black metal / noise / experimental

You find yourself face down, lying on a filthy floor in a room you do not recognize. You're hurt, bleeding. You look up to the grey walls in search of a window but why should there be a window? As you make a first attempt go get up, you feel a sting in your lower leg. You feel your achilles tendon snap while whatever that stabbed you, slowly starts pulling you back. Your t-shirt starts to rip on the granular ground, you realize that your skin will soon follow. You scream, and grasp your bleeding fingers on the bricks in the floor. You hear a harsh, grinding noise when you're being dragged into another room, a chaotic and eerie sound which repetitively bangs on your head. Then you hear a ritual being performed, a dark ritual that should never see the light of day. Somewhere in this absolute and deafening darkness is an entity, gladdedly lurking at its newest sacrifice, you.

Sometimes, when I first listen to an album, all kinds of different things pop-up in my head, little scenes, sometimes cinematic, sometimes joyful and sometimes things like the opening paragraph of this review. It usually depends on the nature of the album I'm listening to, which in this case is indeed something dark, haunting and frightening. The album is named 'II' and is the latest effort of American avant-garde post-blackened doom noise metal act Crowhurst. The band started as a noise act but gradually evolved into whatever it is now. Noise and soundscapes still are important elements in their music but the whole thing delves deep into the black metal scene. Plus, there is plenty of room for influences from sludge or post-metal, doom and industrial  too.

The album opens with an instrumental track, 'Cold Sweat' which somewhat sets the tone. From the very beginning it becomes clear that this is not a commonplace black metal act. The tempo is slow, torpid even, and the guitars make a shitload of noise. On 'Take This Pain Away' the typical blackened screams appear over an equally bleak, slow and grinding piece of music. This is utter despair and utter madness, this is brilliant. 'The End' is also a slow track, but it feels more like a blackened Fields Of The Nephilim or Sisters Of Mercy track, mainly because of the clean vocals. And here too, when the extremes kick in, this monsters feasts on blast beats, eerie atmospheric elements and sheer aggression. You might see this as a mix of goth-rock Tiamat and Blut Aus Nord, or something like that.

But there are more surprises, ever heard a crushing blackened industrial noise rock version of Nirvana? Well, 'No Saviours' is such a song and it rocks. Perhaps this is my favorite track on this album, but I'm not sure. Every song here is an extreme adventure, especially 'Dried Blood and Old Earth' which closes the album in style. This monster is pretty much an "all of the above", include the one song I didn't mention yet, the punishing depressive blackened sludge metal anthem 'Fractured Lung'.  This is an unbelievable album, a relentless piece of extreme music, regardless of genres. I absolutely recommend it to all of you who are looking for the bleakest and most obscure sounds out there. This is an absolute gem...


Serge

heavy metal

When I was a young, learning metalhead, I often visited the local library to quench my thirst for more of those awesome riffs and more of those evil vocals. In the CD section, I could find either classical music, jazz, blues or pop bands like ABBA. I think I was too young for those things back then, so I quickly moved over to the vinyl section, or, as I called it back then, "heaven". Right there, in those plastic shelfs the mesmerizing covers of Accept, Venom, Metal Church and Sacred Reich lured me into a word of relentless aggression and brilliant music. Things would never be the same again...

Fast forward to a few days ago, when I first started listening to this album by Canadian metal gang Medevil. The cover looked somewhat Old Man's Child-ish, which immediately aroused my attention. I know I wasn't dealing with a black metal band, after all, I read the biography before I started playing the album, but I was quite sure that this was going to be something qualitative. Something like Iced Earth maybe, another band that I like but always seem to forget about. Perhaps that's the problem I have with more modern metal bands; I forget about them because they don't take me back to a time when everything seemed to be easier.

Well, Medevil is different, but what would you expect from a band whose vocalist sounds quite similar to Udo Dirkschneider? Backed by extremely talented musicians, vocalist Liam drags all of us back into those early to mid-eighties. Not because his voice is alike Udo, but because his voice is so perfectly suited for this kind of old school thrash metal that the whole thing sounds like it's coming directly out of those plastic shelfs in the library. Just listen to opener 'Nightwalk' and you'll get sucked into the vintage-sound.

Fast paced, vicious riffs remind me of the very best of those old albums and I quickly start missing my long hair. 'An Empty Glass', for example, is a massive headbanger, perfectly capable of hypnotizing an entire festival audience, from young to old. Besides, there is some unbelievable guitar play in here, from flashing licks to almost psychedelic solos. There's also plenty of variation in tempo and atmosphere. Speaking about atmosphere, the brilliant ballad 'The Angel Of Rain' drives of a simple but awesome guitar lick, one that each and every post-rock band simply forgot to write. Too bad, now it belongs to the collective heavy metal scene.

One more thing I'd like to mention is the conceptual feel of the whole thing, probably triggered by the similarity in 'The Angel Of Rain' and the classic metal anthem 'A Sacrifice'. I miss that feeling in many present day heavy metal albums. Classics like 'Ride The Lightning', 'Peace Sells...But Who's Buying', 'Painkiller' or 'Breaker' were no mere collection of songs but a musical unity. Well, 'Conductor Of Storms' has that same feeling as those classics, something I can only applaud. This album is a gem, a must-have in every self-respecting heavy metal collection. 


​Serge

ambient

Cold Tear Records

Whitestoned is a perfect, lucid and vivacious six tracks ambient album by Russian musician Alexander Saykov, notorious for its prevalence of very soft and melodic elements, reminiscent of urban lounge, and chill subgenres of electronic music. Primarily characterized as a fulfilling and thrilling musical narrative with an urban mindset, Whitestoned is a very poetic and delicate album that seems to be inspired by a devotional love the artist has for Moscow. With delicate rhythms, and beautiful, ingenious melodies, Whitestoned is quite a definitive, outstanding and unforgettable milestone, punctuated by nuanced fragments of highly distinguished notes, full of flexible, yet powerfully evasive elements of sonorous density, firmly delineated by an exacerbated tone of mystery and fascination, permeated in each track by a glorious sense of determination and destitution.

A very sensitive musical journey, Whitestoned as an album certainly is the product of an artist excessively sensible to music, being a gifted and amazingly talented songwriter, a conclusion that strikes the listener as quite obvious, already in the first few seconds of the first track. Whitestoned, although it could easily be labeled as an easy and quite accessible album for everyone at first, as a matter of fact is highly recommendable only for those individuals who already have been initiated to the genre. Undoubtedly, the most prominent feature on the music is a progressive subtlety, as I would point it out. Although discrete at how he inserts his poignant boldness in his music, Alexander Saykov is no ordinary musician, being highly innovative in practically all exterior and interior layers of his deeply vast and methodical musical appreciation, critically immense in the landmarks of the ulterior standards unseen in the overall premises of his profusely poetic and vigorously unabridged musical approach, firmly grounded in a heart-bound beautiful execution of sound, that I would hardly expect before listening to this album. 

