's equally into ritual music and black metal. Man, I wish I were cool enough to get to put out records on this label, because their releases look and sound mighty swank. 180-gram virgin vinyl, great art, all in a heavy gatefold sleeve, in a limited run of 450 numbered copies (and this is strictly a vinyl-only release, with no intention of repressing). I know next to nothing about the band, but I gather this is a "lost" album of sorts, assembled from sessions for another album (SPHERE, released on K Records in 2004). The label describes this as "vessyl music," and while I'm not completely certain what that means, it sounds right -- this is music less interested in song structures and sing-along appeal and more with hallucinatory sounds and psychedelic vibes, music you experience as an expanding cloud of sound rather than in arbitrary blocks of measures and figures. It's a sound that evolves independently of the actual beginnings and endings of songs (there are four songs on the first side, and unless you actually watched the record play, it would be difficult to know where one song finishes and the next begins), one in which the songs are actually more like escalating movements in a sparking. hallucinatory, and reverb-drenched side-long journey through repetition, ambient sound, and forward motion. The flip side is two long songs: "Gravitational III, part II" is a spaced-out blast into interstellar overdrive if I ever heard one, fearing minimal and hypnotic drumming over which fuzzed-out music of the spheres is accompanied by buzzing squadrons of UFOs, a whacked-out space-rock sound that just gets even less restrained as it goes. This is followed by "Gravitational VI," which is essentially more of the same, but with different sounds. (There was a "Gravitational V" on the A-side, just in case you're wondering, but no mention of where the rest of the suite parts went. Maybe the band smoked them, although I suspect they just count like Robert Hampson of Main.) Those sounds range from buzzy and wasplike machine sounds to flanged-guitar and keyboard motifs repeated endlessly, swaddled in growing clouds of efx-generated sonic weirdness. Mind-expanding stuff, especially if your mind was already expanded one way or another. Note that 50 copies are on mint-green vinyl rather than plain black, and those are available by mail-order only via the label. Now this is what Brother George used to call "cosmic slop" -- noisy, mystical, wonked-out psychedelic blowouts done old-school, lo-fi style by a bunch of players in various NY hardcore and punk bands, not that you would ever guess as much from the sonic evidence of this disc. As its title suggests, this is throwback to the late 60s / early 70s psychedelic rock epitomized by the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Gong, and lesser-known (but much freakier) bands and artists like D. H. Hooker. There's a lot of things going on in the mix, and it's all been heavily processed and drenched in reverb, and just like the best old-school psych records (and Funkadelic albums, too), things start out strange and get weirder as time progresses. Using instruments as traditional as guitar, bass, and trumpets, plus an assortment of varied noisemakers including a See 'n Say, walkie talkies, theremin, turntables, tape loops, samples, and other stuff, they create here three droning, floating cups of cosmic soup, each one employing much the same ingredients but seasoned differently. This is space rock in the ultimate sense of the word, implying not only cosmic tones and journeys, but pathways leading to inner space as well. A lot of it sounds like a really whacked-out beatnik soundtrack to a forgotten low-budget science fiction flick, which sounds plenty fine to me. They may be punk and hardcore players, but they have a surprisingly firm grasp on mellow, spaced-out psych rock. The great psychedelic cover only begins to hint at the delights inside. Phil Minton (voice), Yahihashi Tsukasa (alto sax), Sato Yukie (electric guitar), and Higo Hiroshi (electric bass) are captured here on two different days in two Tokyo locations, with three tracks from each set. The three tracks from the March 18, 2004 (recorded at a former elementary school in Tokyo Nippara, hence the title) are spaced-out explorations of chaotic sounds, barely harnessed into a directed flow, that are less about density or volume and more about the potential for strangeness inherent in some instruments. On these three tracks, the only real constant is Minton's voice, employed not as a "singing" device but more as an eccentric soundbox; he emits froglike grunts, gargles, broken chants, and other noises that never quite resolve in actual speech, somewhere been Eye and Ono but more restrained and subdued than either. Behind him, the others weave asymmetrical sonic textures and unpredictable bursts of energy, never quite approaching a conventional song structure, but never sounding lost, either. The