alternative rock / noise rock

I think this is the first time I have to write a review again. I wrote this one a few months ago, in May to be exact, but apart from the title and the embedded bandcamp link, the whole thing somehow disappeared. That has never happened before. But it's ok, 'Your Kingdom, My Life' by Greek alternative rock band Three Way Plane is a stunning album.
Why? Well, because initially, Three Way Plane is a post hardcore band but over the years, they have evolved into something more interesting, adding elements from grunge, noise rock and alternative rock to their sound. Furthermore, they have never been afraid of experimenting, which is always good.

Opener 'Inner Warfare' is my favorite track in this album, a dissonant, pounding piece of noise rock that somehow sounds like a world class alternative rock song. It takes the weirdness of their previous effort and turns it into rock greatness. About that previous effort, I had this to say: "If these Greeks can manage to put as much variation and weirdness into forty minutes as in six, they're well on their way to become something that will surprise and disturb audiences everywhere."

So did they? Hell yeah, they did. Another prime example of Three Way Plane's genius is the highly immersive 'A Waltz For Unity & Love', which incidentally was the single I reviewed earlier. Today, I absolute adore this bluesy stoner noise grunge tune. I think it's was an excellent idea to put this on the full length. It shows perfectly what this band stands for: excellent music, regardless of genre restrictions. I for one can only applaud that. In fact, I have been applauding these guys so hard that they ended up in my book. 

Then, there is the punky 'Get Off Your Hands', a song that will get a large part of the audience off their feet, or banging their head. Just to show you a bit of the level of variation this album contains. You know, maybe it's a personal thing, but when I look at the alternative rock scene, bands like Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Therapy? have been the defining ones, but somehow, Three Way Plane is a defining one too. I really hope the future of alternative rock music sounds somewhat like this.

You want post psychedelic kraut funk? Listen to 'Xepiasakos Theme'. You love that old Faith No More weirdness? Try closer 'Psychic Changes'. You want post metal? You got it. Fact is, Three Way Plane are so diverse and divergent that it's impossible to categorize them properly. All I know is that is a highly recommended album, one that surprise and stun you on many occasions. Check it out, and then check it out again because it might need to grow on you for a while but it's definitely worth it.


​Serge

post rock

Slipping into another deeper kind, released on May 12, is the debut album of Finnish post rock group Emprier. An excellent, sentimental and surprising record forty two minutes long, it has only four tracks: Slipping into another deeper kind, Fresh breath of sad air, One last midnight and Some kinda wolfe. The first song – the title track – is the longest: twenty one minutes long, it is a beautiful, elusive, consistent and highly concentrated monumental epic, with poignantly serene, but intrinsically expansive harmonies, that intensifies deeply the serene and sagaciously divisive principles of profoundly subtle melodies, extraordinarily amplified by a thought of infinite density, extrapolated over a precocious universe of unprecedented sonorous collisions, unified under a soundscape of precisely gentle and graceful energizing beauty. 

Slipping into another deeper kind is a very intriguing and singular album: while it maintains at the core of its fascinating style the traditional devices of the genre, underneath the core of its fundamental musical ordinations, overcomes the path of a very peculiar sonorous dogma, which easily highlights them as a promising unity of colossal originality, where effervescently contrasting elements converge altogether to form a symbiosis of powerful majesty, that works beautifully over a galaxy of tempestuous sincerity, to undertake the values of poetic musical cadences falling through a spirit of continuous complacency.

There is an element of intentionality in Emprier’s music, that implicates in a marvelous enchantment of truth. Great harmonies and profoundly whimsical melodies provides statements of unquestionable veracities, upon which the beauty intrinsic to their music exhilarates the most overwhelming graceful oceans of tranquility that you can offer to your soul, with so many beautiful moments, that you will feel the need to listen to this album again, as soon as it is over.

With great style, and a profound sense of originality, Emprier got it right with this majestic record, Slipping into another deeper kind. A great work that will be loved unconditionally by all post rock lovers and enthusiasts around the globe, there is an undeniable component of artistic integrity and perfection infused on this work! A gracious record, that will definitely be regarded as a masterpiece, by its audience. And revealing a band with tremendous potential to the underground scene. 


Wagner

black metal

Another fantastic and fluently esoteric album released in May 10 by Swedish atmospheric black metal artist Rafn, under the alias of Hermóðr, Hädanfärd is a thoroughly poetic and splendid record, almost as excellent as the album The Howling Mountains, another masterpiece, released on December 2016. With eight tracks – I stillhet, Nord, Höst, Urskogen, Midnatt, Havsdimma, Under frusen älv and
Hädanfärd – the record is, evidently, another great pearl to be added to the history of the genre. Frugal, melodic, poignantly soft and delicate, the harmonies in general are expansively calm and laboriously smooth. For the most part, in fact, the album seems to be too overtly serene to be considered a black metal album – except, of course, for the vocals – as Hädanfärd is excruciatingly pure, desolate, true and imperiously divine.

