black metal / noise rock / metal / sludge

bandcamp

Well, well, well – if it ain’t the birthplace of it all, Birmingham? Nobody needs a reminder why the
Midlands are the place where the magic started 50 years ago. Nobody needs to hear about Ozzy and
Tommi and the others. But wait – what came out of Birmingham since then? Okay, Napalm Death,
but what else? Goldie. Okay, okay, Napalm Death and Goldie, but what else? Godflesh! Okay, okay,
okay, Napalm Death and Goldie and Godflesh and… I guess most of you know which movie is
being referenced here indirectly. Just as Reg has to admit that the Romans have done numerous
things for Galilee, the connoisseur of music history must admit that rusty, rotten Birmingham has
done loads of things for music with Opium Lord being one of the latest examples.

It is interesting how Opium Lord can oscillate between Godflesh, Jesus Lizard and Mayhem,
although the later is more obvious in the vocal style only as they are clearly black metal – based.
The musical foundation is definitely AmRep-influenced noise rock (with a crisp bass sound),
although it has clearly been stuffed down the sludge version of a meat mincer only to come out on the other end in the style of a musical coldness to match the sterile cleanliness of Broadrick’s
“Streetcleaner”. This sonic versatility is also the reason why the quintet was able to share the stage with bands as diverse as Oathbreaker, Swans and Yob.

​Speaking of Yob, the five-piece from steel town was able to convince Mike Scheidt so much that he wanted to contribute to this record and thus “Columbia” was born. A song, somehow typically Mike but at the same time also typically Opium Lord. It takes its time to build slowly but then end pretty harshly with a lot of shrieking, nearly buoy-like guitar work. Yet, this track also exemplifies the single problem of this record. The clean parts make the song more interesting and add to its intensity simultaneously showing that more clean parts would benefit the album – a small blemish as the industrial soundscape of the album is still so dense.

With an album like this it is hard to believe that their former label was not interested enough in
them to make this work. However, The Sludgelord profits from it and is able to procure another
gem this year with an album whose sonic coldness that never pushes you away but rather draws you in. Birmingham is back with an example how a rusty environment can provide a good basis for a noise-band rubbing rusty metal blades against our ears. 


Thorsten

noise rock / sludge / psychedelic

After a few months of writing-inactivity I thought it would be a good idea to return with a bang, and what better way to make a comeback than with this rumbling piece of sonic confusion by Belgian noise makers 30.000 Monkies? But before I dig deeper into this album, I've got a few people to thank. In the past few months I have been dealing with some kind of writers-block. I lost interest in Merchants Of Air and in writing reviews so I announced our goodbye. Apparently, people were quite shocked by this announcement. I received a massive array of reactions, gratitude and support from Merchants Of Air fans all over the world. So to all of you: Thank you for pulling me out of the quicksand of music journalism...

...only to be pushed right back in by this pummeling album. This Belgian quartet has been composing intense music for quite some time now. 'Are Forever' is the follow up to 'I Ate Myself to Grow Twice as Big', which was released three years ago. Three years is a long time, so it was time to dispose another slab of worms-infested sludge doom over their audience. And for those not yet convinced: 'Are Forever' will either grind you into a pulp or shatter the last piece of sanity still left in you. Luckily for you, if you're a Melvins/Harvey Milk/Lightning Bolt fan, you will love the shit out of this.

​The album opens with 'Miles Of Smiles', which comes up with a sweet girl asking you if you have ever had a dream. Shortly after, the dissonant and pulsating riffs grab you by the throat, dragging you down into the vile, haunting world of 30.000 Monkies. The easiest way to describe this music is saying it's a blend of sludge doom and noise rock, hence the references to Melvins and so on. Yet, it won't surprise you when I say that there is a lot more to this. There are eerie passages with eerie guitars, impending percussion and frightful mantras. There is the punkish violence of 'The Gift' and blackened elements in plenty of other tunes.

'The Fist Of Impending Joy' is my personal favorite. Not many sludge doom tunes remind me of the old days of symphonic black metal but this terrifying piece of work will definitely grind your nutsack, so to speak. And then there is 'And Ever', which does weird things with ambient and a drug-infused Sonic Youth jam. It serves mostly as an intro for closer 'Cluck Me Up' but it's also a bloody awesome tune. That closer, 'Cluck Me Up', is one of those sludge doom tunes that will devour entire audiences everywhere and it comes with the energy of an atomic bomb.

In all, this is not suited for people who suffer from migraine, neither for people who think it's pretty cool that Luc Appermont and Bart Kaell have been a couple for 40 years. Nope, this is the perfect shot of noisy sludge doom, intended to wreck and ruin everything in its path. If you are a fan of being tortured to death by grinding riffs, violent vocals and methodical drums, you need this album. Damn, it feels good to be writing again...


