hardcore / screamo

Okay, 100 words. Not more. No unnecessities, all arrangement. 91 left. 

5 years after. Neither dead nor forgotten but always praised and recognizable. No second thought needed. Unmistakably. Why? Because Envy has always been the blueprint, will always be. 

Drumming punctuating rhythms with magical kicks and volcanic blasts. ­­Vocal lines screaming pure urgency and whispering calming ascend. Every uphill battle willingly fought for the view towards the endlessness. Guitar lines wandering along the roughly hewn path onto the stormy heavens. 

Want to hear one perfect (screamo) album this year? Channeling beauty and despair equally? Many people’s AOTY? 

Here. It. Is.


Thorsten

drone / ambient

German electronic post-rock pioneers Collapse under the Empire have a brilliant 4-LP retrospective on Moment of Collapse Records. The compilation is the regular kind of anthology with some b-sides (for example the brilliant “Spark”), remixes (“Sacrifice”) and new tracks. Those are the new single “Beyond Us” opening the first LP with a brilliant combination of a harsh riff with electronica sounding like an instrumental remix to an undiscovered punkish Depeche Mode track. “Everything Disappears” is like a Latin-style percussion underneath a beautiful and uplifting piano motif with a spiraling guitar line in the background; the third new track is “Anomaly” sees a stomping beat and a spherical ambient space. Of course, some hardcore fans will already know basically all the tracks but the packaging and the beauty of those four vinyls are definitely a reason to purchase this one – especially newcomers to the band might be interested in this one as it is a perfect “entrance” into the realm of this defining post-rock band!

punk / hardcore / screamo

Loma Prieta are back! After a break of more than four years, the quartet from XYZ is back and kicking. Their first 7” after their hiatus is published via Deathwish Inc. and features the two tracks “Continuum” and “Fate”. The first one starts like a sped-up version of the Buzzcocks’ “Ever fallen in Love” before it turns into a Loma Prieta-style post-punk version of Screamo. “Fate” might be even a bit more impressive as it sounds like a mix of Fugazi and the Pixies. As usual, the lyrics are what makes this band great, as they oscillate nicely between clearliness and abstraction, compare the line "Drugs and God the same distractions / Lay on the dirty floor and stare at the ceiling, like it was a planetarium dome" – the last portion trying to explain where the universe comes from while the first one seems to purvey the idea that drugs (to loosen you up from questioning to much) and God (to overlay your sensibleness with believe) give us two different experiences of the universe above us; what a brilliant concoction. Once again, Loma Prieta are back!

progressive metal

Sometimes the meal cooked with simple but high-level quality ingredients is much better than one with a lot of different ones. Try a classical Carbonara, without cream or anything the like. With Grant the Sun’s new EP it is similar. One might argue that due to the people involved already have quite a standing in the musical community, especially Frederik from Meshuggah who is featured here on the bass, but there is more to this 18-minute, four-song EP; the songs are spreading a certain heaviness with the guitars even reminding one of some djent-ish style kick-riffing and the bass supporting it. The songs are somewhere between math-rock and prog-core with lots of heavy riffs and some very interesting vocal samples interspersed to give the release an even better flavor. One can chew on those songs really long because there are a lot of small details to discover, for example the brilliant tempi changes. However, one can also digest this album in a laid back manner as everything flows exquisitely together forming one huge, ass-kicking harmony of intelligent prog-core.

post rock

Cologne-based threepiece Von Mises self-released their first EP at the end of November and it shows an interesting sign of life for a local newcomer. They might have listened to a lot of Russian Circles and Pelican because there are definitely traces of it in their sound-verse, especially the use of a heavy kicking bass combined with a knack for simple but effective breaks to let the song take in some fresh air before it sets in again. The band might make use of their synth a bit more to include some of these refreshing little ditties that makes, for example, “Universe” such a unique track or the structures and layers of “Dxdt” more complex than one would expect from a young band. The guys from the Rhine should pursue this combination more strongly and they are bound to gain a larger audience. Not just for die-hard fans of post-rock, also for those who are searching for a fresh tune to kickstart their day.

black metal

Judging a book by its cover can bring wonderful experiences like buying a record you never would just because the cover is so shining that you are immediately drawn to it. Or the name of a band that simply wants you to like it (Yes, I look at you We Butter the Bread with Butter!). Certain song titles are just so good that you love the track without listening to it (see Death by Stereo’s “No Cuts No Buts No Coconuts”). With Tragedy in Hope it was the same with me, I loved the name of the band – so nihilistic – and I thought the title of the EP was pretty proud. When listening to this new outfit from Russia’s thriving black metal scene, but admittedly I was wrong. The songs are not the problem for they are solid black metal structures and moods, after the intro I liked it a lot. And then the vocals set in and, well, the vocals are the flaw in the construct. With a different vocalist or a change of style, maybe even a different approach, for example going instrumental, this might become a relevant act. This way it isn’t, at least not for me, and that means nothing.

