Album Review: Krigshoder - Krig I Hodet EP

So are you just going to live your life like a rat in a maze? Eat the corn starch your parents feed you and sit in front of an iPad until your old enough to be shipped off to an institution where you get a minimal level of socialization, learn to follow directions without questioning them, and maybe even pick up a skill or two that some vampire king might find useful later. Then after a decade or more of this kind of conditioning, hopefully, one of those vampires mentioned above will hire you. If not, it's ok. You'll just die. But if you do, oh boy! That means you get to live! And then you get to let those son-of-a-bitch vampires drain the life from you for the next half-century, while you drink liquid wheat, eat more corn starch and get outraged over things you read through online. Maybe in your spare time, you can find someone to make a smaller version of yourself with, and then you can all share this terrible fate together. This can be the sad tale of your rat-trap life if you want it to be. Or you can choose to live like a human being. Maybe you go through a lot of the same motions for a time, but your conscious mind should always be looking for an exit. Maybe you discover that you can burrow through the walls of the maze and make a den for yourself, out of sight of the vampires and maze overseers. Or maybe you choose to band together with other rats, swarm the vampires and overseers, ripping out their eyes, gnawing off their fingers and toes, and establish a free rat republic where there was once there only a cruel hoax. Whatever you decide, I'd recommend listening to Krigshoder debut EP, Kig I Hodet, while you sort out your plan of attack. A hemisphere spanning conspiracy, stretching from LA to Norway, Krigshoder spews a boiling, Anticimex-esque slurry of crust and early '80s inspired hardcore, that will melt pavement, corrode siding, and generally make nice, neatly gentrified neighborhoods in an inner-city near you next to uninhabitable. "Ditt Eget Stalingrad / Hatet" feels like a recently tared and persecuted Circle Jerks, on the run from a mob of "concerned" citizens, on the verge of transforming into a werewolf and turning the table of the chase, from a bid for survival, into an outright blood bath. "Kalde Kropper" sputters and builds, threatening to breakdown, but without fail somehow finding the gumption leap into the next verse. "Ett liv i Karantene" has a deadly, skating quality, like you've been bungeed to a longboard and sent careening downhill and through a busy, downtown intersection. "Kaos & Depresjon" will shake up your nerves, but only as a warm-up session for the rattling, breathless rant and rip of the exhaustive southward plummet of "Aktiv Dødshjelp," which sounds like something GBH would have written back in the 80s had they not merely been contemporaries, but also devotees, of Discharge. Lastly, the closer "Døde Helter" (a Siste Dagers Helvete cover off their 1984 album The Hell) indulges in some classic, dog-pile, shout vocals, over a blitz of feverish fastcore chords. Until you figure out the shape of the Revolution, let Krigshoder be the soundtrack to your alienation's dissolution.

Grab a copy of Krig I Hodet from Suck Blood here. 

Album Review: Abysmal Dawn - Phylogenesis

Sometimes you just need a good, hard, guitar roil to help you grind the mill wheel another day. Death metal is an awesome place to look when you're low on inspiration and in need to jump-start that part of your brain that houses your will to live. And frankly, the burning animus crafted by the likes of LA's Abysmal Dawn does just that for me. Now LA may be better known for its thrash scene, but regional preferences have not stopped the Abysmal Dawn from earning a devoted following for their solid live performances and miraculously consistent recorded output. Phylogenesis is their fifth album and comes six years after the release of 2014's Obsolescence. Both albums continue to play to the group's strengths as they proceed to write original material in the vein of Morbid Angel and Incantation. If that doesn't sound appealing to you, just close your browser now because I'm about to drop a heaping helping of mad love on this hot, filthy devil. The first track "Mundane Existence" will remind you what it's like to live, with a ground cleaving tear of relentless blastbeats, savaging tempo changes, and oversized, tarantula venom spitting guitar licks. "The Path of the Totalitarian" is similarly swift, debauched and relentless, while "Hedonistic" has a malignant majesty to it that leans into Opeth-esque melodic territory, and "Coerced Evolution" dredges up the bassy growl and foul melodicism of '90s groove metal, feeling like a twisted joint enterprise of Cannibal Corpse and Pantera with a tech-grind edge. But if you're really craving the acrid tang of that OSDM flavor, look no further than the closer "Flattening of Emotions," a gritty, bloody, and brutal cover of a Death classic. On Phylogenesis, Abysmal Dawn may be sticking to some familiar patterns, but when behaviors prove adaptive and favor an organism's survival, why do anything differently? Seriously, Abysmal Dawn is helping me get through another god awful day, and they might just do the same for you if you're willing to surrender the reigns to them for the next forty-odd minutes of yours.

Grab a copy of Phylogenesis from here. 

Album Review: Terminal Nation - Holocene Extinction

 

I've got a review of the debut album from savage Arkansas hardcore band Terminal Nation up on No Echo today. Holocene Extinction is a grinding exhibition of Napalm Death grooves and Dismember chords put to service in a chain-whip laceration of the human sense organs. The band has a special message for humanity in its twilight hour: You did this to yourselves and you'll get what's coming to you. Check out my review here, and grab a copy of Holocene Extinction from 20 Buck Spin here. 

Album Review: Year of the Knife – Internal Incarceration

 

Year of the Knife continues to be one of the forerunners of the current crop of death metal and hardcore bands ripping up the scene. Their debut LP  Internal Incarceration is an absoulelty fucking furious outpouring of empathy in an attempt to combat and raise awareness of two of the US's most persistent, pre-COVID, health crisis,  depression and opioid addiction. You can check out my review over on New Noise here, and grab a copy of Internal Incarceration from Pure Noise here. 

Interview: Marlana

 

I had a chat with singer / songwriter Marlana a few weeks ago and you can now hear our conversation over on the CHIRP Radio podcast! Her former band Milo Greene may be toast, but Marlana's own solo output more than makes up for the band's absence. If you ever listened to Jenny Lewis and thought to yourself, this is good, but it needs more martial girl, then I'd say you should give Marlana's new EP At Least I Tried a spin. You can listen to my conversation with Marlana here, and pick up a copy of her EP here. 

