Album Review: Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit - April is the cruellest month

April is the cruellest month is a re-issue of a seminal album in Japan’s free jazz scene from one of that movement's most forward-thinking practitioners, Masatuki Takatanagi (and yes the title is a TS Elliot reference). April is the cruellest month was initially slated for release in 1975 by the pioneering ESP-Disk imprint, but the label went bankrupt before the master could go to the presses. As a result, the album languished on a shelf until finally seeing a proper, Japan-only, release in 1991. The album has, as of just a few years ago, been distributed domestically to the USA, but it's been a hell of a wait (some might even characterize said wait as cruell [SIC]). April is the cruellest month captures Takayanagi’s “non-section music” phase, in which he experimented with a guitar to make unconventional and threshold pushing sounds that certainly have parallels in the work of Sun Ra and Jimi Hendrix, and which more than anticipated the clamorous and liberated structures of Merzbow, Acid Mothers Temple, and Michio Kurihara. If you are looking for something, deep, imaginative, and chaotic that somehow manages to maintain an air of calm and composure, then plug this into your brain and forget everything else you had planned for the day. 

April is the cruellest month is out via Blank Forms Editions

Album Review: Bliss Fields - Self-Titled EP

Wrote a little thing for New Noise about the self-titled EP from shoegazy emo group Bliss Fields. They've really come into their own and this album is proof of this fact. Looking forward to what they do next. Read my thoughts below: 

Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-bliss-fields/

Buy: https://blissfields.bandcamp.com/album/bliss-fields

Album Review: Black Viper - Hellions of Fire

Black Viper is a Norwegian speed metal band inspired by American heavy metal acts like Agent Steel and German thrashers Helloween. The genesis of the band was when drummer Cato began writing songs inspired by classic heavy metal of the early ’80s which didn’t mesh with the eccentric thrash-punk of his main band Deathhammer. While speed metal is a progenitor to thrash, an evolutionary step away from the genre’s R’nB roots and a sub-species of sound, dubbed long thought extinct by metal scholars, Black Viper is able to revive it through Hellions of Fire with an absolutely vengeful zeal. On this album, the band is straightforward, fast, and deceptively mature- striking fast and delivering a mighty payload war-making chords, the venomous progression of which will course through your system for weeks to come, causing fever, dry-mouth, and periodic fits of furious air guitar. The main riffs on “Hellions of Fire," “Metal Blitzkrieg," and “Nightmare Mausoleum” make for instant classics, feeling both immediately and intimately familiar while conjuring the rejuvenating ethos of a more care-free era in metal’s history. Salvador Armijo’s siren-like vocals are mesmerizing and Cato’s inimical bellicose beats give the songs just enough crust punk grit to keep the whole affair feeling tough, brazen, and purposeful. Black Viper is going to drag you to hell and make you look forward to every burning inch of the trip. 

Hellions of Fire is out via Dying Victims Productions (as of 2018)

Album Review: Burial In The Sky - The Consumed Self

I'm not that into tech death. It is just not my deal. But when you add a sax, that changes things. I started out my review of Burial In The Sky's The Consumed Self for New Noise, that this mother fucker sounds like it has John Zorn's fingerprints all over it, and yeah, I still feel like Zorn-Tech-Death sums this album up pretty well. Read what else I had to say about it below: 

Read review of The Consumed Self: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-burial-in-the-sky/

Buy The Consumed Self: https://burialintheskytheband.bandcamp.com/album/the-consumed-self

Album Review: Saz’iso - At Least Wave Your Handkerchief At Me: The Joys and Sorrows of Southern Albanian Song

Saz’iso is the brainchild of producer Joe Boyd, who has worked with various rock ‘n roll luminaries, including Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, and R.E.M. At Least Wave Your Handkerchief… is a collection of Albanian Saze songs, recorded by musicians assembled by Boyd in order to capture this largely undocumented folk tradition. While the instruments used are modern, the songs interpreted here go back hundreds of years. The jaunty lament “Tana" tells the story of a shepherd whose flock is stolen by bandits and who plays his flute one last time before he is killed. The maudlin melodies and tense guitar work of “Penxherenë E Zotrisë Sate” tell a story of unrequited love, and gives the album its title: “You keep going in and out of your gate / O poor me outside!/ At least wave your handkerchief at me.” Many of the other songs on this album are about partisans fighting foreign invaders and men leaving home to find work, a perennial theme in Albanian music to this day.  I don't know what else to say about this one other than it is extremely wonderful and not like anything I've heard before. I cannot recommend it enough. 

This album was released via Glitterbeat... sometime in the last five years, I think.

