ambient / dark folk / cinematic

So, if the first three tracks of a four track EP already remind me of acts like Nick Cave, Penitent, Raison d'ètre, Aphex Twin and Biosphere, I guess it's alright to call this a pretty damn varied release. And then comes 'Synchronism', a goosebumps inducing dark pop anthem with vocals by Raya. In all, '...Unfolds' indicates a more than welcome return for a highly exciting ambient project. Recommended? Dûh!

alternative rock / punk / grunge

thrash metal

dark ambient / drone

Signora Ward Records

drone / ambient / soundtrack

drone / ambient

bandcamp

industrial / dark ambient / noise

HGM Music

drone / dark ambient

black metal / noise

Dillinger Escape Plan meets Bathory. Orchid meets Celtic Frost. Some Girls meets Mayhem. Whenever aggressive extremes meet a moment of chaos will be piled up at the exact spot where their forces clashed and the first mercenaries fell. Ulveblod is that exact spot in the middle of two unforgiving enemies. The product of a struggle that spit out Vitriol, the main songwriter, guitarist and founder of Ulveblod, without any kind of orientation, after his partner in music, M. died right before Roadburn last year. Together they were Nihill, one of the most prolific black metal bands to ever come out of the Netherlands and maybe the most-prominent pillar of the now dominant force that Dutch black metal has become with its flourishing scene and amazing bands.

Vitriol has founded Ulveblod as his new outlet for his vision of black metal which many people will neither understand nor share. This is chaos, manic compression, no compromise wanted, pure get it or die – shit. You don’t like it? No one gives a fuck and neither should you.

The guitars follow no clear line, they scream your brains to death, throwing your heads not only from side to side but also jumpkicking it over your neck and then tearing at your scalp to throw it towards your risen knees. No breath of fresh air, no stopping or pausing needed.
The drums are designed to entrance you with their nonstop pounding, which makes heavy use of the cymbals and toms, but is defined by an ongoing hurricane-blastbeat-apocalypse. 
The vocals are quivering and shivering but not voiceless, not without strength but powerful and demanding, catching all your attention and giving you a pulse to make your veins explode.

This music is pure chaos and has no sense for beauty because all beauty dies. Everything must die, that’s a fact. And death equals all – Omnia mors aequat. Death is pain and pain distributes itself equally, everyone is the same in death and we all die – alone. Nihill died with M. and one day Ulveblod will also die. However – at this moment, it screams in your face, sends shivers down every nerve and artery you got. It is here, it is now, it is Ulveblod, and it’s going to equal you out.


Thorsten

grunge / stoner rock

Iceland’s scene is very likely one of the strongest worldwide as we are talking about a country with roughly 360,000 inhabitants and yet we all know so many bands from Iceland pushing the brim for modern music further and further. Keelrider is another one of those, although they most likely will not see as much attention as Sigur Ros, Björk or the whole Icelandic black metal scene because they are Stoner Grungers with a twist. In 2018 they published their debut album “North” and last year they published two singles from their upcoming album “Second Wind”. While “Too Far Gone” is in parts a very nice melange of Alice in Chains-vocals and Soundgarden-stoner riffs, “Sun” is much more interesting because the band some a little more variety when it comes to time signatures and giving the guitar lines more space to breathe. If you are into stoner rock and grunge, this band is something right for you! 

post metal

Post-Metal from Italy. Most foreigners automatically associate it with Postvorta but some, a little deeper in and a little longer might remember the name Calendula, the sextet from Parma, which released an EP (2011) and a full-length (2012) a while ago. After some changes concerning line-up and musical direction, they released a 25-minute-song in November which definitely doesn’t fit to the title “De Brevitate Vitae” - it’s not brevis (brief) at all. It is quite a monster with a lot of dynamic changes and oscillates between dynamic driving drums and some really clever, counteracting guitar-work following the long intro, which sometimes hints at a bit of Tool. The vocals are pretty good, they also use some samples to give it a more differentiated sonic outline. Something that can be criticized is the sound as the partially trashy Lo-Fi sound doesn’t really fit a record as ambitious as this one, although on the other side it fits to the proclaimed role models  – 90s post-rock bands such as Slint (noticeable in the very effective guitar motif after the first real break). If the guys follow this path, we might have two Italian associations with the term Post-Metal.