second track (at 3:50, the shortest of the three) is dominated more by a subtly processed guitar and percussive background chattering, until Minton's hushed mumbling turns into howling and the energy level rises, as heavy waves of reverb begin to radiate from the guitar as his voice falls out... only to eventually return, accompanied by pained sax wails, by more howling. The third track, at least initially, has more to do with drone than pure improv, as the song builds on a wasplike drone, gradually evolving into the prominence of other, equally unsettling, sounds and effects. The other set, recorded two days earlier in Tokyo Koenji at the Temple of No Power No Virtue, is much the same in terms of general intent, although the venue's sound is a bit different. The arrangements are moderately busier and Mintori achieves new heights of sonic abrasion on the first song from that set, while the interplay between the other instruments is more frenzied than ever. The second song, though, evolves in a relatively more subdued fashion and incorporates more spacy reverb that comes and goes as the interplay of sound grows and diminishes in waves. The last track is a short return to the use of effects amid the improv. Contact Jabrec to get your hands on this swell example of how improv, drone, and minimalism can intersect in interesting and unexpected ways in the hands of the imaginative. This one took me surprise -- I don't know what I was expecting, exactly, but "glamorous easy listening music" (as they describe it) was certainly not it. The duo of Jonny Perl and Robert Conroy possesses the arch ironic sensibility and perversely-employed pop chops of Steely Dan or Ween, maybe even Bongwater (I suppose it's worth noting that it was mastered by Kramer), along with the darker and more modern post-everything, pre-apocalyptic vibe of bands like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and Interpol . They not only have decidedly unusual ideas about what constitutes "pop" music, but they actually understand what to do with an orchestra now that digital technology has brought the orchestral sound of Morricone and the like into the realm of anyone who can afford a good polyphonic sampler / keyboard. They're influenced (by their own admission) by artists probably more familiar to listeners of my generation than theirs -- Dusty Springfield, Barcharach, Percy Faith, and Jimmy Webb among them -- but while they write songs modeled in many ways on film soundtracks and pop songs of the 60s and 70s, they speak a more modern musical language, one in which strange, sometimes even abrasive, sounds and tones take the place of what would have been considered acceptable for pop and film music listeners. They may have an old-school mindset, but their sound is one that bands like Pere Ubu, Cheer-Accident, and Nine Inch Nails paved the way for, a way in which the songwriting excellence of old standards can be made accessible to a modern audience sandblasted into submission by a constant din of ambient urban noise, television babble, and overcompressed, poorly-written popmuzak. Their style is old, but their sound is now, and they're really good at making it all happen. This release in particular is the follow-up to their first full-length disc, KOMODO DRAGONS, and is essentially four amazing electropop songs for imaginary film soundtracks, followed by two remixes of the lead track "Monster Zero" and a remix of "Villainess," which might be a new song and might be found originally somewhere else (your guess is as good as mine). Striking, catchy stuff that's sophisticated and unpredictable, but consistently compelling. Gothic metal from Slovenia with a romantic sensibility, a hint of folk music, and plenty of fuzzed-out power chords. Extensive live experience made them well-prepared for their Napalm Records debut (they have an earlier homeland release recorded entirely in their native language), whose material they approached with the specific intention of not including anything they wouldn't be able to play live. The band's most obvious secret weapon is singer Barbara Jedovnicky -- whose presence will almost certainly draw them plenty of comparisons to Evanescence and Lacuna Coil, in spite of the fact that I'm sure they sound nothing like those bands (I've never heard them, so I wouldn't know myself) -- but the band itself (including two guitarists and an electric violinist) is really, really good ("Bow Link in E Minor" is my personal favorite, an instrumental prominently featuring the violinist), very listenable, and not afraid at all to mix in distinctly ethnic folk sounds and rhythms (the catchy but eyebrow-raising "Shut Up" is an example). This band is only barely a "metal" band in the usual sense of the word -- they really sound more like a folk / world-beat band with a gothic sensibility and a metallic rhythm section -- but they can be heavy when they want and their playing is a generally more subtle