Album Review: Wild Earp & The Free for Alls - Dyin’ for Easy Livin’

Wild Earp is the pinnacle of swinging, old school country revival and I'm stoked to say he and his band call Chicago home. Check out what I had to say about their new album Dyin’ for Easy Livin’ over at New Noise below: 

Read about Dyin’ for Easy Livin’ here: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-wild-earp-the-free-for-alls/

Buy Dyin’ for Easy Livin’: https://wildearp.bandcamp.com/album/dyin-for-easy-livin

Album Review: John Frum - A Stirring in the Noos

Philadelphia death metal band John Frum play technical death metal in the vein of Artificial Brain, with greater emphasis on jittery, claustrophobic grooves, grinding tempos, and creeping, spider-legged, chord progression. They're more blackened sludge in approach but still, undeniably, a technical death metal band. A Stirring in the Noos is their debut album, released on Relapse records, and it seems them boasting a pretty exceptional lineup, one that includes Faceless'es Derek Rydquist on vocals and The Dillinger Escape Plan's Liam Wilson on bass. 

John Frum takes their name from the mythical figure associated with the South Pacific cargo cult of the island of Tanna. As legend had it, John Frum would one day descended from the island’s volcano to reward his followers with wealth and other gifts. Against this anthropological context, John Frum (the band) has crafted eight crushing mediations on the nature of myths, the limits of reason, and tricks of human perceptions. Their message takes as its vessel the pensive and propulsive “Presage of Emptiness," the meditative churn of “Memory Palace," the volatile and rollicking “Through Sand and Spirit," the haunting and hooky “Lacustrine Divination," and the thunderous, driving uproar of “Assumption of Form." 

It's interesting to me to see a band take such a strange anthropological concept as a cargo cult and apply its lessons to their culture. It makes you think about what aspects of your life are just illusions you've constructed to makes sense of your surroundings. Or at least it should. I think most people would benefit from reflecting on how some of their closest held beliefs and cosmological convictions are actually just watery mental discharge and half articulated justifications handed down to them from those in power. A lot of people believe that swallowing the hook that is offered to them by their boss, a politician, or a beloved media figure, is the thing that will save their life and guide them through the rough waters that lay ahead. In reality, it's just the first step to being gutted and ending up on a plate or mounted to a wall. One of the things that make us human is our critical faculties. I think it's about time some people start using them. Their life might literally depend on it. 

A Stirring in the Noos dropped via Relapse in 2017. 

Album Review: Portrayal of Guilt / Chat Pile Split

The new split between Portrayal of Guilt and Chat Pile fucking slaps. I wrote a thing about it for New Noise. Read below: 

Read review of split: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-portrayal-of-guilt-chat-pile/

Buy the split: https://portrayalofguilt.bandcamp.com/album/portrayal-of-guilt-chat-pile-split

Album Review: Century Palm - Meet You

Toronto's Century Palm is a synth-driven new wave band whose sound cribs from the cleaner side of post-punk pioneers like New Order and Eno-era Roxy Music, ribboned with a chrome veneer of Wire tinted guitars. Meet You is the band's debut record and sees the group exploring what guitarist and vocalist Andrew Payne describes as, “getting to know another layer of yourself,” after going through a major life change. For Andrew, that life change was moving to Toronto from Alberta and experiencing a sense of alienating anonymity within a major metropolitan area. 

If you are going to be stuck inside your head for a bit while riding public transit or while waiting for a friend (or prospective lover, Oooh la la!) to text you back, there are worse things you could fill your ears with in order to help you process your mood. In fact, I would assert that Meet You is more than just "not bad." It's legitimately great! 

I'm relistening to it right now, and I'm entirely entranced by the staccato wind-up and release of “New Creation,” the airy synths and gloomy vocals of the Psychedelic Fur-esque “King of john Street,” as well as “Another You” with its wet reverb, washing synths, ripping snares, and moody outro. The highlight of this album though is the sax spurred, climb and stern revolt of "Sick of It." If there is one thing that I find missing from the rest of the album, it is the urgency with which the band lends to that particular track. Get to know yourself a little better tonight in the illuminating shade cast by Century Palm while you greet Meet You at the threshold of your perception. 

Meet You was released on Deranged Records back in 2017. 