The music of Hermóðr is characterized primarily by beauty, and by a profoundly sincere philosophical intonation, that has on the crest of sensible melodies the tangible colors of another galaxy, another dimension, another life. A truly captivating and uniquely intriguing album, Hermóðr is the quintessential atmospheric black metal artist per excellence, that brings back on the shoulders of its miraculously powerful harmonies the winds of a profusely comprehensive truth. 

Understandably, there are very recognizable musical features in his work. Hermóðr’s style is amazingly singular, and sensationally reflexive, conspiring against the abyssal darkness that is intrinsically bound to the restlessness of the human nature. In the dispersive thought of uplifting mountains of belief, the music of Hermóðr rises from the ashes of hope, to celebrate the strength of the human spirit over deception and failure.

There is no denial that his music is intrinsically captivating and beautiful, and that Hädanfärd is an exceptionally phenomenal album. Being so talented and releasing one excellent record after another, I wonder how far this terrific musician can go, being so astoundingly creative. Hermóðr’s music is full of intrinsic beauty, greatness and humanity, and all the major cosmogonies diluted in the sincerity of his art are monumental odes to the ashes upon which humankind reduced the scope of its dignity.    



Wagner

black metal

bandcamp

Touch of Eternity is an album by melodic/ atmospheric black metal Russian project MetalBlack, released on May 6. Almost one hour long, the album has eight tracks: Lost in the woods, Surrounded by beauty of the world, The drops of light, Remember, Touch of eternity, One day you'll wake up, Door into the world of mysteries and My Silence. With delicate, translucent and precociously ethereal, almost diluted songs, MetalBlack is another melodic/ atmospheric black metal project with a more reflexive and philosophic sensibility, which deeply translates in marvelously beautiful melodies, and graciously dilapidated harmonies, amazingly interlaced together in a wind of vast serenity, invariably frozen in a universe of dissonant and mysterious circumstances, paradoxically soft, and coherently peaceful.   
 
Touch of Eternity is a profoundly poetical album, permeated by dense, but natural artistic resources, that condenses elements ostensibly saturated by the delineating devices of a retroactive universe of gregarious thoughts, invariably dispersed by the consistent patterns of wonderful completion concentrated in the artist’s musical style, predisposed by the vigorous stupor of his creative intentions in an allegorical symbiosis of condescending waves of perceptive similitude. 

Although incredibly imaginative, Touch of Eternity is a little longer than expected, and the album resents itself from too much musical uniformity, and lack of rhythmic variations in some passages. Nonetheless, there is an undeniable musical grandiosity in the verge of its monumental musical echoes, that ostensibly resonates through the vehement grandiosity of the artist’s universal creative ambitions, that pervasively segregates the honor of his expansive harmonious purposes, in favor of a more ecstatic and dispersive hallucinating cosmogony. 

Touch of Eternity, undoubtedly, is a surprisingly good and decent album. In fact, very close to excellent, if you allow me to write sincerely. With beautiful melodies, and the vigorous authenticity of a style that knows how to adorn consistent rhythms with amazingly captivating harmonies, MetalBlack has really created a record with a poignantly impeccable musical audacity. Unfortunately, in my final evaluation, while the album doesn’t deserve to be labeled as a major work of art, it has, indeed, its fair share of qualities, and the artist in question really has a great knowledge about what he is doing, and what he has to do, to achieve his artistic intentions. When – somewhere in the future – he finds himself able to contemplate the true point of collision behind the veracity of a more concise album, combined with the highly concentrated amount of energy that he ably produced on this work, then MetalBlack will be able to release a tremendously beautiful, graceful and shocking work of art!             


Wagner

drone / ambient / electronic

Sea of Tranquility is the most recent album by an unknown electronic music artist, known only by the alias of Realm. Thirty minutes long, the record has only three tracks: the eponymous Sea of Tranquility, We Will Return to the Stars and Majestic Embrace. With a quiet, subtle and introspective musical proposal, that deeply perpetuates at the alignment of its obscurely serene melodies the confluence of a sonorous secrecy bound by the terrain of virtuous and intensely glorifying harmonies, Sea of Tranquility is a silent ghost among shadows, trying to duplicate the inspirational vicissitudes of its graceful healings in a liquid world of voracious opacity, upon which all states of consciousness rely quiet on a single element of musical confinement. 

Superficially, Sea of Tranquility can be described as the traditional ambient/ drone album, although the record really has unexpected qualities, and a very singular style of its own. With somber nuances, and a marvelous stream of darker intonations – without being de facto a mostly obscure album – Sea of Tranquility really has a pervasively subtle layer of ambiguity deeply entranced into the sound. It is almost possible to feel a wonderful lust for sincerity ostensibly evaluated at the axial truth of its sonorous perceptive guidance, located inside the primordial hardline of the voracious symptoms of its delusional sense of artistry.