Serge

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

post rock / post metal

noise rock / jazz / experimental

doom / sludge

psychedelic / doom / stoner rock

ambient

house / techno / electronic

dark ambient

ambient / experimental

electronic / downtempo

bandcamp

heavy metal

black metal / death metal

ambient

Audiobulb

​Serge

metal

metal / death metal

facebook

progressive rock / experimental

psychedelic rock / doom

hard rock

progressive metal

psychedelic rock /  doom

sludge metal / doom

black metal

alternative rock / psychedelic / noise rock

post rock / alternative rock / noise rock / math rock

Now. is an album released on February 22, by Finnish alternative/ noise rock duo NYOS. A thirty-nine minutes instrumental album, the record has eight tracks: 1) Urgence; 2) High Five; 3) L.W.P.; 4) Zebracazebra; 5) Tiglio; 6) Mutante; 7) Death Star; 8) Aveiro; an interesting and abrasive – exceptionally authorial album –, Now. is an intriguing and sculpting experience on the alternative and noise rock subgenres, with a very peculiar sound, whose math rock melodies definitely increase their amazingly skilled and dry sonorous potential. 

With an audacity that insinuates itself at the epicenter of a singular diagram that envisions no limitations to its creative horizons, Now. definitely proves itself to be a very consistent, elegant and serious album. With a precisely defined style, its virtuous and imperative musical direction displays an artistic security that underlines an impressive and dominant degree of professionalism. NYOS is a marvelously sophisticated musical act, that understands perfectly the veracity of its meritorious grandiosity, and knows how to execute with graceful efficiency and majestic sensibility its delightful and inherently genuine perception of sound artistry. 

Since the album is relatively concise, its main musical statement also reclaims a modest and revolutionary degree of objectivity. Nevertheless, its genuine qualities and wonderful originality certainly makes this album a glorious musical achievement, whose sound navigates over the intensity of its own celebratory, restless and somewhat impulsive harmonies, though everything here mostly seems precisely calculated, premeditated and carefully sculpted. The song Mutante definitely has proved to be my favorite. Its volatile, nervous and highly concentrated density displays a cohesive degree of neoclassical elaboration, whose salutary and pragmatic devices overlaps its own vortex of utilitarian harmonious dissolution. 

Although the album has some minor moments of tedious passages, in a general evaluation, Now. is an excellent work of art, that has no faults or deficiencies whatsoever. Displaying a brilliant work merging several musical genres – and showcasing a sensational domain of math rock, upon which several harmonies were conceived – NYOS delivers to its audience a splendid and exceedingly sophisticated work, whose art and synergy are consecrated by its virtuous, incomparable and latent talent, filled with marvelous and innovative authenticity. 


Wagner

rock’n’roll / hard rock/ noise rock / experimental

Loss is an album released on October 26 by British hard rock act Pijn. Sixty-six minutes long, the record has eight tracks: Denial, Detach, Distress, Blanch, Blush, Unspoken, Squalor and Squander. With a very flexible degree of artistry, the musicality of Pijn goes to both extremes: it can be furiously aggressive and dangerously brutal, as well as expressively calm, melodic and majestically virtuous. This is already noticeable in the first two songs: Denial is a virulent anthem of hazardous and protuberant aggression, while Detach is a serene and soft serenade of introspective melancholy. The album in general has a proverbial density that speaks for itself, although it is very accessible on the sensibility of its methodic and direct easiness, as well as playful and modest on its scale of ambitions.

While the album seems redundant at first – at least in the longer songs –, the musicality of the group, though appears to be simple, is profoundly rooted in a coherent style, that explores systematically the fugacious elements of the melodies, while delivering a deliberately generous and cosmic flamboyant eccentricity to the more dispersive virtues of its placid tonalities, formally engraved in a graceful nostalgia, that easily comes out of sound. Trying to recover lost time in the primordial vicinities of a life that is no longer there, the occasionally almost minimalist style of Pijn is a free deliverance of joy. In the course of this fascinating musical journey, it becomes more than that: a vivid celebration of life, that personally undertakes a realm of sincere melancholy to rescue the genuine golden elements of rock’n’roll, with the firm resolution to compose in a singular piece of paradise the purity, the liberty and the glory that became lost in the sands of time, though they are never restricted to this genre in particular. Their creativity is limitless and boundless. So much so, that in the process of delivering the sound, they develop their own eccentric, playful and peculiar style.   

While the heaviness of the guitar lines is the element that mostly stands out, the adherence of precise notes extending its anesthetic poignant devices in the occasional reverberations of latent melodies never divides the sensibilities of its dramatic soul. They patiently, but anxiously highlight the proverbial qualities of the album: as Loss evolves, the salutary epicenter of the music becomes more philosophic, serene, diluted and dense, although the music itself becomes lighter, digressive and effectively dispersive. 

Occasionally, you will hear awesome screaming vocals, in slow passages delivering the color of agony and despair, in the style of post-hardcore and straight edge; although the album is mostly instrumental. Given its extensive length, the record is somewhat subjected to a certain redundancy; but the sound in general is very sober, somber and delightful, able to satisfy anyone who is expecting the unexpected, with a very clean dose of melancholy, anger, hostility, despondency, acceptance, conformity and exhilaration. Not in this particular order, of course. But be positive that you certainly are going to deeply enjoy Loss.  