Album Review: Grand Collapse - Empty Plinths

Uk-based hardcore band Grand Collapse is bringing the noise and bringing down monuments on their latest album Empty Plinths. You can check out my write up on New Noise below: 

Write up of Empty Plinths: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-grand-collapse/

Buy Empty Plinths: https://grand-collapse.bandcamp.com/album/empty-plinths

Album Review: Balkan Taksim - Disko Telegraf

 
It occurred to me while listening to the debut album from Disko Telegraf from Romanian duo Balkan Taksim, that the way dance, electronic, sound collage, and, yes, even hip hop, artists view sound can be a little objectifying towards the human experience. It kind of has to be. The point of sourcing sounds for artists working in any of these fields is to find raw material that will aid them in encouraging a certain mood or enticing a particular response from the listener. Whether that be to influence their thinking or inspire them to boogie, whatever context there was for the original sound is more or less obliterated in pursuit of the artist's ends. Again, this is not a bad thing, but it is worth examining the flattening effect this tends to have on culture and human experience when thinking of contemporary popular music. The general approach of popular music in a post-modern world is guided by the assumption that any sound or substantive human experience can be fed into the engine of creation as a raw datum and processed to achieve a discrete, and sometimes, profligate, object. 

While Disko Telegraf is without a doubt an electronic dance record, one that combines the folk music, oral traditions and prayers of various Bulkin cultures into infections doses of electronica, the care with which Sașa-Liviu Stoianovici and Alin Zăbrăuțeanu approach the capturing and repurposing of sounds on the record demonstrates a respect for the source materials that is almost unheard of within the genre. In some ways, it almost feels ethnographic- showcasing the vibrancy of traditions of Eastern sounds and practices in the context of modern music in a way that does not lose its connection to people and the places where the music owes its origins. In still other ways, it feels like a work of fiction- the hurdling forward into a foreign place, of people and ideas, where they become enmeshed in a futuristic scenario where baseline assumptions about culture and human expression are tested and allowed playout under fantastical conditions— illuminating the contours of their true character in the process. 

Disko Telegraf is a strange and beautiful album that opens up some interesting philosophical questions concerning contemporary music's use and appropriation of sound. Not as an indictment, mind you, but as a meditation on the common conditions and catharses that structure the human experience, in all its colors, creeds, forms, and patterns. 

Disko Telegraf is out via Buda Musique.

Album Review: 26 BATS! - Portal Party

Wrote a little thing about the new album from MN experimental pop group 26 Bats! for New Noise. Press against the limits of possibility and check out what I had to say about Portal Party below: 

Portal Party review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-26-bats/

Buy Portal Party: https://26bats.bandcamp.com/album/portal-party

Metal Monday: Humavoid, Merked, Sacred Bull, & Devilz by Definition

It's another Monday and I've been listening to some metal. Must be a Metal Monday! Every couple of weeks I take the time to do a few short reviews of some underground metal releases that have been making my life suck a little less. Below are four quick and dirty overviews of albums you might not have realized could improve your life as well. You don't have to thank me. I know I'm doing the dark lord's work. That reward is enough. 

Humavoid - Lidless (Nobel Demon)

Lidless is the debut LP from Finnish progressive metal quartet Humanvoid. It's an impressive introduction to the group's sound and style., one that feels about halfway between Meshuggah and Bjork's turns towards aggressive, avant-garde pop. It sometimes feels like you're at a dueling piano night at a classed-up jazz bar, where one of the jazz pianists turns out to be a guitarist... and that guitarist is Christian Andreu of Gojira. That's not quite fair, though. The band definitely has their share of jazz bonified, but these aren't entirely represented in the piano or guitar lines of the album. Most of the ivory work here, as iconic as it is, has a theatrical drama to it that is better suited to Dracula's manner in Castlevania than paired with an ensemble for a recital. Instead, Humanvoid's genuine jazz qualifications come out mostly through the drumming of Heikki Malmberg, who absolutely knows how to hold down a polyrhythm and has a remarkable, studied, sense of pacing that I can only describe as academic, without being sterile. This description might make it sound like Humanvoid can't rock, but they do. This is an incredibly forceful sounding band who manage to etch out some definitive character and personality for themselves amongst all of the auditory violence they inflict. 

Pick up Lidless from Germany label Noble Demon here. 

Merked - Mercked (Goat Power Recreation)

If there is a better name for a power-violence band in 2021 than Merked, then you can shoot me. I will go to my grave with a smirk on my lips because I genuinely think it is hilarious. Does a power-violence band deserve to be on a metal rec list? I will let you answer that yourself when you start your own blog. This debut, self-titled EP from Merked, basically combines the wry, body ravishing energy of Spazz with playful but punishing deathgrind that should be familiar to fans of Prowler in the Yard-era Pig Destroyer. It's mostly fun, shout-along hardcore that makes judicious use of extreme metal conventions to package virulently infectious, double-time grooves. That sharp point you feel between your vertebrae while listening to this EP is, in fact, a knife, held my Merked. Their ultimatum: party or die. They'll bring the tunes; you bring your body for the wall of death. Mayhem will ensue. Who knows? You might even live to tell someone about it. 

