Album Review: Primitive Man - Immersion

 

I have a review of the gruesome new Primitive Man album over on Scene Point Blank today. Immersion triggered something existential in me that I did not expect. I hope the severity of this experience is reflected in the review.  

Check out the review of Immersion here. 

Grab a copy of Immersion from Relapse Records here. 

Interview: Oozing Wound

Image thanks to the band

My conversation with Zack and Kevin of Chicago-based sludge and thrash space-lords Oozing Wound is now playing over at CHIRP Radio. For this episode of the podcast we talked about the dangers presented by reopening music venues, making and playing music in the post-apocalypse and the band's new video for "Surrounded by Fucking Idiots," co-created and starring Sarah Squirm. It's a seriously wild ride and I'm pretty stoked that I can to share it with you today. 

You can check out my conversation with Oozing Wound at CHIRP Radio's site here, or listen below: 

CHIRP Radio · Oozing Wound INTERVIEW

Here is the video for "Surrounded by Fucking Idiots." Consider not watching it on a full stomach:

Album Review: Sharhabil Ahmed - The King of Sudanese Jazz

 

Have you heard of Sharhabil Ahmed? Well you have now! Ahmed is a forward-thinking and uniquely gifted musician with a career spanning decades and who was once rightfully crowned The King of Jazz. A collection of his works has been reissued by Habibi Funk out of Berlin and you can now read my review over on the CHIRP Blog as part of their Critical Rotation series. 

Check out the review of The King of Sudanese Jazz on the CHIRP Blog here. 

Grab a copy of The King of Sudanese Jazz from Habibi Funk Records here. 

Album Review: Carlos Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson - Chicago Waves

 

CHIRP's Blog is running another Critical Rotation! This week I checked out Chicago Waves, the new collaboration between Carlos Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. It was first performed and recorded at the album release show for Jeremy Cunningham's The Weather Up There in Chicago earlier this year. Thank god someone had the for thought to record the set because it is unequivocally one of the more evocative jazz performances of the year! 

Check out my review of Chicago Waves on the CHIRP Blog here.

Grab a copy of Chicago Waves from International Anthem here. 

Album Review: Mamaleek - Come and See

There is a specter that lurks in the urban wastes of the Unites States. It haunts every rehabbed factory space that now sells artisan pizza and craft beer. It streaks down the thoroughfare of every new shopping corridor and hi-rise apartment development, screaming silent bloody screams into the night. It tails every rideshare. Its sits with you, looming over your shoulder as you enjoy a vegan, gluten-free pasta with your partner in a rehabbed bank that sits by a river that once was a means of shipping goods all over the world, but now is just another body of water that marketing executives and bankers have claimed for boating and drinking White Claw. It glares at you from under the brim of a tattered baseball cap and over a torn cardboard sign as you take the on-ramp to the highway back to your miserable apartment in what was once a Ukrainian Church. It is an apparition that the urban poor must maneuver around in their daily struggle to survive, but that more privileged individuals pass through like it was made of air. The shade that haunts these places is the spirit of homelessness, housing insecurity, and displacement. It thrives in high population density spaces and ensures that those who toil in these areas never know a restful sleep. This spectral malady is one of a stew of rancid spiritual torpor that seeps up through our society's cracks and is part of a foul legacy left by the United States Government's failed public housing projects and initiatives.

Hamstrung from their inception by racists and vicious protestant moralists, Cabrini-Green in Chicago, Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, and other developments across the nation shared space in the minds of your average middle-class idiot with the distant warzones they heard about on the news, or dens of serial killers that they read about in pulp graphic novels. The reality was much different. Public housing in the 20th Century was just that. Housing. Places where people lived. Working people are treated as disposable in this society, and it has always been a fact that the wages they earn do not adequately cover the expenses of living, in even substandard conditions, in most urban environments. Public housing was meant to correct for these moral and economic failures, but the project was quickly discarded by government officials who instead sought to punish the people living in these spaces for their poverty. The proceeding decades since the Government abandoned and then depopulated and destroyed its housing projects (in that order) have seen a collective amnesia overtake the popular imagination. Hardly a word is spoken about the programs and structures that were once synonymous with tales of urban terror and suburban flight. The people who lived in these sacrifice zones remember though, and they still have tales to tell.

Come and See is the third album from the experimental black metal project Mamaleek. It is inspired by the lived experiences and public perceptions of band's central members, brothers who perform and record anonymously. The brothers grew up in the public housing projects of their native California, and from a young age, were well aware of the way the world saw them and the place they lived. More specifically, Come and See is about Cabrini-Green and the way it scared the fabric of America's mind, poisoning all attempts at urban renewal that involved working and poor families for over half a century. The message of the album though, is applicable to the noxious public perceptions and incredibly Government failures of any and all of the public housing built in the post-war period.

