Lines In Wax

TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION

Month: March 2015

Analkholic – After Party Shit Stinks (2014)
grindcore

Analkholic – After Party Shit Stinks (2014)

Like any doctor worth his salt will tell you, at least several weekly listens of guttural groovy gore and/or porn grind is vital to maintaining a.) a happy soul and b.) the ability to dance like a total spastic and get away with it. And Analkholic are just what the doctor ordered. That doctor might be dancing around a muddy field in Trutnov with a dildo strapped to his head, but he’s still a doctor, dammit. Anyways, Analkholic are fucking awesome. Damp, dirty and dingy groove is the order of the day, with stomachable drum machine beats, rumbling strings and Cthulhu-after-two-blunts vokills. This type of shit seems to get a lot of stick these days simply for being what it is – it’s like there’s a new breed of ultra-PC mongoloids infiltrating grindcore (or perhaps just infinite more numbers of mongoloids have access to the internet and are able to freely voice their opinion like it’s actually important or something, amirite? ;D). But fuck it, Analkholic bring the totally sick party vibe with hilarious samples and the perfect dingy goregrind to brighten up your week. So do yourself a solid and crank up this band’s self-styled “coconut porngore”. If you’re not dancing by track three then I’m sorry but you are officially an idiot.

Flesh Grinder – Necrofiles (2013)
death metal grindcore

Flesh Grinder – Necrofiles (2013)

Flesh Grinder are a long-running gory death metal band from the increasingly-metal-as-fuck nation of Brazil. Necrofiles is one of their later releases, being an EP unleashed on the public in 2013. What we have here is classic romp in the traditional Carcass take on death metal mixed with goregrind influences; low pitchshifted gurgles meet throat shredding screams in a mid-paced chuggy bog of deathly goodness. I’ll admit that some of the riffs are a little rough but the production is well rounded and the drums are fucking class. You can tell it’s an underground mix but it still possesses that right level of clarity needed not to sink into the bogs of metal! If you know what you’re looking for and this type of shit is up your corpse-filled alley then you can do no wrong by pressing play on the link below. Out on a 7″ record thanks to Black Hole Productions.

Voices – London (2014)
avant-garde black metal

Voices – London (2014)

Voices’ follow-up to their insane 2013 debut is a puzzling, intricate concept album based in their home city of London. Whilst their debut blasted at 96,000bpm, the band (consisting primarily of ex-Akercocke staff) still managed to fit a lot of subtly, emotion, delicate guitar work and other elements of beauty into their high-speed aural assault. It was pretty similar to Akercocke, only dragged kicking and screaming into a cold and modern world. London expands further upon this, slowing the pace slightly to give everything else more breathing room, and allowing some amazing things to unfold. That isn’t to say this album isn’t fast, heavy or abrasive. There’s a shitload going on here, and hey, David Gray is on the drums, so, lightning fast blastbeats are inevitable. On the subject of David Gray the drum sound has cleared up spectacularly from the debut; it actually sounds like real drumming now, which makes it all the better! Voices’ overall production style is still razor sharp, cold and claustrophobic, though. Awkward, fuck-knows-what-time-signature riffs mesh over blastbeats, pianos, scuzzy electronics and a smorgasbord of clean and shrieked vocals, both male and female. And then there’s the narrator; the velvet-throated storyteller (who sounds suspiciously like Jason Mendonca) holding the entire thing together like the metal bolt holding a crystal chandelier to the ceiling. Stand out tracks for me are “Music For The Recently Bereaved”, “Megan”, “The House Of Black Light” (what the fuck is going on here?) and the closing epic “Cold Harbour Lane”. On the first couple of listens, everything post-“Megan” tends to blur into one, but I wrapped my head around it in the end. The only track I don’t really like at all is “Last Train Victoria Line”, where the lyrics harken back to something Bring Me The Horizon might have wrote when they were 17 years old. All in all though, a worthy follow up to the group’s first offering and a searing slice of experimental extreme metal, whichever way you look at it. Easily one of the best albums of 2014, I’d wager.