and nuanced that you might expect of a heavy-sounding band. The band's name is taken from a concept (the life-stealing darkness of the negative plane of energy) most commonly associated with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS these days, but whose origins are in obscure occultism; they are a recent black metal band from Florida who incorporate ancient ritual sounds and chants into frenzied assaults of possessed old-school aggresion that's somewhere between classic black metal and early technical death metal. I'm not sure what to make of the processed vocal sound, but everything else is great -- they frequently conjure up a complex mood and sound that evokes the spirit of early avant-garde Celtic Frost (especially in the use of ancient-sounding church organ in a ritualistic vein) , but in other places they explode into raw but technically proficient displays of sheer thundering death that hearkens back to bands like Sodom, Destruction, early Slayer, and Mercyful Fate. At the same time, the band's core sound (as opposed to the actual playing) is one of old-school, frozen black metal hell, with sophisticated but direct (and powerful) drumming reminiscent of early Hellhammer (the drummer, not the band), taking obvious inspiration from the likes of early Mayhem, Bathory, and Darkthrone. Amid reverential (but all too brief) moments of a genuinely ancient sound, the band delivers bursts of apocalyptic energy in a furious blur of near-white noise sound made eerie by the judicious use of keyboards and the occasional non-traditional element (ghostly voices, chants, samples, and various strange sounds) in the background). I'd personally like to see them do a whole album of just the creepy stuff that sounds so much like a ancient blood ritual being conducted at midnight on blood-soaked ground, but until then this is certainly impressive enough. Oh, they're also a deeply satanic band, if you care about these things. Punishing, soul-scraping stuff haunted by dreams of a forgotten time. It seems almost redundant to review this, seeing as it was released just a couple of months ago and is already sold out (the fact that it was limited to 80 copies probably helped). Nevertheless, for the sake of completion and all that.... Nyarlathotep -- named after Lovecraft's Cthulhu god, aka "The Crawling Chaos" -- is one guy from Arizona and a bunch of efx pedals and a determination to make gritty, often monochromatic white noise. He does so here in six slices, throwing up loud, challenging sonic barricades filled with chattering power electronics, devolved and endless rhythms, sped-up loops of screaming noise, and more sonic effluvia designed to make your ears hurt. Not all of it is endless pain -- "MM Void" is an exercise in creeped-out dark-ambient noise, built over what sounds like a rusty fan with a burnt-out motor turning endlessly in a room filled with dying electronic machines shorting out one by one, and the (apparently live and, at 24:21, lengthy) final track, "Evocation Through Amplification," at least starts out in a relatively subdued fashion, even if it does eventually spiral upward into an agitated spectacle of oppressive sonic filth. Most of the time, though, the tracks are loud and abrasive and willfully obnoxious -- fine examples of willful sonic abuse indeed. This is my favorite of the Nyarlathotep releases I've heard so far. Gothic, industrial-dance music with a distinct nod toward the likes of Rammstein and Laibach, but more concerned with weaving hypnotic tapestries of sound than with advancing some form of ironic propaganda. Symphonic music with plenty of dynamics and a wall-of-sound approach, one whose songs flow like movements and incorporate plenty of techno rhythms, classical keyboard motifs, and ominous drone. I'm not completely sure what the story is regarding the release and VIAL magazine, but the disc comes in a dvd-sized digipack with inserts and a cover painted by Benjamin Vierling. The seven tracks here are generally uptempo and frequently dance-oriented, but prone to moments of spaced-out weirdness that still never overwhelms the proto-industrial electropulse. Bonus points for the obsessive attention to detail in the presentation, a sentiment carried over into the execution of the actual tunes. Fans of Laibach, Rammstein, and even Rob Zombie (especially circa THE SINISTER URGE) will find this interesting. Edoardo Ricci (alto sax) and Thollem McDonas (rickety piano) appear together here on four collaborative pieces that get shorter as the disc goes (an interesting way of doing things, to be sure), all with titles the are nothing more than the rearrangement of words in a particular phrase (a conceit, I suspect, somehow inspired by their method of operation). The longest track is the first one, "Old of old cold stone house," and it may be the busiest, with both of them improvising in a steady and free-flowing stream of overlapping sounds. "Cold of old cold stone