While Mamaleek has always had an expansive sound, on Come and See they take a special interest in blues and jazz, which they present here in abstract form, pushed to chaotic limits. "Eating Unblessed Meat" has an unhinged and broken blues groove and an off-kilter rhythm reminiscent a half-drown Jesus Lizard, and "Cabrini-Green" features shifting percussion and upper-cutting and crashing melodies that combine to create some eerily dissident jazz. "Whites of the Eyes (Cowards)" begins with thumping heart percussion and a strained trumpet before transitioning into a shrieking march of terror, adding additional unnerving instrumentation as it progresses, while "Street Nurse" is a febrile, psychedelic nightmare. Come and See is the sound you hear while you stand in the long shadow of one of this country's most titanic failures: its hostile disinterest in meeting the most basic needs of its most vulnerable citizens.

Grab a copy of Come and See from The Flenser here. 

Interview: Insight

 

Photo courtesy of Insight

If you head over to New Noise right now you can check out my interview with Mark and Jeremy of pioneering SLC hardcore band, Insight. I got to chat with them via email about their new album Reflection and got their thoughts on the state of the world and what 7" they'd most like to see reissued. They also provided some solid recommendations for vegan eats in SLC and beyond. So bonus if you're into that type of thing! 

Check out my interview at New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of the Insight's new LP Reflection from Mission Two here. 

Album Review: Faim - Hollow Hope

 

Denver hardcore crew Faim have been tearing it up lately, grabbing a lot of positive attention from for their self titled 7" and split last year. Now they have a debut LP out and it is knuckle-to-nose knockout! 

Check out my review of Faim's Hollow Hope over on New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of Faim's new album from Safe Inside Records here. 

Album Review: Vader - Solitude in Madness

Disney owns Star Wars. This means they also own Darth Vader. The crass commercialization of this character is now just another shade of the grey goop of nostalgia that serves a single master. A single hegemonic overlord of culture in the United States. Darth Vader, like so many things that you once cherished in your childhood, is now just one cog in an elaborate scheme to convert every dollar you spend to escape the hell scape of your reality into the marginal gain of a single conglomerate. But you know who Disney doesn’t own? Polish thrashers Vader, that’s who. Vader are their own dude and they’ve answered to no one fucking else since 1983. Sure, they’ve changed their sound over the years to incorporate more death metal flourishes, and yeah it's brought them closer in quality and feel to bands in the vein of Decapitated and Nile, but they did this of their own free will, not because they thought it would move cereal box unites or goad parents into buying tickets to an amusement park (in fact, if your parents are anything like mine, they probably instinctively hate Vader's guts). Solitude in Madness is Vader's sixteenth studio LP and it doesn’t deviate in style or quality from any of their previous releases over the past decade. And that fact is 100% fucking excellent because Vader flat-out fucking rule! “Into Oblivion” is a crushing death-thrash crusade that pushes the band’s sound into the epic red with ferocious guitars and pummeling percussion reminiscent of Kreator. “Sanctification Denied” combines Death styled OSDM with cutting Megadeth guitars and choruses. Later the band flexes their speed-metal muscles on “Emptiness” which harkens back to the style of their demos, while “And Satan Wept” gives their sound a ‘90s spin by embracing a head-banging Pantera groove. No one is sicker, and no one cuts through the crap quicker than Vader.

Grab a copy of Solitude in Madness from Nuclear Blast here.

Album Review: Léve Léve: Sao Tome & Principe Sounds 70s-80s Vol. 1

 

Formerly known as the Chocolate Islands due to the high volume of coco they exported while under the colonial rule of Portugal, the African islands of São Tomé & Príncipe, located in the Gulf of Guinea. The two islands have a unique, shared popular culture as well as a style of folk and soul music only found there. This unique culture form combines the influences of Europe, Africa, and the Americas and is known as puxa. This style took shape in the late ‘70s following the islands winning their independence from colonial rule. Refining elements of European popular music, with the studied reproduction of rhythms from continental Africa, and combining elements of traditions from all over the Atlantic trade routes, such as semba, merengue, kompas, soukouss, and coladeira, puxa is characterized by a vital energy, thin, high-pitched guitars, deep basslines, and ricocheting polyrhythms. Léve-Léve is the first collection of recordings of its kind distributed with in the US, and is named after a common phrase on the islands, which translates to “take it easy.” Party music for the musically omnivorous that comes highly highly recommended. 

Grab a copy of Léve Léve from Bongo Joe here. 

