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Following a demo and two EPs, French death metal duo, Skelethal, unleashed their debut LP on Hell's Headbangers this June. Channeling old school American and Swedish death, Skelethal's Of the Depths... pummels the audience with no frills, classic death metal. Don your leather, strap on your bullet belt, and thrash your way through this solid debut LP.
Nightbringer were formed in Colorado in 1999 by vocalist/guitarist Naas Alcameth and former guitarist/drummer Nox Corvus. Terra Damnata is their fifth full length release, however the band have released a number of splits with the likes of Aluk Todolo, Dodsengel and Abigor to name just a few. Their last album 'Ego Dominus Tuus' was heavily influenced by the big guns of the Scandinavian Black Metal scene, and whilst those classic influences remain, they have toned their sound into something more uniquely their own.
Ayreon is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Arjen Lucassen. This, their ninth and most recent album, The Source represents the latest in the Forever/ Planet Y saga that was originally thought to have reached its conclusion with the album 01011001, which was released in January 2008. The Source is best described as a prequel to that album and is the first album in the saga chronologically.
Five tracks, one minute per track made up of noises from guitar pedals and the mixing board. My first thought prior to hearing this was “this is Soliloquy For Lilith, as covered by Napalm Death”. And that thought was correct, and its good. However, this is apparently part of a series (five in five) from the label Silber Records, and just the latest release in that series.
June 2017 sees one of Norway's long time metal stars (Ivar Bjørnson of Enslaved) changing gears and releasing an ambient album. Under the moniker BardSpec, Ivar's transcendent vision is brought to the world by By Norse, which is his own label, too. Ambient has many flavors, and because of this, often times artists making the jump often eschew the subtleties and miss their point completely. Fortunately, Ivar's passion can be easily seen on Hydrogen, and the drifting, zoning out with pleasure that comes along with good ambient is very present.
Here’s a pro-printed and (I presume) pro-duplicated tape from No Rent Records. The front cover has a close-up of an eye, whilst the inside features a nicely confused photo of what looks like a ruined building. This sense of microscopic viewing, but also obscured vision, is something that carries over to the contents of the cassette. The release has two long tracks, one each side, amounting to about 30 minutes of music.
In keeping with Gruenrekorder's pedigree in curating immersive multi-media experiences centred on field recordings, Angus Carlyle's In the Shadow of the Mountain does not disappoint. The work consists of fifty 100 word texts and 33 split page photographs (presented in two accompanying booklets) and a composed series of field recordings captured over a three year period in the Picentini mountain area of Southern Italy.
This is a very smartly presented package: 2 CDs in a fold-out digipak, complete with a glossy booklet. The Westerlies are a brass quartet, two trumpets (Mulherkar and Hensler), and two trombones (Clausen and de Koch), and the discs contain a mix of compositions from the individual members, plus pieces by Ellington and Ives (for example).
Mother of Abominations, Angelic Foe’s second album, follows the critically acclaimed debut Oppressed by the Heavens released in 2012. Written by Annmari (Arcana and Sophia) and video games sound designer Samuel Lidström, this nine track album sountracks a dramatic and melodious invitation to worlds of mysticism, haunted by otherworldly creatures.
Cadabra records continues its pummeling release schedule this month with their recording of Robert W. Chambers' The Yellow Sign. Once again teaming up the vocal talents of Anthony D.P. Mann and the musical skills of Goblin's Maurizio Guarini, The Yellow Sign is once again resurrected through current media. With both the retail and deluxe versions containing liner notes from scholar S.T. Joshi, this release is sure to please any horror fan.
Originally released in 1981 Madhouse was Italian produced US shot slasher film, which here gets it’s first ever blu ray release from Arrow Video(both in the UK & US). It’s certainly a curious, though not completely successful blend slasher, euro gore, deranged priests & killer dogs with a US southern gothic setting. Oh and it also landed up on the UK's video nasty list in the 80’s
The Chap are a British avant pop rock band formed in 2000. Their 8th and most recent album, "The Show Must Go" came out in 2015. This is my first time hearing the band.
