This is what the latest Earth album would sound like if that album actually rocked, or perhaps what My Bloody Valentine's essential touchstone LOVELESS would have sounded like if Kevin Shields had been obsessed with the Swans and 70s country rock. The band -- a highly precise trio with roots in hardcore and math-rock (assisted, when necessary, by an outside vocalist and one swell dude with an oscillator) -- favors lengthy, epic pieces rooted in prog-rock but played through massive amplification and with a country guitar tone; it's a startling and highly listenable sound, made even more enticing by scads o' melodic guitar work pretty much everywhere. The eight songs unfold at a deliberate pace, powered by dazzling country chords blown up mountain-size, melodic and vaguely psychedelic guitar and bass, and vocals washed into blurry yowling by endless reverb. It's majestic, monolithic, and remarkably ambitious stuff, and nowhere near as pretentious-sounding as the description might lead you to believe. This is simply a great album (maybe one of the best Crucial Blast has released yet, in fact) with a really unique sound that's not wasted on dumb teen angst or something equally silly -- the band obviously takes their art seriously, and so should you. Now this is what I call swank shit -- ritualistic, tranced-out occult rock from members of the black metal bands Diametregon and Vdiog Svaor. The band's name (roughly translated as "worship of the spirit of ancestors") comes from an obscure ancient religion still practiced on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, and the band combines traditional instruments (drums, guitar, bass) with magick theory to create altered states of psychedelic trance music. The first side is a eerie rhythmic piece built around tribal rhythms that builds to a dark and forbidding howl, only to dissolve into a brief spoken paean to the occult as the bass and guitar swirl into droning fog; the flip side is even more rhythmic and heavily repetitive, with black droning guitar and an insistent beat, that eventually fades into a heavily-reverbed death drone -- only to have the drums explode back into action as the guitar turns into an air-raid siren that devolves into pure chaos, even as the bass and drum figure never wavers. This is brilliant stuff, and the only flaw here is that there's not anywhere near enough of it. Many, many bonus points for the amazing black and silver packaging, which folds open from the back to reveal a black and white landscape of what I would assume is the island from which they have taken their inspiration. Note that this is a limited pressing of 500 copies, and once word gets around about just how brilliant this is, those copies will disappear like... like... like magick! (So sorry, I just couldn't resist.) Long live the throne of drone -- more and more this UK label is the place for your ears to be if you're down with the drone. This is the label's third release; the band's name has three words; the band drops three packets of drone science here. See how it all comes together? The first track, "microphones," is a slow whirling drone that is eventually joined by lots of clanking and clattering and noisemaking in general -- not loud, harsh, violent stuff, but strange sounds that come and go at unpredictable intervals, rising from the background and rushing between the speakers before disappearing, even taking solo turns at strangled fuzz-yowling before a percussive drone loop and a growing wall of noise take things in a new (and loud) direction. The second track, "very pressing," is a low-key cyclotron drone over a minimalist beat that's assaulted from all sides by various forms of noise, feedback, and vocal frippery, with a sound that's both eerie and alien in its tone and unpredictability. Naturally, on the final track "cara flaca," they burst into -- yes! -- a Latvian marching song! No, fool, they do the drone some more! Big surprise, right? And it's a good drone, one full of squeaks and squiggles and shaky-ass fuzzdrone like someone jiggling one of the amplifiers. Minimalist, lo-fi, just right. Swell stuff. Bay Area drone aficianado Arastoo Darakhshan makes his Isounderscore debut with three long and untitled slices of otherworldly drone on one heavy slab of vinyl. He uses analog synths, strings, and other artificial textures to create his drones, with different results in each piece. The first, which takes up most of the A-side, is a pure ethereal drone, like telephone lines singing in the distance, or wind in the trees, a sound that could pass for an exceptionally clear field recording under maximum drone conditions; the second track on the A-side is more orchestral, with droning strings and synth washes that create a sound reminiscent of a Howard Shore film score. The third track takes up the entire B-side, and is a series of hollowed-out drones that reverberate and die away, like pure washes of sound funneled through a series of giant pipes -- it's the sound of power stations and electric relay towers as heard deep inside the metal pipes of an oil refinery, or perhaps the sound of traffic echoing through the sewer tunnels far below the ground. Cavernous echoes resonate, building and falling away in an eerie demonstration of the Doppler effect; where the previous two tracks displayed a sort of fragile and ethereal beauty, this sound is more ominous and otherworldly, like the audio equivalent of light from a dying star. The closest comparison to this I can think of would be Alan Lamb's stunning wire music album PRIMAL IMAGE, especially toward the end, when the wailing drones are augmented by a throbbing bass hum. This is pure drone as an elemental force, completely divorced from any relation to rock music (or music at all, really) -- an illuminating exploration of pure droning sound. Essential stuff for drone fanatics, to be sure. What we have here is a split between two noise / hardcore bands from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Be Bad are a psychedelic hardcore band, if you can imagine such a thing, one driven by pummeling drums and old-school hardcore shouting, but with fuzzed-out, tripped-out, psychotronic guitar that often veers wildly into the school of cyclone-guitar perfected by Of Cabbages and Kings guitarist Carolyn Master; they contribute two pounding sounds here, "The Slaves Who Buried the Pharoah" and the even faster and more intense "Ruin Your Life," which both sound like the musical equivalent of being run over by a angry bulldozer driver in the middle of a swarm of bees. This is the sound of hardcore crossed with spastic freejazz, maybe -- loud, fast and intense, with scrabbling, frantic guitar work that practically dares the rest of the band to keep up (and the drummer certainly does). Attack Mode, the band on the flip side, are tad more traditional and in the mold of old-school bands like Black Flag and Negative Approach. MAXIMUM ROCK 'N ROLL likes them, if that tells you anything, and fans of old-school hardcore should too. They contribute three songs -- "Piece of Shit," "Straightfaced," and the awesomely brief "Society's A Prison" (which lasts less than a minute and contains exactly one line of lyrics -- "Society's a prison!" -- repeated several times before the band builds to a sweltering climax); the sound will be familiar to anyone who grew up on the first wave of California punk, and while they don't reference the band in the poop sheet or the insert, there's definitely an early Dead Kennedys influence going on in addition to the other hardcore madness. Pogo for your life!!! Bonus points for the swank tripped-out artwork (which only proves that any piece of art is automatically improved by adding lots of skulls). Holy Bat-Dick, Robin -- this is one whacked-out slice o' greatness, like the diabolical offering of some dude who grew up dreaming of Bootsy Collins or maybe one of those gyratin' dudes in the Ohio Players, without ever realizing he was made for playing in Cheer-Accident instead. Or maybe Arab on Radar reinvented as a dubby, clubby lounge act. The opening one-two knockout punch of "It's Hard Not To Die" and "Deathgrip On Living," both built around hypnotic, dubbed-out bass lines and an off-kilter sensibility, sets the tone for the remaining four tracks of loopiness and sinister, springy basslines occasionally obliterated by sheets of crunchy white noise. King Tubby himself would levitate from the grave with pleasure at the sound of that extended-reverb abuse and dub-hell bass on "L'Amour de Mort," an efx-heavy stop 'n start hypno-mantra that occasionally turns into a psychedelic devival swirling around an endless ping-pong riff. Static, excessive reverb, endless repetition, and a cryptic, indeciperable monologue are all elements that form the lengthy and mesmerizing intro to "Waiting To Die (And The Suspense Is Killing Me)" -- then these swirling sounds fade away, followed by a beat and a fuzzy riff, and the song begins to build in slow but deliberate fashion as the singer comes and goes. It's all strange and disorienting, sure, but insanely catchy -- you will not be able to resist the tyranny of the beat in conjunction with that enormous, dubbed-out bass. Rarely has an approach to rock been so twisted and still so listenable. I couldn't help laughing when I saw the accompanying poop sheet and its handwritten note reminding me that "this is important music," but like we say down here in the South, it ain't bragging if it's true. And this is important, both in a musical and archival sense (the disc is actually the reissue of the band's 1984 debut LP). For an album that was recorded over two decades ago, it sounds awfully contemporary -- the band (John Maz on drums, standard and detuned, and metaliphones, plus Sterling Smith on synth, piano, and organ) were obviously way ahead of their time conceptually and musicially. It often sounds like a classic