post rock / progressive rock

Writing a review for a fellow is not the easiest thing – what shall one say? What can one say? How objectively do I judge the record? Well, in the case with Home Brewed Universe’s new record it is quite easy. My only criticism would be the drum sound as it’s not as emotional as before but very clean and crisp. All the other bits about this record are really interesting. The mastermind behind HBH has tried to capture a soundtrack to a fictitious story of the Time Thief who is able to prolong his own life by stealing time from other people and who even is able to travel through time but who is forgotten by all he knew. The music to the interesting story is very focused on the riff and thus it is very different from Arka’s previous outputs, when he focused on layering bit over bit. Now the audience is faced with a lot of strong, prog-metal-like riffs that dominate the sound and drive the songs through all different kinds of stages. This review for a friend’s work was easy as the release itself is very easily accessible and still interesting enough to keep the audience listening. 


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hardcore / sludge

How you feel about an album or artist usually involves how you feel about the genre that they play in. Doom metal, jazz, pop etc. you know what you like so you tend to stick within the confines of a certain genre that you like. Some bands blend the edges between genres, other like Earth Moves, the  London based group we are talking about today, tear down the walls of genre with will full abandon and create something which, whilst schizophrenic in it's approach to genre, is an exhilarating experience which makes you think about music in new ways.

Superficially I guess you could call this album a post-hardcore one, even a punk one, but that is doing it a massive disservice and doesn't really tell you the whole story. Indeed whilst post-hardcore is a frame to hang some of these songs on, most of them don't even cover this base at all and instead veer off into other territories entirely.

 Opener 'Falling Away From the Ground' is a great example of what they are attempting. It starts with a strummed guitar part until lead singer Jordan Hills impassioned wails come in imploring you to take his hand for the journey ahead. The guitar picks up pace and before you know it, the song is a crescendo of noise. Second song 'Into the Either' sounds similar but explodes with punk energy half way through and even dips it's toes into black metal territory for a ferocious onslaught toward the end of the song. The rest of the album twists and turns between moments of savage noise making and gentle almost ambient sections which should sound jarring (and in a lesser bands hand certainly would do) but each passage has been thought about and placed there for a reason, not jammed together haphazardly for the sake of it. 

If you are interested in heavy music at all then please do yourself a favor and listen to this album, at the very least, it will introduce you to other genres you may not ordinarily listen to, sometimes within the same song!  


Simon

hardcore / black metal

SIBIIR are from Norway. They like black metal. And Siberia. So what kind of music do you expect? Doomy, glistening sounds? Or explosive, harsh shredding? Well, SIBIIR are neither, performing neither doom nor chaos. 

Their style of music might not be as “sophisticated” as for example the obnoxious Tool but at the same time they are not as animalistic as Kvelertak, it is more of a blackened hardcore and interestingly it can show you very well what that terms really means or should mean.

The five-piece from Oslo have no problems in displaying muscular grooves pumping hardcore irons at the gym nor showing their metal likes with ripping up some songs with scratching guitar lines to show that they want to ride on two skateboards at the time – downhill! Usually this amalgam of two genres is pretty hard to balance but SIBIIR are really good at it and can definitely be regarded as one of the few bands to do justice to both parts of the genre – black metal and hardcore. On their second full-length out on Fysisk Format they are able to show a greater sense of songwriting and compiling a coherent album as the songs are not only really good in a way that they are not superfluously long and also not spastically short. The way the songs are arranged within the album context is really good and with some songs seeping in a bit of doom while others being pure distorted hardcore there is a good deal of dynamics going on in those 41 minutes. 

The hardcore part is also audible (or rather readable) in the lyrics; a charge against the capitalists today sucking out the bone marrow from the working classes and ignoring the sparks leading up to a bottom-down-up-revolution (in “For the Few”); a repent that we all participate in destroying this planet of ours and that no one, really no one is innocent and yet no one is doing anything but staring (“The Silent Repent”). 

One cannot but be impressed by this record because it blasts you away with lots of raw power and yet never tries to pull you down into depression – the only thing that shall be pulled away are the shades preventing us from seeing some of the most urgent problems of our day and age. 


Thorsten

blackened crust

When listening to Serpent Eater the feeling of knowing which nightmares will follow might creep up on the listener. The band from Cologne, Germany, releases her second full-length album at the beginning of 2020 upon a world that might not be prepared for what their ears will be facing. 