electronic 

Svart Records is one of the finest labels when it comes to hard, harsh music, most people know about that. Most people do not know that they also have an electronic sub-label – Svartronix which again is very open-minded. A few weeks ago they released the debut song by A Heart Beats “Dazes the Mind” which is pop music that fits perfectly in any 80s mix of songs by some tropical house producer. This songs purvey a kind of Caribbean calypso feeling but their sex-appeal derives to a large extent from the intriguing vocals of Paile who once was a member of Beastmilk. His delivery is very nice and especially the chorus is so funky that one automatically feels his feet moving, but the line also has some depth “It dazes the mind / and numbs the tongue”. The beats produced by Tuuki are layered with some space basslines in the sense of some more synth-driven Daft Punk and the beat itself is shuffling a bit, so that the sunny, opening sounds give the song a holiday feeling without the stupidity. A promising debut song, let’s hope A Heart Beats and Svartronix has some more servings.

doom / death metal

Russian death doom act Intaglio released a demo version of a new track at the end of last year and in some way, the beauty lies in the rhythm. Many voices will now scream that the rhythm is nothing particular new to the genre, as the slow, dragging rhythm of the song is really quite normal, but the way that the strings connect to it, support it in certain passages, yeah, even form it from time to time, that is really breathtaking – the Gothic attitude it brings to the song turns it into a remarkable one. The lyrics, speaking about the overwhelming character of a memory of death which overshadows everything else, are delivered in regular death metal style. Another standout feature is the use of the use of an upright bass that is tuned so well, that you can hear each tap and each ring.
In some way, three pretty singular metal genres are amalgamated into one pretty dense net of emotions that will leave no open ear without imprinting a memory of itself on the listener. If this is a first sign of a new album then one might keep Intaglio in mind.

punk

Everything about this 7” screams “Old school! Old school!”, the cover (seemingly a reverse from the classic Minor Threat discography cover that also was adopted by Rancid several years ago), the cover b-side, the black-white style, the sound, everything! But first things first: The revived band released a good album in 2018 and last December followed with this 7” out on Heartworm Press. The title track is a new shotgun blast somewhere between Zeke, MC5, The Clash, Turbonegro and Black Flag (although one must say, that only the vocals sometimes hint at Rollins) – definitely a good track. The b-side is a well-made cover of “Left for Dead” by The Lemonheads another one of these late 80s punk bands that turned more and more to indie-rock. The cover is good and shows a different side to American Nightmare. However, there is one thing that is lacking in this release and that is the teenage angst that made AN famous. The despair, the sadness, the melancholy – not there. On the other hand, that might drive the listener to despair and achieves the same effect.

avant garde / folk

Dog Tunnel Records

There are genres that seemingly are so heavily steeped in tradition and customs that it is hard to imagine to hear a new sound in them. Take Irish Folk for example; most of us at first might associate it with pub nights somewhere between the Dubliners and Christy Moore (at best) or Michael Flatley and Enya (at worst). But to combine the traditional folk instruments bodhran, flute, violin, and guitar with a wall of sound, lots of spoken word (not cheerfully and rhythmically, but rather intimidating and fierceful) is something rarely heard before. Tuatha is a fierce project that will leave some of us open-mouthed. Formed in early 2019 and already a rising star on the scene, the septet uses old Irish tales from the Middle Ages and Gaelic Dindsenchas (short poems describing certain places) to deepen their already impressive style. In parts, their unrelentless approach reminds one of the approach Archive and SubRosa took in totally different musical landscapes. This here is unique, bewitching and typical Irish yet also totally un-Irish. Folks, give Tuatha a listen!

sludge / doom

A quartet from Phoenix, Arizona with a very grainy, heavy sound, Mosara released their debut demo last November. It shall be a prelude to a record which is in the making and should see the light of day before the end of the year; of course the demo should also draw interest from labels and I think it might: The musical soundscape is strongly influenced by a lot of proto-metal like Sabbath, Blue Cheer, but also by classic doom bands like Electric Wizard or Cough – that means, you get what you expect, low-tuned, richly-distorted, grainy, a bit lofi-ish doom sounds with a tinge of sludge influences (most audible on the second track “Clay and Iron”). Sometimes the howls and growls could be a bit fiercer and less despaired because, sometimes, Tony Gallegos (ex-Twingiant) is a bit too clear. Nevertheless the sound is great, as if someone mated Fu Manchu with Sabbath and their offspring was left in the desert with a guitar as the only means of communication. The riffs are dragging, the bass is dominant, the drums are supportive – all good in the Arizona desert. 