Definitely a very interesting album, that expands the colossal greatness of its veracity inside the dense spectacle of its relentless musical dogma, Sea of Tranquility seems to fulfill the sensibility of a wider scale of nobility into a very pragmatic level of darkness, upon which the senses gets used to a very profound type of descendant wave. And all that you can feel, suddenly, is another kind of universe touching your skin, your senses, your mind, and finally, your soul. A warm journey profoundly exhilarated by the greatness of an exacerbated sensibility, conducted by an ambivalent musical vehicle, that departs from the engines of your own spirit.

Definitely, Sea of Tranquility is a very perceptive and introspective album, upon which the listener will be able to wander, in a perpetual dream-like state, that closely resembles a unity with nothingness. A profound intimacy with the unknown deep space, this album really enables anyone to find the deepest treasures of one’s own truth.   


Wagner

black metal

As We Were When We Were Not is the debut album of English atmospheric black metal group Mountains Crave, released by Italian record label Avantgarde Music on May 13. Almost forty four minutes long, the album has six tracks: Ynisvitrin, Istigkeit (We Saw Them Of Old), Clear Light Of The Void, Arise O Magnificent Sun, As We Were When We Were Not and Theophany. A thoroughly captivating, original, vigorous and imponderable album, that has on the axis of its genuinely creative strength a mordacious veil of authenticity the genre has never experienced before, As We Were When We Were Not really elevates black metal to a very distinct pattern, achieving a planetary degree of desperate beauty never seen in the history of the underground scene. With delicacy, sensibility, poetic splendor and graceful nobility, the music of Mountains Crave abundantly promotes a perpetual cycle of transience, that becomes indefinitely lost in the most marvelous state of its antagonistic purity, sanctioning a wonderful state of grace never testified in the sonorous atmosphere of Black Metal before, although the style of Mountains Crave vehemently retains the most marvelous aspects of the genre, reworking them with such an amazing artistry, that you really don’t believe what you are listening too. 

With a poignant, but sensible esteem for a craving beauty, that adorns the melodies with the collision of a struggle that keeps the elements of its soul unforgivingly pure to the senses, Mountains Crave amazingly works at the flesh of its laboriously pervasive musical components the sideline of vibrant melodies, interchanged with the composite features of a sincere, but aggressive resurgence of a sentimental rebellion. As a result, the genuine and meticulous sonorous dilapidation effectively ordained in their work has built a cosmic veracity fairly unique, for such a monumental scale of extraordinary principles.          

Inevitably, the inherent axis disrupted by the musical dynamics of the group is characterized by a vigorous originality, that splendidly reconciles the melodic tenure of their intuitive sensibility, with the atmospheric principles of a more ethereal and diluted introspective sound, ostensibly and deliberately delineated by the natural layers of the painful solitude relevantly felt by the gracious nature of their music.  

With a tremendously impactful result, As We Were When We Were Not is a formidable album, that has generated a new level of artistic insurgency and proficiency for atmospheric black metal, in such a magnificent scale that the underground will never be same again.   


Wagner

post rock

All Shall Rise, All Shall Prosper is an album by Russian post rock group We Shine Every Night, released on May 1. A very concise album, only thirty six minutes long, it has only six tracks: Pax Romana, Kings And Queens Day, Broken Union, Gardens Of The Night, Guiding Hand and The Light Of Our First Days. A beautiful album, with more cozy, graceful and uplifting harmonies, All Shall Rise, All Shall Prosper is no ordinary post rock album: the melodies are happier, expansive and less diluted, becoming, at least in my personal analysis, very close to school styled indie rock, as a whole. As a matter of fact, if vocals were added to the songs, you could positively say that All Shall Rise, All Shall Prosper is an indie rock album, at least in some of its more promising passages. But it should be noted that this fact doesn’t diminish their value as a musical group, on the contrary: adding a more solicited flavor to their sound, We Shine Every Night becomes a refuge of grace, lucidity and simplicity, while escaping the ordinary ordeals of the genre in a more intense and coherent basis.

We Shine Every Night have somewhat a very simple, but captivating style. The music is basically panoramic, and standardizes at the virtues of its nobilities the principles upon which the fortunes of their melodies are balanced: a vortex of perennial beauty, centered in a convergent universe of plural sensibilities, where your soul will easily rest, as long as the music is able to perpetuate the intrinsic cosmogonies of heaven at the foundations of your heart.    

Although their style is simple, more ecstatic and cinematic than dynamic, there is a confluence of vivid beauty that displays a paradisiac vortex of musical integrity within their consistent paradigm of predisposed creativity. Patience and resignation overcomes the turbulent sidelines of exhaustion, that their music easily cure, with the balm of slow recovery, anticipated by the healing harmonies of a majestic soundscape, that passes by the exhilarating overview of your imagination, always propelled by the magnanimous devices of a world unknown to the abysses of our concealed indolence.      

Evidently – despite its abundant conjuncture of qualities – I don’t categorize  All Shall Rise, All Shall Prosper, by We Shine Every Night, as a masterpiece, but the album should be recognized as a fundamental milestone of the genre. Different, genuine, and with some elements of intriguing originality, here we certainly have a promising post rock group, that has everything to consolidate a great and powerful reputation in the worldwide underground scene.    