Not that the world has never heard this mixture of Black Metal, Sludge and Crust; or the swirling guitars and the blastbeats overwhelmed by infernal shrieking and gut-breaking growls at the same time. The guitars deliver more than solid riffing and shredding, play with brilliant scales to shoot through the noise in order to deliver more chaos in this storm of abysmal-ness. The rhythm section is a steady source of deep-toned slow-grooving black currents in a river flowing in a cave deep beneath the surface. It is hard to imagine any metal fan not being blown away by the moody intro to “Ten Floors Down” and impressed by the musical precision afterwards.

There is something about Serpent Eater’s hurricane of sound and chaos. It is the notion of being pulled up by the hair on you arms and simultaneously being drawn by the ankles. It is as if there were two melodies in some songs, one winding upward with the guitar lines, a totally different one going downward with the bass lines. This ambiguity is most on display when the band takes a deep breath and allows for one of the small spaces for the listener to gather his senses without getting his head beaten on the wall. Even if there is only a short change of the guitar lines, for example in “Dead Spiritualist Remains Silent”: when the guitar calms down and the stormy blastbeats step back after roughly 85 seconds in and the song has more air to breathe. From there on, the song loses speed but picks up atmosphere simultaneously. The same goes for the ending of the last song “Dunkelziffer” with its ascent upwards towards a tiny pinch of hopeful morning light shining through the keyhole in the door at the end of the stairs leading from the peaceful outside down into a thunderous darkness.

Serpent Eater is surely not the first blackened sludge or blackened crust band, but the ones that will follow after them surely better give this record a listen as it definitely is state of the art for a genre that embraces those tiny bits of light you see when looking up from right beneath the eye of the hurricane.


​Thorsten

hardcore

There are labels and there are well-run labels, and then there are those two or three handful of labels that really excel at what they do, making it possible to employ people and still release a bunch of records of the highest pedigrees. 
 
The mini album “A Brief Memoriam” by Frail Body is proof that Deathwish Inc. is one of those handfuls that are able to gather a loyal following by representing a certain sound, aesthetic, ideology – you name it; they have a hand for picking unknown bands that fit their soundscope, giving them time and creative freedom and then incorporating their ideas into a catalog like no other. Frail Body from Rockford, Illinois, is a young trio that promises to follow in the footsteps of bands as diverse as Orchid and Touché Amoré with their modern wavey form of screamo, adding a shade of harshly, blasted and yet suffering, angsty hardcore to a flawless list of releases.

The band is able to provide gut-wrenching shrieks and epic turnarounds in the same song (“Your Death makes me wish heaven was real”) with singer Paul Shaffer filling the gap between Jacob Bannon and Jordan Dreyer. Nicholas Clemenson’s drums are pumping and ever-present but not drenching or dominating (“Old Friends”). The guitars played by Nic Kuczynski range from semi-acoustic intro to harsh shredding or even as if played randomly in the dark corner of a pub on a busy Friday evening (listen to the interlude “At Peace” where you can also hear the band’s friends). However, there is nothing on this record that happens randomly, everything seems to serve a thin red line, although only the first four songs are new while the second half was already released over two years ago. 

That umbilical chord that “A Brief Memoriam” revolves around is the moment of having to let go of a beloved person the narrator sees dying. It looms in lines as “I guess you’ve lived a good life / Though you spent the last quarter dying and trying / Just one more day / Just one more year / Just one more moment of time” (the first lines from the opener “Pastel”) and becomes obvious with such clear statements as “I’ll hold your hand while you die / Delineate through your pale eyes / A shallow grey matching walls … But I’m trying to believe / That I’ll see you soon / In your new home” (“Your Death …”). It should be noted: never since “Stage Four” has the death of a beloved and all the emotions that come with it – despair, rage, denial, anger – been more at the center of attention from the perspective of those left behind. 


​Thorsten

dark ambient

A gray cover shower the mouldy hands of a seemingly dead person – no one could live with hands a mixture of burnt to ashes and blown up by frostbite – hanging down in front of an old garment (with one bloody stain on the left arm) as if worn by a mummy from the 17th or 18th century. This cover
gets the listener into the right mood for what will follow in the next 37 minutes.

No sunshine can permeate through the stark, distorted canvas that Clavicvla – mastermind Ittiel has concocted for the follow-up to last year’s “Sermons”, only to show that the starkness of horror scores for the most evil movies, the most gruesome images, the most horrible slow-motions need some kind of eruption: a shriek, a shrill noise wandering from left to right, a slow verbal chant to exemplify the fear to be induced.

