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Over the years, I've been called a numb skull, called people numb skulls, and even gotten very drunk and HAD a numb skull, but I've never heard of the metal band NUM SKULL. Originally released on LP by Medusa in 1988, NUM SKULL's Ritually Abused quickly went out of print. 26 years later, Relapse unearthed this criminally underheard thrash classic and reissued it on CD, LP, and Digital formats. What's it take for a lost album to get the Relapse reissue treatment? Let's take a gander.
The 3 Leaves imprint presents Processes & Potentials, a full-length CD-R by Icelandic composer/sound artist Bjarni Gunnarsson. Released in 2013, this offering is the outcome of Gunnarsson’s compositional preoccupations over the span of 3 years of his life.
Throne of Sacrilege and Impurium are two new American projects united together on Unleashing a Cacophony of Destruction. This is actually Throne of Sacrilege’s first release whereas Impurium released a demo back in 2012. Given that both bands are brand new; this split offers an excellent opportunity for them to prove their mettle – a trial by fire if you will.
This second volume in the Underworld Transmissions series offers up another two slices of seemingly improvised & eerier ritual ambience from the mysterious Finish based Helixes/Aural Hypnox collective.
France Jobin is an up and coming deep listening and avant garde soundscape artist whose 3rd album was recently released on Baskaru, titled "The Illusion of Infinitesimal". I heard her 2012 album "Valence" a while back, and wasn't entirely able to enjoy or connect with it, giving it a mixed review.
Well, another Altar Of Waste release and thus another professional-looking package from the label. Its quite simple compared to some of the more elaborate items that Altar Of Waste has been recently releasing, but smart and effective, regardless. The imagery establishes that the theme of “Dark Dimensions” is UFOs and alien abductions and, for some reason (which I can’t elaborate on), I want to say that there’s a 1950s “retro” tone to this. The cdr has six tracks: five shorter ones - all below six minutes in length, and one long, twenty-minute plus, closing track.
Nightbringer is without a doubt the biggest and baddest bringer of darkness on the US side of the pond. Unlike the innumerable hordes that espouse their dedication to chaos, there has always been an air of authenticity about this group that sets them apart; an indelible legitimacy that so many other bands attempt in vain to cultivate. And while my tastes never quite lined up with what Nightbringer released in the past, I’ve always admired the sincerity that so clearly birthed their music. This same sincerity is evident on Ego Dominus Tuus, the band’s fourth full-length, but is coupled with a level of musicality and poise that elevates the album far beyond anything the band has previously released.
This two CD set on Cherry Red’s El label brings together five long out of print albums, which move through exotica, ethnic tinged easy listening fare, and exotica tinged lite jazz. The albums on offer here come from between the years 1956 & 1962, and it’s fair to say the quality of the albums is a more than a little mixed-going from: bland & campy, to the enjoyable-if –rather-disposable-novelty, onto genreal rewarding & replay-ble work.
Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation is part noise show memoir, part scholarly debate on the Japanese noise form, and part noise history lesson. The just over 300 page book attempts to tell the story of the Japanese form of noise created by the likes of Merzbow, Incapacitants & Masonna, and it’s effect on American shores. But I’m afraid to say I came away from the book both disappointed & frustrated.
German ambient drone masters and all around experimental wizards, Troum, need no introduction. However, their first release, Dreaming Muzak, may not be as well known as some of their other material. Originally released on cassette in 1998 (post-mainstream usage of cassette and pre-hipster embrace of it), Dreaming Muzak was re-released on a very limited (100) CDr in 2005. Zoharum is making sure that this gem finds its way to more ears by releasing Dreaming Muzak on CD and streaming/download via Bandcamp. After hearing quite a bit of Troum over the past couple of years, it's great to hear where it all began and how close to their original sound they've stayed, and at times, how far they've experimented.
Somnolent Shelter Records presents Kwiat Paproci, a full-length CD by Annna. I couldn’t really find any information on this act other than Annna seemingly hails Poland. Annna plays some crushing harsh, hyper fast cut-up noise that eerily sounds like another Polish act I gave effusive praise earlier this year called Sleep Sessions. It makes me wonder if it’s the same gent that does that project (and more recently Purgist) or if it’s just the Polish waters.
“Watching My Body Burn” offers up a brutal & low-end focused slice of walled noise, which is both intense & sonically descriptive in it’s unfold. This is the fourth Volume in Altar Of wastes suicide themed series 12 Suicides, and it came in an edition of 15 copies.
