drone / ambient

What would happen if you asked five musicians to improvise a soundtrack for a presentation of your film in a church in Paris and record it? That's what Ho Tzu Nyen must have asked himself, and I'm very glad he realized this. His post-apocalyptic film Earth must be very impressive according to what I've read about it, but also according to what comes out of the speakers. 

French drone quartet Foudre hadn't met neoclassical composer Christine Ott before the day of the concert, which adds to the magic of this album. The eerie tones of her ondes martenot match perfectly with the equally nostalgic and intriguing sounds generated by multiple analog synthesisers. Guitar-driven drones and several electronic effects make the general atmosphere complete: an expert level of immersion... 

Give a shoulder massage to a cat and you'll see the same effect as this music has on me. I'd purr equally loudly if I could. But restricted by my human form, I just sit motionless while the soul balming sounds do their work. What an album! 

For fans of all things that drone out of the box. 


​Eline

shoegaze / post-punk / alternative rock

Things you do not want to experience as a band: arriving at your rehearsal room only to find out that someone had broken in and stolen the equipment. That happened to Belgian post punk act The Mary Hart Attack and, needless to say, they were devastated. Still, they stubbornly kept working on their debut full-length and crowdfunded themselves some new equipment. Now, that album is ready to be released, and it's a blast.

The album opens with the song 'In Dreams' which is basically Joy Division meets Sonic Youth. There is a lot of noise and feedback, tonnes of energy and a dark, aggressive atmosphere. In short, the perfect opener for a brilliant post post record. From then on, the band takes on a what can only be described as a vintage post punk journey. The earlier mentioned bands are never far away, which is a good thing.

'Spiders' is a great song too, slower but immersive as hell. It is followed by one of my absolute favorites here, the uptempo and mesmerizing 'All Wrong No Bliss' which drives on an almost industrial drum beat. This one will get many people shaking their butts off at gigs, no doubt about that. Who knows, maybe I will be one of them too. My feet are already tapping along and my head nods like a madman.

By now, we're halfway through the album and I have decided that this album is one where we Belgians should be proud of. It's one of the most dynamic and entertaining alternative rock albums I've heard recently, just listen to the murderous 'This Room' (after it's strange intro). If that doesn't get you off your feet, you might as well amputate them. That was a little joke, please do not amputate your feet.

Anyway. I guess it's clear by now that The Mary Hart Attack is a firm candidate to become the next big thing in alternative Belgium. I won't be surprised when these guys appear in Humo and on Studio Brussel a lot from now on. I will be surprised if they don't end up on the bills of Pukkelpop, Rock Werchter or Marktrock. They definitely deserve it, especially with such a vintage sounding and immersive album as this one.


​Serge

psychedelic / blues / stoner rock

Well, after two ambient albums, it was time for something different, something where the guitars, drums and rough vocals reign supreme. This one is something for the desert rockers among us, and I won't be surprised if I get to see this French duo perform these tunes on the upcoming edition of Desertfest. However, since we're not there yet, let's enjoy these six searing hot psychedelic blues rock songs.

The inspiration for these songs seem to come directly from the Mississippi Delta where blues legends like Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker rose to fame. Yes, the means blues, laced by the contemporary rock of bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd or Creedence Clearwater Revival. Furthermore, Blackbird Hill throws in some psychedelic rock here and there, like in the awesome opener 'Trigger Law'.

My personal favorite on this album is a long ballad 'Stories From The Road'. I know, I'm a sucker for ballads, but believe me, it's a damn good one. The whole album is damn good, raising the temperature to desert levels and putting the listener in a deep, blissful trance. What else could you possible want? So yes, psychedelic stoner blues fans of all ages, you might have discovered a new favorite here...


​Serge 

ambient / drone / experimental

Polar Seas Recordings

Another album from from Polar Seas Recordings and mesmerizing piece of ambient. 'Up Below' by April Larson is a dark, mystifying and inspiring album that every fan of (dark) ambient needs to check out. I put the word 'dark' between parentheses because I'm not exactly sure if this is meant to be a dark ambient album, but it damn well is. The eight tracks on this one are eerie soundscapes and quite often sound like the desperate cries of doomed souls.

Not that I mind, on the very contrary. This album only came in a few days ago and it is already a constant in my ever growing ambient playlist. With good reason too, it's a brilliant album. It's so good that I only have one point of criticism: seven of these tracks are way too short. Like many of us, I am a fan of long, elaborate and stretched out sonic landscapes which seem to last forever. Oh well, I guess I'll just put them on endless repeat.