Get this bad-boy on cassette from Goat Power here. 

 

                                      

Sacred Bull - Ragged Mountain (Super Carnival Recordings)

Georgia's Sacred Bull is back with a new LP, titled Ragged Mountain. It's a loose adaptation of the Edger Allan Poe short story titled A Tale of The Ragged Mountain, a slightly whimsical, yet singularly moribund story of a gentleman who shares some strange spiritual nexus with another man who died decades prior in India. Many of the titles of the album tracks are drawn directly from lines in the story, including "Never Before Trodden" and "Galvanic Battery." The story plays with the difficult to define barriers between slumber and wakefulness, between memories and dreams, and the hypnotic pull of the unknown and unverifiable, through weighty, slumber-shrowded repetitions, smeary grooves, and bloodless passages of cold-sweat inducing sound. Like the story that inspired it, Ragged Mountain balances the intrigue of the uncanny with a ponderous personification of dread. What's more, it is an entirely instrumental album and carries its narrative without uttering a single word. Nineteenth-century literature was probably never meant to be this heavy, but the heaviness works for it all the same. 

Get it on CD and cassette here. 

Devilz by Definition - The Bitter Remains of Human Consumption (Self-Released)

Big, dumb, riffs are sometimes just what I need to get through the day. Sometimes I just have to have a fat groove to ride to through some interminable task, and I know I am not alone in this because Five Finger Deathpunch is a thing. Instead, of talking about one of the biggest groove and thrash metal bands in the country though, I'd like to introduce you to a band that fills a very similar nitch but who gets about 1/100th the love. Devilz by Definition is an Ontario band who followed up their 2016 debut LP this year with an EP titled The Bitter Remains of Human Consumption. It lacks some of the flair and flash of its predecessor, but they've honed in on the fundamentals for this release to great effect. The songwriting is sturdy, seeing the band serve up some tart licks, shout in-your-face choruses, and more importantly, some greasy, belly dragging grooves. If you can give me a reason to drop whatever I'm doing and fist pump in my chair, your doing something right. And Devilz by Definition is getting me reason to stop short and shoot some horns in the air at least once a track with this baby. So that's an A for effort and an A+ for execution in my book. 

Buy the EP here. 

Interview: Annihilus

Photo by Michael Vallera

Had a really fun chat with Luca of Chicago local black metal project Annihilus for CHIRP Radio today. We talked about the origins of his sound, who he got into black metal, and the band's status as a recording-only project and why it's likely to stay that way. 

Check out our convo on CHIRP Radio's site here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · Annihilus Interview

Album Review: Darkthrone – Eternal Hails​.​.​.​.​.​.

Wrote a review of the new album from Darkthrone for New Noise today. It's good and surprisingly different from their past materials. More of a cosmic NWOBHM and blues rock vibe. I dig it. I know this review wont change any minds or put many more ears on this release, but it was fun to write. Links below: 

Click for review

Click to buy via Peaceville 

Album Review: Altin Gün - Âlem

Altin Gün (for the avoidance of doubt, pronounced "Altin Goon'), is an international band who perform updated versions of Turkish rock and folk. Cool stuff right? I thought so. That's why I wrote a review of their steller album Yol a few months back, and I'm following it up with another little write-up for New Noise about their latest album Âlem. This last one is only out via Bandcamp at the moment. Links below: 

Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-altin-gun/

Buy: https://altingunband.bandcamp.com/album/lem

Album Review: Tetragrammacide - Primal Incinerators of Moral Matrix

I didn't become interested in Tetragrammacide because I think I'm cool, and I only like cool, mysterious metal. I got interested in Tetragrammacide because I'm a weirdo who likes weird shit. Even then, Tetragrammacide really rides a line between interesting and inscrutable for me. 

What actually works as a guide to interpreting many of the images, sounds, and song titles the band dumps on the listener throughout the course of their debut LP Primal Incinerators of Moral Matrix is that this is a grindcore band, and like most grindcore bands, they are at some level consciously making something absurd- and that absurdity is meant to be amusing. I really don't need much more evidence for this than the West Bengal-based group's name. The word "Tetragrammacide" is a kind of collapsing of Hebrew and English, that doesn't make any sense on its own, but if you know how to read it right, basically means "Deicide." That gives you an idea of what you can expect here. Layered obfuscation and references to Kabbalistic teachings, Buddhist texts, and cult Christianity, melted together and reformed along with the scrappings of a Silicon Valley pitch deck to assemble impenetrable titles like "Cyberserking Strategic Kalpa-Terminator (Advanced Acausality Increment Mechanism)" and "Dismal Ramification of Metamathematical Marmas and Sandhi." If turns of phrase like these don't elicit a bemused (and rightfully confused) chuckle from you, then this might not be for you. There is some actual history and a certain logic behind these titles and the symbolism the band employs, but I'll be damned if it isn't principally bestowed with a rueful smirk. 