Album Review: Moor Jewelry - True Opera

When I was coming up in the '00s, the worlds of hip hop and punk felt worlds apart. Despite owing their origins to the hollows of the English speaking world's former manufacturing bases, and both acting at times as the language of the unheard,  the genres were often viewed as oil and water in the eyes of rock fans. This seems more the byproduct of certain fans' biases and the influence of certain commercial interests, labels, and distributors than any inherent facts or qualities of either genre in either conception or history. Honestly, you don't even have to dig to find fruitful cross-pollination between the two. As early as 1981, Blondie had released the single "Rapture" which featured Debbie Harry spitting bars (more or less competently) about a wild night out with a man from Mars. The pioneering hip hop label Def Jam was founded in part by Rick Rubin who got his start playing in a punk band The Pricks and the legendary rhyme rapscallions, the Beastie Boys started out as a hardcore band. Fast forward to 1992 and you will find the inverse, when rapper Ice T dropped the self-titled album for his band Body Count, a shocking (for the time) combination of metal and hardcore punk that became the scourge of pearl-clutchering, Tipper Gore-moms and state-sanctioned bullies alike due to its infamous single "Cop Killer." Hell, even Dee Dee Ramone released a rap record at one point… Ok, so mistakes were made, but you get my point.

In recent years the synthesis of punk and hip hop has become more common and more thoroughly embraced by music fans who are coming of age in the milieu of a seemingly post-genre revolution happening one Soundcloud mixtape and self-released Bandcamp project at a time. Amongst the more stable of these experiments is Moor Jewelry, a collaboration between Philly based experimental noise rapper Moor Mother and producer Mental Jewelry. Their new project's debut album True Opera combines elements of both artist's progressive, cryptic and dark hip hop styles with elements of post-hardcore borrowed from angular, poet-rockers Quicksand and the angsty pioneership of Glassjaw. They are joined on the record by Philip Price, drummer of the ethereal metal band Kayo Dot, providing grit to the live beats and propelling the mix towards catharsis. 

Opener "True Opera" has a Gang of Four x Fugazi vibe, while "Look Alive" is driven by a trembling breakbeat and a Refused-esque chaotic groove. "Judgment" is evil and bluesy sounding and "Eugenics" feels like a mash-up of Bad Brains and At the Drive In riding a cresting wave of justice and revenge against genocidal state policies and the ghouls who administer them. True Opera is a record that already feels timeless to a certain degree, while clearly emerging from this singular moment in history.  

With the elites of the world seemingly tripping over each other to drop any pretenses of priority, opting instead to grab whatever they can that isn't nailed down before abandoning the ship of society, it seems like it's more important for the rest of us to bridge the gaps between us to stand and support of one another in solidarity. Whether these divisions be racial, historical, or even as marginal as one's taste in art, it's time to fill in the moats and join forces. As Montenegro explains on Moor Jewelry's label's page, "[f]or people my age there was a shift away from punk rock. [But] Crass was right about everything." A-fucking-men, brother.

Grab a copy of True Opera from Don Giovoni Records here. 

Album Review: Speed - S/T Flexi

 

I did a brief write up for New Noise of Australian hardcore band Speed's new flexi from Flatspot today. It's a trip down under that punches straight through memory lane for fans of east-coast youth crew and '90s beatdown. Fucking fantastic stuff! 

Check out my write up on New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of Speed's self-titled flexi here. 

Album Review: Inner Turmoil - Raised Through Aggression EP

                       

I've got a review of the new Inner Turmoil EP Raised Through Aggression up over at New Noise. The PA hardcore boys have cashed out some of their NYC HC chips for cold hard death metal on this release. The results are absolutely epic! 

Check out my review on New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of Raised Through Aggression from Upstate Records here. 

Album Review: Chad Taylor Trio - The Daily Biological

Take a deep breath. Close your eyes and count to three. Onu, dos, trio? My Spanish may need a little work. While I look up a local bookseller who can deliver an English to Spanish dictionary, why don’t you give the smooth harmonic flow and cascading intrigues of the Chad Taylor Trio a try? Lovingly woven free jazz phases orbiting around the impeccably timed percussive personae of one Chad Taylor. The ranks of the titular Trio are filled out by saxophonist Brian Settles and pianist Neil Podgurski and together they perform chatty, engaging compositions that are surprisingly restrained for being largely improvised. 

In case this is your first encounter with the man, Chad Taylor is a renowned improvisational jazz drummer and founder of the Chicago Underground Duo, along with trumpeter Rob Mazurek. Taylor grew up in Chicago, later moving to Philadelphia, and has provided inspiration and percussion for nearly every noteworthy improviser of the last thirty years, including Fred Anderson, Pharoah Sanders, Nicole Mitchell, and... I could go on, but I think my figures would be worn down to nubs before I could complete an exhaustive list of his collaborations. Suffice to say, he’s in demand, and after listening to his latest effort, The Daily Biological, it should not be hard to see why.

