Thursday 28 February 2013

Witch Ripper - S/T

Witch Ripper hail from Seattle and play sludge/stoner.

Two genres that are a pretty common mix - you know what to
expect .....blah, blah,blah.

FORGET ALL YOU HAVE HEARD BEFORE!


This is fucking awesome.

Really.

Imagine "Crack The Skye" crossed with Baroness and you have
a magical mixture of heaviness, power, passion and an element that
seems to be sorely missing these days - heart and soul.

Soaring, distorted solos over massive sounding tunes that are
not scared to have complex passages that always lead back to
THE RIFF.

Clean guitar atmospherics merge into slabs of sonic sludge
from which strained and searing vocals tell their tales of misery.

A fine debut which whets my appetite for more as just four
tracks is not enough!

Name your price at Bandcamp

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Heavy Glow - Mine All Mine/Headhunter 7"

Heavy Glow are working on their new album and as a taster
are releasing this single on March 12th.


This 7" is chock full of their trademarks - warm, vintage sounding
guitars, soulful vocals, tight as fuck song arrangements and a
feeling of blissed out grooving.

Classic blues riffs vie with a stoner vibe that instantly lodges into
your brain - heavy but tuneful at the same time, I cannot wait
for the album to be finished. 

In the meantime - buy from Bandcamp

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Sludgelord - Paralysis Vol 1

The guys over at Sludgelord have got together a massive
compilation of the best bands they have featured over the
last year. It is 50 tracks of sonic filth from the worlds of
sludge/post-metal/doom/stoner and every other combination
of the heavy you can shake a shitty stick at!


Download the fuck out of it free from Bandcamp

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Wednesday 27 February 2013

Seagraves - Weight Of The World

Seagraves are the newest release from Witch Hunter Records
and with this EP have replicated the sensation of getting
a sledgehammer smashed between your eyes.



Seagraves describe themselves as "4 men on a mission to 
combine the vitality & unchecked rage of 90s noisecore with 
nihilistic D-Beat crust".

Can't say fairer than that ...... these tracks are ferocious slabs
of aggression that hurtle down the path already trod by the
like of Cursed etc but with the added bonus of having excellent
guitar riffs and solos playing against the wall of chords that are
being thrashed out. Vocals have a slightly blackened feel to them
which gives a different dimension to the hardcore feel of things.

Production is great, giving a clarity to every note and shout - 
this is an excellent EP which bodes well for their future.

Name your price at Witch Hunter Records

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Monday 25 February 2013

Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks review

Albums that burnt your soul.

Before I play this, I get a sense of anticipation, knowing that
I will enjoy this from start to finish. As "Holidays In The Sun"
kicks off, the drums sounding like marching jackboots - the
opening chords and the sneered vocals off "Cheap holidays
in other peoples misery" all combine to create an electric shock
that still to this day puts a shiver down my spine.


Back in the misty days of punk, every band seemed to have their
album out before the Pistols. I had the bootleg "Spunk" - which
was a collection of demos - but I wanted the real thing. Matlock
had gone by this time and the rumours were that Steve Jones
was going to play all the bass parts.

Despite the slight disappointment that all 4 singles were featured,
when I got the day-glo cover home and dropped the needle, I
knew that this was MY album.

Jones had overdubbed the fuck out of his guitars to produce a
massive sound which I still think is unsurpassed to this day. With
the best rock'n'roll vocalist since Elvis or Lennon, this blew away
anything I had heard before.

I have many albums or tracks that can transport me to a time or place
but this summons up emotions of joy, savageness, familiarity and
a feeling that just makes me want to shout out at the world. With a
running order that just kills, this - for me - is one of the most complete
pieces of music I own.

Vitamin X - About To Crack

Vitamin X are from Holland and play a foot stomping, fist
punching blend of punk/hardcore/thrash that sounds fucking
unstoppable.


Fast and furious - with vocals that sound like the singer is screaming
in your face so close you can feel the spit run down your cheeks, these
tracks rush past you with more fury and speed than someone taking
a nose dive off the 20th floor.

Blistering fast guitar solos attack every song while the supertight rhythm
section deliver killer riffs with hooks that make you want more.

