It should feel like I've been waiting since the dawn of time for new Akercocke material, but with the Antichrist Imperium and the incredibly excellent Voices, my fix has been kept somewhat at bay. However, to the die hard Akercocke fanatic, I imagine this is somewhat akin to taking methadone instead of heroin, so it is an enormous sigh of relief that I can now lose myself in the blissful, all-encompassing abyss of the group's satanic, blackened death metal once more.
Akercocke feel fresh and revitalized by their break, which is a massive relief, what with a lot of bands "coming back" as pale shadows of themselves, often motivated by cash. The sound here is a lot more refined, where the frenetic chaos of earlier Scanlan-like tracks can now enjoy the breathing room of the sprawling production work akin to the Deeds... era, or later Voices material (yes, Scanlan was on Choronzon, but despite how hard that record hit, it was a very dense production).
Akercocke have carved their own niche in the intricate world of progressive death metal, and now that I've listened to this record several times over and really let it set in, it genuinely feels like they never really went away. Just like, don't go anywhere soon, yeah guys?
Stand out tracks: "Dissappear", "First To Leave The Funeral", "A Final Glance Back Before Departing" and the epic "A Particularly Cold September".
(Mad apologies for snatching this cover art from Demo Archives, but there is literally not a decent scan of this anywhere else. Anyways Demo Archives is a really cool site that you should consider checking out)
Panaramic Twilight is the second demo from shamefully short-lived death metal act Timeghoul. The brutality and the distorted, nightmarish sounds of the band's first offering, Tumultuous Travelings, is distilled and refined into a more streamlined and cleaner yet fantastically proficient record. The fact that this is an early 90s death metal cassette demo is astounding; the production quality is fantastic and the band really feel in their element. The band were onto something really special here, and it is a crying shame that they disbanded not long afterwards.
The demo is only two tracks, so I have linked them both below. I implore you to check them out!
Voices’ follow-up to their insane 2013 debut is a puzzling,
intricate concept album based in their home city of London. Whilst their debut
blasted at 96,000bpm, the band (consisting primarily of ex-Akercocke staff)
still managed to fit a lot of subtly, emotion, delicate guitar work and other
elements of beauty into their high-speed aural assault. It was pretty similar
to Akercocke, only dragged kicking and screaming into a cold and modern world.
London expands further upon this, slowing the pace slightly to give everything
else more breathing room, and allowing some amazing things to unfold.
That isn’t to say this album isn’t fast, heavy or abrasive.
There’s a shitload going on here, and hey, David Gray is on the drums, so, lightning
fast blastbeats are inevitable. On the subject of David Gray the drum sound has
cleared up spectacularly from the debut; it actually sounds like real drumming
now, which makes it all the better! Voices’ overall production style is still
razor sharp, cold and claustrophobic, though. Awkward, fuck-knows-what-time-signature
riffs mesh over blastbeats, pianos, scuzzy electronics and a smorgasbord of
clean and shrieked vocals, both male and female. And then there’s the narrator;
the velvet-throated storyteller (who sounds suspiciously like Jason Mendonca)
holding the entire thing together like the metal bolt holding a crystal
chandelier to the ceiling.
Stand out tracks for me are “Music For The Recently Bereaved”,
“Megan”, “The House Of Black Light” (what the fuck is going on here?) and the
closing epic “Cold Harbour Lane”. On the first couple of listens, everything
post-“Megan” tends to blur into one, but I wrapped my head around it in the
end. The only track I don’t really like at all is “Last Train Victoria Line”,
where the lyrics harken back to something Bring Me The Horizon might have wrote
when they were 17 years old.
All in all though, a worthy follow up to the group’s first
offering and a searing slice of experimental extreme metal, whichever way you
look at it. Easily one of the best albums of 2014, I’d wager.
It's easy to write off a band like Deafheaven as pure hipster fodder, but looking past that probably media-perpetuated stereotype (I'm contributing in my own little way by even mentioning it) you will find an extremely talented band with really awesome music. Sunbather opens up to me sounding like the bastard lovechild of post rock and black metal, with "Dream House" punishing you not only in the feels with the melody, but in the face with the brutality.