Wagner

black metal

bandcamp

Heathen Spring is an album released in May 10 by atmospheric black metal artist Herrwulf. Fifty one minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Winter's End, Maiden Of The Sun, Hymn For Victory, Sunwheel, Sigrblot, Omen and Return Of The Valkyrjur. A very interesting record, with smooth and constant melodies, Heathen Spring is, in several ways, a more typical atmospheric black metal album, with transient harmonies and softly reinstated rhythms. Nevertheless, the music on Heathen Spring is vehemently infused with a profoundly dense and intrinsically normative sense of beauty, and has a deeply understated, but subtle and extraordinary perception of normality as well, which makes the record a beautiful consonantal case of ambient infused work.   

With calmer and beautifully adorned melodies, Heathen Spring, like a lot of other albums in the genre – except for the vocals – doesn’t seem a black metal record at all, even if you labeled it atmospheric, despite the serene and soft vibration that encircles the work. With its instrumental passages reminiscent of a dark and laboriously worked alternative/ gothic rock, I think that the correct thing to reiterate about Herrwulf’s work is the fact that his style is an experimental grace, infatuated with intuitive influences from a lot of other genres, although ambient music plays a pivotal role in his magnanimous artistry.

You may not find this work – at first, at least – too daring, groundbreaking or innovative, but undoubtedly, there is a genuine quest for something new here, as the artist clearly has developed a style of his own in the work. With poignantly intense and precise razor blade guitar lines, that paradoxically can be felt as profoundly soft as well, Heathen Spring has seven amazingly conceived tracks, that brings fresh new elements to the genre, as a whole.  

With a unique understanding of his genre of choice, Herrwulf has conceived a beautiful and interesting work of art, upon which he has engraved progressive and subtle evolutionary scales into the musical mosaic of his gracious creation, that are vibrant throughout the elemental soul of his style, all the way throughout the work. With a peculiarly dense, but marvelous vision of sentimental objectivity, Heathen Spring seems to develop a new sonorous feature, that will shape a classic sonorous distinction to the genre. This becomes clear throughout the album’s splendorous journey, and only a great, audacious and exponentially creative artist will have the strength, the bravery and the overall talent to do that!    
 

Wagner

post rock

From Mountains is the debut album, released on April 14, by the eponymous English post rock group. A very concise record, only half an hour long, From Mountains has five tracks: Outside the Joybox, And We Danced, Juno Meet Jupiter, When We Painted the Sky and Eta Carinae. With delicate and graceful melodic space ambient styled songs, the musical anatomy of the group is relaxed, expansive and evasively subtle, but brings at the confluence of its perfectly symmetric wingspan a detailed and exponentially beautiful cosmogony of serenity, that creates an overwhelming cure for despondency, being at the same time the very own essence of despondency itself, but in a precise and accurately sensible deliverance of splendor.  

The music of the group is characterized by silence in between the notes, although the harmonies are splendidly vigorous, and the general sound departs from a world where intangible meanings are more relevant than the general redemption of their seemingly unrelated sonorous persona. Despite an apparent lack of vivaciousness, their style is profoundly monumental. There is a great scale cohesion of sonorous values that, although is somewhat common in the genre, it is not frequently found presented in the way From Mountains shapes their music, which is full of serene, but formidably dilapidated creative soundscapes, regulated by the confluence of a perfectly devised equilibrium, upon which they developed their art. 

At first, you may not be too much impressed by them, but I guarantee that, after only a few minutes, you will become enchanted. Like a sensible cloud of ethereal emancipation, impregnated in a harmonious ether of ambivalent beauty, From Mountains delivers a stream of surreal sonorous elasticity, overwhelmingly shaped in a dream-like state, that takes the listener to a marvelous journey through the universe that is lost inside the blank spaces of one’s soul, opening possibilities of marvelous discoveries, upon which the music becomes the vehicle for this wonderful paradise. 

My final evaluation, undoubtedly, is related to the fact that From Mountains eponymous debut album is a marvelous work of art. Concise, meaningful, beautiful, poetic and incredibly delightful, this great record has the power to exert a profound and sincere impact on its audience, by delivering thirty minutes of amazingly created music, in a way you haven’t experienced before in your life.   


Wagner

post rock / post metal

This is an untitled album released on May 12, that is a split between Japanese post rock project Of decay and sublime, and Russian post metal group Sequoian Aequison. A little more than forty seven minutes long, the record has four tracks: the first two – Womb and Parhelion – played by Of decay and sublime, and the other two – Caverna and Nemuri – played by Sequoian Aequison. A very interesting album, here we can testify the major confluence of two very interesting groups, that has a lot of contrasts and similarities as well. With a sound that complements one another wonderfully, these two groups have a lot in common, but each one has worked and developed a style according to a very singular set of principles and sensibilities.   