The first track off of The Daily Biological “The Shepard” puts Settles conversational sax playing front and center, backed by a robust interplay between Taylor’s cymbal work and Podgurski’s nimble key dance. “Prism” has a touch of Caribbean-inflected bebop ala Elmo Hope, while the tense “Resistance” is deliberately paced and contemplative, “Untethered” sustains this tempo with more classical, Stravinsky-esque flourishes, and “Recife” has a heavy Brazilian influence while maintaining a free jazz spirit. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway. The Daily Biological is a sublime record. One that just might be a contender for as a new addition to the Chicago free jazz canon.

Grab a copy of The Daily Biological from Cuneiform Records here. 

Album Review: In the Company of Serpents - Lux

Lux is the fourth studio LP from Colorado’s blackened sludge doomer, In the Company of Serpents. Lux is the Latin word for light, and the concept behind the album ties into the study of alchemy and mystical medieval sciences. As frontman and bandleader Greg Netzorg expounds on the group's Bandcamp page, the Prima Materia or “root essences” of all material manifest in the universe fall into three categories sound, mind, and light. To “illuminate” these themes further, the band has selected a reimagining of the tarot’s Sun arcana for the album’s cover. That's enough about the conception, what about the compositions!?! “The Fool’s Journey” is reminiscent of a western rendition of the crushing sludge-doom of Ghost Brigade, while the trudging pummel of “Archonic Manipulations” shares more in common with the progressive death metal elements of Ulcerate and Cult of Luna, distinctions that is instructive in the myriad of variations through which humans experience a sense of bareness and deprivation. There are also haunting country ballads, such as the Tom Waits summoning “The Chasm at the Mouth of the All” and the quicksand blues of “Prima Materia.” The Sun is the source of all life on Earth, but it can strip that life from you, leaving nothing by long pearls in the sand, to forever bath in the rapturous dominance of its ceaseless, penetrating downpour. 

Grab a copy of Lux form In the Company of Serpents's Bandcamp here. 

Interview: Arriver

 

Interview by Arriver

This week for the CHIRP Radio podcast I spoke with Dan Sullivan of the Chicago-based progressive death metal band Arriver. Dan was kind enough to chat with us about running a business in the era of COVID, reviving the sounds of an obscure psychedelic rock band, how history influences his band's music, and what makes Chicago's metal scene so unique.

Arriver has a new single out called "Holy Glow." Its a cover of a song by The Ophelias and you can check it out on their Bandcamp page here.

You can check out the interview either on CHIPR's site here, or by listening below:

CHIRP Radio · Arriver Interview

Album Review: BackxWash - Stigmata EP

 

I've got a short write up of the new EP from Canadian hip hop artist BackxWash over on New Noise. Stigmata is sticky with the blood of a fresh kill and dripping with pain and anger, anchored in a homage to Memphis horrorcore with the aid of heavy metal guitars and fraying noise rock distortion. It's all very exhilarating in that "fear for your life" kind of way. Check out my write up here. 

Album Review: Blu & Exile - Miles

 

Critical Rotation is this fun little thing I do for CHIRP Blog every two weeks or so. This week I covered the latest album from LA duo Blu & Exile and their new album Miles. It's a beautiful glimpse into their lives in LA, viewed through the many shades and hews of history and culture that color their lives. Check out my review here, and grab a copy of Miles from here. 

Album Review: Naujawanan Baidar

 

Critical Rotation is back on the CHIRP Blog! This week I took a look at the new album from N.R. Safi, a tribute to his Afghan roots he is calling Naujawanan Baidar. Recorded directly to tape the transportive and comfortingly strange album transposes the pop and rock of '70s Afganistan into the modern context of high fuzz sound collage. Check out my review here, and grab a copy of Feeding Tube, here. 

