alternative rock

When we took a first glance at the cover of this promo we were already teased by the chaos and depth of the artwork (Mark Cruz Teix). The story of The Morganatics is one of progress. The debut album (Never Be Part Of Your World) followed by a live recording of a radio show and their second full recording (We Come From The Stars) were all released  in 2015. The band produced an album (Eternal Return : An Horizon of Infinite) with acoustical versions of songs from the two previous albums in 2016.



The Morganatics call their creations “rock based with a voice of Linkin Park meeting Archive’s atmosphere with Porcupine Tree's guitars”. Well, let us tell you that they have a point but… the two vocalists Seb  (also rhythm guitars and keyboards) and Chris (female vocals, sample and keyboards) have the same timbre as late Chester Bennington. We needed to listen very carefully to distinguish who was actually singing because they sound very alike… The album contains wide range singing with deep emotions and energy. We had mixed feelings with the track Gloria. The vocals sound like a mealy hymn for a commercial add. 

The atmosphere of the tracks is far-reaching, from psychedelic to moodiness and to avant-garde with electronic effects and samples. This band from Paris reaches, indeed, out to Porcupine Tree with their guitar sound. Lauris (lead & acoustic guitars) listened very good to Anathema, his guitar solos are inspired by the two Cavanagh brothers’ weeping sound. There are some unclean vocals by PM (also bass)on this recording. We would have welcomed some more for better variation and balance in the singing. There are two drummers mentioned in the info. Nico, original core member and drummer announced his departure during the production of this album,so Frank took over.

The Morganatics are strange duck in the music pool. Their music is very fused with all kinds of genres and styles, which gave them a somehow an original sound. We’ve  heard creative chemistry with shredding guitars combined with intense and emotional melodies. Melancholy and experimental drift were added to the energetic formula called The Love Riot Squad vs The F-world, which is to our opinion their best work, until now. 

Bands with the same experimental approach but different in style are Område (France) and Thy Catalfaque (Hungary) and Diabolo Swing Orchestra (Sweden).

​
Patsker

rock

Madhouse is an Italian female fronted rock band doing their utmost best to be a little more visible on the endless and overpopulated fields of rock bands on this planet. The band consisting of Federica Tringali (vocals), Filippo Anfossi  (guitar), Daniele Maggi (guitar), Michele Canevari (bass) and Ares Cabrini (drums) started playing as a cover band and began working on own songs since 2012. During that same year Federica Tringali decided to name the band Madhouse.

And this Italian band rocks. Madhouse presents ten pumping modern rock tracks with groovy guitar riffs and a lyrical concept, proposing ten hotel rooms in which it is possible to keep looking for your own personal dimensions. Federica Tringali has a powerful voice fitting perfectly with the steaming songs. She does not reach for screaming high chords but uses overdubbed vocal effects which create  harmonic and melodic sounds between the guitar riffs. This charismatic front woman has a powerful voice and can compete with the best modern rock and emo-rock singers these days. Guitar players Filippo Anfossi  and Daniele Maggi conjure some catchy guitar work out of their bag. Minimized keyboard parts furnish interesting  and refreshing impulses to the music. The combo is working hard and had already live gigs in several European countries.

Madhouse’s first full album is filled with enthusiastic (heavy) rock guitars and atmospheres  like 30 Seconds To Mars, Placebo and My Bloody Valentine.  This is a band with international potentials playing catchy, varied alternative rock music. Although they bring nothing new on the horizon this Italian band has balls, courage, musicianship and one hell of a female singer. Very refreshing rock music.

​
Patsker

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

alternative rock

With a thirty-year career on the heavier side of the musical spectrum, Per Wiberg stepped out of his comfort zone with this release. The Swedish multi-instrumentalist was a member of the progressive death metal band Opeth (no  longer playing death metal but prog). He was also member of the stoner metal band Spiritual Beggars. Per Wiberg played keys and piano on work by Arch Enemy (melodic death metal) and Anekdoten (progressive rock). As a live musician he plays for the doom metal band Candlemass and as a regular bass player with the Swedish power trio Kamchatka, who play more blues-oriented, psychedelic stoner rock.

Head Without Eyes has absolutely nothing to do with the aforementioned bands and genres. Per Wiberg calls his debut a different kind of heavy. The urge to go further and further artistically, together with a lifelong collection of records, creates a special mix of melodies that explore the limits of experimental rock music. This release contains a daring pile of tracks full of innovative rock music. The dark lyrics contain intelligent ideas that are accompanied by psychedelic sounds and pumping, rocking guitars.

All instruments and vocals were realized by the master himself. Only the drums were played by Karl Daniel Lidén (Crippled Black Phoenix, Katatonia, Switchblade) and Lars Sköld (Tiamat, Avatarium). Billie Lindahl (Promise And The Monster) borrowed her ethereal voice on the tracks  Anywhere The Blood Flows and Pile Of Nothing. 

Anywhere The Blood Flows and Fader are powerful and drawn-out songs that, despite their length (more than ten minutes), thoroughly influence the sense of time. Much attention was paid to the construction and finishing of the tracks. Hallucinating creative sounds provide an industrial ribbon around this release. The vocal lines of Per Wiberg sound surprisingly good with the threatening song structures filled with gothic leverages.

