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Ennui is a C15 tape release that offers up two short ‘n’ brutal wall submersions from the French master of HNW Vomir. The release appears on Belgium’s Under Label, and it comes in a edition of 30 copies.
Noite e Neblina offers up a selection of lo-fi, muffed & difficult to define dark ambience from this Brazilian one man project, which apparently has some connections with-in the Brazilian black metal underground.
For those familiar with the 90's Japanese noise scene, the name Aube sticks out from the pack. During a time of all out harshness and a worldwide explosion of noise fans, Aube kept challenging the genre while others rested on their laurels and released CD after CD of unimaginative static. Sure, this doesn't sound any different from a handful of artists and the current noise scene (sorry HNWers, but you bore me!), but I don't intend to sell Aube short. Although Nakajima Akifumi left us with many great releases throughout his career, we'll never get to see the full range of his vision. Sadly, Aube passed away on September 25th, 2013.
Since 2009’s overwrought Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain Current 93 have been opting progressively for a more stripped down sound harking back to their popular mid 90s records. Both Baalstorm Sing Omega and especially 2012’s Honeysuckle Aeons were quieter affairs, featuring fewer electric instruments and a broadening of the band’s well-worn apocalyptic folk pallet to include Middle Eastern instruments and liberal use of Theremin. Tibet seemed to benefit from the less cluttered music space as he delivered his most introspective sets since 2000s lament to his father on Sleep has His House.
Ink Runs Recordings presents Dark Feed, the 2nd release by French noise project The Girl With The Stanley Knife. For those unfamiliar, TGWTSK is one Charlotte Skrobek (wife of label-runner and noisician Julien Skrobek) who utilizes contact mics as her weapon of choice. Dark Feed is a live recording presented on a 3” CD-R.
Hail Death is NYC band Black Anvil’s third full-length since the band’s formation from the ashes of the hardcore band Kill Your Idols. Now, there’s no genre as obsessed with “purity” as metal (If you are a false don’t entry!), so as I understand, Black Anvil has gotten some flak for their hardcore roots. Probably from basement-dwellers who listen to nothing but bands with no more than one album and one hundred likes on Facebook. I’m of the opinion that what matters is the music, not the band’s image. Like most metalheads I consider the vast majority of metalcore/deathcore/brocore to be an affront to those with ears, so I’m glad that there’s just a touch of the band’s hardcore roots on Hail Death.
The Boring Machines label has returned with another obscure transmission from the Italian psychedelic underground, a lonely and sparse guitar record called "How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck if a Woodchuck Could Chuck Wood?". This is both the artist name and the album's title.
Backyard Decay is another slice of oppressive ‘n’ darkly brutal walled noise from I Watched You Die. This release comes in the form of a C45 tape, that features one long ‘wall’ per side of tape.
Eating Guts gives the listener a punishing 100 minute shot of crude, lo-fi and old school walled noise from this German project, which is obsessed with 1980’s Italian gory cannibal movies.
This tape from Crystal Lake Tapes arrives in a very stark, almost xeroxed, black and white inlay. It contains three tracks, essentially all harsh noise walls, amounting to about half an hour; with each named after a campfire story (or rather I presume they are - I recognise one of the titles from a Tiny Tim story-piece, “The Viper”). The inlay is notably spartan and mysterious, with precious little information to offer beyond titles and artist.
Saxophonist and composer Tom Challenger has created a number of ambitious modern jazz ensembles in the last several years, notably Dice Factory, who released a self titled album of very technical fusion in 2012. His musical entity is an 8 piece called Brass Mask, likely so named for their predominantly brass instrumentation, and indeed one should expect a bright, blaring, heavily harmonized brass chorale for the entirety of this album, titled "Spy Boy".
Following spending the late nineties/early noughties as a bassist in punk rockers The Starvations, Jean-Paul Garnier has since been experimenting with the non-idiomatic use of sound “to take the listener on an experiential trip, not merely through the expectation fulfillment on which music has operated for so long, but into new territory all together,” as his website puts it.
As cliche as it is to say a band needs no introduction, DEATH needs no introduction. However, maybe some of you stumbled upon this review while researching death by leprosy. If so, good luck, and don't type too hard, you'll need your fingers for picking off the rest of your scabs. Since I've already insulted you, I might as well explain that Death is a legendary death metal (*shock*) band from Florida. Founded as Mantas by metal virtuoso Chuck Schuldiner in 1983, Death's early history was riddled with line-up changes, relocations, and frustration. In 1987, they scored a three record deal with Combat Records, and the rest is history. Their debut, Scream Bloody Gore, was met with great fan approval, and their follow up, Leprosy, cemented their place in the death metal legendarium. Now, 26 years later, Relapse is giving Leprosy the deluxe reissue it deserves (the sixth in their campaign of Death reissues).
