Album Review: fallingwithscissors - the death and birth of an angel

Young'uns are calling fallingwithscissors's second EP the death and birth of an angel "breakcore"... Now, I'm in the habit of defending the opinions of my juniors, but in this case the kids' brains are shot through, I swear. Does this sound like "Same Old Chiyo Shit"? Come on, get educated... On the flip side, I read a review of this album from someone who is clearly 40, who described it (lovingly?) as an incoherent mess... Are people just not able to hear and appreciate a song with multiple parts anymore? And I thought the yutes had short attention spans. My rebuttal to said reviewer: "Sir, don't you have something more pressing... like planning your retirement? Where is your wife?" I hate to break it to you all, but there isn't some secret code to understanding the death and birth of an angel- Errorzone was only 8 years ago. Atari Teenage Riot launched 34 years ago. Get caught up, or get left behind. fallingwithscissors is a current-day metalcore band. the death and birth of an angel is a current-day hardcore record with nods to dissonant dance music, a digital hardcore record if you will -a very fine hardcore record at that- but let's not get too distracted by the anime visuals and start slapping "break-this" and "break-that" all over everything. Okay? Have a little restraint, folks. Now the death and birth of an angel a cool take on what's come before it, and is very much informed by contemporary production and EDM trends in a way reminiscent of forward-facing artists in the vein of Femtanyl and Machine Girl- with, of course, emo vocals and melodic conceits delivered with the flair of a wounded devil and evocativeof turns taken by Alice Simard with her Coffret de Bijoux project. As far as metalcore and its consequences are concerned, though, I do like the direction that this record is pointing, one that feels fresh but firmly rooted, and one that, sonically and meta-texually, acknowledges the human race's consciousness as it rapidly synthesizes with an augmented digital reality- all while retaining some semblance of the rage exerted by the animal nevertheless impounded in the interior. The way the death and birth of an angel sort of clicks together with such baneful efficiency has me thinking it's the extreme aural equivalent of a Battle Angel style cybernetic being, assembled from components of disparate designs and eras, but repurposed into a sleek and deadly visage of mechanized bionic fury, capable of venting the calvaria of a skull with a single swift blow like it was a can of cranberry sauce. A sweet cybernetic cherub, whom death follows like billous oily perfume.

Album Review: No Soy Bill Murray - Error, Fatal Inferno

No Soy Bill Murray implies the existence of a "Soy" Bill Murray, much to the delight of some sarcasm-loving vegans, I'm sure. However, I've never ordered an impossible burger in my life, and don't intend to change my dietary habits on a hypothetical whim, so we'll be sticking with the All Beef Bill Murray for the rest of this review (you're welcome to sample alternatives and report back). As their name implies, No Soy Bill Murray is not, and has no affiliation with, the Evanston-born comedian-turned-actor, best known for his work in the seminal romance Mad Dog and Glory, playing opposite Robert De Niro, rather they're actually from Honduras, not Illinois, and don't have much of a movie career to speak of (at least not yet!). To avoid any of you getting too lost in translation, the group's name literally translates to "I'm Not Bill Murray," which may bust the ghost of some of your expectations concerning the level of schlubby, throwaway repartee the band is likely to display, but that's not my problem, I don't care, and I'm moving on. Their first and only record was released last year- 2025's Error, Fatal Inferno-, and it is a psychedelic shindig fit for the end of days: smooth, relaxing, and steamy, like sunbathing on the charred exposed rim of a gaping hell mouth as it belches tropical-temperature vapors into the atmosphere. The low-key radiance of their floating grooves, the solar-ray-emulating weave of guitar work, and refreshingly lustrous and lucid melodies will almost make you forget the imminent and immediate dangers of surfing on the landslide of modern material and social decline, as experienced across the globe (but particularly in the good ol' US of A). There are really worse (and possibly more deadly) mistakes you could make today than giving Error, Fatal Inferno a spin- it's certainly less of a macabre blunder than The Dead Don't Die.