That being said, you might also say that this album lacks variation as pretty much everything here consists of these haunting soundscapes and drones. However, we ambient aficionados really don't mind, as long as the atmosphere is right. And in that April Larson definitely succeeded. This album comes highly recommended to all ambient fans, bright or dark, doesn't matter. I strongly suggest checking it out. You will not be disappointed.


​Serge

ambient / experimental

Polar Seas Recordings

This is probably one of the most adventurous ambient albums I have heard in a while, and certainly the one with the most tracks. There are no less than twenty-five of them on this album, most of them short studies of a certain instrument or soundscapes while others are nicely elaborated pieces of music. I have been playing this album a few times in the past few days, mostly while writing my book, and I have to say, this one never gets one-sided. It always makes you wonder, "what is coming next?"

I'm not going into a song-by-song description with this one, but I have to pick out some tunes, just to show you how diverse this whole thing really is. It starts with an opener which features the voice of Veronika Zakonjšek. She appears on more songs, but out of those, 'Moje Misli' is my favorite, a mysterious soundscape, luring the listener in. The song is followed by my absolute favorite on this album, 'Sepastia', which reminds me of both O Yuki Conjugate and Deutsch Nepal. It's a rhythmic track and a damn immersive one too.

'Cutter' is a strange, otherworldly piece of music, short but certainly captivating. 'Vertigo' is an eerie track, one that reminds of either very experimental ethereal music or stripped down post-rock. 'ColourEyes' is possibly even stranger. Then there are vintage old school ambient passages, dark drones, classical arrangements and uplifting plucked snares. With that being said, this album just never ceases to grab your interest, even if the songs are rather short. You still have a seventy minutes lasting sonic adventure here.

But now the hardest part, who exactly to recommend it to? Well, see it this way. 'Ghost Folk' is one of those albums that has the power to get you acquainted with new things while still containing everything you like about ambient music. It's relaxing, it's spooky, it's surprising and it's incredibly diverse. So yeah, this is one that every ambient fan should listen to, at least once. Check it out, you might be pleasantly surprised here and there...


​Serge

funeral doom

From delightful post rock we dive into the dark, depressive world of funeral doom, again with an act I'm happy to hear again. Russian one-man funeral doom act Funeral Tears returns with his third full length. This act by Nikolay Seredov (leader of bands like Стахановцы [Stakhanovite] and Taiga) has pleasantly surprised me in the past, not only because this is one of my favorite genres, but also because Funeral Tears throws a lot of melody in his otherwise led-heavy music.

As per usual, the six tracks on this album are enormous anthems, mostly driving on almost tangible drones and riffs. These come with torpid drums and deep, guttural growls, plus the occasional blackened scream. Opener 'Close My Eyes' is already a brilliant anthem, outstanding in atmosphere, intensity and melody, a bit like Shape Of Despair maybe, or any of those awe inspiring funeral doom bands.

You know. I could have just wrote down the words "funeral doom" and publish this review. If you are a fan of this kind of music, this album is an absolute must-have. There is no doubt about that. Everything to make it a prime example of this style is present on 'Beyond The Horizon'. But it is even more than that. I can easily imagine post rock and post-black metal fans skipping over to this kind of stuff. 

My favorite song here is 'Breathe', which somehow blend funeral doom with the new wave sound of bands like The Cure. I like that shoegazing guitar lick and I'm very sure I will not be the only one. So yeah, this is another highly recommended doom metal album and a solid reference towards the slowest of metal styles. Excellent job, and now I hope that this act will start touring, that would be bloody awesome...


​Serge

post rock

Hey, look at this. Spanish post rock three piece Astralia return with the follow up to their excellent 2014 album 'Atlas'. In 2015, I saw them play a great show at that year's edition of Dunk! Festival and 'Atlas' has been in my possession (and day-to-day playlist) ever since. So I guess it's no surprise that I was immediately interested when I saw this album coming in. Like I said in my review for Dunk! 2015, "this is proto post-rock from a very high level". 

The seven tracks on 'Solstice' contain everything a good post rock album needs. There are vast soundscapes, there is a dreamy atmosphere and quite often the whole thing bursts out in an intense, riff loaded pieces of music. With that in mind, what Astralia does might not be extremely renewing or inventive, but they don't have to. Rule number two in my book says: "if you can't be original, you have to be exceptionally good to stand out".

And that is exactly what Astralia did on this album. These songs elbow themselves a way into several best-of lists, I'm quite sure of that. The competition is harsh but with their impressive instrumental songwriting skills, this trio certainly deserves to accompany the top. If someone ever asks you what post rock is, you might as well make him listen to this album, because it shows the very definition of the genre: long tracks, instrumental, glorious and narrative anthems.