sixties jazz album being dismantled, or perhaps a pop record as produced by Sun Ra -- with only two members in the band, the sound is far more complex than you might expect, and even when the songs are working in traditional formats and structures, they tend to drift off in unexpected (and sometimes unorthodox) directions. Think of them as the American answer to the Ruins, maybe, only with the bassist playing keyboards instead and a heavy blues / pop grounding (as opposed to prog rock and classical influences) to the madness. The ten tracks are all excellent, occupying a space somewhere between traditional blues / pop, free jazz, and improv, definitely a different and wildly uncommercial space to be in back in 1984. (Hell, maybe even now.) I hesitate to mention that the album was recorded by Iain Burgess -- you know, the jolly guy who engineered those seminal Big Black albums everybody bleats about -- because it will give people the wrong ideas (this is about as far removed from Big Black as you can possibly get, trust me), but he did a swell job recording the band, so it would be churlish not to give him credit, nu? Fans of quality improv and experimental pop should creep over to CD Baby (where you can listen to samples and buy the album) and scope it out for themselves. Great, well-played stuff. Coughs are back. They still have a lot of people to squeeze onstage on in the recording booth (six, I think, including two drummers who whack on fifty-gallon oil drums live), they still like to pound on things, and their singer still sounds like a shrieking harpy (and may be the scariest-sounding female singer around, now that Pineal Ventana's no more and Clara Clamp appears to have drifted into obscurity). This time their primeval, turbulent noise chaos has been sharpened and focused a bit, but it's still pretty unnerving in its frantic violence. The eleven songs are filled with hyperactive polyrhythms from the two drummers and much hoarse shouting from Anya Davidson, along with a smorgasboard of weird sounds from the rest of the band (bass, guitar, and one person playing keyboards and sax). The sound that results is like listening to a band of psychotics dance around a drum circle with swords and spears, until everybody is flat on the ground in a sea of blood as the fire from the spilled firepots begins to spread. If you've heard the first album, well, this is essentially a more focused subsequent chapter in what is sure to become a lengthy musical tome on violent, erratic behavior. If you haven't heard the first one, rest assured your mother wouldn't like it (and she won't like this one, either). Intense stuff for the heavily caffeinated generation. They used to be called The Postman Syndrome, if that means anything to you; if it doesn't, then all you need to know is that the band combines elements of emo, art-rock, and progressive metal, crafting short but potent songs. The band's approach is interesting -- they have three vocalists, for one thing, resulting in vocals that often alternate between a radio-friendly croon to harsh shouting, and the two guitarists are very different, allowing them to shift from melodic and jazzlike figures into chunky riffing with ease. The drummer is capable of highly complex patterns but never gets so busy he overwhelms the other players; in fact, all of the players appear more than capable of playing jazz-fusion (which becomes evident on the highly melodic and jazzy "In the Holding Cell"), but their obvious devotion to excellent songwriting insures that their chops remain firmly in service of the songs, allowing them play in a fashion that is both complex and subtle at the same time. They also favor relatively short songs that remain focused, with an intriguing interplay between the guitars in particular. The songs themselves are highly emotional without devolving into ridiculous self-parody, and feature plenty of stellar playing that never deteriorates into showing off. Those captivated by their sound may be disappointed that the five-song EP is rather short (about sixteen minutes), but that just proves the band is smart enough to eliminate the filler and not wear out their welcome. Worth checking out, dig? Imagine Jim O'Rourke, Thurston Moore, and Mats Gustaffsen on a stage, surrounded by pedals and gadgets, getting their freak on by deconstructing rock before a live audience, and you have the basic idea here. There are just two tracks here, each approximately 15-16 minutes long, and they are both exercises in the flow of sound and noise. The first track is highly reminiscent of the early sound of Illusion of Safety, a creeping soundscape of crackling noise and strange sound effects at times punctuated by bursts of static and tortured guitar wailing that eventually builds to something vaguely approaching actual music (mainly from Thurston's guitar) backed by squeaks and bleats, only to devolve back into tortured noise grind. The second track is a bit more "musical" (well, sort of), but essentially another evolving soundscape grounded in the same approach to sonic debasement, some of it quite noisy and painful, all of which gradually builds in density and aggressiveness. I'm not sure how "essential" it is -- frankly, there's nothing going on here that any of the three haven't really done before, even if it is well-done -- but fans of any or all of the players will at least want to check it out. And no, I have absolutely no idea what's up with the bizarre cover art, other than the possibility that some (or all) of them are possibly perverts with an arcane sense of humor.... The best thing about this goth / darkwave trio from Orange Park, Florida is singer Madame Lee Holiday, whose sneering and studied delivery reminds me of Nina Hagen on a serious decadence kick, or maybe Dinah Cancer after a couple of shots of tequila. Her bandmates, bassist The Imerperious 1 and The Right Reverend Acid Washed Messiah aren't quite as musically flamboyant as their names might suggest, but their playing is certainly solid enough, although it's kind of hard to tell at times since this demo is a bit on the underproduced side. Then again, I suspect the band is primarily a live act who spend most of their time concentrating on the live show, which -- given the way the look and the beat-heavy nature of the songs -- is probably a swell show indeed. The five songs here (not counting the ominous spoken-word intro) are all definitely classic darkwave with thumping beats, always a good thing. It's just too bad the demo doesn't convey the band's vision as effectively as it could -- hopefully they'll be able to clear up the production deficiencies on the forthcoming full-length.... This surging power-trio featuring an ex-member of Enemy Soil was formed in 2002; after a couple of demos and a compilation appearance, this is the band's first official full-length release. If the cover art conjures up visions of punk and hardcore, well, there's a good reason for that... but the hardcore approach is frequently blindsided by a serious inclination toward hyperactive grindcore, which makes for an interesting and wildly unpredictable listening experience. I'm not seriously down enough with hardcore / punk (to put it mildly) to comment much on that aspect of the band's sound, but their grind is of the soul-crushing variety, and they get bonus points for having a female bassist in a genre (either one, take your pick) notable for being testosterone-heavy. When they veer more distinctly into grind territory, they can be intensely heavy, especially during the slow parts of "Burning." The punk and grind influences are bridged by a heavy fondness for dissonance and unpredictable tempo shifts; the result is a sound that never stays the same long enough get boring. Heavy, heavy stuff, too. I'm sure their lyrics are real insightful and stuff too, but frankly, I care a whole more about the pummeling drums and grossed-out hyperspeed bass flatulence. A crushing mix of punk and grind that's worth your listening time. Even for a release on Load, this is bizarre shit, like what you might get if members of Captain Beefhart's band (circa TROUT MASK REPLICA) and Half Japanese got real drunk together and started banging away at random on whatever they could find lying around in a room full of music equipment. Squeaks and squawks, grotesque bass hum, stuttering half-baked drums, moaning, droning, more moaning... and then there's that squeaky-voiced vocalist, who's working real hard to take Mr. Pottymouth's place in Arab in Radar (I guess they forgot to tell him that band broke up, wups). This isn't so much "music" as it is a series of ten-car pileups, with deranged forms of percussion colliding with bleating horns, dying synths, and more "traditional" rock instruments being savagely abused and tortured with meat forks. This is the musical equivalent of a grand mal epileptic seizure -- if you combined this at high volume with strobe lights you could probably turn the entire audience into a writhing mass of foaming lunatics jerking around helplessly on the floor. Weird, weird, weird, even for guys who've been in Deerhoof and Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase. One of the latest offerings from rising noise artist Dillon Tulk, this three-inch cdr contains one track, approximately fourteen minutes long, called "Fleeting Breath." The track is a disorienting flow of caustic sound, opening with shrieking wind rotating from one channel to the other as dark glitch noises burst and explode in the background. Reversed sounds fritter and chirp as the black wind rises and falls... then a growing tide of harsh white noise boils up from nowhere, screeching and clanking, threatening to make the speakers explode. The last half of the track is pure blinding noise hell -- all shrieking wails and tumbling, cyclotronic audio violence that finally ends on an abrupt note. Punishing, intoxicating