Music that helped me survive 2020

 No order, no ranking, just the sounds that blew my mind this year.

Here The Captain Speaking, The Captain Is Dead - Flux Capacitor

Strap on your suit, check phasers are set to kill and join
Here The Captain Speaking, The Captain Is Dead on an epic 
quest that will take you from the white-hot explosion of a nebula 
exploding, through to the dying embers of a burnt out black star.

Flux Capacitor is a cosmic trip of mind and music expanding

 themes set to a stoner-groove of monster proportions.

The main thrust of these songs are unstoppable riffs of power
and beauty which are split into 5 chapters. With such a grand
vision, does the music match up to it?

Oh yeah - this should be the album to project this band of
Spanish starmen to greater heights. Heavy rock and stoner
heaviness are the bedrock from which springs the imaginative
and inventive song passages that take you through this exploration
of sounds, aggression and epic story telling.

Doom, modern psych and stoner all play a part in setting
the scenes of sonic mind/spacescapes.

Guitars are chunky sounding with distorted chords give the riffs
extra bounce and vigour. Vocals are sung or chanted to make sure 
the emotion is varied and interesting. There are lulls of restraint 
that drift to a dark, tranquil place before revving back up into 
interstellar overdrive.

I only got this fucker yesterday and it has not come off my player.
Get your head nodding, trip out and break out the bong - groove
your way into the outer cosmos of rock.

Facething

The Black Legacy - Black Flower

The Black Legacy are a stoner band who do not
piss around trying to invent the wheel - they want
to turn the amps up, crank out some riffs and stomp
on some distortion pedals.

 

Over the last couple of years, Stoner bands have become quite samey and seem to have lost the heavy edge it used to have.

 

Just my humble opinion but this is my blog -

please do not come whining about it.

This is raw stuff, both in production and the playing
which suits the music just fine. 

Riffs are basic and powerful and sometimes that is 
all I want. Circular song passages keep the groove
turned up to the max and the foot stomping beat just
keeps rolling along.

The guitar solos are prime electric blues - mean, aggressive
and full of feeling. This is the sort of shit I love.

Bandcamp

Facething

Electronic Chaos - Anarchaos Vol​.​1 (From Concept Art to Reality)

 

Hailing from Canada, this is a sonic pit of aggression. 

Fast and powerful, these songs drip with elements of crust and 

hardcore, while the depth and tone of their sound have that 

black metal sonic solidness that are evident in Coverge or 

Trap Them. 

Electronic Chaos fuse all these elements together with some 

wonderfully mangled guitar riffs that strays out of generic 

templates and delves into some intricate but still heavy madness. 

These tracks are interspersed with spices of news reels, police 

sirens, background talking which elevate the whole thing into a 

montage that helps to keep your attention and makes listening 

an event rather than “just some more grindcore shit!” 

Production is top notch - keeping the sound big and tight but 

without descending into muddiness. Oh yeah - and the 

vocalist sounds like a werewolf fucking around with 

bad drugs and a microphone!

Bandcamp

Facething

The Mighty Ur - Take It On The Chin

Noise Rock as a political weapon and raising awareness while

rocking like a bastard has always been the main thrust of this

band of trouble makers and I am glad to see that with this new album 

all the shit going on with this country has not escaped their aim.

Because I am an old bastard, I was raised on punk bands talking

about social change, personal politics, government policies etc

and can only be amazed at how the climate today, so ripe for

protest, seems to have a very small impact on the song writers

that inhabit this underground world where our music lives.

The Mighty Ur have really found their own sound with this album. Sure,

we still have the loud/quiet passages with plenty of throbbing bass but

now the guys have upped the dynamics to include picked guitar

breakdowns, spoken vocals which croon menaced threats, bursts of drone

and the master stroke of muted electronic swirls and keyboards 

which adds an air of loneliness and loss to the atmospherics.

Bandcamp

Facebook

Orgöne - Mos/Fet

Every now and then I get sent something to review that makes 

my ears ring with sounds and music that seems to come from 

a different dimension. This is a female fronted heavy fuzz
 psychedelic band that trample through genres as gleefully as
my daughter stealing money from me. 

Heavy and dense, there is also a strong vein of weirdness running 

through, ensuring that there is always something going on to keep 

your attention.The riffs are strong and muscular with snaking
 patterns that the guitars deliver drenched in feedback and distortion,
giving the haunted vocals a platform to sit upon. 

Ambient drifting intros linger and then dive straight into the 

chaos and power. Squalls of space guitar noise drone over kraut- 

rock song structures while the rhythms are almost mathy with a
jazz like complexity that propel the listener into orbit. 

The production ensures that every note is LOUD. 

The musicianship on display from all members of the band are on 

fire, giving these tracks an effortless feel that gets the head nodding 

along nicely. Tension and dynamics are handled well - there is
always a danger of this sort of thing becoming samey but in
the hands of this band, it is an organic process which carries you along. 

On the other hand, if you are brave enough to plunge into the unknown,
take a deep breath, hold my hand and let me guide you through
an electric trip! 

Orgöne describe themselves as heavy psych/retro rock/experimental/sludge/
space rock and stoner.. If those words strike fear into your hearts
and you do not want to delve into uncharted musical territory,
now may be the time to leave. 

Lone vocal chants start the first track - a massive 20 minute track before the
distorted guitars start droning, morphing into Melvin type riffage - then with
choral vocals, which lead to a lone buried vocal - this is a prelude to some
frenzied jazz drums that are played in the Mitch Mitchell school of
skin bashing over which a throbbing bass line is accompanied by stabbed guitar
chords - soon chaos descends but always with control.