This album has been given the Steve Albini treatment which I presume
means that these songs were recorded virtually live to give the
record the feeling of being at the front of a gig.

Name your price from Tankcrimes Records

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Friday 22 February 2013

Witch Hunter Records - The Coven & Neophytes Vol 2

Witch Hunter Records give you a fucking awesome
collection of the raw and angry sounds that they
are putting out.


With tracks from Iron Witch, Old Wounds, Limb, Atragon
and many more, this is available for a free download and
well worth a listen. Chris Kaye is doing an amazing job
with all these bands - show him some love or I will knife
your spinal cord in the night.

Overlord - S/T

Band request from Oxford via Chris Alchin (hi dude!)

Overlord play an infectious mix of classic rock/stoner and
have really impressed me with these 4 tracks.


With bucket loads of fuck-off riffs, these guys show a real understanding
and more importantly, a real love for the genre they are playing.

There is a gritty, heavy blues feel that combines Sabbath with 
Graveyard or Witchcraft. Warm toned solos that hit all the right notes
are overlayed on top off the songs that are barrelling down the highway
of righteous rock straight into the brain paths that make your head bang
up and down while stomping out the beat with your foot!

The recording has a raw, unpolished feel to things which actually
suits this EP perfectly. If Overlord were based in Sweden and had
Jens Bogren producing, they would be on their way to critical acclaim.

I think this is fucking great and cannot wait to hear some more.

Free download from Bandcamp

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Ocean Of Insects - Heathen Mythology

Band request from New York.

Ocean Of Insects have taken the musical template of post-metal
and overlaid it with stoner vocals and solos.


This might sound jarring but in fact they work it really well.

You have heaviness with eerie atmospheric samples and 
drones but overlaid with distorted, psychedelic guitar outburts
- what's not to like?

All you need to know it that it rocks like a bastard and sometimes
that is all I want. The complex song passages keep the attention
levels nice and high while the tracks run together to make playing
the album as a whole the only option.

If you want something that kicks arse but want to rest your
ears from the cut'n'paste cookie monster vocals that seem
to have taken over the world, give this a listen.

Name your price at Bandcamp

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Thursday 21 February 2013

New Tongues - Interview

New Tongues blew me away with their debut release which I reviewed Here
This was prime punk/noise rock which I gleefully fucking recommended!

The band have been cool enough to give me an interview, so here goes:



Who is in the band and how did you get together? 
I met Justin at a street fair here in Columbia and we began playing and writing 
songs together. It was just the two of us playing bass (Justin) and guitar (Shane) 
for a few months in this tiny little room. 

Mike and Justin went to high school together. Justin and I had been trying 
to find a drummer for a few months before we met up with Mike at a 
show to see what he thought. 

He agreed and we wrote most of the album in the course of the next 4-5 months. 
We recorded all of We Are... after playing only 4 shows together. 

I can hear influences of NoMeansNo, These Arms Are Snakes and 
Jesus Lizard in your music. Was this the music that inspired you? 
I have been playing guitar for decades now and my stuff still has 
echoes of The Ramones and The Stooges in it - 
music I love and always play. 
We definitely wanted to play loud, chaotic music that wasn’t necessarily defined by a period or predecessor. No doubt all of those bands and many more shape what we sound like however, we often find ourselves describing a feeling or texture in a song in non-musical terms ie “let’s make this part sound like a truck slipping out of park and rolling downhill into a jeweler or fine dining restaurant” 

Do you have to put on your own gigs or are there plenty of places to play? 
We definitely book all of our own shows. Columbia has lots of good venues and bars but the one DIY venue is scheduled for demolition because the owner of the building would rather have a parking lot.



What has the general reaction been to “We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For” - I have seen some really good reviews on the web, has this album helped in getting people along to see you play and getting gigs? 
It hasn’t helped yet but we plan on doing some touring soon. We’ve got a few offers to play out of town. 

I thought the production was really good - powerful & aggressive with a “live” raw sound - are you pleased with it? 
Very pleased. We worked with our friend Dan Ruder, drummer of the band Jack Buck in St. Louis (an amazing band) on the record. He recorded it and we mixed it together. Carl Saff in Chicago mastered it for vinyl. It was recorded in about a day and half, mostly single takes with minimal overdubs. 