death metal / black metal / doom / noise / grindcore

Noise bastard? Yeah. Death metal? Sometimes. Grindcore? For sure. Doomy Gloom? You bet. All of that and more is “Tellurian Insurgency” by Ploughshare. With their third release in as many years (after 2017’s “Literature of Piss” and 2018’s acclaimed “In Offal, Salvation”) the quartet from Australia’s capital Canberra once again proves that the bar is always too low for them. Excellent musicians with a highly complex understanding of how music works they show that extreme metal must also rely on atmosphere that sometimes exists between the chords and blastbeasts. A great deal of the attraction of this band is the vocals, which never sound cheesy but quite on point. This EP also features a remix of their standout song, the title track of “In Offal, Salvation”, which shows that it is even possible to give this dark nightmare of a song an even more desperate twist. One thing that becomes clear throughout the record is how important good drumming is for such a kind of music as it must set the tone for everyone. If the guys can keep up their productivity we should await a new heir to the extreme metal throne in 2020.

industrial

Describing this Oakland, CA, quartet is not that easy and not that difficult at the same time. Their sound relies heavily on synths, samples but also on guitar, bass and drums. They cross constantly between electronic noise (aka industrial) and post-punk’ish avantgarde sounds. Initiated in 2013 and having independently released already a bunch of records, Lament Cityscape set out to publish three EPs in 2020, each following some red thread and yet also standing out on its own. Something that they share with some of the pioneers of this kind of sonic assault (Godflesh, Killing Joke, Author & Punisher) are the harsh sounds that sometimes remind one of buoys warning the oncoming ships of the nearby rocks and sandbanks which here are symbolized by the rough drum attacks. In parts, this is a good record for those who like Godflesh’s Streetcleaner a bit less polished and a bit more straightforward. Partially, one is left behind by a lack of surprise, but fans of industrial noises and harsh synth-driven drums will really like this.

black metal

At first, the band’s name might sound like a nice pun on 80s karate flic “Bloodsport” (with the amazing multiple Academy Award winning actor Jean-Claude van Shakespeare) but when listening to this new face on renown Swedish Meta label Blood Harvest it becomes clear that the idea of a fungi which sits parasitically on its host and feeds of it before finally killing it works perfectly within the black metal community. It also works nicely because the record to it is really good and leaves one’s ears with an immediate wish to press replay because of its clever changes in mood, dynamics and tempi. The record (especially the second track “Cede to the Saprophyte”) is like a nice blend of groove metal and black metal with the emphasis, of course, on the latter. Thematically, the record presents the idea of the fungal mass on this planet slowly but certainly taking over and destroying all other organisms, a new take on the apocalyptic visions presented by bands like Botanist or Arx Atrata. For a band that only came together in 2018, this is really somewhat impressive. 


​Thorsten

experimental / electronic / dark ambient / ambient / noise 

Nostalgie De La Boue

The world is all that is​.​.. is the most recent release by German electronic underground experimental noise artist Hans Castrup. With six tracks — The concept of sinking, Popular imagination, Full of used notes, Paradox difference, Clarification of geometry and Upon a hill —, on this work, like his previous albums, Hans continues to dive deep into a realm of lugubrious, melancholic and sinister sound experiences, where he clearly heads towards a stylistic direction of impious, responsive, nihilist and fatalist demise. Each and every album released by Hans Castrup seems to be the perfect soundtrack for a H.P. Lovecraft horror story. 

Already in the first track, the dense, epic and monumental The concept of sinking, we clearly see that the artist — deliberately or not — establishes his creative efforts towards a prominently dark ambient musical cosmogony. With pulsating, almost afflictive sonorous reverberations, the sensitive pluralism that emanates from the expansive and digressive agonies that subtlety comes out of these tracks certainly makes this album one of the darkest in the artist's discography. 

Nevertheless, there is also a lighter side in the music — albeit ostensibly dispersive —, that sounds as a more discreet, reasonable, proverbial uneasiness allocated in the background, that ocasionally flirts with our projective sensibilities, gracefully establishing an harmonious pattern that can be as decisively obscure as it is delightfully stimulating. 

The music gradually reveals itself as it is: as complex — in the darker depths of its relentless and dissolute darkness —, as it is majestically simple and objective, in the way it calmly delivers its pungent and uneventful dimension of poingnant mortality smoothly to the listener. Just as impressive is Hans' remarkable ability to progressively reinvent his music with more diluted elements, while never losing his virtuous and graceful sonorous identity. 

With the conception of an exceedingly dense, cohesive and robust musical atmosphere, it looks like Hans Castrup has crafted The world is all that is​.​.. as a pervasive parallel dimension destitute of acessible colorful sensibilities, whose mandatory elements are all indebted to a relentless and abrasive sonorous tissue, made entirely of an unforgiving, infinite and ruthless demise. 