noise joy in a swell package, ready for your consumption. The fact that one of my cats was sitting nearby when it started and moved to the other side of the room halfway through should tell you everything you need to now about its level of psychic audio intensity. The cult of F/I/T/H has been growing for a while now, thanks to noise guru Michael Page's dark vision and a steady series of releases elaborating on the more painful audio excesses of that bleak impulse to bum people out. Page is also the guiding hand behind Sky Burial (see the review of that band's new album later in the issue), and there are some similarities between the two, but F/I/T/H is far more visceral and violent, harsher and more punitive. The ten tracks on this disc are dominated by chaos and destruction, high-pitched wailing and dark, subterranean rumbling, along with an endless assortment of crunchy sounds. The tracks themselves are harsh, usually instrumental (although there is a guest vocalist on "Psychotic Underground"), and filled with jarring, unexpected sonic surprises and lots of bowel-scraping harsh noise (among other distorted effects). Fans of MZ.412, Cold Electric Fire, and harsh but unorthodox dark-ambient power electronics in general will want to pick up on this one. The album's full title is a mouthful: LYING ON THE FLOOR MINGLING WITH GOD IN A TIJUANA MOTEL ROOM NEXT DOOR TO A VETERINARY SUPPLY STORE. It's hard to get much more specific than that, isn't it? Sonic madman Robbie Martin has been making peculiar electronic music for a long time now, having previously appeared on compilations from RRR and Overguard Records, and his aesthetic here is one of rhythmic propulsion using bizarre sounds (samples, electronic glitches, homemade noises, etc.) -- break beats are composed from water, foilage, electricity, and other unorthodox sources, and the rhythms themselves are eccentric and accompanied by strange, abstract sound collages. Imagine a collision between Aube, Art of Noise, and a devolved electronic take on Kabuki theater; the results are inexplicable but highly listenable, although none of this would ever be mistaken for "traditional" EBM (or any other form of music, for that matter). Titles like "i am a photograph of my old driveway, the edges of the photograph are made of cartoon cow's teeth, as the cow's mouth closes" suggest at least some inspiration from sonic collage god irr. app. (ext.), and there are echoes of Zoviet France and Coil at work as well, although none of those bands are anywhere near as terminally "out there" as this. The worlds of experimental electronics, sound collage, and beat-heavy dance music collide with a surprisingly listenable level of weirdness. This is psychedelic music for beatboxes and samplers, pointing the way to cut-up dance fury of the future. Or something like that. Whatever it is, it's definitely an unusual listening experience.... Eleven, count 'em eleven, slices of grinding harsh noise fury, so loud, so piercing, so in your face, that the weak listeners will have to turn it down.This is face-peeling stuff; there's no sissified politics or conceptual posturing here, just to audio equivalent of tying you to a chair, plugging in a Black & Decker sander, and applying the working end of the sander directly to your face for about an hour or so. The first ten tracks were originally released as a C60 cassette by Smell the Stench in 2004; the last track is a bonus untitled live collaboration with Grunt, recorded in October, 2004 at La-Bas Studio at Helsinki, Finland. You're either totally down with this kind of balls-out sonic harassment or you can't throw it in the trashcan fast enough. Your sinuses (and possibly your entire skull cavity) will be miraculously cleansed after experiencing this real, real loud while wearing headphones. (Note that DEAD ANGEL cannot be responsible for auditory damage that may result from emulating our questionable listening habits.) I'm sure this is, like, real limited or something, so you may want to look into this while you still have the chance. Cipher Productions continues to win hearts and minds with its commitment to overamplified sonic violence. The poop sheet that came with this disc claims the band's earlier EP sold over three thousand copies with almost no press coverage, and I can understand why -- this is a really good goth-metal band with an amazing singer, Lady Godyva. She has a highly dynamic vocal range and plenty of different approaches, and the band is more than capable of matching her in terms of sheer power. The band plays a raging brand of progressive metal with darkwave overtones, and the playing is excellent, as are the production and the songs. In fact, there are no weak songs on this album at all, which makes it a distinct rarity in today's commercial music realm. This is strong, strong stuff, and highly recommended to anyone into bands like Lacuna Coil, Type O Negative, Bauhaus, Queensrhyche. I'll bet they're earth-shattering live, too. This may be the new definition of splendid skronk heaviness. It doesn't hurt that they went analog for the recording -- the tracks were recorded in 2005 on 1/2" tape, perfect for a band driven by large, reverberating avalanches of fuzzed-out drone and feedback -- or that James Plotkin mastered it; this is one of the densest, heaviest, and loudest drone-rock albums I've ever heard. Max and Leslie Soren remain at the core of the band's sound, with her droning, wispy voice buried under piles of slo-mo bass heaviness and shrieking guitar feedback, but this time around they have some guests (three different drummers and Does guitarist Neddal Ayad on two of the album's heaviest tracks, "sanibel" and "haruspex"), which adds some interesting layers and textures (not to mention an actual beat, even though it's frequently obscured) to the swirling sonic chaos. There's still plenty of serious Earth-worship in Max's shuddering death-drone, but without altering the band's basic sound, everything's gotten a bit more focused this time around. (And heavier. Much heavier.) The quality control (one of the hardest things in the drone ethos to get a handle on, seeing as how one man's "trancelike and hypnotic" is another man's "boring and monotonous") has gone up a notch, too, which is always a good thing. The more restrained and psychedelic nature of the band's earlier works is even present on "windowpane," a lovely and mesmerizing respite from the rest of the album's apocalyptic roar. Mostly, though, the album is about overdriven and exploded sound, the kind of sound that translates into something physically oppressive onstage, the kind of sound that can barely be captured (and then only by people who know what they're doing) on recorded media. True fans of drone-doom would be foolish not to own this. This six-track EP is a throwback to the ethereal pop sound of the early 4AD roster, especially the Cocteau Twins -- the kind of floaty dreaminess that really only works with a good vocalist up front. Fortunately for Hope, she's got the pipes to make it work; even when the lyrics are hard to make out, her mesmerizing delivery means you don't have to understand the words to get the emotional impact. The song structures are fairly simple and straightforward, all the better to keep her voice from getting lost, and the production is clear without being overblown (one of the biggest dangers of the goth / ethereal genre, where bands are frequently tempted to shovel on soaring keyboards and layers of sound with a trowel to the point of being ridiculous). The one mild complaint I have is that the simplicity of instrumentation makes some of the songs sound a bit too similar, but that's probably more of an issue on the producer's end, and something that can be easily fixed on future recordings -- and it does nothing to detract from her singing, which is the main reason to listen to this anyway. Her aesthetic reminds me a lot of Lahannya, another solo singer in the goth / ethereal mode, and fans of Lahannya would be well advised to take a listen to Hope's EP (and vice versa). Bill Horist, eccentric but highly talented six-string deconstructionist, returns with a new album and a new collaborator, Marron (actually Tanaka Yasuhiko, credited with "dubharmonics" guitar). As with all other Horist releases, it's a surreal descent into the world of guitar manipulation, with ten tracks of experimental, processed guitar duets, most of them fairly short, featuring a wide array of bizarre guitar-generated sounds and -- yes -- plenty of conked-out harmonics. With the exception of a few tracks like "A Road Is Never Lonely," featuring crazed, metallic grinding and what sounds like a whole rack of guitars being exploded in rapid succession, most of the album is fairly subdued, in some places almost somnambulistic (hence the title, perhaps?)