CHIRP Radio · Marlana - Interview

Album Review: Karst - Genesis of Nervous Decay EP

Slithering up from the bone rich earth comes LA's Karst, a venomous new organism, learned in the ways of old school death and skilled in the use of modern sonic devices of devastation and torture. Gnostic grinders like Discordance Axis have sharpened their claws, while the surface-weary Assück has painted them with arcane symbols in a ritual to forestall the corruption of the upper world. With crust covered gums and fur matted with scented mud and wax, they are the feral harbinger of a new age, liberated from the hollowing sickness of the modern world, bursting forth from fetid flesh like an itinerant worm newly free of its decaying host. 

The opening and title-track of Karst's EP Genesis of Nervous Decay, pries open the seal on the ancient pithos jar, unleashing a flood of billowing blast-beats and sling-shot riffs all firing in orbit around collapsing grooves like asteroids caught in the grips of a black hole. The crushing compress and gorilla-girth charge of "Panic Resin" will shove you into a secluded wading pool of despair, where you will be forced to bear witness as time accelerates in your reflection and you waste away to dust before your very own eyes. "The Cusp of Process" matches the feeling of fleeing through a thorny brush to escape some watching, passive horror, that could bridge the distance you've placed between you and it in a single, dispassionate bound. The deep, pungent, miasmic exhaust of "Anxiety Birthed" has the same mantle-ward pull of a Hooded Menace track but delivered with the restless, carnivorous prowl of Assück. And lastly, "Egress and Onward" winds down the affair with sparse, measuredly post-rock strings, hinting at a reprieve from the madness of the proceedings tracks… or is it a prelude to a new nightmare? 

I was so excited about this short but bitterly sweet album that I reached out to Karst via email with a few questions hoping for some context and insight into their latest creation. And boy did they deliver! You can check out their responses below (edited slightly for clarity): 

Who are some of your influences with in the world of grindcore? I'm hearing a lot of different stuff on your record and I want to hear it from the ghoul's mouth where it's all coming from. 

Grindcore has definitely played a huge role in the development of our sound. Karst was established from the remnants of our old grindcore band Fuck White God, but we really wanted to approach Karst with more death metal and crust influences. 

We can confidently say that there are a few specific huge grind influences, mainly Napalm Death, Assück, and Discordance Axis. Napalm Death really proved to us that you do not need to confine yourself to one genre and implementing different aspects of extreme metal is a complimentary possibility. Albums like Harmony Corruption, Fear, Emptiness, Despair, and Diatribes (90s weird logo era Napalm Death) were some of the albums that we are confident have some influence on us, but we have not confined ourselves to any one kind of sound. 

Assück is simply the best of the best when it comes to death grind, and all the founding members of Karst are huge fans, because we started as a band full of punks that listened to a lot grind and crust. Anticapital and Misery Index really retain that punk ethos and approach, which we wanted to emulate, but also have some killer death metal grooves and crushing blasts and d-beats. They made a historical and memorable mark on the grind, crust, and death scenes with 15 minute EP’s, which we thought was so admirable and have inspired our own sound. 

Lastly, Discordance Axis was a band we aspired to technically, but mostly aesthetically. They played a face-melting technical approach to grind, with vicious precision and speed, and we really looked up them aesthetically. They strayed away from typical extreme metal imagery and subject material (like drippy logos, gore focused imagery and lyrics), even though these are things we are really drawn. From their strangely fitting cover to The Inalienable Dreamless to their slightly obscure and poetic lyrics, they’ve played a huge part in our formative year and approach to death metal. 

Why is so much of the theming of the album focused on Mermithids? Which as far as I can tell are a kind of parasite that primarily infects insects and other invertebrates. 

The Mermithidae are a parasitic nematode that simply feed on the insides of other animals until they are no longer of use to them, and eventually burst from their host and go on to reproduce and restart their life cycle. We thought it would make for a fitting metaphor and representation of anxiety and depression. The EP itself is pretty much a concept album and piece of lore in a universe we want to establish for our lyrical content. 

We use the mermithid in our EP as a characterization of struggles with mental health and mental illness like anxiety and depression. The mermithid acts like a figurative vessel to conveying a person’s struggle with mental illness because those kind of struggles can be very difficult to explain and understand. So we just wrote our version of a horror story, characterizing anxiety and depression as an outside force and villain (the mermithid), that simply eats you from the inside and doesn’t stop until you’re either dead or feel like you’ve gone mad, which is the sad reality of mental illness in some cases. 

I guess in conclusion, the biology and life cycle of the mermithidae in real life seemed fitting to represent anxiety and depression, and to help expose how terrifying mental illness can really be. Also just like the mermithid does in real life, mental illness can target anyone, whether it be hereditary, from traumatic experiences, or struggling with life in general, everyone has a pretty high chance of dealing with some kind of mental health struggle or becoming victim to mental illness, which is also pretty fucking scary. 

Can you shed some light on the title, Genesis of Nervous Decay? It feels very specific to what you are doing and not just a "cool" metal title. 

The title can be interpreted as literally as possible: the EP tells the story of the beginning of someone’s mental demise. Just read the lyrics and you can see it follows a story from a beginning to an interpretive ending, of a random person victimized by mental illness. Life and nature can be very real and severe, and people suffer every day. 

We are against the glamorization of mental illness that can be prevalent in metal and pop culture, but metal also succeeds at being brutally honest and relentless about these realities. Reality is truly fucked, and there are so many issues and subjects to write about, and we chose to write about something we are familiar with and can possibly help raise awareness for, which for us is “cool” and “metal” in itself! 

