Monday, May 31, 2021

Interview: Chase Cohl

Image thanks to Chase Cohl

I had the opportunity to speak with the lovely Chase Cohl for CHIRP Radio recently. We talked about her love of '60s girl groups and how it informs the sounds of her new EP Dear Dear. I'm a drooling idiot for this style of music so it was extremely cool for me to be able to chat with someone who is actively working to revive it. You can listen to our interview on CHIRP Radio's website or below. 

Album Review: Sangre de Muerdago - Xuntas

"Sangre de Muerdago, which translates to English as Blood of the Mistletoe, is a Galician folk band from the Galincia region of Spain. They’re led by Pablo C. Ursusson whose roots in the anarcho-punk scene deeply inform the spirit of resistance that drives the spirit of the band’s fresh compositions, rendered as pastoral hymns in the style of their region’s folk tradition." - That's the intro to my review of the neofolk group Sangre de Muerdago's new album Xuntas. You can read the full thing over on New Noise. 

Review of Xuntas. 

Buy Xuntas.

Friday, May 28, 2021

Album Review: Oui Ennui - Occupe​-​toi de tes oignons

We're a week out from the next Bandcampr Friday (the first Friday of each month when Bandcamp waives its fees and lets artists keep all the dough) and I am compelled as if by a spirit whose name I know not to make a timely proclamation. Oui Ennui is dope. Chicago has a lot of underground producers living and working within its borders, but none are able to share their raw journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance as forthrightly while maintaining an air of mystery and privacy as Oui Ennui. Persona is an important part of being an artist these days, even an underground one. But that's not all that is important! You need to have music that Is worth hearing as well. And to that end, Oui Ennui can absolutely throw together some motherfucking, house-fire starting jams. 

Sharing and having something worth sharing are both important aspects of being an artist of worthy caliber, but Oui Ennui has really hit a remarkably dynamic balance as to what he shares and what he withholds which makes what he does disclose feel that much more important. I know for a fact that he is sitting on a tremendous amount of music, a sprawling catalog he has been releasing piecemeal throughout quarantine, one album at a time, on Bandcamp Fridays. It's become an anthology of painfully human grooves, often paired with agile, swinging hooks, and puckish beats, all submerged in lo-fi cinematic atmospherics and illuminated by brief philosophical statements in the liner notes. He's on par with a Theo Parrish or Moodymann in my opinion, both in terms of the concerted nature of his work, the deftness and skill it betrays, but also his relative seclusion and avoidance of the spotlight, preferring to let his beats do the talking for him when possible. 

His latest album Occupe​-​toi de tes oignons marks the one-year milestone of his releasing an album every month for a year, and represents some of his best and most approachable published works to date. "Faim de peau" has an old school techno mashup vibe to it, glazing rattling beats with a kiss of smooth, luscious melody, making for a refreshingly danceable experience. "Involuntary Pilates" could have been the updated score to a Soviet-era silent film about brave cosmonauts leaving Earth to bring socialism to the stars, composed by an Eastern European avant-garde sound artist writing in the wake of the Berlin Wall's collapse. Finally, "Leave Me Together" takes rhythmic obsessions of dance music to its natural conclusion, permitting the momentum of the track to overwhelming any sense of melody and restraint, splashing in cascades of foamy fury and heightened emotion, and left to course through your body like a bolt of lighting connecting with the ground beneath your feet. Despite his name, there is not a hint of weariness to Oui Ennui work. In fact, I think he has a stronger will to thrive and create than the majority of the people working in music period, electronic or otherwise. Let's hope he keeps releasing new music each month. For some (well, ok, me) his monthly drops have become almost as much of an event as Bandcamp Friday itself. 

Get Occupe​-​toi de tes oignons here. 

Interview: Mdou Moctar

Image courtesy of Mdou Moctar

I got to have a really enlightening conversation with Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar about his new album and the situation in his home country of Niger following the presidential election back in February of this year and you can read our full conversation over on New Noise. I'm pretty proud of this one. Links below: 

Read interview with Mdou Moctar here. 

Get a copy of Afrique Victim here. 

Album Review: L’Orange & Namir Blade - Imaginary Everything

I love this record. There may be better hip hop records released this month, year, or decade, but I didn't write about any of those today. I wrote about L’Orange & Namir Blade's collaboration Imaginary Everything and it rules! You can read my review over on New Noise at the links below:

Read my review of Imaginary Everything here. 

Buy Imaginary Everything here. 