I'm not going into a song-by-song description since it's not needed here. I can't pick a favorite one either, I think all of these songs are absolute post-rock masterpieces. So yeah, there is little else to say. If you are into post rock, and love bands like Explosions In The Sky, PG Lost or Meniscus, you should already own this impressive piece of work. Obviously, this comes highly recommended. I you don't buy it, you're not a post rock fan. 


​Serge

stoner rock

Rooster is an album by American stoner rock group Brume, from San Francisco, California, released on April 20. Fifty one minutes long, the record has six tracks: Grit and Pearls, Harold, Reckon, Call the Serpent's Bluff, Welter and Tradewind. With the traditional approach to the genre, densely eroded by pervasively abrasive guitars that drive exceedingly slow rhythms to the normal persuasive axis of its expansive sonorous universe, Rooster is a reasonable album, with interesting melodies and intricate harmonies. Nonetheless, as usual for the genre, the draconian stylish virtues of the work are too excessively dragged all the way through, which makes the album overtly monotonous, after a while. Which, of course, is more of a characteristic of the genre itself, than a fault of the band, that only follows the traditional style of their genre of choice. 

Unfortunately, there is little Rooster can offer to more experienced enthusiasts of the genre, although the album has expressive merits. With poetic passages, some sober and marvelously exceptional guitar lines, and, above all the other elements, fascinating and perfectly aligned female vocals – certainly the most efficient and wonderfully creative flavor of Brume’s music – Rooster can be majorly described by its efficient set of qualities, despite the fact that Brume narrowly escapes the traditional ordinary features of the genre. 

I think enthusiasts of stoner rock will definitely be overjoyed by this album. In a more technical evaluation, Brume can be ostensibly described as a promising band, although they have potential to be more creative in some aspects. But the treatment displayed by them at the sonorous configuration of their own style shows, indeed, a very energized and confident band, with real musical proficiency, a major technical domain, and a formidable sense of intuitive creativity. They do manage to stay above the average score, as they have a superior sense of formal solicitude, concerning their competent, veracious and vehement artistic skills.

Although I can’t qualify Rooster as a masterpiece, in its own terms this work can be classified as a major album – especially in the vein of its technical abilities –, and I can’t deny the fact that this record shows a formidable degree of originality, and its own frame of artistic achievements. Evidently, Rooster is a very good stoner rock album, and certainly, has an enormous potential to find a respectable audience within the underground music scene.   


Wagner

folk metal / black metal

Ruoto is an album by Finnish Pagan Folk Metal band Noituma, released on April 13. A concise album, thirty four and a half minutes long, it has seven tracks: Rutonkantaja, Matojen herkkupäivä, Ruoto, Virvatulen kajo, Kaatuneiden muistolle, Jokainen hautaa omansa and Revontulet. With splendidly crafted and well created folk melodies, sidelined by a balanced spirit of greatly consistent compositions, Ruoto is a marvelous album. The first track, Rutonkantaja, already is enough to impress any folk metal enthusiast. With heavy, but consistently energized harmonies, Ruoto is a magnificent masterpiece of the genre, with a surprising degree of audacity and originality infused into the creative nucleus of the music.

With an interesting mixture of black and folk metal, Noituma has a very characteristic style, grounded in cyclic, and sometimes thoroughly irreverent harmonies, profoundly efficient and almost inherently sarcastic. Nonetheless, their sound is fulfilled by a cohesive synergy, that not only perfectly combines these two genres, but works on their innermost qualities in such peculiar techniques, that they managed to create a pervasively singular style of their own.

With more spiritually-orientated and melodic folk stylish pieces, each and every track on Ruoto has its own distinct sonorous identity. With every song sculpted in an almost indulgent state of intuitive sensibility, there is a fascinating degree of beauty delicately inserted in each and every song, with a peculiarly standardized degree of universal infinity colliding directly in the interior anatomy of the soul’s music, to such a degree that you can almost feel the everlasting and inherent strength of Noituma’s impeccable sense of artistry revitalizing all the relativities hidden inside the colorful mountains of your ordinary existence.  

The music of Noituma is the essential description of a fearless and definitive journey of the strongest musical aphorism ever to take place in the history of folk metal music. With Ruoto certainly being one of the most marvelous albums that I’ve heard on the genre, their potential goes beyond any possible description. With a vigorous inclination towards a captivating and salutary sense of originality, this is a band with enough qualities to redefine all the principles that solidified the strength of the genre, converting it into something stronger and fundamentally human.         


Wagner

dark ambient / black metal

Astronomy is an ambient music/ atmospheric black metal album released in April 17, by Spanish musician Iván Ferrús Fernández. Almost one hour long, the album has only five tracks: Trappist-1, Disloyal, Forgetting... Is Time, Recalling In My Thoughts and Winds. With a very organic principle, and a predominantly serene atmospheric soundscape, Astronomy is very quiet, lucid and down to the ground. With beautiful and poetic melodies, Astronomy allows the listener to efficiently undertake a legitimate journey throughout the sensibilities of one’s soul, with a genuine layout of correlated virtuosity, celebrated by the possibilities of a complete process of undeniable discovery, that foretells precious allegories surrounding our own versions of universal truth. 