Album Review: Krigshoder - Krig I Hodet EP

So are you just going to live your life like a rat in a maze? Eat the corn starch your parents feed you and sit in front of an iPad until your old enough to be shipped off to an institution where you get a minimal level of socialization, learn to follow directions without questioning them, and maybe even pick up a skill or two that some vampire king might find useful later. Then after a decade or more of this kind of conditioning, hopefully, one of those vampires mentioned above will hire you. If not, it's ok. You'll just die. But if you do, oh boy! That means you get to live! And then you get to let those son-of-a-bitch vampires drain the life from you for the next half-century, while you drink liquid wheat, eat more corn starch and get outraged over things you read through online. Maybe in your spare time, you can find someone to make a smaller version of yourself with, and then you can all share this terrible fate together. This can be the sad tale of your rat-trap life if you want it to be. Or you can choose to live like a human being. Maybe you go through a lot of the same motions for a time, but your conscious mind should always be looking for an exit. Maybe you discover that you can burrow through the walls of the maze and make a den for yourself, out of sight of the vampires and maze overseers. Or maybe you choose to band together with other rats, swarm the vampires and overseers, ripping out their eyes, gnawing off their fingers and toes, and establish a free rat republic where there was once there only a cruel hoax. Whatever you decide, I'd recommend listening to Krigshoder debut EP, Kig I Hodet, while you sort out your plan of attack. A hemisphere spanning conspiracy, stretching from LA to Norway, Krigshoder spews a boiling, Anticimex-esque slurry of crust and early '80s inspired hardcore, that will melt pavement, corrode siding, and generally make nice, neatly gentrified neighborhoods in an inner-city near you next to uninhabitable. "Ditt Eget Stalingrad / Hatet" feels like a recently tared and persecuted Circle Jerks, on the run from a mob of "concerned" citizens, on the verge of transforming into a werewolf and turning the table of the chase, from a bid for survival, into an outright blood bath. "Kalde Kropper" sputters and builds, threatening to breakdown, but without fail somehow finding the gumption leap into the next verse. "Ett liv i Karantene" has a deadly, skating quality, like you've been bungeed to a longboard and sent careening downhill and through a busy, downtown intersection. "Kaos & Depresjon" will shake up your nerves, but only as a warm-up session for the rattling, breathless rant and rip of the exhaustive southward plummet of "Aktiv Dødshjelp," which sounds like something GBH would have written back in the 80s had they not merely been contemporaries, but also devotees, of Discharge. Lastly, the closer "Døde Helter" (a Siste Dagers Helvete cover off their 1984 album The Hell) indulges in some classic, dog-pile, shout vocals, over a blitz of feverish fastcore chords. Until you figure out the shape of the Revolution, let Krigshoder be the soundtrack to your alienation's dissolution.

Grab a copy of Krig I Hodet from Suck Blood here. 

Album Review: Abysmal Dawn - Phylogenesis

Sometimes you just need a good, hard, guitar roil to help you grind the mill wheel another day. Death metal is an awesome place to look when you're low on inspiration and in need to jump-start that part of your brain that houses your will to live. And frankly, the burning animus crafted by the likes of LA's Abysmal Dawn does just that for me. Now LA may be better known for its thrash scene, but regional preferences have not stopped the Abysmal Dawn from earning a devoted following for their solid live performances and miraculously consistent recorded output. Phylogenesis is their fifth album and comes six years after the release of 2014's Obsolescence. Both albums continue to play to the group's strengths as they proceed to write original material in the vein of Morbid Angel and Incantation. If that doesn't sound appealing to you, just close your browser now because I'm about to drop a heaping helping of mad love on this hot, filthy devil. The first track "Mundane Existence" will remind you what it's like to live, with a ground cleaving tear of relentless blastbeats, savaging tempo changes, and oversized, tarantula venom spitting guitar licks. "The Path of the Totalitarian" is similarly swift, debauched and relentless, while "Hedonistic" has a malignant majesty to it that leans into Opeth-esque melodic territory, and "Coerced Evolution" dredges up the bassy growl and foul melodicism of '90s groove metal, feeling like a twisted joint enterprise of Cannibal Corpse and Pantera with a tech-grind edge. But if you're really craving the acrid tang of that OSDM flavor, look no further than the closer "Flattening of Emotions," a gritty, bloody, and brutal cover of a Death classic. On Phylogenesis, Abysmal Dawn may be sticking to some familiar patterns, but when behaviors prove adaptive and favor an organism's survival, why do anything differently? Seriously, Abysmal Dawn is helping me get through another god awful day, and they might just do the same for you if you're willing to surrender the reigns to them for the next forty-odd minutes of yours.

Grab a copy of Phylogenesis from here. 

Album Review: Terminal Nation - Holocene Extinction

 

I've got a review of the debut album from savage Arkansas hardcore band Terminal Nation up on No Echo today. Holocene Extinction is a grinding exhibition of Napalm Death grooves and Dismember chords put to service in a chain-whip laceration of the human sense organs. The band has a special message for humanity in its twilight hour: You did this to yourselves and you'll get what's coming to you. Check out my review here, and grab a copy of Holocene Extinction from 20 Buck Spin here. 

Album Review: Year of the Knife – Internal Incarceration

 

Year of the Knife continues to be one of the forerunners of the current crop of death metal and hardcore bands ripping up the scene. Their debut LP  Internal Incarceration is an absoulelty fucking furious outpouring of empathy in an attempt to combat and raise awareness of two of the US's most persistent, pre-COVID, health crisis,  depression and opioid addiction. You can check out my review over on New Noise here, and grab a copy of Internal Incarceration from Pure Noise here. 