Alexander Saykov’s music is remarkably beautiful. Melodic, dense, multifaceted and philosophic, is enthralled by a poetic and eventful kindness, as well as a warm delicacy, that easily shapes the skies of his perfunctory ethereal fascination, that seems to be harmonically correlated with his vastly creative artistic skills, that frantically impersonates emotional developments, and anticipates enormous levels of melodically soft and artistically created harmonies, rearranged in a personal paradise of rewarding vivacious infinity, whose goals are all but emotionally demanding. 

Besides being one of the most beautiful albums that I have ever heard on the genre, the delicate touch of soft melancholic beauty into each and every track is remarkably and intrinsically disruptive, drawing bridges of a derisively calm turmoil inside the prosperous devotional benevolence of a giant sphere of urban musical luminescence. Whitestoned, for sure, is a great, rewarding and beautiful album, fulfilled with the most drastic and compelling devices the genre could ever had, as the artist responsible for the creation of such a magnificent, complete and outstanding masterpiece is a very sensitive, intuitive, skilled and resourceful musician, whose straightforward and natural excellence goes way beyond the ordinary highlights of art.

So, Whitestoned, in my personal evaluation, is undoubtedly an incredible and very delightful album. If you like a more glitch-flavored, chill influenced, lounge dispersed, and melodically granulated ambient music, then Whitestoned, by Alexander Saykov, is the perfect album for you. Virtuously poetic, insanely urbane, vigorously artistic and creatively unique, intertwining serenity, sincerity, rapture and autonomy between notes, everything on this album is perfectly arranged in an objectively captivating degree of unimaginable originality. Before listening, be sure that this record certainly has the potential to be the album of your life!


​Wagner Hertzog

electronic / ambient / downtempo

Blu Eon is an album released by ambient sound artist Echo Delta via Lithuanian underground record label Cold Tear Records. With nine tracks that usually follow the normal pattern of electronic ambient music, very long tracks exceeds all the ordinary lines, visuals and matters for this album, really capturing and captivating instantly from the core of its demanding proposal exceedingly reliable, philosophic and very consistent tones. Seemingly inserted in a universe inspired to fulfill imaginary waves of sound, wonderfully shaping and reemerging in all contexts of a sincere art of the soul all perfunctory dreams of a resonating dreamlike nature that easily perpetuates on the onset of an indefinite journey all the marvelous glory of a sound eager to diversify, define and clarify existence as a whole, Blu Eon is an album that perfectly fits spaces between galaxies, deemed to watch collisions among spheres of sound, as the mastermind of an eye that never overlooks the possibilities towards the infinity. 

With a very credible and underlying patience that seeks to diversify all the main goals of a sonority hardly shaken by the ghosts of an unbearable utterance, Blu Eon is a calm, yet thrilling and majestic album, full of honorary greatness, despite what appears to be a transcendental rhythm of delightful regularity, with a profound and acquiescent sense of serenity, that never gives an ultimatum to its own meritorious simplistic benevolence. With an upward motion that chronologically harmonizes its own intrinsic nuances towards the values that always return to the barycenter of the force that generates the rhythm of the music, Blu Eon is a non-static dissonant ambient assertive upheaval, centered on a melodic axis of a slow metamorphosis dramatic intuition, grounded in a very precise indefinite disposition, that mathematically challenges the balances and the harmony between all the layers that fit together to compose the sound. 

Unbearable at the top of the lights created by its own vigorous audacity, although at the other hand exceedingly conformed to the normality of the standards usually bound to the genre, Blu Eon is an album that can be labeled as equal as it is, as well as different as it could be, as cleverly sets a very unusual pattern of standards on which the music rely on. With the remarkable ability to give different shapes of sound to a musical configuration that normally doesn’t have such diversified nuances, nor varied levels of harmonization, Echo Delta as an artist manages to establish and create its own style of musicality in the process, without losing a positive identification within the genre. 

With an exceedingly great and virtuous elemental nature of flexible sonorous beauty, Blu Eon, by Echo Delta is an amazingly pure, gracefully solid and gratuitously serene ambient music album, that rebuilds, expands and redefines every single element that composes the fundamental milestones of the genre, without infamously decharacterizing or unsetting its principles, but fiercely preserving the dynamics upon which the sound is recognizable and easily assimilated. Being a work of art made with heart and soul, Blu Eon, by Echo Delta is a bright luminous mesmerizing piece, with a serenity driven sincerity, that delays and outshines the limits of its own lucidity, while at the same time seeking to overshadow the reminiscent melodies of the sleepiness of the dawn of its own dark days of miserable uneasiness. With rising undertones of striking soft dimensional grounds of invisible relaxing soundscapes, Blu Eon is an astoundingly complete album, that revolves primarily on the underlying peaceful motives of an apprehensive beauty that runs between boundaries, never to set back on the definition of rhythms that compels the soul agitation to look permanently in the interior of a sonorous continual reverberation. An album made to produce crystallizing echoes throughout the universe, Blu Eon, by Echo Delta is certainly a monumental work of art, set to redefine and resize the ambient genre as a whole.  

Wagner Hertzog                                   

dark ambient

bandcamp

A Bleeding Star is a musical project by musician Alex Goth, that focuses on the creation of a dark atmospheric sound, surrounded by cold and inhospitable dreamscapes, and very evasive and circumspect traces of melancholy, with an intriguing ability to disturb you, as well as leave you in a calm and peaceful state of mind, wandering in the black and white atmospheres created solely with the purpose of exalting the vast emptiness that wanders all alone painfully obscured in the human soul.  

A Bleeding Star most recent album, titled LXXXVII – Forget About this Mess’d Realm for A Second & Enjoy this Nyxchill’d Smokin’ Session, is a dark ambient and ambient industrial musical work that produces a very characteristic sound, with the solid distinction of creating heavy atmospheres – like cloud layers – with the plain opacity of an extremely soft sound. This means that Alex Goth can lead you through the surface of the moon in one track, and make you descend to the unknown depths of a dark abyss into the next one. Although he produces the feeling of a serene tranquility with his songs, there is an obscure element, hidden in the trembling fear emerging from a sinister expectation, that he masterly creates with his dark and pervasive ambivalence, that makes your mind wander lost in the vastness of an infinite forest.   