With a consistent musicality, surprisingly, for an album that does not feature a heterogeneous sonority, the work doesn’t sound monotonous in any moment; on the contrary, it can be strongly appreciated. With an interior vivacity of its own, there is an ostensibly atmospheric sonorous beauty attached to the life of the music. Dispersing a calm, delightful and abundant reality through the vicinities of a peaceful and relaxing sound, Astronomy masterly creates an alternate universe where everything that dwells deep inside your soul is enthralled in the eyes of the unknown.

Despite the somewhat ecstatic – almost frozen – nature of the music, Astronomy is a remarkable album. With an unforeseeable intensity that culminates – and perfectly juxtaposes – into the fascinating galaxy of its lurid propensity of eternal dreams, you have unexpectedly the wonderful opening of a marvelous atmospheric black metal layer, permeated by the astounding sensibility of cohesively written guitar lines, that draws a universe of soul’s disillusion into the absence of a monumental correlated sorrow, that creates beauty from the innermost abysses of melancholy. Summarizing it, an achievement that resulted in a splendid and very artistic record. 

Working in a brilliantly sculpting style the ambient music, as well as the atmospheric black metal passages, consolidating a marvelous mixture of both genres – as well as perfectly delineating a frontier and a limit in between them in the record, as both styles have its different moments of highlight – with discreet, but pragmatic elements of post black metal wonderfully added to it, Iván Ferrús has created quite a unique work, efficient in the sonorous torrential expansion of the harmonies over its infinite diagrams, provided by the primarily philosophic melodies ambitioned by the purpose of the work. 

Astronomy is, undoubtedly, a great record. Although it has a stronger appeal to ambient music enthusiasts, the general outline of the work is mostly solid and competent. A lucid and firmly created work, this is an album abundant on powerful qualities, capable of opening new horizons of sensibility, towards a fundamental principle of audacious, intelligent, renovated and highly independent originality.  


Wagner

doom / heavy metal

Follow The Grain is an album released on April 9, by renowned underground German musician better known by the alias of Morphinist. Though mostly known by his releases on the genres of traditional and atmospheric black metal, Follow The Grain witnesses the musician experimenting with doom and heavy metal, in a very unexpected, but interesting experimental mood. Forty one minutes long, the record has only three very long tracks (which is somewhat a remarkable feature of his): the eponymous Follow The Grain, The Demons Of Doubt and Battle Wounds. With amazingly solid and vociferous, but at the same time soberly clean guitar lines, Follow The Grain from the beginning reveals itself to be a great and marvelously crafted instrumental album. With lucid, but very imponderable harmonies, perfectly delineated at the height of severe rhythmic ordinances, Follow The Grain encounters Morphinist in his best creative shape, brilliantly displaying the vigor of his colossal energies in a style not familiar to his audience. Nonetheless, the final result couldn’t have been more formidably amazing. 

Underlying the visionary cosmic strength of serene melodies, these three tracks effusively consolidate the sonorous ritual of a sentimental intensity that deeply elevates its harmonies into an imaginary field of astounding deliverance. With exceedingly factual poetical elements that acts at the direct interface of the songs, the extraordinary sensible intonations that plays with a more spiritual level of intricacy reveals a genuinely effective musical structure, whose technique is perfectly correlated with the sensitive ordeal that joyfully precipitates the consistency of the sound into an imaginary cosmogony that dreams abundantly in the unpredictable fields of mind expectations.

With a surreal predicament of a linear embodiment of devotional artistry, Follow The Grain is simply a tremendously magnificent album, with the most audaciously ferocious and imponderably creative guitar lines that you will ever hear in your life. Preciously beautiful, inherently natural and vehemently undertaking a wonderful sonorous journey of exhilarating rapture, the three tracks of Follow The Grain are simply formidably arranged masterpieces, that will elevate your soul to different standards of existence. 

With no faults to be pointed out whatsoever, this is an album for a lifetime. A majestically monumental state of the art work – one of the best and most fantastically exceptional guitar driven albums ever to be conceived –, whose sagaciously demanding imperative beauty has created sonorous galaxies of perceived excitement and graceful healing, Follow The Grain is an unusual move for Morphinist, that once more has proved why he is one of the greatest and most versatile musicians in the contemporary underground scene. 



