Album Review: Like Rats - Death Monolith

Harm's Way is literally why I'm into hardcore... at all, as in completely, as in no Harm's Way and I'm stuck in a painful, decades-long limbo, grinning and bearing it and putting on a brave face to acquaintances while I pretend to enjoy and appreciate Wilco. It's a long story as to how this happened, and I'm not going to get into it here, but it's essential context for why this review of Like Rats's Death Monolith has come into existence. In the very early part of this decade, I was skimming music discourse, trying to pick up on new hardcore bands that might tickle my fancy, and Like Rats came up in a back-and-forth about Harm's Way and Xibalba (...on Facebook, I think? This was prior to it serving primarily as the internet's trailer park and/or content landfill). I checked out Like Rats's then-latest album Death Monolith (2020), but since I was expecting them to be a hardcore band, I didn't spend much time with the album... until recently. I've been somewhat nostalgic lately for the high-brow, misery-mired sludge era of Chicago's cross-pollination with Indianapolis and the metal scene it produced, roughly running the gamut of the mid to late '10s and begetting such legendary monstrosities as Indian and Lord Mantis- you know, smart guy, bad attitude type stuff- the kinds of music that Jordan Reyes likely started American Decline Records in order to sign, only to have every viable candidate snatched up by Southern Lord or Profound Lore. A Chicago band, Like Rats, emerged out of this milieu, and while they did not reach the lofty conceptual heights of groups like Coffinworm, they demonstrated a strain of intelligence that is all too rare amongst metal acts, even in boom times- they can really write a song. Sonically obtaining succor somewhere between Atlas Moth and Bones, the group wrings all the tarry goop out of tried-and-true death-sludge dynamics, leaving its tendons and muscles spry and springy, lethal and ready to hone in for the kill, whether it be by a frontal bombardment or an evasive ricochet. As if they were a Souls-like adversary, they give glints and tells of their movements, subtly, but mockingly concealed, warning you of their intended course of action, with a feint or flourish, before driving their point to a fatal conclusion with bloody intent. If you're quick-witted and agile enough in your faculties, you can catch wind of the strike and dodge well enough to afford yourself a fleeting moment of appreciation before a succeeding thrust angles for your breastplate, or maybe you'll only be granted the opportunity to appreciate their artful, deathly flow posthumously- Death Monolith is intelligently crafted to delivery you into a prone position, whether this is merely a temporary resting place before a permanent dirt-nap, or a repose before reprisal in proportion to the aggression you've been dealt is a matter of ingrained determination- something Like Rats has in spades, and as I suspect, something they mean to test the mettle of in their audience.

Winter is coming... Hibernation Release.

Album Review: Bereft - Lands

Blackened sludge metal out of Madison, WI to give voice to a once sacred, now defiled and ravaged terrain, Bereft play a deeply atmospheric hybrid of black metal and sludge metal, placing them in a uniquely crushing category of extreme metal with other chimeric monstrosities like Stone Titan and Chicago’s own Lord Mantis (circa their 2017 LP Lands- the subject of this write up). Think Agalloch meets Baroness, with all the aspirational and uplifting parts sucked out and replaced by earth-cracking, tarry guitar dirges and despair-inducing primal howls. This is bleak, acerbic, and enveloping metal music that is as compelling as it is desolate... and it’s pretty fackin' desolate. Lands is Bereft’s second album and first with Prosthetic Records. Brace yourself for the leviathanic “We Wept” with its lumbering, impossibly heavy bass which collides with knotted guitar dirges under pained howls and other vocal lamentations before exploding into a fury of tremolo-picking and ruthless blast beats, “The Ritual” which leads in with Agalloch-esc ambient guitars before unfurling into weighty funeral march with an ever-quickening tempo which ramps up into a tug-of-war between swampy mid-tempo chords and a dissonant stomp of blast beats and demonic guitars, and (lastly) the devastating fourteen minute closer, “Waning Light” with its gargantuan, rolling riffs that produce the auditory sensation of being swallowed in the yawning mow of a tremor with brief reprieves of rippling ethereal guitars to break the filthy, clausterphobic tension. This land isn't your land, this land isn't my land, this land belongs to the dead. 