But don’t get me wrong: it is not a desperate or acrimonious, but a very peaceful and calm descent to an alarming abyssal plain, as you get lost into the realm of his select – and somewhat derelict – ghostly atmospheres, that seems to be created in the reluctant path of a black winter, surrounded by the inconspicuous solitude of a melancholic landscape, immersed in a lethargic state of a sincere, but unlawful nothingness.

I think no other artist in music today could have the word “atmosphere” more correctly applied into their music, than A Bleeding Star. Interior planets, extra solar winds, dark deserts and lonely ruins in abandoned castles will easily come up to your mind, with songs able to create entire stories with very simple notes and themes, that can be intricate, at times, as you get lost into a world devoid of an easy escape. Nonetheless, there is an obscure element of a nervous breakdown in some of his tracks, a little dissimulated in the eventful density created by the influential mood that the music brings to your hears.

Some of the songs, like Should’ve of Escaped ‘Vhen Ye Still Had the Chance… Now ‘tis too Late… Let It Commence can be as exhilarating as melancholic at the same time, as they usually really on a very simple, but profound and poetic symphony, that can easily make your mind wander deeply into another worlds, another times and another places, as little artists have the ability to do, especially regarding the same track.  

The titles of the songs curiously tell intriguing stories, and they work as great introductions to the tracks themselves. The first track – which is also the name of the album –, LXXXVII – Forget About this Mess’d Realm for A Second & Enjoy this Nyxchill’d Smokin’ Session is a very calm, but sinister ambient track, nervously combined with that disturbing dark anxiety that comes directly from the heart, inserting you high into the middle of a lonely desert, and distorting your senses into something imperatively different, making you feel lost in the dark, and arbitrarily surrounded by the strange and inconspicuous nothingness that the track creates, captivating your senses to the most infamous and extreme expectations that a perfect ambient song can lead you, so far.        

The second track, There’s A Specter Starin’ At Me from My Bedsheet’s Cover… I Don’t Care… I’m Higher than A Clocktower is a great example of a very powerful and infinite anthropomorphic sound, that draws in your mind such a sensitive darkness, that you can almost feel and touch the sardonic devices beautifully delineated by the heavy and antagonistic atmosphere that this overwhelming track leaves into your soul, as a sudden and rather violent anguish that never abandons you, but stick into your mind as a relevant configuration of emptiness, fear and isolation, never seen in music before! And this is what it is so exciting about Alex Goth’s music: it sticks into your flesh, into your soul, into your senses, alienating your mind, and obliterating your notions of existence from whenever your perceptions could be – past, present or future –, making you literally feel the music deep into your bones, as no other dark ambient artist made you feel before. 

All in all, the album LXXXVII – Forget About this Mess’d Realm for A Second & Enjoy this Nyxchill’d Smokin’ Session, by Dark Ambient artist A Bleeding Star is a very intriguing, mesmerizing, and astoundingly peculiar work of art, that can be serene and heavy at the same time! True to the ambient genre as a whole, he somewhat leaves his mark into the genre, with remarkable peculiarities, being as dark as anyone can be, and yet, peaceful, calm and transcendental at the same time. As strange as this can be, it is a very imposing, beautiful and poetic darkness. If you can compare him to a scenario, A Bleeding Star would be a black and white dawn surrounded by a magnificent phosphorescent non-linear atmosphere, lost in a perpetual winter, filled with an imperial loneliness hard to deny to your soul. It’s epic, it’s marvelous, it’s astounding! You have to listen this wonderful work all by yourself, alone, in complete darkness, to be able to immerse your mind completely into the vast world of a silent forest lost in the middle of nowhere! But be prepared: A Bleeding Star will stick into your soul, and will never leave you.  



​Wagner

drone / ambient / freejazz 

I received this album a few  week ago, shortly after I published Tomas Järmyr's 'Songs With Stories' (read). I know both artists quite well, one from his massive oeuvre, both solo and with Nadja, Caudal, Hypnodrone Ensemble and the other one for his work with Barchan and Zu. I was extremely intrigued by the possible outcome of this cooperation and I immediately formed an idea about how this whole album would sound. The opening track only confirmed that idea, Aidan's drones and Tomas' free jazz drums created a wondrous musical adventure. However, soon after, a question popped up, being "can they make this stuff interesting for an hour and a half"?

Apparently, they can.

After I listened to the whole album for the first time, I turned to Mike from Consouling Sounds and asked him "whose idea was it to lock these two geniuses up in a recording studio". Mike said that is was all their own idea and added the the fact that he was immensely pleased to be able to release the end result. If I owned a record company, I'd be damn pleased too. You get two seasoned musicians who clearly put their mark on a certain genre. I mean, Aidan has been doing this for centuries and Tomas has been responsible for a landmark album with James Welburn (Barchan - Soliton). Yes, landmark, I regard that album as the breath of fresh air the drone-scene needed.

'Werl' is ninety-five minutes of experimentation, a continuously evolving and thus highly varied masterpiece. In fact, the typical initial idea I had about drones with free jazz was forced to expand. There are industrial passages, there is a strange and psychedelic guitar solo from Aidan, there are elements of ambient, noise, krautrock, psychedelic rock and doom. It's impossible to pick a favorite track, as they all float in and out of one another and create a new atmosphere each time. I mean, 'III' is noisy, 'IV' has something Godspeed-y, 'V' is minimal as hell, 'VII' could be a psychedelic sludge noise rock track from the sixties if that existed back then and so on. 

My advice? Let me put it this way: if nobody is going to send me a physical copy of the album, I'm damn well going to buy it myself, even though I already have the flac-version. 