Wagner

psychedelic rock

Into the Long Night is an album by Danish garage/ psychedelic rock group The Sonic Dawn, released on April 21. A little more than thirty six minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Intro, Emily Lemon, On the Shore, As of Lately, Six Seven, Numbers Blue, Lights Left On, l'Espion and Summer Voyage. With intelligent, spontaneous and wisely dynamic psychedelic grooves, Into the Long Night is an interesting and refreshing album, that has on the verge of its effusively elongated style the best influences of seventies rock’n’roll. With impressionistic melodies, burnt at the despicable road of a red sun, the overall harmonies of the songs are quite surprising, and sustain in the precious context of its dimensional elements the greatest journey of a very idyllic nostalgia-driven acid rock album. 

With sensible and delicate melodies, Into the Long Night is an interesting and reasonable record, although unfortunately doesn’t offer a very original outlook into the strength of genre. Falling sometimes into a more generic and perfidious sonorous derailment, Into the Long Night has its moments of enthusiastic apex, though you can’t afford to be in high expectancy here. 

Into the Long Night, after all, manages to be a good album, but the group fails to give a more original and authentic sonorous impulse to their sound, despite the fact that their music has, indeed, a formidable amount of energy, and genuine vigor. But in what concerns the style, they seem too vaguely familiar with other acts of the genre. 

Nevertheless, I seriously think that Into the Long Night has potential to attract a loyal amount of enthusiasts. Despite the fact that the sound becomes too excessively uniform and ordinary as the album progresses, there is a genuine effort consciously displayed for the sake of refinement throughout the whole album, and their competent technique cannot be ignored either. After all, the record disappoints a little, but in the end, the work achieves a reasonable level of creative intensity, with some very good songs along the way, especially the second, and the last three – Emily Lemon, Lights Left On, l'Espion and Summer Voyage, respectively – that summarizes beautifully The Sonic Dawn’s poetic effort in their free-flowing style of psychedelic rock. 


Wagner


 

black metal

Lost Legends is an album by an Indonesian ambient black metal artist, known by the alias of Nicrotek, released on April 13. Forty seven minutes long, the album has nine tracks: Lost Legends, Execution, Cosmic Baptism, Mortalization, Reflection, Fog Flames, Hanging Ropes, The Shrine of the Sky and 7 Days to the Abstract. Though mostly ambient, Lost Legends has formidable and exceedingly impeccable translucent melodies, deeply infused into horizontal and expressively serene harmonies, that fly free in the crest of an immortal wave, amazingly projected into a fading universe of expansive melancholy. With an intriguing, mostly spasmodic and self-centered degree of dense and discreetly infuriating authenticity, Lost Legends intertwines a brilliantly effusive atmospheric black metal sentiment with the captivating, but almost invisible, specter of a minimalist, lucid, sober and eccentrically arranged soundscape of electronic music, anticipating a vivid amalgamation of genres that ominously creates a majestic convergence of melodies, that standardizes its omniscient patterns for a sonorous configuration of worlds.

Although Lost Legends, in certain passages, do sound imperatively ordinary and commonplace in some aspects, the overall atmosphere of the album is quite fascinating, as you almost feel yourself teleported to a very distant, different and sensitive imaginary dimension, where everything is correlated to the emotional perceptions of the sound. With the proverbial collision of an unexpectedly delusional science of rhythms, Lost Legends is an intrinsically vivacious album, with the pragmatic fluidity of its principles formidably delineated by the incision of its elementary distinct cosmogonies.  

With an introspective sagacity that explicitly aligns the sensibility of its fundamental intuitions to the consistency of its outward melodies, Lost Legends is firmly rooted in a monumental majestic proposal, that exteriorizes the coherence and the beauty of the work in a torrential display of delicate wisdom. With its lenient – almost harmful, but exasperatingly eternal – idiosyncrasies serenely predisposed in an colossal frame of majestic sonorous cadences, reinvigorated by the stream of poetic melodies, wonderfully delighted over the gray dust of melancholic rainbows, the harmonies effusively absorb the inhospitable solitude of the universe into the overall intonations of marvelous songs, splendidly integrated into the fascinating vacuum of the most wonderful elegies ever created in black metal-styled ambient music.   

A dense, pungent, relentless and incredibly fascinating album, Lost Legends deserves to be among the best underground ambient albums of the year. A formidable, unexpected and inextricably ambivalent work, this highly audacious and melancholic atmospheric piece certainly has the potential to infuse new, intense and more powerful perspectives into the genre wonderfully developed in this magnificent album, that certainly will become a milestone, in the records of the underground music scene.   


