post-punk / dark wave

A release on Wool-E Discs gets always my attention because of the  quality of music on the label. A Slice Of Life is a Belgian Post-Punk/Darkwave band from Antwerp. Dirk Vreys (lead vocals) and Guy Wilssens  (Guitars) formed  the six member band in 2016. They play a kind of mix between The Cure and The Sisters Of Mercy  with a modern Rock twist. Restless is their debut full cd, although they already made a EP in 2016. All 5 songs of the EP are also on the full cd!

The cd starts with the catchy post New Wave song, ‘Restless Gods’ (also on the EP). Dirk Vreys vocals sound good and made us sometimes think of Andrew Eldritch. What a kick off! ‘Older’ shows us another side of Dirk’s voice, slower and full emotions, this song takes you back to the best Dark Wave of the eighties! ‘The Marionette’ and ‘Life As It Is’ sound very Cure, knowing  that Dirk Vreys is also lead singer of obsCURE, a pretty popular Cure cover band in Belgium. His voice on ‘Life As It Is’ has the same sad vibe as Robert Smith . The lead  guitar sounds  maybe a little too much Cure but it’s still a very nice song!

‘Feel Like Crazy’ and ‘We Fight’ are potential live hits on stage, and could make the crowd shout and dance. ‘Sweet Sin’, ‘Coraline’ and  ‘Panic Attack’ switch again to the darkest songs of the eighties when The Sisters Of Mercy had their best days! The cd has a bonus track but the song doesn’t reach the level of quality as the rest of the songs on the cd. A Slice Of Life gives you a blast in the past, ‘Restless ’ is a greatest hits album from the dark 80’s without hits!


Patsker

post punk / new wave / goth rock

Heading from Bristol, Naut decided to ignore all current trends and to look back to the dark eighties. Now, this five-piece comes with a baffling debut EP, containing five pitch black goth rock tunes. Influences from bands like Sisters Of Mercy and Killing Joke run rampant and come with the overwhelming energy of post punk acts like The Jesus and Mary Chain. Song like opener 'Disintegration' and 'I'm Here' are destined to fill dark dancefloors everywhere. My personal favorite here is closer 'XVI'. It makes me curious and hungry for more, but for now I'm sure that this EP will be an excellent addition to every post punk / goth rock collection. 

doom / sludge

Sheffield doom mongers Kurokuma return with a two track EP, based on the Dope Rider strip from High Times in the 70s. The artwork comes from Paul Kirchner, the creator of the strip. The music is another slab of severe psychotic sludge doom, five and eight minutes long. Part 1 also showcases something industrial, reflected by repetitive, almost methodical drums. Part 2 simply continues to slow but brutal pummeling. Fans of bands like Conan, Dopethrone and Yob can easily trust Kurokuma to deliver the monolithic riffs and fierce vocals they crave so much. So if you want your sludge metal as destructive as a wrecking ball, this EP should do.

post-metal / doom / alternative rock

facebook

Several months after the release of 'Serrated', Dutch heavy rockers An Evening With Knives unleash three songs that did not make the album because of the limited space on the vinyl. Yet, these songs were to important for the band to be ignored. Opener and title track 'Fade Out' deals with the death of Marco’s father due to Alzheimer disease. It's a long, heavy and cathartic lamentation, showcasing the darkest side of this band. The other two songs follow that example, be it a bit shorter. They all walk a similar path as the songs on 'Serrated', and thus would also fit perfectly into every sludge, doom and grunge collection. These guys are growing steadily, that's for sure.

electronic / ambient / experimental

An alienating two track EP that will leave you confused and entangled, that is what Soho Rezanejad delivers. Subtle electronics, minimalist drones, gloomy soundscapes and her vocals come together in two lengthy modern day folk songs. I can't help but think about a mix between Zola Jesus and Diamanda Galas, be it a bit less creepy than the latter. Yet, there is emotion, there is fear, mourning, wonder and hope in these two tracks. There is a mystifying atmosphere, one that borrows elements from dark ambient. Yet, above all perhaps, this is a unique piece of work, reminding me of an act like Dark Ensemble. Recommended only for eternally wandering souls.

post rock / post metal / stoner / sludge

In today's post rock scene, new bands pop up like mushrooms. Würzburg residents The Man Within are one of those newcomers. Mostly, that first effort comes with a low production and a careful introduction in what the band really is capable of. Yet, here that results in a full-blown post metal album with seven outstanding tracks. Most of them, including 'Mount Santo', my favorite 'Institution' (that rolling bass is hot!!!) and the massive 'Limitless' can easily entertain audiences far and wide. Although firmly rooted in the post-scene, elements from sludge metal, psychedelic rock and stoner rock are never far away. A great introduction, now let's hope they can confirm this in the near future.

dark ambient

The new brainchild of Nachtzeit, the man behind ambient dark metal project Lustre, comes up with an interesting dark ambient album. Although playful at time, this album takes us back to the mysterious  and dark age of the Norse gods. Early in 'Drömmarna' acts like Mortiis (on Cold Meat Industry) and Wongraven come to mind. Synths, soundscapes and dreamy melodies guide the listening on a musical tour of medieval Europe, so it seems, highlighting in 'Löftet' and 'Tårarn'. Strangely, the title track 'Hädanfärden' has an X-Files OST feeling about it, which isn't bad, on the contrary. Fans of old school medieval dark ambient can easily appreciate this album.