Beyond all this strangeness, the music on Primal Incinerators of Moral Matrix is really quite good and a cut above their debut EP Typhonian Wormholes: Indecipherable Anti-Structural Formulæ in everything from conception, design, and rendition. Think Napalm Death if they were attempting to saber-rattle a war metal group like Blasphemy and just way, way overboard. They list Goatpenis and Nuclearhammer as inspirations, which provide some illuminating insights, even if I'm not sure anything either band has done is as sonically swift, dirty, and chaotically violent as Tetragrammacide is on their debut. Amazingly for a grindcore band, a many of these tracks crack the 5-minute mark. This means that you're going to have plenty of time with each of these ominous omnibuses of harsh sounds and weird religious references to soak of the audacity and contemplate your divine punishment. 

At the end of the day, Primal Incinerators of Moral Matrix is a competent, brutal, and wholly unique record, that you should give at least one full spin, if you haven't already. However, if you start hearing chanting from the shadows of your apartment at night or voices in your head speaking in uninterpretable tongues afterward, don't panic. These are likely only temporary side effects of the album (probably). If they persist with time, consult a priest, or a local underpass dwelling hobo. They might not be able to help, but they'll at the very least believe you. 

Primal Incinerators of Moral Matrix is out via Iron Bonehead. 

Album Review: All Life Dies - Ghost Dust

Wrote about some black metal for New Noise! The debut EP Ghost Dust from Texas's All Life Dies is a very promising introduction to what this fantastic melodic black metal band can do. Check out what I had to say about it at the links below: 

Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-all-life-dies/

Buy Ghost Dust: https://alllifedies.bandcamp.com/album/ghost-dust

Album Review : MouthBreather – I’m Sorry Mr. Salesman

Dropped some praise about the debut record I’m Sorry Mr. Salesman from Boston metalcore band MouthBreather over on New Noise today. Completely vicious and stupidly brutal record. I loved it. Read what I had to say below: 

Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/album-review-mouthbreather-im-sorry-mr-salesman/

Buy I’m Sorry Mr. Salesman from Good Fight Music: https://goodfightmusic.com/

Album Review: Grave Miasma - Abyss of Wrathful Deities

Grave Miasma was one of the leading cavernous death metal bands in the UK at one point. This apparently isn't the style du jour anymore though- which leaves Grave Miasma not leading much of anything these days. That's not as bad as it sounds. It means that the expectations are such that they can more or less do what they want, and that's exactly how I would describe their sophomore LP Abyss of Wrathful Deities. It's pretty much exactly what they want, with few if any concessions to the listener. 

I can appreciate that about a band. I respect it when a group basically throws all considerations for their expected audience out the window and just does what feels right- letting the rabble make sense of their art in whatever manner their faculties will permit. There isn't a whiff of pandering on Abyss of Wrathful Deities, just dark and stormy death metal- fixate on mortality and the irreversible strength of the abyss's pull, while finding itself transfixed by the banality by mortal cruelty as addressed by Eastern traditions and philosophies. 

Inspiration drawn from funeral practices in India and China bare their bones through the rotten bag of tarp-like skin that Grave Miasma drape themselves with- taking the form of unusually haunting interludes performed on a sitar, but also, through the themes of the album itself. One of the more notable examples of which is "Rogyapa," whose title is a reference to the practice of sky burials. In some high-altitude areas, where the soil is too rocky to permit a proper burial, corpses are disposed of through ceremonies where the body is parted out and fed to vultures. "Rogyapa" treats the practice with characteristic anguish, beginning with blasts and thrashy guitar shrieks before transitioning into Grave Miasma's more traditional Incantation-esque slice, embodied in mirthless crests of Bold Thrower-styled grooves. 

