post rock / post metal

Earlier this month, I published a few wishful predictions for Dunk! Fest 2020 (read). Belgian post rock/metal combo Turpentine Valley were mentioned in there and somehow I feel like that was a little spoiler. I mean, there is no way that Turpentine Valley are not going to occupy the stage in Zottegem. Here is why:
1. Their new album is released by Dunk! Records. 2. They're from Zulte, only 31 kilometers from the sacred festival grounds.
3. Their music will be featured on 'De Twaalf', a new Flemish fiction series on één. 
4. 'Etch' is a smasher, containing tracks that will easily immerse and overwhelm the crowd. 

Which is all good and well, but how does this album sound exactly? Well, if you look at their facebook page, you'll quickly notice that Russian Circles is one of their major influences. Deftones and If These Trees Could Talk are also in that list. So you can expect some rolling bass, a busload of grooving riffs and an atmosphere to float on. It all begins rather carefully in 'Abrupt', which gradually tries to lure the listener in. If that doesn't work, 'Compromis' will probably do the trick, driving on intensity and impressiveness. From there, the band rages on with an ever pulsating blend of post rock and post metal.

​The short intermezzo 'Ballast' is oddly enough one of my favorites here, but I'm a dark ambient fan so that's quite natural. It mostly serves as an intro for the sonic bulldozer 'Vergeten'. These are riffs that will grind an audience to pulp, combined with a gritty atmosphere, doomed out rhythms and gloomy guitar-scapes. Like I said before, top shelf Dunk! material, no doubt about that. 'Trauma' is perhaps the most representative for Turpentine Valley: meticulously composed post metal, adding tiny licks of alternative rock and kneading it into a post metal statement, or monument, if you will. 

In the beginning of the album, I thought this was a decent, interesting debut, but halfway through 'Trauma' I'm blown away by not only the sheer intensity but also the technical aspects of the whole thing. And that's not just me. My wife just said "dat is een debuut of wat? Fucking hell"! I'm not going to translate that. Guys from Zulte will understand. Anyway, while the equally strong 'Compassie' rolls through my speakers, I can only recommend this beauty to all you post metal fans out there. Yes, this is only a debut, which obviously means that the stakes are high. Turpentine Valley are here to dominate the post-scene...


​Serge

post metal / sludge

When Sludge Metal first became a term twentysomething years ago it was defined as more of a “Southern” thing with bands like Crowbar, Down and (partially) Corrosion of Conformity leading the way and its musical signature being the tuned-down double guitar lines with some of that typically Southern twang breathing the air of the Allman Brothers. 

Of course, this sounds has not remained restricted to the Southern states and numerous countries can claim to have some bands like that at home, one major stronghold being the UK. Byzanthian Neckbeard (what a name!!!!) from Guernsey is another example for the thriving UK scene and “Minaton” is their third release (after a previous album and an EP in September). Maybe the sparseness and isolation on one of those Channel Islands is a good thing for the band as they do not have to think of the needs and necessities of a (large) local scene but can concentrate completely on their music.

On the new record, they show again how a band whose major sound construct is already pretty irrelevant can still gather followers. Their riffs are flexing muscles just like the bull on the cover of the record seems to be flexing his neck and the groove they got seems straight out of the Pantera-parade book. Together with a more than solid bass-attack that makes for a well-trained rhythm section. 

Of course, neither of their singers sound like Phil, but that doesn’t matter because their vocals fit to the music which benefits immensely from that duality. However, those are not the only ‘vocals’ on Minaton as there are some vocal samples used throughout the record, with the spoken word intro being one of the most intense moments of those 40 minutes. 

To sum it all up, the Guernsey trio is not the next big thing in a genre that has seen so many bands come and go as they didn’t have the energy, the drive, the groove or the strength needed to stay around for long. Byzanthian Neckbeard has all of it and that is a good thing for all Sludge fans because those riffs will carry the band far with all its doom and gloom and stoner and... well, you get it! Sludge on!


​Thorsten

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.​

post metal

Some bands are hard to get a grip on and John Malkovitch! from Italy is one of those because their post-rock-influenced instrumental metal is nothing new, admittedly, but there is something about these tracks that makes you want to listen to them again – one of the better signs for any record. 

One thing that stands out is the focus on the rhythm section. A few years ago, one critic wrote that the drums are the most important instrument in post-rock as they are telling “the story”, which definitely holds true with some bands, for example for Pelican. John Malkovitch!, however, focus on the whole rhythm section with some parts of the songs dominated by cymbals and snares delivering the tiny movement of the dark gray clouds while the bass provides the harsh background of volcanic eruptions and the guitars showing the slowly flowing lava the way to the tropical sea. All of this and much more becomes audible in tracks like the final “La Grande Madre Gialla”, the big yellow mother. 