Special mention must be made of the vocals by Olga Rostropovitch.
She sings, croons bellows, shrieks, whispers and because I do not understand much
French, the overall feel is like a witch spitting out curses - I mean that a a good thing!

This is my album of the year so far!

Facethingy

Heavy Psych Sounds Records

Thanks to Heavy Pysch Sounds Records for sending this promo.

An Autumn For Crippled Children - All fell silent, everything went quiet

Having come across the last AAFC release quite late,

I have been waiting for the next one with bated breath to

see if it could match up.

Well ,"All went silent, everything went quiet" does not let you down. 

Instrumental post-rock drive the song structures but 

when the distorted guitars kick in, the mood changes 

with the powerful riffs that deliver a punch that would 

not sound out of place on a sludge album. 

The ambient passages carry a real feeling of mood that 

build up into a post-metal explosion of tension and 

release. The guitar playing is not just mindless fret- 

wanking but carry the songs along with sustained riffs 

and some wonderful note progressions. This is classy 

stuff and the tracks have a definite epic feel to them. 

There are tiny flourishes that make this stand out from the 

crowd - there are some ghostly screamed vocals which are used 

sparingly but with great effect and thekeyboards that could of been 

overworked - instead, it sits behind the riffs and give the songs 

another dimension.

This is the good shit.

Bandcamp

Facethingy

Black Rainbows - Cosmic Ritual Supertrip

The sounds of fiery stoned psychedelic rock blasting 

from my headphones means that Black Rainbows have got 

a new album out. It feels a bit darker and heavier this time around. 

Fuzz, powerful riffs, great song compositions and vocals buried 

under the sonic assault continue the fine run of Black Rainbows releases. 

Tired of 10 minute prog rock tracks passed of as

 Doom/Stoner songs? Well plug into these Italian guys vision 

of rock. Tight, taut songs that hit you between the eyes 

are order of the day here, served up with catchy-as -fuck choruses, 

world weary vocals and scorched earth solos that never overstay 

their welcome. Heavy, groovy, unstoppable with hints of space 

rock expansiveness combine with driving Stoner song structures

 to make each track sound like a classic cut on first hearing. Hints of 

fuzz electric blues are scattered throughout with searing effect

 and yes, it does make me want to drive faster with my arm hanging

 out of the window, music blaring from the speakers on the way 

to some humdrum place of work, having my soul lifted 

by this potential masterpiece.

Bandcamp

Facethingy

Heavypsychsounds

Lophius - Their Poison Our Antidote

Fuck knows what they put in the water down there

in Denmark but Lophius are a doom/stoner band that

 tick all the right boxes.

This is one mother of a low-end beast. 

All the riffs capture the groove of stoner 

and the heaviness of doom with admirable results. 

Fuzzed out, distorted tunes with tempo changes power 

along, showing the potential of what interplay between a

 trio can achieve, the rhythm section pounding out a bedrock

 for the guitar to fill in the gaps.

The vocals are a growl/clean and fairly low in

 the mix which is where I like 'em. The overall feel is 

very much in the vein of Sleep in full "Dopesmoker" mode and 

I hope that this band can progress in this sometimes overcrowded 

genre to wider acclaim.

Bandcamp - NYP. 

Facethingy

Acid Alice - The Road

Band bio:

"Like a laboratory where multiple substances are mixed 

and the boiling points are reached, Acid Alice is the authentic sublimity 

of the stoner rock rhythms, the psychedelic riffs of the 60's and 70's 

and the aguardentious voices of classic rock"

This is fucked up acid pysch rock of the first order.

Stoner rock blended with fuzz blues give this a massive sound

and you will never want this trip to end.

Bandcamp

Facethingy

Kassad - London Orbital

Normally, high up in the top floor of Maim Towers, I put together

my reviews with wit, wisdom and the knowledge that I am right

and you are wrong. But the band have put forward their own manifesto

that says everything that needs to be said. 

Combining abrasive and gritty black metal with hallucinatory 

ambience and spiralling postrock intricacy, Kassad’s name is 

synonymous with misery, futility, and madness of modern urban life.

"London Orbital", the new album, centers around modern

 urban living and looks to a near future of megacities where

 the city itself is a personified, malevolent being where human 

empathy and culture have been replaced by artificial intelligence. 

The artist adds: "I wanted to create music for an imagined,

 future London - one where the city’s monoliths of glass and 

concrete have come alive to assert their malevolent control 

over the millions of people that live and toil amongst them. 

Workers travel in the vast shadows of these buildings, in the 

tunnels and transport systems that snake below or in the

 briefest snatches of sun that are yet to be blacked out.

 If you tilt your head and look at the city just right, you can 

already see the light starting to turn to darkness."

This is the good shit.

Get from hypnoticdirgerecords bandcamp

Kassad on Facething

Woorms - Twitching, As Prey

Woorms - Twitching, As Prey

Woorms have crawled out of a sludge swamp and rolled in the

 corpse of rock before unleashing their second album upon us. The

 sludge elementis still the driving source but the songs are infused

 with ideas and atmospherics that bring a more doomy and psych feel - 

combined with a hardcore aggression that keeps the menace swirling 

around the tracks.

This is an album that demands to be played in one sitting. You are

carried along in this soundscape from start to finish and as a cohesive

whole blends into an almost epic concept album.

Vocals are screamed, muttered, crooned and chanted with effective

and creepy results. The sound is of course low-end but with many

different effects and playing styles, the middle end of the musical

scales are well catered for. The production is just great - everything

sounds full on without losing clarity or aggression.

Drones and sound effects are used along with quieter passages to bring

the pace and feel down - not to a peaceful interlude though – 

this is the good shit.

Thanks to Aaron for sending me the promo.

Get from Sludgelord Records

Woorms Facebook