While Of decay and sublime has more tender elements sidelined to the invisible ocean of a splendorous outline of graciously poetic attachments, the sound tends to filtrate the normal correlations of extremely floating melodies, standardized over a stream of harmonious symmetries, that perfectly highlights at the axis of the music a majestic universe of restrained turbulence, easily surpassed by a joyful pragmatism destined to overcome the tempestuous elements of the fallacious shadows of inexistent sentiments.  

Sequoian Aequison, on the other hand, displays a thoroughly heavier sound, that dissipates over the abysses of a despondent soul all the dust and darkness conceived by the loneliness of a sad spirit. In the deserted desolation of a gray horizon, Sequoian Aequison’s sound complements, perceives and condensates the subtle hostility of the environment in a pervasive scale of dissonant consternations, indefinitely sidelined by an evasive solitude of constantly painful perceptions of life. 

This split album definitely is a very beautiful, gracious and ultimately striking combination. Two amazing artists, whose sonorous characteristics complement one another so overwhelmingly, and yet, each one with its own distinctions, and respective musical styles. With a perfectly balanced symmetry of harmonic values, greatly distributed in the shapes of intensely sensible, and incredibly well dilapidated melodies, definitely this record stands as one of the best split albums that I have heard.            


Wagner

avant garde / metal / post metal

Saule is the debut album of the eponymous Polish crossover post metal act, released by Italian record label Avantgarde Music, on May 13. Forty one minutes long, the record has seven tracks: I, II, III, IV, V, VI and O. A brilliantly conspicuous, sagaciously unreserved, pervasively ambivalent and profoundly monumental album, with consistently epic elements, Saule reverberates through the colossal components of its own intrinsic beauty thoroughly exacerbated and melancholically dense desperate devices, that harmoniously shapes the melodic oceans of sensibilities upon which their music is crafted, and intelligently expands the fundaments of its redeemed phantasmagoric labor. 

Marvelously beautiful and thoroughly efficient, the style of Saule has an imperative grandiosity centered in wonderfully shaped and sculpted melodies, that brings at the confluence of its sonorous axis the experience of a sound convergence that reiterates the strength of a formidable and inextricable creativity. Sidelined at the lucidity of its ambitious harmonies, it is possible to observe the birth of entire universes, craving in the linear opacity of its thought the fugacious galaxy of a serenity that dreams way ahead the philosophy of its delightful whispers. In the corners of a delicate and splendidly voracious sensibility, Saule becomes the ethereal veil of melodies covered in dust, upon which the world has buried the coalescence of its unwanted dreams.  

Although the album is deeply submerged most of the time in a beautiful and almost hypnotic density of a marvelous instrumental ocean of deeply saturated sensibilities, there are thoroughly gracious vocal passages, that highlights the subtle style of the group to another path of reflexive grace. Stricken by an aggressive stupor of melancholy, the sound seems to levitate between somewhat inexistent monumental spheres of fallacious agony, and afflictive worlds of dying secrecy, upon which the fundamental principles of our soul becomes diluted, but keeps feeding at the fountain of the music’s essence. 

Despite some sonorous uniformity, Saule’s debut is a great and very unexpected record. A genuine and incredibly original work of art, full of gracious energy and displaying a genuine vortex of melodic infallibility, in thoroughly consistent rhythmical dissonances that creates a very singular dimension of plural expansions, Saule condenses the pressure of a gas giant into a symbiotic strength of versatile proclivities, meticulously engendered to pronounce the fugacious doom of a universe lost at the insensitive fables of our own inhumane hearts. So, summarizing, a formidably creative and astoundingly terrific album. 


Wagner

electronic / ambient

bandcamp

Chime is an album by an unknown artist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, known only by the alias of Quietest. Released on May 12, Chime is a rather eccentric, but beautiful album, whose genre is described as “generative ambient inspired by wind chimes” on the artist’s bandcamp page. One hour long, the record has only six numbered unnamed tracks, ten minutes each. A very good album, pretty effective for the purposes of relaxation, Chime is a subtle, but efficient work of minimalist tendencies, upon which your mind would do the work, way more than the music itself.  

A very interesting album, despite minimal musical proclivities, Chime can inspire the mind of the listener to wander through a great vastness of colorful, dense and sensible universes. If your emotions were deeply aligned to the serene and sentimental waves of the work, you will certainly have the most pleasant journey throughout a world of perennial beauty, profoundly seen by the vivid illusions of infallible perceptions.

Nevertheless, the listener really has to be exactly on the same level of introspective serenity, and interior relaxation, as unveiled by the music, otherwise the sonorous experience will be too much monotonous. And what could be a marvelous perceptive journey throughout one’s own inspirational and personal world will turn into a despondent and anxious tedious task.  

Chime is perfect for relaxing moments. Besides the music being beautiful, the length of the work offers greatly surreal experiences for perception and meditative exercises. Although the music itself doesn’t have too much value alone, it is amazingly brilliant if combined with the correct ambience, and directed towards a very specific purpose, like the aforementioned meditation. For people who have already a certain kind of affinity towards relaxing music, Chime is a highly recommended album. A gracious work, splendidly conceived at the height of the most precious and refined style of the genre, the album has profound, but subtle melodies, perfectly solidified at the heart of the miraculous vicinities of its own pure purposes and delightful perceptive intentions. 