alternative rock / hard rock / grunge

facebook

Belgian hard rock duo Breakfast At Midnight proves that two is enough to create heaps of noise. On this debut EP they blast seven tracks through our speakers, beginning with the heavy rocking 'Kidi Coke'. From then on, the rock doesn't seem to stop. Inspired by anything between Tool, Queens Of The Stone Age and Stone Temple Pilots, these two feed an everlasting fire. Most tracks drive on sheer energy but in 'What I'm To Say' and in '1813', the band delves deeply into the Pearl Jam version of grunge rock. Here, the vocals are excellent and clean while the other tunes contain heaps of aggressive screams. Not that I mind, this is pure rock 'n roll: raw, rough and heavy.

black metal / death metal

Grab onto something now because Ukrainian trio Goatsperm is about to unload a hellish, chaotic and vulgar EP, loaded with orthodox black/death metal. 'Voice In The Womb' contains three tracks, each one being a pummeling piece of extreme metal, as dark as Satan's butthole but with an ambient breather here and there. Somehow, this trio manages to combine atmospheric passages with sheer metallic terror, something that might indeed make a lot of banging heads turn their way in the near future.  Besides, 'Into The Deep Waters Of Catacombs' is one of the fiercest black metal tunes I've heard this year. If you're a self-respecting extremist, you need this.

krautrock / shoegaze / punk

What would have happened if Ramones used My Bloody Valentine's guitar effects? What would a punk rock cover album of Neu! songs sound like? Well, Finnish six piece Teksti-TV 666 might have a decent answer for you. 'Aidattu Tulevaisuus' delivers six high-octane krautrock tunes with the raw energy of punk and the immersive nature of shoegaze. I admit, it is something different from the usual slabs of rock 'n roll that appear here but 'Turbo-Mondeo' and 'Aidattu tulevaisuus' can easily get your behind shaking. My favorite here is the somewhat slower 'Rauhankone', which might be described as a down-to-earth space rock track. Recommended? Hell yeah!

ambient / electronic / experimental

Hailing from Porto, Vitor Joaquim is a sound sculptor and visual artist, active around the strange borders between soothing ambient and otherworldly noise. This new album, 'Impermanence' contains seven tracks, revolving around repetitive soundscapes, almost subconscious loops and immersive musical textures. Here and there vocals samples have been added to increase the narrative nature of the music. That, along with the minimal soundscapes, makes the title track my favorite here but I'm sure that every fan of decent ambient music can appreciate these sounds. Obviously, this comes highly recommended.

ambient / drone / experimental / noise

bandcamp

An even more noisy and experimental variation on ambient sounds comes from Han, a project by Vitor Joaquim and Emidio Buchinho. This album revolves around live improvisation and real time processing, which results in something severely unusual and highly experimental. Yet, behind the gritty freestyle on the guitar, beautiful ambient loops lurk. These seven tracks are weird, immersive in one way, yet restrained and peculiar. Somehow this album feels like the early days of drone experimentation, when artists were exploring the other possibilities of their instruments. In all, this is an interesting release to dive into, but only for experienced avant gardists...

Serge

electronic / darkwave / alternative rock

Some of the albums we receive are a real challenge. For me, many releases are rather easy to write about but once in a while something comes along that seems to challenge and question my musical reference pool. In those cases, I listen closely, try to find something to start with, a certain sound, a similarity with another band, a connection to real life events, anything. Then I look into my ever growing English vocabulary and try to bark out some words that might get people interested in that particular release. If all goes well, several minutes later my opening paragraph is written and I can finally describe the actual music.

Writing about this album by Swedish duo Råhypnos proved to be a challenging task. For the record, that doesn't mean this is a bad album. I tend to simply ignore albums I don't like so if it appears on this website, you can bet your ass that I see potential in it. And yes, I see potential in here, a lot of gloomy, darkwaving, new waver's flavour of the year potential. The only thing is, who exactly to recommend it to? Well, I think I just wrote my own answer: new wavers, dark wavers, old school goths looking for their shot of new audible darkness.

As I mentioned before, Råhypnos is a duo, formed in Gothenburg in 2015 by Pablo Rautenberg and Nadja Virgé. Soon into their career, it became clear that one style was not enough. Initially an alternative rock act, Råhypnos added elements from darkwave, gothic rock, trip hop, intelligent dance music and even (dark) jazz. The result feels like a mix between Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Chelsea Wolfe, recorded, mixed and mastered by Portishead. 

Now, I have to say that I wasn't immediately blown away by this stuff. Opener 'Pain Shrinks The Heart' is a great song, pretty much comparable to the aforementioned acts. It's downtempo and raw. Interesting yes, but perhaps a bit too much on the experimental side of things. Yet, gradually, the record started growing on me, mainly because of the level of variation. There's electronics but also rough rock music. There's male and female vocals and even those come in a wide array, perfectly fitting in with the music.

Besides, 'Damaged' and 'Insufficient Love' are awesome. 'The Land Of Nowhere' is a brilliant new wave song that will get even Simple Minds fans excited. 'Blood' is a tearjerker and closer 'End Of The Beginning' brings that other amazing darkwave act to mind, namely The KVB. So in all, this is a surprisingly interesting album, one that will definitely end up in my day-to-day playlist. So check it out. I mean, I eventually managed to write a five paragraph review about it so it's definitely worth it.


​Serge

ambient / drone

industrial / metal / drum & bass

classical

metal

grindcore / crust

ambient / techno

new wave / alternative rock

black metal

bandcamp

black metal

classical / post rock / jazz

facebook

drone doom

hard rock / metal

black metal / noise

dark jazz

Serge

doom / rock

sludge / doom 

shoegaze / dreampop

new wave

pop / rock

black metal

bandcamp

post rock

punk / crust

nu metal

drone / jazz

Serge