Album Review: Fulu Miziki - Mokano EP

Uganda's favorite sonic salvagers Fulu Miziki already had a recognized and well-received album under their upcycled, polyurethane waist straps (2021's Ngbaka) by the time 2024 EP Mokano sprang from the soil like a disco-ball-patterned sunflower, but in many ways this later release is their earnest debut to the world. Ngbaka, while being sonically and texturally interesting and imaginative in its own right, denied a prospective audience a proper exposition of the group's unique interchange of Cuban-inspired and East African sounds- a regrettable development for a band whose raison d'être is raising to the plane of consciousness the natural and genuine in a sea of manufactured superfluity. Mokano gives a stronger sense of this purpose, while being a more straightforward reclamation of aural authenticity, thriving amidst the mountainous cast-offs of decadence and decay- in other words, it's landfill music meant to root you back in the dirt and struggle of this planet. A call to motion and unity of action rings out from the first strike of a PVC pipe on opener "Mbanga Pasi," with its banded, jived-out rhythms, inundating percolation of improvised percussion, accompanied by a multi-tiered torrent of vibrant group vocals, a potent display of energy that heightens the senses suitable in preparation for the bopping scoot and scrapping skip of "Bopeto" with its pepper-bark puff and gum-boned slap, which then winds down just in time for the high-traction bustle of "Tamatu" to take center stage, followed by the monsoon-summoning charm "Vie Eza," the ascendant acapella of "Soki Ozwyi Yako Lia," and finally, the jerky rhythmic convoke "Mosala," which seems to pull flesh and blood from the clay of the altar on which it pivots to give body to a prancing homunculus, whose gesticular form is as dynamic as lightning and who lithe figure extends as a bridge between the plane of the sky and the terrene flats below. Not everywhere in the world has the infrastructure to dispose of the refuse generated by modern industrial output to satisfy consumer needs, and as a result, many around the world end up living with and amongst the consequences of light production and petty consumption as the terrain around them fills up with refuse and non-biodegradable elements, from both their communities and abroad, as their home becomes a dumping ground for places rich enough to have the luxury of forgetting about the debris created by their lifestyles. But in heaping and accumulating, these disregarded residues of modernity reshape the land where they come to rest, and for those who still maintain a connection to this land, even as undesirable as it is, the detritus integrates into their cosmos, augmenting the spiritual balance and flows of energy but not disrupting the fundamental obligations which the living have to the cumulative well-being of creation; instead, demanding an infusion of imagination to reintegrate what is cast off back into an integrated whole and renew humankind's commitments to the Earth in the process. Fulu Miziki play "junk music," because junk is the indigestible kernel and stubborn gallstone lodged in the belly and at the heart of the contemporary schism with the forces that sustain life on this planet- by reclaiming waste, they are reclaiming the world itself.

もしもし! はい, レコードでございます!

Album Review: Summer Cannibals - Can't Tell Me No

I never considered Summer Cannibals to be one of the essential acts of the late great garage rock boom of the early '10s, but they always had a certain spunky charm that made the group notable if nothing else. Their first LP had the title No Makeup slapped across its face, and from the moment that dog hit the track they never backed down from that no-second-chances, put-up-or-shut-up style of rock on a kaiser roll... But they DID eventually refine the hell out of it! 2019's Can't Tell Me No is the fourth album from Portland's Summer Cannibals. The era when this defiant bit of pop art dropped was afflicted with an unsightly rash of two-bit hucksters of all hackneyed strains, frankly scraping the barrel for whatever nostalgia they could sprinkle on top of their garbage to hide their stink with a dusting of legitimacy- the dead horse de jure being being Dinosaur Jr.- but Summer Cannibals escaped a trip to the glue factory by only ever aping the Pixies, and doing it in ways that were often as unexpected as a stray toenail glazed into the surface of an apple fritter... albeit far more tempting, as it were. Clearly, when they were bashing together Can't Tell Me No, there were going to be zero naysayers to dissuade the group from recasting and redefining their tried-and-true, no-frills brio- thankfully, such additions managed to clarify and sharpen their sound, rather than weigh it down with gaudy hubris. The album strikes the right note out of the gate with the buzz-guided killer ray of perception "False Anthem," that has this infectious yet measured bounce and enough wiggly elbow room to permit the cracking off of a few groovy and rewarding side tangents. Following that is the title track, "Can't Tell Me No," a feisty little stomper helmed by an angular, desaturated guitar groove reminiscent of Sleater-Kinney circa All Hands on the Bad One with some appropriately fizzy breakdowns thrown in for good measure. Later, "Behave" platforms big Veruca Salt-esque vocal hooks embedded in a tense, Pixies-inspired, riffy groan-huff. Things get a little more lonesome cowgirl-esque with the dizzy, nipping rebuke "Like I Used To," before dipping into the subdued ripple-pop splash of "Innocent Man," which doesn't flinch at the chance to litigate crimes that only take place in the dark, and then "Start Breaking" takes us on a sweetly retributive demolition exhibition. Lastly, I genuinely appreciate how this heater fades out with a shimmering, melt-on-touch adieu, "Into Gold"; it's a sweet and affirming send-off that the album had surely earned by the end. Can't Tell Me No really feels like the culmination of the band's career and intentions- if they were satisfied to kick up their feet and lean on this thing's laurels for now until the big one drops, I wouldn't blame them one bit.

Tiny Engines, big ambitions.