Wagner

death metal

"Death-punk", that's what the band calls their music but to me this is old school death metal, testicle ripping death metal even. I have no idea where the "punk" tag comes from, although I have to admit that there is a dash of that anarchistic attitude in here. Anyway, first things first. Hereza is a band from Croatia, formed in 2014. According to the info I can find, the band members moved to Germany and Ireland in 2016 but they still managed to record this delightful piece of brutal blasphemy.

What do you get on this album? Well, old school death metal, crushing guitars, a deep, growling voice (plus here and there a few punk screams) and mosh pit inducing tempos. From opener and title track 'I Become Death', these guys drags you into a whirlpool of distorted riffs and pummeling drums. That song reminds me of Dismember, which is probably the reason why I like this album so much.

Yeah, I do, me, the one who stopped listening to death metal after the classics by Entombed, Sepultura, Death, Suffocation and the aforementioned Dismember. But what Hereza is currently blasting through my speakers, is the one album that drags me right back in. Fierce tempos, insane guitars and an immersive speed. You don't need anything else to start that blood-gushing death metal orgy.

No, take it from me. This is one of the greatest death metal albums I've heard in years. It comes with a relentless groove. Songs like ''Homo Homini Lupus Est' and 'Full Moon Slaughter' are awesome beatdowns and they are far from the only ones on this album. On the latter, even the brilliant Götheborg scene comes to mind, improving the overall quality and level of variation. If you are a fan of death metal, you need this. If you don't like it, you might want to reconsider your musical preferences...


​Serge

post rock / indie

From eerie black metal to a soothing blend of post rock and indie rock. It's all in a day's work for a Merchants Of Air reviewer. In that aspect, this certainly is one of the most varied jobs in the world. But enough about me, let's talk about this album, the fourth by German combo Nihiling. Much like the poles an actual battery, this album seems to have two different sides too, even though you can easily place it among your favorite post rock albums. 

The first four tracks are post rock induced indie rock songs. Yes, songs, with vocals. With a calm, relaxed atmosphere, these tunes are beautifully immersive, and that comes from someone who is not a fan of vocals in this kind of music. Then again, with a sound in between acts like Ef, Foals, The XX and more traditional post rock bands, Nihiling certainly delivered something captivating and convincing, something even Sigur Ros has never managed to do for me.

Part two of the record consists of four elaborate instrumental post rock songs in the vein of bands like This Will Destroy You, Mogwai or Explosions In The Sky. For me personally, these are the four highlights of the album. 'Cellardoor' is my favorite track, a brilliantly built-up piece of music which is simply irresistible to fans of the genre. It shows exactly how good this band is in instrumental songwriting. 

In all, I think this is an excellent album, certainly worthy of your attention. If you are a fan of post rock, this one definitely deserves a spot on your undoubtedly overloaded shelf. So go ahead, check it out and allow yourself to dwell in the captivating sound of Nihiling. I'm positive that you will not regret it...


Serge

black metal

English black metal duo Hokedun return with a new ep after their 2016 album 'Succumbing to Decay' (read our review). Still incredibly loyal to their DIY-attitude, this ep comes in the form of a CDR, limited to fifty copies. The ep contains seven tracks, three of them being old school black metal tunes and the others being short instrumental interludes.

The build up and the level of variation are quite similar to their previous effort, which is a good thing. Furthermore, the three black metal tracks are excellent pieces of work, certainly suited for every fan of the vintage, grimm and atmospheric sound of the genre. In that, title track 'Bleak And Harrowing Journey' is a firm highlight in this band's career. 

I think it's good that, in times when traditional black metal is often pushed away behind the whole post-scene, bands like Hokedun excel and come up with excellent releases. I can only recommend this album to all you old schoolers out there. It has the right atmosphere, the right sound and the right attitude. Check it out, you won't be disappointed.


​Serge 

ambient / downtempo / post rock

On the somewhat quieter sound of the musical spectrum, we find Indian one man project Mixtaped Monk and his deeply emotional music. On 'Urban Lonesome', the project flirts with ambient, post rock and downtempo music, be it in a very minimal style. The tracks on this album are slow, atmospheric pieces of music with soundscapes, electronic percussion and a few oriental influences.

Other acts that come to mind while listening to songs like 'City Of Changes' or 'Lonesome Drifter' include Plaid and Boards Of Canada. In fact, this albums would fit right in between the works of these acts and probably some other Warp residents too. On other occasions, as in 'Futile Festivities' elements of cinematic post rock shine through, driven by gentle guitars plucks and soundscapes.

Perhaps, if there is one point of criticism to be given, it might be the somewhat sterile sound of the album. Although the tracks are quite immersive pieces of music, I still miss something. I'm not sure what it is but I think I can explain it. This project has been around since 2016 and is still in the process of careful experimentation. For now, that resulted in a splendid album, one that certainly deserves you attention. Yet, I think in a few years, Mixtaped Monk will realize that this was just the beginning and grow ever prouder of his most recent work.