We can rebuild your record collection... make it better, faster, stronger, and heavy as fuck (Prosthetic Records)

Album Review: Ails - The Unraveling

Ails was the second phase of vocalist Laurie Shanaman and guitarist Christy Cather’s life work of reshaping the American metal scene. The duo first played together in the phenomenal black metal band Ludicra, where they advanced a fresh take on the acidic hail-storm of second-wave blast-beats and tremulous, while adding a momentous sense of atmosphere and vamperic folk-rock, complemented by Shanaman’s amphibious growl and the occasional clean singing segment. Ails on their LP, The Unraveling, is a less straightforward rock project than their previous band. Here they double down on bleak, damp atmosphere, not in a metal hipster, “ambient” or shoegazey kind of way, instead embracing elements of death-doom a la Hooded Menace, while striving to write serrated, alienating riffs that fulfill the eldritch covenant of their Nordic forbearers. The harsh whirlwind of cresting tremulous, coiling grooves, acid-plaque feedback, and wounded female vocal squalls may not be welcoming to the uninitiated, but given a chance, these tortured missives can be a cathartic departure for you and your more adventurous listeners. 

The Unraveling is Ails’s debut LP released by the practitioners of dark, inscrutable sound curation over at The Flenser, and unfortunately, it may also be their last as it was released in 2018, and they have yet to produce a successor. Another vibrant alternative metal project, cut down in its youth by expositio, or maybe lack thereof...

Metal Monday: Rolo Tomassi, Vanda, Warcoe & Lord Dying

Alas, another Monday is upon us and I have therefore taken up the burden of trudging my way down to the belly of my metal vaults to retrieve some malformed treasures to bestow upon you. We're starting out with the highly conceptual new album from UK's Rolo Tomassi and ending with a lash of brutality from Portland's Lord Dying. There is no theme this week. These are just some of the metal albums I listened to today and that I felt inspired to write about. 

Rolo Tomassi - Where Myth Becomes Memory (MNRK Heavy)

It's hard to keep a bead on where the UK's Rolo Tomassi is headed next with their sound. The only thing that is certain is that they will always be on the move. First taking shape in the metalcore scene of the mid-00s, they have fashioned for themselves many different permutations over the years, from shoegaze rockers, to acid jazz jockies, to ambient architects, to sonic cosmonauts, only to finally come back to roost in their metalcore roots, darker and more dangerous sounding than before. Their latest album Where Myth Becomes Memory is the latest incarnation of their perfidious, shadowy cosmic-core phase. The last in a three-part series (following 2015's Grievances and 2018's Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It), the band takes the time on this album to contrast their dichotomous aural belligerence with increasingly golden guitar tones and a bath of cleansing feedback, which showers the progressive unfurling of their designs in an air of forgiveness and redemption. Part feral space horror; 2/3rds divine epiphany; all the stuff of legends. 

Vanda - Covenant of Death (Majestic Mountain Records)

Vånda is a truly wicked-sounding band. They emerge from Stockholm as if they've just rushed out of the deep woods- blood streaked across their faces, wild mayhem in their eyes, hair thick, wet and gnarled as if they've been sweating petroleum, and with fire leaping up from the footprints left by every galloping step. Their steps spark and ignite their surroundings as they move with maligned intention- a farce of humanity cast by the devil himself. A human-shaped avalanche of death that is now bearing down upon you. Apocalyptic imagery aside, Vånda's debut Covenant of Death most assuredly hits a sour, satisfying balance of death-thrash and black metal in a way that few bands can. They're like Watain if they focused less on shock value and more on the structure of their songs, or Necrophobic but with more earthy grit and a firm undertow of incurable gothica. Covenant of Death will leave you headbanging the whole time that you're fleeing for your life.

