Recent Albums
Motorik - Klang!
Independent
I suppose the best way to talk about Klang! Is to call it a sort of funky-punk new wave throw back. As that is pretty much what it sounds like post-punk fun falling right out of the 1980s. With maybe a tiny bit of shoegazer thrown in here and there just for colour. Well done but at the same time there is nothing to really make it stand out above the pack of bands currently, well at least in the last few years, doing this sort of music.
I mean, as I once heard some stranger...
LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
Virgin
Douglas Coupland’s 1996 Polaroids from the Dead begins with ten short stories, about people going to a Grateful Dead concert in San Francisco. It ends with a long, bricaloured essay about the social and cultural heritage both high and low of Brentwood, in Los Angeles. In one of the stories, three ironic hipster/yuppies get free tickets from a neighbor. They are paranoid about drugs, they do not dance, and they move around the concert flummoxed, fleeing in an automobile, the female ...
A Storm Of Light - Forgive Us Our Trespasses
Neurot
Forgive Us Our Trespasses begins with this strange sort of prayer (I guess it is, I don’t really know) – it sounds like a softly spoken prayer, anyway. An ode to chaos written by Lydia Lunch , now I’m not sure if this something they just liked or if they have some sort of connection to her. Wait, that is what the internet is for. Oh shit apparently that is actually her doing the vocals on that track and a couple of others even, weird doesn’t sound a thing like her. Well the ...
Sabbath Assembly - Restored to One
Ajna Offensive
In Restored To One, Jex Thoth, has put together an excellent album of hymns from the Process Church of the Final Judgement.
The 60’s/70’s era group, based out of New Orlenas and Mexico, was a splinter cult of Scientology, that believed something along the lines that one needed to find enlightenment through walking a middle line between the teachings of Yehova, Lucifer, Satan and Christ, and that Satan and Yehovah were going to reconcile their differences and team up for the fina...
The Beast Of The Apocalypse - A Voice From Four Horns Of The Golden Altar
Transcendental Creations
As Genres go, Last Fm’s tags are pretty hit and miss, but when I saw ‘The Beast of the Apocalypse’ had a tag that simply read ‘Pure Hate’, I was hard pressed not to agree with it.
Opening their debut album with a screeching & terrifying violin dissonance, ‘A Voice from the Four Horns of the Golden Altar’ explodes into an agro fuelled nihilistic nightmare, ‘Etemenaki: Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth’ hammering the point across that the next fifty minutes or so is ...
Subarachnoid Space - Eight Bells
Crucial Blast
Four piece psychedelic outfit, SubArachnoid Space have been going since 1996 and have released a fair few albums in the process, the latest, ‘Eight Bells’ released on Crucial Blast; a label alone that will no doubt gain the attention of the relevant fan base.
So too will the Oregon based groups progressive and trippy instrumental ensembles; ‘Lilith’ opens the album with a confident foray into psychedelia while a menacing rhythm section holds the piece firmly in orbit (albeit the...
Harvestman, Minsk & U.S Christmas - Hawkwind Triad
Neurot
Three heavyweight names in contemporary doom/ psych metal have joined forces to produce a wonderfully thought out and crafted tribute to one the world’s greatest bands of psychedelic yesteryear: Hawkwind!
Opening this pleasing accolade is U.S Christmas, a spacerock outfit by trade that take on ‘Master of the Universe’ with respect and devotion to the original material, making the composition loud but palatable while avoiding an amorphous edge some psych tracks find themselves ind...
Carta - An Index Of Birds
Silber
Opening with a deep bassy hum and minimal piano instrumentation, ‘Alfred M’ opens our invitation to the cinematically emotive compositions of Carta on their latest offering, ‘An Index of Birds’.
Hailing from San Francisco, Carta create soothing and elevating slowcore in the style of Low and Red House Painters, ‘Building Bridges’ being a strong evidential piece to prove the above. Composed, dreamlike and whimsical, it ticks all the boxes for a drone-pop/ shoegaze musical template....
Black Breath - Heavy Breathing
Southern Lord
Aptly suited for Southern Lord Records though equally under sung as a genre on said label, Pacific North West-based Black Breath weave hardcore and thrash together with brutal shredding and a whole lot of ferocity.
Made up of members of Shook Ones, Go It Alone, Blue Monday & Get The Most, Black Breath’s Heavy Breathing is no doubt going to appease the masses with ease, their opening track ‘Black sin (Spit On Cross)’ as harsh and rapid as it is energetic and abrasive....
iM.G.R. y Destructo Swarmbots! - Amigos de la Guitarra
Neurot
Im.g.r have crafted this really cool forty-two minute track of guitar ambience, with like a Spanish style guitar plucking (think of the spaghetti western style guitar) with deep ambient rumblings in the back ground that is absolutely powerful and haunting. It is a collaboration between Mike Gallagher of Isis and Swarmbots and was apparently recorded by Oktopus of Dalek. I have to admit a total ignorance of Swarmbots, but still it is a fairly impressive line-up. Okay so I’m not a huge Isi...