"Erudite Decomposition" exhibits graduated tremolo scales as a feature of its cracked and worn blackened-death rattle, luring you in with the perfume of death and guiding you up the steep and pale pavé leading to a collapsed mausoleum brimming with restless spirits. "Demons of the Sand" has a somewhat contorted groove to it that binds like the wages of sin- chained to your aching spine,- a burden that is in no way relieved by the ghastly and sparse outro that concludes the track. Harshness is kind of Grave Miasm's thing, but if I had to pick a high point for the band's ruthlessness, it would have to be the fire barrage of "Exhumation Rites," whose conflagration in the opening section, through the galloping joust of the grooves following the first tempo change, feels like you are attempting to outrun a cavalry squad dispatched by the four horsemen of the apocalypse to specifically reduce you to a clod of blood and hairy clumps of pressed flesh. 

My one complaint is that Abyss of Wrathful Deities is that it in some ways, Grave Miasma reproduces the sound that they settled into on their Endless Pilgrimage EP back in 2016- streamlining it without adding much variation. But in general, I like what I hear on Abyss of Wrathful Deities. It's as ugly as the face of death itself and any small gripes I have wither the observance to band's mastery of form.

Pick up a copy of  Abyss of Wrathful Deities from Dark Descent here. 

Interview: DARE

Image courtesy of the artist

Talked with Angel of the Orange County straight-edge and hardcore band DARE ahead of the release of their debut LP Against All Odds out on Revelation Records this week. You can read the transcript from our chat over at New Noise at the links below: 

Interview: https://newnoisemagazine.com/interview-dare-to-live-in-a-hostile-world/

Buy Against All Odds: https://revhq.com/collections/dare

Album Review: oldsoul - High on Yourself / Safety Net

I wrote a review of the smashing new double single from Massachusetts's oldsoul. Big-hearted emo that you won't be able to put down. Check out what I had to say about it over on New Noise at the links below: 

Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/column/bandcamp-of-the-day-oldsoul/

Buy the record: https://counterintuitiverecords.com/products/oldsoul-high-on-yourself-pre-order

Album Review: Sekou Bah - Soukabbe Mali

I've decided that I'm over the album cycle routine. I really do not care about staying on trend with releases. Instead, I'm just going to use this blog to write about whatever I find interesting while prioritizing music that has dropped within the past ten years. To that end, I want to talk about Sekou Bah. Sekou is a Malian multi-instrumentalist whose background in jazz informs his 2018 album Soukabbe Mali, a voyage into the lapping tides of afrobeat and Caribean music, combining more traditional aspects of Malian folk music into more popular, global styles to unleash their universalist appeal and convey a message of cross-cultural, and cross-generational respect. It’s a pretty relaxing sonic expose that is perfect for a summer night when the moon is full and the air is still and warm. Throughout the entire album, Sekou sings in his native tongue, which does nothing to obscure the content of his clandestine, communiqué of comradery. There are hip wiggling groves paired with sensual melodies on “Dogon Oulon," while funk guitars give life to a plaintive ballad on “Nge Mounkila," and soulful riffs and interjecting bass-heavy percussion (with the odd, propulsive, semi-blast-beat... really) guide the title track “Soukabbe Mali.” The infectious rhythm of “Wari Tigui” has a danceable pull, and the plucky, jazzy guitar riffs which tango with call and response vocals form the bedrock of “Fifi.” The album is partially dedicated to Sekou’s bassist, Amadou Keita, who tragically died in an automobile accident just weeks after recording the album. Soukabbe Mali is an album about struggle, sure, but also peace and kindness, and it might sound corny, but god damn do we need more to both these days. 

Soukabbe Mali is out via Soukabbe Mali Clermont Records. 

Album Review: Vazum - V+

 
I'm not a "deathgaze" expert- but I don't think I have to be in order to relish Detriot's Vazum. To clarify, the band, Vazum, consists of the delinquent duo Zach Pliska and Emily Sturm, and they describe their synthesis of industrial influenced post-punk, alternative metal, and death rock as deathgaze. Prior to encountering their most recent LP V+, I was familiar with the term "deathgaze," but only as it was used by another band- the theatrical Japanese goth-metal group, Deathgaze.

 I only know about the Deathgaze because I had a crush on a girl who was really into visual kei back in college, and in spending time with her, I ended up absorbing some of her weird passion for the genre. Deathgaze has nothing to do with Vazum, and they sound radically different. While Deathgaze's Ai could approximate the authentic and insensate croon of a vampire drifting in your bedroom window, Zach and Emily don't sound nearly as bloodless. That's actually what's caught my ear about V+ in the first place- the passion of Zach and Emily bring to the project is irrepressible. They really can't help but throw themselves into their offerings. 