house" is a bit shorter, but otherwise similar in sound and intent, as the two continue to improvise around, over, and through each other, the sax chattering away as the piano pounds in fury or tinkles absently. The energy settles down a notch for less frenzied, more exploratory playing on "Stone of old cold stone house," and on "House of old cold stone house" (at 7:46, the shortest variant here), they begin in a relatively subdued fashion, but pick up the pace as they go. A nice document of two experimentalists letting the instruments talk at length. Crunchy, resonating noise hell that sounds in places like lo-fi field recordings and in other places like deliberately torched electronics. The disc is one long track, a bit over thirty minutes, that plays out like an incidental field recording of traffic and apartment sounds overlaid with bursts of sonic violence and a growing density of fetid electronic noise and overmodulated sonic grunge. It's a long and slowly-evolving sound that culminates in a bed of radioactive hum and tainted electronic sickness; the piece wallows in electroacoustic oblivion and frayed white noise on the way there. Hellish and brooding without necessarily being overbearing, and in many ways closer to dark ambient and noise-collage artists like K2 and Contagious Orgasm than most of his PacRec labelmates. A muted approach to white noise and electrodeathhum that could be considered almost contemplative, at least at reduced volume levels. Midwestern techno with industrial leanings, more old-school than new-school (except in the revved-up, thumping beat), with plenty of drive and energy. This is the band's second full-length album (in addition to a pile of singles, EPs, and compilation appearances -- they obviously haven't had any problem staying busy) and it's a good one, filled with hard beats, industrial textures and vocals, and songs that play out in an engaging fashion without lapsing into boredom. Synths and keyboards predominate, and the ... Bonus points for the nearly unrecognizable cover of REM's "Losing My Religion" (which will probably come as a tremendous shock to anyone familiar with the original). They not only have the old-school, thumping-beats thing down cold, but they dial up some really swell drones from time to time amid all the twinkling keyboard lines. Cool stuff, especially the old-school vibe. Twelve tracks, one of them a remix by Caustic. This disc features three noise artists with three tracks each, and a bare minimum of information. First up is Subterrane (aka Claire Staley), with three crunchy tracks of exploded junk noise. Dense clouds of radioactive sound give way to stop 'n start glitch electronica, harsh waves of shrieking echo-hell come piling down in a sonic avalanche, and through it all is a core sound that's pure old-school power electronics. There are moments of weirder, more playfully experimental approaches to sound, but even those are eventually pushed into the direction of white noise and sonic violence. That violence, when it comes, is punishing. The tracks from Askela (aka Dillon Tulk) are a different thing altogether -- the first track is brooding dark-ambient noise with a black-metal vibe and howling like barely-restrained wolves in the background, a sound both eerie and apocalyptic. The next track is even more minimalist -- just a steady black mechanical drone and a piercing wail, like a ship's horn bleating for help while lost in the fog, that comes and goes at unpredictable intervals. The third track is a hideously distorted loop of sound and a growing wave of white noise that culminates in a thick, rumbling avalanche of sound followed by more hissing electronic white noise -- brief but highly effective. The Being tracks are conventional in their approach to power electronics, but no less powerful, especially on the first one, a thundering avalanche of junk noise streaming past your ears like a river of harsh sonic shrapnel. The second track has a brief introduction of sorts -- a pinging sound, sort of -- before getting impatient and bringing back the noise, big time. The last track is more of the same, only this time the introduction is even shorter and the junk cloud may be even noisier and more abrasive than the first one. A swell collection of noise it is, then, and probably hopelessly impossible to find, alas.... The second release on this promising UK label features two extended pieces by Bill Thompson, a former jazz guitarist whose battle with tendonitis forced him to shift his focus to sound art and minimalist composition, with interesting results. He has spent the past ten years working in the improvised electronic sound scene, mainly in Austin, Texas (where he regularly performs with the GATES Ensemble) and Aberdeen, Scotland (Mickel Mass), using everything from prepared guitar, cd mixers, laptop, radio, DIY circuit-bent devices, and other noise-making devices to create mesmerizing drone epics driven by