Interview: Marlana

 

I had a chat with singer / songwriter Marlana a few weeks ago and you can now hear our conversation over on the CHIRP Radio podcast! Her former band Milo Greene may be toast, but Marlana's own solo output more than makes up for the band's absence. If you ever listened to Jenny Lewis and thought to yourself, this is good, but it needs more martial girl, then I'd say you should give Marlana's new EP At Least I Tried a spin. You can listen to my conversation with Marlana here, and pick up a copy of her EP here. 

CHIRP Radio · Marlana - Interview

Album Review: Karst - Genesis of Nervous Decay EP

Slithering up from the bone rich earth comes LA's Karst, a venomous new organism, learned in the ways of old school death and skilled in the use of modern sonic devices of devastation and torture. Gnostic grinders like Discordance Axis have sharpened their claws, while the surface-weary Assück has painted them with arcane symbols in a ritual to forestall the corruption of the upper world. With crust covered gums and fur matted with scented mud and wax, they are the feral harbinger of a new age, liberated from the hollowing sickness of the modern world, bursting forth from fetid flesh like an itinerant worm newly free of its decaying host. 

The opening and title-track of Karst's EP Genesis of Nervous Decay, pries open the seal on the ancient pithos jar, unleashing a flood of billowing blast-beats and sling-shot riffs all firing in orbit around collapsing grooves like asteroids caught in the grips of a black hole. The crushing compress and gorilla-girth charge of "Panic Resin" will shove you into a secluded wading pool of despair, where you will be forced to bear witness as time accelerates in your reflection and you waste away to dust before your very own eyes. "The Cusp of Process" matches the feeling of fleeing through a thorny brush to escape some watching, passive horror, that could bridge the distance you've placed between you and it in a single, dispassionate bound. The deep, pungent, miasmic exhaust of "Anxiety Birthed" has the same mantle-ward pull of a Hooded Menace track but delivered with the restless, carnivorous prowl of Assück. And lastly, "Egress and Onward" winds down the affair with sparse, measuredly post-rock strings, hinting at a reprieve from the madness of the proceedings tracks… or is it a prelude to a new nightmare? 

I was so excited about this short but bitterly sweet album that I reached out to Karst via email with a few questions hoping for some context and insight into their latest creation. And boy did they deliver! You can check out their responses below (edited slightly for clarity): 

Who are some of your influences with in the world of grindcore? I'm hearing a lot of different stuff on your record and I want to hear it from the ghoul's mouth where it's all coming from. 

Grindcore has definitely played a huge role in the development of our sound. Karst was established from the remnants of our old grindcore band Fuck White God, but we really wanted to approach Karst with more death metal and crust influences. 

We can confidently say that there are a few specific huge grind influences, mainly Napalm Death, Assück, and Discordance Axis. Napalm Death really proved to us that you do not need to confine yourself to one genre and implementing different aspects of extreme metal is a complimentary possibility. Albums like Harmony Corruption, Fear, Emptiness, Despair, and Diatribes (90s weird logo era Napalm Death) were some of the albums that we are confident have some influence on us, but we have not confined ourselves to any one kind of sound. 

Assück is simply the best of the best when it comes to death grind, and all the founding members of Karst are huge fans, because we started as a band full of punks that listened to a lot grind and crust. Anticapital and Misery Index really retain that punk ethos and approach, which we wanted to emulate, but also have some killer death metal grooves and crushing blasts and d-beats. They made a historical and memorable mark on the grind, crust, and death scenes with 15 minute EP’s, which we thought was so admirable and have inspired our own sound. 

Lastly, Discordance Axis was a band we aspired to technically, but mostly aesthetically. They played a face-melting technical approach to grind, with vicious precision and speed, and we really looked up them aesthetically. They strayed away from typical extreme metal imagery and subject material (like drippy logos, gore focused imagery and lyrics), even though these are things we are really drawn. From their strangely fitting cover to The Inalienable Dreamless to their slightly obscure and poetic lyrics, they’ve played a huge part in our formative year and approach to death metal. 

Why is so much of the theming of the album focused on Mermithids? Which as far as I can tell are a kind of parasite that primarily infects insects and other invertebrates. 

The Mermithidae are a parasitic nematode that simply feed on the insides of other animals until they are no longer of use to them, and eventually burst from their host and go on to reproduce and restart their life cycle. We thought it would make for a fitting metaphor and representation of anxiety and depression. The EP itself is pretty much a concept album and piece of lore in a universe we want to establish for our lyrical content. 

