Head Noise - Special Effects Improves The Defects

(Words by Gareth Burra)

Head Noise are a 3 piece Electro Art-Punk band from South Wales, often using a keytar as a primary instrument as well as an array of nontraditional instruments. With no live drums or an actual drummer they are certainly a different act and stand out from the crowd with their less conventional, more experimental approach.

So here we have the bands new 6 track mini-album "Special Effects Improves The Defects", a very fun sounding release here; upbeat, with some wicked little electronic jingles and beats throughout, which wouldn't sound out of place in an 80s disco or a soundtrack to a film set in such era, truth be told.

Some highlights of the EP, for myself, are "Finally Snapped", which may be my favourite of the bunch, with its dark and ambient sound - I'm getting some major A Flock Of Seagulls-esque vibes from this one - as well as "Diamond Planet", with its perfect groove and a more alternative 80's sound.

Overall a nice little release her; its fun, its fresh, its different, and stands out. Nicely done.

O.A.P. - Human Milkshake

O.A.P. (or Onanistic Anti-Peristalsis for short) were a death metal band based in Newport, Wales. I believe they finally kicked the bucket sometime around 2013/14 and Human Milkshake was their only album release. They featured members of death metal bands Necrocest and Cryptophile, as well as having local promoter / general all round good egg Sam Wall as one of the vocalists.

Human Milkshake gets better as it goes on; personally I find the opening track "Jeremy Kyle" hilarious yet a bit repetitive, but the guys quickly fall into a gurgling groove which should satisfy the nastiest of death metal bloodhounds. The inclusion of shouted vocals alongside the gutturals and inhales is an interesting choice but adds a fresh dynamic to a tried and tested formula of music. A tidy production job as well, rounds the whole thing off with a surprisingly heavy hit for a drum machine band. Top stuff!

I miss the O.A.P. shenanigans. Reunion tour?

Sodomized Cadaver - Verses Of Putridity

You'd think that given the opportunity, I would do everything in my power to throw mud at this band, but the reality here is that I have to admit that this is a decent fucking record. The production is solid, the riffs are intense and the vocals are on point. As with the previous release, Vorarephilia, the main downside is that for some godforsaken reason the band used a drum machine in lieu of their actual, real-life human equivalent, essentially making Verses of Putridity a solo record from a guy that isn't even in the band any more. A pretty accurate representation of the band's sound, then?

Objectively though, as above, this is a wicked slab of metal, it's just a crying shame that it doesn't feel like a coherent band recorded it. I'll leave it at that before I get ahead of myself.

Future Of The Left - The Plot Against Common Sense

Future Of The Left are one of those rare bands that my friends are into that I can also get into. I'm a stubborn fucking dickhead, so when someone tells me to listen to something, I usually don't. So, the fact that I love this album is nothing short of a total miracle, but the love comes in heaps, and for good reason. I initially gave the whole thing a chance on the strength of "Beneath The Waves An Ocean", which has a bass riff dirtier than a Tory politician rolling in a mud pit at Reading Festival.

The whole thing is a bizarre mix of indie-style rock wrenched into odd time signatures and filtered through a scuzzy lens. I guess it's kinda like feeding The Strokes into a meat grinder whilst listening to John Zorn's Naked City, or something like that. "Goals In Slow Motion" is one of my favourite songs here; and if not more straight-forward than a lot of the tracks (think REM meets Green Day, seeing as we are on the subject of ridiculous comparisons), it does however possess a bangin' chorus hook which more than makes up for it. Church.

Calling Apollo - The Great Depression Act 1

(words by Porth's man-in-thon-know, Gareth Burra)

Here we have the new 6 track release - The Great Depression Act 1 - from South Wales 5 piece Calling Apollo. What a huge sounding record this is; production wise, instrumental and vocal wise - it's great! A very wisely chosen opening track comes in the form of "Light The Way"; I love the guitar tone in this, it's very reminiscent of a lot of the 2000's era rock that was about, topped off with some really powerful vocals, solid bass playing and hard hitting drumming.