... but hardly boring, since the sounds and tones the two players generate are intensely harmonic, maybe even melodic at times (although not in any traditional sense). Horist's entire career as a guitarist seems to be rooted in confounding listeners and destroying all preconceptions of what can be done with the guitar, and this album is no exception. Is this a new form of noise-jazz, an attempt at turning art rock inside-out, or just a couple of dudes with perverted ideas about guitar abuse making wild sounds to confuse the masses? Only Horist and his newfound pal know for sure, but one thing is certain -- if you're already down with Horist's past exercises in guitar immolation, then you definitely need to hear this. The cover pretty much says it all -- this is a series of ten musical demolition acts. Pounding drums, whacked-out guitars from another dimension, fuzzed-out bass, and psychotic vocalizing create a sonic tempest from which no sanity can escape. Words like spastic, schizophrenic, chaotic, and eccentric are the order of the day here. They whip up a hallucinogenic fury that's as hard to deny as it is to describe (or assimilate, for that matter); just when things start making sense (well, sort of), they take off in several different directions at once. This is the sound of hardcore freejazz devolving into an art-damaged hissy fit, made even more unnerving by the vocalist's traumatized wailing. Even for a Load band, this is a deranged-sounding unit; I'll bet live audiences are routinely mystified by their shenanigans. Still, they bring the rock -- broken into tiny pieces and scattered to the four winds, true, but when they're not fiddling around making grotesque noises just for the hell of it, they roar with a maniac intensity that's not completely the product of sane individuals. They also incorporate a fondness for grossed-out power electronics into the galloping rock madness, which is always nice. This is experimental post-rock at its weirdest, even for a band with ties to the Providence art-rock / antimusic scene. When they slow down and the guitarist wails while the bassist settles into a minimalist groove, they sound like a dark ambient band being tortured with forks; the rest of the time they sound like they skipped their medication before hitting the studio. Deeply perverse, perversely entertaining, and just more evidence that there are more ways to be genuinely weird and still make interesting music than you ever imagined possible before Load Records came around to demonstrate all the ways music can be completely disassembled. This cd is exactly what the title suggests, a twisted fusion of goth and reggae, at least on the best tracks (like "Amphetamine" and "Darkness"), where dark, droning keyboards play out over fat reggae beats from a drum machine while solo guy Christopher Jackson sings. The overall feel of the entire album has more to do with reggae than goth -- it's really an eccentric reggae album with goth stylings on top -- and while it's kind of bizarre to hear a white dude from L.A. doing reggae, he's actually got a pretty good grip on the concept. In true reggae tradition, he keeps everything simple, including the keyboards, but those simple rhythms and keyboard bleats are awfully catchy. Reggae is all about the groove, and there's plenty of groove happening here, especially on the keyboard-heavy tracks; he's really good at piling on the keyboard drone, which makes for a really interesting sound. Twelve tracks, plenty of island rhythms and whompin' beats, and plenty of good-natured attitude. Reggae fans (hell, maybe even goth fans) looking for new kicks should look into this. This disc by Romanian industrial act Infectator.com is actually two releases in one: The first seven tracks are from the band's 2002 demo, while the remaining four tracks (two of them remixes) are more current material. This is dark, brooding stuff, industrial from the old-school mode, with lots of rumbling ugliness and cryptic muttering, hollowed-out and distant percussion, and strange, brooding sounds designed to jar the senses and alienate the soul. Good reference touchstones would be early Brighter Death Now, early MZ.412, Archon Satana, Masochistic Religion, Cabaret Voltaire, Front 242, and similar bands form the first and second wave of industrial music, especially the ones straddling the chilly divide between dark-ambient and early industrial sounds. The beautiful part of this release and its stark, frequently rhythmic tracks is that there's no hint whatsoever of the more commercial impulses that would eventually pretty much ruin the genre; this was designed to be unsettling and forbidding, and succeeds in commanding the listener's attention without the need to resort to cheap gimmicks or watered-down beats and melodies. (In fact, this is largely a melody-free outing, driven far more by atmospheric drone and noise and machine beats.) Dark, unsettling stuff, even when it's actually danceable (which is more often than you might think), and well worth seeking out, especially if you were weaned on early industrial music. This is the debut album for this band (although they did release an earlier ep called NULL), and if it sounds far better and more accomplished than your average metal band's first album, that may have a lot to do with the band's pedigree -- the band includes former members of Uphill Battle, Anubis Rising, and one player from both Impaled and Exhumed. The band is of a technical bent, with complex (and frequently fast) songs that nevertheless incorporate quite a bit of melody into the crushing riff madness. Guitarist Leon del Muerte's howling death vocals make a nice contrast to the tuneful chromaticism of the guitars, and the playing is exact and progressive; at times the band sounds like a more distinctly metallic answer to Blind Idiot God -- but when they turn up the volume and brutality, they fall unquestionably into classic death metal territory. It sure is strange to see somebody from Impaled in an art-metal band, but it's a strange world these days, isn't it? The seven songs take nearly 45 minutes to play out, so you know the songs have plenty of movements and avant-garde passages, but things never wander too far from the deathlike core. Big, big drums and the occasional fondless for dissonant chords never hurts, either. The wise doom childe down with melodic technical metal will be looking into this. The LPD have been around forever and so has ROIR, the label (originally specializing in cassettes only) that played a large part in documenting the early American punk scene, so it's interesting to see them working in tandem here. The Dots have always occupied a strange place somewhere between goth, pure electronic rock, and industrial dance music, and this album is no exception -- while there are elements of all three genres at work here, they occur in subtle and unexpected ways, and much of the album is far more subdued and minimalist than one might expect, and their choice of instruments is wide-ranging and surprisingly traditional, often employing acoustic guitars, piano, and trumpet in addition to the mechanical beats and synth bleats. At times this sounds almost like a folk album, albeit one dragged kicking and screaming into the world of modern technology and augmented by considerably un-folk instruments, song structures, and ideas; certainly it's far more subdued and removed from anything you might hear coming from the speakers on the local dance floor. With the exception of a handful of tracks built around more familiar electronic figures and beats, a lot of this could almost pass for an unorthodox folk-rock album obsessed with death and mysticism. Props to Silverman for keeping the drone quotient high, and to his partners Martijn de Kleer and Edward Ka-Spel for the rest of the eccentric but accomplished delivery. Bonus points for the totally hypnotic rhythms in "The Made Man's Manifesto," my vote for the album's best track. Old-school LPD fans will find this a fine addition to the band's catalog; newcomers may well be initially puzzled, but can expect to be won over by the band's undeniable songwriting chops and musical taste. It's absolutely ridiculous that two guys -- one on bass, one on drums -- can sound this dense and clotted, not to mention completely manic. The average Lightning Bolt album tends to sound like they ate a dozen bowls of cereal with a very high sugar content and sniffed a lot of glue before stepping up to the mikes, and this one is no exception; in fact, this may be the wildest-sounding album they've done yet, no small feat given their total dedication to overweening musical psychosis. Despite the nature of their lineup, this has absolutely nothing to do with the drum 'n bass genre; this is more like listening to a drill press gone horribly out of control, running amok and eating people. To say the band is "energetic" is sort of like saying the ocean holds a bit of water; if you could plug them into a generator, you could probably power half of Tokyo with one of their live performances. Their recorded output is no less manic, and with the exception of a few brief moments where they slow down long enough to catch their collective breath and indulge in musically sick shit, this is nearly an hour of high-velocity madness, sort of like racing flat-out in the Indy 500 before finally piling into a wall in spectacular fashion. Heavy, crazy shit that's every bit as psychedelic in its own way as the album's cover art indicates. Listening to this too many times in a row will probably turn on switches inside your skull that were never meant to be tinkered with, and probably can't be turned off ever again. More flaming cosmonaut madness from a band that should probably include crash helmets with every release. The band apparently used to be compared to Isis and Neurosis a lot, and while I can sort of see the latter, the former makes no sense to me... frankly, there's a lot more King Crimson (and maybe a nod or two to the Mahavishnu Orchestra) on this album. Then again, the band has changed considerably since the release of its first album, TIME & WITHERING. The original bassist and guitarist left, reducing the group to a trio (they borrowed the bassist from These Arms Are Snakes to finish the album; they've since acquired a full-time bassist and a touring second guitarist). One of the most interesting things about the band's sound is the way they fuse the low, fried-neuron sound of avant-garde death metal with the sophisticated playing of considerably more progressive bands; the result is that the songs are long, sonically dense, and heavy as hell while still suffused with plenty of dark melodic content. This is how King Crimson's RED or STARLESS AND BIBLE BLACK would have sounded if Robert Fripp had grown up listening to death metal. It also doesn't hurt their progressive-metal cred that they managed to talk Mastodon dude Brent Hinds into singing on "At Arms Length." Don't let