Thursday, May 27, 2021

Album Review: Mannequin Pussy - Perfect

Wrote about the new EP from Philly punk band Mannequin Pussy for New Noise. It's pretty good. They needed to shake the quarantine fatigue off in some kind of way and an EP is an alright way of doing that. Unfortunately, this is one of those albums that gets less interesting every time you listen to it. I liked it a lot the first time I heard it, but by the fifth or sixth spin, it definitely started to grate my nerves. I still like the variety of ideas they throw at you, but it all gets strained through the twin garbage shoots of #sadindierock and moderate tempo melo-punk. It's a little underwhelming but I still think it's ok. Give it a listen and make up your own mind. Links below: 

Read my lame little write up of Mannequin Pussy's Perfect here. 

Buy Perfect here. 

Album Review: Stella Research Committee - A Proposed Method For Determining Sanding Fitness

 

This is the kind of music that blogs with borderless parameters for coverage (like mine!) are made for. That is, really weird shit. Ohio's Stella Research Committee released their most recent LP A Proposed Method For Determining Sanding Fitness back in April and it is now getting another push from UK tape label Cruel Nature Records who are issuing it on cassette. Stella Research Committee are one of those punk bands that sounds pre-punk, if that makes any sense. Noise and uninhibited displays of animism that would only retroactively be understood as music in the wake of bands like Suicide and Sonic Youth. A psychedelic exercise in sound wave manipulation and mood amplifying currents, aimed at liberating the thought patterns of the mind, but accomplishing something else entirely in the process.

They sound like a band Don Van Vliet convened to give flight to his fancies, but who came to develop their own sense of autonomy which could not be contained, so he had to wall up in an old steel mill in order to save himself from their madness. A comparison could also be made to a sibling band to The Residents, who came to understand themselves through the same medley of classic literature, drugs, and antagonistic philosophy as Throbbing Gristle. The major difference being that we actually know who the members of Stella Research Committee are... or do we? Put a pin in that, sports fans. On to the music! 

"Nails" pins a blues-rock groove beneath its front tires and pumps the accelerator until they can hear it squeal under their tread. "Sauerkraut" is a messy can of soupy grooves and burnt and refried guitars that sound like they're being poured out over a young Mark Mothersbaugh while he recedes into an existential crisis. "Hanging in my Screamer" sounds like a reciprocating saw chewing through a DVD copy of Stop Making Sense as it protests and attempts to play the film out of order on a projector screen. "Monologue" is another track that is highly reminiscent of Devo's early period, where computational sounds are strung together like Christmas lights in a kind of countermelody against which a brazen surf riff bays. What ever weird fetishes for sound you've developed an affinity for while listening to post-punk and no-wave classics over the thirty some odd years, Stella Research Committee are prepared to convert these sonic comfort zones into a bed of nails. 

Get a copy of A Proposed Method For Determining Sanding Fitness on cassette from Cruel Nature Records here. 

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Interview: Michael Wood of Broken Sound Tapes

I had a fun conversion with Michael Wood of the goth tape label Broken Sound Tapes about his label's big World Goth Day comp Unearth'd. We mostly discussed how the comp came together but I was able to drag a ghost story or two out of him. It's up over on New Noise. Check it out at the links below: 

Interview with Michael Wood of Broken Sound Tapes. 

Get the Unearth'd Comp here. 

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Album Review: Heccra - The Devil​-​Faces of My Old Friends, Beneath Me

Heccra's music feels special. Don't get me wrong, all of the music I review I would describe as special in some way. However, Heccra's stuff is really in its own league. His last album The Devil​-​Faces of My Old Friends, Beneath Me dropped back in 2015, but people are talking about it again because Chillwavve Records pushed a collection of his songs on cassette last year. Which I'm going to say is about dang time. There is something about this album that makes me feel like I need it in my life right now. It's probably because my music diet currently consists of wild binges of hardcore, electronic music and the current wave of emo. Weirdly, Heccra has a finger in each of these pies to varying degrees of depth. 

The Devil​-​Faces of My Old Friends was apparently recorded piecemeal in 2013 while the sole member of the project was in college and working in a seafood restaurant in Algonquin, IL. ...That's a dark place to be in your 20s. And it shows in the music. This album adequately conveys the sense that Heccra is attempting an insane escape attempt of some kind. Like he's trying to force his way through the airholes drilled in a pane of bulletproof glass. He'll either succeed or end up telescoping his spin and causing a stress fracture to his skull: freedom or an extended sojourn in a hospital. His volition has no direct goal and either outcome is welcome. 

Tempos, chords and moods, change directions erratically and fitfully, like a bat trying to free itself from a balloon that's been tied around its crinkled ankle as it haplessly drifts upwards, its struggle silhouetted by the moon. Flutes duel and duet with the wild-bite of tooth chipping cries on "The Mint that Grows behind the Dumpster," rebellious sounds that bound over harshly, twinkling guitars, and lay down their lives in strangely explicit scenes for your eyes and ears to behold. Elsewhere, half-shouted melodies pull a fake right turn to tag in an N64 on the appositely willful "Koala Bear." Finally, I'm smitten by the tangerine-tinted post-hardcore intro of "Fox." A track that splashes open like a rat cadaver run over by a bicycle messenger to reveal a winding interior of brash guitar solos of the kind that would make Slash envious, bubbling up alongside translucent death vocals and rattling blast-beats. A garish conflagration that completely unspools to reveal a portal to a sanctuary in an ethereal plane. 