As the perfect sonorous background for a surreal hallucinatory black and white alternate reality — like the ones shown in old sixties television anthology series like The Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond —, the music conceived on this marvelous album by Hans Castrup transports us to a whole different, more diluted, arbitrary and conspicuous diagram of existence, where the fugacious ephemeralities of life seems dormant, because they were never what they seemed to be, in the first place. 

Your sensitivities will be all confused, before they would be entirely configured in a completely different sonorous perception, diametrically opposite to what you had expected. In the end, The world is all that is​.​..  is a fantastic descent into a world of gloom, solitude and demise, without any possibilities to return. 


Wagner

post metal / blackgaze / noise

A few years ago, Have a Nice Life published a manifesto: “We believe in all of the following: complete self-autonomy, cooperation towards shared goals, contradictions, home recording, home distr[i]bution [sic], idealistic capitalism, creating art as if no one else existed, the necessity of doing Awesome and Intense things with your life, being prolific, and not letting anyone ignore us, no matter what.” 

In these lines, to be found on their website enemieslist.net they want to clarify their own vision of a new society, of art and of themselves as humans. The world should change towards a more shared-togetherness, we’re in this together now. Creating art should be idealistic without the big buck in mind. Everybody should try to be the best and the most peaceful version of themselves they could be. If we now apply this to their third album Sea of Worry, there is nothing more to say than: Perfection achieved!

The album is clearly self-recorded – just listen to the imperfect wavey-ness “Everything we Forget”, any self-important producer would have tried to even it out in order to make it more sinus-like so that the highs and lows are more clearly distinguishable; Tim Macuga and Dan Barrett don’t do that. It has this typical HANL-flow, nothing seems out of place and it shows what a band like Radiohead could be capable of today if their background was more classic bleakness and not shiny, sparkly 80s early Brit-pop (even though some new wave sparks can also be found this record). The sounds of Sea of Worry are made with synthesizers but the band has the ability of a guy like DJ Shadow to make artificial sounds seem like utter natural water flowing over a lotus leaf and into a huge pond of corroded metal, only to birth a beautiful flower stem out of the rotten orange. Even distorted walls of sound with their black metal blastbeats shining through the industrial wallowing of a far-off sea rescue buoy in the middle of a raging thunderstorm are never intended to disturb the listener. 

An album like this will never be a million-seller, Have a Nice Life will never perform as the headliner in Wembley Stadium, but those who know them, will follow them forever, as they – and this is a very important factor for the band – they rather remain silent for years and years before releasing something halfheartedly – it’s the old ‘L’art pour l’art’. And there will be fans who will not like this – more bass-driven and a bit uptempo version of HANL, but again, Tim and Dan are not in it for them, but for themselves.

The most disturbing moment on this record is certainly the spoken word intro to the final opus “Destinos” when you hear a preacher’s bible studies in which he questions God’s moral character for if he is so good how can he create such a negative place like hell and send people there while on the other hand being able to forgive some of the most horrible beings? Interestingly these proto-black-metal-questions are being drenched out by growing chants and an acoustic guitar before it puts layer on layer, flowing into an intense post-metal part and leaving the audience speechless in front of the stage. 

There was never a need for a band that mixes Ulver, Joy Division, Crowbar, Sonic Youth and Current 93 – hell, there was never even a shared space between those bands – but Have a Nice Life show again that with time, passion, a love for detail and a good measure of musical braveness such diverse origins can flow into timeless music. Another manifesto.​

industrial / post rock / metal / noise

Sometimes the seemingly impossible is possible. Leicester City wins the Premier League, some player not Messi or Ronaldo wins an important award, Guns’n’Roses reunite, Tom Warrior finishes his “Requiem” with an orchestra-supported performance at Roadburn. However, can a side-project achieve something as unique as the “main” project? Sometimes yes – think of S.O.D. who sometimes outshone Anthrax. 

Consumer is a side-project, and Have a Nice Life is its roots. Tim of HANL formed Consumer in 2017 together with the live-band that supports him and Dan on the road. However, it must be noted that this band is hopefully more than a once-off-project because their sound and approach are different to HANL. You can hear some proto-noise in Consumer’s sound even though it is coming from an opposite idea. If we take bands like the Melvins or Pere Ubu, it is clear that the foundation for their early work was always a guitar and the wish to do something unusual with it. Consumer also want to do something unusual, but their foundation is clearly much more focused on electronics and synths. The shared motif is distortion. Consumer distort their instruments (the aforementioned plus guitars and a regular rhythm section) and twist them around and around until everything contributes to a mantra-esque hard flow of ebb and tide. 

