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Ranger are a Finish metal band who mix together old school trash, NWOBHM, and 80’s fist pumping metal. Skull Splitting Metal offers up a selection of rare & out print tracks from the bands early days- and simply put it’s a great fist punching, beer spilling, and head- banging ride.
Here we have a pro CDR reissue of Enbilulugugal’s 2013 full length- the project creates an overloaded, messy & mangled mixture of black metal & noise. And this album offers up just of an hour of grim yet slightly tongue-in-cheek blacked & noisy chaos.
The Sultans are a two piece finish project who create a raw, repetitive & stark brand of boogie rock ‘n’ blues. This 2014 on Ektro( home of loop riff based genre mixing Finish masters Circle), is a twenty three track compilation which brings together a selection of tracks from the bands career- the tracks here date from between 1995(when the band started) & 2009.
Eclectic Norweigen musician Erik Honoré has been active for a long time now, beginning in the early 90's as part of a band called Velvet Belly. In the past 15 years, he's released a number of recordings that blur the line between experimental jazz, modern classical and art ambient music.
As a general rule of thumb, I try to avoid reading label spiels and press releases - I like to see and hear what the actual release, the artefact itself, has to say to me. So, having read the information on the God site, my opinions on this album changed quite a bit.
Originally released in 1992 on Tatra Productions, When's The Black Death is a sonic recreation of the plague that swept through Norway in 1349, taking two-thirds of of the country with it. Based on the series of drawings featured in Theodor Kittelsen's Svartedauen, Lars Pedersen takes the listener on a structured, rollicking journey through a dark time in Norway's history.Historic instruments add an air of credibility to the recording, but unfortunately, some instruments and loops push most moments toward the goofy side.
Gruenrekorder presents 52°46’ North and 13°29’ East - Music for Wax Cylinders by Merzouga. The duo of Eva Poplin and Janko Hanushevsky offer a single track CD utilizing historic wax-cylinders from the Ethnologisches Museum Dahlem in Berlin. Gruenrekorder, an imprint with a penchant for field-recordings, always seems to have an interesting story behind the making of each of their releases. This disc is no exception.
Along with the rest of Inquisition’s back catalogue, Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm is getting a facelift courtesy of Season of Mist. I speculated that the change of cover art was an attempt to distance themselves from Kramer and NS accusations, but perhaps this is to unify all of Inquisition’s releases with similar artwork. The reissue of Ominous Doctrines is another of Paolo Girardi’s, one that looks an awful lot like Chalice of Blood’s Helig, Helig, Helig. Again, he’s immensely talented, but his covers often look very similar due to reoccurring themes and a limited color palette, and so I prefer the original, especially on the full, folded out version as seen on vinyl and the A5 digipak. There’s something about that massive, trippy skull that fits the music so much better.
Here’s a collaboration between to between two respected, troubling, and uneasy drone projects. Culver is the Tyneside based project of Lee Stokoe, and has been active since 1995. And La Mancha Del Pecado is all the work of Ciudad Juarez, México based Miguel Perez, has been active since 2009- both projects are fairly prolific( as solo artists & collaborators), and as this releases title suggests this is the 5th time the pair have collaborated together.
Richard Glover's ascetic chamber music opus "Logical Harmonies" is well titled, a selection of process pieces clearly dictated at least in part by mathematical processes that result in curious symmetries. However, unlike the deeply uncomfortable dissonance and alien quality of math derived music like Schoenberg's serialism, Glover's music has a rounded, mesmerizing smoothness, a consistent hypnotic cadence.
Returning with their first full length in almost eight years, New York's Skinless are back with their newest slab of heavy, brutal death. Their third release from Relapse Records sees the quintet returning to their classic, late 90's line-up. Skinless shows that despite trends and fads in the death metal world, brutal, crushing grooves never fail to get the blood flowing. Only the Ruthless Remain is seven tracks of pure, unadulterated, death fury that'll get any metalhead stomping, screaming, and air guitaring around his kitchen.
