krautrock

 Musical millipede Aidan Baker and his Caudal trio return with album number three. According to Aidan, this is their most "poppy" album to date. When I read that, I had no idea how a poppy Caudal album would sound. What did they do? Invite an autotune brunette? Have Dr Dré make the beats? Have DJ Khaled scream his name over all the songs? 
So today I finally decided to dig into this (and several other) albums. Coincidentally, before this one I was listening to Red Snapper. I didn't realize how close Caudal and Red Snapper actually are. The transition between the two bands was seamless, apart from the fact that there's no sax in Caudal.

On 'Fight Cry Fight', Caudal delivers nine songs. The longest ('The Blue Meds') is eight minutes long while the others barely reach the maximum commercial airplay length. Perhaps that is the poppy part of this album, short tunes. Everything else is pure Caudal, which obviously is exciting. Their blend of krautrock, post rock and drone rock sounds rather lighthearted and joyful, in sheer contrast to the cover art. In fact, a track like 'Divisible' even reminds me of Alice In The Cities, another smile evoking post rock act.

'Flourish' takes on a more jazzy approach and adds a sense of space rock to the whole thing. It also seems to be one of the most complex tracks on this album, and again, Red Snapper comes to mind. 'Low Red' is an incredibly friendly tune, something that sounds like The Cure jamming on a beach in late summer. 'Sunwashed' does something similar, be it a bit faster. I guess this is the sound of Joy Division trying their hand on krautrock, something like that. Oh well, poppy or not, this is simply another highly enjoyable Caudal album, one every fan of krautrock should possess.


​Serge

thrash metal

stoner metal / sludge

psychedelic rock / stoner / blues

drone / ambient

death metal / symphonic metal

alternative rock

ambient

drone / noise / ambient

dark ambient

techno

symphonic metal / death metal

electronic / experimental / breakcore

Petrol 80

Serge

doom / post metal

metal / hardcore

psychedelic rock / doom

psychedelic / doom

shoegaze / dream pop

shoegaze

post punk / new wave

alternative rock / shoegaze

neofolk

experimental / ambient / noise

Unexplained Sounds

ambient / noise / experimental

bandcamp

dark ambient / drone

bandcamp

ambient / electronic

death metal

black metal

Serge

psychedelic kraut doom

Ok, ok, one more doom metal album before I engage in other activities, like preparing dinner for example. Yet, this isn't just another doom metal album. In fact, none of today's reviewed albums were. One was so vintage Black Sabbath would be jealous about it, the other was laced with classical instruments and Gregorian chants and this one is one long and heavy LSD trip. Then again, you might expect something like that with a title like 'Drug Magick'. So, grab your mushrooms, your weed, your LSD and your whatnot and join me on a psychedelic kraut doom hallucination with Polish occultists Doomster Reich.

Opener 'Gimme Skelter' pretty much immediately comes up with this awesome blend of heavy doom metal and groovy krautrock. It also already showcases these psychedelic jam solos. So I guess it's no wonder that a band like Jefferson Airplane comes to mind when I listen to these tunes. They are with good company too because gradually acts like Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Captain Beefheart, Ash Ra Tempel, Cathedral and Jimi Hendrix also seem to join the jam. At one point I was even thinking about Ozric Tentacles and that doesn't often happen when I'm listening to a doom metal record.

Now, I must admit that I had one minor doubt at first. For me, many albums win or fail because of the vocals. Here, at first these seemed to be a little let-down. Yet, gradually I got used to them as they started adding that awesome occult element to the whole thing, a bit like Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats do. Halfway through 'Rites of Drug Magick' I'm beginning to realize that this album might become one of my recent favorites. My favorite track here is the jazz 'Meet The Dead' for some reason. 

So yep, another doom metal album and another quite unique one. One that certainly comes highly recommended if you ask me. I mean, it is doom, it is psychedelic and it is kraut as hell. So what are you waiting for? Get your hands on this acid trip...