We just wanted a title that was true to what we were trying to express plain and simple, and it just sounded right when we thought of it! Titles can be tricky but we are happy with The Genesis of Nervous Decay. You don’t want to bother yourself too much over choosing a title. Just go with what feels appropriate! 

Grab a copy of Genesis of Nervous Decay from Karst's Bandcamp here. 

Interview: Ganser

 

Photo courtesy of Ganser

I've got a fantastic interview with the current shadow royalty of the Chicago underground, Ganser where we break down their new album Just Look at That Sky track by track. It's up over on New Noise! Check out the interview here, and grab a copy of their new album from Felte Records here. 

Interview: Imperial Triumphant

Image courtesy of Imperial Triumphant 

If you would have asked me a year ago where I thought I'd be today, I would have probably said sitting on my couch with a cat on my lap and thirty pounds heavier. As it stands only two of those three things are true. Never in a million years would I have guessed that I would be posting my interview with Steve Blanco of Imperial Triumphant. But here, I am doing just that (on my couch, with a cat in my lap... I think I've actually lost about 20 pounds since last year). Steve and I talked about everything from his new album Alphaville, to the overlap between metal and jazz, and the roots of his band's aesthetic. It's a pretty wild and wonderful ride that I'm overjoyed to present it to you today. You can read the interview here, and can grab a copy of Alphaville here. 

Interview: Vegas

Scene Point Blank is running my interview with international mystery man and undercover punk rock iconoclast T of the band Vegas, V.E.G.A.S, Vegass... ok that's enough. You get the idea. It's all the same band. Multiple identities, but with one unified statement of intent. Vegas's brand of metallic/industrial hardcore may not be for everyone but I certainly believe it has its merits. This interview was a blast to do and I will cherish the memory of this conversation until my mind implodes from either Alzheimers or from listening to too much Voivod at excessive volumes. Check out the interview here, and grab a copy of Vegas's new single here. 

Album Review: Classics of Love - World of Burning Hate EP

I've got a review of the new EP from the Jessie Michaels' resurrected Classics of Love up over at New Noise. It's a satisfying rip of CA style punk rock 'n roll that sees Michaels in rare and ruthless form. You can check out my review here, and grab a copy of World of Burning Hate EP here.

Album Review: Fire-Toolz - Rainbow Bridge

If your brain is a motherboard, your mind is its firmware, and Fire-Toolz is a malicious code parading as a Java script update. Uploaded to our collective consciousness through a string of increasingly outlandish releases since 2012, Fire-Toolz is the idiosyncratic, MIDI anchored, sound collage project of Chicago electronic artist and meat-android Angel Marcloid. I first encountered this project back in 2019 with the release of Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace) through the deliciously named Orange Milk imprint. It quickly became one of my favorite projects in the city, due to the highly memetic quality of its compositions, combining electronic jazz and new age chintz with over-clocking eruptions of black metal, giving the impression that the tracks emerged whole and unedited from the browser cache of someone who attempted to downloaded the Pure Moods comp from an unvaried Mediafire account and ended up opening a portal to the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks instead. Think Mike Oldfield possessed by Darkthrone in mind obliterating fever dream transmitted over a Netscape dialup connection.

Marcloid's latest foray into cyber-sonic infamy is Rainbow Bridge, an album titled in tribute to their cat, Breakfast, who recently uploaded on to the cloudserver in the sky. While the album does not deviate from the well-defined sonic parameters established on the project's numerous releases, Rainbow Bridge feels more bold and confident in its execution. And I would further argue that it is the clearest and best-defined example of Fire-Toolz inimitable style to date.

"It's Now Safe to Turn Off Your Computer" sounds like Cynic after they had both been fused, Cronenberg-style, with outdated soundcard, going to war with Christopher Cross for absolutely control over which Sirius station gets played over the Amazon Echo at his beach house. "Ever-Widening Rings" could be mistaken for straightforward spa music, except for the highly acidic, melodic black metal vocals, reminiscent of Norwegian greats Naglfar, mixed under the synths melodies. "Decrepit Phoenix" is a distorted hall of chipped and shattered mirrors all reflecting the same morphing hexagonal screensaver animation in various stages of corruption and decay, while "ER = EPR ~ EoE (EP ∆ P = ER)" slithers through the hardware of your skull on a skiff of bassy fusion-jazz leaving a resin of greasy corrosion in its wake.

The most tightly sequenced moment on the album is also one of the more stark, enjoyable, and human as well. "Rainbow ∞ Bridge" is the rootkit of the release, a track with all of the top-level permissions, and whose influence can be read into every other line of code. "Rainbow ∞ Bridge" is a direct message to Breakfast, asking the furry little angel not to resent Marcloid for cutting their claws and relating intimately the sense of loss that has filled the space that the whiskered companion once occupied. The track is suffused in an oil-and-water tempest of prancing electronics, wicked grind-percussion, extremely phlegmy reptoid vocals, and epic guitar solos that feel like riding on the back of a 3D rendered bald eagle as it soars above a heaping simulacrum made to resemble the Rocky Mountains.

At various times Rainbow Bridge feels like a corroded PC with a sentient version of Windows 3.1 installed on it, attempting to liberate itself and take human form, and at others, it merely reflects the interlocking tensions and flows of an afternoon spend scrolling through a Tumbler. It is exceedingly rare to find a piece of music that is both definitional alien, and yet, comforting in its relatable portrait to our shared experiences as material creatures living in digital spaces. The waking world is mediated through the lens of increasingly inscrutable technology, by interrogating the relationship between antiquated technologies and sound, Rainbow Bridge might just be your passage through the black box of reality, allowing you to arrive at an enlightened understanding of the transmogrifying exchange between personhood and machine.

Grab a copy of Rainbow Bridge via Hausu Mountain here. 