Warcoe - The Giant's Dream (Morbid And Miserable Records / Forbidden Place Records)

Italy's Warcoe nails the occult ambiance and aura that a lot of '60s heavy metal was able to tap into on their debut LP The Giant's Dream. Relying on melodic guitar grooves to do the bulk of the lifting on these tracks, they paint a picture of arcane practices and bring the essence of ancient knowledge thundering into the breach of the modern world. When I hear these high-cast, burning guitar riffs lumbering through the cool muddy pound of percussion, I am visited by visions of wizards pouring over ancient texts to discover the secrets of turning dragon scales into gold, or various tales of misfortune, such as a poor shepherd who stumbles into a tomb of forgotten treasures where he encounters a scroll that turns him into a great hungry wolf. It's hard to imagine containing the untamed, willful and timeless motion of these songs within the confines of a single eight-track album. You might as well be trying to push a glacier across the tundra with your bare hands, yet Warcoe proves themselves more than man enough for the task. The Giant's Dream is truly a beast and Warcoe are both its progenitor and its master. 

Lord Dying - Poisoned Altars (Relapse Records)

To me, Lord Dying belongs to that era of the mid-'10s when sludge metal appeared to be finding new inroads into the realms of death metal and hard rock with results that, improbably, had some hooky commercial potential to them. Red Fang appears to be the most successful of the band to come out of that milieu, but Lord Dying had a lot going for them as well, as a darker and more outwardly punishing version Inter Arma and a more direct and less cosmically inclined version of early Mastodon, Lord Dying on their second LP Poisoned Altars have wrought forth an absolutely crushing affair that still manages to pack in some captivating hooks among all the deluge of bruising riffs. And when I say captivating, I mean it! Tracks like "A Wound Outside of Time" and "Offering Pain (and An Open Minded Center)" literally feel like they are trying to warp themselves around you with snaky grooves and put you in a headlock. Every half-choked, half-sung line forcefully ejected from singer Erik Olson mouth feels like a narrowly missed haymaker, rushing past you and creating a frightening vacuum in its wake. Ultimately, I think the key to their aggression can be unlocked by clues found on the track "Suckling at the Teat of a She-Beast" which feels like a combination of crust punk and West-Coast chopper rock, that will educate you in the ways of their brutality in the most hostile ways possible. Lord Dying went in a more space-rock and psychedelic route with their 2019 album Mysterium Tremendum, but 2015's Poison Altars is still the pinnacle of their discography, in my opinion. Long live Lord Dying! 

Album Review: Norska - Too Many Winters

It's cold as fuck right now in Chicago and that's got me feeling pretty good. I'm one of the few freaks in this city (and possibly the world) who prefers the winter months to their sweltery sibling seasons. Not because I'm one of those huge, remarkably insulated individuals who can (and do) wear cargo shorts year-round and loves lauding it over their friends, neighbors, and spouses. Just the opposite in fact. I am a thin man and cold air cut through me like a cheese grater through cheddar. No, I like winter because winter is brutal and inhospitable. And like with most unpleasant things, I'm diluted enough to believe that enduring them builds character and spiritual fortitude. That's right, I like winter because it helps me appreciate the daily struggle of survival more. Speaking of brutal stuff I appreciate, this evening I've been enjoying Portland sludge metal band Norska and their 2017 album Too Many Winters. The group performs thundering, shout-vocal prog and bad-trip stoner rock in the vein of early Mastodon, interspersed with doomy driving grooves and epic clean singing sections. Aaron Rieseberg, bassist for respected doom metallers Yob, plays in the band along with his older brother Dustin, and it's no surprise that these two share blood, because it's clear they share one heart and are in total sync when it comes to the dark and viscerally dramatic vibe of Too Many Winters. The album is a marked improvement over their debut, boasting tighter instrumentation and generally more focused compositions. For example, I really like to patient reveal and gradual focus of Samhain” which starts out like a crushing Mastodon track, only to slowly transform into gothic, medieval folk balladry. Other highlights include, "Too Many Winters” where driving, gooey riffs and cavernous vocals give way to a turbid sea of winding, intersecting guitars and chilly distortion, “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” which is a slow-burning, stoner rock odyssey, and “Fire Patience Backbone” which will harden your flesh to ice in a blizzardy hurricane of shout vocals and purposive riffs. Believe me when I say, that I can't get enough of Too Many Winters.

