Album Review: Tamar Aphek - All Bets Are Off

"Flexibility as a concept is operative in these mixes as hemoglobin is in your blood. It’s the driving mentality that pushes these tracks where they need to be and gives them life. What can feel like a straightforward take on a post-punky rhythm, in Tamar’s hands, is peeled of all of its pretensions in order to unfurl into a scintillating, sweltering sax splashed rill, such as the covert psychedelic saunter of 'Show Me Your Pretty.'" - Read the full review of Tamar Aphek's All Bets Are Off over on New Noise. Both Tamar and KRS Records really responded to this review and seemed to like it a lot. This fact might not mean much to you, but I thought it was cool, and this is my blog, so there. Links below:

Read review of Tamar Aphek's All Bets Are Off. 

Get a copy for Kill Rock Star Records. 

Album Review: Show You Suck - Comfy​,​Cozy​,​Cardigan​,​Cutie

"Chicago hip hop artist and noted DIY denizen Clinton Sandifer, better known as Show You Suck, has recently gotten back into the recording game, releasing fuzzy, funky, and moody self-produced and released loops via Bandcamp." - Read the full write up of Show You Suck's new release over on New Noise. Links below: 

Link to write up on New Noise. 

Get the album here. 

Album Review: Voluptas - Towards the Great White Nothing

"When experimental varieties of black metal are discussed, most dedicated metal fans can probably check off the usual suspects in a single breath. Ulver for ambiance and atmosphere, Oranssi Pazuzu for psychedelic stuff, Blut Aus Nord for progressive rock, and Enslaved for… everything else." - Read the rest of my review of Voluptas's Towards the Great White Nothing over on New Noise's site. Links below: 

Write up of Towards the Great White Nothing on New Noise. 

Get a copy of Towards the Great White Nothing via Metalgate Records here.

Album Review: ISS - Spikes

"North Carolina duo ISS have butchered up another charcuterie board of bastardized sound on their latest EP Spikes. Consisting of bored misanthropes Rich Ivey and Edwin Schneider, ISS is essentially the Riff Trax equivalent of a soundtrack to the sinking ship of our civilization." - Read my full review of Spikes over at New Noise. Links below:

Read review of ISS's Spikes here. 

Get a copy of Spikes here. 

Album Review: БѢСЪ - Кощунства

"Russian black metal band БѢСЪ (Biese) seems to see blasphemy as a calling. So much so that their project’s debut LP is literally called, Кощунства (Blasphemies). The band is the product of a single, deranged mind, that of a man who refers to himself only as Demetr, and describes his role as not only the source of the band’s sound, but also any sorcery associated with it." - Read the rest of my review over on New Noise. Links below: 

Read entire write up of Кощунства on New Noise.

Get a copy of the album here. 

Album Review: Whitney K - Two Years

"Through wit and grit and callbacks to the antique forms of rock and folk, Konnor takes us through a journey of self-annihilation that ends right where it started, with a man staring himself self in the face wondering how he made such a mess of his own life. Two years is a long time to be living so hard, and yet, some manage to make a lifestyle out of it." - excerpt of my write up of Whitney K's new album Two Years over on New Noise. Check out the full write up below.

Write up of Two Years for New Noise.

Get a copy of Two Years from Maple Death Records.

Album Review: Crescent Lament - 噤夢 Land of Lost Voices

"There is nothing like a little folk metal to transport you out of the lowest point of the winter doldrums. Without a doubt, if there is one word that could be used to describe Taiwanese folk metal band Crescent Lament, it would be transportive. Combining traditional East Asian folk melodies with soaring vocal performances worthy of Nightwish, thunderous guitar chords that crack the sky, and mountain shaking beats that could leave even the mighty Manowar looking for a fresh pair of leather trousers, Cresent Lament’s prowess is as intimidating as it is beautiful." - excerpt from my write up of Crescent Lament's 噤夢 Land of Lost Voices over on New Noise. You can read the whole thing at the links below: 

Write up of 噤夢 Land of Lost Voices.

Pick up a copy of 噤夢 Land of Lost Voices here. 

Album Review: Martin Gore - The Third Chimpanzee

I did a little thing for the latest EP from Depeche Mode songwriter Martin Gore today for New Noise. You can check it out at the links below. It's a better album than my brevity implies.  