damaged electronics and lo-fi noise. The first piece, the title track, features a subdued hypno-bass pulse that gradually becomes enveloped in fried noise snippets, ring-modulator sounds, glitch electronics, and a looming cloud of electrodrone fog. The piece becomes thick (but not dense) with overmodulated and processed tones that interact in harmonic fashion with the bass pulse that eventually slows to more of a dark, throbbing drone. The second piece, "Feb'23rd," takes over half an hour to unfold and is an evolving collage of small audio files traded over the web with members of Edinburgh's FOUND ensemble. The musicians traded the audio snippets, altering them with each pass, and the final pieces were assembled into this exotic-sounding tapestry of unidentifiable noises, hums, and field recording snippets. The defiled audio bits play out over a bed of droning, shimmering harmonic feedback and hum, like a processed stream of alien audio consciousness speeding by in clouds of soothing drone. As with all SSR releases, this one is limited to 200 copies in understated but spiffy pressboard sleeves. Nice, and worth hearing. Fans of Subarachnoid Space, Gravitar, Mason Jones, and wigged-out drone-psych in general should pay attention here. This is the audio evidence of an evening in 1998 when various current and former members of Subarachnoid Space and Geoff Walker of Gravitar decided to lay down some heavy jams. The tapes were presumed lost for a long time, then recently rediscovered and properly mixed and mastered by Mason Jones, who shares guitar duties with Melynda Jackson on the seven tracks presented here. The ensemble is rounded out by Chris Van Huffel on drums, Jason Stein on bass, and Geoff Walker (guitar, voice, noises), and not surprisingly, it sounds a hell of a lot like Subarachnoid Space, only a bit more interested in repetition, simpler song structures, and whacked-out noises. It sounds to me, frankly, like a "lost" album that should have appeared somewhere between ALMOST INVISIBLE and THE SLEEPING SICKNESS (not terribly surprising either, since it was recorded within a couple of years of those and with much of the same lineup). Since those two releases happen to be the high points of the SAS catalog for me, this is a good thing, a very good thing, as Brother George would have you know. The seven tracks here come in different lengths (nothing is less than four minutes long, and two tracks exceed ten) and different flavors (all minty-fresh psych, to be sure, but sometimes more enthusiastically so, at other times far more muted, and always seasoned with a fine selection of hypnotic squiggles disguised as riffs and peculiar noises), but as the band's name suggests, the tracks are very much about states of rhythm and melody that transition from one to another, in many different fashions. The short version of all this critic-poo is that the album really rocks, and is by far one of the best psych albums I've heard in a long time that didn't come out of Poland. The art is also really swell -- mysteriously tinted and beautiful shots of nature, a minimal amount of type, and nothing else. If you can't get your hands on anything by One Inch of Shadow or the aforementioned SAS discs, you can consider this a substitute of equal quality. Noises and drones, my friends and neighbors... it doesn't get any more important than that.... Seattle's Tundra evolved out of Gods Among Men when that band's vocalist departed, and their sound has developed as well, judging by the five tracks on this self-titled EP. A DIY band with experimental and punk / metal roots (imagine Eyehategod or Buzzov.en if they'd been raised on noise and the avant-garde in addition to southern rock and the Butthole Surfers) -- for instance, the hypnotic, thundering drums that close "Pursuit With Spears" are straight out of the Savage Republic (or similar IRP band) playbook, but the vocals and metallic guitar that permeate the tracks are straight-up crust / metal. At the same time, there are moments that call up memories of GYBE and other moments of such driving frenzy and technical complexity to make you think they spent a significant portion of their budding musical years listening to lots of Skin Graft bands. The use of effects (especially delay) is very un-metal and highly interesting at times, coming from an experimental sensibility, even if everything finally culminates in tortured yelling and heaviness. The sound they get here reminds me a lot of early Pineal Ventana -- tribal, equal parts exotic and unnerving, confrontational and even threatening -- but filtered through the tortured vocal style of Eyehategod even during the psychedelic interludes or film-score moments. Cool, cool stuff bridging the gap between a number of disparate genres that proves you can come on like an egghead and still be heavy and intense. Comes in a dvd case with inserts. Recommended. he New York duo with one of the strangest names in modern