And the album continues in this vein. It is a perplexing marriage of styles, granted, but sticking with it if you find it a bit weird at first will reward you handsomely. The title track brings those soaring guitars from the opening moments back in again, and all is well with the world. Well, with my world. For now. The guitar sound is almost depthless; distorted yet possessing a clarity required for those sailing melodies. Closer "The Peacan Tree" opens with a riff nodding towards more traditional black metal, which is only cemented further with the use of flat-out blastbeating on the drums.
Seriously give this a go if metal has been tiring you lately, or if you like your black metal with a little artsy twist.
When I first went to Roadburn festival in 2011 I was in waaaay over my head with my bands-I-know to bands-I've-never-heard-of ratio. I'm not saying I didn't have a wicked time (I went again the year after) but I spent a lot of time high, watching shit I'd never even heard of. Black Pyramid was one of those bands, whom I espied briefly through the packed doors of the second stage in Tilburg's 013 venue. When I came home I wrapped my lugholes around this album, which by some strange coincidence turned out to be bloody fantastic.
Black Pyramid are a good bunch, aye. They seem to mix driving, monumental rock in the vein of Mastadon with the slower, crunchy doom metal vibe. The result is a unique but refined sound that is somehow both all-go and stoned as fuck. The music isn't exactly challenging, but Black Pyramid present a take on the metal template which I enjoy very much. Guitar widdly-widdly-ness is present, but often in small, manageable chunks or catchy-as-fook hooks, like at the end of "Visions Of Gehenna". My favourite tunes here are the pacy "Twilight Grave", the stoned "Worm Ouroboros" and the epic as fuck closing track, "Wintermute".
The band do have other material but in my opinion none of it tops this shit. Check out "Wintermute" below - a seething masterpiece that takes a few minutes to kick in, but stick with it!
PS - I found out whilst writing this review that Black Pyramid are no more - gutted!
Welcome to
another post about another album that I have put off buying for
nearly a decade. You can thank the wondrous Amazon marketplace for
these posts that should have rightly been made a long time ago; their CD prices are sometimes so goddamn obscene that I cannot resist
buying a whole bunch of new CDs every week. This one cost me a little
more than the usual 1p, but it was still a criminal sum for a brand
spanking new CD. I’ve received some sorry looking CDs through the
Amazon marketplace (particularly from Zoverstocks) but this one is
pristine in every single way. Anyway, onto the recording itself!
Deloused In
The Comatorium is an extremely ambitious debut from a band that
includes those two chaps from At The Drive In and Flea from the Red
Hot Chilli Peppers on bass, and a bunch of other guys that I’ve not
heard of before. I don’t really know that much about RHCP or of
ATDI for that matter, but considering the type of stuff that both
those acts produce, you’d never in a million years expect something
as mind-bogglingly experimental as this. To sum up quickly; Deloused…
is a concept album based on the experiences of a dude called Cerpin
Taxt, who journeys through a week-long coma induced by consuming a
concoction of morphine and rat poison. Yeah.
Before I
start going into particular tracks, I would just like to say that the
instrumentation here is absolutely flawless; the guitar work is
enough to fuck with any 6-stringed student’s head, whilst retaining
that dirty, distorted “indie” sound in the loud parts, keeping
everything nice and digestible. The bass, by the ever-amazing Flea,
whilst playing perfectly, is kinda kept in the background for the
entire album. You can hear him clearly, but the bass is the backbone
here, which isn’t what you’d expect from something that seems to
be so hay-wire with it’s other comprising elements. I can’t tell
if there are electronics going on here or if they are just severely mangled guitar sounds. Either way, they add a whole new depth to
most of the tracks. Finally, the drumming is precise, fill-happy and
extremely busy (and often very Latin-sounding).