Corrupt Moral Altar – Mechanical Tides (2014)
grindcore punk & hardcore

Corrupt Moral Altar – Mechanical Tides (2014)

Christ, this band has come a long way since I heard their 7″ EP Whiskey Sierra that was put out by Dead Chemists Records a few years ago. I knew the momentum was building for them; their ever-increasing dominance over the UK live circuit testifies for that, but it wasn’t until this album dropped that Corrupt Moral Altar really made me turn my head. Now I feel like I’ve been missing out on something really special. Nevermind – it’s always better late than never! Mechanical Tides is a perplexing, dense mixture of sludgy doom and blistering grindcore. The band craft their own sound out of these two polar opposites, all the while creating an unique and almost groovy middle-ground that doesn’t really belong firmly in either camp. To be honest, it’s fucking great. The drummer is an absolute machine but my favourite thing has to be those vocals. I’m not sure if this is the work of one, two, or three vocalists but the range here is off the chart. In the first track, I almost convince myself that Barney from Napalm Death is doing a guest spot (ironically ND’s Mitch Harris and Carcass’ Jeff Walker appear a little later on). If you are into heavy music in any capacity, you really can’t go wrong here.

Death In June – Nada! (1985)
electronic folk, neofolk & acoustic

Death In June – Nada! (1985)

Nada! is my favourite Death In June record. Brown Book is kind of similar but I prefer Nada! for its dominating dark 80s synthpop vibes and martial background. There’s also less Nazi imagery flirtation going on here, which is always a plus. I believe that this album was the last the group did as a three piece; and seems a fry cry from the acoustic solo project that Death In June has been for so many years now. I love the dense electronic sound on most of these tracks. I’ll have to find out what equipment was used here, especially the drum machine (not so I can go out and get one, but see if any .wav rips exist that I can import into iDrum or something like that). “The Honour Of Silence” opens things up on a haunting, sombre note (what else would you expect though?), and “The Calling MKII” sounds like it could have been in regular circulation on the radio back 25 years or so. “Rain Of Despair”, “Foretold” and “Carousel” bring those dark synth vibes in by the truckload, which is just what I want. My favourite track though has to be “Crush My Love” with its excellent synth lead and unusual vocal approach (for DIJ). To top it off, Nada! is probably the best place to start with Death In June, although I could be slightly biased.

Broken Hope – Loathing (1997)
death metal

Broken Hope – Loathing (1997)

Broken Hope have been on my stuff-to-check-out list since they were announced for OEF this year. It’s funny, death metal’s appeal for me is growing as I get older. When I was younger I didn’t have much time for a whole lot of death metal, it all sounded the same to me, despite the fact that I am heavily into grindcore and all sorts of other metal. But hey, I guess it’s just one of those things. I’m glad I’m changing my tastes up a bit though because a few years ago I would have written Broken Hope into the seemingly bottomless category of music called “Boring Death Metal”. Loathing is a mechanical and clinical exercise in the classic death metal template. The riffs are technical yet traditional, the drums dryer than a London gin and the vocals typically Cookie Monster-y to the absolute max. I guess if you sucked the jazzy bass playing out of early Cryptopsy you wouldn’t be a million miles away. But yeah, I’m really into this shit. “Siamese Screams” has a killer fucking riff and “High On Formaldehyde” has an over-arching slam vibe to it. A whole bunch of eery samples hold the whole thing together. Top stuff. Between their OEF performance and their upcoming UK/European tour with Internal Bleeding, I’m very much looking forward to catching Broken Hope in the next few months.