Heccra probably had to transact a deal with the devil to get this album out of him, but you won't have to make a parallel promise to enjoy it. Although, you may want to consider signing a few forms in blood in order to make a down payment on a follow-up. I would hold you in very high regard if you made such a sacrifice. I think a lot of people would. 

Get a copy of this album through Bandcamp. 

Album Review: Hannah Jadagu - What Is Going On?

I wrote a review of Texas producer and songwriter Hannah Jadagu's debut EP What Is Going On? for New Noise today. It's dawned on me that the cover of the album may be a portrait of Hannah herself. Weird that I didn't notice this fact until I was already done with the review. Well, I'm too lazy to go back change it. You'll just have to pretend like that observation is in there. Links below: 

Read review of Hannah Jadagu's What Is Going On?

Buy What Is Going On?

Monday, May 24, 2021

Album Review: Khalab & M'berra Ensemble - M'berra


Italian producer Khalab has organized an orchestra of sorts in the West African M'berra Refugee Camp located in the southeast of Mauritania. The refugees there at present have mostly fled fighting in Mali, where Tuareg rebels attempted to establish an independent state in 2012, and where, as recently as March of 2020, protests over economic strife and national security concerns prompted a coup where both the President and the Prime Minister were arrested by mutinying army officers and forced to resign. Some might think these to be less than ideal circumstances to start a band, but the players on M'berra clearly beg to differ. 

Khalab is noted as an enthusiastic appreciator of African music (as we all should be) and while I think many of the styles on M'berra are be captivating enough without his involvement, but it's hard to deny that he can assemble a great team when he wants to. M'berra primarily features Tuareg and Hassaniyya players, numbering fourteen in all, and includes contributions from members of the internationally renowned band Tartit. Specifically, Mohammed Issa Ag Oumar and Amano Ag Issa, the latter of whom is old enough to recall the Tuareg people's first encounters with Frenchmen. While it is easy to get swept up in the wailing, psychedelic guitars on this album, elements familiar to fans of other Tuareg bands like Tinariwen and Mdou Moctar, it is Amano Ag Issa's tehardent lute that is most handly captures the attention on tracks like "The Western Guys," where it's reedy twang is layered with a bucking breakbeat, an innovative pairing capable of kicking up a blinding sandstorm with all the body moving it can inspire. 

The music of M'berra has been of interest to the musically omnivorous for decades now, with several collections of traditional sounds circulating since the camp's founding in the 1990s. It's been well documented, but very rarely allowed to mix and cross-pollinate with European music in a way that directly involves the people of the region. Khalab in collaboration with the musicians of the M'berra camp circumvent the artificial barricades erected by colonial interests and allow for a genuine exchange and trans-continental explication of art and ideas to transpire. There may be parts of the album that feel a little bit more like a gritty Bonobo bootleg and others that sound like an Imarhan demo recorded in a theater bathroom before a set, but these wonky, impromptu elements, especially when they are combined, impart a powerful spontaneity to the proceedings that make repeat listens as rewarding as the first. I can't lie. I can't get enough. 

Like most of you, I'm someone who listens to music for hours at a time each day. And like most of you, I take it for granted most of the time. Sometimes when I listen to stuff like this- music made by people whose existence is more imperiled than my own, whose future is more uncertain than even what most of us experience in the US, and who don't have a home and who must make one for themselves in sound- it reminds me of just how important music really is. How it's never a waste of time to listen to, play, share, or talk about it. The world is a really terrible place to be most days. Music doesn't just make this ball of dirt better, it makes it livable. 


Album Review: Juan Wauters - Real Life Situations

I'm really glad that I did not skip out on this album. Juan Wauters is a genius songwriter and his new album Real Life Situations legitimately really kept me on my toes. Go check it out for yourself and read my review over on New Noise below: 

Read review of Real Life Situations

Buy Real Life Situations here. 

Friday, May 21, 2021

Interview: Youth Code x King Yosef

Image courtesy of Youth Code

I have a lot of fun conversations with artists but this one is really head and shoulders above most. I got to rap with Sara and Ryan of Youth Code and Tayves Yosef Pelletie of King Yosef about their new collaboration A Skeleton Key in the Doors of Depression, and it honestly felt like I had stumbled into a family reunion. A fun family reunion. Not like the ones you're used to. The good kind. 