​Serge

sludge

A free three-track ep from Canadian sludge deities Dopethrone, which, by the way, is completely free to download if you wish. So why write a review about it? After all, every Dopethrone fan should know about this ep already, and most of them should already have it in their digital collection, no? Well, like I said, "should". I know that there are some lazy stoners out there that haven't checked out the crushing 'Shot Down', the grinding 'Drifter' (my favorite) and the pulverizing closer 'Skag Reek' yet. Maybe because it's monday morning and they still need to get the weekend out of their systems. Good new, this ep can help you with that by knocking you out cold...

black metal

The Scandinavian countries have always been the place to be for decent black metal and Swedish trio Astrophobos are here to prove that. Since their inception in 2009, they've released an ep and a full-length, now followed by this triumphant four-track. These songs resemble some of the all time greats, including Satyricon, Dissection, Immortal and so on and comes with an excellent production, solid enough to blast the wax out of your ears. My favorite track is the epic 'The Cadaver Monarch', a massive piece of (mainly) slow, grinding black metal in the vein of some of the best Dimmu Borgir songs. This ep certainly is a must-have for ever self-respecting black metal adept, that's for sure... 

crust / post-metal / sludge

In a faraway future, when our civilization is left in unrecognizable ruins, a number of new people will form tribes and start all this madness all over again. London, UK based supergroup Morrow created the soundtrack for this post-apocalyptic world, and what a massive beast that album has become. Crust, post-metal and sludge with violins and cellos accompanying the more traditional instrumentation, intense, heavy and  often straight-in-your-face music that is quite hard to categorize. The band is huge, featuring a massive number of guest vocalists and narrators speaking or screaming in different languages. This certainly is a strange but highly immersive experience.

sludge / noise rock

Ready to be hypnotized by repetitive, almost ritual, sludge doom? Well, than the first part of this burdensome split is something for you. Black Tar Prophet for Nashville, TN, specializes in thick, harsh sludge with samples instead of vocals and the result is mesmerizing and immersive. It could very well be the soundtrack for a David Lynch movie about Dante's 'La Divina Commedia', or something. Iron Gavel basically follows a similar pattern with harsh guitar riffs and pummeling drums but seem to throw a thick sauce of noise rock over the whole thing. In any case, this split comes highly recommend to anyone who wants to scare the shit out of people...

death metal

Headbanging time! Drop whatever you're doing, play this one loud and bang the day away. This band from Montenegro, featuring members from Abhoth, comes up with bloody delicious thrash induced death metal. Slayer meets Obituary and Testaments meets Dismember, which obviously means fingerlicking riffs, a fierce tempo and deep guttural growls. However, it might be interesting to notice that these guys never let brutality get in the way of musicality, which is a massive plus in my book. The level of variation is high, the mid-tempo parts are immersive as hell and 'Demigods' is a world class death metal track. This album certainly is a highlight in 2016's death metal scene.

death metal

This strictly limited 7" (250 copies) is meant to be an appetizer for the upcoming debut of American trio Impure Consecration. I'm not sure when the full-length will be released but if you're a fan of old school death metal, you might start preparing to feast on the corpses of your enemies. The two songs on this single are primitive, harsh and unforgiving pieces of death metal, quite similar to some of the oldest works by Morbid Angel, Sepultura or Vital Remains.'Apparitions of a Malevolent Spirit' for example, completely reeks of the early eighties when extreme metal started to take form with its growling voice, it's chaotic riffing and it's nutsack piercing drums. Try it, it's good for you....

black metal / death metal

I have no idea where Blood Harvest keeps finding these ancient school bands. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a time portal to the early eighties in their office. Take this Supremative ep for example, an intro with gregorian chants, followed by chaotic and psychotic noise, moshing on the thin line between black and death metal. The tempo is murderous, but so seem to be the intentions of this whole thing. This Spanish act blasts and grinds its way through your eardrums, right into wherever your soul is situated. I'd recommend this thing to all the old schoolers out there. Maybe to the new death metal kids too, hoping this music will devour and destroy them completely...

punk / metal

One is a metal band, the other a collective of punks. Both play heavy music, preferably loud. Both have recorded one brand new song and a cover of the other band. But the whole thing kicks off with a song they wrote and recorded together. That song, called 'Imitators' is an intense piece of punk-metal, guaranteed to start a moshpit or at least a decent headbanging session. The whole thing feels a little Exploited-like, you know, thrash metal meets punk. Other bands that often come to mind include Overkill, Anthrax and The Unseen. This really is a fun crossover ep by two of Essex' loudest bands, exceptionally suited for those who long for the good old days of both genres...

noise rock

Dissonant music doesn't always have to be metal. Take this impressive six-track split for example. Opening with a brilliant piece of noise-rock in 'Something Better', American trio Buildings comes up with one of the best things in the genre I've heard this year. The other two tracks are just as much dissonant delight, bringing everything from Unsane over Godflesh to The Jesus Lizard to mind. Fellow countrymen Volunteer add a few hints of sludge to the whole noise-rock sound, perfectly completing this already stunning split. This is something for fans of Vandal X, Today Is The Day and Neurosis, maybe, probably. I don't know. This is noise-rock perfection...

metalcore / metal

Although metalcore usually isn't my thing, I do feel some sympathy for these youngsters from "De Kempen", a geographic region in Belgium, claimed to be "silent". Well, nothing is silent on this debut ep, on the very contrary. With their mix of fast hardcore, melodic metalcore and metallic extremes these guys are preparing for the bigger stages. This is pure aggression, dressed in something that seems to be influenced by everything between Alexisonfire, Parkway Drive, Trivium and Gojira. There are some brilliant passages, plenty of variation and sheer power, everything a good metalcore band needs. So yes, this is highly promising. We'll hear a lot more from these guys in the near future...

progressive metal

Thessa is a one man musical Project from France, the creation of musician Alistair Bigareault, extremely grounded in a guitar-based alternative/ progressive metal instrumental feature. The album The Other Side MMXV, released in 2015, is the reworked, remastered and remixed version of his 2013 album The Other Side. 

Well, Thessa is essentially music for musicians. If you like totally guitar-driven songs (not that there isn’t any other instruments in the music, but the guitar is the main instrument, and dictates the rhythm of the songs), the album will be a great delight to your ears, but if you are not into that, the 59:12 full length will probably exhaust you, so you have to take a stance, before listening to this album. Otherwise, you will be totally bored, unless your passion for guitar-driven songs is way above the accepted levels of normality. 

Despite the variety and the change in melodies, the album is very linear and homogeneous. It can be a great lesson if you are a guitar student: if you learn how to play two or three songs of the album, you will certainly improve your skills in the art of playing, especially depending on how long you have been learning (this album wouldn’t work for beginners).

The songs are beautifully executed, and what I liked most in the album are definitely the almost perfectly synchronized mathematical rhythms that features in some songs, interesting in the way melodies are structured above them, in a very symmetric cadence of sounds, constructed carefully behind the changing pace of guitar riffs.   

