Death Mercedes - Sans Éclat

French screamo/post-hardcore released by the always excellent
Throatruiner records.

Death Mercedes draw upon the obvious template of loud/quiet
but with far more superior results than their fellow bands.

The song writing talents on show soar and peak, with a breakneck
speed that promises anger and passion in equal measures. 

The guitars are a joy to listen to - shimmering riffs of distortion,
shifting time scales and locking in with the vocals to produce
moments of sparse beauty among the aggression.

In under half an hour, Death Mercedes give you a triumph of
hard hitting poems set to a sonic wall of spite which deserves
to propel them further into the underground psyche.

Get from Throatruiner Records

Facebook

Cowards - Hoarder

French band Cowards play a mix of raw sounding hardcore

and sludge with a feral crust attitude.

This is brutal stuff with no guitar leads or solos, just crushing

riffs played with wild abandon - overlaid with vicious, hate

filled vocals. The dark, claustrophobic production suits the

songs perfectly.

Heavier and slower than "Shooting Blanks & Pills" from 2012,

these tracks suffocate with the weight of despair and fury.

There is a chaotic edge that threatens to collapse into a wall

of noise but the strong arrangements manage to pull things

back from the edge.

Ending with a fantastic cover of "Blessed Persistence" by 16 

Horsepower, this EP shows Cowards at their best and proving

themselves to be an unstoppable force of nature.

Released on 15th September from Throatruiner Records

Facebook

Thank as always to Matthias for links.

Death Engine - Amen

Released on 20th June on Throatruiner Records, Matthias has

once again put out some music that wants to tear your face off.

Death Engine play hardcore/punk with lashings of noise rock to

give you a record high on visceral thrills and passion.

Led by the desperate vocals, these tracks rage along but with

enough different influences and twists to stop this being four tracks

of inter-changable songs. With some slightly slower passages, this

enables tension to be built up, using different dynamics to bring

the explosive climaxes home.

Heavy and tight, Death Engine play these songs like someones

gonna get hurt. Quick running times make sure nothing outstays

its welcome but do make you want to press play again.

Get from Throatruiner Records

Facebook

Primitive Man - Scorn

Primitive Man serve you up one of the filthiest, most destructive

releases you will hear this year. With vocals sounding like a

swamp monster spewing up bile in gouts of hatred, the music

is a gut-wrenching platter of blackened sludge, crawling out

of the mire at the torturous pace of the slowest doom ever heard.

Short passages of drones and muffled shrieks provide 

interludes of uneasy calm before the unrelenting barrage

starts again. I felt drained after playing this and just sat in silence

for a while, trying to clear my head and hoping my melted brain

cells would recover. In the meantime, read their bio and order

at once from Throatruiner Records.

Fronted by Ethan McCarthy of notable grind acts Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire and Death of Self, Denver, Colorado's PRIMITIVE MAN play some sort of blackened sludge/doom with hints of drone and d-beat in the vein of bands such as The Body, Thou or Khanate. An earth-shattering, bleak wall of crushing dissonance and pure sonic heaviness : "Scorn" is only the band's debut full-length, but it already sounds like one of the heaviest and most brutal records you'll hear for a while. Thirty nine minutes of pure, unrelenting destruction that will leave you bruised and bleeding.

Pre Order the 12" Here

Facebook

Bone Dance - S/T

With a ferocious sound that steamrolls over you, Bone Dance

have produced their finest record yet.

Dense, heavy hardcore with the bleakness of sludge thrown in

mean these songs have a dark and menacing slant to them.

The riffs have a chaotic Am-Rep complexity that weave

through the tracks which the technical guitar work delivers

flawlessly. All the instruments are pushed to the front and

combined with the throat shredding vocals make this one of

the albums which will be at the pinnacle of their genre this year.

Bio: Bone Dance, a ritually charged and menacingly DIY band seeped in all things heavy, is rising from the South Idaho desert with their first self-titled LP for Melotov Records (USA), Throatruiner Records and Prototype Records (Europe). Bone Dance takes the grime and gravelly glut of the band’s previous work, the self-released Snakecharmers, and reevaluates not only its intensity, but also the band’s heritage: retooling the ferocity of hardcore, the technical acumen of extreme metal, and the minimal gauze of sludge and doom. This is the kind of tight, controlled, anvil-heavy music that only comes out of an area dominated by the Religious Right, the Conservative Coalition, and some of the most culturally repressive mechanisms in America. Bone Dance acts as a document of this inheritance by time and place and on principle rejects all of it. As a combatant to the moderate veneer that glosses even the counterculture in their hometown of Boise, Bone Dance have crafted not a shield but a weapon against the repressive devices they so clearly detest. By deconstructing typical sludge breakdowns, by retooling blast beats into searing grooves, by inverting a biblical poetic into a sinister manifest of their body politic, Bone Dance forges a musical dialogue exemplifying the clash typical of the liberal-conservative head butting seen throughout misleading media; however, the band seems to reject even mainstream leftist views in favor of an utter desert-driven nihilism. Bone Dance proves yet again that the frontier isn’t innovation—the frontier is misery.