Faust - From Glory To Infinity
Paragon
Okay I love metal albums that start this way. No introduction, no warm up, no shaking your hand and seeing if you’re alright. It just totally gives’er. Right from the track to the last. A blast of teeth smashing brain grinding death metal. Faust do all the tricks right ripping double bass, thrashing guitar some nice noodley guitar bits, cookie monster vocals. The whole bit, just really straight forward metal, with some elements of prog thrown in just to keep the listener on their to...
Kreator - Hordes of Chaos
Steamhammer
You know what? I have never been a bit fan of thrash metal. I mean I don’t find anything inherently wrong with it, it’s really just not my cup of tea. And to be honest, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have always thought Kreator was a bit of a joke. I mean come on you know what I mean with those ultra cheesy hordes of doom fantasy covers, you know devils and demons and knights and faces of elflike thingies. And it was even worse with the pseudo industrial metal devil elves scream...
Leprous - Tall Poppy Syndrone
Independent
Okay this is a little funny, okay well I found it so anyway. Just before this I was listening to a really crappy version of Greensleeves, and the beginning of the first song, in fact the first song in general makes me think of a really bastardized version of that song, like Metallica trying to do it or someone like that. Anyway interesting tidbit for you there, utterly meaningless, but there none the less. Okay I don’t really know what to make of Lapus it seriously makes me think of ...
Various Artists - Blue Sanct 2008 Mixtape
Blue Sanct
Well I think it might be a bad indication of an album when on the first song as you put it on you start singing another song. For the record it was Hoyt Axton’s Oklahoma Song, and yes I was singing it at the top of my lungs if you are asking, which I assume you are. And yes it really is that great a song. Now the fortunate thing for Bluesanct is that it is a compilation so I am sort of forced to hold my opinion before listening o the whole thing, so hopefully there are some really great...
Gnaw Their Tongues - All The Dread Magnificence Of Perversity
Crucial Blast
I think that title makes me gnaw on my tongue. Okay, okay silliness aside, well all silliness in fact, silliness has no place in the world of Gnaw their Tongues. In fact that name alone is a pretty good indication of the intense noise on All the Dread Magnificence of Perversity. Intense death noise music. With lots of throbbing smashing violent soundscapes with blood curdling screams and god knows what the hell else is going in the back. It is just pure evil. In fact it rem...
Laudanum - The Coronation
20 Buck Spin
The Coronation begins with a very ominous dark ambient atmosphere with a pulsating noise repeating in the background and slow washes of noise like waves crashing over and over it, slowly a high pitched noise like a broken machine joins the chaos, and an alarm goes off in the background. All this over a deep rumble set off in the distance. The it breaks down into an empty wind swept plateau, leaving you feeling isolated and empty. This then continues into the second song, whic...
Merauder - God Is I
Regain
Merauder makes some freakin kick ass music. Blending together elements of death metal, thrash and hardcore punk into this blistering assault of menacingly brutal music. And hell there are parts that remind me of industrial metal. And boy does this mix ever work. Just taking aggression to a whole new level. With some samples even thrown in for good measure.
Really it follows a style of just really good moshing music, with lots of moments of song builds that then break d...
Strotter Inst. - Minenhund
Public Guilt
Strotter Inst is very reminiscent of bands like Brighter Death Now and Rains D’Etre. In fact they would be right at home on the Cold Meat Industry label, as it has that same quality of low end, noisy, death industrial, ambience to it. And the art work has that old time sepia quality to it. In fact when I first put it on I had to look at it few times before I was sure it wasn’t a Cold Meat Industry release, I mean everything on this album points to that, from the musical sound to the ...
Bizzart - Future Stars and Small Wonders
Joyful Noise
Sound collage hip hop. Yeah mashed-up, mixed-up sounds made into hip hop tracks. Woo hoo, pretty exciting, no? And Bizzart seems to have a mild to severe obsession with robots and androids, With tracks like “Android Hearts” and their description of themselves as making robot poetry, which is a bit fascinating. And somewhat timely as I am reading this Judge Dredd comic strip where he is questioning if robots are given human emotions and then treated like slaves how long be...
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - Kollaps Tradixionales
Constellation
Deciding on Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra as their moniker for this recent release (How many variations are there now exactly?), Montreal trio Efrim Menuck, Sophie Trudeau and Thierry Amar conjure up more heartfelt, impassioned post rock symphonies with latest abulm, Kollaps Tradixionales.
Familiarity with Silver Mt. Zion’s prior work or indeed with the musicians work with GY!BE will undoubtedly make this release rewarding if not all that surprising, ‘There Is...
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