rock is definitely an oddity, with a sound that merges drone, Native American tribal rhythms and myth, Krautrock, art-rock (if there isn't a whole lotta Magma in their musical DNA, I'll eat your kitty's li'l booties), metal, and off-kilter vocal harmonies. The result is severely damaged art, an aesthetic fond of pastoral themes that are frequently abruptly shattered by shifts in texture, volume, and heaviness, with more attention to vocal harmonies than most of their labelmates. Maybe TUSAIAM is the Cheer-Accident of Load Records. They also possess big, droning synths, and they know what to do with them. Some of the more stripped-down moments featuring just heavy drone and vox are very reminiscent of classic Sleep, incidentally, not that this has anything whatsoever to do with standard-issue stoner rock or doom metal. Hyperactive spazzrock coexists with folky interludes and spaced-out synths; sped-up tribal rhythms and impassioned chants conjure up visions of an older and more wide-open country, before technology took over everything. Peculiar concepts and startling execution, what a combo... the unabashed metal moments don't hurt, either. The "limitations" of having only two members just keeps them from getting too cluttered, that's all, and the two of them sure manage to incorporate many sounds into their sonic palette on these unpredictable paeans to a new tribal ethos. This album is a bit more direct and coherent than the previous one, but it's still plenty out in left field, no question. Hey, now this is the way to start off a noise compilation: The swell Gland opener "ye gods: this parachute is a napsack!" spews intense, ear-scraping, hiss-howling white noise like something straight out of a early Whitehouse or something equally abrasive. The rest of the 15 tracks on this compilation of UK noise bands isn't always quite so face-peeling, but even the more relatively restrained moments are pretty weird and intense in their own way. The fried glitch electronica and mutant behavior of Filthy Turd's "japanese girls sex in reverse" and the childlike ping-pong rhythms and grotesque guitar sound of Guanoman's "gamelama fa fa fa" are miles apart in terms of execution and sound, but very much of the same spirit in terms of intent. There's a pretty wide variety of sounds, textures, and execution strategies to keep the compilation from growing stagnant, and with fifteen bands offering a track apiece, there's plenty of opportunity to find something to like and space limitations keep everybody from getting carried away in terms of playing time, which is useful -- nobody has the chance to wear out their welcome, and the really good stuff ends before you're ready, leaving you wanting more. Some of the best stuff comes at the end of the album, when Eaten By Children, Tortured Bird Transmission, and Another Enough Chairs close out the disc in three different but thematically similar slices of damaged electronics and dread-inducing drone. Swell, swell stuff. Seth Kasselman and Rune Freeman are a sound-obsessed duo from California; this, their fifth album, was recorded "under the influence of microtonality, natural disaster, and extreme weather conditions." Sound sources include Hollywood, California, Scottsdale, Arizona, and the Sequoia National Park in California. The four tracks here owe as much to Stockhausen and other like-minded sound collage artists as they do to drone, a key element in the album's sound. "Sincerely, The Moon" is a drifting collection of pleasantly off-center musical snippets connected by peculiar background sounds and perversely altered vocals that may or may not be a manipulated sample, a piece that starts out with noise and a traditional approach to collage before veering off into celestial ambient drones. The title track features a steady, percolating beat overlaid with droning feedback and ambient noise, while "NASA March" welds what sounds like a loop of a woodpecker to minimalist "response" percussion and an ambient background that could be anything from processed radio waves to ambient space signals, a sound that eventually turns into a buzzing hum as strange things begin to happen. The last track, "Creole Accordion Whisper," is far more naturalistic and melodic, but every bit as eccentric in its own way, overlaid as it is with near-random noise and squawking. The duo strikes a nice balance between something approximating an accessible form of jazzy folk on one end and an avant-garde bent rooted in experimental sound and collage art on the other, incorporating significant elements of both worlds to create something far more mosaic-like than traditional folk / jazz, but still relatively accessible to open-minded listeners of those genres as well as collage / experimental devotees. Nice and oversaturated treated-photo art doesn't hurt, either.
All reviews are by RKF unless noted at the end. Other reviewers are: Amanda, Gafne Rostow, Dillon Tulk, and Neddal Ayad (n/a).
