Album Review: Round Eye - Culture Shock Treatment

Where to begin with Shanghai's Round Eye? Well, for starters, none of them are native-born Chinese. They're actually from all over the world, but have found themselves in mainland China, primarily due to work. Lead by vocalist, former Florida resident, and Libyan Hit Squad defector Craig [last name redacted]; the group are four albums and ten years into their career- a spectacular exercise in stubborn survival and foolish flights of misbegotten fancy. They've managed to thrive in their adopted haven despite having tours canceled by the authorities at the last minute, having their art censored due to its obscenity, and having their very existence snubbed and motivations questions by hipsters and elitists from across the globe. But, hey, what doesn't kill you makes you weirder, you know? And Round Eye are plenty strange.

For their fourth album Culture Shock Treatment, their second with Mike Watts behind the mixing board, Round Eye have make a record that is about as old-school punk as you can get. Don't know what I mean? Look, it's not your fault. Blame Green Day or Sire Records, or the music press in the '90s. A lot of people treated The Ramones and the Sex Pistols as the only legacy acts worth mentioning back in those days. But the genre was more than just three chords, played loud and fast with dried glue in your hair. There were some dudes with real vision back in the day. Acts like The Damned, who combined punk attitude with humor and absurd theater. Fellas like Grahm Parker who presented an air of sophistication while maintaining an encourageable, wise-ass sneer. And punk clubs opened up spaces for deranged pop acts like Sparks and no wavers like James Chance & The Contortions to flourish. If you were to triangular a point in rock and roll's sea of sounds and inspirations between all of these groups (plus The Fall), you'd find an island inhabited by mostly insane people that neighbors the one the Round Eye calls home. 

Culture Shock Treatment, like most of the band's previous albums, is political in theme, and while Monstervision took mostly safe jabs at the American election of 2016, this one is aimed at what they view as authoritarian overreach in the place where they now live and work. I can't tell you how, since I don't live there, and can't speculate, but the passion and anger in the face of injustice permeate the album, like water oozing through an exasperated sponge. Wring it out in your ear, and you might learn a little about what it's like to live in a place different than your own... or you might just lose your grip on your own sanity. Caveat emptor and all that. 

Culture Shock Treatment is out via Paper + Plastick Records. 

Interview: Fallfiftyfeet

Photo courtesy of the band.

Had a really fun interview with James of West Virginian metalcore band Fallfiftyfeet about their new album Twisted World Perspective. It straight-up rips! It's also one of the more eclectic hardcore albums I've heard this year. Check it out and my conversation with the band below: 

Interview: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-interview-fallfiftyfeet/

Buy Twisted World Perspective: https://fallfiftyfeet.bandcamp.com/releases

Album Review: Les Filles de Illighadad - At Pioneer Works

At Pioneer Works is the third album that Les Filles de Illighadad (Daughters of Illighadad) have recorded with Christopher Kirkley of Portland-based ethnographic label Sahel Sounds. That might not seem particularly significant, but it is. He's been a constant collaborator with the band, and like other Tuareg musicians, including Mdou Moctar (who appeared on the first Sahel Sounds comp Music from Saharan Cellphones), he's opened quite a few doors for them. Not the least of which are the doors of Brooklyn's Pioneer Works, where this album was tracked live in 2019. 

The album contains some variations on songs that appeared on Les Filles's previous albums, 2017's Eghass Malan and 2016's self-titled, but is mostly stacked with fresh materials. Without a doubt, even the familiar tracks are genuine articles in their own right and it's worth hearing these songs again to revel in the versatility of each of their variations. 

What separates Les Filles's music from other popular Tuareg and Malian music is the band's adoption of tente rhymes into their repertoire. This is actually very significant. Tente is usually a form of drum-lead (after a fashion, the base rhythm of the styles is performed with a mortar and pestle, which is played like a percussion instrument) choral music performed by women, while the "desert blues" guitar style that forms the core of Tinariwen's and Bombino's sound is traditionally played by men. However, the woman-led Les Filles manages a synthesis of the two, represents a transcendence of not just sound, but of prescribed social roles and definitions well. 

Tradition is important to all cultures for sure, but the strength and meaning of a tradition, I think, is best measured by its flexibility- something which Les Fellies's incursions within, and excursions through, Tuareg folk demonstrates to be incredibly robust and adaptive. Specifically, Les Filles give these desert ballads a hypnotic, almost prayer-like quality. Imbuing them with something enchanting and inescapable- like the smell of fresh dirt after a rain, the way that shadows bow and then evaporate before the rising sun, or the simple wonder of a bird in flight.  