Read the write up of The Third Chimpanzee. 

Get a copy of The Third Chimpanzee from Mute Records.  

Album Review: Bas Rotten - Surge

 When I first saw the name Bas Rotten in a subject line of an email in my inbox, I thought, "Like Rotten Sound? That's got to be a grindcore band." Then I saw the cover art, an impressionist oil painting of two men boxing, their flesh appearing to merge as they batter each other's bodies with fists and force of will, and I thought to myself, "Yeah, that's got to be a hardcore band." And then I read that the band was from Portugal, and found my mind shifting gears, preparing me to evaluate some kind of communally minded crust punk cadre. And then I hit play on the streaming link they provided me, and... Turns out I was right. And wrong. About all of it. And none of it. 

Bas Rotten are a grindcore band. They're also a crust punk group and a hardcore band, who play like they're opening for Iron Reagan. Scratch that; they play like THEY ARE Iron Reagan! A clip from the film Take Shelter greets you in the foyer of the opening track of their album Surge. "The Blow" begins with the dialog above shrieked over a similarly disconcerting clip of Rod Serling of the Twilight Zone discussing his favorite topic, man's folly and penchant for self-delusion. Somehow the layering of these two clips failed to prepare me adequately for the point when the reigns of the track fall into the cruel hands of vocalist Joao. If you are like me, once those locked and loaded, grind-grooves kick into gear under Joao's menacing snarl, you'll feel like a trap has been sprung and like you're now helpless to fight back what's coming your way. Like a garrote had been looped around the base of your neck, you're being to choked into submission, the sound of Joao's gnashing rasp ringing in your ears, and the lash of the band's twin guitars (both performed by different men, also named Joao) churning the air like a blender, just inches away from your face, getting precariously closer to the bridge of your nose as you blackout. 

You're going to want to keep your wits about you, though, because the surfy, side-swipe "Dissociation" is more than capable of bodying your ass into a nearby dumpster, even with less than a minute run time. It's followed in quick succession by the crusty, rust-lined chop of "Prime Cuts," and death-daring, slide and sever, proto-thrash of "Violence." It's amazing how quickly Bas Rotten can pull off some absolutely, heroic thrash riffs, and at bowel loosening, muscle-gelling speeds, shifting between Napalm Death-driven grooves and bone-chilling, doom metal channels, with the best example of this dynamic being possibly, incredibly grim and gnarly "Worth." 

Napalm Death would obviously win a paternity test if one were administered for Bas Rotten, but so would Trash Talk, DRI, Destroyed in Seconds, and Nuclear Assualt. It's impossible to really distinguish a dominant linage from any of these bands as their attributable genes have fused together into new, horrid hybrid phenotypes in Bas Rotten's sound. The result is, as the opening quote from Take Shelter implies, a storm, like a total force of nature. There really is no containing the belligerent monstrosity that these Portuguese punishers have unleashed. All you can do is watch helplessly from a distance and hope the stampede of sound doesn't abruptly shift trajectory and beeline for your undefended position. You can admire Surge, but I guarantee, you can't outrun it. 

Get a copy of Surge on CD and Cassette here. 

Album Review: Eoront - Gods Have No Home

"Eoront’s LP begins with “The Forlorn Land,” where you are greeted with the sounds of a traveler leaving in a blizzard, facing the open wild on horseback, after which a heaving tremolo gallops into earshot on the back of a cold earth plowing blast beat, a valiant charge that only grows more bold as it tilting against the onrushing gale of wintery guitars and disconsolate orchestral maneuvers." - excerpt from my write up of the third album Gods Have No Home from Russain black metal band Eoront. You can find it over on New Noise at the following links: 

Read write up of Gods Have No Home. 

Get a copy of Gods Have No Home on vinyl here. 

Album Review: JPEGMAFIA - EP2!

It's high time you check out JPEGMAFIA if you haven't already. EP2! is as a good place to start (but I 
would recommend going back to check out his 2019 LP All My Heroes Are Cornballs if you are really unfamiliar with his style). If you want to know whatt his EP is all about, your best bet is to hussle over to Bandcamp and listen to it for yourself. Make your own assessment. Be a person with your own brain. The next best thing to listening to the EP though, is reading my review over on New Noise. Links below: 

Read review of EP2! 

