Sunday 13 December 2020

Music that helped me survive 2020

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



Thursday 12 November 2020

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.


Monday 9 November 2020

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.





Sunday 8 November 2020

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

Sunday 7 June 2020

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.


Tuesday 19 May 2020

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!


Thanks to Heavy Pysch Sounds Records for sending this promo.

Sunday 17 May 2020

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.




Tuesday 12 May 2020

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.





Monday 11 May 2020

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.


Sunday 3 May 2020

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.



Sunday 2 February 2020

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.



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.