No matter how obsequiously they may bow before the altar of Bauhaus on tracks like the darkly stirring "Haunted House" or the gothic, guillotine blade glide of "Razor Smile," they don't seem capable of detaching themselves from the subject matter of their songs, or the expression of their performances the way Peter Murphy and his monster squad always managed to. But, I personally think this is a good thing. If I ever had a complaint about Bauhaus, it was that they could sometimes sound TOO disinterested and aloof. Vazum gets directly in your face and it changes everything. The tempos are hot, the grooves slice and gauge like a company of demonically enchanted knights attacking the stone walls of a defenseless medieval church, and the vocals smolder and entwine like a pair of dessert eagle wielding co-ed assassins, locking lips and hips as they defend themselves in the center of a bloodied gymnasium against the advancing hoard of their zombified former classmates. 

As an added bonus, V+ is a very danceable album. The shadowy guitar work helps build up a sensual atmosphere while the throbbing beat resuscitates the animal in you that society has shamed into hibernation. The repetition of each of these songs's structure aids in the design as well, ensuring that you can find your groove in each before it sunsets. Vazum might call this deathgaze, I just call it a good time. 

Buy V+ here. 

Interview: Karaboudjan

Image courtesy of the artist

I had the chance to interview Billy of Karaboudjan for the CHIRP Radio blog this week. Billy is a very dedicated and talented guy, who started out in the world of post-hardcore, eventually found his way into electronic and dance music, and now has a solo light funk album on the way under the name Karaboudjan called IMAGO. Dude is one to watch! Check out our conversation at the links below: 

Read interview with Karaboudjan here. 

Lisetn to Karaboudjan here. 

Album Review: Underdark - Our Bodies Burned Bright on Re​-​Entry

UK's Underdark are making an interesting variety of blackgaze that, to my ears at least, is synthesizing inspiration from various metal and punk subgenres in a way that delivers on the promises of Sunbather in ways that Deafheaven has yet to. Controversial statement, I know.  I'm trying to keep you folks on your toes. Check out what I had to say about Underdark's Our Bodies Burned Bright on Re​-​Entry over on New Noise. Links below: 

Read review of Our Bodies Burned Bright on Re​-​Entry.

Buy Our Bodies Burned Bright on Re​-​Entry.

Album Review: Ben Katzman's DeGreaser - Astrology 101

Astrology 101 is like a masterclass in personality profiling and a map to your place in the universe. I say that, but full disclosure, I know next to nothing about astrology. I make flirtatious eyes at the tarot every once in a while and my shelves are stacked books about weird cults and religious practices... I even own a couple of crystals. But I know about as much about astrology as I do aerospace engineering- which is next to nothing. So when I call Ben Katzman's DeGreaser's latest album Astrology 101 a masterclass, you have to take that as coming from someone who is literally learning the difference in temperament between Aries and Libras by listening to the album. But to the album's credit, I'm learning a lot. 

In a recent interview with Talk House, Ben credited astrology with his music career. It apparently helped him feel more grounded and like he could better understand himself, and gave him the courage to pursue a career in music. So right there, you have a success story crediting this area of study because Ben is a super talented guy! Seriously, Ben can shred a lick like a jet engine can cut a block of cheese. It's easy to get caught up in the power of his guitar work and forget about the skill that is behind it, and I often find myself getting caught up in the groove of a guitar melody and forgetting to actually listen to the notes he's playing. This is a scandal, because when you hone in on the specifics of what Ben is doing, it kind of makes your brain fizzle a little. Like someone packed the creases of your cortex with mentos and then poured a liter of orange soda on top. 

Each sign has its own song on Astrology 101, and each song has its own vibe. Most of these song's styles land squarely in the sectors of surf and hard rock- but there are some surprises. "Gemini Brain" dances on an old-school hip hop beat and a pudgy, descending guitar chord that sounds like something Rick Rubin might have sampled for The Fat Boys back in 1985, later Cancers get a bombastic, Elton John parodying, piano lead power ballad, and finally, "Pisces Transmission" plays you out with an interstellar voyage on ambient guitar waves that docks in a place where you can take a dip your toes in the cosmic waters of the equinox. Ben serves of some tanalizing riffs on Astrology 101, but his energy and aptitude seem most focused on "Mom's A Capricorn," which loops around a lean little Are We Not Men? era Devo riff like a rollercoaster riding a rail, and "Taurean Tactics" which catches massive air, kickflipping clouds like they were skateboards to some high flying, vertical, Van Halen like riffs. 

I see you still being skeptical over there, thinking to yourself, "learnin' and rock music, are like oli and water." After all, Rodger Waters once wrote the seminal rock line, "we don't need no education," and thousands have taken heed. However, when Roger wrote that line, he was pointing to a system of social control that is perpetuated through the English school system. He was also writing a long time ago, and well before Ben Katzman released Astrology 101. If Roger were to hear Ben's album today, I bet he'd change his tune. Because you might not need no education, but Ben Katzman's Astrology 101... That's a whole other story- this shit's mandatory.