{ } is a recent addition to the world wide HNW scene , and like a few artists with-in this scene, there is much mystery behind it- so it’s location, origin & personal make-up are all unknown. Open The Faucet is the projects first release, and it comes in the form of a C30 tape- that features two side long tracks. The project brands it’s take on walled noise as ‘Cold Electrocution Static’, but I think it’s best to describe what’s on offer here as (mainly) fixed, dense & brutalizing HNW.
Experimental, often ambient textural guitarist Mike Fazio has been active since the 80's, and recently grabbed my attention with a string of thoughtful, emotional and out of the box recordings under various aliases including orchestramaxfieldparrish, ÆRA and A Guide for Reason. His music is filled with glassy melodious tones of ambiguous origin: if they were truly all sourced from guitar, that is a feat indeed.
Wram is a new name to me, but “I Don’t Know Where You Lost Your Eye” arrives on a familiar label. Bad Rip Series is a side-label of Julien Skrobek’s Ink Runs Recordings - one of the more exciting ventures around recently. Both labels tend to have simple, effective, striking packaging and this Wram release is no different. The cdr contains one long track, just over eighteen minutes, which covers a fair amount of Harsh Noise ground.
It seems like every time you turn around, there's a new dark ambient project rearing its head. Although most tend to cover the same turf without adding anything new, some add a bit of their own touch and create something that stands apart from the pack. Isolator's debut, Culture and Principal of Anti-Human Exaltation, comes as a nice surprise. While not glaringly different, Culture... has enough working within its layers to keep if from being a faceless, dark, drone among a sea of low, drawn out notes.
The Crónica imprint presents Never So Alone, a full-length CD by long-running sound artist Simon Whetham. Based out of Bristol, U.K., Whetham’s sonic vocation since 2005 has been laboring with field recordings. This passion has taken him all over the world in search of sounds, from the Amazon Rain Forest to (in the case of Never So Alone) the streets of Lisbon. This particular album has an interesting story behind it. Whethem experienced an expanded stay in Lisbon after european airspace was shut down because of the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Taking advantage of his time there, he decided to do want any field recordist worth their salt would do; traverse the surrounding geography armed with a variety of microphones to capture the sounds around him.
The Divination of Antiquity is the latest album from British black metal band Winterfylleth, their fourth one since being signed to Candlelight Records. Winterfylleth (which means winter full moon in The old English language) formed in 2007. Their purpose was to honor Englands’ cultural heritage and bring awareness to Englands’ folklore, landscapes and ancestral past. They have also become one of the fore runners of newer British black metal bands along with Wodensthrone and A Forest of Stars.
Auditor is the HNW/doom/Industrial project of Chicago, Illinois based Brandon Elkins. This two disc released on Altar of Waste is themed around the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer. And it offers up two forty minute plus slices of oppressive, chilling & intense walled noise that flirts with a death ambient industrial feel.
This three way HNW split is themed around mythical monsters from each respective artists cultural heritage…so we get a Loup Garou( werewolf) themed wall from New Orleans based Nightmare Castle. A Southern Sasquatch themed one from Texas based Fouke, and a Leshy( a eldritch woodland based spirit) from Serbian based Dead Body Collection.
Sammath’s fifth full-length Godless Arrogance is the band’s first release since their previous album five long years ago. Continuing along the same vein as their earlier output, Sammath marries pummeling death metal with more aggressive elements of Swedish black metal in an effort to wage all-out war against humanity.
Crucial Blast brings us the rerelease of T.O.M.B’s 2009 limited album Pennhurst along with their 12” Xesse. Together it represents a rare collection of black ambient industrial noise. Material for Pennhurst was recorded at Pennhurst State and Norristown State Hospitals, both were (and in Norristown State Hospitals situation, still open) notorious mental institutions that unfortunately didn’t always protect those who desperately needed it.
Psychedelic and krautrock label Hubro have released a number of quality 70's flavored instrumental albums in recent years, including such artists as Bly de Blyant and Astro Sonic. Norweigen improvisatory trio Cakewalk's Hubro debut "Wired" came out in 2012, and this, "Transfixed", is their second album. This is my first experience with the band.
Troller are a rather mysterious Houston Texas based project, who create a dark and reverb heavy brew of: 80’s bleak synth pop, dreary dark wave, slurred Goth music, doomed bass reverberations, shoe gaze, and retro dark ambient dwells. This self titled release is their first( and seemingly only) release-original it appeared in late 2011 in a cassette only form on Los Angeles based tape label Living Tapes, and has gone on to be reissued in Mp3, vinyl & finally CD form…I’m reviewing the most recent release, which is the 2013 CD release on Handmade Birds.