“Hyenaeh” is an album that is as much Red Sparrowes as it is Isis, although of course that sounds stupid given the fact that Bryant Clifford Meyer played guitar in both. John Malkovitch! is also somewhat similar to From Monument to Masses when you hear their use of vocal samples for an otherwise instrumental band albeit the samples mostly function as an added layer of instrumentation. James Plotkin mastered “Hyenaeh” and in some moments his input is noticeable, when you take time to work out the guitars spiraling upward accompanied by the small feedback in the middle and the drums slowing down, there are some parallels to the heavier stuff he did with OLD. 

There is something strange about “Hyenaeh” and that is the tracklist because even though there are three different tracks in the middle of the album (surrounded by two songs of more than 10 minutes’ length) but those three basically form a third long track, with each one individually working like a chapter. And even if this may sound strange when talking about three longtracks – the Italian project really focused on their songwriting and took a big step forward from last year’s debut album “The Irresistible New Cult of Selenium” because the songwriting is much more focused and the songs are not left wandering off alone. Thus, this album is able to stand its ground amid all the great post-rock releases of 2019. 


​Thorsten

post metal / black metal

A dulcimer is an old instrument used in a lot of different cultures and sounds like a cross between a lyre and a vibraphone and the way it is played is also a similar crossover resulting in a resonance within the hearts of those who listen. There is a lot to listen to on Botanist’s new album because the eco-ideology-centered collective gives us a lot to work with, musically and lyrically. 

“Ecosystem” centers around the ecosystem of the redwoods in California and poses the question whether we as humans got our own such system defined as a system of different organisms living together. Now, do humans really live WITH the other organisms or do we just feed off of them and then “throw” them away? According to (the) Botanist, the crazy scientist from whose perspective the whole story is told, we are nothing more than parasites who endanger nature and our own existence by not taking care of the other beings around us. That drove him into the seclusion of his “Verdant Realm” (green world) where he tries to live with plants and other organisms and withdraws completely from mankind. There is something hauntingly true in those ideas, so true it hurts. 

Musically, Botanist once again use black metal with an unusual instrumentation as the basis for their “Green Metal” - aforementioned dulcimer but also a harmonium plays an important role for the collective around Otrebor, the mastermind and m, drummer Daturus and bass player Davide Tiso (Ephel Duath, he also recently released a record with his wife Karyn Crisis) with Cynoxylon providing additional vocals. The collective plays a kind of black metal that is infused with a sound as if you took the short medieval parts from Funereal Presence and turned them into the foundation of the song. The dulcimer and harmonium are placed in the foreground of the arrangements – of course, because they’d go down in the whirlwind of blastbeats and high pitched screaming. 

However, there is more to Botanist than just some nerdy instruments and an intelligent story/ideology – because they are able to deliver music that is as intense as its theme. You find whispered passages and shared vocals only accompanied by semi-acoustic dulcimer parts and some sparse drums, just like we have a flying passage through the courtyard of the Botanist’s black metal hell. An album that impresses on so many levels. 


​Thorsten

doom / black metal / post metal

Caro Tanghe from Oathbreaker, T from Turia – two brilliant examples of female fronted black metal or blackgaze, two strong females who show that not only guys can raise hell with their voices and a coherent attitude. If we talk about Dutch-Belgian bands with female vocals over dark, sinister music we shall not forget another one – Sylvia Berger, the singer for Breda’s blackened sludge five-piece The Fifth Alliance.

The band released their third full-length in late August (shame on us for not reviewing it earlier) and
it definitely is a grower in its own right. One cannot deny the magical carpet ride that they take us on with this record as they are able to give space and air to every instrument so that it can contribute
to a sound that will flow through you and captivate your senses.

Sometimes the blastbeats may be a bit harsh but the guitars flow and always point out a way for the listener to catch a hold in all the wonderful chaos before him. They show you the path whenever a moment to clarity is needed, for example after roughly two thirds of “Hekate” - the guitars take over after a longer passage of dancing around the blastbeats and then two very different guitar lines make for a highly atmospheric ending.

The doomy parts, take the intro to “Hellfire Club” for instance, also provide a perfect background
for Sylvia’s vocals reaching into the Depth of Darkness. Here, for example, she starts the narrative with the words “On a starless night he played god”, a clear sign that nothing good can follow as someone is already at the beginning unmasked to be an impostor to a position that no person can hold.

The only criticism that one might put forward is that, even though they are near-perfect in their own genre, they hardly contribute to its evolution. Nothing on this record is unheard of; it is flawless and captivating, but unique in its own sense? No. Nevertheless, is that really necessary if you are that good at what you do? Maybe we should just follow Sylvia down into this five-song abyss hoping that we find our way out again. The voyage itself should be worth it. 