Wagner

alternative / post rock / experimental / shoegaze

Here come the French again and once again, they come up with one of the most surprising albums of the year. I'll try to guide you through but it's not going to be easy since there is so much going on. Most of that is quite out of the ordinary too, but I guess we're slowly getting used to that. After all, I've seen a lot of strange and fascinating things coming from our country's neighbour and I must say, they truly are an experimental bunch of people.

Let's start with the beginning. For me, Owun is new. I have never heard of them before. Yet, the band exists since 1992 and released a first demo three years later. Back then, they blended noise rock, hardcore and new wave. Their second effort was an eighties inspired album and later on they incorporated elements from ambient, drone and electro. For a while, the band disappeared, only to resurface again in 2007.

Now, they released another album, simply named '2.5'. This one contains pretty much all of the above, and more. From noise over post rock to noise rock and psychedelic shoegaze, flavored with drones and electronics, Owun has it all, which obviously makes this extremely hard to categorize. Yet, if there is one comparison, it might be Primus meets Melvins as at least one of the band members if a big Les Claypool fan.

Then again, there is also some post rock present here, showcasing immersive instrumental rock songs and hypnotic soundscapes. Yet, the whole thing is usually a lot faster than typical post rock. Still, I wouldn't mind this band showing up on Dunk! festival or so. They will be a bit different from most of the other bands but I'm sure that they will put up an impressive show. I don't know. I guess I'm just becoming of a fan of this band.

So, to conclude, who to recommend this album to? I think answering that question is quite easy. I'd like to recommend it to all noise and post rockers out there, especially the ones that like to deviate from the norm once in a while. '2.5' is a very adventurous album, one that you won't easily forget.


​Serge

folk / psychedelic / experimental

Rejoice! J. Kill & Mr. Mule return with another splendid full-length. This Finnish one-man project has been delivering interesting psychedelic folk trips in the past, and this album faithfully follows that tradition, much to my delight. As I mentioned in my previous review (read), "sometimes experimental music can be minimal but expressive and insightful pop songs". Yes, this is experimental, but it still contains excellent and fragile pop songs.

On the other hand, there is plenty of room for other things as well. In the first three tracks alone, I hear influences from folk, jazz, noise and post rock. Opener 'Kuihtuva Kehä' builds upon influences from Nick Cave or Tom Waits while 'Ruosteen Huuto' drags in some experimental electronics. 'Elo' in its turn, sounds like an acoustic version of an immersive post rock anthem. 'Varjojen Maa' brings back memories of neo folk bands like Death In June, Forseti or Wardruna.

What I like also about this album, besides the impressive amount of variation, is the fact that the artist leaves plenty of room for instrumental passages. With those, he nudges towards the drone ambient scene, without being a drone ambient artist himself. Perhaps, when Master Musicians Of Bukkake or Om go acoustic, they might sound a bit like this. With that in mind, I would mind witnessing this stuff at some Desertfest or so.

My favorite track on this album is 'Kyyn Tie' and there is one very good reason for that. This song sounds like it comes straight from the Twin Peaks soundtrack. Yes, dark jazz galore with a narrative spoken word and a gloomy atmosphere, irresistible for a dark jazz aficionado like yours truly. Now I definitely want to see this live, dammit. I'm not sure if that will ever happen but this song, and the whole album, is going straight into my day-to-day playlist.

And I suggest you do the same. This is DIY-stuff from a very high level. If you are into anything between Nick Cave, Chelsea Wolfe, Swans and William Burroughs, you need this album. If you like Ween, you'll love 'Vankila'. I know I do. So, I think it's pretty clear that this act has shoved another great piece of music into my mailbox, psychedelic folk music straight from the heart. This comes highly recommended, that's for damn sure...


​Serge

stoner rock

King Tide is an album by Australian stoner rock band Riff Fist, released on April 17. A little more than half an hour long, the record has only five songs: the eponymous King Tide, D.T.U.B., Chugg, Fist Bier (Noch Eins) and Beer and a Cigarette. A very interesting stoner rock album, severely unconventional, the irreverent nature and character of Riff Fist’s music remembers a little other groups of similar breed, like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More, although not exaggeratedly. Provided with a very distinct identity, Riff Fist’s musical outline is intriguing, despite some sonorous restrictions and limitations. Their music, in general, expresses a very secure musical intuition, and a cohesive certainty, that makes Riff Fist a band very easy to categorize, to appreciate and to listen.

Despite the fact that King Tide is not exactly an extraordinary or magnificent album, the general line of work is competent, and technically proficient. With comprehensive melodies, and a rude and crude style, very different in practice, but fun to listen, to understand and to explore, King Tide, in a very positive light, is a tempestuous and vociferating album, with a decent degree of audacity and originality courageously added to the outline of the musical frame.