Buy EP2! here. 

Album Review: Michel Kristof and Wayne Rex - Astarte

Curiously prolific but difficult to observe or pin down, the enigmatic electric guitarist Michel Kristof is one half of the noise band Other Matter (where he is joined by Julien Palomo). On Michael's latest release Astarte, for Florida-based Muteant Sounds, he is joined by percussionist Wayne Rex. Like most of Michael's work, it's not always easy to interpret what he's attempting to accomplish, but it is worth investigating. It's like a sonic brain puzzle, where the pieces of the rotating cube you're attempting to assemble in the proper order correspond with bits of free-jazz pummel and guitar chords that sound like badly transcribed messages from a crashed satellite. There are times when the rhythms resemble a demo take from the Art Ensemble of Chicago and others time where you'd swear the shadowy, Residents associated, Ralph Corporation was in the studio with Michael and Max giving notes. I really love the squishy quality of Michael's guitars on "Athame," it's fantastic to witness "The Dove" weave between a straightforward bebop jam and the sounds of a locomotive derailing as it passes a station platform at full speed, and you can't miss the messy "Chalice" which delivers a surprisingly sturdy sense of orchestral melody that sounds like it is attempting to reimagination the theatrical score to Ben-Hur with some lysergic additions cribbed from Death Race 2000. I honestly can't believe this is a record made by two individuals and didn't involve a team of ex-communicated NASA scientists. Astarte is a truly baffling but consummately intriguing EP. 

Get a copy from Mutant Sounds. 

Interview: Thou

Photo courtesy of Thou

Did an interview with Thou about their collaboration with Emma Ruth Rundle for CHIRP Radio. If you feel inclined, which you should, you can check out my conversation with Bryan Funck below, or on CHIRP's site here. 

CHIRP Radio · Thou Interview

May Our Chambers Be Full can be bought via Sacred Bones. 

Album Review: Low Moder - Self-Titled EP

"UK’s Low Moder started the way most great underground bands do, as a drunken conversation between friends over video games. With little more guidance than a sticky note slapped to their frontal lobes with the words “noise rock” scrolled on it, Low Modor has taken the amorphous concept of the genre and grounded it in the surprisingly sturdy mortar of their collective passions and derangements." - expect from my review of Low Moder's self-titled EP now up on New Noise. Read the whole thing at the links below: 

Review of Low Modor’s self-titled debut EP

Buy the EP here. 

Interview: Bathe

Image courtesy of Bathe

Bathe is a post-hardcore band out of South Carolina with a unique aesthetic and a pretty great sense of humor. Bands who trade in the volatile arts of fast, loud and aggressive tend to come across as overly serious at times, especially when the "post-" modifier is tacked on to whatever genre they've adopted as a fair description of their sound. This is unfortunate, for as Dillinger Escape Plan and Enter Shikari aptly proved over the course of their careers, being good at your job doesn't require that you get up every morning, look in the mirror, and hate the person staring back at you. It's ok to have a laugh now and then and enjoy yourself while playing music (it's called playing for a reason), even while performing music as thick with cacophony as Bathe's is. 

On Bathe's third album A Field Guide to Dead Birds (not affiliated with Sibley), the group knits together dissident, contorted grooves and talons-toed riffs, that spring up from a sludgy filament of bone-soup beats, like the spring-loaded jaws of an enormous bear trap, submerged in the mossy peat of a marsh, waiting to snap into action and leave a lasting impression in your vulnerable flesh. The instrumentation acts like an amplifier for the agonizing rasp of the sullen death vocals, which lurch around within the confines of the mix, bloodying its foreheads and joints as it snarls and clamors against the obtuse walls of its enclosure. After witnessing such a devastating creature of sonic mayhem in action, you'll be extremely grateful for the few chuckles the band makes room over the course of the album, if for no other reason than to cut the intolerable tension. 

When I came across Bathe's A Field Guide to Dead Birds late last year, I was so confused and delighted by it that I reached out to the band via email to see if I couldn't get some insights into the project and the people behind it. You can stream the entirety of their new album and read our conversation below: 

Interview conducted over email on February 11, 2021. It has been edited slightly for clarity.