Well, like I said some lines above, Thessa – specially this album – is music for musicians. If you, on the other hand, are not taking guitar lessons, and are definitely NOT into a whole guitar-driven instrumental album, you will be bored to death. Which gives me two possibilities when rating this album: if I was a guitar student, I certainly would give a four starts rate, since I would learn a lot (or become frustrated on not having the ability to play decently) but, since I’m not a guitar student (and don’t have any plans to become one), I can give only a rate based on my personal analyzes on its technicality, artistic result, and level of amazement, and this turns out as a two and a half stars rate, at best. It’s a good album, but, despite some great moments of magical and glorious harmony, a whole album lead by a guitar-driven sound can be tiresome, for sure. Although some passages are very good, I probably can’t listen to this album a second time. It is too technically driven for me. Like I said, and repeat – it’s great music, for musicians only. Guitar players, more specifically.           


​Wagner

doom

Just when I started believing that doom metal didn't have a lot of variation-possibilities left, this bizarre masterpiece found my inbox. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love doom metal. I just thought that the genre-boundaries had been solidified by now and that there was little else bands could do to come out as something extraordinary. Apparently, I forgot about SubRosa, or better, I never heard of SubRosa before this album reached me. Why? Well, I guess mainly because I was out of metal until I formed Merchants Of Air in 2014, and SubRosa's latest album dates back to 2013. So for me, this is a highly surprising first encounter, one which undoubtedly be followed by a deep dive into their entire oeuvre. 

SubRosa hails from Salt Lake City and was formed in 2005 by guitarist and vocalist Rebecca Vernon. Over the years, the band expanded and today there are two violinists among the more traditional instrumentation of guitars, drums and bass. Those violins add something special to the whole thing, which might indeed recommend people of My Dying Bride but goes way further than that. Here, the violins add a sense of eerie chamber music to the whole thing. With that, you might expect some smooth and relaxing tunes but don't forget that SubRosa can also blast out in crushing sludge doom, complete with brutal vocals and brain drilling riffage. And they can do it at the same time, completely confusing the listener.

'Wound Of The Warden' feels like Zola Jesus meets Evoken or Diamanda Galas meets Agalloch, obviously accompagnied with those playful but dark violins. On other occasions this music feels like the metal version of Dresden Dolls or like PJ Harvey crawled out of an intensely dark and haunting experience. The level of dissonance is quite high, often gaining the capacity of harsh black metal or even noise, but there's always this strange sense of melody to grasp on while you're being dragged into the occult whirlpool of sounds. There is always this brilliant occult feel of musical witchcraft.

My favorite track is 'Black Majesty', which begins as a gently sung medieval folk song and evolves into a torpid but immersive piece of doom. The overall feel of this is song is so intensely gloomy that it immediately chills the room. That is pretty damn impressive by the way, since we're currently facing a heatwave. It's bleeding hot in this room but at this very moment, cold chills are running down my spine. Those continue throughout the rest of the album, an album that I absolutely recommend to any doom fan, whether it's folk doom, sludge doom, funeral doom, gothic doom or blackened doom. This is a masterpiece...


​Serge

post-rock / post-metal

This little gem is coming out tomorrow and I suggest every fan of bands like Russian Circles, Isis, Monkey3 and even Tool to get their hands on it. Although not really a new act - Khaldera released a first ep in 2013 - this might prove to become one of the shining stars in the world of instrumental rock and metal. If only they don't wait another three years to release something new, that is. 

Khaldera are a Swiss trio, focusing on atmospheric but heavy music. This ep contains three tracks, opening with 'Impending Tempest'. This is an epic piece of drone ambient, evolving in a strong, fuzzed out and groovy piece of post-rock, coming extremely close to what Russian Circles recently released upon the world. In fact, this whole ep might compete with the masters from Chicago. Brilliant guitar licks, visceral drums and a bass guitar that rocks you out of your pants, what else could you want?

'The Inevitability Of Transition' is an intense and immersive anthem, perfectly suited to bang your head a little or just to mentally surf on the delightful sonic waves of riffs and drums. The ep closes (way too soon) with 'Afterglow', a drony piece of music, gentle but vivacious. In all, this is a stunning ep, which I hope will soon be followed by a tour. After all, this music is at its best on stage and it's already this damn good on my stereo...


​Serge

hard rock / stoner rock

This is the second French rock album I received a few days ago and with this one, things suddenly got a lot hotter. I had to play this one loud, for all my neighbours to enjoy, at least loud enough to make it sound like a live performance on some festival. Why? Well, mainly because this is live music, written and recorded for one purpose only: blast it through massive speakers in front of a frenzied audience.

Dog 'n Style combine heavy rock 'n roll with flashes of stoner rock, hints of metal and whatever it is that those massive American stadion bands play. The end result is something quite interesting, as if Zakk Wylde joined Kuyss or Lemmy fronted Iron Maiden. Opener 'The Best Of Me' perfectly states that with is groovy, heavy and melodic approach and it's chorus with a tremendous sing-along capacity.

'I Did Something Wrong' is my favorite track on this album, driving on an uplifting lead guitar and enough groove to shake you out of your pants. 'Mad Motorcycle' might be the song with the most hit potential, on an alternative radio that is. Commercial station will have none of this but that's exactly why I will have nothing of commercial radio stations, they suck and Dog 'n Style rocks, period.

Obviously, this is party music, designed to enjoy with a 'Couple Of Beers' (yes, that is a song title), in a hot and sweaty venue while the band on stage blasts the wax out of your ears. If you like rock music, this definitely is something for you. If you're into anything from Led Zeppelin to Linkin Park and from Queens Of The Stone Age to Alice In Chains, you need to get your hands on this. Party hard, you know you want to.


​Serge 

hard rock

A few days ago, I received two albums from French hard rock bands. When the postman delivered them to me, I was redecorating and heavily cleaning a room in our apartment. The computer in that room  didn't have any music so I quickly ripped these albums and started playing them loud. Before I knew it, I was in the middle of a searing hot cleaning frenzy, dripping wet from the sweat and spilled beer. 

Berserkers are a quartet from Bordeaux, founded in 2009. They are heavily inspired by the  hard rock scene of the seventies but also experienced in everything the rock industry produced later on. On this album those elements result in some heavy rocking, often accompagnied by these vintage keyboards. Everything here reeks of old school, strong riffs, that mesmerizing keyboard and a methodical drummer.

Opener 'Outlaw' is a raunchy piece of rock 'n roll, in the beginning reminding me of bands like Deep Purple or Living Color. However, gradually, other references come to mind, including Red Hot Chili Peppers and even the horrible Spin Doctors, but rest assured, the music on this album is far from horrible. 'Blind Taste' is a solid piece of rock music, 'The Foolish Man' is a classic hard rock anthem and 'Rock Save The World' is a party-cracker.