At Pioneer Works is out via Sahel Sounds.

Album Review: Charm - Sugar Mountain

Wrote about last year's EP from Greenboro pop boys Charm. I also put some words down about their latest single. All the words are on New Noise. Enjoy! 

Read about Sugar Mountain: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-charm/

Buy Sugar Mountain: https://acrobatunstable.com/charm

Album Review: Bambu - Sharpest Tool In The Shed

It usually takes me a couple of days after Labor Day weekend to reset my brain and get back on the grind. Thinking about the history of struggle for survival and dignity in this country and how hostile, sour, and fucking deadly it has been for the people who dare speak up about the conditions they are expected to live under gets be a little worked up... every dang time. Labor Day is a day when I spend more time than usual contemplating these things (especially since the real Labor Day has been dragged down and replaced with some brain-wormed holiday dubbed "Loyalty Day" in the US- No. Thank. You.) And when it comes to music for working people- music that speaks to working class issues- folk in fine, but if you want to get the feelings and the facts right, you need to turn up some hip hop. There really isn't a more direct form of musical expression out there, and if you want to hit the bedrock of human experience, it pays to be direct. 

Bambu's Sharpest Tool in The Shed, dropped last year, but it's still extremely relevant... and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Set against the backdrop of the 2020 summer uprising for black lives, the LA MC describes in startling and lyrical detail the ways that banks and real estate investors loot neighborhoods through gentrification, the methods by which police act like an occupying force in segregated neighborhoods throughout urban centers, the coercion that guides and defines the choices and circumstances of so many lives, the parallels between prisons and public schools, and intolerability of ongoing apartheids- both in the US and abroad. Bambu's flow really pops throughout, landing lines like left hooks- striking out against the false narratives and consciousnesses that define what is and isn't politically and theoretically possible. It's very cool to hear straight fire, spit from Bambu's jaws like sparks from a furnace- skipping and skimming atop classic jazz samples and crisp, confident grooves. Every track sounds like a battle in a war that Bambu has been preparing to fight his whole life. I wouldn't call it a performance, but a prosecution of the justifications for an unjustifiable state of affairs. These are dope tunes, addressed to a distressed and daunting world. 

And if you listen to Sharpest Tool in The Shed and don't think what he is talking about are working-class issues, then you need to ask yourself- who do you think a working class person is? Is it a dues-paying union member who works in a factory? Is it someone who drives a car for a ride-share company? What about someone who delivers burgers or pizzas through Postmates? Is it the dishwasher who works in the restaurant that made that those burgers and pizzas- the line cook, the server, the bus person, the host? What about someone who comes the US from another country to work, with or without a VISA- who possibly sends money back to their family on the other side of the border? What about the person who is unemployed- someone who can't find work, or who is incapable of working due to disability or other mitigating factors? How about the person holding out the empty Burger King cup, who stands in the middle of the road near stoplights and asks people in passing cars for change? What about just anyone who has to work for a wage in order to justify their existence? I'm going to stop burying the lead- these are all working class people, leading working class lives. And nothing in this world is going to change until they realize that they share more in common with each other than they've been lead to believe. 

Get a copy of Sharpest Tool In The Shed from Beatrock Music here. 

Album Review: The Codgers - The Codgers Have A Little Fun

Wrote a review of the latest album from Detriot's The Codgers for New Noise today. Most of their band members are either represented by a union or are involved in labor struggles in the state. They're also a really great folk band, whose songs and subject matter feel very honest and relevant to the present moment. I figured they would be a good band to cover following Labor Day. 

Read my review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-the-codgers/

Buy The Codgers Have A Little Fun: https://thecodgers.bandcamp.com/album/the-codgers-have-a-little-fun

Column: New Noise’s Bandcamp Friday Picks: September 2021

Because I love making lists of music to check out, I wrote a list of recommendations for New Noise for Bandcamp Friday this month. You can check it out here.

Included in the list are...

