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Trepaneringsritualen, Sweden's master of dark industrial meditations, returns with a new offering on Cold Spring. Entitled Veil the World, this offering is actually not a new recording, but a CD reissue of the limited edition cassette originally released in 2011 on Kosci. The reissue is handsomely presented in a 6 panel digipak and fully remastered. I've been a huge fan of Thomas Ekelund's project since last year's massive Perfection & Permanence album, so I've been eagerly awaiting another Trepaneringsritualen (or TxRxP for short) album to fill the void. Veil the World is yet again another grim and caustic blend of occult inspired ritual industrial and power electronics, deeply blackened to the core.
Ah, classic death metal...is there anything more comforting? While a lot of the comfort comes from the nostalgic warmth of discovery, there's something to the tight, brutal simplicity of good old, Tampa-styled death. Sitting outside on a nice spring day with a pipe, a cup of tea, listening to death metal while being pelted from above by inchworm droppings really makes one happy to have been exposed to lots of life's simple pleasures.
I’m really starting to get sick of occult, riffless black metal that seems to be in vogue: bands that would rather spend a quarter of their album chanting, playing little ritualistic drum beats, and looping dark ambient tracks than laying down the metal law and bringing the riffs. What’s even more puzzling is that these bands are ostensibly worshipping Satan. Everyone knows that Satan is more pleased by neckwrecking riffs than incense and occult triangles; someone needs to let these guys know that they’re screwing up. Achterontas is a Greek band playing in the aforementioned style, preferring to let their general occultness and nonmetal portions of their music do the Satan worshipping for them, while the neglected metal potions languish by the wayside.
Here’s a cdr from the reliable Bored Bear Recordings label, featuring the work of Sleep Column. “Scar” is one long track of wall noise, just shy of fifty minutes. The photocopied sleeve comes adorned with grainy pictures of gnarled hands - an appropriate image for the sounds within.
Gordon Sharp's Cindytalk began as an industrial/post punk crossover band with a full band line-up in the 80's, but since reactivating in 2009, has been a pensive ambient noise solo project. His new album "touchedRAWKISSEDsour" is a colorful firestorm of sharp and visceral psychedelic distortion, arranged into undulating loops and hypnotic near-repetitions.
We're far enough out of the 80's now for the young folk (said as a older than my time codger) can look longingly at a time before their births and wax nostalgic about an era they never saw. Taking inspiration from music and movies of the era, the trend in modern retro is toward coldness of synths with horror flourishes (well, the ones that come across my desk, anyway). Michigan's GosT is no exception. Simple in execution, Behemoth hits quickly and gets the head nodding, but doesn't really provide a lasting impact.
Bored Bear Recordings presents Cold Water/Withering Life by GRY SMK. The was released as an extremely limited edition CD-R (12 copies) in the Spring of 2014, so I’m thinking you might have to dig a little to find a copy. As with most Bored Bear Recordings I’ve come across, there’s little details available about the artist or the particulars of the release. I suppose it’s part of the label’s mystique. GRY SMK is the moniker of Alex Pearson based out of Nova Scotia. In addition to GRY SMK, Pearson is the man behind In Negatives and D/A A/D, acts I can’t say I have any familiarity with.
Tony Tears are a Italian project who brew up a quirky sometimes wonky mixture of doom metal, moody horror to space fed 80’s styled synth fare, woozy psychedelic ‘n’ kraut rock grooves, mournful ‘n’ creepy cinematics, with the odd foray into more experimental fare. This three CD box set brings together a selection of rare & out of print work from the project from between the years 2000 & 2014
K. Leimer is often seen as a slightly more experimental & American version of Brian Eno- due to his ability to create varied, creative & memorable sonic fare that mixes together elements of ambience, synth craft, early electronica, world music & beyond. This rather excellent collection focus in on his work from between the years 1975 & 1983, and it’s a most rewarding, varied & highly consistent release. It comes in two formats- either a double vinyl version, or a single cd version- I’m reviewing the cd version.
With Drudkh’s slump extending from one to two albums with the release of Eternal Turn of the Wheel in 2013, I was just about ready to write the band off. Drudkh going post-black metal/shoegaze was not something that should have happened in any universe. But happen it did. And although I was disappointed with the band going out with a fizzle instead of a bang, you can’t fault the band for releasing a half-dozen quality albums over half a decade. Well, this was all before the release of A Furrow Cut Short. Against my better judgement, I gave the preview track a listen when it dropped. It was OK. Better than the last two albums, that’s for sure, and that was enough to get me looking forward to this release. While A Furrow Cut Short doesn’t reach the heights of the band’s earlier material, it’s certainly a promising step up from a low point in an otherwise respectable career.
Here’s a rather pleasing, majestic, and dramatic drone release from this long time & highly prolific US based project. The CD takes in eleven tracks that move between lush slow-mo strings based ambience, and short slices of field recordings from Japan.