Sepulchral Blessing” is not a bad album per se, not that is not true, in the realm of Black Ambient
this band has definitely a strong footing and will even gather more followers with this album. It is
bleak, it got a lot of atmosphere, knows how to incorporate small disturbances into the sub-bass
horror bleakness without ruining the Hadean flow. However, those of us who do not regularly watch old horror movies turning off the sound and for those who cannot envision a dark spawn of John Carpenter and Bohren und der Club of Gore lying in the grave dug up by Mamiffer and A-Sun Amissa this will not do. A class of its own – for its own scene – in its own world. Enter if you may.

black metal

Swiss German is already a hell to understand for anybody who is not from the Northern part of
Switzerland, but turning it into the lingua franca for a black metal record seems even more absurd.
However, one thing becomes very clear when listening to Ateiggaer’s debut EP, to be released in
mid-November: These two guys (working under the monikers Fauth Temenkeel and Fauth Lantav)
make no sacrifices, they take no hostages, they are in it for themselves and for nobody else.

Associated with the up and coming Helvetic Underground Committee from Zurich, they are able to play a furious version of black metal that has long been associated with the second wave of black metal, stemming from Norway. They infuse their fundamental rage and well-shouted visions with short passages of intricate laid-back drum fills, guitar motifs and near-Gregorian chants that connect very well with the mysticism they are here to convey, just listen to “De Dämon us Levania” (the demon from Levania) – everything blends in nicely.

The world as we see it is not theirs, they talk about spheres and gods from another realm, always
able to surprise us with minuscule differences to the usual sound. Not even a year into their
existence, Ateiggaer already got a release by popular German black metal label Eisenton – no
surprise when listening to this EP which is hopefully not their last.

hardcore

When announcing this release of one of his numerous projects on iconic label Deathwish Inc.,
guitar player Aaron D.C. Edge said that this was a dream come true. Naturally, most any hardcore band dreams of releasing a record through Jacob Bannon’s label for several reasons – worldwide acclaim, lots of fans and, of course, the respect of the scene. However, the members of the band have already earned that respect over decades of contributing with so many bands (amongst them 
Deadguy, Kiss It Goodbye or Lumbar), so that this should not be a major goal.


Nevertheless, one goal was surely to release a standout single which they did. The noisy, low-tuned shredding by Aaron, Brock Lowry’s tight drumming or Tim Singer’s brilliant vocals (his name speaks for itself, evidently) all give the listener a shiver-evoking experience. The opener “Lies > Truth” already shows all the strengths of the band and additionally marks a deeply sarcastic lyricist.
​
“I don’t want truth… just lie to me” - sometimes people want to be lied to because (maybe) the
truth is too hard to bear, right? Well, truth be told, you will have to try hard to find a better noisehardcore debut single this year. The dream has come true for these experienced musicians. 

"miserable bastard music" / alternative / indie

Burden Limbs debut EP can hit you straight in the face when you least expect it as it displays a rougher version of the kind of dark pop that Kayo Dot presented on their latest record. The darkness is not only shown musically in a synth-driven melodrama like the self-titled track “Burden Limbs” but even more in their lyrics which are pretty straight-forward: “I'm so tired of suffering these reminders of a world I can't abide / Why else would I carve out my hatred and dissatisfaction?” The little red-glowing dots on the dark horizons are not leading the way to new-found hope but rather to blood raining in slo-mo from the skies. Not a lot of songs demand repeat as urgently as this one.

Burden Limbs can also knock you out in ways that do not sound like a doom-version of The Cooper Temple Clause but much more immediate with songs that introduce themselves into your longtimememory by means of simply intriguing lyrics by Chad Murray but also through the combination of synths, drones and gently-interwoven electronica giving you the chance to discover a lot of details and something new each time you sit down to really listen. And listen you should – these Londonboys might be up to something. They provide a great soundtrack to an overdose of medicine you don’t want to take but that you just can’t stop yourself from.

doom / sludge / noise rock / metal

Astral Noize

Split releases – an interesting thing as most of us can name a few from the tip of our head, right? Isis and Aereogramme, Melt Banana and Fantomas, Battery and Ignite, The Ocean and Burst. Sometimes however, those with the unknown bands get you the most. Mid-November, Astral Noize will bring us one of the latter category, releasing a 7” by Kurokuma and Under. The combination is really striking, because both songs at first glance seem totally unrelated only sharing a certain weirdness.