Abigail Williams
Candlelight Records
Abigail Williams -- LEGEND ep [Candlelight Records]
Callow God
Ahlzagailzehguh / Impregnable -- SOLE POSSESSION cs (c10) [Callow God]
Antaeus
Ajna Offensive
Antaeus --BLOOD LIBELS [Ajna Offensive]
Moribund Records
Azrael -- ACT III: SELF / ACT IV: GOAT [Moribund Records]
Bastard Noise
Housepig
Bastard Noise -- THREE DOLLAR DATE (+) [Housepig Records]
Torturing Nurse
Dada Drumming
Blast Beat / Torturing Nurse - 12" split [Dada Drumming]
C. J. Borosque
Harshnoise
C. J. Borosque -- THEY [harshnoise]
Darkwell
Napalm Records
Darkwell -- METATRON [Napalm Records]
Destruction
Candlelight Records
Destruction -- THRASH ANTHEMS [Candlelight USA]
DVKE
Napalm Records
Die Verbannten Kinder Evas -- DUSK AND VOID BECAME ALIVE [Napalm Records]
Digital Geist
Digital Geist -- THE ZERO ENGINE [self-released]
Moribund Records
Dodsferd -- FUCKING YOUR CREATION [Moribund Records]
Stentorian Tapes
Eloine -- SAGEBRUSH / DEIMOS [Stentorian Tapes]
Fear Falls Burning
Equation Records
Fear Falls Burning -- I'M ONE OF THOSE MONSTERS NUMB WITH GRACE [Equation Records]
Ferveur Noire
Ferveur Noire -- BASK [Just Friends]
Ferveur Noire
Ferveur Noire -- INTO A SEA OF REGRET [Green Ox Sound]
Flaming Fire
Silly BIrd Records
Flaming Fire -- WHEN THE HIGH BELL RINGS [Silly Bird Records]
oad Records
Gang Wizard -- BYZANTINE HEADACHE [Load Records]
Carlos Giffoni
No Fun Productions
Carlos Giffoni -- ARROGANCE [No Fun Productions]
Lisa Gill
Kurt Heyl
Lisa Gill / Kurt Heyl -- MORTAR & PESTLE [Reckless Faith Records]
The Handshake Murders
Goodfellow Records
The Handshake Murders --USURPER [Goodfellow Records]
Horna
Moribund Records
Horna -- ANNIA YOSSA [Moribund Records]
Mason Jones
Mason Jones -- DIMLY RECALLED [foxglove]
Housepig
Juhyo -- MESOTHESIS [Housepig Records]
Ajna Offensive
Katharsis -- VORLD VITHOUT END [Norma Evangelium Diaboli / Ajna Offensive]
Landing
Equation Records
Landing -- GRAVITATIONAL IV [Equation Records]
Lunch With Beardo
FDH Records
Lunch With Beardo -- SURREALISTIC PICNIC [FDH Records]
Jab-Rec Art Music
Minton / Tsukasa / Yukie / Hiroshi -- NIPPARA TOKYO [Austin Records / Jab-Rec Art Music]
Misty Roses
Frog Man Jake
Misty Roses -- MONSTER ZERO [Frog Man Jake]
Naio Ssaion
Napalm Records
Naio Ssaion -- OUT LOUD [Napalm Records]
Ajna Offensive
Negative Plane -- ET IN SAECULA SAECULORUM [Ajna Offensive]
Housepig
Nyarlathotep -- SKILLFUL MEANS [Housepig Records]
Sonic Abyss
The Red King -- SOMNIFERUM [Sonic Abyss]
Edoardo Ricci
Thollem McDonas
Edgetone Records
Edoardo Ricci / Thollem McDonas -- SONO CONTENTO DI STARE QUA [Edgetone Records[
Damion Romero
PacRec
Damion Romero -- NEGATIVE [PacRec]
Stochastic Theory
Sonic Mainline
Stochastic Theory -- OPPOSITE EXTREMES [Sonic Mainline]
Subterrane / Askela / Being -- split cd-r [Skeleton Dust Recordings]
State Sanctioned Recordings
Bill Thompson -- TRIPARTITE COLLISION [State Sanctioned Recordings]
Last Visible Dog
Transitional Phase -- s/t [Last Visible Dog]
Tundra
Tundra -- s/t ep [self-released]
Load Records
The USA Is A Monster -- SUNSET AT THE END OF THE INDUSTRIAL AGE [Load Records]
No Statement
v/a -- CATERPILLARS, HEAD SWELLS, AND MIND MELTS [No Statement]
Warm Climate
Warm Climate -- FORCED SPRING FOR RISING TIDE [RBCA]