The only suggestion I would make, is this: make the vocalist chain-smoke some heavy cigarettes and drink at least one bottle of whiskey each day. That way, the vocals might get that extra raspy, grinding edge that would make this music stand out between the tonnes of other rock 'n roll bands. Often, the vocals are a bit too clean and goody-goody to me, but then again, on 'Heroes Are Back In Town' the make up some awesome choruses.

But now for the final question, who should I recommend this album to? Well, obviously the old school rocker who has been into everything from Led Zeppelin to Guns 'n Roses and everything from Rainbow to Black Crowes. This is one for the so-called "dad-rock" fans, and I mean that in the best possible way. After all, that generation has witnessed the entire (d)evolution of rock music, from awesome to "meh", and now with 'Lock 'n Load'  can have awesome again...


​Serge

doom / sludge

Goddammit, the longer the year lasts, the better the albums seem to become. Then again, what would you expect from a band like Slomatics, anything less than a perfect sludge doom album? I don't think so. My expectations for this album have been as high as Snoop Dog on a Sunday afternoon. Since I experienced these guys live, I've been a fan of their work, even more so than bands like Conan or even Yob. And after listening to 'Future Echo Returns', my fanboyism for Slomatics only grows.

The album opens with the instrumental 'Estronomicon', immediately showing what Slomatics stand for: thick, fuzzed-out guitars. This track builds a massive wall-of-sound, but also gradually shows the psychedelic influences, as if Yob meets Ozric Tentacles, or something like that. From then on, it's smooth sailing on tar-thick waves of downtuned guitar licks and hypnotic drums, here and there accompanied by epic vocals. 'Electric Breath', the second track on this album is one of my absolute favorites. I'm sure this will give of lot of stoner doomers an orgasm, so will 'Rat Chariot', a song that will make your foreskin vibrate.

'In The Grip of Fausto' and 'Supernotrhing' are brilliant songs, harsh, relentless and completely pulverising but an entire album of these monsters might get stale and one-sided. Too often, bands in this genre tend to drown in their own drones and noise and completely forget to add a bit of variation to the whole thing. With Slomatics, it's different. They add tracks like 'Ritual Beginnings' which every single post-rock fan out there will appreciate. Hell, when the drums come in, the whole things gets a nice, jazzy feel before the whole thing bursts-out in a stunning post-whatever anthem.

Closer 'Into The Eternal' is an epic piece of work, initially reminding me of the gothic doom scene of the nineties and later on coming up with another delightful wall-of-noise to float on. On the other hand, it also feels like a doom metal track from the nineties, along with some nostalgic Type O Negative elements. You'll get it when you listen to the song. And you should listen, you should get this album, play it as loud as possible and watch the cracks in your walls grow bigger and bigger. Of course this album comes highly recommended...


​Serge

industrial rock / nu metal

It's been a while since I encountered an awesome industrial album that I had to get used to at first. As a matter of fact, the only other act that has ever managed to write such an album was Nine Inch Nails. All the others I immediately and permanently either liked or disliked. This ep by Null1 also does the trick. I wasn't ready for their noises, their electronics and their ruthless sound yesterday, but I sure am now and at this moment it's blasting through my speakers for the entire street to enjoy...

In their email, Null1 claimed to be influenced by acts like Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, David Bowie, Bauhaus, Nirvana, Nick Cave, Deftones, Iggy pop & The Velvet Underground. After listening to this album, I don't think I could come up with a better set of names to put up as a reference. Of course, there are the vicious industrial assaults, the noisy electronics and the grinding guitars but there also seems to be an ability to write decent songs. Besides, the vocals really remind of of nineties alternative rock and grunge.

My personal favorites here are opener 'No Returning', which combines Marilyn Manson with Korn and could easily become a heavy rock club hit, 'Hold On', which drives on pure EBM beats and the epic 'The Lowest Common Denominator' which again brings Korn to mind. 'Better Than A Man' is also worth noticing because of its alternative radio-friendly approach. This might be a good single for Null1, perfectly capable to please both grunge fans and nu-metal lovers. And, like I said, the level of songwriting is pretty good.

So yeah, this thing might be worth checking out if you like the heavier side of music but don't like to go into extremes. People who got into music by listening to nu-metal in their teens can easily relate and so can seasoned industrial rockers. The new-wavers might really enjoy the gloomy atmosphere but might not appreciate the heavy guitars (although even they will probably be shaking their asses off to this stuff, certainly after a few red wines). So check it out, this is an interesting new act, definitely one to keep an eye on.


​Serge

doom / black metal / dark ambient

Sometimes, I load a whole bunch of albums to review into my Winamp-media player, check the 'shuffle' button and hit play. Then I start doing some other stuff, writing stories for example, or cleaning the bathroom. Yesterday, after I published all the new articles, I did exactly that. The playlist started with a two-minutes lasting grindcore tune and by the time I was in the kitchen, a song from this freaky and haunting gem suddenly started playing. I rushed back into the living room, watched who created these delightful hellish sounds and unchecked the shuffle-button. This I had to hear out entirely.

Hyponic was formed in Hong Kong, back in 1996. A first album, 'Black Sun' appeared in 2001, followed by 'The Noise Of Time' in 2005. Perhaps the band is most notable for their slowed down version of Death's 'The Philosopher' which they recorded for a tribute compilation. Now, over a decade after the previous full-length, the mysterious act returns with '前行者' (which Google translates as 'Former Monk'). And my god, what a brilliant monster this has become?

The album pretty much sounds like a slowed down and stretched out black metal album, which obviously drags us into the doomish regions of the metal universe. Yet, it also sounds like a drone doom version of Pink Floyd with its elaborate and dreamy (or nightmarish) guitar solos.The whole thing is slow, like a thick black slime crawling through my speakers, covering everything in a crushing blanket of drones, dark ambient soundscapes and martial ambient passages. That being said, if Puissance and Sunn O))) would make an album together, it would pretty much sound like this one.

This is as post-apocalyptic as it can possibly get. Especially the track '飄流', which sounds like echoing waves of despair over a barren wasteland, hours after humanity fought its very last war and lost it. By the end, there's an eerie cover of Virus' 'Intro'. I don't know the original track, hell, I don't even know which Virus they're covering but this cover is one brilliant piece of audibly darkness. This whole album is a perfect blend of dark ambient, drone and depressive black metal, here and there joined by a deep, growling voice. 

Or in other words: "wow"


​Serge

electronic / ambient / downtempo

Lightworker’s Delight is the second and most recent album by School Of Crystal Healing, an electronic ambient project by Swedish musician Olof Ejstes, released on June 18, by Troll N' Roll Records.