How difficult is it to juggle work with being in the band. 
Difficult, but necessary. We have smart phones that tell us what to do and where to be. 

Your digital album is pay what you want - do you find places like Bandcamp are able to get your music out to a much wider audience than just gigs and friends? 
It is certainly a great tool. We have no illusions about broadening our audience or making it. We love playing music and making records and prefer said records are in other peoples hands/turntables/ or respective listening devices rather than our hands/basements. Sharing is good!


Are there any bands in Columbia that other readers may not of heard of before that we should check out? Columbia has a small but high concentration of great bands. Normally these come off as “check out my friends bands” but they are fantastic. Coward, Dark Blue Dark Green, Bald Eagle, Hott Lunch, Jack Buck (STL), Believers, etc. are all bands that you should check out and buy their records.

What does the future hold for you? We’re going to try for some Europe or South American tours next year and continue playing shows here in the Midwest (No Coast). We’re probably going to write another record this year too. Buying a trailer hitch will also happen. 

Those are the words - check out the sounds!


Black Table Tour Dates


Wednesday 20 February 2013

Godstopper - What Matters

Request from Milgram records who are releasing this on Vinyl.


Godstopper play music that unsettles at the same time
as hitting you over the head with its heaviness. Jarring
riffs fight for space in the claustrophobic production.
These are dark, slow songs sung with venom but in a
clean vocal style which hangs over the sometimes empty
space where you would expect notes to be.

The songs have the power of early Swans and the riffs
of the Melvins, all delivered in a sparse sonic envelope.

This is the music you hear when you overdose on sleeping
pills and vodka.


Pre order album from Milgram Records

Name your price at Bandcamp

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Humanfly - Awesome Science review

This is the fourth album from Humanfly and only after some
initial plays, it has already gone onto one of my albums of
the year list!


Mixing post-hardcore and psychedelic noise with heavy prog
leanings means if you have ever wondered what the bastard
spawn of Mastodon and King Crimson would sound like
channeled through a massive fuzzbox and forced directly into
your brain, wonder no more!

With every member of the band playing to their full potential,
this release should elevate them to the heights they deserve.

If you have followed this band and have been waiting for
this album - enjoy. If you have not heard them before, you have
not only let yourself down but opened up the floodgates for
some well judged abuse and possibly a stabbing!

Highly fucking recommended!

Get all their stuff from their Bandcamp site, including a
soundboard recording of the last show.

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Monday 18 February 2013

Pohl - Pohlsmoker EP

Band request from Bristol.

Pohl are a two piece who include the drummer from the
glorious noise-makers Sonance.


This came out towards the end of last year but has now been
released on  CD through Future Noise Records.

With a rough and ready stoner/punk vibe, these five tracks
are riff filled bastards that are powered by fuzz boxes, backed
up with pounding drums.

Early Big Business and The Melvins come to mind as sludge
elements are worked into the mix with head nodding results.

This is good stuff and I look forward to hearing more.

Name your price at Bandcamp

CD from Future Noise Records

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Friday 15 February 2013

Johns - House Of Wrongheads

Band request from Buffalo, New York.

Johns are a five piece that features ex-members from one
of this blogs favourite bands - The Fucking Hotlights.....
who have sadly decided to call it a day.


Ryan describes his new project as more polished and pop
structured than the Hotlights but I feel he is being modest.

This is a great mix of garage rock and post-punk that fuse
melodic tunes with off-kilter chords to excellent effect. 
Fairly clean guitars are thrashed, giving the convoluted
tunes an eerie feel, helped in no end by the female
backing vocals.

Riffs are hypnotically played, with variations slowly being
exposed during the song passages. If you ever grooved out
to BATS or Young Widows, check this out.

Name your price from Bandcamp

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Momentum - Herbivore

Momentum are made up of members from Light Bearer and
ex Fall of Efrafa and play fucking pissed off fast and aggressive
hardcore.

This album is a full bloodied manifesto about animal rights
and veganism.

Read below for a fuller story.