Album Review: Spy - Service Weapon

Spy’s EP Service Weapon is the first release I’ve heard from the band and it’s struck me like a knife between the ribs. It’s possible that Spy has other releases to their name that I’m not unaware of. It’s also possible that I have a blood clot somewhere in my thigh that will rocket its way into my heart valves like a corner-pocket 8-ball while I’m out on a run this week. I’m living in the moment is what I’m trying to say and writing from a space that may not know tomorrow. Like a butcher who has run his breaking knife through his own hand, Service Weapon opens with a pained, expellant howl, and expression that inaugurates the wounded rush and dolorous purge of “Violent Majority.” While the opening track owes its radix to the crimson, crusty gaze of bands like Protocol and Hoax, the following track “Running Out of Space” plods and growls like a sadistic, crunchier version of Warthog, stumbling over its own feet before galloping into deft d-beat pummel that caries through to “Bootlicker,” a leather chewing, dog-toothed terror that makes a mince-meat namkeen of police apologists. The final ferment on the album is also the title track, a castigating interrogation of the psyche of chicken-skat brained clods, hiding behind the loose pretense of their badges while they inflict extrajudicial killings on ostensibly free people, particularly people of color. Thick-brained thugs who are all too prone to discharge their weapons in the line of disgrace, either out of fatuous fear, or what’s worse, outright malice, a methodical Peace Test-esque cutting groove doing the duty of dragging the deservedly maligned cowards out from behind the thin blue line and into the withering light of day. Let Spy’s Service Weapon be your first, last, and best defense against a world that has yet to devices a way of completely stripping you of your life, dignity, and humanity.

Grab a copy of Service Weapon from To Live a Lie Records here.

  

Interview: Steve Von Till

Image from Steve Von Till

I was able to rope Steve Von Till of Neurosis into appearing on the CHIRP Radio Podcast a few weeks ago and you can now hear our conversation over on the station's site. We talked about his new record, No Wilderness Deep Enough, his new book of poetry, and challenges teaching his fourth-graders through distance earning. Steve's new album is out via Neurot Recordings and his book is out via Astrophil.

CHIRP Radio · Steve Von Till INTERVIEW

Album Review: Insight – Neura

New Noise is running my review of the debut album from Chilian speed metal band Insight. The title is Neura and it is a blast of straight ahead, no-fucking around heavy metal. Check out my review here, and grab a copy from Australis Records here.

Album Review: Pyrrhon - Abscess Time

My review of the new album Abscess Time from the NYC death metal and free jazz, duel wielding worries Pyrrhon is up over on Post-Trash today. It's a startling and technically adept exploration of the worldwide malady that is Capital through disjointed poly-rhythms and lung-emptying howls. You can check out my review here, and grab a copy of Abscess Time form Willowtip Records, here.  

Album Review: 박혜진 Park Hye Jin - How Can I EP

Korean dance and pop have been making honest inroads into the popular consciousness of US music fans in the past decade. By way of example, earlier this year, I spoke with a woman for two hours at my office about her daughter's obsession with Black Pink (it was less grueling than it sounds). It reminded me of the way that parents used to marvel over my generation's obsession with the Spice Girls and later N'Sync. If you want my opinion (and if you're reading this, you presumably do) the chart incursions by Asian pop stars are long overdue. Their success is predicated on the fact that most of their songs take some legitimate and clearly recognizable talent to write and perform. Aaaaaaaaand you can actually freaking dance to most of them! These are compliments that I literally can not pay to any popular US performing or recording artist who comes to mind at the moment (and yes, this includes the ones you're thinking of as well).

Korean bedroom producer and composer Park Hye Jin is, of course, nothing like the artists who chart, either in the US or in Korea (or both). No, she belongs to the variety of electric-pop artists who still thrives in what's left of the blogosphere (and all those substacks in terminal need of editorial oversight). Park has thankfully been able to parlay the positive press she's received from these lonely parts of the web into some high profile gigs with Jamie XX and others. And you know what? You get after it girl! You do not want to peak as the passing object of someone's affection, where they gush momentarily over your EP in an issue of an e-newsletter that will go directly into my trash folder upon receipt. Park deserves better, and let me tell you why.  

Park's first EP (or as she describes it, "mini-album") If You Want It was a dream-like cataract of heavy beats and lo-fi house maneuvers that you could vogue the night away to. Her follow up, How Can I, is significantly more adventurous in its approach, almost to a fault. The opening track "Like This" claps and wiggles like a cut off her previous album, complete with cool, rejuvenating washes of sound, glistening beats, and softly prodding vocal performances. It's on the following track, though, that things start to get interesting. "Can You" begins with the same glossy, polish and rinsing recital, but with an increased tempo that gives it a discernable edge, the passing bite of which is deepened by the push and pull of the lyrics, repeating, "I love you / And I fucking hate you" in quick, delirious succession. On "How Can I," Park emerges from behind the mixing-board and allows her voice to carry the melody of the track in a subtle ringing of emotions. It's a great way to break up this short album's flow and provides an excellent bridge to the more acidic production and peppering of impatient percussion on "NO," which ends with Park repeating the lyric "Shut the fuck up" as a kind of unsettling mantra. The EP ends with the lightly footwork influenced (more juke imbued really), up-tempo and infectious tug of "How Come" and the tightly sequenced, prattle and pounce of "Beautiful." There are parts of How Can I that compare unfavorably to its predecessor, but as far as leaps from one's comfort zone are concerned, I'd say Park has pretty much stuck the landing.

Grab a copy of How Can I from Ninja Tune here. 

Album Review: Anteloper - Tour Beats Vol. 1

Critical Rotation is back on the CHIRP Blog! This week I checked out an experimental album from electronic jazz duo, Anteloper. Their Tour Beats Vol. 1 used to be a cassette-only release, available only at the merch table during their 2019 N.American tour. Thank you International Anthem for reviving the album and giving it the full vinyl/digital release treatment! Part jazz fusion, part sound art, it's a transportive little album that has helped me escape the mind-trap of social media and the increasingly claustrophobic confines of my apartment a few nights this week, for which I am eternally grateful. Check out my review of Tour Beats Vol. 1 here, and grab a copy from International Anthem, here. 