With eight tracks, being them Influx, Boutique Sternway, Parallax Oasis, Seven Stages of Empathy, Lavender, Cherry Blossom, Lonely Planet and Fruity Loom, each song has seven to nine minutes in general. With very consistent and exceedingly poignant harmonies, remarkably solid and not so overtly ecstatic, School of Crystal Healing, on this album, really expands and surpasses in interesting, but very subtle expressive devices, the boundaries of the genre, consolidating a sonorous element of virtuous audacity, that breaks the uncompromising opacity that engulfs the more hidden layouts of the genre. 

With an embracing sound that inhabits the globe of an atmosphere that creates within its own sensibility the calm beauty of infinite spaces, the invisible forces that searches for unusual sound distinctions on the verge of its own gregarious intuitions seems to reveal that School of Crystal Healing’s objectives are all but simple, eager to segregate, active and disseminate several colors of protuberating, yet hidden, senses of completeness. Summarizing the circles on which the music – and the music alone – contemplates the vastness of its own intrinsic harmonies, sleeping in the soul of a consciousness that never fails inside the universe that grows in the shoulders of an underlying greatness of symbols, all the melodies flourishes near the boundaries of rhythms never felt before in the core of ethereal senses, permanently hiding its infatuated brilliance in the nothingness perpetuated by a dormant sense of introspection. Nevertheless, as calm as it is, Lightworker’s Delight will heal and wake up your senses, activating them to a configuration ready to fit in a dimension where everything delusional seems empty, and yet, it conforms existence to a reality on which time is never stranded within a space bound for human thoughts.

So, if you’re looking for something highly unusual, and as infinite as the outer space, this work will exhale vast principles of unlimited possibilities through your imagination, creating an appealing framework of undeniable romanticism and peace, that will instantly undermine in the distinctive paths of your mental lucidity a whole new set of rainbows that will easily reinstate a groundbreaking thrill of majestic desires within your soul. Perfectly matching tranquil, peaceful and serene moments of overtly absolute quietness, building them near the internal algorithms of the psychosocial environment inherent to your life, Lightworker’s Delight, by School Of Crystal Healing, easily combines the exact elements for an interior discovery within yourself, that escalates to a time travel throughout the cosmos, brilliantly consolidating a sonorous journey of overachieving miracles, that doesn’t end when the album finishes. Although wisely disguised as an ordinary album, seemingly similar to others of the genre, Lightworker’s Delight is an impressive masterpiece, that suits perfectly all ambient music lovers out there, highlighting a very intelligent and sensitive pathway to a vigorous form of sonorous enlightenment, managing to open up in a simple manner very complex forms of graceful healings, that personal ethereal satisfaction is brought to light with a compelling cohesion, hardly believing what music can accomplish, when grounded in a soul system of relief. 

But this is only a little, from a handful of reasons and perceptions why you should listen to this amazing album. Fiercely grounded upon a remarkable sincerity that makes every atom and molecule of your body to transcend all the boundaries of the universe altogether, Lightworker’s Delight is a state of the art album, made by one of the best artists of the category. Bound to be a colossal force within several genres, like Ambient, New Age, World Music and Easy Listening, amongst others, this work is a fundamental milestone for meditational and transcendental music alike. And I would not be surprised at all if, in the years to come, this work turns out to be a main reference within all those genres. 

Wagner Hertzog                               

crust / black metal / hardcore / post-metal

King Apathy is the latest album released by German metal band Thränenkind, a highly interesting and potentially groundbreaking band in the current underground scenario, that has been emerging with its compelling and virtually distinguishing uniqueness, that keeps them shining under a very singular sonorous configuration, exceedingly hard to label and to classify.

Executing an intriguing and astoundingly unique mixture of metal, post-metal, post-black metal, hardcore, post-hardcore and what appears to be melodic straight edge, Thränenkind really does an excellent work infusing several different musical influences and elements, coherently binding everything altogether in a creative, competent and straightforward framework, which creates an impressive and exceedingly unique style of music, that can be regarded as their signature sound. With a strategic discipline that combines a lot of different components into their music, their perfectly aligned artistic eclecticism probably comes – but this is only a supposition on my behalf – from merging the ideas of all five band members, with an impeccable ability to embrace all those different musical confluences through impressive songwriting skills. As you can imagine, the result would be exceedingly above all the ordinary levels of expectancy. Perfectly counterbalancing wrathful heaviness with sentimental melodies, melancholic harmonies with furious rhythms, and vicious anxiety with serene dreamscapes, Thränenkind, in King Apathy, really builds a world of their own, sharing with their audience all of their main motives for creating these groundbreaking experiences in highly unquestionable sound form. 
 
With forty five minutes and ten tracks, being them Desperation, King Apathy, Ghosts, Urban Giants, The Blood On Our Hands, Drifter, What We Believe In, Smokestacks And Concrete Walls, Vanishing Youth and Homeruiner, Thränenkind really does an interesting and peculiar brand of sound, that highlights itself as pure, uncontrollable, delightful and highly unique. With an interesting shape that collides directly into the eye of a soul storm, their music has emotion, consistency, virtuosity and wrath, all essential elements for an album that could easily fulfill on its own the most remarkable pretensions for being a fundamental milestone on the exciting, but nevertheless dangerous field of the cross genre. With several qualities that really make this album worthwhile listening, King Apathy, by Thränenkind, is not made for weak, easy minded, or conservative audiences. A very intriguing work that shapes no restrictions, unbound distinctions of sound and creates bridges between heterogeneous paths of expression, it perfectly sets the best remarks, and more than ever, manages to balance the sincere wrath of metal with a more serene, introspective and soft brand of unusual harmonies, giving birth to an amazing and highly diversified artistic sonority, that shows the immensurable skills hidden in the colorful shades of the creative restlessness that resides and explodes in the heart of each band member. So, if you’re really interested in listening to something different, rewarding, enthralled, complex, beautiful, highly amazing and completely out of the ordinary, than this an album made for you.   

Want a recommendation? Go get it, right now!                              


​Wagner Hertzog 

dark ambient

An underground abyss of infinite darkness. An imperial desolation set up by the immolation of an impending doom. Grounded in an infinite palace of bestial darkened melancholy, the music of Gimu, in his Of the Spirit, Of the Space, is a masterpiece of dark ambient music, with an outstanding ability to create psychological labyrinths of gloom, desolation and sorrow, in a correlation of sinister imperial symphonies, perfectly aligned with a malignant state of insanity, that completely drives the listener into a concurrent zone of madness, tormented by the shadows of his own demise, in an unknown grey area of furious fear, completely cast out of time.