all this talk of progressive and avant-garde hoohah fool you into thinking they're wimpy or something, though; when they decide to crush your skull -- which they do quite frequently -- they succeed with punishing aplomb. Even better, on tracks like "No One Wished To Settle Here," they manage to incorporate a grinding black metal tone into the guitar abuse (all the better to complement the singer's harsh death shriek) even while drifting into melodic art-metal. There's also some genuinely beautiful guitar work on the bordering-on-ambient rock "Carry On" -- in fact, gorgeous playing abounds all over the disc -- but as tracks like "Wake Me When It's Over" prove, all that prettiness just makes the forbidding crush-groove riffing sound that much heavier when it finally bursts into action. This is exceptional stuff from a band that's frankly a hell of a lot better and more interesting than a lot of the current ambient-metal bands cited by way of comparison. Loud, punishing industrial noise from Romania that's centered mainly around loud (did I mention they're real loud?), piercing feedback and harsh noise processed through enormous amounts of echo -- this is seriously abrasive stuff, probably made in the most minimalist fashion imaginable. Lo-fi and menacing, this is far-reaching noise from the nightmare factory, sonic avalanches punctuated by disorienting peals of endless feedback and what sounds like hallways collapsing in some forgotten underground tomb. Their use of echo is startling and unusual, and gives them a sound that's much different (and far more psychotic, sonically speaking) than the average power electronics outing. Their visual aesthetic reminds me a little bit of Psychologie Abwefront, but the sound (that sandblasting, feedback-drenched sound!) is something else entirely. Seven tracks, all of them blinding in their echo-driven excess, and liner notes in what I would presume is Romanian. Harsh noise devotees, you need to hear this. This trio from the Washington, D.C. area have an interesting sound -- part pop, part art-rock, part pure raging melodic metal -- that defies easy description. The sound of the songs ranges from melancholy pop stylings to metallic layers of sound to languid grooves to other surprising strategies, all without ever sounding forced or artificial. They favor a highly orchestrated sound, and the trio is assisted on record at times by numerous guest musicians, which just adds more layers to the already-complex sound. The band's name is taken from the Italian musical term for a recurring musical fragment, which is entirely appropriate given their fondness for repeated motifs and a tendency to build into movements that sound like a melodic cyclone, especially on "the art of vanishing," probably my favorite track on the album. Despite the inherent artiness of it all, they remain firmly grounded in a sharp melodic sensibility; even when they're veering off unexpectedly in different directions, the drummer keeps everything from falling apart, and the results are frequently hypnotic and melodically mesmerizing. Think of them as a pop band with a tendency to spiral off into progressive realms or an art-rock band with a distinct pop core -- either way, it doesn't matter. Fine, complex, thought-provoking stuff that sounds great even while challenging the listener's sensibilities. This is the fifth document in drummer Mike Pride's ongoing "Scene Fucker" series, a series of live improvisations by ensembles composed of musicians from really different genres and scenes performing together for the first (and probably only) time. Pride has a ridiculously extensive and impressive musical pedigree himself, having played with Anthony Braxton, Eugene Chadbourne, Trevor Dunn, Fushitsusha, the punk band MDC, Jack Wright, and Otomo Yoshihide, among others (many, many others), and currently plays in at least seven bands, including Dynamite Club, Evil Eye, and Big Fucking Sellout. The ensemble presented here -- Pride (percussion), Jessica Pavone (viola), Aaron Ali Shaikh (sax), Gerald Menke (pedal steel), and Brian Moran (electronics) -- has a pedigree just as ridiculous, with its members having played with the likes of Babe the Blue Ox, Lydia Lunch, Mercury Rev, Super Furry Animals, Cecil Taylor, and John Zorn, just to name a few. So they've all been around the experimental / post-rock block a few times, dig? The disc itself is one long track, approximately 35 minutes in length, recorded live at Freddy's in Brooklyn, NY in February of 2003. The sound is very much in keeping with past releases on PE, with lots of peculiar sounds and cryptic strategies unfolding in a distinctly non-linear fashion. It's loose and unpredictable without being overly chaotic and shambolic -- there's a certain sense of direction at work, but one that's more implied than stated outright, with a lot of emphasis on droning lines from the viola and pedal steel as the other players join in in a decidely free manner. Cryptic, yes, but far from unlistenable or indecipherable. It's all about the flow of sound, one that rises and falls, in both volume and density. The biggest surprise is that Pride, who put the ensemble together, plays a fairly minimal role in the proceedings -- when he appears he's definitely adding something substantial to the sound, but he can hardly be accusing of hogging the spotlight (in fact, the viola and pedal steel are pretty much leading the way through most of the piece). Given the involvement of several of the members in pysch / rock outfits, this is a surprisingly subdued piece of work for the most part -- they never get so crazed that you can't follow what's going on, and no one instrument ever manages to overpower the others. It's a nice piece of work from a quixotic assembly of players, and a fine addition to the PE catalog. DEAD ANGEL's Youth of America Intern listened to this one night before fleeing to Portland to escape the diabolical clutches of the Moon Men, and his response was less than enthusiastic, so I was inclined to approach it with caution. After hearing the record (and this is an LP, by the way, although it's also available in the shiny aluminum format for the more "modern" listener), I think the problem is simply that he's too young to remember the glorious days of No Wave. The band is a five-piece from Columbus, Ohio who got together in 2004 to feed at the poisoned tit of skronk rock, and in spite of its modern vintage, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a long-lost artifact from NYC's No Wave scene circa 1978-1980. It's all spastic thrashing about that sometimes resolves into something vaguely resembling straightforward punk-pop before flying off in different directions again, with a guitarist who favors galloping figures and a pounding drummer who provides some semblance of a coherent direction while the others bleat and squawk. They also have at least two singers (one male with an unnerving tendency toward raving madness, one female who alternately sings like a real human being and chirps like Le Rita Mitsouko) who trade off between songs and sometimes rave together. I find the guitarist's commitment to screeching, wailing, and generally fucked-up noises deeply moving, not to mention the band's fondness for pure-bred psychotic noise. Not all of his playing is cranky noise, though; there's plenty of manic surf-guitar, tornado guitar, and melodic punk jizz worthy of East Bay Ray happening here. This is not noise, but rather extremely noisy rock that shambles on violently over insistent beats. It's whacked-out shit, to be sure, but highly energetic whacked-out shit that's far more focused and together than it appears at first glance. (Or is that first listen?) Think of this as the audio equivalent to crisis management, or perhaps a drug intervention gone terribly, terribly wrong. So much of this sounds like a throwback to the classic years of revved-up, out-of-control No Wave that it's like post-rock never happened. Who would have ever thought the No-Wave revivial would begin in Columbus, of all places? EEK! This will make you jump out of your chair on first listen -- the A-side starts out with "phony detective," which begins with psyched-out, low-key twanging, only to have what sounds like a very drunk singer jump in twice as loud as the music. The music itself is rhythmic skronk-rock that rises and falls in volume, driven by pumping bass and drums, that ends abruptly (very abruptly); the second track, "quasar," sounds like a traditional rock band playing stuttering rhythms while doing battle with a Skullflower clone blasting at high volume. This is psychedelic noise-rock with strange ideas about volume and balance, to say the least.... The flip side is just one track, "(b)ring on the curse," with too-loud drums and the return of the drunk singer as the rest of the band makes a godawful noise in the background. You'll either find this a complete revelation (well, maybe) or intensely irritating, but one thing's for sure: this is the perfect record to play over and over when you want to piss off your neighbors next door. If you ever wondered what a drunken collision between the Birthday Party and Skullflower might sound like, this is the record for you, doom childe. Scissortail is no more -- I'm pretty sure this is the final release since Dillon abandoned the name and moved on to putting stuff out as Ferveur Noire -- but this is an interesting way to go out. The first track, "Wither" (not the 13 doom classic, ha!) is a grinding exercise in lo-fi hum 'n throb that shudders along like an auto transmission about to fall out on the highway, one that's gradually overwhelmed by high-pitched melancholy droning and other ugly forms of skronk, until it turns into a battle of wills between a repetitive rumbling noise straight out of Gerogerigegege's 45 RPM PERFORMANCE and more intense wailing. The second track, "And Die," is