I think
you’re either gonna love or hate the voice of Cedric Bixler; his
high-pitched wails, whines and nasally highs are enough to get up the
backs of more gruff rock’n’roll listeners, but whilst I am not
particularly a massive fan of this style of vocal performance, I
think that it works perfectly with the music. The first proper track
“Inertiatic ESP” has an enormous chorus, and Cedric's vocals
work so perfectly on the chorus.
I could go
into every song here but they are so varied that this blog post will
end up lasting a million years, which I do try to avoid. Whilst I do
like writing in depth about records, it is time consuming on both
myself and the reader; and I don’t want things to get too boring!
Anyways, thanks to the copyright-defying users of Youtube.com I can
let the fantastic tunes of The Mars Volta do the rest of the talking.
If you’ve got an hour spare (and an open mind) I would definitely
recommend giving Deloused In The Comatorium a listen through. This
catch-up purchase of a band that I liked once upon a time has
initiated a whole new love for me; it’s time for me to go out and
discover the rest of the material that The Mars Volta has to offer.
Cheerio!
Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself of
the growing pool of talent in my local area. Zonderhoof were another local band
that I’d somehow spent my entire life avoiding; that was until Terrorizer
magazine gave their album away for free with an issue of their magazine, and at
their stall in Damnation Festival 2011 (which is where I kindly received my
copy). Even then, I only gave it a quick listen, and I wasn’t turned on to the
band again until they supported Conan in a Cardiff show last year.
My first - and somewhat harsh - thought about
this album is that Zonderhoof sound like a poor man’s Bongripper. Y’know one of
those silly half-opinions you form after listening to something for the first
time, like no matter how much you convince yourself otherwise, you really still
haven’t got your head around it? Well, it was one of those. See, that’s why I can never understand “professional”
reviews where a writer is given an album to write about*; I’ve found that you
always need to let a record unfold for you over time. First impressions are
just that; first impressions.
And with time I have come to appreciate
Zonderhoof as an instrumental wonder of the metal world, playing a nice, almost
progressive brand of lyric-free metal goodness. This CD is a long ‘un, which is
really great considering it was given away for free (just think of the
recording and production costs; sheesh!). My favourite tracks are probably opener “Smoking Ears Screaming Teeth”
and the groovy “Hogslayer”, although the last couple of tracks are awesome as well. Well
worth a listen, in my somewhat skewed opinion.
*a brilliant, recurring example of this is
the writers that Kerrang! employ(ed). When a big band dropped a new album
they’d always give it either an arse-kissing five Ks or a controversial licking, and
within months go back on their own fucking word almost every single time, like
clockwork. Mind you, Kerrang! is a heap of shit and probably a bad example, but
there you go.
I fucking love Cloud Rat, who are I think one of the first bands to reap the rewards of being on Jay Randall's Grindcore Karaoke net label. If you're into grind and haven't heard their self-titled record then you must have been living under some sort of grind-resistant-coated rock or something. To me, Cloud Rat invoke imaginings of Converge crossed with Magrudergrind, but with Agoraphobic Nosebleed's Katherine Katz on vocals. Is that a bit fancy? Fuck it, that's what Moksha sounds like to me on the first listen.
If you're familiar with Cloud Rat's sound then you'll be happy to know that they do it well here on Moksha; pushing the band's more "musical" approach to grindcore into further experimental territory. Side A is chock full of amazing songs, which are all over in a blink of an eye. It is on Side B though, and from "The Needle And The Damage Done" onwards that the band's experimental side really starts to flow. The title track, which closes off the entire record, is a monemental listening experience.
Well recommended if you like your grindcore with a bit more flourish to it, and also I think I would recommend this to people who aren't really that into grind all that much....Moksha's almost (dare I say it) mathcore-sounding leanings more than definitely open the band up to a much wider audience. I wish the band all the best with their amazing and unique sound. Now do a UK tour already! Released as a collaberation between IFB Records and Halo Of Flies Records in the USA, and between React With Protest and 7 Degrees Records in Europe.
Seriously, I am chuffed to bits with this impulse buy. This record is fucking fantastic. Lucky for you, Cloud Rat have a link for everyone to download the whole thing for free right here.