Momentum was a side project, but it became much more than that. A catharsis from our other more time consuming projects, which soon became as valid and as important as those. We practiced every other week for two years, and played very very few shows live. We wrote a lot of songs and put out two records – one really long, and one really short, but contained within those songs were our passions and urgency to create punk rock songs, free of past musical experiences. This last record is possibly the most direct and belligerent release I have ever been involved in and we all love it. We all care a great deal about the issues we raised, and the music we played. But we have decided that we have completed what we wanted to do with this band, and so sadly Momentum will end with Herbivore. We plan to play a release show for our LP, beyond that, I am unsure. Hopefully you will enjoy this record, which is available below for free.

Please consider the words we have written, and reflect on the rights of non human animals, their screams are much more significant and deserve much more attention than ours.

Free download from Momentum

Order vinyl from Halo of Flies Records


Wednesday 13 February 2013

Burning Bright - Domesday

Band Request from North Cult Records - a new label
started by Benou from the great French band Direwolves.


With Burning Bright, Benou has hit the ground running - if this
is the quality of music he plans to keep on releasing, I cannot wait
to see what  comes next.

Burning Bright have members from Amanda Woodward and Aussitot
Mort (who I loved) and play a mix of hardcore/crust/screamo.

The songs are epic and massive sounding with filthy guitar riffs
that actually have tunes to them rather than a blanket of identical
tracks that blend into one sludgey mess. Great burts of solos are threaded
behind the powerful rhythm section which retain their brutal sound
thanks to an excellent production job.

The vocals are emotionally charged with passion but it is the
little details that make this record stand out - the sparse plaintive
guitar chords ringing out with distant reverbed vocalst in "Kalopsia"
or the horns/keyboard/samples at the end of "Dreamcatchers".

Highly fucking recommended!

Name your price at Bandcamp

Monday 11 February 2013

Multiple Truths - No One Wins

Band request from Chicago.

Multiple Truths play a brilliant meld of hardcore and punk
which have melody and ferocity in equal measures.

Front woman Mariam has a great throaty howl that sounds
passionate and scary while singing with a tunefulness
that brings another dimension into this collection of songs.

All the instruments are recorded with power and clarity and the
riffs go straight for the throat. This band are fucking tight and
have the tunes that make you want to play over and over. 


Bio: Multiple Truths was formed by Justin Wettstein, Lucas Sikorski, and Tim Murphy in early 2011. Justin had been stockpiling songs, and wanted to record and press an LP as a band before performing live. Lucas and Tim joined the fold first, and started practicing in September of that year. Mariam heard about Multiple Truths from a mutual friend, and when talking to Tim and Justin at a show on a visit home to Chicago, was asked to join the band while visiting her hometown, Chicago. With a singer on board and a set plan, Multiple Truths began recording demos as songs came togetherand sent them to Mariam in San Francisco. The band entered Howl Street Recordings in Milwaukee September 2012 with Shane Hochstetler to begin tracking No One Wins. Mariam recorded vocals at the Atomic Garden recording studio in east Palo Alto, CA in October 2012 with Jack Shirley. The album was mixed at howl street in November, and Jack Shirley mastered at the Atomic Garden in December. Justin pulled double duty, playing drums and guitar on the record, but Shane Hochstetler joined up on drums while tracking at Howl Street. The members of Multiple Truths are former and current members of a number of projects, such as Herds, Manipulation, Condenada, Permanent Ruin, Radar Eyes, Shopping, Canadian Rifle, La Mantra, Call Me Lightning, Zebras, and Hero of a Hundred Fights.

Tour:
Thursday, March 14th, 2012 : Quarters in Miwaukee w/ No Future and Shut-in

Friday, March 15th, 2012 : Mousetrap in Chicago w/ Sin Orden, No Future, and Distract

Saturday March 16th, 2012 : Toronto, ON @ tba w/ Hassler


Friday 8 February 2013

God Bless You Reg!

Celebrate the unique talent of Reg Presley, not with
Wild Thing but with the infamous "Troggs Tapes" - 
11 minutes of the word 'fuck'.


Cryptodira - Recursions

Band request from Long Island, New York.