Album Review: Coffret De Bijoux - My Limbs Are Not Mine

Of all the tattered flesh shrouds and spectral shades she slips through, Coffret de Bijoux appears to be maturing into Alice Simard's most compelling and sonically adventurous manifestation. The vicious Québec-based virtuoso has quite the rap sheet, splitting her time and a swath of eardrums across a range of abominable aural bêtes noires; whether she is flexing her carrion-fed, brutal-death shredding chops with Codex Crudelitas, communing with the gods of inter-neuro-grid with the Lain-inspired cybergrind exe. FILESHAREMAIDEN, or gutting the idols of restraint with the dauntingly anointed goregrind sauvage Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy- there is no height of extremity too lofty, or aquifer of dissonance too low, that to drill to its depths would be unimaginable. Which brings us back to Coffret de Bijoux; outwardly, it is a depressive atmospheric black metal project- the first releases under its mantle were ghastly and otherworldly, devoid of recognizable human warmth (or verbal expression) and submerged in the oily dew of void-burn existential perturbation, an orientation towards sound that culminated in the pinnacle of 2025's wen jalè jalè gunala, a fraying web of gossamer that shrieks and rends its own soft flesh in a fitful attempt at self-reorganization and recognition, tortured form that threatens to spontaneously combust through the friction of its interior traivol. There was perhaps a considerable dose of Damian Anton Ojeda's Trhä in the alchemist's vessel out of which Coffret de Bijoux emerged, especially in the way that emotion tends to leak out all over performance like black lacquer seeping from a cracked inkwell, but there is certainly more to its chemical composition than simply a reflective polymerization of her peers. Last year, Coffret de Bijoux also introduced this world to the project's emo chip-tune side with the sullenly angelic and blindingly enigmatic intablej' u ana, which could have convincingly fronted as a Weatherday and Këkht Aräkh collaboration and left me uncertain about its true origins. This willful and restless transmutation is again evident on my limbs are not mine, which, as far as I can tell, is Alice's first (mainly) English-language release with Coffret De Bijoux, as well as her first full and proper punk record- scraping together brisk, punchy third-wave emo-inspired grooves, pop-punk melodies, and early metalcore riffs to beat back the night with a force of resilience possessed only by the perpetually young at heart. Incredibly, the record retains enough of its black metal allele to not result in too dramatic or off-puttingly divergent a turn for the project on the whole, but rather offers an opportunity to comprehend the richness of the vein of influences and inspirations that conspire to produce the genius of Coffret de Bijoux's spellbinding cache. From the rattling rollick and arresting seraphic avowal of "i need to see" all full of loose screws and bent halos, to the sweetly venomous coo of "nuit d'automne," to the veiled hunger and agitatedly exposed decampment of "i never recollect," through to the quietly wounded, organ-transplanting, and giallo-stained lament of the title-track, and finally the crushing return to form on the tearful, ruminating spectre and closer "pillow poise remembering"- my limbs are not mine extends the tensile subluxation of Alice's spirit as embodied in Coffret de Bijoux in a manner that magnifies the luster and ethereal shine of its fractured intricacy and interior.

Album Review: Ikebe Shakedown - Kings Left Behind

Thrones are toppled, kingdoms laid to waste, histories are reduced to sand, and all roads lead to ruin... but not if you're Ikebe Shakedown. The seven-member instrumental funk band out of Brooklyn, New York, may seem like they've abdicated and gone incognito since their 2019 LP, but their legacy has yet to be turned to ash by the ravages of time. Their sound is horn-driven, highly cinematic, stylishly psychedelic, and inspired by the soulful charm of Curtis Mayfield, the weighty rhythmic pulse of Fela Kuti, and the epic scope of '70s spaghetti western soundtracks. Kings Left Behind (as previously alluded, released in 2019)is the band's fourth studio album (and most recent), recorded straight to reel-to-reel by the band's bassist, Vince Chiarito. The album unveils an oasis of melodious intrigue with "Not Another Drop," establishing the group's predilection for gonzo grooves, which is supercharged on the following smoky, hookah-haze-infused "Unqualified," and is fully realized with a vengeance on the mid-album stinger, the momentous, bongo-and-horn-driven spanner "Hammer Into Anvil." "The Witness" takes things in a more mischievous direction, with its quivering guitars and spit-and-pucker percussion, a track that would slot easily into the soundtrack of some lost supernatural western thriller, set in a traveling carnival where all the orphaned performers inexplicably have telekinetic powers and a predilection to deploy them in a zeal for vindication. The most retro-sounding tracks on the album come near the end, with the spy-thriller-esque "No Going Back" and the rose-tinted slow jam "Kings Left Behind," a worthy pair of companions to help mask the cry of a gunshot ringing out over shifting desert dunes. It's the kind of album Coalmine Records exists to put out into the world. They dig through the rough and excavate the gems, so you don't have to.

Ain't no diamonds without Coal(mine Records).