Head Without Eyes opens after several listening sessions like a lotus. Per Wiberg is a master smith who mixes and forges different types of iron into an insanely strong samurai sword that cuts through the flesh and bones with a sharp rocking blade. This is an exciting piece of rock music with a lot of underlying layers that slowly float to the surface. Head Without Eyes  is an edition to cherish. 

​
Patsker

wave / rock

The Riddle is an odd man out. At first we had doubts to review this release but as open minded as we are, we gave this one a shot.

Fans of The Cure could be astonished with the first guitar chords of this album. On the first track (Waving Leaves) of The Tree Deep In The Forest, you can hear immediately what this is all about. The Riddle (Kennet De Bondt) must be a die hard fan of The Cure.

This Belgian DIY artist created a weird combination of a melancholic guitar sound with an indie pop like voice. The vocals sound at first conflicting with the music. Dark and sad strings guiding sunshine vocals are producing a blasphemous wedding. If you ever wondered what would happen if you mix Charlotte Sometimes with The Boys Of Summer of Don Henley (The Eagles)? Well…

The Riddle sounds like music from a parallel world, everything on The Tree Deep In The Forest is recognizable but unearthly. This time machine to the eighties had some bugs and wrong calculations creating twelve songs filled with contradiction. Kennet De Bondt vocals are soft and contain a small amount of sad vibes. The tone of his voice is rather apathetic and flat. On the pop song Happy he sings with a very joyous voice showing what he really could do.

There is a lack of tension in song structure and the music on this release, sometimes we had the feeling that doubts of choice limited the exploration of more adventures musical directions. This nut was easily busted holding an original and daring content. Honestly, this is not our cup of tea. For those who favorite and ready for dreamy pop wave music inspired by the eighties, then this could be an interesting and outlandish journey. 
​

Patsker

krautrock / psychedelic rock / post rock

The Insektlife Cycle is no stranger to Merchants Of Air. This instrumental rock band from Manila has been featured a few times in the past several years. In 2015 I was quite amazed by their post rock influenced music, especially since the band members have a history in death metal and mathcore.

So that was rather surprising but perhaps even more remarkable: the band is already evolving away from the post rock scene. With 'Temple Of The Soul', this quartet jams itself into the world of krautrock and psychedelic anthemization (if that is a word).

The four lengthy tracks on this album have been recorded during a 150 minutes lasting jam session and recorded live on a four track cassette player. With that, it might be rather normal to be catapulted back into the sixties and seventies. Pretty much everything on this record breathes that vintage air, from the cover to the elaborate guitar solos and the overall sound quality. So no, this is no longer a post rock band, this is a psychedelic jam act that will rock your socks off if you're into this kind of stuff.

The music on the record has been cut from the original tape recording, which is quite noticeable in opener 'Unmentioned Motions'. This track does not feature an intro or anything, it just starts rocking rather suddenly. From the very beginning the drums and bass guitar provide a steady foundation over which the guitar players seem to enjoy absolute freedom. 'Sonic Sermons' is my personal favorite, mostly because of its doomy blues feel. Title track 'Temple of Our Soul' would make a neat sixties movie soundtrack.

The closer is up to you to discover. If you are a fan of long jam sessions, inspired by everything between Hendrix and Hawkwind and Pink Floyd, this album deserves a shot. Perhaps it needs some time to grow on you, but once inside, you'll never want to get out of there.


​Serge

post rock / progressive rock

I'm not a gamer. The few computer games I play appear rather laughable to the die-hard gaming community. While some are occupied with first person shooting games and others conquer ancient online worlds, I build cities or have my Sim do quite normal stuff. On the other hand, I would like to make a game. I already have a few ideas. One of them is the game being stuffed with music, mostly to enhance the atmosphere but also because I think some artists create perfect music for this kind of stuff. And that takes me to Indian one-man project Mixtaped Monk, who recently released his new album. 'How To Live Inside A VMMORPG', a neat progressive post rock album.

The story behind he album is pretty neat. A group of gamers gets stuck into a Virtual Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, titled 'Tales From Skylar'. Unable to log-out, the group now lives in the game and faces real challenges. The eight songs represent different situations and one of those tracks is the best piece of music I've heard Arka produce. While opener 'It took Forever to Decipher the meaning behind it All' is loyal to the progressive guitar driven sound of Mixtaped Monk, 'We exist in a place Hidden away from the Stars' is a musical chef d'oeuvre. Moody and melancholic, this tune expresses something playful and soothing.

Although the music is slow, Mixtaped Monk comes up with rhythm and repetitive sequences over which he frolics with guitar solos. 'Rock is still Alive but We are not' is a great example of that approach. Driving on a pulsating bass and drums foundation, the guitars whirl and flutter. Here and there Santana comes to mind. Arka is one of those musicians who prefer high notes over droning bass lines and that might set him apart from most post rock acts. Instead of bands like Explosions In The Sky or Godspeed, Mixtaped Monk seems to be inspired by Mike Oldfield and Steven Wilson.