​Serge

post rock

doom / sludge / psychedelic

metalcore

folk / alternative rock

facebook

post rock / shoegaze

Spotify

alternative rock

progressive rock

dark ambient

experimental / avant garde / classical

bandcamp

stoner rock / alternative / metal

funeral doom

funeral doom / ambient

bandcamp

psychedelic rock / post hardcore / grunge

I'll let you in on a little secret. Sometimes I like to start writing a review before I actually listen to the album. Just for fun. In those cases, I write some nonsense about the weather, about how almost every car on the handicapped parking space is a BMW or about my lazy cat. I can also write that first paragraph about the band name or about the cover art, or simply about my own history with that particular band. In this particular case, that history is rather long and vague. I think I first heard the name Maudlin back in 2006 or 2007. After that, I regularly saw them featured on a festival flyer. Yet, I can't say I have ever been a fan.

Why not? Well, I have absolutely no idea. My best guess is the fact that I have never been a (post) hardcore fan. That, and I have been away from the heavy music scene for about ten years before I started this website. In the days Maudlin stepped on festival stages far and wide, I was engaged in the dark ambient and noise scene. Until today, I didn't know any song by these guys. Now, that is all changing and after giving this album a first spin I'm stuck between a feeling of regret and one of pleasant surprise.

Maudlin is a Belgian band, formed in 2005. In those thirteen years, they released only three albums, this one being the second full length on Consouling Sounds. This one comes five years after 'A Sign Of Time' and much like its predecessors it is a concept album. This time, the focus is on the sea. The band hails from Ostend, a city at the Belgian coast so the band members are very familiar with the North Sea. 

The music on this album is quite different from what I expected. After all, I expected post hardcore but I was treated to something psychedelic and immersive. 'Endless Expanse' is a perfect opener for this album, something between Tool, Soundgarden and Isis. To me, that was surprising, especially when the vocals came in. Most of them seem to be clean, well performed efforts instead of brutal screams. To me, that is a massive plus.

Then it hit me. Of course, Maudlin has matured, something you can easily hear in the brilliant 'Erase'. Along with the opener, this one is probably my favorite. In fact, all of these tracks are strong, potent pieces of raw psychedelic rock music. Over the past thirteen years or so, the members have gotten extremely well attuned to one another, became better musicians, experienced the ups and downs of the underground music industry.

Blending psychedelic rock with doom metal and grunge is an absolute win-win situation and Maudlin simply nailed it. Other bands that come to mind include Master Musicians Of Bukkake, Om, Porcupine Tree, Alice In Chains and Black Sabbath. I don't think those are bad names to be compared with. Yet, probably more important than that, Maudlin managed to create their own niche within a vast and massively influenced music scene, so it seems.

So yeah, from a bit hesitant to glorifying. I guess that I either underestimated these guys in the past or they have just created their own magnum opus. Fact is, this is going right into my day-to-day playlist in which all of the aforementioned bands are already present. I'm sure I will enjoy tracks like 'The Stowaway' or 'Above The Vast Clouds' quite a few times from now on. I can only recommend this album, which is actually yet another statement about how much talent our country harbors.


​Serge

psychedelic rock / krautrock

Sometimes it's funny how people promote music. This album, for example, was pretty much pushed as the rebirth of psychedelic rock, created by guys who claim that the genre should not have died. However, being a music reviewer, I have seen tonnes of psychedelic rock albums come in. This genre is far from dead. I don't understand why people would think such a thing. Ok, true, maybe on the radio but people who solely listen to the radio should not have an opinion about music. Oh well, I'm digressing again. Let's just say that psychedelic rock is still raging on in all its glory and immediately add that this is a damn good album. It's not a rebirth but a splendid continuation.

Vibravoid is a band from Düsseldorf, Germany, formed in 1990. Since then, they have been extremely loyal to the psychedelic garage sound of the late sixties. From The Beatles to Jefferson Airplane, these guys truly breathe that fuzzed out and Indian inspired sound. The heavy use of sitar gives the whole thing an authentic feel, although it sometimes also reminds me of Cornershop. You know, from 'Brimful Of Asha'. That being said, also Stone Roses come to mind.

Oh well, if you are really into vintage sounding psychedelic rock, there is absolutely no reason not to love songs like 'Om Gang Ganpayte Namah', 'The Legend Of Dr. Robert' or 'Echoes Of Time'. This stuff is genuine, not another bandwagoner jumping on the psych-train. I can only advise you to check this out. Besides, those three 'Krautfaktor' tracks at the end are nothing short of amazing. This is top notch hippie stuff!!!