​Thorsten

progressive / sludge / post metal

When in Rome do as the Vandals, an old idiom says which implies that you turn everything topsyturvy and leave no stone untouched. Believe or not, this could also be applied to Juggernaut’s third album “Neuroteque” which was released a few weeks ago.
The Roman foursome took quite some time to release new music after their second full-length “Trama!” which is already five years old. However, this becomes understandable when listening to the new record which was recorded in Rome by Valerio Fisik over the course of 2018. It is noticeable that it took such a long time because the musical landscape ranges from miniscule glockenspiel use to bass-driven harshness.

This is also one of the strongholds of Juggernaut, they can build tensions and with a snip of a finger deconstruct all any upward aggression the song might have had before. The very beginning of the record sets a great example for it, the guitars build up toward a kind of brutal relief or harsh turn but then the band turns around with their version of a funky bassline and a drummer that definitely steps forward and tells his story.

Not denying the good guitar work by Andrea Carletti and Luigi Farina its fair share of the glory but
this record is driven by the rhythm section of Roberto Cippitelli and Matteo D’Amicis who have
found their way of telling a story without words. No matter if it’s Cippitelli’s dynamic bass or
D’Amicis’ drumming and percussion parts – here we have a tight-knit union of minds alike that
dominates a song without taking away room from any other instrument and without being just about themselves, the duo serves the song – not their own pride. The air they leave can then be filled by the guitars’ sprinkling touches of ambience and pearly shine.

This record needs earplugs to show how much it has taken from bands like Hidden Orchestra or
Pelican, from The Cinematic Orchestra and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Sometimes a bit more elaboration and the courage to leave an even bigger pause would turn this very good album into even more of a frontrunner of the neo-instrumental wave we witnessed over the last few years. But sometimes a good measure of humility should also be rewarded. However, there is one thing that might be changed: on their Bandcamp page the band states they make “Threatening music, harmonies of disappointment” - well, there are more soothing than threatening sounds of harmony and fulfillment in this record than stated. Humble they are, proud they can be. 


​Thorsten

post rock / post metal / drone

I've often wondered how bands name themselves, do they put lots of cool sounding words into a hat and pick them out and see what happens? (I'm looking at you, Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard) or do they think long and hard about what type of music the band play and take it from there? Today’s album band falls very much in the later category and may well be one of the most apt band names I've ever heard.

 The Boston natives return with their second full length following their well received previous album 'Though Your Sins Be As Scarlet, They Shall Be White as Snow; Though They be Red Like Crimson, They Shall Be As Wool' Yeah, these guys have a way with words all right.  They play an instrumental style of post-whatever that takes it's time and sounds like an unrelenting force of nature (hence the apt band name). 

 Lead off single 'O World! I Remain No Longer Here' starts off with an ominous sounding drone and slowly ratchets up the tension until just the right moment and a torrent of exciting sludge is released. It takes a long time to unfurl it's full might but once it get there the fury is exhilarating. There is an unusual amount of thought which seems to have gone into this record, each note sounds like it was put there on purpose with no excess whatsoever.

 Next up we have the brilliantly titled song (In truth, all the songs are magnificently named) 'The Bugles Blow Fanned by Hysteria' which starts of with a gentle drum beat, before adding textures of guitar, bass and atmospherics until the song dissolves into a gorgeous bass refrain and picks up once again. Once more, this song takes it's time to unwind and once more, the explosion of force when it finally arrives is impressively powerful. This clearly is an album that is in no hurry to get where it wants to go, and it's all the better for it as the heavier sections hit that much harder.

 Third song 'We Glut Our Souls On The Accursed'  Is a curious beast, it's practically one giant build up with various instruments and textures being layered on top of one another until the whole thing sounds like an out of control freight train, it's quite a left turn after the first couple of songs.

 Last song 'And we Are Damned Amid Noble Sound' starts off with a cacophony of drums and guitars which sounds like being chased by a swarm of angry bees, it's quite unsettling which I think is the point. It takes some getting used to and rather outstays it's welcome in my opinion. It's a shame as the rest of the song is a fantastic doom laden grungy swamp of drudgery with plenty of low end goodness.

 Overall I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this album and although I personally loved the first 2 songs more than the last 2, there is a lot to like here and I would not hesitate to recommend this album.


Simon

post metal / sludge / doom

What constitutes a heavy album? There are so many different ways to answer this, it's almost not worth asking, but still, whichever way you look at it, London noise mongers Torpor are heavy, I mean seriously heavy. They blend sludge, doom, drone and post-metal in a heady brew. Previous album From Nothing Comes Everything was recorded as a 4 piece, but the lead singer left after the album was released. After losing their lead singer, some bands would have called it a day, but  Torpor rolled up their sleeves, regrouped, spread the vocal duties amongst the remaining members and spawned their latest album Rhetoric of the Image.