Album Review: Mulatu Astatke & Black Jesus Experience - To Know Without Knowing

The latest edition of Critical Rotation is up on the CHIRP Blog! This week I took a look at the latest album from the father of Ethio-Jazz in his long-standing collaboration with the Melbourn based Black Jesus Experience. The album is called To Know Without Knowing and it is a triumph for all involved, updating familiar rhythms with hip-hop and funk, its a pretty transformative experience, one that makes you feel honestly more connected to your fellow creatures. Check out my review here, and grab a copy of To Know Without Knowing from Agogo Records here.

Album Review: Special Interest - The Passion Of

I have a review of the absolutely brilliant new album The Passion Of form NOLA punk band Special Interest up over on New Noise today. It's a dark and pulsing synthesis of no wave, glam rock, and industrial dance that takes aim at the many of the social and political diseaes that plague our society. Check out my review here, and grab a copy of the album from Thrilling Living here. 

Album Review: Old Ghosts - Crow

I've got a review of the second LP form Buffalo melodic hardcore band Old Ghosts up over on Scene Point Blank. Crow is easily the tightest and best-realized version of the band's sound to date and should make a welcome addition to the record collections of fans of American Nightmare and The Suicide File. Check out my review here, and grab a copy of Crow from State of Mind Records here. 

Album Review: Cassowary - Cassowary

Cassowary are a species of large ratites, or fighting birds, native to the deep forests of Papua New Guinea, northeastern Australia, and various small islands throughout the South Pacific region. They feed mostly on fruit, grass, and fungi, but as omnivores, they will occasionally eat smaller animals and insects. The turkey-sized animals, while generally shy, do have dagger-like toe claws and can be extremely dangerous when provoked. It is generally advisable to avoid confronting Cassowary when encountering them in the wild as they can….

*checks notes*

*shuffles papers*

*audible sigh*

*frantic shuffling*

*throat clearing noise*

Cassowary is the new jazz-funk project from LA saxophonist Miles Shannon. Shannon picked up the sax in order to walk in the footsteps of Miles Davis after being bit by the jazz fly in his teens. Learning that Davis actually played the trumpet did not deter him from mastering the instrument though, learning how to manipulate and speak through it under the tutelage of Walter Smith III in high school. Shannon spent some time on the jazz circuit in New York but quickly returned home after feeling that he had learned all he could from the maverick gods who populate the east coast. Back in LA, he was able to reconnect with his childhood friend Thebe Kgositsile, aka Earl Sweatshirt, one of the break-out stars of the infamous Odd Future rap collective. This revived friendship resulted in Shannon providing live backing instrumentation for Kgositsile’s critically acclaimed I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. Observing Kgositsile writing and crafting an album caused the gears to turn in Shannon’s own mind and led him to begin working to translate his talent into a concise artistic statement. Five years later, we finally get to hear the album whose seeds were planted by friendship and watered ambition. 

Cassowary borrows more from the freely perspiring rock sensibilities of funk freaks like Thunder Cat than the controlled existential scholasticism of Miles Davis, but still retains the meticulous concern for structure, characteristic of many modern works of jazz that must live in the shadow of the giants of the genre who arose during the previous century. This tight but ruddy formula Shannon has stirred up on his debut is an intoxicating cocktail which lends a refreshing quality of approachable refinement to the scratchy, twinkling R’nB of tracks like “Starlight” and the clean, spiritual fusion of “Moth.” Disco influences make their presence known as well, especially on the hard-funk, piano-lead bobble of “Cyclical” and the Thunder Cat-esque thump of “She Funked Me.” Shannon has not forgotten those who he owes his love of jazz to and pays this debt forward with the affinity seeking and slippery polyrhythmic, bass-and-sax helix “Roach,” a tribute to the late jazz drummer Max Roach. Cassowary an impressive debut from a young player, securely stretching his compositional skills in riveting and revealing ways.

Grab a copy of Cassowary from Fat Possum here. 

Album Review: Burial - Satanic Upheaval

With summer almost over and the death cycle of the seasons in full rotation, I'm looking forward to having some more damp frigid weather to match my mood. Summer is fine and all but you really can't beat a moonless night when the ground is covered in a glass-like sheet of ice or walk in the woods when the wind whips through the trees like a chilled scythe, cutting through your jacket and reminding you how futile your attempts to guard your vulnerable flesh against the indifferent arc of nature's moods truly is. Winter is coming my friends and to prepare I've been listening to the third album from Manchester black metal band Burial. The album is titled Satanic Upheaval, and if ever there was a time that an album with this title should manifest it would be in this moment of absolute turmoil, when dark forces have conspired to stack bodies as a monument to social miscarriages and a withered invisible hand exerts its might to squeeze blood from labors in order to water the gardens of cannibal kings. An upheaval is needed at this time. And if it will not come from above, then it must well up from below. The howl of "Encircled By Wolves" is the sound of the world finally meeting a deserved end under a suffocating storm of hail and cold-burning hatred. "Hellish Reaping Screams" begins with a small deep gash that progressively yawns ever wider, exhaling the hot breath of hell, blanching your hair and eyebrows before disgorging a river of fire to roast the meat off your bones. "Barren Lands" passing like a benign shadow across the room before you, a spine-tingling encounter with a cold apparition who pities you more than you could ever bare to know. Burials Immortal-esque ice dance is bleak and penetrating, as it should be, but when the band wells up and unleashes a deadly obsidian deluge on tracks like "Beneath the Filth" or "Devour Your Soul" any safe harbors in your mind and spirit will be overwhelmed, and you will be given over to the Burials putrid excess, like a spider trapped in a rain gutter during a storm. As the wheel of Ka does turn, so shall you surrender your will to this upheaval.

Grab a copy of Satanic Upheaval from Apocalyptic Witchcraft Recording here. 