Serge

death metal / black metal

An interesting black metal EP, full of sinister and crudely afflictive melodies, in the best style of the genre’s old school, Nether Darkness has powerful and distinctive guitar lines, that ostensibly create an atmosphere of doom and demise. With rapid and crudely hostile, almost agonizing melodies, Vhorthax gets really close to what is known as blackened death metal, although they maintain their style more aligned with traditional BM. With pragmatic virtues that showcases a group in the complete command of its technical skills, the harmonies of this EP displays a world of good old fashioned black metal, with aggressive guitar lines, and a permanently lugubrious atmosphere. With six tracks – Altar I - The Mass, The Levitating Tomb, Stabat Mater, Thy Foul Graal, Crushing The Vessels Of Trinity and Altar II - The Descent of the Martyr –,  Nether Darkness is a formidable EP, that has a tremendous amount of dark fury, delivered at the perfect intensity to reach the highest peaks of the black art.   

post rock / shoegaze / doom

delightful universes of sensitive compassion, the music of Solip seems to be the sonorous configuration of a reasonable moment of beauty, doomed to be ephemerons at the pretentious highlight of its infinite vastness. 

drone / noise / experimental

electronic / psychedelic

bandcamp

sludge / doom

dark ambient / noise / drone

dark ambient

shoegaze / dream pop

progressive rock / metal

thrash metal / progressive

psychedelic / ambient

A fantastic and captivating trip to a peculiar universe made entirely of dense, calm and colorful sonorous aphorisms, Particle Horizon, more than being categorized as another album of experimental and minimalist ambient music, cosmically analyzes into the soul of it’s fascinating harmonious paradigm the spiritual essence of its expressively detailed, but somewhat constrained style, where ephemeral galaxies of profound sonorous sensitivity wanders throughout the paradoxical realm of sensibilities, with the aim to diffuse the everlasting enchantment of perpetual melodies, greatly devised at the clean and sober line of a convergent path of subtle intonations, that draws another type of existence within the empire of your senses. Aspiring to disintegrate the anatomy of the sound into a state of catatonic freedom, the expansive paroxysm of each and every track on this album is a delicate, but concentrated experiment on delirious and illusion, that has on the synapsis of its conscious lights the potential to create a different version of reality. With ten tracks that ostensibly penetrate the craters of the soul – Luminescence, Gateway Aura, Edge of the Infinite, Zero-Crossing, Twilight Gap, Gardens of Light, Radiance, The Age of Acceleration, Taking the Void and The Particle Horizon –, the fascinating cosmogonies that emerge from the music are exhilarating molecules of artistic emancipation. 

With a formidable degree of originality – but modestly confined to a secure space of harmonious subtlety, Ascendant circulates on this album over the impenetrable logic of its own sonorous hallucinations, with continual, but small melodic punctuations, that respects the sagacious and perfectly coherent ordeal of the work. With its cosmic level of serene, but infinitely curious and demanding space ambient style of sound being preponderant all the way throughout this sensitive journey of inapprehensible fascination, Particle Horizon is a pretentious, but successful audacious outlook on the genre, giving the fact that explores in a more individual perspective the gloriously diluted, but also infinite possibilities offered by this category of music, that almost seems to be the remainder of a sidereal silent symphony. 

The sound, very tasteful and soft, carries on the atmosphere of its genuine commotion the authenticity of its discreet symbolisms, that explores persistently the invisible nuances that gives consistence to the sound. So, in a more technical procedure, the sonorous expansion deliberately collides with the sign of its own artistic ambitions. But this is the prerogative behind the energetic dynamic of the marvelous calmness that overflows throughout this state of the art work.  

In a few words, you can positively affirm that Particle Horizon is a formidable trip to an invisible universe of sound, whose surface extends far beyond the standards of normality. With surreal atmospheres that comprehend on the junction of its fundamental qualities the essential pretext that perfectly juxtaposes in music all salutary aspects of existence.  


Wagner

grindcore / crust

psychedelic rock / blues / stoner

post rock

An effervescing idiosyncrasy of starving, but calm and levitating melodies swears to an infinite ocean of time a formidable conflagration of creative harmonious contingencies. The sound is beyond exceptional, and everything that revolves around your ears bears the scope of an infinite storm of peaceful eternity.