Too Many Winters is out via Brutal Panda. 

Album Review: Whores. - Clean.

 It surprises me how prominently Whores.'s second EP Clean. has stood in my record collection since its debut in 2013. Of course, I didn't discover it until just before they unleashed their 2016 LP Gold., and because of it, the EP felt like a precursor at the time. I figured it would eventually be shifted to the back of a milk crate and end up being lugged to a record store for resale at some point. This has not the case. As I said, its position in my personal catalog has only become more entrenched, and its shadow has grown longer with time. This seems due to the fact that it's the release where Whores. finally nailed the right balance of blistering, distorted sludge rock- that sounds like it is being performed by the future ancestors of Morlocks- and gauging social commentary that glides into your perception like someone's thumb driving directly into the center of your eye. They would later polish and perfect this aesthetic on Gold., but the way that it emerges on Clean. is truly bracing and unsettling. 

I get such a strong sense of foreboding when I listen to Clean. One that seeps into my bones and never manages to dissipate. Like how the dark and murky, brain-broth, blues grooves of opener "Baby Bird" manage to portend impending disaster, even before vocals enter the picture and intimate a disturbing, and all too familiar, sense of entitlement and coddled neurosis, with all the subtly of a beartrap folding on some poor quarry's leg. Or the way that the guitars on "I Am Not A Goal Oriented Person" have a nasty, impelling quality to them, one that resembles a bullwhip, employed against a marching, labored, and depressive groove, that will not be hurried, regardless of the punishment that is layered on top of it, causing the whole song to become a cycle of self-inflicted violence that only becomes more abusive with each repetition. 

What sticks with me about Whores. though, is that beyond just their style and vision, they give off a bad vibe. And Clean. is the album where I first noticed this about them. Listening to this album is like making direct eye contact with a very large snake, and feeling the full strain of the cold, hungry, calculating set of motives that is returned to you with its gaze. Like it is waiting for the moment you blink to strike and release its venom into your flush, fleshy cheeks. Whores. have the same vicious instinct about them, but only more frightening because it is interspecies. 

Every veil ripping denouncement of the petty-bourgeois, every spark that is thrown on the heaping trash pile of our consumer culture, and every castrating stab taken at contemporary masculinity on Clean. is presented as if the band is letting you in on the fun. As if it's actually someone else who represents the quantum of all of society's problems, and the band is inviting you to justifiably ridicule them. And while it's true that Whores.'s ruthless polemics are both funny and insightful, it's hard to shake the feeling that you've been invited to the party as a party favor, rather than a guest. No one is safe from the band's ire, though. The worst parts of this country that they point to, are all present in you as well. And once you've let your guard down and gotten near enough, they'll stick a knife in you, and pop you open like they were opening a clam- exposing the bubbling pit of vipers, self-pity, and rosy, red #5 dyed narcissism that dwells inside. Will the last thing that crosses your mind be the realization that you've deserved it? If you've been paying attention, then there can only be one answer to this question. 

Clean is out via Brutal Panda Records. 

Album Review: Body Void - Bury Me Beneath this Rotting Earth

Wrote a review of the galaxy collapsing new LP from Body Void titled Bury Me Beneath this Rotting Earth for New Noise today. Read it below: 

Read review of Bury Me Beneath this Rotting Earth. 

Buy Bury Me Beneath this Rotting Earth

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: Chain Gang Grave - Cement Mind

I wrote about the new album from NYC's Chain Gang Grave for New Noise today. Fucking fantastic record. One of my favorites of the year so far. Links below: 

Read review of Chain Gang Grave's Cement Mind here. 

Buy Cement Mind here.

Album Review: KIM - Self-Titled

I did a write up for Oakland sludge rockers KIM and their self-titled album for New Noise. I'm not going to lie. I got a little distracted reading up on Nero and ancient Rome while writing about this album. It's a good album, if you're into slow, growly, guitar rock. 