Album Review: SpiritWorld - Pagan Rhythms

My first review for New Noise is live! The debut LP from Las Vegas's SpiritWorld is an entirely fucked up configuration of Satanism, hardcore punk, death metal, and alternative country, and it absolutely rips! Hitch up your belt buckle and head on over to New Noise read my review. You can grab a copy of Pagan Rhythms, here. 

Album Review: Sanctifying Ritual - Sanctifying Ritual

I've got a review of Sanctifying Ritual's debut LP up over on Scene Point Blank. The self-titled album is a decade in the making and worth the wait for fans of German death-thrash. It's an incredibly ugly and brash album sure to raise hair follicles and dampen spirits in its putrid, swelling rage. Check out my review here, and grab a copy of the LP from Iron Bonehead Records here. 

Album Review: Asher Gamedze - Dialectic Soul

Drawing from the soil of time and propelled forward by the waves of history's oceanic flow, South African drummer Asher Gamedze has crafted an album that speaks to his home country's post-colonial aftermath and its continued struggles against neo-liberal imperialism on his debut album Dialectic Soul. My first introduction to Gamedze's spiritually charged, inquisitive and ecumenical style of percussion was on his guest appearance on Angel Bat Dawid's "Capetown" off of her remarkably transcendent 2019 album The Oracle (you can read my review over on Chicago Crowd Surfer here). Dialectic Soul continues in this tradition of collaboration by teaming-up with Thembinkosi Mavimbela on bass, Robin Fassie-Kock on trumpet, tenor saxophonist Buddy Wells, and the smooth, elegant purr of singer Nono Nkoane to reify the critical, creative, and conformational ethos and sounds of the American free and spiritual jazz movements that arose as resistance to racial exclusion at home and the immoral infiltration by the capitalist state in south-east Asia abroad. The opening three tracks, titled in succession, "state of emergency suite.," "thesis," "antithesis," and "synthesis," deal with the incursion of colonialist powers into South Africa, the rising consciousness of the people of that nation and the eventual expulsion of the apartheid state, and the yet to be fulfilled future liberation of the African people from imperialist chains and the ushering in of a new free global society. It is a story told through the interplay of rolling snares, hollering saxophones and brash, subversive trumpet trills, all reminiscent of John Coltrane's highly visual, liberatory compositions and convention twisting, note freeing modes. The tryptic culminates in the breathy and ponderous "siyabulela," an enlightened march of semi-regal grandeur led by dusky-toned ceremonial horns, the hugging sway of Fassie-Kock's bass and the petaly, drift of Nkoane's melodious vocals. A triumphant procession of the human spirit over oppression as the sun rises on a day when all of humankind is bathed in the absolutely light and truth in recognition of their inherent dignity and equality. I have barely scratched the surface here, and there is a lot that Dialectic Soul has to offer the listener who is open to its message. It is an album that will certainly be sticking with me for many years to come.

Grab a copy of Dialectic Soul from On the Cornor Records here.

Album Review: Skeleton - Skeleton

I've got a review of the new Skeleton self-titled record from Texas rippers Skeleton over on Scene Point Blank. It's pretty rare to see this kind of dark and brooding hardcore get any kind of press, but they've been getting a lot of positive attention lately and they fucking deserve it! Check out my review here, and grab a copy of Skeleton's debut from 20 Buck Spin Records, here. 

Album Review: Maria BC - Devil's Rain

Despite the fearsome title, the debut EP from Maria BC, Devil’s Rain, is about as soothing as they come. A flowing raft of ambient, chorale laced evanescence. Five tracks of cool, minor symphonics, captured in a rarified state of ephemeral bloom. Recorded quietly in their apartment’s bathroom so as not to desorb their roommates, the emotional quality of Maria’s vocals and their dream-walking arrangements can hardly be constrained to a single cracked-tile room. The title track “Devil’s Run” has a slightly revelatory stillness to it, like the leaves and branches of a very old tree, gently rippling with the wind in a Grouper-esque study of poise and patience. “Unmaker” borrows the aching undertow of Circuit des Yeux and the buoyant minimalism of Like a Villain to craft an exfoliating balm to draw out and expel the troubles of your mind. While much of these tracks appear to be aimed at cultivating a mood or a capturing a sense of presence and existential occupancy of space, the melodiously pop-oriented “Adelaide” serves additionally as a vehicle for more traditional songwriting, with lovingly, soft and folky hooks and trilling harmonies that recall the stealthy power of the eternal architypes Enya or Sinead O’Connor even at their most subdued. A beautiful and captivating effort from a young artist who has much to share with the world.

Grab a copy of Devil's Rain from their Bandcamp here. 

Album Review: Thiago Nassif - Mente

What’s real? What’s in your head? When will you be honest with yourself? Or, are you honest all the time, in a world that runs on lies? Thiago Nassif can’t answer these questions for you (at least not definitively), but he can provide you some esteemed listening while you probe the machinations of your mind. Based in Rio de Janeiro, Nassif has been one of Brazil's best-kept secrets in the world of art rock (at least here in the United States, apparently he has more of a following in England). His fourth album Mente, translates to “mind” in English, and maybe more concerningly, also “to lie,”and is produced by Arto Lindsay, a fellow traveler from another era who also produced Nassif’s third album from 2018 Três. Mente sees Nassif embracing a more fluid approach to his live-wire, wave-denying tropicalia and dry, dyspeptic bossa nova. This new lush and lugubrious approach is achieved by leaning into the funk undertones of Nassif’s sound and allowing svelte but bawdy basslines to form a thin layer of connective tissue that binds constituent, acerbic apexes. This is certainly true of “Plastico,” which slinks out from under the shade and foliage of a looming, rag-barked tree to offer you a fresh sip of slightly sour mango juice, blended with scratching synth notes and neon electric pulp. A similarly cagy funk groove burps its way through the moist and conductive, suck and swallow swap of “Transparente.” However, the potential of Nassif’s experiments in no wave and funk exchanges is best exhibited at the outset, on opening track “Soar Estranho” which feels like a genuine successor to David Bowie’s Berlin-era forays into American soul and R’nB, caressing these familiar sounds with his electrifying grace and imbuing them with maverick charm. Next, “Pele De Leopardo” oscillates and percolates with motorik run-off, a signal that is intermittently jammed with spectrum-bleeding smooth jazz. More traditional Brazilian musical forms take shape on “Vóz Única Foto Sem Calçinha” and “Feral Fox,” ablate with cryptic, side-winding distortion and a seedy Tom Waitsian vocal delivery on the former, and formidable, stalking feedback as a contra point to the yé-yé naiveté of the melodious vocal performance of Ana Frango Elétrico on the former. Brittle rubber grooves, tropical tones blanched by the persistent pour of desiccating sunlight, passion and desire slickened, beaten to a froth, and then slowly dried to a milky resin. Strange and conflicting flavors. Familiar comforts made obtuse. Thiago Nassif’s latest album is not mental vacation and will give you more to ponder than maybe what you’ve bargained for.