How did you all meet, and what are your backgrounds?
We are all in other bands and met playing shows together. Paul and Alex are in Abacus, the Brothers Scott (Jon and David) are in Sein zum Tode. We went on tour together and one night, drunk as fuck and yelling over a bonfire in Texas, we formed Bathe.

What is the metal and hardcore scene like by you and how has it fared through COVID?
Like most places, there is no scene anymore. Not in the traditional sense anyway. There are still rad bands here that put out awesome stuff, but still no shows. We have one main venue, New Brookland Tavern, that has managed to stay open during all this, albeit not doing shows, so we do as much as possible to support them. Our local alt-news paper, Free Times, recently did an annual festival called Music Crawl, which Abacus played. It was a livestream event this year with no audience. The scene here, much like everywhere we imagine, is still holding on, but without shows, ya know.

Where are the best places to see birds by you?
Any gutter, most curbs and road shoulders & the chicken plant caged trucks are best for viewing birds at their most miserable. If you want to see them have a good time or whatever, any river entrance or riverwalk park in Columbia would be swell.

You seem to have access to an unusual number of dead and taxidermied birds. How do you come to have so many specimens laying around? I'm assuming the answer is nothing nefarious.
Are you a cop? A bird cop? Are you a bird pretending to be a person who is also a cop?

The birds were found dead and then preserved by us. We also encourage people to bring dead birds to shows for free admittance. We didn’t kill any of these birds, we are recycling what nature has chosen to discard. We might start killing birds though. When we are ready to take that step, we’ll accept a handsome ransom to not kill the birds.

Can you ID the birds that are on the cover of your latest album, A Field Guide to Dead Birds?
Hummingbirds, a grey heron, some finch and a mockingbird.

Who does your album art and how do they go about constructing such strange, dramatic scenes?
Holli Strickland does our album art. For previous releases, she made dioramas of a bathroom and a hanging gallows while our friend Jamie Clark took the pictures and edited them for release. Holli did everything for this newest release. She gets our motivation: stark and unsettling art, audial and visual.

What bird calls did you incorporate into your new album and on what tracks?
David, our drummer, does all the samples for Bathe. He records a lot of stuff on his own. He also used an album we found a thrift store called Guide to Bird Sounds by the National Geographic Society. There are too many birds to name, I’ll send you pic of just some listed. [See pics below]

Are there any humans you believe deserve to be sprayed with Avitrol?
We’d rather just use Avitrol on birds. The way Zod intended.

Why was it significant for you to name a song after Wasaga Beach, and what is the message of that track?

The great bird kill at Wasaga Beach is an insane event to imagine. Thousands of birds plummeting from the sky. There is no message, more of a narrative reimagining of what it’d be like to be there.

You did a very good job of making that beach scene from The Notebook sound deranged and ominous on "Cloacal Kiss." Is there some deeper commentary going on there, or was this just for the hell of it?

Jon, our bass player, was made to watch The Notebook with his fiancé, now wife. The only thing he took from the movie was that some crazy woman was yelling about wanting to be a bird & how the dude was not having it. We listened to it after smoking tons of weed & we all agreed that Dave could make it sound real weird.

What have you been doing to promote your new record since it's been out?
We made an initial online push, Sludgelord Records put it on CD, it got reviewed by some rad blogs, then nothing.

Get a copy of A Field Guide to Dead Birds here. 

Album Premiere: Matthew Mast - Of All The Endings

"What Matthew takes from his influences, and in doing so, manages to duck around the troupes that trap so many similarly placed artists, is that his compositions retain a certain warmth- a sign of his lingering humanity, and redeemable character." - exerpt from my write up of Matthew Mast's latest LP over on New Noise. Read the full review at the link below:

Write up of Matthew Mast's Of All The Endings. 

Get a copy of Of All The Endings on VAST Legacy. 

Album Review: Wømb - Here, The World Falls...

Portugal's Wømb is one of those black metal bands with a discography befitting their raw, inhumane style. By which I mean, that they basically only release demos, and when they're not releasing demos, they're doing splits. They released one EP two years ago, realized it was a mistake, and have now made up for their error in judgment by releasing another demo. It's good to recognize where your strengths lie and to play to them. 