Get a copy of Astrology 101 here. It is out via Starburns Industries Press (yes, the one that does all the animations you like). 

Interview: Hate Club

Image courtesy of Hate Club

Interviewed Albany's Hate Club for New Noise today. They have kind of an unflattering origin story for their name, but the music is good. Kind of hooky emo and melo-punk with some '90s throwback bristle. This and a tall boy of pilsner will set you up nicely at the end of the day. Links below: 

Read interview with Hate Club. 

Buy their new album Tightly Wound. 

Album Review: King Woman - Celestial Blues

 

I wrote a review about that enigmatic new record from Celestial Blues for New Noise today. Lots of people have portrayed the Devil in song and film. Very few have been as believable in the role as Kristina Esfandiari. Links below:

Read review of Celestial Blues. 

Buy Celestial Blues.

Album Review: 80HD - Demo & Impede - Digital Hell

I'm doing something a little different tonight. Allow me to explain. Something that used to bug me before I started writing reviews was how flat-out dismissive writers could be of the bands they cover. The phrase "nothing new here" was dropped a lot when a band was identified as playing in an established style and it would completely piss me off. Like, why are you writing about a band if you have nothing to say about them? This always struck me as a problem with the writer rather than the artist they were writing about. Because the writer is acting like their lack of understanding, imagination, and perspective was the band's problem and not theirs. There are mercifully fewer of these now than there used to be, but I'll still read a review that basically implies that all hardcore/death metal/ black metal sounds the same, and it never fails to make me mad. So I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to compare two bands with very similar styles and explain how different they are, and why that matters. If you think this is a waste of time- it is not. And I think that opinion says a lot more about you than you realize. 

80HD is a hardcore band out of Brooklyn, NYC. They don't sound anything like Madball, though. They actually play in a style that I find more common in college towns and minor-metro areas out in the hinterlands. Places like Louisville, Nashville's suburbs, or DeKalb. By which I mean they play a loose and noisy style of punk that is reminiscent of, and clearly inspired by, classic d-beat and '80s Japanese hardcore. Bands like this never quite stay in the pocket of their influences though. A fact which always plays to their benefit. 80HD released their 2021 Demo back in April and the record fizzles and burns like a bottle rocket fired directly down your throat. There are some straightforward RAWK guitars on this baby that help to put grit beneath its treads and gives the whole sweaty, psychotic, slip and slash affair on its feet and moving with a red-eyed momentum. Delivering one headbutt to your gut after another for a total of six and a half minutes. 80HD sounds like Warthog on a bad day, when they've been self-medicating with a cocktail of paint-thinner and discontinued pesticides. Sloppy, sorted, and sensationally weird. 

 

Impede is also a hardcore band whose sound is heavily inspired by '80s Japanese hardcore. Like 80HD they also prefer very loose grooves and rough production. Unlike 80HD, they are far more spot in capturing the sounds of their influences, which include unhinged, d-beat Italian groups like Negazone as well as black metal that rides the line between the first and second wave. On the Australian group's Digital Hell, serrated speed metal grooves press forward with relentless resolve, cutting a wake through the noise feedback into which a ferociously vicious vocal performance invades, a wrenching howl that emerges somewhere between Fugu of Gauze and Tom G Warrior during his Hellhammer days. The band also has a flair for the dramatic, which is extremely rare in the world of Japanese hardcore influenced bands. This maudlin verve manifests in the form of eerie interludes and intros that seem like they might be a better fit for a death rock record, but which are very effective when combined with Impede's overall approach, and which gives Digital Hell a cryptic and unsettling ambiance. 

 

Both 80HD and Impede are Japenese inspired hardcore bands from English-speaking countries, but each represents a dramatically different approach. 80HD takes the rough framework of music that inspires them and uses it to feel out their own way of expressing themselves. It's looser, less constrained, and more willing to include elements from the milieu of underground Americana, like hard rock and power-pop, with just a hint of SSD. Again, this is a band that sounds wild that they should be from Nebraska or something. Someplace where they could have a lot of open space to let their anger out. Impede is similar in this respect, in that they also sound like they have a lot of rage they need to regurgitate. In contrast to their yankee counterparts, Impede is more studious in their adoption of influences, finding routes to individual expression through strange combinations, synthesizing Japanese and black metal vocal work and integrating it with speed metal, d-beat, and gothic atmospherics. 

Similar starting points. Drastically different outcomes. Each is exciting and fearsomely bedeviling in their own right.