Necro Deathmort - Martian Cartography

Martian Cartography is an excellent album release by the criminally under-rated experimental duo Necro Deathmort. Mixing catastrophically heavy atmosphere with intelligent, progressive electronic work has always been ND's forte, but on Martian Cartography, I find that this approach to sound design has finally had chance to spread its wings and fly. In some respects that means that this record isn't as hard-hitting or droning as something off Music Of Bleak Origin or earlier, but the duo more than make up for it on the journey that they help take us on.

The opening track "Repeat-O" - and also, I'm sure not coincidentally, my favourite track, "The Ultimate Testament (Remix)" - both have pulsating beats carrying them; a clinical industrial backbone to a sparse electronic worldview. Other stand outs for me include "Cold Sleeps" and the muted closer, "Terra Cimmeria", which has a relaxed, almost deep house feel. 

Originally released as a download by the band themselves, this was eventually pressed onto CD by Extreme Ultimate.

Fistula - Vermin Prolificus

I’ve really been jamming the guts out of this album for the last few weeks. Fistula mix sludgy, messy doom a la Eyehategod with elements of crust and hardcore punk. I personally think that any genre of metal can be vastly improved by adding musical elements of (or just the spirit of) crust punk (Darkthrone’s The Cult Is Alive being a prime example; a vicious bastard of an album that followed a long string of tired recordings, ironically containing zero amounts of crust punk).

Fistula resembles the haunting downtuned bogscapes of Lines In Wax favourites Dragged Into Sunlight with their repetitive, sinister riffs accompanying long, eery passages of sampled vocal monologue usually revolving around drugs, drug abuse and the problem with cops (boy, can’t we all relate to that one). If I had to sum up sludge in one song to an ‘outsider’, opening track “Smoke Cat Hair and Toe Nails” couldn’t go far wrong as a perfect example. The opening riff just melts my face every single time – it’s just so nasty.

“Pig Funeral” is probably the highlight of the record for me; a seething upbeat hate anthem towards the powers that be, that slows down to a chug for more horrendous sampling to unfold. I’m digging this template – fast songs and nasty slow passages accompanied by samples. Bonza! “Interlude” takes this sampling-feast to the very edges of sanity; droning on and on and on before “Goat Brothel” caps off the entire thing like a shotgun blast to the forehead; effectively putting you out of your sludgy misery with a dose of punk attack.

Brilliant.

Jesu - Silver

There’s a lot of Jesu stuff out there now – I think this project ended up being much more productive than even Justin Broadrick could have anticipated when he first started lurching out the aching melancholic drones of Jesu. Silver however, simply has to be some of the best material recorded under this moniker. It fights for the top spot against Lifeline, which was the first Jesu release I heard and therefore I have an immense soft spot for. I think Lifeline is probably more solid overall, but Silver might just take the crown simply because of the title track alone.

 

"Star” and “Wolves” are also two fantastic Jesu songs ranking high up there, but “Silver” itself is something else. It has the components of any other great Jesu track; the droning, distorted guitars and bass creating a wall of sound, a basic drumming backbone and a bright, melodic synth to carry the whole thing. It’s a brilliant song but it’s not until the middle of the track that all these components come together so beautifully that it sends shivers up my spine every single time I hear it. The band chug through their heartbroken metal whilst that synth just fucking soars and unfolds and goes on and on and on…Then the vocal kicks back in; “Silver’s just another gold…” repeated over and over and over. I’m not sure of the intended message in this song but I get feelings of reassurance and comfort, as if it’s saying “things aren’t the best, but they could be a lot worse. Look on the bright side, pal!”

 

The only time I’ve ever taken magic mushrooms (well, Dutch truffles) was the day that Jesu played Roadburn 2012 and the experience, although mild, peaked during the band’s set. I was able to intricately study the music and dissect it in my head, really get behind every aspect of it, and hearing “Friends Are Evil” and “Silver” in that way nearly brought me to tears. It was a powerful moment I’ll never forget and definitely brought me a lot closer to Jesu’s music.

 

If you’re gonna play this video, please play this as loud as you possibly can.  

Sunn O))) & Scott Walker - Soused

Sunn O))) are a bunch of folks who love their arsty fartsy, hipster-baiting collaborations. The split with Ulver, the featuring of Julian Cope on earlier drones, the covering of "Che" on a 10" shared with Alan Vega, that art installation thingy that Oracle was based around, and I'm sure there's more but those are the ones that spring to mind. So I'm not surprised then, to see this collab with Scott Walker come along at some point, after being rumoured for quite some time, and only be available on some ridiculously overpriced limited label release. Oh well, at least it's on Spotify so I don't have to burn in hell for downloading music on the sly.