Here, The World Falls... is Wømb's third demo. Reaching for an analogy, I'd say it sounds like Watain, if they burned all of their possessions, faked their deaths, relocated to a cave in the woods, and survived the following year by eating nothing but sickly squirrels and poisoned berries. Upon returning to civilization after thirteen months of absentia, I would then imagine that they immediately entered the studio and cut an album. Whatever you would imagine the album Watain would make after that journey would sound like, that is what Here, The World Falls... actually sounds like. This is a very tortured way of saying that Wømb's latest release sounds like an album made by some people at the very limits of human sanity, who had become very accustomed to life on the teetering edge of barbarism. Wømb know how to translate their madness into musick, a fact they prove with every hissing snare fill, saliva leaking shriek, and every abrasive and obtusely bent groove, each so jagged that you can feel them lacerating your skin like the straight-razor of a drunk, stroppless, barber, on a mission from hell to give you a shave so close you'll need to see a surgeon about stitches afterward.

I really like the demo style releases for Wømb, because I believe it sets the right expectations for their sound. The unproduced quality of their music lends their compositions a power they wouldn't otherwise have. The confines of their recording are not enough to contain the vicious howl of their vocals or the grandeur and symphonic ambitions of their tremolo picking (particularly on "Kalika"). These sonic fetters give Wømb restraints that they can bay against, creating the impression of active rebellion against the confines of their physical environment, and even their own bodies, as if they are constantly on the verge of becoming too large for the room in a sort of lycanthropic transformation. The tension conveyed by these compositions is compelling and allows Wømb to achieve an aesthetic quality liminal abhorrence that is both cannily shrewd and indisputable violent. 

Get a copy of Wømb's Here, The World Falls... on cassette via Purodium Rekords.

Purodium Rekords · Wømb - Kalika

Interview: For Your Health

Image by For Your Health

I had a great chat with the fine folks in Ohio screamo upstarts For Your Health for New Noise. Believe it or not, their name is not actually a Tim & Eric reference. There are a lot of unexpected revelations that come out of the conversation we had together and I think you'll have fun reading our interchange. Links below: 

Read full interview with For Your Health. 

Get a copy of their new album In Spit of on Twelve Gauge Records here. 

Album Review: Buggin - Brainfreeze EP

"Chicago hardcore hooligans Buggin signed to Baltimore’s Flatspot Records at the start of this year, on the strength of their 2020 self-titled EP. Despite being from the Midwest, the group slathers on some serious East Coast flavor. If there is one thing that screams NYC more than a thin, wide, and sloppy slices of pizza, is a big, floppy, ass-dragging grooves. And now, thanks to Buggin, Chicago can at least compete in the groove department." - excerpt of my write up on the new Buggin "Brainfreeze" EP which went up on New Noise today. Read the whole thing at the links below: 

Read the full review of Buggin's EP. 

Get a copy of Buggin's EP from Faltspot Records. 

Album Review: Lái 来 - Pontianak

"With members culled from the beleaguered lumpen masses that inhabit the waste trenches, ashen steppes and glutinous landfills that constitute the remaining landmass of the Australian colonial project, Lái 来 is a d-beat band, whose members are hardly strangers to the form, having played in the high-culture, civil-collapse Pisschrïst, as well as Extinct Exist, UBIK, and Masses." - excerpt of my review of Lái's debut LP Pontianak over on New Noise. You can read the whole piece at the links below. 

Read write up of Pontianak review here. 

Get a copy of Pontianak from Ruin Nation Records here.

Album Review: Begräbnis - Izanaena

It might be tempting to some to give a cursory listen to Sendai, Japan's Begräbnis and dismiss them for their simplicity and unfiltered influences siphoned from '90s funeral doom, but such an assessment of these stoic servants of the crypt would be a grave error. One of the few irrefutable facts about humanity is its unmitigated mortality. The decay of the body into fleshy debris is something that every human being will experience if they have the misfortune to live long enough, and while the subject of death is a preoccupation for many metal bands, few can produce such an unvarnished glimpse of the matter as Begräbnis (whose name literally means "Funeral" in German). 

Their debut LP Izanaena feels like a divine tragedy and traversal through the paces of one's own requiem and internment. A final pilgrimage guided by a shrowded wraith, whose grip around your wrist graphs to your skin like a chilled fetter, penetratingly cold and sodden, as if it had been resting on the bed of a subterranean stream for weeks. 