Wagner

alternative / noise rock 

Don't you just love it when a band forgets all about trends, genres or popularity and just goes wild on their instruments? That's the magic of music: people with a wide variety of influences and favorites coming together in a rehearsal room and bark out something completely unexpected. At least, that's the feeling I get when I listen to 'Driven'. In the past the members of this Swiss trio might have been active in the worlds of shoegaze, punk, noise, grunge or hardcore but now they're Asbest, a raging steamroller that sounds like Melvins had babies with Bikini Kill. Ugly, abrasive and noisy babies that refuse to fit in anywhere.


I think it's safe to categorize Asbest in the noise rock scene, although they do borrow elements from a wide variety of genres. The Melvins immediately came up during opener 'Driven' but with pissed of female vocals. Something sure is wrong in the world of Asbest, something poisonous and deadly. 'Deceit' follows a similar path, that of creeping sludge doom, mixed with something Sonic Youth will definitely appreciate.

But then there is 'Means Of Reproduction', a sick and twisted tune that feels like slowly being eaten by an ant colony. I'm scared of this. Vocalist Robyn is yelling at me, "be productive', while I'm trying to be positive about the whole thing. Being creepy is not only for the dark ambient producers among us, that's for sure. Now, don't get me wrong, this is one powerful piece of music, loaded with anger and frustration. It's just that it might haunt your dreams for years to come.

Speaking about dark ambient, 'I Need A Spacesuit To Leave My Home' brings exactly that, at least for a short while in the opening. In a way, this track is exactly what you need after the aggressive bullying of 'Means Of Reproduction'. Here, elements from post rock appear, providing the listener with a little breather. You'll need that, for the rest of the album will continue to slowly pummel you into a bleeding pulp.

My personal favorite here is 'Pillar', oddly the tune that completely dives into the muddy soils of sludge doom and post hardcore. 'They Kill', the single you can already enjoy on their bandcamp page, might be a nice introduction to Asbest but it's not their best tune. If you like this one, the others will completely overwhelm you and if you don't like this one, the others will drill holes in your skull. 

Oh well, it's pretty obvious that Driven' is not an easy digestible album. It is however a great example of non-genre bounded experimentation. The album is loaded with power, aggression and anger. It contains influences from everything between the Riot Grrrl scene to the post hardcore world, like PJ Harvey on meth, or something like that. Anyway, if you like sonic knives through your eardrums, this is definitely your thing. 


​Serge

drone / ambient / folk

electronic / ambient/ synthwave

bandcamp

bandcamp

acoustic / folk

post punk

post punk

funeral doom

shoegaze / dreampop

electronic / house / synth

hard rock

math rock / alternative rock / experimental / noise rock / punk

​Serge

drone / sludge / doom / noise

Outside of your musical comfort zone there is so much awe inspiring music to be found. When you leave the easy-listening surface behind you, you can discover sounds unheard and unimagined. Few people seem to realize that but then again, few people are open to new musical experiences.

Those people usually say "that is just noise" and they're absolutely right. It's delightful noise, piercing your consciousness and ripping your self esteem apart. I do think some people need to be forced to listen to a decent dose of noise music and I got just the album for that.

UK based trio Bodies On Everest does some good noise. Initially coined a sludge/doom act, these guys go way further than that. The album contains six tracks with opener 'unreleaseddeathvideo.flac' being a massive noise tune, nudging towards the Harsh Noise Wall scene. With eerie samples and gritty soundscapes, this track sets the tone for unholy and blatantly dissonant things to come.

'Tally Of Sevens' then comes up with the elements that usually result in sludge metal: intense riffs, pounding drums and screams. However, this is not sludge metal, this is repetitive noise rock that will slowly gnaw on your feeling of wellbeing. There is a tremendous lo-fi atmosphere, resulting in something very uneasy-listening. By now, not even halfway through the album it becomes clear that this is definitely not something for the average (doom) metal fan.

The band members themselves call their sound "dungeon wave" and yeah, if you imagine the  cries and supplications of countless of forlorn prisoners in ancient dungeon, that term is quite correct. Besides, the eerie 'Gold Fangs In Enemy Territory' contains elements from the genre I refer to as "dungeon synth". This is haunting music, barely melodic and with an overwhelming feeling of despair and solitude.

I have absolutely no band to compare this stuff with, apart from the many underground noise acts that often intrude my facebook profile. I mean, this is more Prurient than Sunn O))), more Genocidal Organ than Swans. 'Shotgun Or Sidearm' for instance has absolutely nothing to do with metal anymore. Not that this is a bad thing, on the contrary. It's interesting to hear this slab of sheer noise aggression. 

'Suspicious Canoe' brings back the basic elements and even raises the tempo but do not expect anything less destructive as the previous tracks. I think I can describe this best as something that resembles and old basement tape from Winter. Suffocating noise punk, so to speak. It just adds to the uncompromising nature of this whole album. This thing must be bad for your health, undoubtedly, but then again, what isn't these days. So check it out, you might find some new favorite noises in here.


​Serge