A friend told me before I started listening that this collab record suffers a similar symptom as Metallica and Lou Reed's mash up - that basically, it's one band doin' their thang as usual, and then another guy just rambling incoherently over the top of it all. As Soused opens up with "Brando" (which is hope is not about Marlon Brando or Brando Calrissian, because that would be shit, because I say so haha) I can totally appreciate where the comparisons to LuLu are coming from, but this record is much more well put together than that fucking Loutallica farce.

Despite Scott Walker having an extremely unique voice he does remind me of Lou Reed a bit, actually. I've never actually heard Scott Walker before but he's now on my enormous fucking list of shit to check out. I wanna hear him sans-O))). Anyways, this collab is actually pretty good, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, which is not something I particularly expected to do. I just sat there and read pretty much the entirety of Garth Ennis' Preacher Book 4 whilst listening to it. With the good ol' Americana feel of both of these things pairing quite well, I had a hell of a time, to be honest.

What I'm really looking forward to though is a brand new Sunn O))) full length, so get on it ye cunty fuckin' radge robe wearing spastics!

 

Bong - Stoner Rock

What part of this release constitutes as ‘rock’ I’m not entirely sure, but Bong have got the ‘stoner’ part of the title 100% correct. Well, with a name like Bong would more would you expect? Such a simple yet fathomless name can only lend itself to a simple (in theory) yet fathomless (in practice) sound. Bong is music for those who aren’t afraid to sit tight and experience the long haul; the great build up, the magic of the meandering drone into a stoned culmination of noise and bliss. Yes. It certainly made the inane task of steaming spilt coffee / beer / questionable substances off my beige sofa a much more enjoyable  task. For when you want your mundane housework to become a mystical journey into the arcane, I recommend Bong. Don’t be fooled by the 2 track running time, these are enormous stoned monuments of fuzz.

Main - Motion Pool

Main is a band that was formed by two members of Loop, including Robert Hampson who was also in Godflesh for a little bit (he played on the Pure album). Main, to me, appears to be some sort of experimental industrial-tinged ambient project that places heavily effected guitar work into a world of noises and other creepy atmospheres. 

And that, essentially, is what Motion Pool is all about. It’s a great, minimal listen for chilling the day away with something a little different. In one sitting it can be a bit hard to differentiate when one track ends and other begins, but then again, I am an idiot, so that’s probably not a fact. You can get this in a digipak CD or even a pretty fancy triple LP package, but a lot of Main stuff is now available on Spotify (oh revered bringer of music!) so you’ve got no excuse; have a go!

Earth - Primitive And Deadly

Fuck! What happened here? Earth are definitely not messing about on their new record - the heaviest thing the band have done in over a decade. I can get behind this! Since their reformation / regrouping, Earth have been all about calm, serene, bright and wavering tones; colossal monuments of clean guitar work and uplifting instrumental soundscapes - almost like the shoegazing equivalent of their early drone days. But this is something else entirely. Someone finally decided to turn Earth's amps up, and I couldn't be happier with that decision.

The Bees Made Honey... is one of my favourite things ever, and I loved the first part of Angels Of Darkness Demons Of Light, with it's dusty, haunting, almost western sound. The second part of that double album was much, much more sparse, and I must admit I lost interest a bit, with Earth's already stripped back sound being reeled in even further (I gotta say though, the bass playing was pretty funky). 

I'm not sure if I'm entirely sold on the inclusion of guest vocalists (Rabia Shaheen Qazi and sometimes-QOTSA collaborator Mark Lanegan) but the reappearance of distortion in Earth's work has made a world of difference for me. It's not as if it is overpowering in any way, or like it even detracts from the subtleties going on around the guitar, it's just that everything sounds much more alive and vital - something that can do no harm for a band as far into their career as Earth. 

Enter a shimmering, mesmerising desert of sonic absolution.

Nadja - Numbness

This is the first time I've actually successfully sat through an entire Nadja album. They definitely made delivering kebabs and pizza an ethereal experience, I can say that much. Numbness is like many other releases in the sizeable Nadja catalogue; ridiculously fuzzy, enormously slow, miserable yet hopeful and just a little bit pretentious. Numbness offers (to me) nothing new; it is simply Nadja for Nadja's sake. Depending on how much you like Nadja, you may or may not be in for a treat. If you're secretly hoping for the band to mix it up a little bit from the usual template, then you might as well uncross your fingers now. This duo are the Agathocles of the 'slow and moody' universe. 