Undoubtedly, there is a vast degree of talent into this band, and they surely know how to use it. Revolving harmonies and intelligent guitar lines certainly are the most distinct features of the work, that whimsically elaborates at the epicenter of these qualities decently good and stylish songs, exponentially true to the musical identity developed by the band. 

With a gracious singularity, Riff Fist has elaborated King Tide as a charming and captivating album, that has underlined in the peripheral score of its abilities a somewhat impressive and torrid style, that consolidated in the vicinity of its brave and wild melodies a wise confluence of definitive perceptions, that upgraded the music into a more lancinating scale of authenticity.    


 
Wagner

post rock / alternative

Ghost Shirt Society is an album by Russian experimental/ post rock group Antethic, released on April 2. Fifty minutes long, the album has eight tracks:  Ilium, Modulor, Metamachine, Fragments, Cascadia, Tsunami Museum, Sentinel and The Moon Must Fall. A beautiful, quiet and subtle post rock work with an interesting display of experimentalism, Ghost Shirt Society is a very introspective album, with a modular universe condensed in the core of its moderated melodies. Full of intriguing, splendorous and audacious qualities, Ghost Shirt Society is a record ostensibly delineated by a conjuncture of fascinating and impeccably punctuated peculiarities, amazingly combined to conceive a lucid and overwhelming work of art.   

Although the harmonies in general are very discreet, they can be also intrinsically intense. With a pulsating layer of inebriating beauty, Ghost Shirt Society has interesting melodies, that sometimes expands its general line of sonorous flavors into the colorful zones of indie and alternative rock as well. With a somewhat simple, but ostensibly dynamic musical sensibility, Antethic really has created on Ghost Shirt Society an intriguing mosaic of genres, where different styles play along altogether, in a beautiful and intuitive coalition of sounds, filtered as one infinite and monumental soundscape. 

Nonetheless, calmness is the main element that punctuates Antethic    ‘s music. The harmonies are smooth and serene, and into their wings the listener can undertake a marvelous journey of ambivalent dreams, where everything is sidelined with reality, although in more colorful, charming and surprising shapes. Undoubtedly, all your sensibilities will tell you that the music of Antethic has to be felt, for its strength has so much consistency that you almost can sense its palpable and vivid resonances to pressure your skin, and legitimize a spectacle inside your soul. 

In Ghost Shirt Society, beautiful melodies, poetic harmonies and amazingly elevated sonorous layers perfectly complement each other, to fully diffuse throughout a creative universe of overwhelming serenity a marvelous dimension of sensibility and splendor. With a delicate and dispersive touch of primal intensity, the music of Antethic reaches a formidable level of authenticity, that makes you literally feel that everything is possible, in each and every conceivable way. A fantastic and terrific album, Ghost Shirt Society is an aggrandizing overview of an evolutionary and expansive model to dilate a more imponderable and dense musical universe. A very peculiar album, evidently, it will fascinate all the enthusiasts of the genre, without exceptions.       


Wagner

post rock

Apocryphal Gravity is an album by Swiss post rock group hubris., released on April 3. Forty five minutes long, the album has seven tracks: Intro, Beyond Styx Part 1, Beyond Styx Part 2, Aphrodite Terra, Doom Mons, Deimos To Phobos Part 1 and Deimos To Phobos Part 2. A very beautiful, sensitive and calm album, Apocryphal Gravity is full of overwhelming and magnificent melodies, brilliantly standardized at the soft nucleus of an ardently proficient, moving, sincere, colossal and infinite sonorous universe.

The style of hubris., although somewhat simple, is vehemently characteristic, softly charismatic, sensibly charming and ostensibly profound, permeated by an almost somnolent dynamic, that deeply revolves around the pure and pragmatic ordeal of an imponderable horizon of nuances. Exceedingly linear, each track seems to be the continuation of its predecessor, so the listener is deliberately directed by a formidable sense of continuity. This quality essentially maintains the fluidity of the music overflowing in a marvelous cycle of torrential tranquility, as you feel that you are listening one very long and extensive track. Nonetheless, this impression can be rather subjective, as some songs are indeed punctuated by pronounced, elongated and audaciously creative rhythmic variations, that seems to play in the fields of alternative rock a little.   

Apocryphal Gravity is a tremendously great and fantastic masterpiece. A true and overwhelming lesson on originality and creativity, hubris. has a strong and well-designed singular style, exceedingly developed and marvelously conceived. A wonderful state of the art work, the harmonies are embellished by gentle and splendorous universes of monumental melodic traces, surrounded by profoundly proverbial intonations, where all elements are abundantly full of life, density and poetic intensity. Standardized by colorful sidelines of extraordinary sensibility, hubris. delineates through the music a majestically singular perception of a correlated imaginary universe, filtered in a graceful sonorous form.     