Far from a detriment, Begräbnis's dominant characteristic is their arrestingly narrow sound. Icy guitars, struck at a mournful pace, allowing the notes to decay without interruption, each sonorous soul gasping in despair and then dissolving in the air— making room for the next to be ushered out and forced to submit to a similar fate. There is no real percussion to speak of, not even a marshal beat to evoke our march to the grave. The beats you hear are sparse but thunderous, produced by a drum machine, whose regard for its human compatriots is fittingly indifferent. 

The somber undertow of Izanaena is undeniable, but what makes it truly and inescapably saturnine is its internationalism. With members from all over the world, moored in Japan, producing dirges under a German name and adorn with the spiral reel of stony, Celtic knots, they are a band whose message is reflected in every beating human heart that to pulses gayly above hungry ground. Pulsing little flowers, destined to someday wither into stillness. Begräbnis's Izanaena is an album of subtle ambition, whose grim conceit is that it has the inclination, and what's further, the capability, to blanket the Earth with dread in the face of our inexorable extinguishment. 

Get a copy of Izanaena from Weird Truth Productions. 

Interview: Greylock / BEDTIMEMAGIC

Myself and some of the other New Noise folks did a track-by-track, blow-by-blow with two hella-ugly Mass-based hardcore bands about their split dropping this week. You can find a link to read the whole interview and stream the advance tracks below. 

TBT Interview with Greylock and BEDTIMEMAGIC

Album Review: Waltzer - Time Traveler

"Former Killmama singer and Chicago transplant Sophie Sputnik has released her debut album as Waltzer, an album inspired by all those lost hours spent fantasizing about an ideal future, titled Time Traveler."- excerpt from my review of Chicago-based rocker and up-and-coming Americana icon Waltzer's new album Time Traveler for New Noise. Check out the full review at the links below:

Review of Waltzer's Time Traveler on New Noise.

Get a copy of Time Traveler on vinyl here.

Album Review: norse - blu

Where would you expect a post-hardcore band named norse to be from? Probably Minnesota, right? Given the Scandinavian settlements of that region and the higher than normal likelihood of running into the single member of an atmospheric black metal band while picking up sheet cake from the grocery store (Fun fact: Satanists also enjoy baked goods, but don't always want to make them at home). A good second guess would have to be Oregan. Mostly because there are just so many white people out there. And by the law of averages (of white people), some of them have to believe that they're descended from Vikings, despite all physical and factual evidence to the contrary. In either case, you'd be wrong. norse is a post-hardcore band from Italy. Like your average Portlander, they might not have any direct lineage to Thor, but unlike a given Rose City dweller, they are here to slay! 

nores's blu is the band's second EP and follow up to 2019's self-titled. Their brand of post-hardcore is of the volatile and emotive variety, that despite its rawness, aspires to elevate nuance through their performances. To this end they achieve an artful angularness that approaches the groove crawl of Knut, without leaving a grimy trail of primordial afterbirth in the wake of their stirring approach, as well as approximating the dexterous slew, and pin-tipped-toe tight-rope walk of These Arms Are Snakes, without that group's penchant for glaring nods to padded post-rock. That may be overstating my point a bit though. What I think I actually mean to say is that norse sound like a metallic hardcore band who all learned to play their instruments by listening to and trying to mimic Thursday (Nailed it! Points up!). 

Opener "Abisso" stumbles and collapses like it is falling down an endless sprial staircase, with only unforgiving stony edges to greet the weight of its battered and broken body as it descends. Next,  "Abitudine" breaks the emergency glass with its forehead as it attempts to escape a fire creeping up its legs and along its back, an inferno started in a fit of fear and fanned by years of neglect. "Colpe" feels like a direct indictment of personal failings, with its shackle tightening grooves, painfully deliberate pace, and sharp, accusing leads. The EP enters its final chapter with the heavy, water-logged cry of "Conforto" which sounds like it embodies the desperate, pleading wails of someone left in at the bottom of well overnight during a torrential downpour, as the water levels rise around their ears. 

I don't speak their language, but norse still manage to make me feel what they're feeling, and if that's not enough of a reason to recommend their EP, I don't know what is. 

Get a copy of blu on cassette here. 