This isn't to say that Numbness is a particularly bad album - it's actually very enjoyable - it's just that it genuinely baffles me how Nadja can release so much of this stuff sounding all the same yet still be able to craft new and genuine songs from it? Surely there is only so much you can do with a drum kit, a synth that apparently plays only one note and a bass guitar that sounds like radio static pumped through a sunn O))) amplifier. At times songs resemble something altogether more Jesu, and others sound almost like Merzbow fell asleep on the lower-end of a keyboard. Closing track "Numb", which builds slowly and with menacing purpose, was set to be my favourite track, until some crazy effect on the drums kinda ruined it for me. 

Honestly don't know what to make of this. Really on the fence with Nadja. Guess I just gotta be in the mood to listen to them, which is very, very rare. If you know and love what Nadja is all about though, you'll fucking love this. 

PS - after listening to this I found out that this is actually a fucking BEST OF compilation! (??????). I think it's safe to say I'm done with Nadja for the foreseeable future)

Bongripper / Conan - Split 12"

The recent (edit: a year and a half ago! Fuuuuuck) Bongripper and Conan UK tour lived up to all my expectations in total sonic annihilation, and this tie-in Split 12" is a great little reminder of the cacophony the duo made together. On the 12" we get more of the same from Bongripper, which isn't a bad thing I assure you. I simply cannot think of anything more to say other than it really is awesome as hell, if only a little short for my liking, even when spinning at 33rpm. Bongripper are slowly growing to become one of my favourite doom metal bands of all time, and they are showing no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Conan on the other hand throw a little variation into their usual sound here. It is still downtuned and massive; horrendous room shaking bass tones are laced with echoic yelps like every other Conan release, but there seems to be a grandiose, building feeling beneath the usual textures, as if Conan have all of a sudden become epic as fuck. It is like giant-monolithic-power-doom-drone-metal. Yes, that'll do. Ha ha. Out on Holy Roar Records.

Fury 161 - Armageddon's Maw

Fury 161 are a noise / death industrial based project with members hailing from Wales, Ireland and originally, South Africa. They came together in 2013 to produce misanthropic, hateful atmospheres about futility and anger towards all of mankind. 

Opener 'Thanatos' builds a dark, clanking atmosphere without getting too harsh. It is the audible equivalent of an incomprehensible mechanical world gearing up. 'Spirits' follows, which almost sounds like the distorted offspring of a Public Castration-era Swans track, that is until the vocals kick in. The vocal attack is reminiscent of the styles used heavily in black and death metal, with feral growls and throat-shredding howls barking across the surface of the searing, depthless and machine-like compositions and noisescapes.

Harsh noise enthusiasts shouldn't be too quick to pass them off here - Fury 161 might not be as harsh or brutally uncompromising as some of their noise and industrial peers, but this is still some disturbing, twisted shit. Fury 161 aren't afraid to use cerebrally crippling waves of distortion, but instead of blasting us with these audible cannons for entire tracks, Fury 161 play the soundscape game, building dissonant and creepy atmospheres using synths and ambient sounds (and often incorporating some kind of electronic beat) before melting your head off with some good ol' fashion noise. The track "Black Heart Attack" is my favourite example of this approach, with its haunting synth melody and pulsing distorted beat, meandering in and out between the beautiful and downright fuck ugly.

This is a fairly long album, clocking in at 56 minutes with most of the tracks averaging around the 5 minute mark. Closing off the ceremonies is the 7-minute epic "Tears", which matches rasping howls over a warbled drone and eery, clanking percussion. 

All in all, I would definitely recommend you giving Armageddon's Maw a listen to. You can stream the entire thing at the Bugs Crawling Out Of People Bandcamp page (linked below), where you can also pick up the record on CD, and a bunch of t-shirts. As you can see from the pictures, the CD comes in a really fancy card DVD case, which looks absolutely awesome. Check out "Black Heart Attack" and the rest of the album in the link below:

Ishmael - Hell Is Empty And All The Devils Are Here

I first experienced Ishmael many moons ago at Rainfest 2010 (AKA Bloodstock 2010) on the unsigned stage. I can't remember how we ended up watching them, perhaps it was because a large chunk of the crap on the mainstage was....well....crap. Anyhow, I was blown away by the sheer heaviness of this band; I did not expect such a sludgy and droney doom band to be playing Bloodstock, and I was proper chuffed to have caught them on a fluke. My mate Gumpy bought a CDr demo off them at the time, which I can't remember the name of, but I still have in the format of mp3. I recall the high-lariously titled song "Clit Snipper", which sounds just as nasty as it reads.