Personal favourites for me include the popular single "Clone City", "Obelisk" (massive sounding track!) and the ballad-like "The Wars", but this release just flows so well as a whole. There is a really carefully chosen and selected bunch of tracks here, all skillfully crafted. Also, the perfectly chosen ending to the release - "...And The High Plateau"; another ballad style number just closes the record off perfectly. Such a nice sound to this one and a great closing track. As I say, the whole thing just flows so perfectly.

Plain and simply this mini-album is just brilliant. It oozes strength and power; a really confident-sounding record from a band that know exactly what sound they are going for and are confident in doing such so early on in their career. There's nothing shakey about this one. Calling Apollo are a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale Welsh music scene, so stick with these guys as I can only see good things for them. This is a release they can really be proud of, and I see no reason why these guys won't be pretty huge a few years down the line.

P.S Fans of Saosin, Billy Talent, Circa Survive, Thursday etc may enjoy this one!

Brutality Will Prevail - Forgotten Soul

Brutality Will Prevail are a long-running Welsh hardcore band that have, over the years, gone through several styles and line ups. Forgotten Soul is the band's 2009 debut album (they self-released a few things before this, but this was the proper debut) and it catches the band when they were playing a really down-tempo, super-chuggy style of hardcore. I guess it is almost like slam death metal, but with the endless double kicks taken out. BWP are a decent hardcore band in their own right (Root Of All Evil is the tits), so it's a bit of a shame that this record conforms so strictly to the chug-style, which was, if I'm totally honest, just what everyone did back then.

There are so many fucking awful trendy chug bands in Wales, even now. Kids are still listening to mindless bollocks like Oceans Apart and it genuinely baffles me - I mean, is it still 2007? Why is this genre even still a thing? Anyways - on to the album. I won't pretend that making it through the whole thing in one go isn't a bit of a task for me, but then again, I'm a bit out of my comfort zone here. But,that doesn't necessarily mean that this album is bad. The vocals are fucking class. On first impressions, (musically, not so much vocally) I can make a lot of comparisons to the early sound of Annotations Of An Autopsy, who made waves in this style of music before jumping ship before shit got too stale.

Perhaps I shouldn't have reviewed this album, because I've gone off on a massive tangent, but fuck it, it's written now so it's getting posted! Stay tuned to Lines In Wax kids, for super top quality content like this!

Throw down or fuck off, or something.

PS Mad props for that album cover though, top stuff.

Necrocest - Prenatal Massacre

Wow this shit is brutal. Probably one of the best bits of death metal I've heard in a while, Prenatal Massacre is the third full length album from Welsh sickos Necrocest. I remember seeing these guys supporting The Berzerker in Newport many moons ago (2008 methinks) and I had forgotten all about them until I came across them on Youtube recently, because y'know, I'm an idiot, but there you go. All that matters is that I finally listened to them properly.

It took me a while to figure out that there may be a drum machine on the go here. If not, then those are some triggered-as-fuck drums. My hazy memory of their live show includes a drummer, but you know how things are on the production side of death metal; drum machines out the ass. Or, to make that more death-metally; drum machines out the ass, prolapsed cunt and bursting from your stomach like some shit from the Alien franchise. Either way, Prenatal Massacre is fucking awesome brutal death metal.

(Apologies for the image quality - it was very difficult to find a full sized version of the album cover, and Blogger crushed the life out of it during the upload.)

Desecration - Gore & PerVersion 2

The story surrounding Gore & Perversion always comes up at some point with Welsh metalheads over a certain age - we all have our own stories to tell about it, and there's always one person who knows someone who also knows someone who's uncle's dog still has an pristine, uncensored copy of the original. But thanks to the absolute twattery and/or dickfuckery of Gwent police, a piece of death metal history has been blasted off the face off the earth in the name of "decency". Why don't you go and tell the sweatshop child slaves making dresses for Primark that Britian is a decent and proper society?