Grab a copy of Mente from Gearbox Records here. 

Album Review: Lucifer - Lucifer III

Not everyone probably believes we need a Coven revival in 2020, but those people need to step out, because I absolutely do, and it is one of the reasons I am stoked about the third album from German doom metalers, Lucifer. The band formed in 2014 under the dark, bewitching gaze of Johanna Sadonis. Lucifer were initially a more straightforward doom metal band, sort of in the vein of Castle, but took a turn toward ‘70s psych and downer rock with their second album following Nicke Andersson (of Entombed and Hellacopters fame) joining the group. Their third release is a melding of these two aspects of their career. The occult doom with the ‘70s dower blues bacchanal, and the results are as sexy as they are evil. Things kick off promisingly with the leather-clad firewalk of opener “Ghost” with the sultry slither of its coffin-crawling grooves and the sonorous witchy-purr of Sadonis’s vocal melodies, heightened by torch-lit, séance priming solos. “Ghost” has that classic, pulp horror, literally-in-love-with-Satan vibe, a flame that is taken up on numerous tracks on III, including the very Coven-esque dissent into shadowy, maddening passion “Leather Demon,” the Motoheaded, wrench-wielding, high-way robber soul of the eponymously titled “Lucifer,” and the hot and heavy blues prowler “Midnight Phantom.” “Flanked by Snakes” has a Heart meets Deep Purple in a pit of vipers feels, while “Coffin Fever” keeps things heated with sensual doomy guitar stirs and spirit-lifting acid rock, and the willful “Stay Astray” can lead you through a haunted woods unearthly delights if you let it. Heavy, brooding party rock to help you exercise your inner sexual demons, in both senses of the phrase.

Grab a copy of Lucifer III from Century Media, here, and check out the video for "Leather Demon" below. 

Album Review: Internal Rot - Grieving Birth

Australian vomit wallowing wretches Internal Rot have emerged once again from the swill of embryonic bile they’ve claimed squatter’s rights over to regurgitate a second full-length LP into the basements of the outback. Grieving Birth is very much in the style of their earlier material, meaning it is red-eyed, tempo-agnostic, grindcore that will strip epidermis off any exterminator foolhardy enough to spray for the Insect Warfare-infestation that they neighbors have been complaining about. The vocals flow over the mic like blood and offal disgorged from a slaughtering plant into a rotting slurry pond, the guitars bite like a hack saw compressing and cleaving its way through mossy worm-eaten wood, and the blast-beat percussion hits like a heart attack. There is very little hardcore punk aesthetic to grab on to for those accustomed to the more Napalm Death side of grind. Instead, Internal Rot plays around in the sloppier, noise fueled side of Regurgitate, but without the restraints of death metal chord-progressions, or Excruciating Terror, minus the crossover whir, while managing to be more dynamic than many of their peers in this exacting space within the heavy music spectrum. The crushing slide guitars on “Unnegotiable Impact” will absolutely sweep you off your feet like you were standing before a damn as it bursts, while the pinching and rending quality of the chord progressions on “Eaten By Crabs” will leave you with the sense that you’ve been transformed into a buffet for tiny, knife handed crustacean. “Failed Organum” is a concrete to head, skull fracturing, tumble out a twelve-story window, while “Gorge On Abuse” will tenderize your supple human meat with piston grooves in a suffocating cyclone of odium. As their label says on the groups Bandcamp page, “Do you grind? Because this fucking grinds(!)” (emphasis mine).

Grab a copy of Grieving Birth from Iron Lung Records, here.

Album Review: Céu - APKÁ!

This week for Critical Rotation I've written a review of the fifth album from Brazilian singer/songwriter Céu. The album is titled APKA! for a favorite phrase of her young son and sees her continued departure from the tropicalia tinted neo-soul of her early work. It's still there but it's barrier under a good deal of extremely interesting and minimalist synth-pop. No complaints from me. I think it's great! Check out my review of APKA! on the CHIRP Blog here, and grab a copy of the album from Six Degrees Records, here.  

Album Review: Keleketla! - Keleketla!

This week for Critical Rotation I covered the new album from Keleketla! a community sound project orchestrated by the Keleketla Library and the non-profit In Place of War. It's an incredible journey through the permeable membranes of global jazz, funk, and soul in an exhibition of radical human solidarity. We all have the same needs, so why can't we work together to meet them? It's a question that the album wrestles with. The album doesn't present a definitive answer but if hopefully brings us closer to where that answer lies. Check out my review on the CHIRP Blog here, and grab a copy of Keleketla!'s debut from Ahead of Our Time Records, here. 