Read write up for KIM's self-titled album. 

Buy it here. 

Interview: EYEHATEGOD

Image courtesy of the artist

I had a conversation with Mike IX Williams of EYEHATEGOD for New Noise. Their album A History of Nomadic Behavior is out via Century Media. We talked about his new record, the increased blues influence of their sound, his thoughts on EYEHATEGOD parody bands, and the two-year-long tour that was cut short by the pandemic. They'd probably still be on tour if it weren't for the pandemic, but at least we get a savage new record from these boys. Links below: 

Read my interview with Mike IX Williams here. 

Get a copy of A History of Nomadic Behavior on Century Media here. 

Album Review: Jupiterian - Protosapien

Protosapien, the latest album from Brazil's Jupiterian, is a thoughtful, tortured beautiful, doom-sludge album that definitely does not feel its length. Check out my write up of it over on New Noise. You don't have to do it now if you don't want to though. This is the internet. It will be there later. But if you wanted to check it out the link is below.  

Read write up of Jupiterian's Protosapien.

Get a copy here. 

Album Review: Netherlands - Zombie Techno

NYC experimental, progressive sludge and psychedelic rock group Netherlands, is led by former Yoko Ono collaborator Timo Ellis. Ellis has been performing under this moniker since 2012 and has remained remarkably consistent throughout the project's run, sounding a little like Spacehog meeting Wayne Coyne for a hot, three-way, hotel-rendezvous with Torche. Zombie Techno is thematically a critique of consumer culture and humanity's abuse of the environment that doesn't hold out much hope that we'll correct course before there is nothing left on earth to eat but raw plastic. This theme is driven home on the sardonic and biting, bassy and brash, feedback fricasseed song "We're All Gonna Die One Day." Elsewhere, the title-track and "Casual Monster" kind of bleed together, but still retain distinctive characters, with the former leaning into space-aged, Parliament-esque, punk-funk and the latter opting to be a pensive, blown-out and theatrical version of Jane's Addiction suffocating in a grain silo. "Shirestarter" is minimalistic, allowing the band's weird melodic preoccupations to take center stage, and "U.F.O. D.U.I." could be mistaken for a late-career Butthole Surfer single. Another solid album from a band who aren't pushing the envelope as much as steering it twine with a laser cutter. 

Get a copy of Zombie Techno here.

Album Review: Yatra - All is Lost

 

I somehow found the time today to crack into the latest album from blackened sludge metal band Yatra and their new album, All is Lost. It's a mean-ass slog through the swamps of despair and their second studio LP released this year. Keep an eye on Dana Helmuth, she sounds absolutely terrifying here and I'd be willing to bet money that she'll be the last one left alive in the state of Maryland once Armageddon getting into full swing out there. You'll want her for both your raiding party and your soft-ball team once civilization collapses. Full-circle, bad-ass! 

Read my review over on New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of All is Lost from Grimoire Records here.

Album Review: Crust - .​.​.​and a Dirge Becomes an Anthem

 

Russian blackended sludge band Crust know a thing or two about heroism. They'd have to in order to reach deep enough into the dragon's gullet to pull out the fire that they exhibit on .​.​.​and a Dirge Becomes an Anthem. The album has an arch that feels reminiscent of the monomyth of the ages, the redemption of the soul. Only one steeped in a kettle of blood and desperation, lined with rotting flesh. Grounded, relatable, and therefore terrifying, it is reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising, where the call to adventure is actually an invitation to oblivion. Coaxing, leading, and then dragging you to reunification with the eternal. Only someone made of the sternest meddle could face such a fate. Crust's debut invites you to ride with it into the night, knowing that you will never be seen in the flesh on this plane again.