Anyyyyway, several years later, with the complete loss of their debut album more than likely weighing on them in some way shape or form, self-styled Welsh "death metal bastards" Desecration re-recorded everything and put it out as Gore & PerVersion 2, although this time with a much tamer cover picture. If you want to see the drummer getting a blowy in a graveyard then you at least have to open the booklet first. So yeah, repackage the entire album with a close-up of something horrible happening and shorten "Infantile Anal Intercourse" to "I.A.I." and suddenly Gore & Perversion is now totally acceptable for our decent and proper society to consume. What a fucking massive load of shit.

But the silver lining here is that Version 2 is much, much better than the original. It's hard to beat a grubby old school death metal independent release, but Version 2 was recorded by a band who had found their feet in their own unique and super-brutal niche of death metal. If I ever want to listen to Gore & Perversion I come to this release, although the original has now been re-released several times with censored artwork.

Anyway, don't listen to me because I'm an idiot. Check it out below.

The Judas Cradle - The Self-Inflicted EP

Warning! Self-promotional post!

 

I just wanna take a post to tell you all about my new grindcore band The Judas Cradle (google the definition for epic luls and potential cringing). Formed out of the ashes of Newport death metal crew O.A.P., The Judas Cradle became a real thing in September of last year. We’ve have been rehearsing pretty much weekly since, and we recorded our debut EP in our rehearsal space. It was released in December online, and we had physical copies made up in January, which were all put together lovingly by our guitarist Will.

 

We have about a 100 of them to go around at shows and shit, but this EP is available to be spread far and wide on the net. So give it a download, rate it or hate it. If by some astronomical odds you fancy a copy you can get one off my Discogs page!

 

Grind it!

 

Auerbach - She's Worth It

Auerbach is one of a gazillion projects by Merthyr Tydfilian / Aberdare-ian (yeah, I can make up my own words now) Kristian Cole. I sit next to this cunt most days in work placement so I might come across a bit biased as I review one of his creations, but I say with all the honesty in my blackened heart that this is a seriously harsh aural assault of the senses. He goes by many names and guises, but I believe that Auerbach is one of the original aliases he came up with. She's Worth It is a puzzling, perhaps worrying exercise in harsh noise; ear-splitting distortion meets feral soundscapes and brooding noise collages. 

Definitely one for the more seasoned noise aficionado, She's Worth It may reduce less experienced noise mongers down to nothing more than a bubbling pile of mysterious goo that may or may not look like semen with acid in it. Yeah.

Exit_International - Chainsaw Song

I picked this up because a few of my mates really like Exit_International, and swear by their unusual bass guitar driven sleazy rock swagger. It was also nice to see a 7" for sale locally, of a local band, so that swayed me. I love bass guitar focussed stuff, and I've heard a fair amount of it over the years, but this, well, it just bores the guts outta me. Exit_International have got their sound, and I respect them for it, but it literally does nothing for me at all.

It's hard then, to really continue writing a review about this 7" without getting negative, which is something I want to avoid doing because Exit_International aren't exactly bad, I juste don't like them. Anyways, this a single release of a track from their Black Junk album, released by the Undergroove label in 2012.

Led By Lions - A Long Time Coming

Led By Lions are a band that are fairly local to me, with members hailing from several areas of South Wales. This band was born from the ashes of long-running metal-meets-pop-punk group Man Of The Hour, who have been flogging the local circuit in various guises since 2007, so A Long Time Coming has been, well...a long time coming, really. Led By Lions is essentially the final incarnation of Man Of The Hour, with the added inclusion of a new full-time frontman, Scott Randall. Former vocalist/guitarist Richard Meyrick now focuses entirely on his guitar role, and the main back up vocals are provided instead by second guitarist James Heard (and the rest of the band in a live setting, no doubt). 