We talked about a lot more than just their new album. Topics ranged from '80s TV shows, to cursed masks, to everyone's favorite Weezer album. If you want to get the full story, links are below: 

Read interview with Youth Code x King Yosef over on New Noise. 

Buy A Skeleton Key in the Doors of Depression here

Interview: Jimmy Montague

Image courtesy of Jimmy Montague

I had the true delight of being able to chat with singer and songwriter Jimmy Montague about his new album Casual Use, his inspirations, love of old music, and why Steely Dan will forever rule! Seriously a delightful and passionate fellow. You can read out full conversation over on New Noise now.

Read interview with Jimmy Montague. 

Buy Casual Use here. 

Thursday, May 20, 2021

Album Review: Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble - NOW

Damon Locks is Chicago's arty, punk rock granddad. He got his start in Trenchmouth and solidified his infamy with a turn in the Eternals, after which he earned his wings aiding in the ascension of Rob Mazurek and his Exploding Star Orchestra. His restless mind and protein talents have lead to incursions, and enduring impressions, in the worlds of visual art, performance, and education. He has arranged a number of album covers for International Anthem releases, has performed work with the incarcerated through Prison and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville, and is friends with Angel Bat Dawid, Ben LaMar Gay, and Dana Hall. I could keep going with this introduction. Really I could. However, I have another purpose today, and that is to discuss his latest album, NOW

So what is NOW? It was something you couldn't have stopped had you tried. In the summer of 2020, following months of lockdown and the racial awakening that shook the country, Damon convened many of his talented friends and associates behind the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago to record some takes in the open air. This was not meant to be an album, but there was no way it wasn't going to be. After the session wrapped, it became clear that these tapes couldn't just sit on a shelf collecting dust and becoming buried under a lack of ambition. Hence the urgency expressed in the project's name, NOW. Had these recordings not had the spark of the eternal muse cascading through them, they would have been named, Later. At the time of recording, the motivating operation of the collaboration was to capture the essence of sight and recognition. The observation of one's self through another, specifically as it applies to black Americans. A wordless exchange of synchronicity, which momentarily aligns the worlds and histories of souls floating in separate streams. Something he calls, the "Black Nod."

The final exhibition, embossed with Damon's name and the collective moniker the Black Monument Ensemble, is part collage, part history lesson, but more than both- a map of moods and minds, drawn together like streams rushing down a mountain to spill and lash at the mossy stones, and eventually swirl together in single a shimmering body in the basin of a valley. Bright, clean, and fathoms deep, NOW begins with a modern orchestral sweep and soul-soothing psalm that parts the gloom of clouded consciousness to let the light cut through and illuminate a meadow-like calm, disturbed only slightly, by a soft, whispering breeze. Very little of what follows will be as placating, escalating instead to personify the celebratory. This is particularly true of the whistle and warp of "Barbara Jones-Hogu and Elizabeth Catlett Discuss Liberation" which proceeds like a summer parade, but also like a mantra grounding meditation, its two paths diverging and intersecting at odd junctures, but also true of the wind and brass duel of the bucking beat led closer "The Body Is Electric." Amongst the more instructive moments on NOW, are the bop and break swot of society's embedded double-bind brinksmanship embodied on "The People vs The Rest of Us," and the pained false-starts and spin-outs elucidated on the cold rebuke "Movement and You."

I'm probably a fool for trying to tackle this album with anything short of a sixty-page dissertation, but once your analysis of an album starts to require an index of citations, you have to ask yourself whether what you've written serves a greater purpose than simply, and earnestly, recommending that someone listen to a record. I think NOW has much more to say for itself than I could credibly interpret and transcribe on my own. Links and Bandcamp player are below. The door is ajar, all you have to do is push to be let in. 

Get a copy of NOW from International Anthem Records here. 

Album Review: Pet Fox - More Than Anything

I did a review of the new Pet Fox record for New Noise today. The band is comprised of members of Ovlov and Palehound. They're attempting to revive the '90s era of Superchunk-esque pop-punk and indie. I don't exactly like what they are trying to accomplish here (we do not need an indie revival folks) but the record is pretty good. You can read the full review at the links below: 

Read review of More Than Anything

Buy More Than Anything. 

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Album Review: Ett Dödens Maskineri - Det Svenska Hatet


"Ett Dödens Maskineri are a Swedish crust punk band, who like all crust punk bands, look to take Western society to task for its greed, exploitation, exclusionary tendencies, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, distrust of foreigners, and various other forms of social morbidity. The ways in which these maladies manifest is apparent to anyone willing to open their eyes, and you probably don’t need an artist, musician, politician, or therapist to tell you what’s wrong with your life and how it is impacted by greater societal ills. But that’s why Ett Dödens Maskineri is the topic of our conversation today. Beyond their penetrating and acute insights, they make some pretty compelling sounding punk rock..."- and that's how my review of Ett Dödens Maskineri's Det Svenska Hatet begins. To read the rest you'll have to have to head over to New Noise. Links below: 


Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Album Review: The Growth Eternal - Kensho !