Roll on a few years then, and I'm now following Ishmael on Facebook. One day, I see they have released a tape, entitled Hell Is Empty And All The Devils Are Here, and I finally decide that it's high-time I actually bought something that this band have put out. And boy am I impressed! What a fuckin' sludgy tape! The production is shit hot, and the physical product as well has been professionally put together. That might not seem like much in itself but I'm normally used to getting DIY shit, so this tape looks extra impressive and shiny to me.

There are only three songs here, but they are fairly lengthy and make up a good total time between them. They are all, perhaps unsurprisingly, slower than an old man in slippers, and heavier than a wooden cart full of plague victims. Vocalist Dani Hawkins is particularly impressive; she is a veritable snarling beast, dispensing demonic-grade snarls, growls and roars alongside the brain-shaking doom metal.

If you like slow, sludgy, evil doom you need to get a load of this band! It's an absolute shame that they are now broken up but you can still listen to their stuff online. This tape was made by Breathe Plastic, and limited to 50 copies. I have number 6.

Sunn O))) & Pan Sonic / Alan Vega / Stephen Burroughs - Split 10"

This is a nifty little split 10" that I keep forgetting I own. It's in a plain white sleeve with a stamp like a club 12" and recently until I separated my 10" and 12"s onto different shelves I would keep losing it in the pile of vinyl that I have. The choice of artists appearing alongside each other here is pretty varied, but there isn't a shit song on the entire thing. It spins at 45rpm so it doesn't last very long but it's a nice little cross section into the work of the featured artists.

Side A is taken up entirely by Sunn O))) collaborating with Pan Sonic, making a slightly more higher pitched drone than usual, complete with brooding vocals and creepy as shit synths. The fat tones just build and build and then about half way through this full-blown organ-sounding synth kicks in and the entire thing becomes so epic that it's just bloody brilliant.

Side B begins with a fellow named Alan Vega, rambling on about "13 Crosses" over and over, accompanied by some spazz-happy electronics and a rabid audience. The first time I heard this I didn't like it, but it eventually grew on me. Last but not least, Stephen Burroughs sings us a mournful tune with just an acoustic guitar. "Goodbye Darling" is a slow, sorrowful track that starts off great but kinda loses it's way towards the end. It's a great song, but I just think it goes on for too long. Also, I just can't shake the thought that it was sound a thousand times better being sung by Michael Gira.

Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind

Soundtracks for the Blind is often hailed as something incredibly special in the original Swans catalogue. After spending the majority of the 90s focussing on much more softer material, Swans' issued a perplexing final death rattle with this double album. Listening to it, even from the first few opening seconds, evokes deep feelings of sadness for me, even though I never got into the band until they reformed three years ago. This record was literally everything the band had left before they quit. There are a few full-band songs in here, but the majority of the two discs is made up of sound collages by Gira and Jarboe. Some of them are tests of patience, sure, but for the most part they are extremely efficient and poignant passages of noise, ambience or atmosphere to rival any long-term artists in this field.

As a whole, Soundtracks for the Blind is an absolute mammoth task to try and conquer in one go. You really do get your money's worth here. Both discs are crammed full, and the total running length for the entire album is nearly two and a half hours long. Even with the recent release of The Seer, I believe that Soundtracks is by far the most "out-there" thing that Swans have ever done. It's creepy, moving and downright edgy, and leaves you with that sinking feeling you get in your chest after looking at old photographs or something. Due to the sheer volume of ambient tracks here, when the full band finally kicks in it is infinitely more impressive. Most of the band tracks last easily between 10 and 15 minutes, a scary decade-plus long ago look at what was to come in the future, and also a downright perplexing move for a band that had spend the previous seven years or so peddling acoustic-driven four-minuters like it was nobody's business. I mean, just compare this record to the album before it (The Great Annihilator); such startling change continues to puzzle me to this very day.

Couple that with the fact that a few of the songs here scarily pre-date the stylings of the post rock explosion ("Helpless Child" and "The Sound" as examples) and you really have an absolute relic of a record that must be cherished until the end of time. Its length makes it almost impossible to market commercially, its content relating to neither the brutal Swans of old or the soft Swans of the 90s, and it was released at a time when it would be seen as a statement along the lines of "This is all we have left of any worth. This should have been the future, but it is all you are getting". If I had been a Swans fanatic in the 90s then I would have torn this record apart and analysed every single second of it. I'm so fucking glad Swans reformed. So. Fucking. Glad. Out on Young God Records.