The first notable thing about Led By Lions other than the new vocals is the chunky, impressively professional production standard and heavy sound. Without being over-triggered, the drums are solid and dense in the mix, as is, rather nicely, the bass (provided by Small Fortunes / Start! Start! lunatic Gareth Burrough). I'm not sure what tuning this is all recorded in, but it adds a welcome grating metal edge to what would essentially be a very melodic and poppy performance. 

This was self-financed and self-released by the band themselves, and you can hear the EP in it's entirety if you are using Spotify (clicky clicky). Physical copies will be available later in the year, and you can also check out the promo video for the song "Fall Of A Giant" below. 

Lines In Wax Trivia: The "Fall Of A Giant" music video features appearances from 3/4s of the band Start! Start!. The only Start! Start! member not included in the video is me. 

Small Fortunes - Say What You See

Ho ho! Now this is something that I have watched grow from a silly one-minute-something demo into a full-blown project of epic proportions. Introducing my good ol' pal Gareth B, whom is a fellow band-mate with me in Merthyr Tydfilian based rap metal (yes!) group Start! Start!. Mr. B is always grooving our tunes up with his mad bass skills, but he doesn't get much chance to shine on the mic. That's where Small Fortunes comes in; Gareth B shows us his unique view on the world with this swanky and professional-as-fuck four track EP.

 

Lamenting us through the medium of auto-tune like some bastard lovechild of Ke$ha and Nate Dogg, Small Fortunes takes us into four real life scenarios told through the exciting method of songwriting. "Baldman Beatdown" tells us how Mr. B mashed up a cider-swilling lout at his local bar, "Mr. Sunday Night" is the hilarious tale of a bloke that he met in the local chippy who didn't know what day it was, "Crows Nest" is a backlash reaction to some over-enthusiastic music critic, and "A Birthday To Remember" shares the toilet-rattling tale of getting the shits after his birthday meal. I was present for that one, and boy it was ugly!

Despite the enormously sexy artwork, this EP is burned onto CDr, although you'd never guess because Gareth B has put so much love into this little package. The CDrs are styled like lil' 5" vinyls, which is right up my street, and the production on the songs by Downtown Studios' Uncle Richard is very polished and modern. The cartoony artwork by Lauren Orrells is the finishing touch here. These motherfuckers are limited to 50 copies, so act fast and get one from Small Fortunes whilst the going is good! I also have the first Small Fortunes promo single "Caution! Wet Floor!" download card free with every Pointless Records order, so get in!

Zonderhoof - Hakken!

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.  

Desecration - Pathway to Deviance

Death metal has a limited appeal for me, but when it's done right I just fucking love it. Maybe it's coincidence that I love my "local" death metal band Desecration more than most other death acts, or maybe it's not. I donno, I'm not a psychologist. All I know is that Desecration is fucking awesome. The sound (on any record) is spot on; the drums are dry and precise, the guitars clinical yet fuzzy and warm, and the bass clanks underneath at just the right volume. A whole world of growly growly vo-kills over the top of it all and wehey, instant death metal boner.

Regardless of the endless controversy that surrounded this band in its earlier days, I've always found their blood splattered themes to be rather tongue in cheek. Perhaps it's because the music is so groovy. I don't get an evil vibe from Desecration. "Bloody Human Carvery", whilst looking rather grim written there like that, is an absolute groove-fest. "Frosted Breath" sounds like a black metal song, but it really isn't. "King of the Missing" is a rather perplexing title, and "Offer the Flesh" opens with some really impressive drumming. That's what I'm talking about!

I got this picture disc from Ollie at Damnation 2012 when he was selling shit on the Extreme Noise Terror merch table. I can't remember what I paid for it but it was dirt cheap and I was chuffed to a thousand pieces to finally pick up a Desecration record on vinyl. Their discography is rather inconsistent with regards to format, but I do try to buy wax whenever possible, as I'm sure you're all aware by now. Out on Copro Records.