Electric Wizard – Time To Die (2015)
hip hop

Electric Wizard – Time To Die (2014)

To say that the recent Electric Wizard album sounds like Electric Wizard would possibly be a very lazy analysis of the situation, but hey – this sounds like Electric Wizard. It sounds so much like Electric Wizard that it literally hurts. Even with Mark Greening back on drums (for long enough to record this record anyway) it just sounds to me exactly like the last two albums. It seriously boggles my little mind how Wizard can (let’s be honest) keep recycling the same old shit and still have it sound fantastic as fuck. The biggest thing for me with Time To Die is the production sound; it’s much more sludgy, even a bit meatier than its predecessor, and adds a clarity to the swampy sound of thon Wizard of Electricity. As great as Black Masses is, it sounds like it was recorded in an active wind tunnel and then some “new guy” at the studio sucked all the fucking bass and treble out of it. For such a brilliant album, it sounds truly, truly awful. Anyway, Time To Die is awesome. For me it picks up as the album develops; the triple whammy of “Funeral Of Your Mind”, “We Love The Dead” and “SadioWitch” is absolute top class doomery. The whole thing has a recurring theme of eery keyboards and samples relating to satanic worship meandering in and out every so often. This cumulates in the closing outro track “Saturn Dethroned”, which takes the eery keyboard widdly-widdly-ness to epic new levels of spookiness. Despite the fact that I like to complain about everything (but hey, I’m an internet blogger – we’re the scum of the universe) please, please be assured that Time To Die is a fantastically heavy record by a longstanding doom metal legend.

Urine Cop / Vomir – Split Tape (2011)
noise & power electronics

Urine Cop / Vomir – Split Tape (2011)

When I heard of Urine Cop being a collaboration between Adam Jennings of Winters In Osaka and Putrefaction In Progress-era LDOH vocalist Erwin De Groot, I got very, very excited. I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed with what is on show here. Bass, noise and LDOH vocals sounds fucking class in my book, but you literally can’t hear a thing here. You’ve basically got 8 minutes of distorted blastbeats, with the odd De Groot roar farting through the mix. Any noise or bass or whatever the other contribution is, is virtually inaudible. I guess I set myself up for the fall, but hey, I calls ’em how I sees ’em (or hears ’em, in this case)! Vomir is all about what Vomir is about. Dim fuckio aroundio, as us Welsh folk say. Straight up, to the point, psychosis-inducing harsh noise wall for the whole family to enjoy. Child playing fuck? Smash on this tape. Eldery family member tired of living a pointless life, forgotten about by your children and grandchildren? Smash on this tape. Slightly off-topic but I would love it if Stalaggh (or Gulaggh nowadays) did some sort of collaboration with Vomir. Although, that would probably cave my head in permanently.

Dragged Into Sunlight – Hatred For Mankind (2009)
death metal doom metal

Dragged Into Sunlight – Hatred For Mankind (2009)

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but Dragged Into Sunlight have become one of my favourite British bands of all time. From misty beginnings catching them unknown on the smallest stage of Leeds Deathfest in 2009, to seeing them release two records and headlining tours, packing out huge rooms at festivals. I think it must be the air of mystery, darkness and intrigue surrounding the band and their music. I’m a sucker for shit like that. My fascination with them would obviously also be somewhat attributed to the utter sonic annihilation that Dragged Into Sunlight offer us on records such as this one. Hatred For Mankind is a perplexing, extremely evil album of cataclysmic heaviness. Their unique blend of black metal, death metal and doom reaches unmatchable levels of brutality that very few artists can provide. “Boiled Angel” creeps and crawls (no pun intended, if you get what I mean!) before “Buried With Leeches” literally just blows the fucking roof off. “Volcanic Birth” continues the ceremony of unrelenting heaviness. “I Aurora” actually has a sung chorus, which is very unexpected considering the environs. If you listen to this all the way through then the world will seem a little darker forever afterwards, but you’ll feel better for it.