Tulsa native, and LA transplant, Bryon Crenshaw is The Growth Eternal, a sound experiment that combines funk, R’nB, and post-punk motifs into minute-long catchy, pop-vignettes, which meditate on themes of loneliness and inward struggle. Content-wise, a lot of this is going to be familiar to fans of Drake and the Weeknd. Melody-wise, the early releases from neo-soul artists like Nick Hakim, especially Green Twins, are a pretty good guide. Kensho ! is Bryon’s follow-up EP to last year’s Bass Tone Paintings. Both releases are stamped with a heavy bass presence that reveals its self through downtempo grooves a la Thundercat, as well as a daydreaming affect that is micro-dosed with a half-tab of melancholy and dab of anxious desire. Another very surprising quality of this release is Bryon’s penchant to play around with a vocoder, which will remind you of Laurie Anderson more often than it doesn’t. “Shaving Cream LSD” is a somewhat humorous reflection on the isolation of quarantine that sounds a little like Bootsy drown in Nyquil. “Bull Frog’s Croon: i. Night Fishing” is a watery slurp of angular R’nB. “Weak” is a hypnogogic roil of ‘90s radio R’nB, melted and pressed into an unrecognizable shape. My favorite track though, is the apprehensive, prickle pop and tongue-tied tumble of "Contact High," which sounds like Bryon is trying to get up the nerve to say something but he's too nervous and his mouth literally can't form the words, and so the thoughts in his head dissolve in the saliva pools behind the vault of his teeth like sour-apple flavored candy. Honestly, who hasn't been there? I really like how much emotion Bryon is able to pack into each of these bite-sized sonic soap operas. Kensho ! is another suburb addition to this artist's catalog. 

Get a copy of Kensho ! here. 

Album Review: Crimi - Luci e Gual

"The border between the music of Europe and Africa is artificial. Maintained by narratives that naturalize unnatural divisions between people. Crimi is a French band whose sound undercuts such mythologized divisions to demonstrate the overlap and interdependency between regions, demonstrating how beautifully they blend and inform each other in the process." - That's the intro! If you want to read my full review of Crimi's Luci e Gual you can check it out over on New Noise at the links below: 

Review of Luci e Gual here.

Get a copy of Luci e Gual here. 

Monday, May 17, 2021

Album Review: Art d’Ecco - In Standard Definition

 
"What started with an album recorded in the back seat of his car, and took a hard right turn with the discovery of a wig in a (or I guess, THE) Victoria mall, is now the closest thing you’ll find to a genuine glam rock experience in 2021. Art d’Ecco is the eclectic and electric inheritor of the restless quest and search for clarity through sound that animated the stark experimentation of Lou Reed and the various transmogrifications of David Bowie during their most evocative ’70s periods. His latest, and third overall, is In Standard Definition, a reflection on the way that media shapes us and the relationships we form with the icons who we visit us through the black mirrors that we pore through each day." - That's the intro to my review of Art d'Ecco's In Standard Definition. Read the whole thing over on New Noise at the links below: 

Read Review of In Standard Definition

Get a copy of In Standard Definition from Paper Or Plastic Records.

Album Review: Coaltar of the Deepers - Revenge of the Visitors


The visitors have landed... or returned. It depends on how familiar you are with the Japanese punk scene of the '90s. Coaltar of the Deepers is a long-running metal band with strongly identifiable, and I dare say, assertive, shoegaze elements. Formed in '91, they released their first album 
The Visitors from Deepspace in 1994Some of the coverage of this band has identified Hum and Deftones as possible successors of their sound, but the only US band that I've ever heard refer to them as an actual influence of there's is the hardcore band Hazing Over (formerly Shin Gaurd). As for Coaltar of the Deepers own influences, their vocalist and bandleader Naraski puts the band in the same bushel as grotesqueries as grindcore acts like Terrorizer. And yes, I'm aware that reading that sentence probably just gave someone an aneurysm. 

Now suppose you really wanted to give someone reason to question what they think they know about metal and shoegaze, and the boundaries between them. In that case, you can just play for them Coaltar of the Deepers's death metal cover of The Cure's "Killing an Arab." Then you can gloat while you watch them pick at stray threads protruding from their clothes and contemplate the choices in their lives that have brought them to this specific moment, where all of their references for sound and culture have burst into sparks and smoke before their eyes, like bottle rockets shot off into the night sky. 