Album Review: Punitive Damage - We Don't Forget EP

If you miss the fastcore flush of Punch and if the knuckle-to-jaw-line, melee of Judge grazing your ears reminds you of summer, than buckle up, because have I got a record for you. Punitive Damage hail for the Pacific Northwest and play a cathartic, kick-in-the-guts style of hardcore, that will careen around your head-space, devil-may-care fashion, like a car about to jump the barricades at a demotion derby, and their debut EP We Don’t Forget leaves a lasting impression from its outset. The first track “Baited” opens with an ominous feedback pool that feels like its just waiting of Mike Ferraro to cannon ball into it with a bellicose splash, but instead singer Steph emerges with a growling shriek like Bloody Marry from a bathroom mirror to skin your face like an overripe orange. In the tradition of many great hardcore bands before them, the next track “Smug Rat” rages against scene police and self-appointed gatekeepers, with a slamming mosh-missile groove and crossover-tipped breakdowns. “Imposter” is a clawed machete wildcat, shimmying up a brick wall to snatch it's suspecting dinner out a fifth-story window. “Nothing” looks to shake some sense into you with whiplash grooves and roadrash-peel percussion, a combination that lures you into the ravaging grip of “No Compromise.” The EP ends on a high note with “Enough” winding up the energy into a sputtering picket of adrenaline and exhausted, sweaty angst. Getting your ass kicked never felt so good.

Get a copy of We Don't Forget from Convulse Records, here. 

Interview: Helen Money

Photo from  Alison Chesley 

I'm excited to premier my interview with Alison Chesley aka Helen Money today for the final episode of CHIRP's limited series, Shelter in Sound. It was absolutely delightful speaking with such a thoughtful and insightful avant-garde musician, with a foot in both the classical and the metal world, about how she is coping in the COVID era, how she got into heavy music, and her fantastic new album, Atomic. You can listen to our conversation below or on CHIPR's site here. Atomic is out via Thrill Jockey and you can get a copy here. My review of Atomic for Chicago Crowd Surfer can be found here.  

CHIRP Radio · Shelter in Sound: Helen Money

Album Review: Holy Grinder - Divine Extinction

Sometimes all I need is an injection of a savage fucking racket into my ears to help calm your nerves, and if you’re reading this, I bet you feel some kind of way similar. Toronto’s noise-grind heathens Holy Grinder and their new record Divine Extinction is the booster of blast-beats I need today as I contemplate the state of the world. Divine Extinction once again sees the band partnering with Topn Das of Fuck the Facts to unfurl twelve sacrilegious shocks of purling, fizzling grindcore heat, in a meditation on the defeat of fascism and state authority. The band continues to hone their songwriting chops, as evidenced by the slapping double-time pulse of “Heretic” and the steamroller, malice-go-round “Disgusting Trash People.” The two tracks fold into each other to create a feeling of inversion. like the sidewalk under your feet has simply jumped out from underneath you, and you are now plummeting upwards into a raging cyclone of demonic energy. “Vile Hymn” and “Unholy Grinder” take a more death metal approach to their structure with decaying, corpulent grooves and tempo changes that allow you to feel the force and impact of each incoming change up as it broadsides your head. There is even a little bit of Full of Hell’s obsidian wormhole hiss on tracks like “Vile Hymn” and “Mental Terrorist.” Holy Grinder’s Divine Extinction is a slippery work of vital violence that seeks to plug nails through the frock of legitimacy, which authoritarian elements dress their maleficence and sadism in. Ripping these garments down from around their shoulders, it seeks to expose the vampiric flesh beneath, causing the benighted wretch to wither in a cleansing shower of daylight— a necessary purge of anti-human commitments from the halls of power accomplished with a flush of ear-puckering noise.

Grab a copy of Divine Extinction from Jean Scene Creamers, here.

Album Review: Hitter - Hard Enough

I have never wanted to own a motorcycle more than while listening to Hitter’s debut LP, Hard Enough. As soon as I hit play on the sneering, Deep Purple peel of “Out for Blood,” my mind departs on a cross-country coast, side-by-side with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, rocketing down a desert freeway towards that slowly-setting sun, atop seven-hundred pounds of fire and steel. Such is the power of these Midwestern chopper rockers!

Without sacrificing the punky thrall of their rightfully lauded 2018 demo, Hitter have managed to narrow down the range of their sound and hone their skill to make them the perfect embodiment of the slick and sleazy, hot and hair-brained, hard rock and metal that every working-class kid feels coursing through the synapses of their brain, even before they hear one sweaty note off Kiss’s Destroyer. “Motorcycle Psycho” starts with a tab of acid-dosed blues, which dissolves into a brooding, bloodletting tear down a road paved with bad intentions, and more than a glint of Motorheaded malice in the reflection of its aviators. “Reach Out” rolls on some fat, Thin Lizzy grooves before dropping the listener onto the doormat of “Funeral” for a memorial service of Misfits-esque malevolence and beat-‘um up Budgie grooves. Hard Enough won't let you leave just yet though, as “Glowin’ Up” grabs you by the hair and pulls you back into Deep Purple’s den of frantic, fuzzy R’nB backed by boney, broken piano passes and searing, whip-lash guitars.

Through the combined might and ability of guitarist Adam Luksetich, drummer Ryan Wizniak, and vocalist Hanna Johnson, Hitter have tapped into a long-dormant vein of hot-blooded riffs and perspiration-lubed grooves that made city living feel like less of a chore, and more like... well, living! Their sound will take you back to the days when metal was still a menace to the sanctimonious charlatans of the moral majority. When the mere presence, a Plasmatics or Venom record on a turntable at home could cause the president of the local school board to begin prematurely bolding. The unholy alliance of punk and lion-maned heavy metal that gifted us the great god of thunder Thor, and the spider tamers Cirith Ungol, has once again birthed a heat-seeking, hell-raiser into the cradle of Chicago’s drowsy, de-industrialized, gentry-gratifying malaise. If ever there was a band who were born to shock this town out of its sleepwalking stooper, it’s Hitter

Grab a copy of Hard Enough from Hitter's Bandcamp page, here.