The verdict? 'Urban Lonesome' is a splendid album, best to be enjoyed with a good glass of wine and a decent meal, or in a comfortable, meditative position. It shows an artist worth keeping an eye on, certainly if he decides to take his experimental efforts to a next level. Only time will tell what he comes up with in the future but I bet it's interesting enough to follow. So, check it out and judge for yourself. A talent might be blooming here...


​Serge

stoner rock / alternative rock / grunge

Hell yeah, rock 'n fucking roll, causing desert level reaching temperatures and making me regret that I don't have a car. This is road music pur sang, perfectly suited for a cross country trip. Well, in most countries it is. In Belgium I wouldn't recommend going on a cross country trip by car. Our traffic is awful. Our highways look exactly the same as our parking spots, filled with stationary cars and fighting families. 

Wait, sorry, I'm digressing again. 

Her Name Was Fire is a Portuguese duo, formed in 2015 or 2016 after a heated conversation about rock music.  Shortly after, they found themselves in some kind of room, rocking their asses off to their own groovy mix of of stoner rock and grunge. They liked what they heard and decided to record an album. That thing is now available for your enjoyment and here are a few reasons why you check it out.

One. It rocks. That first song, 'Little Pain' is a smasher and it's far from the only one on this album. It's an uptempo rocker, delivered straight from the nineties. It brings all the goodness of Queens Of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters and Nirvana. The whole album is loaded with these groovy and fuzzy tunes, irresistible to stoner rockers and grunge adepts alike. Even when the tempo goes down, the songs never lose their immersive character. 

Two. This album contains some of the best vocal performances I have ever heard in this scene. Both musicians sing, quite often together, which enhances the joyous and powerful atmosphere of the whole thing. Furthermore, Nirvana's 'Heart Shaped Box' must have been a big influence, coincidentally one of the grunge songs with the best vocals lines. The song 'Way To Control' even manages to come up with poppy and punky vocals and they work bloody damn well.

Three. It rocks. It rocks so damn well that I have decided to turn it into a reason twice. My absolute favorite here is 'Summer Strummer', another irresistible uptempo blaster. There's a touch of noise rock in that one too, which obviously is another huge plus. Oh well, maybe I'm just being nostalgic for those awesome and exhilarating nineties. Then again, some huge band forgot to record this album back then and Her Name Was Fire turned it in a potential future classic now.


​Serge

post rock / ambient

Transition is a post rock/ ambient album by Iranian musician Moein Roshan, released on April 12, under the alias of False Horizon. A beautiful, sensible and lucid epic monumental masterpiece, the record is eighty minutes long, and has thirteen tracks: Trauma, I've Fallen For You, Floting Memories, Solitude, Let The Rain Wash Away Your Pain, Fate Falling Upwards, Who Am I, Last station, Face Your Fears, Transition, Lights, Walking Barefoot on Grass and Set Your New Clock, Meet Your New Life. With highly energized and sensible melodies, Transition is a pure, introspective and fugaciously delicate record, majorly consistent and superbly conceived. With inspiring harmonies, and a very subtle take on life, the rhythms are increasingly soft, and outwardly profound, as they descend into a demanding, but nevertheless beautiful synergy of natural sonorous convergences, that comprehend the indulgences of an extremely serene and calmer universe, hidden within ourselves, but almost always invisible to the dense solitude elements of our own intrinsic nature. The exceptional redeeming component vehemently inserted into the songs materializes a fragile perception of beauty within the listener, and all that you can claim for is for this astounding universal perception of highness to never end. 

Transition’s music is profoundly exacerbated within the uniqueness of its own elements. With a calmer configuration of dissonant sounds, the atmosphere upon which the work reproduces itself finds an echo in the ethereal walls of your soul, and elevates to the masterful principles of our origins the transmuted benevolence of our own beliefs, even to the point of reprograming its own recidivist thoughts of marvelous acquiescence towards the harmonious sentiment of a divisive time, filled by the sonorous neighborhood of a wonderful past. 

Although the artist’s style can be regarded as quite simple, and the plain atmosphere of the music as ordinary and uniform, there is a genuine and very audacious flavor, that inherently captures the most vivid idiosyncrasies within the scope of his work. Abundantly shaping delicate and passionate harmonies on the sideline of a graceful and perceptive atmosphere of sincerity, the artist’s profoundly dilapidated style reveals pungent and effectively sculpted melodies, that always grew at the ardent epicenter of its own magnanimous origins. 

Transition is a very magnificent and whimsically absolute work. At the axis of its own complete artistry, False Horizon dwells to conform to the higher standards of a marvelously fantastic sonorous universe, where everything that you are searching for was already masterminded in fabulously omniscient elements, perpetually hidden inside the labyrinths of your soul. The music’s vibration is able to awake all of these excruciatingly intense points of potential. So, let the music fill its purpose. 