Cryptodira play progressive death/post metal which is not
something to set my soul alight with joy.


But.....

There is some amount of experimental song writing which adds
different layers to this genre. Complex passages are played
with enough technical chops to pull of the bewildering guitar lines
with ease and the bass just fucks with your ears.

What do I know? Check it out for yourself.

Name your price at Bandcamp

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Thursday 7 February 2013

Corax - S/T

Band request from South Africa.

Corax are a two piece who dabble in the un-holy genre
of sludge/doom!


Bleak downtuned riffs are the order of the day as this 30
minute slab of misery plays out like a soundtrack to all of
human suffering.

Raw and DIY sounding, the suffocating atmosphere is further
fueled by the croaking vocals. Powerful and relentless, the songs
have a hypnotic feel to them - this is not pretty music for hipsters
but fucked up music for fucked up people.

I am not always in the mood for this sort of thing but when the
blackness of my soul comes out in tandem with my distain for
the pointlessness of my existence, this is what goes on my iPod!

Free download from Bandcamp

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New Tongues - We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For

Band request from Columbia, Missouri.

How can anyone resist an email that describe themselves as
being "drenched in reverb, propulsive rhythms, and a 90's 
midwestern aesthetic, New Tongues pay homage to their noise and 
post-hardcore ancestors."



This album has a huge, sprawling sound that stomps over your
sensibilities and punches you in the throat. The vocals are clear in 
the mix which means they are not fighting to be heard over the pounding
riffing and Am-Rep rhythms, giving the songs a dark tension that 
builds within the song passages. 

There are elements of chaotic free-form structures running through 
the tracks but never distracting enough to make you forget the huge, 
heavy riffs that are always present. Discordant timings and abrasive guitar 
riffs litter the songs with a reckless abandon, you can  almost hear the strings 
breaking under the duress they are receiving.

Filthy basslines throb in tandem with the drums,  giving the guitar a 
platform to wail, feedback and groan like a mutant raised on noise rock. 
The despairing vocals add another  layer with yells, screams and 
general gibbering craziness.

New Tongues also avoid the standard verse/chorus by using AmRep type 
noise rock song writing and melodic structures - all of which gets my head 
pounding with excitement - it is not rooted in the past though, it sounds 
fresh and aggressive and with a clarity that ensures that every note and yelped 
vocal can be heard to great effect.

This is prime punk/noise rock which I gleefully fucking recommend!

Digital version can be brought from Bandcamp - Vinyl will be available at
the end of March.

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Wednesday 6 February 2013

Dead Empires - Waiting In Waves

Band request from New York.

If instrumental metal wants to make you gouge out your
ears with a rusty crucifix, rest easy - Dead Empires have
created an album that easily makes a vocalist redundant,
instead, letting massive riffs do the talking instead.


The world is getting very full of Pelican/Russian Circles type
clones - while there is certainly room for these bands, I do
not need to hear yet another slow, drawn out song that goes
from quiet to loud with an epic climax.

These guys do have the post-rock/metal elements but it is
heavy and can easily veer into thrash, stoner or even hardcore.

Nothing it what it seems - unexpected turns bring a song
passage down paths not often heard but the overlying
theme is heaviness and distorted guitars.

Trippy psychedelic intros are soon disturbed by a Motorhead
mentality that have prog-metal elements that do not bore the
arse off you, instead this music is meant to be heard loud and
not pushed into the background.

Give it a listen.  

Buy from Bandcamp

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Friday 1 February 2013

Dead Dingo - Crows And Bones

Band request from Poland, a country that over the last year
or so has sent me a wildly diverse and excellent selection
of music to review or try out.


Dead Dingo like their music powerful, hard hitting and loud.

While not being an expert in all the chaotic, hardcore sludge
 descriptions -  and I have been wildly wrong before -
 this is raw and viseral stuff. A barrage of distorted guitar
overlays the senses and sits on top of the frantic drumming.

The vocalist spews out  throat shredding dementia and
the production gives everything a heavy and powerful feel.
Dark and oppressive, this is not for the fainthearted. The songs
have more variation than I normally expect from this genre
which for me, makes this a more interesting listen.

Buy from Bandcamp

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