Hungarian sound artist Ákos Garai presents Subway Budapest. The recording was recorded as a contribution to Audiotalaia net label’s Subway Sound Composition, which I can only presume is an international subway recording project.
It’s tough to find a genuinely terrible, offensively shitty black metal band. I’m actually having a tough time coming up with the last time I heard an album that actually pissed me off due to how awful it was. The vast majority of the time, the worst black metal can get is simply derivative, uneventful, and altogether boring, as is the case on Hellgoat’s 7” EP End of Man.
The Long Night is a new collaboration between US ambient legend Steve Roach, and up & coming electronic ambient artist Kelly David. The release is subtitled ‘Atmospheres for the Night Journey’, and it finds the pair creating a sixty one minute album that takes the listener on a soothing ,yet at times haunting, journey into nocturnally focused ambient mood-scaping.
Albedo 0.39 was the 8th album from this celebrated Greek electronic composer & musician. It was originally released back in 1976, and it saw the highly talented electronics whiz pushing the (then) perceived boundaries of synthesizer music by adding in complex layers of synth & other instrumentation, as well as bringing in elements of jazz fusion , symphonic prog, blues, gamelan & early dark ambience into the albums make-up.
Here’s another great split of dark ‘n’ deranged blackened US noise from Altar Of Waste- the Minneapolis based noise/drone/HNW label of Cory Strand(Fantome De Sang, Lethe, solo work, etc). This CDR brings together two Southern Californian based projects- Gnashing Of Teeth with their crumbling/ extremely lo-fi mix of blacked metal/ noise. And Static Goat with their hellish & psychedelic take on overloaded noise scaping.
“Urban Megafauna” is the 17th album from this wonky ‘n’ unwell Missouri based multi-genre project. And this 2013 release offers up fifteen slices of wacky ‘n’ deranged song craft that mixes together elements of: Off-kilter synth pop, jaunting day-glow synth melodies, crooked world music rhythms & trilingual vocals, arcade game sounds, slurred & unwell white-boy rap, male cartoon meets slight unhinged frat boy vocals, wonky IDM & off angle dips into other electronic sub-genres, and what-ever- else-they–fancy throwing in.
Here’s a short, wee tape from Svartvit. Two sides, amounting to about twelve and a half minutes of harsh skree. The title references the 1935 novel by Elias Canetti, as well as the act of proclaiming judgement on those condemned by the Spanish Inquisition; this judgement would often result in public execution by burning and indeed, the inside of the pro-inlay has such a woodcut.
Michael Blake's music is a truly 'modern' form of melodic jazz, taking the prerequisite influences from 60's hard bop and combining them with refreshingly bright and colorful synth work, noise textures, and the sort of minimalist repeating chord progressions commonly used by post rock bands these days. "In the Grand Scheme of Things" is his 5th full length since his debut in 2000.
Finland, the land of metal, all sorts, from Beherit to Lord Vicar, Lordi to Hanoi Rocks and every sub genre in between; a veritable treasure trove of metal diversity. Finnish metallers Kuolemanlaakso may be somewhat new to the metal arena (they formed in 2010), but their new album “Tulijoutsen” is a fabulous beast of a record. Members of Kuolemanlaakso are diverse too, coming from bands such as Chaosweaver, Swallow the Sun, Cult of Endtime and The Nibiruan. Tulijoutsen (Fire Swan in Finnish) lyrically was influenced by Finnish poet Aani Kouta.
Bleak Existence is a Canadian based walled noise project, and it’s one of the less prolific HNW projects working in today’s worldwide scene, putting out maybe one or two releases a year. But when it does put something out it’s always worthwhile & rewarding, and this new C70 cassette is no exception. It offers up two lengthy slices of detailed & subtle shifting walled noise that is both creative & moorish.
This split C60 cassette offers up two lengthy slices of brutalising & mostly fixed walled noise from these Serbian & Croatia based projects. Dead Body Collection will need little or no introduction to the seasoned wall-head, as this highly prolific project has released just over 100 releases since it started in 2009. Placenta Liposuction, also started off in 09 as well, but this project is a lot less prolific only releasing around a release a year for the last few years…through in all the project has put out around 18 release . This fairly recent tape is the third time these two projects have done a split release together.