more intense -- screech wailing and bursts of static explode without warning into full-tilt harsh noise rumbling that grows denser and more clotted, with the screech factor building in harsh unpleasantness, culminating in ugly primal vocalizing and even more dense noise hell that ends abruptly. The flip side of the cassette is taken up entirely by "Your Sweat," another harsh noise collage filled with rumbling bass hell and a full spectrum of frequencies being eviscerated and transformed into white noise like a garbage compactor vomiting up human body parts. Wild screaming noise buried in sonic filth rises up to peel your face off as the speakers vibrate wildly; the screech machine wavers and trembles but does not break. This is the hopeless, broken sound of pure human alienation played out at high volume, with no purpose save making your ears fall off. This is the audio translation of the cassette's bleak nighttime cover, and a throwback to pure old-school power electronics. Good luck getting your hands on a copy.... This is eccentric but catchy stuff; this trio from Omaha, Nebraska combines catchy dance beats, irresistible pop hooks, and a decidedly psychotronic approach, sort of like a more listenable and less scatalogical Mr. Bungle, or perhaps John Zorn on a pop kick. Actually, the Mr. Bungle comparison is appropriate in light of the fact that singer Mr. PanTastic often sounds very much in the same ballpark as Mike Patton, all full of eccentric dynamics and odd voices. The songs are built around more or less "traditional" pop structures, then exploded with strange sounds, whacked-out drum 'n bass grooves, left-field guitar weirdness, and other perverse musical escapades that still somehow manage to keep things hopping with an unshakable booty-shaking groove. Maybe this is actually what Funkadelic would have sounded like if they hadn't all been on drugs. (Then again, after seeing the way the band dresses onstage, I'm not sure these guys aren't sailing the sugar cube seas themselves.) This is unquestionably the closest PE has ever come to releasing a "rock" album, but it's still bizarre enough (and still grounded in sonic experimentalism) to fit in with PE's destroyed-freejazz / avant-garde aesthetic. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself getting up and getting down, just like Beavis and Butthead used to do, at any point during the listening process. The sound of this disc is one of secret rituals and terrifying visions, dead bodies carried through black water in deep underground caverns, prophets who have seen too much laughing madly beneath the starless sky of the Plains of Leng -- in other words, scary shit, doom childe. The sound is a moderately noise-driven variant on dark ambient, but the mood is bleak and chilly, an alienated series of soundtracks from the blind and yawning void. Picking up where the limited (and now sold out) debut ep on Housepig left off, the nine tracks on this disc are dark, cold, and noisy, droning and forbidding excursions into haunted realms and alienated moods. Part of it in undoubtedly due to the sound material, which includes field recordings from temples and caves in Laos, along with bits and pieces from the studio, some dating back as far as 1996. The band has been compared to the likes of Skullflower, Earth, Sunn O))), and the like, but what this disc really sounds like is a diabolical combination of Abruptum (minus all the screaming) and Cold Electric Fire. You'll be paralyzed with dread, unable to decide whether to slit your wrists or hide under the bed until the drone terror dies away. Absolutely essential. The title means "The Battle of Saule," and as the cover makes clear, Skyforger are a pagan war metal band -- but one from Latvia, which lends an extremely interesting aspect to the band. They play bagpipes and flutes, for one thing, and frequently burst into heartfelt Latvian war chants; they also have distinctly non-western ideas about melody and rhythm, which makes them really stand out from all the other metal bands trying desperately to soak up the heavy evil (and swank chops) of original old-school black metal legends like Beherit, Bathory, and Mayhem. They're also really good at capturing the old-school sound, play it furiously with a violent passion, and manage to incorporate obviously Latvian folk moves without sounding stilted or artificial. All the pagan metal bands from the Baltic region (and you'd be surprised how many there are) I've heard so far have been distinctly strange and alien, at least by American standards, but every bit as intense and powerful. Skyforger is no exception, and the excellence of this album -- especially its blend of old and new musical themes and highly sophisticated songwriting, both of which set them light years apart from most war-metal bands -- is even more remarkable when you consider that the album is actually a reissue of their debut cd on Mascot Records (they've released three more since this first came out) and nearly a decade old. Powerful, well-written, and executed with great precision, this is also a true reflection of pagan ideals and the warrior spirit. Essential listening if you're down with pagan metal, war metal, Latvian folk, or plain excellent heavy tunes. This is more than just an excellent return to form; in fact, it may just be the best Skullflower release since INFINITYLAND, maybe even since XAMAN. If the previous release ORANGE CANYON MIND was definitely a step in the right direction after the more tentative sounds of the initial reformation, this is the sonic equivalent of sinking a pick into a rock vein lined with gold. From the initial mind-blowing junk-noise explosion "Lost in the Blackened Gardens of Some Vast Star" to the shuddering death-drone that closes the album ("In the Depths of the Stagnant Pond," where they show all the doom-laden Earth / Dylan Carson-worshippers how it's really done), there's very little dead weight and plenty of shrieking hellnoise to please even the hardcore, old-school Skullflower fan. My personal favorites are "Saragossa," "Void of Roses," and the aforementioned tracks, but all of it is great stuff, nine focused blasts of harsh-edged drone noise, often with a heavily-reverbed cathedral sound and a tendency toward dark celestial drift, the kind of stuff Skullflower hasn't been associated with since CARVED INTO ROSES or OBSIDIAN SHAKING CODEX. There are similarities, too, between this and the best of Total in its more aggressive period, which is hardly surprising since Skullflower at this point appears to have devolved into a Matthew Bower solo enterprise, at least for the moment. Skullflower's canon looms large (and extensive); this is one of the essential ones. Bonus points for the swell, swell artwork, including one of my favorite Skullflower covers. The good news is that this is the first Slayer album in sixteen years to feature the band's original lineup, including uberdrummer Dave Lombardo; the bad news is that it should be a whole hell of a lot better, given Lombardo's return to the drum throne. Which is not to say it's bad -- it's vintage Slayer, bold and fast and punishing, and far more consistent than anything they've done since SOUTH OF HEAVEN -- but while it's heavy as fuck, there's very little that's new here. Even worse, the genius in charge of production buried Lombardo way in the back and somehow managed to get a weird, unbalanced sound that takes several listens to get behind (if you can get into it at all). Given that guitarist Kerry King wrote most of the album and remains obsessed with the same topics he's been running into the ground for the past decade, it's pretty obvious that on the next one, the rest of the band should hold him down and let Hanneman and Araya do more of the writing -- sure, there's plenty of blazing riff madness happening, but seeing as how Kerry never met a melodic figure he didn't immediately throw in the garbage can, the result is nowhere near as fabulous as one might hope. On the plus side, the songs are still plenty ferocious, Araya's death shout still holds plenty of menace, and the cover art is possibly the greatest metal album cover of all time. Let's just hope that next time they get up off their asses and write some really brilliant songs as opposed to just playing real fast and yelling a lot.... Whoa daddy -- this is strange and mesmerizing stuff, presented in a severely cryptic fashion. Strotter Inst. is actually Swiss artist and musician Christoph Hess, who uses five old Lenco turntables and various cut records and found objects to create droning, clunking soundscapes that sound like the rhythmic hum of machines and giant turbine generators. Just to make things a bit more interesting (not to mention confusing to those who aren't hep to the score -- the clear sleeve theoretically tells you this, but you'd have to be smarter than me to interpret it properly), the two tracks on each side play outside-in and inside-out, meeting in the lockgroove that separates them; in other words, you play the first track as normal -- then you have to move the needle to the inside and it will play backwards to the lockgroove between the tracks. Of course, if your turntable is like mine, playing that second track will be the devil's work, and you probably won't be able to play the entire thing (every time I try it, the turntable automatically returns the stylus to the tonearm, which is just a tad irritating). On the plus side, the grim drone from that lockgroove is a nifty sound into itself, one that you could listen to for a really long time if you took the right drugs. The tracks themselves are great -- springy drones with lots of low end and plenty of drone 'n hum -- and the packaging concept (courtesy of Hess, who, like many artists who are also musicians, has an obsession with tinkering with the physical playing format) is definitely striking and unusual. Like the