Opener Benign Circle is a great way to kick things off with. A clean drum beat and strummed guitar riff lulls you into a false sense of security before the hammer drops and the song hits like planets colliding, it's an almost physical thing (and if you turn it up loud enough, it will be!) And you know what? It feels glorious. Then the whole thing collapses upon itself and the aforementioned beauty shines through with a sense of serenity, before crushing you again with a slab of granite-like sludge.

We get somewhat of a respite in the form of next song Two Heads on Gold. with it's rolling ominous drones. Hidden within the song is quite a beguiling melody hidden under the layers of aural miasma which become apparent when you give the song your full attention.

From there, we move onto next song Enigmatic Demand. A droning almost calming intro begins the song before hitting you with an absolute gut punch of sonic heaviness. Tortured vocals reminiscent of Aaron Turner at his most acerbic howl over monolithic noise dragged from the primordial swamp. It's as if the band have reached into themselves, dragged their darkest thoughts and energies and transferred it directly to their instruments. Yes it's suffocatingly intense and heavy, but it's this act of purging themselves which has produced something cathartic and cleansing. The dichotomy at the heart of this album is what makes it special.
 
From there, it's another shorter song Mouths Full of Water, Throats Full of Ice which is a surprisingly delicate number with gorgeous clean female vocals. It is a beautiful track and a real gem, it also gives the listener somewhat of a sonic palette cleanser. Then it's into final track Mourning the Real which is a real juggernaut of a track, slightly more experimental with longer ambient sequences which are particularly effective and do a great job of accentuating the bouts of sonic onslaught when they inevitably drop like an anvil. It's like an unstoppable black hole dragging everything in on itself, collapsing and condensing into a super dense nugget of weight. There is nothing rushed about this song, it's intricacies revealed to the inquisitive listener, yes it's bloody heavy, but also, it's beguilingly soothing, it's that dichotomy at play I mentioned earlier.

The band have taken the bones of their previous sound and refined it, improved upon their previous album in every way imaginable and produced a monument to monolithic grandeur. They have a firm grasp on dynamics and know the power of holding back until just the right moment to hit with an intense burst of noise, and the album is all the more powerful for it. The ambient sections are not just thrown in but have real thought, purpose and meaning. The whole album benefits from giving it your full attention as the layers slowly reveal themselves, it really benefits from repeated listens as all the nuances start to become apparent. There are moments of genuine beauty which are allowed to shine through like crepuscular rays of sunlight through an apocalyptic sky. Also, did I mention it's bloody heavy? If you like your music heavy and intelligent you owe it to yourself to listen to this album as it is glorious.
  

Simon

sludge / doom

Aaron Turner of Isis was once asked to describe his band's genre of music, he didn't want to be pigeon holed so he replied “we play thinking mans metal”. Even though his band helped define a new genre of metal in Post-Metal, he did not want to be boxed into one style of music.

So, that laborious intro is my way of saying that new album 'Failure to Thrive' by Massachusetts band 'Cazador' could, on one hand be labelled 'post-metal' but on the other hand, this only serves as a touchstone, a launchpad if you will, into this rather exciting album.


Things start off as they normally do nowadays on any album with am intro of feedback noise, so far so good. Second song 'Skeleton Crew' is a different beast altogether. It's a slippery eel of a song, whenever you think you have a grasp of it, it slips and turns out of your grasp into different sonic directions. There are contemplative sections, punk sections, sludge metal twists and to complete this heady brew, a dash of hardcore. It's great. Really great.

The next song 'Children of Man' is a delicate sonic shower of noise which flows nicely into next track 'Kingdom' which starts of with the same delicate musings before exploding with sludgy murkiness, it's really rather good, in a mucky way (just how I like it!)

 Title track 'Failure to Thrive' flips the previous song on it;'s head and begins with some straight forward metal before flowing into a gorgeous post-rock-esque serene passage of clean guitars before slowly building up (or should that be down) into the gloom. The following 2 tracks again feel like one long song switching between the meditative styling of 'Edema' into the fierce hardcore leanings of 'Comey' The album ends with 'Sassafras' which encapsulates all which has gone before. 

I very much like this album and would recommend anyone in an interest in intelligent metal to check this out, there is enough here to pique anyone’s interest. Although if I do have one gripe with this album, it's that the vocals don't quite seem to have the weight that the music so richly deserves. They are not bad, far from it, they are very good, it's just that to my ears, they don't match the soaring heights reached by the rest of the band. Overall, this is an excellent album.


Simon