Coaltar of the Deepers's have recently renamed their cover of "Killing an Arab," changing it to "Killing Another." This new version appears on their most recent album Revenge of the Visitors, their first official US release, and a full re-recording of their debut album with the original lineup. Even though a lot of these compositions haven't changed dramatically from their originals, it's still surprisingly compelling to listen to both, as neither manages to fully usurp the place of the other. The Visitors from Deepspace has an appreciable and eager, naive power to it that simply cannot be replicated, while Revenge of the Visitors represents versions of these same tracks that benefit from modern recording technology and a certain sureness of execution that brings out the foundation strength and forward-facing orientation of these compositions. 

In particular, the improved recording quality helps bring out the playful contrasts of melody and groove that propel a track like "Amethyst (Revenge)" as well as the absurdly catchy hooks of the death vocal flirting, pop-overflow of "Earth Thing." The starkest upgrade takes the form of the brain-tickling vocal hooks of "Summer Days" which explode out of the otherwise somber, jagged affair like a passenger train crashing through the front gate of a cemetery and unleashing a swarm of jubilant, hooting phantoms. To give The Visitors from Deepspace its due, the crinkly and waywardly psychedelic quality of the original recording of "Snow" is delightfully romantic in a way that the newer version just isn't. I also much prefer the barely constrained and badly warped quality of the original "Your melody" which simply cannot be imitated by more seasoned musicians working under ideal recording conditions. 

Finally, The Visitors from Deepspace terminates with a noisy, studio imploding punk-blaster, while Revenge of the Visitors recedes with the cooling swirl of a tension off-setting ambient track. Both titled "The Visitors," both the product of pure impromptu improvisation. Coaltar of the Deepers haven't come to meet your leader. They are the leader. 

Get a copy of Revenge of the Vistors on vinyl and cassette from Needlejuice Records. 

Friday, May 14, 2021

Album Review: Drip-Fed - Kill the Buzz

Drip-Fed doesn't bring the rock to you in the form of beads and dewdrops; they'll bring it all down on you like a waterfall. The Austin band has just released their second LP Kill The Buzz, the first noticeable difference between it and their previous, self-titled album is its intensity. You are just getting that much more Drip-Fed flavor on this release, and it comes at you faster and fiercer than ever before. Drip-fed describes themselves as a hardcore band, which is reasonable. I'm not going to argue with them. Even given that conceit, they're hard to place in the greater spectrum of punk extremity.

There is a noticeable country twang to a lot of the guitar work on Kill the Buzz that feels downright subtle in its tendency towards folky throwback. Especially, when you think of some of the straight-up Credence Clear Water Revival renaissance chord progressions that powered their previous effort. On their second album through, the country drawl in the guitar work is really more of a suggested, rather than a commanding, presence or quality- stipping out the pokey parlance but leaving the aggrievement and swagger. The spur-heeled stomp and fraying, cracked leather grooves of "Move Right Through Me" is a good example of this, where hollering southern guitar leads sping up like sparkling spurts of raw crude to lubricate the track's self-mutilating stumble and spiral. On Kill the Buzz, Drip-Fed comes a lot closer to Annihilation Time with the way that they employ light country motifs and the genre's crushing tendency toward inebriation enabled, grievance peddling from a vantage point parallel with a stained motel carpet, which they use to give purpose and perspective to their own radioactive, emotional meltdowns. Then there are the grunge parts.

If putting a leather fringe jacket on over a Trash Talk cut-off wasn't eyebrow-raising enough, Drip-Fed also manages to seamlessly wind Pearl Jam worthy, Billboard Alternative Chart-topping, guitar melodies into these tracks, which shouldn't work, but totally does. Like the bubbling, bad-blood blues of "Tone Deaf" or the watershed-cracking rush of "Freak Show." Part of what makes the Alt-Nation aping portions of these tracks more palatable is the fact that these grunge parts are filtered through post-hardcore and '90s emo sensibilities, similar to the way that Citizen's grunge metamorphism occured, although on Kill the Buzz, the mix is properly shot through with the right dose of adrenaline and simmering resentment.

 "Moonlighting" will give you the feeling that you've caught Sunny Day Real Estate on a very bad day, and "Wearing a Wire" sounds like Hot Water Music decided to take a buggy ride during a state fair, got bored in route and opted to flip the cart, start it on fire, and boil the horses for lunchmeat. 

Kill the Buzz is an album that is weighty with inspiration and ambition, that somehow manages to stay on its feet and moving at full speed without feeling off-balance or burdened by its oddly-shaped magnitude. It feels like the first Kvelertak album in that respect. It's so strictly sculpted by its allegiance to its own twisted gallery of muses that it can't help but reach perfection when judged on its own terms. Something which I am more than happy to do. 

Get Kill the Buzz on vinyl from i.corrupt Records here. 