Aluk Todolo single reviewed earlier in this issue, this is also a limited edition of 500. The band is actually a collaboration between members of Wapstan and Shoebomber, and what they favor are long, repetitive drone jams filled with evolving layers of sound. The bits and pieces of sound on this disc were recorded between late 2005 to early 2006, then edited down from many tapes and assembled in June. The result is a series of tripped-out psych mantras with many, many movements in each piece and a wide range of droning sounds. Krautrock is, in theory, the object of veneration here, but I wouldn't know about that -- Krautrock in general kind of makes me all fidgety and stuff, and thus I tend to avoid it -- but this is a lot more interesting, partly because it's so minimalist and (for the most part) relatively subdued. There's also a nice rhythmic component to these elongated jams, and it's generally a slow rhythm at that, which always makes for the best drones. There's nothing particularly electrifying or innovative going on here, but the lengthy pieces here are well-done and filled with great sounds, which is a much better deal if you ask me. Great stuff that's often highly reminiscent of the more eerie and obscure offerings from Drone Records. The band is actually two guys obsessed with Native American themes and in possession of a truly ridiculous pile of equipment (as the flip side of the fold-out insert proves, showing them sitting on the ground in the woods in front a pile of pedals, guitars, drums, and amplifiers stacked literally ten feet high). Sometimes, as on "Tecumseh," they chant and drone (at least at the beginning -- eventually they rev up their motors and start to attack your senses in earnest before returning to the chant and drone motif), but most of the time they shout and pound out tribal rhythms while making ungodly noises with guitars and pedals; sure, the effect is a tad jarring, but what do you expect of a band on Load? And they are definitely a Load band -- there's lots of frantic behavior and eccentric sounds at work here, and the album is a concept album of sorts about lost nations and oppressed people resisting subjugation, which works perfectly with the band's complex playing and delivery. They're all over the map, too, playing complicated hyperspeed freedeathjazz math rock on "Poison Plant," twisted jazz over tribal rhythms on "Hey," combining acoustic folk with noise on "Waterfall," old-school Americana on "George Catlan and the Mandan Chief," mutant strains of jazz with trumpets and more tribal drums on "ML king of the punks," and so on... there is no simple way to classify them or even get a handle on where they're coming from without actually hearing them. Strange, strange stuff, to be sure, but well-executed and definitely original. It takes a twisted kind of genius to come up with an album as out-there as this one and still keep it listenable (although your mother and your neighbors probably won't see it that way). It's good to see that Thirdorgan -- one of the more cryptic and interesting of the second-wave Japanese noise units -- is still around and still up to beefy noise antics. What you get here are five tracks -- an "Intro" filled with junk-noise, bleeping and blooping, and other harsh, broken sounds -- plus four longish tracks, "La Sexorcista" A-D, that are essentially longish collage noise jams. This is old-school noise, divorced of any political subtext or misanthropic urges -- in other words, noise for the sake of noise and nothing else. The "A" track is an extended workout in sound collision, filled with static, glitches, noise, and other ugliness; the "B" track starts out as the overmodulated sound of a Japanese pop record -- talk about cognitive dissonance! -- and eventually segues into more noise chaos. The other two tracks are -- prepare to be surprised here, doom children -- more harshnoise-and-static collages. The album's overall effect is not as blindingly harsh and heavy as one might expect from the description, and its execution (and sound) definitely put it squarely in the tradition of second-wave acts like K2, Contagious Orgasm, and maybe even later sonic manglers like Mammal and Kites. Swell sonic ugliness. Now this is swell -- a noise / antimusic compilation of artists from Nova Scotia with a great title and eleven slices of sonic distemper. With the eleven artists showcased here, anything goes -- there's noise generated by pedals, distorted answering machine messages, backwards frippery, damaged guitar, damaged turntable action, homemade electronics, records played at the wrong speed, hacked-up shouting, and more ways to dismantle and disfigure sound than you ever imagined possible. If your stereo could vomit, it would heave uncontrollably after being sickened by this nonstop procession of glorious sonic filth. Torso's "The Eating" also incorporates elements of droning noise into its decaying sonic palette, always a pleasing thing to hear; there's also plenty of ugly drone content (and acoustic guitar!) in Jef Jef's "Express." Then there's "Wear What," s-Slaytor's track, which sounds very much like someone pounding on oil rig pipes underwater while tripped-out wailing noise rises and falls in the background. Do you burn for the soothing mantra of endless repetition with your cranked-out noise? Heliopause has a swell track for you, "Boats," one of the most eccentric-sounding things here (and that's saying something). This compilation also have the good sense to keep things short and to the point -- only five of the pieces here are over three minutes, and the longest one is just over five minutes, meaning that they don't have the opportunity to wear out their welcome as is often the case on noise compilations. This is noise for the short-attention span generation...! Many, many bonus points for including the artist with the boss name Shit Cook, whose "Cracked Light" is one of the most unusual and violent-sounding compositions on the whole compilation. Now this is a nice drone compilation -- eight tracks from as many artists, beginning with Datashock's brilliant opener "Silence 0," which starts off echoing UMMAGUMMA-era Pink Floyd and quickly mutates into an alien exercise in applying heavy reverb, massive repeating delay, and the Doppler effect to simulate giant machines and robots coming and going. The track from Conversations About the Light, "Collector of Hare Ailment," is a drifting, haunting ocean of sonic fog that wouldn't have sounded out of place on the classic ISOLATIONISM dark-ambient compilation, and Dead Wood's "Speaker Hold" is a hypnotic, noisy exercise in cyclotronic machine sounds; Rotten Piece's "Mass vs. Spain" is a swell and ever-expanding cosmic drone, while the Mystified track "Cliffs of Ice" incorporate found sound, arrhythmic percussion, and pure gritty crunch into their drone swirl. The remaining tracks by Grkzgl, Cheapmachines, and Austin's own Skillful Means are pretty hep in their own right, too. High quality control on the listening end and nice (but not extravagant or complicated) packaging only adds to the album's attractiveness. Recommended listening for droneheads in need of the most current fix. This Canadian label appears to be working on cornering the market on interesting new extreme-metal bands -- not only have they issued the impressive Intronaut disc reviewed earlier in this issue, but this compilation makes it possible for you, the broke consumer, to check out eleven bands from the label el-cheapo. And heavy bands they are, especially The Abominable Iron Sloth, whose "Hats Made of Veal and That New Car Scent" is one of the heaviest things I've heard in a while that wasn't by Celtic Frost. The other best tracks are the ones by The Handshake Murders ("Messenger"), Taken ("Treaded Paths"), Intronaut ("Gleamer"), and Cursed ("The Void"), but truthfully, everything here is pretty punishing. Other bands present include Spitfire, The Smackdown, The Spirit That Guides Us, The Secret, Blessing the Hogs (a band including uberengineer Billy Anderson -- you know, the guy who records for bands like Sleep, Melvins, Acid King, etc., etc.), and Passion. As a nifty bonus, the cd is enhanced and includes videos for the tracks by Blessing the Hogs, Spitfire, and The Abominable Iron Sloth. If you're looking for a cheap 'n dirty guide to a bunch of mind-crushing new bands, now you know where to look, don't you? This is the art-damaged collaboration between the Massachusetts duo Vampire Belt (Bill Nace of X.0.4 and Chris Corsano, who has collaborated with Yod, Jandek, and John Olson, among others) and Can't, the solo vocal / electronics project of Jessica Rylan. The result is ten relatively short bursts of audio madness, with Rylan's homemade electronics doing battle with Nace's warped guitar histronics and Corsano's all-over-the-place freedeathjazz drum rumble. There's some pretty caustic cacaphony at work here, too; it frequently sounds like the entire band is playing in a van that's falling down the side of a mountain. The sound is frantic (it's on Load -- what did you expect, folk tunes?), explosive, and in your face, with hyperactive drumming and spastic, efx-processed guitar blurt hurtling through a dense void of grossout electronic pedal death. Expect lots of crunchy sounds and pained electronic wailing amid the percussion overkill. Weird but good, like unremitting nipple shocks from an agitated dominatrix tripping on bad, bad acid. Bonus points for the tripped-out cover art courtesy of Matt Brinkman. Established in 2004, Vorpat is one guy (maybe; info on the band is somewhere between sketchy and nonexistent) from Bloomington, Indiana with a four-track and a fondness for endless drone. There are two discs here, housed in a striking package (white discs, minimalist art on opaque vellum, all in a clear jewel case); the first is a forty-minute disc of ten tracks of new material, while