Get digital and vinyl from Throatruiner Records

Facebook

Verdun - The Cosmic Escape Of Admiral Masuka

This is a fucking magnificent beast of an album.

Verdun are named after one of the longest and devastating battles

of the First World War. Fought in the Western Front over 10 months,

an estimated 976,000 people lost their lives in an area so small

that parts of the ground were composed of more human flesh

and bone than of earth and vegetation.

Taking their name from such a gruesome example of mankinds

destructive urges should give you an idea of what the music sounds like.

3 songs all around the 10 minute mark deliver despairing epic

 tracks that are the perfect mix of sludge/doom/hardcore. Battle scarred 

riffs that are droned and tortured get the head banging in slow motion

while the howling vocals that are mixed quite low, fight through the

murk of massive basslines and drums that have a monolithic feel to them.

Verdun create some masterful atmospherics and are not afraid to bring

a song down to the wire, creating moments of calm and eerie quietness

before delivering explosive climaxes that leave you feeling drained.

The song arrangements create a claustrophobic tension of bleakness

that make this album one to be listened to as a whole to get the

full effect. I like this a lot!

Bio: Named after the most inhuman battle in the First World War, VERDUN (Montpellier - France) are one of those bands that are hard to label, merging the lines between sludge/doom and slowed-down dark hardcore. Heavy and dry riffing, neck-breaking groove, incantatory vocals and a strong psychedelic feel, that's what you can expect from the half-hour of their debut EP "The Cosmic Escape Of Admiral Masuka". Carrying a strong live reputation, VERDUN is definitely one of those bands to watch for any fan of Burning Witch, Electric Wizard, or Amenra; and by extension anything dark and crushing.

Yet another masterpiece from Throatruiner Records Here

Facebook

Direwolves - Me From Myself, to Banish

The latest release from the always impressive Throatruiner

Records are the Direwolves. 6 tracks of heavy hardcore crossed

with crust and screamo make this a ferocious beast that wants to

track you down and tear your face off.

Fantastic production makes sure that every riff and scream comes

out crystal clear but still captures the awesome power of the music.

I have being playing this non-stop today and have come to the

conclusion that this could be one of my favourite hardcore

records of the year so far.

Highly recommended!

Bio: "Hailing from Lorient (western France), DIREWOLVES merge modern hardcore, crust and screamo on their debut EP "Me From Myself, To Banish". Recorded by producer/sound engineer Amaury Sauvé at La Senelle, these six songs find the perfect balance between emotion and heaviness, reminding of bands such as Alpinist, Lewd Acts or Killing The Dream. After a self-released demo last year, the Wolves confirm their huge potential - don't sleep on them!" 

released 15 October 2012 

• Recorded by Amaury Sauvé ~ amaurysauve.tumblr.com

• Mastered by Sylvain Biguet 

• Artwork by Fortifem ~ fortifem.fr

• 12"EP limited to 500 copies on clear vinyl

Name your price at Bandcamp

Facebook

Birds In A Row - Collected (2012)

Shit-kicking collection of Birds In A Row tracks from the great
Throatruiner Records.

This is punk/hardcore that takes no prisoners, played with passion
and heart.

I am stupidly busy at the moment, so just enough time to post
that this is some really good stuff and recommend that you check
these French brutes out!

Buy and free download Here

Comity - The Journey Is Now Over

French heaviness that defies genre tagging.

Comity play a brutish but thrilling brutal mix of hardcore,

sludge and post-metal but keep things dark and dank with

descents into crust.

The four tracks are long and epic with a crushing feel to the

atmosphere. Extreme sonic noise is suddenly brought to

a stillness with piano notes echoing in the silence until

the chaos explodes - this reminds me of when Neurosis

still termed themselves as hardcore but were plainly

mapping new territory into post-metal.

The intensity of these songs seem impossible to keep up

but Comity play the tension out with an ease that is

helped with sudden bursts of Dillinger Escape Plan type

guitar riffs spewing out over the schizo tempo changes.

If you are not aware - I really like this - despite the fact that

it was released in December 2011, this goes onto my album

of the year list for 2012!

Listen

Facebook

Pay what you want at Bandcamp on Throatruiner Records -

one of my favourite labels out there at the moment.