Interview: Bala

Photo courtesy of Bala

Spanish groove furnace Bala has a new album out today on Century Media. It's called Maleza and it exists to flash fry the dough between your ears and particalize its casing like a marble in rock crusher. Combining sludge and stoner rock in fast, aggressive, and unexpectedly satisfying (and unexpectedly loud) ways, it's an album that earns the descriptor "hard" in a way that very few albums I've heard this year deserve. I got to chat with the band's vocalist and guitarist Anxela about some of the tracks off her new album and what she's been most appreciative of during this past year and a half in quarantine. You can check out our conversation below: 


You can get a copy of Maleza on vinyl and other formats from Century Media here.

Interview: Bone Cutter

Image courtesy of Bone Cutter

I got to chat with Robbie and Sam of the hardcore band Bone Cutter today for New Noise today. We talked about the origins of the band, their killer new EP and got some great suggestions for new and classic horror films as well. Links below:

Interview with Bone Cutter.

Get Bone Cutter's Self-Titld EP. 

Album Review: Regret - Self-Titled

I did a write up of the band Regret and their self-titled album for New Noise today. You can check it out at the links below: 

Read review of Regret's Self-Titled album. 

Get Regret's Self-Titled album here. 

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Album Review: Anharat - Blood Sorcery


"Lesser metal enthusiasts may describe a band they are dismissive of as “no-frills.” I, on the other hand, view this as an asset. A band that is doing their thing, and doing it well, really isn’t going to be concerned with impressing nerds on the internet who have set themselves up as gatekeepers. A good metal band is going to be a good metal band, regardless of who blogs, tweets, or barks about them. Case in point, New Jersey death-doom band Anharat." - That's the intro to my review of Anharat's Blood Sorcery. You can read the whole thing at the links below: 


Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Album Review: Mortuary Spawn - Spawned from the Mortuary

You can read a review I wrote of Leeds OSDM band Mortuary Spawn's debut EP Spawned from the Mortuary over on New Noise today. I will not give you any more incentive than that. That should be incentive enough. Click the links below:

Read review of Spawned from the Mortuary here. 

Buy Spawned from the Mortuary here. 

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Album Review: Fulci - Opening The Hell Gates


Fulci are an Italian death metal band who have recently migrated to Flordia to... pursue their dream of being a death metal band. I honestly can't imagine why else anyone would move to Florida, and as far as I can tell, they are living the dream. Fulci have had a few successful releases to their name, most recently 2019's hyper-violent Tropical Sun, but their debut 2015 debut LP Opening The Hell Gates continues to stand out as an excellent addition to the slam-death cannon. It's recently received a remastering and reissue, so I figured I'd give it a listen.

Slam really isn't my favorite genre of death metal as it tends to lack the big, grappler-hold grooves that I like and heavily associate with the genre. Also, like a lot of deathcore bands, slam can end up sounding a little uniform when the few ideas that the band has for a song in this style get spread over the course of an album. Fulci really avoids these problems in at least two very important ways: 1) they've got grooves, 2) they are not short on ideas. The two bands that I would associate with Fulci's sound outside of slam are Cannibal Corpse and Skinless, taking the bone-splinter, 10-ton grooves of the former and the lightening hot leads of the latter and combing them with some very gory sounding vocals results in some absolutely inspired bangers, like the harrowing blast, stomp, and shrieker "Premature Sepoltura," and "Feeding the Undead" which spends half its run time tenderizing you with lashing grooves and the other half slowly grinding you into a soft-serve paste to be enjoyed as a cool and easy snack by a shambling zombie on a hot day at the beach.

The other thing that makes the Fulci interesting is their commitment to the cinematic elements of their sound. The band is none too shy about their love of the famed Italian horror director Lucio Fulci; borrowing his last name for the name of their band, lifting clips of dialog from his films and slicing them into their songs, and even using fan-drawn, alternative posters for his films as their own album art (
Opening The Hell Gates's cover depicts numerous scenes from Fulci's 1980 film City of the Living Dead, a stone-cold, mother-fucking classic in my opinion). This focus on cinematic inspiration gives their music somewhat of an atmospheric aesthetic which I appreciate, but further, It inspires some badass songs, like the instrumental bonus track "Paura" which is a death metal take on the theme from City of the Living Dead (named for its Italian title, Paura Nella Città dei Morti Civenti), and incredibly frightful, and surprisingly danceable, soundtrack experiment titled "Inferno II."

 Something that falls outside of both Fulci's soundtrack exhibitions and their solid autentico death metal, are their forays into hip-hop. The closing and title track features some real suburb bar trading between somebody who sounds little like B-Real and verses delivered in blood-belching death metal vocals. As much as I like that track, I'm an even bigger fan of their collaboration with Italian beat-down rappers Face Your Enemy on the bonus track "Death by Metal," which features a couple of KRS-One references as well as shout-outs to zombies and other supernatural horrors, delivered with total hostility. There was a lot to love about the original 
Opening The Hell Gates, and the remastered edition gives you that much more vile material to wallow in. If you haven't already given this unsung classic a spin, now is your chance. 
 