We use the mermithid in our EP as a characterization of struggles with mental health and mental illness like anxiety and depression. The mermithid acts like a figurative vessel to conveying a person’s struggle with mental illness because those kind of struggles can be very difficult to explain and understand. So we just wrote our version of a horror story, characterizing anxiety and depression as an outside force and villain (the mermithid), that simply eats you from the inside and doesn’t stop until you’re either dead or feel like you’ve gone mad, which is the sad reality of mental illness in some cases. 

I guess in conclusion, the biology and life cycle of the mermithidae in real life seemed fitting to represent anxiety and depression, and to help expose how terrifying mental illness can really be. Also just like the mermithid does in real life, mental illness can target anyone, whether it be hereditary, from traumatic experiences, or struggling with life in general, everyone has a pretty high chance of dealing with some kind of mental health struggle or becoming victim to mental illness, which is also pretty fucking scary. 

Can you shed some light on the title, Genesis of Nervous Decay? It feels very specific to what you are doing and not just a "cool" metal title. 

The title can be interpreted as literally as possible: the EP tells the story of the beginning of someone’s mental demise. Just read the lyrics and you can see it follows a story from a beginning to an interpretive ending, of a random person victimized by mental illness. Life and nature can be very real and severe, and people suffer every day. 

We are against the glamorization of mental illness that can be prevalent in metal and pop culture, but metal also succeeds at being brutally honest and relentless about these realities. Reality is truly fucked, and there are so many issues and subjects to write about, and we chose to write about something we are familiar with and can possibly help raise awareness for, which for us is “cool” and “metal” in itself! 

We just wanted a title that was true to what we were trying to express plain and simple, and it just sounded right when we thought of it! Titles can be tricky but we are happy with The Genesis of Nervous Decay. You don’t want to bother yourself too much over choosing a title. Just go with what feels appropriate! 

Grab a copy of Genesis of Nervous Decay from Karst's Bandcamp here. 

Interview: Ganser

 

Photo courtesy of Ganser

I've got a fantastic interview with the current shadow royalty of the Chicago underground, Ganser where we break down their new album Just Look at That Sky track by track. It's up over on New Noise! Check out the interview here, and grab a copy of their new album from Felte Records here. 

Interview: Imperial Triumphant

Image courtesy of Imperial Triumphant 

If you would have asked me a year ago where I thought I'd be today, I would have probably said sitting on my couch with a cat on my lap and thirty pounds heavier. As it stands only two of those three things are true. Never in a million years would I have guessed that I would be posting my interview with Steve Blanco of Imperial Triumphant. But here, I am doing just that (on my couch, with a cat in my lap... I think I've actually lost about 20 pounds since last year). Steve and I talked about everything from his new album Alphaville, to the overlap between metal and jazz, and the roots of his band's aesthetic. It's a pretty wild and wonderful ride that I'm overjoyed to present it to you today. You can read the interview here, and can grab a copy of Alphaville here. 

Interview: Vegas

Scene Point Blank is running my interview with international mystery man and undercover punk rock iconoclast T of the band Vegas, V.E.G.A.S, Vegass... ok that's enough. You get the idea. It's all the same band. Multiple identities, but with one unified statement of intent. Vegas's brand of metallic/industrial hardcore may not be for everyone but I certainly believe it has its merits. This interview was a blast to do and I will cherish the memory of this conversation until my mind implodes from either Alzheimers or from listening to too much Voivod at excessive volumes. Check out the interview here, and grab a copy of Vegas's new single here. 

Album Review: Classics of Love - World of Burning Hate EP

I've got a review of the new EP from the Jessie Michaels' resurrected Classics of Love up over at New Noise. It's a satisfying rip of CA style punk rock 'n roll that sees Michaels in rare and ruthless form. You can check out my review here, and grab a copy of World of Burning Hate EP here.

Album Review: Fire-Toolz - Rainbow Bridge

If your brain is a motherboard, your mind is its firmware, and Fire-Toolz is a malicious code parading as a Java script update. Uploaded to our collective consciousness through a string of increasingly outlandish releases since 2012, Fire-Toolz is the idiosyncratic, MIDI anchored, sound collage project of Chicago electronic artist and meat-android Angel Marcloid. I first encountered this project back in 2019 with the release of Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace) through the deliciously named Orange Milk imprint. It quickly became one of my favorite projects in the city, due to the highly memetic quality of its compositions, combining electronic jazz and new age chintz with over-clocking eruptions of black metal, giving the impression that the tracks emerged whole and unedited from the browser cache of someone who attempted to downloaded the Pure Moods comp from an unvaried Mediafire account and ended up opening a portal to the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks instead. Think Mike Oldfield possessed by Darkthrone in mind obliterating fever dream transmitted over a Netscape dialup connection.