G. Brenner – Bushfire (Very Jazzed)

Charlotte Day Wilson – Alpha (Stone Woman)

Catbite – Nice One (Bad Time Records)

Mothercell – Powerhouse (Metaphorest Records)

Gumiho – Gumiho (Self-Released)

Camp Trash – Downtiming (Count Your Lucky Stars)

Lysol – Soup for My Family (Feel It Records)

Diskord – Degenerations (Transcending Obscurity Records)

Moratory – The Old Tower Burns (Planet K Records)

Anti-God Hand – Wretch (American Decline Records)

Album Review: Unearthly Trance - Stalking The Ghost

This fucking album. When Stalking the Ghost dropped in 2017, it was the first album released by Unearthly Trance since their reanimation. The shambling horror show that is NYC sludge metal band broke up in 2011, got back together, and then dropped their sixth album of signature black metal meets cacophonous tar-choked metal on the unsuspecting populous of this wet dirtball of a celestial body. People talk up Melvins, Neurosis and Isis like they were the pinnacles of what low, slow, and brooding rock music can do to unsettle the human psyche. I suspect the fact that Uneathrly Trance escapes such similar praise is because of the cerebral damage their concussive riffs are prone to cause. Brain damage is the only possible explanation. This band cut a split back in 2018 with Primitive Man for fuck's sake! This is a band that knows terror and captures it succinctly with the whirlwind of their sound. Places to stop and sights to wish to unsee on this tour of abject madness include the pummeling “Into the Spiral” with its fiery guitar work and reptilian bass lines, the deliberate slow burn of “Dream State Arsenal” with its oceanic grooves and mammoth riffs, the merciless and rhythmic hammering of “Scythe,” and “The Great Cauldron” with it's he flesh cleaving riffs which churn and lap wickedly at the creases of your ears. When it comes to heavy music, Unearthly Trace is the real fucking deal. 

Stalking The Ghost is out via Relapse. 

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: Rejoicer - Energy Dreams

Rejoicer is the one-man hip-hop production team Yuvi Havkin. Yuvi, currently living in LA, hails from Tel-Aviv, and is credited by many as the driving force behind Israel’s modern beat movement. Energy Dreams is Yuvi’s debut album for Stones Throw and serves as an exploration of the mystic potential of free jazz to radically alter one's perception and transcend the provincial setting of one's surroundings. His soundcraft relies heavily on nonlinear logic as a guide with hypnogogic emission as its goal. Yuvi has crafted an unabashedly spiritual broke-beat album inspired by a lucid dream he experienced in which still objects stirred and his sense of time had become flat and inverted. As Yuvi himself explains, “I wanted to create an atmosphere of freedom; of walking in unfamiliar territories while still feeling at home and at ease. There’s a huge music world in my head that I hadn’t expressed or explained, and I decided to try tap into that world of sounds.” If you are looking for something that is easy to digest while leaving plenty of vibes to savor, look no further than these sweet servings of potent dive into the blossoming center of the lotus of deep-knowledge.

Get a copy of Energy Dreams from Stones Throw Records here. 

Album Review: Air Credits - Believe That You’re Here

Did a write-up of the new album from Chicago hip hop collaboration Air Credits. It's a pretty good companion piece to the unfolding apocalypse that continues to unfold before us. Read my thoughts over at New Noise below: 

Read review of Believe That You’re Here: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-air-credits/

Buy Believe That You’re Here: https://aircredits.bandcamp.com/album/believe-that-youre-here

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

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

April is the cruellest month is out via Blank Forms Editions

Album Review: Bliss Fields - Self-Titled EP

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

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

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

Album Review: Black Viper - Hellions of Fire

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

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

Album Review: Burial In The Sky - The Consumed Self

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Album Review: John Frum - A Stirring in the Noos

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

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

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

A Stirring in the Noos dropped via Relapse in 2017. 

Album Review: Portrayal of Guilt / Chat Pile Split

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

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

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

Album Review: Century Palm - Meet You

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

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

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

Meet You was released on Deranged Records back in 2017. 

Album Review: Grand Collapse - Empty Plinths

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

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

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

Album Review: Balkan Taksim - Disko Telegraf

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

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

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

Disko Telegraf is out via Buda Musique.

Album Review: 26 BATS! - Portal Party

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

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

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

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

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

Humavoid - Lidless (Nobel Demon)

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

Pick up Lidless from Germany label Noble Demon here. 

Merked - Mercked (Goat Power Recreation)

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

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

 

                                      

Sacred Bull - Ragged Mountain (Super Carnival Recordings)

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

Get it on CD and cassette here. 

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

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

Buy the EP here. 

Interview: Annihilus

Photo by Michael Vallera

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

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

CHIRP Radio · Annihilus Interview

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

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

Click for review

Click to buy via Peaceville 

Album Review: Altin Gün - Âlem

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

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

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

Album Review: Tetragrammacide - Primal Incinerators of Moral Matrix

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

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

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

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

Primal Incinerators of Moral Matrix is out via Iron Bonehead. 

Album Review: All Life Dies - Ghost Dust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Album Review: Grave Miasma - Abyss of Wrathful Deities

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

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

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

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

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

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