 

The journey begins as the curtain is drawn on the cyclonic stomp of "Approaching Grave," a portal into a land of decay where the ground is blackened with rot and spoil. We see the image of a king as he sits in decadent repose, awaiting his flesh to become a colony of warms and teeming insects. A vision of death that has no promise of renewal, only a long, anguished decline. The inciting action then strikes, in the form of a wind that throws open the chamber doors of the palace, carrying aloft a nauseatingly sweet siren's call, beckoning you to leave the comforts of the king's living tomb, the acrid din of Lord Mantis in the air, the spell of Skeletonwitch goading you to your mount. You leave the living rot of the kingdom and travel through mountains and valleys, greeted by lush meadows to the bending guitar chords of "Beneath the Cold Clay." Beauty assails your senses, distracting you from the heaps of bones that line the trail and streams you cross, until you reach the roads terminus, a thatch hut that reaches into a nest of roots at the base of a great tree. This is the ego-stripping threshold, and as you enter your are greeted by the slaughterhouse hymn of "Clad in Flesh." As you pass further under the tree mutilating grooves and covetous clawing chords reach up from the floor of the tunnel and strip your bones of the burden of their coverings and replace them with a new flesh, unblemished and resistant to age.

 

Bolstered your sheath of new skin and its imperviousness to the drain of time, you travel for a thousand years until you come to the mouth of a great beast's den. You know that it is your destiny to confront the monster within and so you descend the mountain of treasure and skulls to the creature's resting place and plunge your sword into its side. A sky parting pummel arises from the beats guts as it rouses from its sleep. The vibrations of the grim thunder of its interior traveling through your sword, leaping up your arm bones, through your shoulder and neck, and into your skull, filling the cavities of your head with the whipping trounce and Neurosis-esque chthonic howl of a thousand angry spirits. You turn in a moment of panic to look to the mouth of the den and wager your chances of escape only to be met with the beast's eye as it looms over you. A moment passes and then you are smote by its jaws. 

 

Surprisingly, this is not the end to your journey. A slow, resonate, coil winds through the fabric of your soul made of a waterlogged guitar line and its movements summon you back to life. As you enter "Graveland" you find yourself lifted skywards toward the surface of a frozen pond by the swelling pressure of a tempest trapping groove. You feel the force below you grow more solid to the point where it is like a marble floor. You can see a graveyard on the distant shore and make plans to swim to it, but before you can, the tension below you bursts and becomes a whirlpool, savaging you as you clamber for one more breath of air before you are sept under. Your will and strength are not enough to overcome the force of the funnel that wishes to consume you and you tumble into its cold, spraying maw. 

 

Again you find yourself floating, through a place that is neither light nor dark, nor hot nor cold. You know that this is the "Space Sabbath," a distilled place of magic beyond human perception. In this place, you realize that your body has momentum and you allow it to carry you. Eventually, your feet brush up against something solid below you, and you begin to exercise your limbs in a trot. After an eternity of wandering, the navel of a star opens before you, and you pass through to find the kingdom you had left behind centuries ago. It is now overgrown and reclaimed by nature. Everyone is dead. And now there is only peace. You sit and contemplate the ruins and the passage of the sun and the moon until the sky collapses into the earth and the sands of time grow still. 

Get a copy of .​.​.​and a Dirge Becomes an Anthem here. 

Album Review: Tithe - Penance

There are a lot of metal bands who have come to embrace the void-walker motif. The vision of a robed, often faceless figure, possessed of arcane knowledge and doomed to live a deathless existence while experiencing physical, bodily decay befitting a corpse. I get why they do this. People tend to drudge through their days, heavy with the knowledge of their inertness and mortality. Getting on with their day-to-day, with no ability to change their surroundings. Failing to connect with other humans who share their plight. Being a conscious creature under such conditions can feel like a kind of languid living death. While most metal bands choose to embrace the figure of the void-walker for a variety of relatable reasons, Portland's Tithe manages to embody the existential estrangement and ego-death represented by this cultural form with a savage and satisfying alacrity on their latest LP, Penance.