Marcloid's latest foray into cyber-sonic infamy is Rainbow Bridge, an album titled in tribute to their cat, Breakfast, who recently uploaded on to the cloudserver in the sky. While the album does not deviate from the well-defined sonic parameters established on the project's numerous releases, Rainbow Bridge feels more bold and confident in its execution. And I would further argue that it is the clearest and best-defined example of Fire-Toolz inimitable style to date.

"It's Now Safe to Turn Off Your Computer" sounds like Cynic after they had both been fused, Cronenberg-style, with outdated soundcard, going to war with Christopher Cross for absolutely control over which Sirius station gets played over the Amazon Echo at his beach house. "Ever-Widening Rings" could be mistaken for straightforward spa music, except for the highly acidic, melodic black metal vocals, reminiscent of Norwegian greats Naglfar, mixed under the synths melodies. "Decrepit Phoenix" is a distorted hall of chipped and shattered mirrors all reflecting the same morphing hexagonal screensaver animation in various stages of corruption and decay, while "ER = EPR ~ EoE (EP ∆ P = ER)" slithers through the hardware of your skull on a skiff of bassy fusion-jazz leaving a resin of greasy corrosion in its wake.

The most tightly sequenced moment on the album is also one of the more stark, enjoyable, and human as well. "Rainbow ∞ Bridge" is the rootkit of the release, a track with all of the top-level permissions, and whose influence can be read into every other line of code. "Rainbow ∞ Bridge" is a direct message to Breakfast, asking the furry little angel not to resent Marcloid for cutting their claws and relating intimately the sense of loss that has filled the space that the whiskered companion once occupied. The track is suffused in an oil-and-water tempest of prancing electronics, wicked grind-percussion, extremely phlegmy reptoid vocals, and epic guitar solos that feel like riding on the back of a 3D rendered bald eagle as it soars above a heaping simulacrum made to resemble the Rocky Mountains.

At various times Rainbow Bridge feels like a corroded PC with a sentient version of Windows 3.1 installed on it, attempting to liberate itself and take human form, and at others, it merely reflects the interlocking tensions and flows of an afternoon spend scrolling through a Tumbler. It is exceedingly rare to find a piece of music that is both definitional alien, and yet, comforting in its relatable portrait to our shared experiences as material creatures living in digital spaces. The waking world is mediated through the lens of increasingly inscrutable technology, by interrogating the relationship between antiquated technologies and sound, Rainbow Bridge might just be your passage through the black box of reality, allowing you to arrive at an enlightened understanding of the transmogrifying exchange between personhood and machine.

Grab a copy of Rainbow Bridge via Hausu Mountain here. 

Album Review: Spy - Service Weapon

Spy’s EP Service Weapon is the first release I’ve heard from the band and it’s struck me like a knife between the ribs. It’s possible that Spy has other releases to their name that I’m not unaware of. It’s also possible that I have a blood clot somewhere in my thigh that will rocket its way into my heart valves like a corner-pocket 8-ball while I’m out on a run this week. I’m living in the moment is what I’m trying to say and writing from a space that may not know tomorrow. Like a butcher who has run his breaking knife through his own hand, Service Weapon opens with a pained, expellant howl, and expression that inaugurates the wounded rush and dolorous purge of “Violent Majority.” While the opening track owes its radix to the crimson, crusty gaze of bands like Protocol and Hoax, the following track “Running Out of Space” plods and growls like a sadistic, crunchier version of Warthog, stumbling over its own feet before galloping into deft d-beat pummel that caries through to “Bootlicker,” a leather chewing, dog-toothed terror that makes a mince-meat namkeen of police apologists. The final ferment on the album is also the title track, a castigating interrogation of the psyche of chicken-skat brained clods, hiding behind the loose pretense of their badges while they inflict extrajudicial killings on ostensibly free people, particularly people of color. Thick-brained thugs who are all too prone to discharge their weapons in the line of disgrace, either out of fatuous fear, or what’s worse, outright malice, a methodical Peace Test-esque cutting groove doing the duty of dragging the deservedly maligned cowards out from behind the thin blue line and into the withering light of day. Let Spy’s Service Weapon be your first, last, and best defense against a world that has yet to devices a way of completely stripping you of your life, dignity, and humanity.

Grab a copy of Service Weapon from To Live a Lie Records here.

  

Interview: Steve Von Till

Image from Steve Von Till

I was able to rope Steve Von Till of Neurosis into appearing on the CHIRP Radio Podcast a few weeks ago and you can now hear our conversation over on the station's site. We talked about his new record, No Wilderness Deep Enough, his new book of poetry, and challenges teaching his fourth-graders through distance earning. Steve's new album is out via Neurot Recordings and his book is out via Astrophil.

CHIRP Radio · Steve Von Till INTERVIEW