Klaus Lang is an Austrian composer, concert organist, & improviser. This vinyl release offers up two twenty to twenty five minute pieces of thickening & slowly shifting sonics for the organ.
Since the early 1980’s this Belgium based project have carved out their own distinctive take on ritual music, which moves between ambience, surreal primal-ness, and tribal electro industrial music. This recent release on Zoharum is part reissue/ part new release- as it takes in 1991 EP The Ritual Should Be Kept Alive (1) , with three tracks from the same period, and expands the releases running time to around 70 minutes.
I’m reviewing a very simple promotional copy of this album, a plain cdr in a plain card wallet; on top of this, Lawrence English and Werner Dafeldecker are both new names to me - so it really is a “blind” review. The album has eight tracks, coming in at a pleasingly concise thirty-three minutes; essentially covering a wide range of sounds.
After five years in the making, Italian quartet Ad Nauseam have finally unleashed their debut upon the metal world. This was not time spend idly, either, as this album is impeccably crafted, played, and mastered. So much care went into this record that it's hard to believe it's a debut. The song structures and dedication to recording are akin to some of the mightiest bands around, and show the immense talent of a band that clearly doesn't settle for second best. Ad Nauseam's commitment to complex beauty and crushing death is very welcome in a time when speed and nearly unlistenable technicality are flooding the scene.
Lingua Fungi's "Melankhton" is an album of contemplative and serene soundscapes that retains the usual Aural Hypnox air of mystery, but manages to be the most emotionally open, melodic and diverse output I have heard from the label.
These past couple years have been great for Greek black metal. With awesome new releases from Varathron, Macabre Omen, Nocternity, Spectral Lore, Hail Spirit Noir, etc. in just the past couple years alone, it appears the scene is flourishing. Of course, this revival would mean nothing without at least some new blood. Enter Ithaqua, a promising duo playing old school black metal with the blood of Rotting Christ coursing through their veins. Released earlier this year on tape by Iron Bonehead, the band’s first demo Initiation to Obscure Mysteries shows a glimpse into this promising young group’s future.
Laube is the slowest band I have ever listened to. This 2xCD compilation, released in 2014 on Small Doses, includes two of their previous albums.
Here’s a four CDR release from this Greeley Colorado based project- it's work focuses in on creating often dense yet texturally rewarding walled noise that is themed around works of literature. And this release is based around Honoré de Balzac's Lost Illusions- an 18th century three part literary realism novel that charted the path of impoverished & impatient man making his way in upper class French society.
Midnight Heat was the hardcore roughie themed walled noise project of multi project linked west Yorkshire based noise maker George Proctor ( of Mutant Ape, Murder Book, many other projects, and runner of uk noise label Turgid Animal). This four cassette box set collects together the project’s whole discography in one place, along with a never before released bonus track. If you enjoy the crude & sleazed walled noise works from the likes of Rough Sex Quartet you’ll surely get a kick out of this.
This seven-inch distills two very famous names in HNW down to around five minutes each - not a duration that either is too well-acquainted with! Both The Rita and Dead Body Collection should hopefully be recognisable to you, as quality wall practitioners and the two labels involved do them proud; presenting a very professionally put together package. The stark, back and white design, features lots of photographs of stockings - in myriad forms; as well as one picture of some frogmen carrying out a raid, using manned torpedos: both themes which should be recognisable to fans of the two projects. Both acts get a side each of black vinyl, to work their magic. (According to the “Discogs” website, the vinyl was unfortunately incorrectly stickered; with each side labelled as the other project’s side…)
Long time contributors to the dark ambient scene, Jarl and Envenomist team up with Zoharum to put on disc a sonic reenactment of the Tunguska Event. This mysterious explosion over the Russian region of Tunguska has been studied and written about for the past 100 years, Cold, synthy, and low, Jarl and Envenomist capture the space and mystery around the event quite well. Spread over five tracks, this sonic journey takes the listener back in time to the cold, bleak, Russian woods where the mysterious explosion flattened almost 900 sq mi without warning.
German-based experimental label Geräuschmanufaktur presents a split cassette (C20) between Creation Through Destruction and SSRI. Creation Through Destruction hails from Serbia and is the harsh noise project of Aleksandar Nenad, perhaps better known for his wall-making prowess as Dead Body Collection. SSRI hails from Finland and is the moniker of Pekka PT, also known for his work in Sick Seed and Gelsomina.
Whenever I receive a new title to review, I always like to play the game “Guess where this band is from” during my first listen. Sometimes I’m totally off the mark, but with others I’m dead on the mark as regional trends shape the music. In the case of Sovereign’s Nailing Shut the Sacrosanct Orifice, the predominant Swedish riffs are laced with a sort of intimate, worldly American atmosphere that was impossible to miss. Blending two different styles Feels a little more real, more personal, and perhaps a little more evil for it.