Album Review: Magazine Beach - Friendless Summer

"Friendless Summer continues to refine the qualities that made Sick Day endearing, demonstrating the band’s growing confidence in their songwriting by allowing tempos to slow and harmonies to blossom in full." - expert from my write up of Magazine Beach's new EP Friendless Summer for New Noise. Check out what else I had to say about this fantastic new emo band at the links below: 

Read review of Friendless Summer here. 

Get Friendless Summer on Cassette from Knife Punch Records. 

Album Review: Quelle Chris & Chris Keys - Innocent Country 2

Detroit's son of a shoemaker Quelle Chris once again teams up with producer Chris Keys for a sequel to their pivotal 2015 album, Innocent Country. Before 2015, Quelle was best known for slacker valorizing stories of drugs and dropping out; however, Innocent Country saw the young MC changing the temperature of his tunes and examining more introspective subject matter, such as depression, isolation, and learning to find the inner strength to persevere through life's inherent struggles. Now that depression is basically all any rapper his age rhymes about, Quelle has had to evolve again in order to stay at the forefront of the hip-hop heap. You probably wouldn't be reading this if you didn't think he was up to the task, and Innocent Country 2 is more than ready to prove you right, functioning as a modern update of the conscious rap idiom that reifies the wry, irreverence of his early work in order to repurpose his tendency towards irony to serve a higher purpose.

So you're probably wondering, "Where do I start with this one?" Well, I'm partial, and therefore bias towards the tracks with more traditional jazz-beats, the kind with tranquil, overlapping piano caresses that combine like honey and butter when layered over a popping woody beat and the singe of Quelle's low-key fry. So honestly, start at the obvious place, the first full track "Honest." It's going to take you through to the ivory anchored, street boxing, twirl of "Living Happy," and the spiritually fortified coruscate of "Sacred Safe." Innocent Country 2 is a much more positive and hopeful record than I'm used to hearing from Quelle, and his odd optimism shines through, not only on tracks like the culture validating "Black Twitter" and "Ritual," but also in how his brightness infects the attitude and bars of his collaborators, coaxing warm and amiable performances out of the likes of Homeboy Sandman and even Billy Woods. The presence of charming, mellow, vibed indie artists like Merrill Garbus definitely helps even out the precarity that I so often associate with Quelle's subject matter and rhymes, and she was a good pick as a contributor on this project. 

Recursive themes of deprivation, bad choices, and life cycles that resemble being strapped to a catherine wheel do eventually surface on Innocent County 2, as they should. Life's blessings are often only what we can pick out from the rubble after a storm has passed, and the storms never seem to abate for more than a few days. Personal mistakes and compounding miscalculations are dealt with humorously on "Moments" featuring Josh Gondelman, and it does a fair job of waving off concerns about the coincidental denominator of all of our most devastating failures, that being, ourselves. But the real heart of the album may be "Herizons" where the glow of each day is seen as simply the turning of a wheel that only spins in place, never forward, never with momentum, simply turning in the air like trapeze artist between rings. The significance of a horizon that is meet without the advent of a new day is further grounded by a spoken word passage delivered by Big Sean at the end of "Mirage," when he states "security is an illusion" and encourages the listener to live with this knowledge and keep it close to their hearts. True, this is dismal, but it is also an unavoidable fact. The bedrock of your life is actually little more than a gumbo made of quicksand and broken concrete. Living with this knowledge doesn't mean that you shouldn't prepare for the future, in fact, it makes such preparations imperative. But rather this wisdom should relieve you of the fear of calamity, as calamity is inevitable, as is fear, pain, and humiliation. Learning to live without cowering before this certainty, mastering your dread and anxiety of it, is the only way to accept life for the adventure that it truly can be. 

Get a copy of Innocent Country 2 from Mello Music Group. 

Column: New Noise Bandcamp Friday Picks - Feb. 2021

I did a short list of albums that I thought people should check out for Bandcamp Friday for New Noise. Reading the list does not obligate you to buy anything off of it, but if you don't, you might make someone cry. I'm not saying who. But they will be crying and it may be your fault. 

Check out the list Bandcamp list here. 

Featured in the article: 

Arlo Parks
Milkblood

Mother of Graves

Groupie

Scarred

Nyctalllz 

The Cavemen

The Anarchy

Niner Niner

Oginalii 

Beige Banquet

... and that's it. Isn't that enough for you people? 