The Doctors Of Madness where a 1970’s British band that never really fitted in, with their heady & often haphazard blend of art rock, proto-punk, & pub rock. So as a result during their initial lifetime (between 1974- 1978) they never got the recognition or praise they truly deserved. Perfect Past is a recent CD box set that remedies this issue as it brings together the band's first three albums, plus bonus tracks, and a fairly thick inlay booklet
When you think of animation- what comes to mind?-maybe the many films of the Disney studios, or possibly the more edgy & cult out-put of Japanese anime. I’m sure when you think of animation you don’t think of shock, horror or revulsion. Sure you had adult cartoons like Fritz The Cat, and of course the more extreme horror anmie of the likes of the Urotsukidoji series or Wicked City- but at the end of the day these lightly shock, and in reality they where just cartoons, which as a art form does seem somewhat removed from both shock & any feeling of reality. Where The Dead Go To Die, is a feature length animated film, that bloody rips-up, brutally rapes, then spews–up what you expect from the form, and creates one of the most unrelenting, disturbing, and wholly depraved things you’ll ever have seen.
Another release from the sound-art side of Germany's Gruenrekorder, Komplex is a collaboration between saxophonist Roger Döring and electronic improviser Konrad Korabiewski. Recorded over two years in a variety of locations and different acoustic spaces, Döring, who also improvises on c clarinet, provides the material which Korabiewski manipulates into unfamiliar shapes or adds to with mostly subtle electronics and field recordings.
Bubba the Redneck Werewolf is a 2014 film directed by Brendan Jackson Rogers, also known for a host of spoof comedy short films including Jurassic Job Hunt and Baywatch of the Caribbean. The film stars Fred Lass as Bubba, Malone Thomas as Bobbie Jo and Mitch Hyman as the devil, and is only Rogers’ second attempt at a full-length film after his feature length debut Flashback in 2011. Bubba is certainly the more interesting of the two features, however his shorts have thus far eluded me. The film is based on Mitch Hyman’s long running comic book series and Hyman himself, as already mentioned, stars as the devil.
Masami Akita’s Merzbow needs no introduction to anyone who has even the slightest passing interest in the industrial or (japa)noise scenes. With coming on for 300 albums released in a 30 year period Akita has proven not just his longevity as an artist, but also he’s continued to develop creatively.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe brings together elements of classic haunted house horror, unreeling mystery, realistic-though-never overplayed gore, a great cast, and a very tangible feeling of both dread & fear. All to create one of the more distinctive, downright unsettling, and original horror films I’ve seen in some time.
Here’s a four CDR set from The Ebony Tower, taking the novel Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami as its theme. At this point, your reviewer will confess that they’ve never read a word of Murakami in their life, so… The front cover has a human figure with a ram’s skull, sat reading, and drinking a cup of presumably tea or coffee. This has no meaning to me, but no doubt readers of Dance, Dance, Dance will nod knowingly. The set has four discs, each with one long track, ranging from a short 38:39 minutes, to a much longer 1:12:06 minutes. All are fine works of wall noise.
Gruenrekorder has been one of my favourite labels of the last few years. Their output traces a line from socio-political academic works like Hein Schoer's remarkable The Sounding Museum to documentary style field recordings and in this case, complex, composed works of sound-art. The blurb for R.Schwarz's The Scale of Things notes its distant relationship with classic musique concrete but emphasises the transformational approach taken by Schwarz and his combining audio processing with modular synthesis. The result is a rather dark and engaging suite of pieces that attempt to capture something of the chaos and indeterminacy of the natural environment, amplifying it through studio techniques and electronic sound. The cover art gives some indication to the compositional approach, eschewing the type of formal style associated with music concrete; instead, presenting a confusing collage of monochrome environments and magnified elements that could be insect, plant or otherwise.
Making Summer more wondrous for the third year in a row, How Do You Are? gives the world the fourth volume of Too Slow to Disco (can't NOT count their Ladies edition). Yet again, DJ Supermarkt culled the crates for slow, grooving, aural sunshine. Whether slow disco, or sun-drenched yacht rock, the tracks on Too Slow to Disco, Vol 3 bring about a bright, fun vibe that continues for eighteen smile inducing tracks.
Eerie Lurking On The Sensors is a C90 from late 2016, and it features two side long slices of seared, extremely thick, and multi-layered walled noise themed around doomed astronauts trapped out in space.
It’s fair to say for the most part the walled noise/ static noise/ noise texturing genre often focuses in on darker, bleaker & grimmer sound & themes. So it’s always nice to see a project that’s trying something a little different. Here we have the first release from this Paris-based project, and it blends together static noise elements with often moody-yet- occasionally tuneful synth matter.
Sogra is another project from the highly prolific Russian industrial/noise/ambient artist’s Vitaly Maklakov(Light Collapse, Kromeshna, and Obozdur). Here we have 2017 CDR releases, which feature three twenty plus minute examples of weathered & atmospheric walled-noise.