A splendid and aggrandizing state of the art work, Apocryphal Gravity certainly is one of the most important releases of the year. A monumental record with exceptional qualities, it is a milestone in the history of post rock. With an astounding and impeccable degree of artistic lucidity, and the additional abilities of an extraordinary musical outline, hubris. has surpassed each and every landmark ever to exist in the history of the genre. A true voracious icon of originality, this marvelous group arose from the elements of its own outstanding sonorous sinergy to take the underground by storm. And this work certainly will enter into the records of the genre history. There are no doubts concerning this matter. 


Wagner

black metal

None is an album by the eponymous atmospheric black metal act, released on April 11, by Hypnotic Dirge Records. Thirty minutes long, the record has only three songs: Cold, Wither and Suffer. A surprising, sinister, melancholic and exceedingly artistic album, the melodies are astoundingly poetic, and elevates to a vigorous and consistent scale of sound the omnipresent lucidity of an original and overwhelming style. 

With impeccable harmonies, a depressive tone and a frozen atmosphere, the music of None reaches a zenith where the beauty collides with the pragmatic soul of the sound, propelled by an intuitive sense of sincerity and logic, that converts the proficiently evasive harmonies into an organic panel of dreams. The precise convergence of instruments into a complete cosmogony of sound reiterates the strength and the sagacity of a very formidable and acute artistic sensibility, that not only fully comprehends the genre, but knows how to use it for creative purposes. 

With an audacious level of originality, that explores the best elements the genre has to offer, the perfect amalgamation of traditional and atmospheric black metal components gives to None’s music a vivid perspective of their own nature, abridged by a sense of fundamental infinity. With a genuinely sonorous exposition of the sentiments behind their art, the spectacle created and completed by these three songs can be seen as an overwhelming grey ocean that reluctantly emphasizes the darkness of the human character, although in a more sensible and subtle constitution. 

A very interesting album, that perfectly summarizes the spirit of atmospheric black metal, here inserted in the wider scope of a truly elegant and sophisticated musicality, None can be fully understood as a virtual journey that delicately explains the dynamics of its own sorrowful sincerity. A wonderful work that elevates the genre into a higher level of majesty, this record deserves to be considered one of the best atmospheric black metal albums of the year.  


 
Wagner

black metal

The Carnal Sabbath is an album by avant-garde black metal act HELLEBORUS, from Manitou Springs, Colorado. With nine tracks – Helleborus Black, Coils, Edge of Black Waters, Colored Spores of Yuggoth, Draconian Discipline, The Poison of Sleep, Temple of Seventh Death, Gift of Renewal and the eponymous The Carnal Sabbath – this album probably features the most expressive, beautiful and imaginative guitar lines that I have heard in a record of the genre. Like a glorious thunder strike, with solos that remembers efficiently colorful, ascendant and perceptive power and heavy metal riffs, the sonorous guideline of HELLEBORUS can be described essentially as way more heavy metal than black metal per se, with the clear exception of the vocals, although I should point it out that certain passages in some tracks are indeed exceedingly rapid and hostile. Nonetheless, their musicality is vibrant, audaciously voracious, original and profoundly dynamic. 

With uncommon creative abilities, The Carnal Sabbath is a beautiful work, that has on the verge of its consistent melodies the sagacity of its mordacious brilliance. Tracks one, three and eight – Helleborus Black, Edge of Black Waters and Gift of Renewal, respectively – are songs that deserve to be highlighted. Gift of Renewal, in special, certainly is one of the most beautiful songs that I have heard in my entire life. With impeccable and wonderfully exhilarating guitar lines, a very hard rock rooted sonorous proficiency and an impressionistic amalgamation of diffuse harmonies, this is probably the best song of the album. A firm and astonishing example of eccentric creativity in the genre, HELLEBORUS remembers nineties Rotting Christ a little, although I should say that they extrapolate the Greek band in terms of spontaneity and dynamics, as their music sounds more colorful, vivid and vibrant, and the production values are accurately clean and standardized. 

 A very intelligent and singular album – a milestone in the genre’s history – that is absolutely secure of the complex comprehensiveness of its path, HELLEBORUS delivers to its audience a lucid and cohesive work, ostensibly genuine and volatile. This work can certainly be described as an intrepid storm of sonorous beauty, embalmed with an archaic dogma of despondent solitudes, exalted by a hostile atmosphere of infinite horizons, surrounded by a tempestuous, atrocious and sulfuric planetary darkness. 

A thoroughly precious and fantastic record that certainly deserves the attention of each and every enthusiast of the underground scene, The Carnal Sabbath is a ferocious and aggrandizing work of art, close to perfection. You can listen to this album without fear. You will not be disappointed.     

 

Wagner