Sometimes the drums sound as if Einstuerzende Neubauten got the idea that self-made instruments are cool but their sound had to go through a broken vocoder to make the result even more uncomfortable just to lose a battle with a synth-driven melody that alludes to the end of a sinking ship on the open sea. Everything is in its right place, flows into one another on “In Computers” and even though the sound is hard to describe it must be clear that this band has a knack for ear candy. The sounds are unusual and sometimes harsh but they never disgust. 

The instrumental trilogy “In Computers Parts I – III” at the end is definitely HANL-like, of course as Tim is at work. The electronica in “Part II” can be seen as a little nod to Radiohead in their “Kid A/ Amnesiac”-period, not the worst of mental connections; some other parts sound like a very self-indulging and noise-less collab between Mogwai and Aphex Twin. Obviously, a lot of ideas, connections, comparisons come to mind when listening to Consumer’s full-length debut but one should note that this is a release which can take all of that scrutiny and needn’t be afraid of any of it for it is unique and self-sufficient. And maybe that is the best one can say for any side-project, right? 


​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

noise / dark ambient / experimental

bandcamp

electronic

dSound In Silence

progressive / metal / black metal

heavy metal / thrash metal

downtempo / electronic / post rock / shoegaze

facebook

psychedelic / doom

sludge / black metal

ambient / modern classical / experimental

bandcamp

drone / doom / noise / experimental

ambient / electronic

noise rock

stoner rock / grunge / alternative rock

facebook

​Serge

dark ambient / electronic / noise

Well, time to dive into darker territories and what better way to do that than with a haunting release by dark ambient label Sombre Soniks. For this one, we go to France, where we meet the Arcaïde project. According to the project the album "takes us on an inward journey contemplating the two inseparable and indispensable phases: fire and ice, yin and yang, Solve & Coagula".

Musically, that concept results in overwhelming pieces of music, where dark ambient soundscapes meet intense noise and industrial patterns, all coming with a fierce atmosphere and dressed in sheer darkness.

The album consists of two main parts, "Solve" and "Coagula". Each of them is a collection of four tracks, or parts if you will. The whole thing opens in an intense and crushing matter. This is dark ambient noise with the audacity and atmosphere of black metal. "Solve Part 2" brings me back to the glory days of Cold Meat Industry. "Part 3" is minimal and gloomy while "Part 4" drives on industrial electronics, pounding beats and rhythmic ritual noise, complete with the harsh, distorted vocals. Impressive.

The second half of the album, "Coagula" opens with a long dark ambient set, something impending and mystifying. But this act, too, quickly adapts elements from noise and industrial in order to evolve into a baffling whirlpool of sounds and noises before once again toning down towards calmer areas. No, it's not an easy album but I am quite sure that adepts of harsh ambient will adore this rough and gritty piece of work. 


​Serge

ambient / noise / experimental

Usually I'm not very wild on reissues but in some cases reissues are an excellent way to make sure the music does not get lost. That is almost what had happened to this one. Initially released as a handout promo tape in 1995 'Mutus Liber' is now finally available on CD, thanks to EE Tapes. According to sole member Steve Cammack, most of those tapes have been lost by now. It was a collection of live recordings, released two years before Dieter Mûh's first official album. But now, so many years later, the compilation receives a new life, and I think ambient noise fans will appreciate that.

Because yes, ambient noise, constantly balancing on the edge between both genres. With six lengthy tracks, Dieter Müh creates odd sonic trips with an industrial feel. Opener 'Empty Mirror' immediately delivers that immersive yet haunting set of drones and noises while 'Decoding The Ritual Of Frequency drives on deep droning bass lines, almost tangible. 'Ibruksin' is a minimal yet captivating piece, surprisingly somewhat of a breather after its intense predecessor.

If you want references, try acts like Zoviet France, Taphephobia, Predominance, Luasa Raelon and perhaps a milder version of Brighter Death Now. The great thing about this album is that it's actually well varied. I've heard many ambient noise albums over the years and most of them are quite similar. Here, it's different. Each track has its own set of soundscapes and drones, which clearly distinguishes them from the others. Of course, all still well within the range of the genres.

So there you have, a solid and nicely arranged ambient noise trip, almost twenty five years old but still massively relevant today. If I were you I wouldn't hesitate to get your hands on a copy of this gem.


​Serge