Wagner

southern rock / blues / rock

Uno is the debut album by American Southern Rock trio Pinto Graham, from New Haven, Connecticut, released on May 5. Forty two minutes long, the album has ten tracks: Hell Train, Counting Coup, Ghost Town, Gambler, The Creeper, Fire, Bootlegger Blues, Wind n Heel, Low Road and High Flyer. One of the best albums that I have heard on the genre, the melodies are dynamic and intelligent, explicitly creative, and effusively energetic, in the best tradition of southern blues rock. Certainly, a magnificent and intriguing pearl that aggregates a definitive principle of colorful motion into the harmonies, with an innovative approach that profoundly conserves the traditional elements of the genre, Uno is an album as soft as it is abrasive, and dilapidates in the constraints of its splendid rhythmical dissonance greatly shaped sonorous dilacerations, pervasively amplified in the exhilaration of magnificent guitar lines, a furious musical technique and an astounding convergence of musical components. 

With a creative magnetism that pullulates at the confluence of a creative zone amazingly proficient, the harmonies on Uno concentrates their energy in the pragmatic axiom of expansive melodies, that never interfere with the logical audacity of its basic intonations. And bringing with them the major and most significant influences we could ever think of, Pinto Graham has formatted their sound to be the best their abilities can provide. And what a tremendous result! You can listen to this album two, or three times in a row, and still feel energized and enthusiastic about it!

Sincerely, I don’t see any flaws or disappointments here. Their music is tremendously magnificent: major melodies, perfectly aligned with astoundingly beautiful and captivating harmonies, all meticulously framed in a picture of technical excellence, to deliver one of the best albums ever conceived in the modern history of the genre. 

Uno is a great album, and Pinto Graham is a formidable band, with a promising future in the underground music scene. Fantastic and tremendously exciting, there is an energy, a vitality and a pure vivacious sense of originality that certainly has the potential to consolidate them as a leading act in their musical genre of choice.                      


Wagner

ambient / darkwave / avant garde

Darkness Is Dressed Black is an album released on May 8 by darkwave/ ambient/ avant-garde electronic musical project Deadly Oak, designed by Spanish artist Vadym Sycantrhope. With nine tracks – Abducted By Stranger, Try To, Hold Me (My Monster), Blood Is Life, Zero, Aethetic Apocalypse, Occasional Tragedy, Underneath The Surface and Stay – Darkness Is Dressed Black is a terrific and superbly unexpected album, and has on the virtual despondencies of its lurid insinuations the majestic – and thoroughly relevant – force of his artistic persona. With the darker nuances of sagaciously somber melodies, that seems to act as sideline hallucinations to the subtle grievances of his extraordinary and pervasively expansive musical dimensions, the album carries on the conspicuous and unforgiving grotesqueness of its style the drastic and more vivacious elements that Sycantrhope always brings with him, under the Deadly Oak moniker.    

A marvelous album, that has on the experimental verve of his seemingly audacious creative compositions a relentless desire to break sonorous boundaries, Darkness Is Dressed Black has no fear in what concerns the outline of its own deeply fugacious, but consistent sonorous configurations: relying on an almost perfect elaboration of a creepy and sordid atmosphere of infamous expectation the laborious art of a genuinely afflictive despondency, upon which every track seems to be opening something sinister towards the unknown. The atmospheres are evidently eager to celebrate the incongruous density of a bizarre planetary isolation, where all delusions of its virtual sensibilities perpetuate the solitude upon which your soul gets deeply confined, while the sound vividly promotes in your perfidious melancholy an intense conflagration of emotions. In the practical axiom of the imperiously consistent worlds created by the intangible density of the sound waves that thoroughly dissipates the anatomy of your soul, the harmonious emancipation of musical allegories that you feel masterly aggregates in your genome the insidious and tempestuous sensation of a world doomed to end in a matter of instants. 

Masterly creating anxious, afflictive and agonizing atmospheres of a hyperbolic lucid exhilaration, Darkness Is Dressed Black is overwhelmed by what Deadly Oak does best: the majestic confluence of several different electronic genres and musical elements, to conflate them into an abrasive set of melodies, adorned by the convoluted rapture of unsolicited shadows, that dream of escaping to the real world, while offending – and feeding – the irrational instability of the artist’s – as well as the listener’s – creative devices. 

More subtle and ambivalent than his previous Deadly Oak work, Darkness is Dressed Black leads the listener to a profound abyss of surreal – and almost pathological – nothingness, that literally feeds your imagination with whatever the things you dare to keep inside your head. Being the perfect soundtrack to a day in a parallel dimension of everlasting fugacity and ecstatic eternity, this album literally has the power to bring about the most elusive and despondent lethargy that you keep hidden within yourself. With the power to attract a symbiosis and a multitude of creative collisions inside a conspicuous myriad of emotional turbulent distances, Darkness Is Dressed Black is another demonstration of the incredible artistic power of Deadly Oak, always ready to surprise its audience, in the best and most inconceivable way possible!     

 
Wagner