​With precise and overly diluted, but poetic guitar lines, ​Three Horizons Away is an imaginative and surreal glorious panorama of exponential beauty. Despite its brevity, the sonorous sincerity expanded through the brave, but serene vastness of splendorous rhythms redirects the soul through a journey of ascendant and pure reality. The continual universe promulgated by its linear and constant propulsion of peripheral sounds exhibits the greatness of it’s fantastic, but discreet style, as a different pattern of sensibility.  

post rock

A full, energizing and pure post rock work, with profoundly melancholic, but genuinely organic sonorous vicissitudes, upon which formidable and lucid guitar lines comprehend the painful vicinities of incisive and latent harmonies, that revolves around a mysteriously ancient, but poetic silence. A monumental transformation of conscience reveals itself at the grandiloquent axis of serene melodies, that not only impress by the brutal honesty and sincerity of its audacious beauty, but also by the infallible ordination of its salutary sonorous manifestation, that opens an omniscient pattern of authentic intuitive creative algorithms over the impatience of its notes. With a striking, but overwhelming simplicity, the sensitive calmness of this work is a delightful experience, that makes this brief, but majestic masterpiece a glorious necessity for all enthusiasts of the genre. Leviathan is definitely a precious and marvelous state of the art work, highly recommended.  

post rock

A brief, but poetic immersion towards a recrudescing world of ethereal conflagration, Lift Off ably leads the listener towards a more introspective and interior version of himself. A calm, serene and minimalistic quasi-operatic work that derives the essence of its intrinsic value through the vastness of its sincere and genuine sonorous evaluation, this EP by Man Against Mankind is a rude, but decisive filtration of translucent harmonies eager to revolve around the undermining capacities of reality, determined to descend over a spirit of pure sensibility. With seriously experimental overtones, the audacity of the musician’s style is an experience that reflects the authentic rapture of his creative spirit. With plausible sonorous features that expand the antagonistic principles of its abundant qualities without renouncing the splendor of a glamorous simplicity, Man Against Mankind deserves to be comprehensively inserted in a more singular musical category, given the fact that its aura of original sensibility is  highlighted by the fantasy of harmonies impossible to forget. 

black metal

An interesting EP, with a full atmospheric layer of enormous grandiosity, the hazardous and afflictive anxiety that comes out from the imperial harmonies of this grotesquely delightful sound replicates with precision the endemic agony and the intense features that characterize the genre, and its sinister overtones. With a somber expectation that announces  an imminent conflagration of unraveling proportions, the melodies that strikes the tissue of infinite possibilities simply reaches a level of splendor that eagerly evolves to a planetary dissension. Perfect as the soundtrack of a really macabre movie, Ice-Cold Souls drives at the core of its majestic opportunities the real lancinating devices exceedingly genuine to the genre. Undoubtedly, it’s a marvelous example of how graceful, dense, subtle and evasive the tempestuous sonorous tissue of atmospheric black metal should be.       

black metal / death metal

A majestic and very powerful metal work, with traditional elements brilliantly inserted at the core of the songs, If it is True What the Prophets Write is an elemental journey through the most sincere qualities of an intriguing style, that seems somewhat crossover.

​Despite some moments of more generic harmonies, the group displays an intelligent and passionate singular style, that interestingly revives at the heart of its vibrant molecules an amalgamated version of metal. The human virulence of death metal intertwines the efficiency of its brutal coalescence with the furious fastness of black metal, in a sidereal conflagration of melodies, that exhibits fatally hostile harmonies, also abundant in sensible thrash metal intensities. Definitely a memorable work, If it is True What the Prophets Write is a curious and refreshing EP, that deserves to be highlighted at the center of the underground scene. 

indie / psychedelic / alternative

electronic / downtempo 

crust / grindcore

Fucking shitfuck, did I just become a crust/grindcore fan or what? I mean, I wanted to add this album to Brieviews because quite usually these albums are rather one-sided and there is just not much to write about them. I also wanted to promote these guys because they're from Antwerp. But when I started to play 'Barbarians', I was in shock. Here was a perfect industrial sounding crust punk tune blasting through my speakers. Fast, delirious, harsh and intense, just what we need. So I continued listening. 'The Violent Way' is another of my favorites. These guys have just turned crust and grindcore in one of the most immersive pieces of extreme music I've ever heard.

I mean. I know some of these guys. I often see them at gigs but I have never talked to anyone of them and now they present me with one of the most impressive albums in Antwerp (and the world, or as we say "the parking lot") today.  Fuck yeah this comes highly recommended. 

grindcore

Whooaaarg

post metal / drone