Heart Shaped Box Productions presents Abstract Expressionism, Part 1 by Vitaly Maklakov. The Russia-based sound sculptor is perhaps better known for his HNW output under the guise Light Collapse. This pro-pressed CD-R was released last November with only a slim 15 copies made.
Here we have the 31st album from long running, highly distinctive & influential English post punk band The Fall. And I’m happy to report this time around the band are in fine, often challenging, yet rewarding form.
This cd release offers up two albums worth of prog bound & often lined bass synth music from the late 1970’s & early 1980’s. On offer here are two rare albums from the Bruton music group- a British music library company who released some of the more creative & varied works of the music library genre in the 70’s & 80’s.
Here’s the second in series of recent reissues of Sky releases on Esoteric Recordings/Cherry Red. Sky were an English/Australian instrumental progressive rock group who existed (in one form or another) between the late 70’s & mid 90’s, and created an often approachable brand of classical influenced rock music & fusion. Here we have the bands second album, which originally appeared in the form of a double vinyl album back in 1980- reissued as a cd / DVD double set.
You know those days where you wake up and then go to bed without accomplishing anything at all? That’s basically the feeling you get from Nahtrunar’s Symbolismus, which is especially disappointing, considering the album is thematically about the time of year when the world of the spirits connects with ours.
Extreme electronic minimalist / Line label founder Richard Chartier and Australian avant garde composer / field recordist have teamed up for "Built Through", something of a bizarre take on a 'remix album'. Each has taken sound material recorded by the other and processed it through a number of experimental means. Focused primarily around droning, synthetic hums, the result goes beyond ambient or soundscape music into some kind of experimental sound research.
For the duo's 3rd album on art ambient / deep listening label 12k, titled "Akari", Iluha brings intimate, domestic soundscapes sourced primarily from piano and guitar, characteristic of the label. This is my first experience with Iluha, so I can't compare it to their previous albums.
Two years ago, ritual dark ambient master Harlow MacFarlane released the first part of an ambitious interpretation of the Tree of Death. The second and final installment of this wonderfully dark and sparse production comes to us on a limited edition (500), 6 panel Digi Sleeve from 77th Cycle. While similar in tone to the opening piece, Part II takes a less familiar route to get its message across. Funerary Call is one of the most solid projects out there, so it's no surprise that, despite the near minimal, unorthodox approach, he manages to hammer another one out of the park.
Profound Lore Records presents Frozen Niagara Falls, the new massive full-length by Prurient. Currently available as a 2xCD and digital release (with 3xLP and cassette versions to follow), at 91 minutes it’s quite the beast to digest. Dominick Fernow, the mind behind Prurient, should need no introduction. Fernow has been toiling in the noise underground since the 90’s and is one of the few acts of the genre to attain a modicum of mainstream attention. In addition to Prurient, he runs the label Hospital Productions, spent a spell in Cold Cave and has more recently been performing dark minimal techno under the guise Vatican Shadow.
Marching To The See( yes See, not Sea) offers up a selection of prime live recordings from The Resident’s 40th anniversary tour that took place through-out 2013/2014. The CD offers up twelve of tracks culled from their length & odd career, and as you’d expect from The Resident's this is far from a safe or nostalgic look back that most projects would do at this point in their career.
Valborg are a German project who blend together elements melodic yet chugging doom, simmering & slow 80’s synth moodiness, theatrical yet dark metal craft, and a pinch of gloomy pop. Romantik is the bands 5th full length.
Reviewing legends like Gorgoroth always presents difficulties. On the one hand, everyone knows that they’ll never top their unholy trio of Pentagram, Antichrist, and Under the Sign of Hell, so naturally everything following is, by extension, the band not living up to their own greatness. On the other hand, the albums that made them legends were released almost two decades ago, so expecting them to equal those heights is bound to be met with failure. Gorgoroth is well aware of the fact that they can’t create an album in the style of their first three albums, and have been moving away from that sound for years now. Instinctus Bestialis furthers that trend, taking a route curiously taken by Mayhem the year earlier: adding death metal to their repertoire.
Mental Martyrdom offers up a sixty minute slice of urgent, manically swirling & intense walled noise from this long running & highly prolific Siberian based HNW project.