the second is the reissue of the out-of-print CALCUTTA ep (and consists of exactly one track, not quite thirty minutes long, called "calcutta"). One thing's for sure -- I definitely like the band's style.... The ten songs on the first disc are catchy and melodic instrumental trance-pop with lots of fuzz and great sounds, sort of like a tripped-out collision of early Low, Mogwai, and Joy Division. Simple but effective beats, sparse but tasteful playing on a variety of other instruments (including piano and organ), and fuzzy drone-o-rific guitar add up to hypno-dronepop that's highly worth your listening time. The use of noise, occasional dissonance, and dynamic shifts to throw the pop elements off balance is a nice touch, too. The material is all good stuff, too, and for all the melodic prettiness inherent to most of these tracks, there's also an air of melancholy that keeps the songs from turning into bouncy exercises in pop fluff. The ep's one long track is considerably different but just as interesting, a dronescape that mutates periodically, ebbing in flowing in terms of texture, density, and rhythms. The drone may be constant, but it is rarely static, and intriguing elements (percussion, odd noises, etc.) drift in and out of the drone field at leisure. The sound is both hypnotic and haunting, often spare to the point of minimalism. This is the drone of a dark and mysterious journey through a nighttime underworld. I think this band may be the Emerson, Lake and Palmer of Load Records. It's technically a side-project (Brian Gibson spends most of his waking hours devoted to Lightning Bolt; Rich Porter does the same for Bug Sized Mind), but what a great side-project it is -- Gibson slows down his normally hyperkinetic drum clatter (most of the time, anyway), while Porter piles on giant clouds of melodic funhouse synth, and the result is a modern version of synthed-out prog rock minus the tendency toward navel-gazing. (Keeping the songs short doesn't hurt.) It sounds like Gibson managed to get his hands on a whole pile of old-school analog synths, Moog devices, and who knows what else, and they all sound genuinely gorgeous. Meanwhile, Gibson pulls his weight on the prog-rock end with intense drumming and, when the spirit moves him, insanely complex figures. It all sounds like the soundtrack to a lost cheesy film about swords and sorcery, the kind where the soundtrack rocks more than the movie. In other words, it's great stuff, and worth hearing just for all the weird sci-fi sounds Porter manages to extract from his giant jumble of keyboards. Fans of Lightning Bolt will want to hear it as well just to find out how Gibson approaches the drum kit outside of his usual spazz-rock combo. Now this is real black metal -- and from the U.S., no less. The American black metal scene has advanced considerably in the past few years, with great work from bands like Nachtmystium and Krieg, but this is the closest I've heard anybody in this country come to the classic old-school sound of distant melancholy and blackened pessimism. Xasthur's sound is one of washed-out, atmospheric despair accompanied by hideous, shrieking vocals; on tracks like "Trauma Will Always Linger," Xasthur comes as close to being the American answer to Burzum as anybody's likely to get. There are no commercial aspirations among the eleven tracks here, just a series of dense, forbidding clouds of darkness threatening to freeze your soul until it shatters. Everything is enveloped in heavy washes of reverb that mirrors the feel of prime-meat isolationism (but in a black metal context); the result is a spooky, alienated sound that unfolds with majestic grandeur at its own pace. Xasthur is not interested in entertaining you; sole member Malefic is not here to give you what you want, but to give you what you need -- namely, dark and frightening music that will make you want to burn down churches or commit suicide, I'm not sure which. Maybe both, actually. If you listen to black metal, you need this album. Seriously. This is one of the few occasions in the gore / grind world where the deliberately offensive, over-the-top art and title turn out to be actually tame compared to the contents of the album. This album was originally released in the US in 2004, where it promptly sold out (hardly a surprise, since American metalheads weaned on bad horror movies and trashy porn just can't enough of this stuff); it's since been reissued with an extra bonus track (a perverted "disco" remix of one of the best tracks). Aesthetically similar in a lot of ways to Bloodduster's amazing (and often amazingly tasteless) classic CUNT, this is stone-cold high-quality American grindcore. Even if you removed all the porn / horror movie samples and related depravity, you'd still be left with a strong set of short (and I mean short, as in 31 songs in 24 minutes) but punishing grind jams of a severely bone-crushing nature. This is heavy, heavy shit from two guys who know what they're doing -- the album didn't sell out like hotcakes just because of the rude cover and nasty samples, you know. Make no mistake, though, a lot of people will find the album's content really offensive; track titles like "Buying a DVD Player (Then Raping You With My Old VHS Tapes)," "Desperately Craving Anal Attention" (one of the heaviest tracks, incidentally, and accompanied by some of the most disturbing samples), "Catholic Slut," "Eat Your Entrails and My Kult Ejeculant," and "If I Dismember Your Cunt, Are You Still A Virgin?" should make it crystal clear where they're coming from. I'm sure the lyrics are real rude too, not that you or anyone else will ever be able to tell. Did I mention that the tracks are really, really heavy? Highly recommended for the punishing grind, but only for those with strong stomachs and / or a taste for the sick.
All reviews are by RKF unless noted at the end. Other reviewers are: Amanda, Gafne Rostow, Dillon Tulk, and Neddal Ayad (n/a).
Across Tundras
Crucial Blast
Across Tundras -- DARK SONGS OF THE PRAIRIE [Crucial Blast]
Aluk Todolo
Implied Sound
Aluk Todolo -- single [Implied Sound]
Another Enough Chairs
dead sea liner
Another Enough Chairs -- BRING THAT VOICE TO THE STATE [dead sea liner]
Isounderscore
Arastoo -- THREE [Isounderscore]
Divorce Records
Be Bad / Attack Mode -- split 7" [Divorce Records]
Chapeau
Brise-Cul Records
Chapeau -- DON JAIL ROADWAY [Brise-Cul Records]
Conveniens
Conveniens -- s/t [Convenience Records]
Coughs
Load Records
Coughs -- SECRET PASSAGE [Load Records]
Day Without Dawn
Day Without Dawn - s/t [self-released]
Load Records
Diskaholics -- LIVE IN JAPAN VOL. 1 [Load Records]
Disembodied Voices
Disembodied Voices -- s/t cd-ep [self-released]
Drugs of Faith
Selfmadegod Records
Drugs of Faith -- s/t [Selfmadegod Records]
Fat Worm of Error
Load Records
Fat Worm of Error -- PREGNANT BABIES PREGNANT WITH PREGNANT BABIES [Load Records]
Ferveur Noire
Pitchphase
Ferveur Noire -- FLEETING BREATH [Pitchphase]
Fire in the Head
Eibon Records
Fire in the Head -- MEDITATE / MUTILATE [Eibon Records]
Isolate
Flourescent Grey -- LYING ON THE FLOOR... [Isolate]
Cipher Productions
Gelsomina -- NOSTALGIA [Cipher Productions / MIR]
Godyva
Razar Ice Records
Godyva -- IN GOOD AND EVIL [Razar Ice Records]
The Goslings
Archive Recordings
Goslings -- GRANDEUR OF HAIR [Archive Recordings]
Mystic Dreams
Jennifer Hope -- REFLECTIONS OF AN ENCHANTED SOUL [Mystic Dreams]
Bill Horist
Public Eyesore
Bill Horist and Marron -- SLEEP HAMMER [Public Eyesore]
Load Records
Impractical Cockpit -- TO BE TREATED [Load Records]
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Impulsive Lust
Impulsive Lust -- GOTHIC REGGAE [self-released]
Infectator.com
FIR
Infectator.com -- CORUPT [FIR, Romania]
Intronaut
Goodfellow Records
Intronaut -- VOID [Goodfellow Records]
Legendary Pink Dots
ROIR
Legendary Pink Dots -- YOUR CHILDREN WILL PLACATE YOU FROM PREMATURE GRAVES [ROIR]
Lightning Bolt
Load Records
Lightning Bolt -- HYPERMAGIC MOUNTAIN [Load Records]
Mouth of the Architect
Translation Loss
Mouth of the Architect -- THE TIES THAT BIND [Translation Loss]
Narokoleptik
FIR
Narkoleptik -- IMPULS DOMINANT [FIR, Romania]
Ostinato
Exile on Mainstream Records
Ostinato -- CHASING THE FORM [Exile on Mainstream Records]
Mike Pride
Public Eyesore
Mike Pride -- THE ENSEMBLE IS AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE [Public Eyesore]
Necropolis
Columbus Discount Records
Necropolis -- THE HACKLED RUFF & SHOULDER MAN [Columbus Discount Records]
Psychedelic Horseshit
Columbus Discount Records
Psychedelic Horseshit -- WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? 7" [Columbus Discount Records]
Scissortail
Green Ox Sound
Scissortail -- WITHER cs [Green Ox Sound]
Shinyville
Public Eyesore
Shinyville -- NO SLEEP TILL BABYLON [Public Eyesore]
Sky Burial
audio immolation industries
Sky Burial -- SPECTREHORSE [audio immolation industries]
Skyforger
Paragon Records
Skyforger -- KAUJA PIE SAULES [Paragon Records]
Skullflower
Crucial Blast
Skullflower -- TRIBULATION [Crucial Blast]
Slayer
American Recordings
Slayer -- CHRIST ILLUSION [American Recordings]
Implied Sound
Stotter Inst. -- ANNA ANNA 7" [Implied Sound]
Brise-Cul Records
Tandoori Dream -- SAFFRON SOUNDS [Brise-Cul Records]
The USA Is A Monster
Load Records
The USA Is A Monster -- WOHAW [Load Records]
Thirdorgan
dead sea liner
Thirdorgan -- SATANICO PANDEMONIUM [dead sea liner]
Divorce Records
v/a -- DIE LIKE AN ANIMAL DIES [Divorce Records]
Brise-Cul Records
v/a -- DRONE SEASON II: THE MISSION [Brise-Cul Records]
Goodfellow Records
v/a -- END TIMES [Goodfellow Records]
Load Records
Vampire Can't -- KEY CUTTER [Load Records]
Vopat
Vopat -- TELL THEM WE ARE DEAD [Inam Records]
Load Records
Wizardzz -- HIDDEN CITY OF TAURMOND [Load Records]
Xasthur
Hydra Head
Xasthur -- SUBLIMINAL GENOCIDE [Hydra Head]
Slefmadegod Records
XXX Maniak -- HARVESTING THE CUNT NECTAR [Selfmadegod Records]