With Gimu, things are never quite simple, although the ambient space sound that he creates, in a more pragmatic point of view, is really very simple, indeed. But this paradox is one of the most interesting things in his music. While he is completely capable of doing songs that appears to be “ecstatic”, and therefore can be considered quiet, easygoing and driven by the flow of calm melodies, on the other hand, there is this hidden and nervous darkness within, whose anxiety can make you dream, and fall into the other side of your most despicable and pervasive truths, as you wander lost through the most abstract landscapes of your imagination, perpetually sinking in the waves of the dark cosmogonies that overflows throughout the sound of his music, while at the same time you wonderfully considers what in fact exists beneath all the complex layers of his multifaceted sound, that makes you fall deep into the heinous abysses of the most brilliant, obscure and curious dark ambient music ever created. 

First and foremost, Of the Spirit, Of the Space it is exactly what it means: a journey of the spirit, and a journey of the space. Primarily of the artist, as he puts at least a little of himself in each and every one of his tracks, allowing the listener to discover at least some of the labyrinths the artist had in his mind and in his emotional landscapes in the moment he wrote those songs, while also revealing the most interesting elements of his creativity. Nevertheless, the most important thing here begins with the fact that the listener himself can undergo the very same journey Of the Spirit, Of the Space, while listening to these same tracks, travelling through feelings that you may find difficult to describe, wandering lost through a journey of self-discovery, into an unknown world made of darkness and affliction, that reiterates in each note of each song the reverberation of damnation that the most amazing and excellent dark ambient music has the obligation to deliver to its audience. 

All in all, the music of Gimu speaks for itself. An astounding set of sinister frequencies, perfectly delineated to lead you to a downward spiral of hysteria, anxiety and affliction, thinly disguised as an innocent, peaceful and calm set of songs, you will see beneath the compounding layers of his sound structures the complex morbidity of a nefarious and continuous breakdown, that summarizes the darkness of all existence, easily surpassing your thoughts in the most exhilarating manners you have ever possibly felt, as you will be entrained by a malevolent dawn of ubiquitous impulses, being dragged to a world where the borders between what is real and what is not are quite indefinite, and you will have to rely on the beat of your own heart to wake you up from the nightmare to which you slowly was persuaded to fall into, and pray that it is not too late to wake up. Or you will be eternally tied to a universe from which there is no return at all. That is what Gimu gives us, in his Of the Spirit, Of the Space: a marvelous journey into the spirit of darkness, where space dwells no rules, no tranquility, and no time. If you by any chance manage to survive this groundbreaking dark descent into madness, be careful – you will get addicted to it, and will not stop listening to this beautiful masterpiece, for a long, long, long time!                     


​Wagner

thrash metal / death metal

In the early nineties I roamed around in the world of death and thrash metal. I visited big, small and tiny venues with big, small and tiny metal bands on their stages. I have seen some crazy stuff going on in those bars and clubs, I felt the adrenaline, I was awed by the technical abilities of some of these musicians and the sheer speed of their music. At that time, Belgium was teeming with metal bands, each trying to be as extreme and intense as the next one. It still is by the way, and even some of the bands from those early days are still going strong.

Yep, you guessed it, Poseydon is one of those bands. Formed in the town of Beveren in 1992, the band formed by Alain De Block (guitars) stood for swirling live shows and an aggressive blend of thrash and death metal. Yet, the path to success is not a smooth one in this little country. After a few years, Alain went on to form Everglow, followed by some of the other band members. Thing became quiet around Poseydon, but many knew that it was just a matter of time before the god of sea and metal returned to the stages.

And that's where this album comes in, a brand new collection of fierce thrash metal songs, loaded with eerie, almost industrial sounding death metal clamour and a thick, crushing atmosphere. The technical level is astounding but never gets in the way of the song writing, nor of the raging drive this album seems to have. From opener 'Classified' to the dark, haunting closer 'Innocent Blood', this thing breathes the air of the old school perfectly. And, as an old school death metal fan, I can only applaud that direction.

The ten songs on this album are rather short but effective assaults on your eardrums, highlighting in title track 'Masterpiece', the somewhat melodic 'Blind Faith' and the almost classic death metal anthem 'Pre-Emptive Strike'. I also really dig the instrumental 'Tortured Shadows', which is a gloomy piece of music which reminds me of something between Slayer, Sacred Reich and old Sepultura, or, in short, high quality headbanging stuff that you need to check out if you're into this madness...


​Serge

psychedelic folk / blues

About a year ago, I reviewed an album by Finnish one-man act J. Kill & Mr. Mule. I was extremely charmed by his stubborn do-it-yourself approach and the music was a nice variation from all the stuff I had been listening to. So when this new album came in, I was quite curious.After all, experimental music doesn't always have to be something like ambient or jazz, sometimes experimental music can be minimal but expressive and insightful pop songs.

Armed with his guitar, the kantele (a traditional Finnish instrument), salt shakers, empty paint cans and pretty much everything he can get his hands on, this act treats us to some creepy apocalyptic folk and blues songs like opener 'Jumala On Kone', 'Ilta Hämärtyy' and the immersive jamsession like 'Erämaa'. I can hear flashes from Tom Waits, a bit of Nick Cave and elements from faraway times, when life seemed to be tougher but simpler.

Some of the songs on this tape have lyrics, deeply personal and philosophical themes and one story about a religious cult which commits suicide. No, this isn't an extremely positive and joyful album, but it is a highly interesting one. 'Harhakuvat' is one of these songs, and somehow I hear some stoner rock influences here, acoustic ones and still deeply rooted in traditional or ethnic music. 'Saatana Saapuu Sieluun' even goes further by presenting itself in a desert-rock kinda way. Brilliant.

My love for instrumental music probably makes 'Peyote' my favorite track on this album. This track has a searing hot Americana feel to it, making it great road trip material. It's follow by the eerie, almost shamanic 'Minä Olen Outo Piiri' which drives on minimal guitar and features spoken word passages. So does 'Lopun Ajan Kansan Laulu', which has some Sol Invictus or Blood In June references.

In all, this is an excellent album, well-varied, often surprising but mostly gentle. Things can get quite dark at times but there's always room for decent musical craftsmanship and dreamy passages. If you are into psychedelic folk, this is something you should not ignore. If you like acts like Der Blutharsch, Bain Wolfkind or Current 93, it will not be a big step to embrace this project too. Try it out, you might be pleasantly surprised...


​Serge