 

If you have a spare 2 hours and 22 minutes why not give the entire album a listen right here. What do you have to gain expect complete and total enlightenment? 

Life is Easy / Arseterror - Split Tape

Nearly a year in the works, Ohio's one man harsh noise and power electronics magician Arseterror finally meets the ongoing experiment Life is Easy on the format of split tape. featuring roughly 20 minutes of music from each artist; Arseterror first with the 20 minute maddening contribution, "Camptown Racist". Life is Easy contributes two unreleased drones from 2007 that have been festering away in the vaults for years.

Strictly limited to 15 physical copies, all hand made and assembled with disgusting hentai artwork and lovely jubbly pink ink! comes with a tape only bonus track "Josie", which can never be heard anywhere other than on this tape! I put this out myself on my part-time label Pointless Records - so if you want a copy just hit me up with a tradelist or drop me a message on Facebook. You can also add Pointless on Facebook here.

Stream the whole thing (barring "Josie") below.

Scott Hull - Audiofilm I

After the incredible journey that was Requiem, I was terribly disappointed with the first Audiofilm installment. When I finally got over the fact that this 3" CD wasn't going to be more of the same of what was displayed on Scott's debut, I gave it another chance and now I really like it. I can't really say much about it as it's fairly short and entirely atmospheric, so you'll have to hear it for yourself to form an opinion on it. My words can't really do much here, although I will say that I am now hunting for a copy of Audiofilm II. This was put out on Crucial Blast and limited to 1000 copies, so check out the link below and pick this up now!

Life is Easy - Falasmaryon

I can't exactly review this as it's my creation, but I got one in my collection so it'll have to wind up on here eventually, so I'll just do a brief run down to plug this fucker. I recorded this bastard of an EP back in 2007, simply by running a distorted B C Rich through a whole world of filters and then recording a cold, mechanical drum beat over the top of it before doing more or less the same to that too. 

 

I don't really know why but I've never really bothered to release music that I have made alone, so it took 6 years to get this out, which is ridiculous  You can download it for free here or if you read this around the original post date and actually like it you can get a copy on tape for cheap as chips. Limited to 20 copies on Lines In Wax's very own Pointless Records label.

Sleep - Dopesmoker

I've been holding off buying this fucker for a long time, mainly because I was plagued with the dilemma of getting it on vinyl (far superior format) or on CD (song plays through in one go). As collectable as the vinyl pressing of Tee Pee's release might be, I forever shyed away from it due to the fact that the hour-plus trip that is Dopesmoker would be broken up into bits. That just wouldn't do! Anyway, I never got around to buying it on CD either because I'm lazy like that, and in 2012 Southern Lord snuck this reissue upon us; remixed and remastered to absolute fucking audible ecstasy, causing stoners around the world to blaze socially-retarded amounts of da 'erb in celebration.

 

above right: it's so fancy that even the inside of the of sleeves are printed on.

I was a few website clicks away from purchasing the CD when I happened upon this vinyl version, in all it's shiny fucking beautiful glory. Southern Lord do not fuck about when it comes to vinyl. I caved, and I went for the vinyl version, rather than the CD, even though the journey was broken into three parts. And do you know what the best part is? That turned out to be a good thing! In an interview that I read recently, Matt Pike revealed that Dopesmoker was recorded on reel-to-reel tape - THE fucking medium that translates godly to wax. Good news yes, but there's something else. Do you fuckers know the MAX recording time on a reel-to-reel tape? No? Well it's fucking 22 fucking minutes. Holy fuck. That means that Dopesmoker was recorded in THREE seperate parts; coincidentally the same number of sides that Dopesmoker is split across here. So what you can hear on this pressing is the three original reel-to-reel tapes, mixed to perfection. Why am I making such a big deal over this? Well, mainly because this is one of the greatest record packages I have ever bought.

 

 

When I first read about another version of Dopesmoker I was sceptical, but the mix here is far superior to any other version; it's just so clear! I'm not sure exactly what was done to clear the whole thing up so much but the guy who did it, Brad Boatright, deserves a fucking medal. Dopesmoker is a fucking monolith in the stoner / doom genres, and this is the absolute, definitive version that simply must be heard by all metal fans and/or stoners. An absolutely huge achievement in modern music, this is the version of Dopesmoker YOU should own!

Warning: Listening to this record may make you a better person and/or a wizard.
(Unfortunately the new 2012 version isn't available on Youtube but if you got Spotify go sneak that shit there. This video is the Tee Pee mix for Dopesmoker.)