Kurokuma starts off with a cover song (well, that is not unusual for a split release) – reworking a theme song for a 20 year old Sega game classic called “Ecco the Dolphin: The Tides of Time” - fortunately, this is not a close cover but a free interpretation as they turn the whirling theme into a pretty clever doom track with a lot of atmosphere and a striking hihat use so that the listener asks himself afterwards if this might not have been the better theme for Ecco’s second adventure.

Then Under are up next with “Abysal Gigantism” and they definitely have some sense of humor, because their track starts with some field recordings from the seaside so that you hear that kind of stuff you would expect from our dolphin. Then they turn the song into an  eight minute epic somewhere between Crowhurst and Dillinger Escape Plan making clever use of vocoder, swirling guitars and waving drums all being held together by a strong rhythm section. 

In the end, this 7” leaves one impressed by the chutzpah of combining those two bands and the
clever way both complement each other turning this split into a more than welcome stray from the
path of regular splits.

black metal / noise rock / post metal

Sometimes, certain boundaries should not be crossed. For example combining Motown Soul and
Classic Hardcore – that just doesn’t work. Nevertheless, some unexpected combinations might
work, just remember Zeal and Ardor combining gospel and black metal. Witch Trail do something similar – they create their own unique blend of post-metal taking a lot from Sonic Youth and Thurston Moore’s solo work and combining it with pure post-metal. And once again, Belgium (more specifically Ghent) proves to be a brilliant soil for unique combinations as the trio is really able to provide a fresh start to a genre as trodden as post-metal.

They take the classic noise-licks and use them to replace the regular post-metal riffs. This way they also implement the pop-appeal of good noise-rock into their songs. How they start “Lucid” with a noisy take on a nearly surf-twang guitar riff and then build the shrieking vocals around it, always leaving those easy and pumping noise-rock elements at the core of the song and right in the middle of our ears – impressive! Sometimes you must think of the Beach Boys (“Stupor”), but sharing the record with Stiff Little Fingers and Discharge (“Sinking”); suddenly Kim Gordon and SY show up on your mental stage (“Silent Running”) - but interestingly all of the songs are not sung by any of those but by a guy like Fenriz. These 29 minutes full of twists and turns, of clean-distorted noisy-ness and of blastbeats, of infernal shrieks and a unique soundscape really captures any open ear. 

Thorsten

black metal / noise / industrial / hardcore

Over the years, the boundaries between genres have vanished more and more. Some think that is not good and try to remain pvre and trve to their roots, which should be tolerated. As long as nobody gets hurt for it. Others think that it’s good to cross boundaries and explore new genre-blending possibilities. With Mur from France it is clear from the very start – they belong to the latter group.

The six-piece combine so many styles and ideas, it is hard to twist your mind around all of them –
some parts are noise, some have an industrial touch, others bear witness to hardcore roots while all of them seem to be infused with a certain black metal attitude. So if you are looking for a band between Melvins, Pitchshifter, Venom and, let’s say, Portrayal of Guilt – here it is. Unfortunately, that sounds silly as all of the bands mentioned above do not have one single thing in common, and if you then try to get a mental impression of it, just by reading these lines – well, sorry, but your idea won’t do because Mur is more. Literally, they are more than just a combination of single ideas and styles.

Over the last couple of years we have seen a lot of developments in black metal but Mur is still a new one, because Black Metal and Industrial and Hardcore (the three main pillars) have not yet been amalgamated as cleverly as on “Brutalism”. Take “Third” as an example – it starts off with an eerie, soft combination of slightly distorted, electrified guitar picking and spherical ambient passages until a hardcore drum part kicks in and changes the tone completely.

Next is the blackened screaming by vocalist Jay and the song swirls and whirls around always
accompanied by synthesizers to give it some kind of gloom-factor. The rhythm section slows the
song down with industrial-like precision before it speeds up again and the shrieking noise parts
become stronger and then fade again when a nearly alternative metal part gives us a little clarity
with the synths now dominating again – the listener is thrown from side to side trying to grasp all
that is happening.

Clearly, one might argue that Mur are trying to do too much, trying too hard to get as many people in as possible. If you want to see it that way, you can, but maybe you are missing out on the fun of a record that shows some really good ideas and is still able to convince because of a lot of overall composition work in order to sound as if everything was in its right place. 


Thorsten

ambient / classical

Sound In Silence

experimental / noise

alternative rock / psychedelic rock

death metal

post rock

ambient / classical

doom / black metal

black metal

hardcore

metal / death metal / metalcore

facebook

hardcore / grindcore / crust

black metal

grunge / alternative metal / progressive rock

doom

alternative rock

death metal

punk rock

bandcamp

electronic

electronic / darkwave / EBM / Industrial

shoegaze