So, if you're looking for decent progressive rock music, I'm quite sure this album will satisfy your needs. I only wonder, as I do so often with one-man acts, what would happen if Arka turns this project into a live band. The songs are great, the atmosphere is spot-on and the overall quality of this release is certainly good enjoy to be enjoyed in a live setting. Perhaps we will never know. All I know is that 'How To Live Inside A VMMORPG' is another excellent set of compositions, destined to be explored and enjoyed by a large group of prog-rock fans.


Serge

stoner rock / garage rock / sludge metal

Tårn is an album released on May 3, by South African stoner and garage rock group Ruff Majik. A very energetic, effusive and heavy album, the record, almost thirty-seven minutes long, has seven tracks: 1) Schizophrenic; 2) Gloom & Tomb; 3) I'll dig the grave; 4) Dread breath; 5) Heretically happy; 6) Speed hippie; 7) Seasoning the witch; despite the simplicity of its general structure, the sound displayed by the band in this furious work can be described as pure, mature, exceedingly powerful, resonant and lancinating. Definitely, a work that will easily please the enthusiasts of the genre.
​

There is nothing in Tårn that you haven’t heard before in similar albums. The record is predominantly abundant in incisive, brutal and rude guitar lines, hazardous and practically self-governing destructive and hallucinating, but lucid musical cohesiveness, dense and protuberating, but intense melodies, and all these elements converges altogether to consolidate with masterful elegance an intricate conjuncture of chaotic rhythmic ordinances, that imperiously gravitates towards the gracefully diligent and pervasive creative axis of a sound that collides with the symbiotic grievances of its own robust and wild consistence.  

Despite its more conventional overtones, and the lack of innovation, Tårn can be considered an excellent album, that never disappoints. With hostile, sometimes lethargic, but always brutal guitar lines – that dilutes the phantasmagoric dissonances of its aggressive behavior throughout the implosion of its sonorous, but ostensibly sensorial kingdom of wrath –, Ruff Majik conceives a sound whose stylish virtues dilapidates with cruel veracity the most lethal, tempestuous and arcane, but also flexible elements of stoner rock, concomitantly exposing with grace and salutary vivacity a mosaic of plural qualities, that will definitely expose to audiences the fantastic artistic ambitions and the extraordinary level of versatility present in the group’s music. 

With a primarily dense and heavy sound that becomes exceedingly serene and melancholic in some precise moments, the general style of Ruff Majik can be described as the perfect combination of intricate fury and vivacious energy, correctly inserted in an emotional battlefield of cohesive authorial sagacity, that extends the tissue of elegant harmonies beyond the atmosphere of perennial predictability. Exposing a graceful level of musical excellence that deserves to be widely appreciated, Tårn reveals itself as an exceptionally fantastic album, that carefully positions the creative standards for stoner rock into another perspective.  


Wagner

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

progressive rock

Dark Matter is an album released in March 29, by Polish progressive rock guitarist Tomasz Piwecki. Almost fifty minutes long, the record has nine tracks: 1) Nebula; 2) Dark matter; 3) Earth; 4) Moonlight; 5) Serum vitae; 6) Eye of the cyclone; 7) Path; 8) Storm; 9) Walls; an interesting album with highly energetic, dense and impulsive guitar lines, Dark Matter is an almost surreal journey throughout a multilayered diagram of colorful, pungent and pervasive, though somewhat ambivalent harmonies, that highlights the colossal greatness of its deeply precious and imponderable virtues, abruptly convoluted in a horizon of lucid, though proverbially diluted creativity. 

An interesting album with beautiful harmonies, Dark Matter is – anatomically and sonorously speaking – profoundly conventional, though competent and decent instrumental progressive rock. Despite some generic passages, the album is exceedingly satisfactory and its music has an organic, vibrant disposition, as well as a salutary and vivacious degree of dynamism. With ascendant harmonies devised by a dispersive mosaic of expansive guitar lines, the music style of Tomasz Piwecki is expressively lucid and sober, and definitely aggregates, though in a relatively moderate scale, a graciously genuine level of inventiveness into the genre. 

Despite some limitations – and a minor degree of musical predictabilities –, Dark Matter reveals itself to be a very good album, all the way through. With marvelously competent and proficient technical skills, Tomasz Piwecki proves that there is nothing he can’t do with a guitar. His compositional skills knows no boundaries or selective tendencies. An intelligent, complex and highly functional artist that knows how to design and display sound into different shapes, atmospheres and distinctive tonalities, this exceptional musician delivers to his audience a highly intense and pungent selection of guitar driven symphonies. 

Primordially recommended to enthusiasts of progressive rock, there is nothing in Dark Matter that you haven’t heard before in other albums of the genre. Nevertheless, the album is successful at achieving an unexpected degree of genuine artistry, gradually revealing a talented, dedicated and audacious musician that definitely conceives with his masterful creative sensibility a very personal style, fantastically exposing with his eagerness the graceful delicacy of his introspective musical restlessness. Definitely, Dark Matter is an interesting progressive rock album, that – despite some level of rhythmic and melodic limitations – has enough qualities to be moderately appreciated.


Wagner