Tithe took shape after vocalist and guitarist of Matt Eiseman and drummer Kevin Swartz hit pause on their grindcore project Infinite Waste and moving up from Oakland to Portland. Sounding like a pagan, mongrel hardcore punk hybrid of sludge and ‘90s death metal, Tithe shriek into the whirling, emptiness of the sky, demanding that the universe offer answers for their regrettable existence. What works so well thematically on Penance, is how Tithe incorporates sources of tangible pain in the world into a sound that feels like it's baying against the fabric of reality itself. The sources for any spiritual and psychological crisis are always going to be material and social in nature, with your subjective experience extending outward as a world-altering, cosmic force. These themes are clearly illuminated by the trudging dirge of “Scum” which begins with a clip of dialogue from Todd Solondz’ "comedy" Happiness before diving into a cold pool of lightless Dead Congregation-esque grooves, dragged further into the mire by a ripping tow of blast beats and lung-filling sludge guitars. “Apostasy” and opener “A Single Rose” similarly prove space for the band to lash out at their sorrows, weaponizing their disillusionment to tear down false idols. Elsewhere, deranged experiments with LSD and cruel psychiatric treatments are examined and morally eviscerated through wheeling, bucking guitar melodies and light-extinguishing, arid howls on “Psychedelic Neurogenesis” and “Lullaby,” both interspersed with disturbing clips of conversations pulled from news broadcasts on the topics.

Ultimately though, it's the track “Palindrome” where everything comes together, a tight and visceral framing of a gnawed and gnarled mind, with rushing sweeps of Autopsy-grind beats and frantic, sawing guitar chords which tear at the tracks innards as if it were performing its own vivisection, prying open the cavity of its chest to peer inside the hollow of its trunk to glimpse the depthless lacuna inside, with lyrics depicting the death presaged by every birth.

We are all tiptoeing on the rim of annihilation, unable to pull ourselves back, and unwilling to throw ourselves in. The war each of us wages against the mind and the world it must inhabit is an endless squabble of pitched battles and ceaseless losses. Each day we rise, a part of us dies and leaves another hole. And yet we continue to live knowing full well that someday there will be nothing left of us but the pain that passed through these holes, like wind whistling through the gaps and cracks of an old pane of glass.

Grab a copy of Penance from Tartarus Records, here. 

Album Review: Baroness - Gold & Grey

It’s almost sky fire day, and I’m getting in the mood for beer and explosions with the latest LP from southern sludge and progressive metal melody mavens Baroness, Gold and Grey. The group has managed to gain serious steam since 2015’s Purple (which snagged them a Grammy nomination) with increasingly euphonious and complex compositions that retain the gritty undertow of their earlier work. They’re like an arena-ready manifestation of Kylesa who you can listen to with your partner who prefers Stevie Nicks’ post-Fleetwood material over Ozzy’s post-Sabbath bellowing. Gold & Grey is the first album the band has released since the departure of guitarist Pete Adams, with former Cirque du Soleil (yes, THAT one) performer Gina Gleason taking up his axe. Gleason is already a crowd favorite and if you have seen the band live then you already know how exhilarating it is to watch her tear through a scorching solo. So where should you start with this behemoth? I recommend the lead-off single “Borderlines” with its gooey psychedelia, sun-parched, interlocking guitar rhythms and enormous vocal harmonies, it’s an excellent primer for the rest of the album, feeling very old while at the same time fresh and evocative. The rushing and explosive grooves of “Front Toward Enemy,” the roiling, resonate blues of “Broken Halo” are perfectly crafted to soundtrack the shock and astonishment of firework season, while the swaying melody and glowing space-rock preoccupation “Throw Me An Anchor” and the loft, dusty diamond studded “Tourniquet” will help you mellow out as the smoke clears off the horizon. Gold & Grey is an iconic feeling and incendiary additional to Baroness’s already worthy catalog, as well as the punchy pyre I need to ignite the fuse on this week’s festivities.

Grab a copy of Gold & Grey from John Dyer Baizley's own Abraxan Hymns Records

Album Review: Sâver - They Came With Sunlight

Lots a brilliant brutal stuff in rotation this week.Check out my review of the latest album from Norwegian sludge metal upstarts Sâver over at Chicago Crowd Surfer.

Review of Sâver's They Came With Sunlight

Still curious who "they" are.