Get a copy of the newly remastered Opening The Hell Gates on CD and vinyl here. 

Album Review: Negative Øhio - Never Mind The Gap

I wanted to cover this one briefly because it triggered some tantalizing nostalgic vibes for me. A little back story on me, I came up during the era of Myspace when social networking and music discovery were literally one and the same activity. During that period, there were a lot of raw genre experiments that would be distributed exclusively through the platform, and it felt like I would stump across a new one of these just about every day. A goth-industrial circus-themed punk band? Sure. A deathcore band with rap parts, or rappers who would drop verses exclusively before live metal bands. Check and check. Grindcore bands with emo vocals. Absolutely. Techno-infused pop-punk bands. Of course! Where do you think Good Charlotte got the idea for Good Morning Revival? The possibilities felt essentially endless. What was even more fascinating about all of these weird experiments is that they would usually get some traction and people would take them fairly seriously. I honestly miss those days more and more as the functional equivalent to what Myspace offered in today's terms is Bandcamp, and Bandcamp's social functions are very endemic, as well as it has an increasingly intense curatorial edge to its navigation that favors more established genres and "respectable" art. I'm not a fan of this frankly and really miss the days when you could log on to a music platform, hang out with your friends and find the craziest sounding thing you never knew existed. There were haters back in the day, of course. But haters, then, as now, are not worth our time. We're here to talk about exciting new music that unapologetically crosses the arbitrary boundaries of genre, which is a perfect segue into a discussion of Negative Øhio. 

 Negative Øhio is a forward-looking collab between an American and self-described Nintendocore musician Gigakoops and a Norwegian metal producer named Nightmare Lyre. They're both trans women and present themselves in full fursona, which I can't help but find endearing. Their second LP Never Mind The Gap is a message album of sorts that expresses discontentment with the increasingly conservative government of the UK as well as solidarity with gender-nonconforming and neuro-divergent individuals in their struggles for survival and recognition of their humanity around the world. Great messages, right? I fully endorse both. As for their music, I like it. I wouldn't be writing about it if I didn't. It's essentially a rough blending of hardcore techno and gabber beats with grindcore blasts, layered with slam parts, death metal grooves, and other strange sonic ephemera. There are some segments where they slip into drowsy R'nB melodies ("I Must Count My Blessings (Because I Feel There’s Been a Miscalculation)") as well as highly theatrical moments where it sounds like I'm listening to an original musical score being rehearsed entirely by monsters ("Transgender Lucifer"). Eight-bit soundcard sounds are always present, as are a bewildering number of movie sound bites. 

I love that "Check By You, We Can't Wake Your Ass In Hollywood" sounds like an Apex Twin track has prolapsed into the bridge of a Dying Fetus song, and "Why Won’t Anyone Believe That My Teeth Need to Come Out?" sounds like a Captian Beefheart blues-line struggling for air beneath a river of Masonna runoff. And yes, I think it's hilarious that the chord changes in "everybody who built the carpal tunnel went blind afterwards" are literally too fast to be played by an actual person without the aid of a midi, and I find the sputtering, disorienting trumpet sample on "Real Rockers Wear G-Strings" endlessly amusing. If there is anything negative I could say about this album, is that it may have too many ideas. But in my book, too many ideas is a far lesser crime than too few. If the first two years of the current decade have yet to entirely rob you of your sense for adventure and sense of humor, then you should probably give Never Mind The Gap a spin.  

Get a limited edition USB version of Never Mind The Gap album here. 

Album Review: Reek Minds - Rabid

Wrote about a Siege revival act out on 11PM Records today for New Noise. It's good stuff! Go check it out! 

Read review of Reek Mind's Rabid here. 

Get Rabid on vinyl from 11PM Records here. 

Monday, May 10, 2021

Interview: Sacripolitical

Photo courtesy of the band

I had a great chat with John Marmysz, lead singer of the Marin hardcore band Sacripolitical today. He and his and have been around since the early '80s and they have a pretty good perspective on punk and how it developed in parallel with the rest of society over the past several decades. It was cool hearing what he had to say about how things have changed, and how they have stayed the same. Also, as someone who would really hopes to see the world transformed for the better someday, I have an ongoing and hapless interest in other people's politics and values that John was happy to indulge. His positions fall far outside the deranged consensus reality you get from cable news and talk radio, or the run-away brain-rot you can contract from spending too much (or really any) time on Twitter, and I appreciate the fresh perspective he was able to provide. I really am thankful to John and the band for answering my questions and being so thorough and thoughtful to boot. 

Read my interview with Sacripolitical on New Noise. 

Get Sacripolitical's new EP Pandemic Sessions here.