Interview: CB3

Image thanks to CB3

I had a great little chat with cosmic warriors CB3 about their new EP and approach to music-making this week. Check out the interview and my brief write up of CB3's Aeons Live Session at the links below: 

Read interview with CB3 on New Noise. 

Get a copy of Aeons Live Session from the Sign Records.

Album Review: Cheekface - Emphatically No.

It frustrates me a little bit to recommend Cheekface's Emphatically No. because I feel like it exudes the squeaky clean air of that witty-by-half, performatively depressive, middle-class flaneur, whose abundance of malaise is admittedly a product of decades of uninterrupted comfort, the kind of person who I feel is my utter antithesis, but the album is actually pretty funny and relatable. It's good even, really good. I can't deny it. Despite my irritation with the world view, I feel the album comes from, I believe that I was able to bite back my more cutting criticisms in order to highlight its merits for New Noise today. Someday soon I may need to serve up a spicer take on a lesser album in the same lane, but that won't be the case here. Check out my write up at the link below. 

Write up of Emphatically No. on New Noise. 

Get it from New Professional Music here (if you feel like it).

Album Review: Incantation - Sect of Vile Divinities

Where do you even start when it comes to Incantation? I think I cite them as an influence just about every time I write about a death metal band. It's almost always an applicable comparison, even when discussing bands as disparate as Fuming Mouth and Caustic Wound. Any band, metal or otherwise, who take inspiration from that low-register, grit and grind and conflagration of early '90s death metal, invariably owes some seed of inspiration at the root of their gangrenous stentorian storm to the vault of discontent that is Incantation's imposing position within the world of heavy music. Frankly, they don't need me to write about them. They don't need anyone to write about them. They are as a force of nature. A cosmic wind that sweeps through the euclidian world, causing planets to rotate counter to their axis and the winds to plunge howling into the sea. So why am I writing this review? You may as well as me why my heart beats. 

Sect of Vile Divinities is the eleventh studio album from Incantation and follows their 2017 album Profane Nexus. Their previous album was somewhat derided for its cleaner, less-saturated production quality. If that was a deal-breaker for you, then consider Vile Divinities to be the band's heinous counter-offer. Most tracks are named after a different foul, an unearthly being, giving the entire album a sort of bestiary of malign demiurges quality that would characterize a book on demonology. The entire affair is a testament to those destined to unmake the human world. On this note, the morose churn of "Propitiation" is a good place to start, as its oppressive atmosphere is instructive as to the deference you need to show before the old returning gods if you want to evade being ground under their indifferent tred. Groveling is no guarantee of survival, though, and your cue to start running comes on tracks like the all swallowing flame of "Black Fathom's Fire," as well as later, on the toothy, fate-sealing, flesh pulverizer "Fury's Manifesto." Amongst the most old-school cuts served up on this album are the guttural, anthropomancy practicing, splatter-riff spill of "Entrails of the Hag Queen" and the pungent, drop-riff, pounce of "Chant of Formless Dread", which reaks of dead air escaping from between the rotten teeth, a recently revived, deathless nightmare. 

Sect of Vile Divinities is all the evidence one needs to be convinced of Incantation's mystic-malevolence and capacity to summon an impious, all-consuming ire. If you are not on your knees now, you will be once they cut your legs out from beneath you. 

Get a copy of Sect of Vile Divinities from Relapse Records. 

Album Review: Isotope - Isotope (Discography Compilation)

"After half a decade of staining basements and maintenance rooms with their filth and infecting minds with their pungent, anti-authoritarian, aural pertussis, Oakland crust punks Isotope have collected their entire discography onto a single cassette, which they unleashed late last year on Chad Gailey’s Carbonized Records." - excerpt from my review of crust kings Isotope's discography collection over on New Noise. 

Read full review of Isotope's collection here. 

Get a copy from Carbonized Records here. 

Album Review: The Chisel - Come See Me

 London oi revivalists The Chisel have a new EP and you should go and see my write up of it over on New Noi-oi-oi-se. Ok, I'm done. Take me to jail. 

Read write up of The Chisel's EP on New Noise. 

Get a digital copy from LA VIDA ES UN MUS DISCOS.