Torsofuck / Lymphatic Phlegm – Split CD (2002)
grindcore

Torsofuck / Lymphatic Phlegm – Split CD (2002)

Who would have thought that a split between two uncompromising legends of the goregrind genre could be so fuckin’ shite? Lymphatic Phlegm are not exactly my favourite band in the world; although I respect what they do I find a lot of their stuff kinda sounds like really crummy bedroom black metal. Once you’ve heard one Lymphatic Phlegm song you’ve heard them all, if I am to be brutally honest. That’s not meant as a diss, it is what it is. They are who they are, and they play what they play. They also carry this split. There’s a whole bunch of Lymphatic Phlegm madness here – if your into it, you will enjoy this split. Torsofuck on the other hand, are lazy as fuck. All we got here is a couple of crappier versions of songs off the full length Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy, making only half of Torsofuck’s material exclusive to this split. Seeing as the treble-heavy production on EDF already pushes the limits of half decent studio work, these extra-crappy demo versions are as worthless to me as a Thai hooker cut up into several pieces. Astoundingly, this is available on Spotify, which isn’t exactly known for its reams of dodgy goregrind. The album art is heavily censored (read: completely different) though. If you’re into this shit, check out the Lymphatic Phlegm material, but don’t bother with the Torsofuck shit. This level of laziness is usually reserved for Agathocles 7”s. Disappointed.

Dwarves – Blood Guts & Pussy (1990)
punk & hardcore

Dwarves – Blood Guts & Pussy (1990)

I absolutely love (The) Dwarves. They are probably one of the most fun bands I’ve seen live, and all their albums (even the dodgy pop punk ones) are bursting with a childish, youthful punk energy, even as the band continue to age in the physical world. Blood Guts & Pussy shows a much more hardcore punk orientated side to Dwarves that unfortunately quickly died out as they adopted a cleaner, more mainstream sound. It matters not though, as for me, Blood Guts & Pussy is an absolute classic in the fields of short, fast and loud. It’s very cheeky to call this an album as it’s over really, really quickly, but I don’t suppose its short enough to be an EP either. Opener “Back Seat Of My Car” is probably the most punk thing ever, as is “Drug Store” and the enormously rude “Let’s Fuck”. “Fuck You Up And Get High” is one of the simplest yet greatest tunes written in the history of music, while “Flesh Tantrum” is a stomping, bass-heavy mid-pacer dripping with malice. “You make my skin crawl!” spits Blag Dahlia, over and over. The only downside with Blood Guts & Pussy is that it kinda just fizzles out; there’s no real ending as such, it just starts, fucks you up and then finishes abruptly. I guess it could be fleshed out a bit more with a few more solid tracks but then again I think that more than likely detract from the whole point.

Desecration – Gore & PerVersion 2 (2003)
death metal

Desecration – Gore & PerVersion 2 (2003)

The story surrounding Gore & Perversion always comes up at some point with Welsh metalheads over a certain age – we all have our own stories to tell about it, and there’s always one person who knows someone who also knows someone who’s uncle’s dog still has an pristine, uncensored copy of the original. But thanks to the absolute twattery and/or dickfuckery of Gwent police, a piece of death metal history has been blasted off the face off the earth in the name of “decency”. Why don’t you go and tell the sweatshop child slaves making dresses for Primark that Britian is a decent and proper society? Anyyyyway, several years later, with the complete loss of their debut album more than likely weighing on them in some way shape or form, self-styled Welsh “death metal bastards” Desecration re-recorded everything and put it out as Gore & PerVersion 2, although this time with a much tamer cover picture. If you want to see the drummer getting a blowy in a graveyard then you at least have to open the booklet first. So yeah, repackage the entire album with a close-up of something horrible happening and shorten “Infantile Anal Intercourse” to “I.A.I.” and suddenly Gore & Perversion is now totally acceptable for our decent and proper society to consume. What a fucking massive load of shit. But the silver lining here is that Version 2 is much, much better than the original. It’s hard to beat a grubby old school death metal independent release, but Version 2 was recorded by a band who had found their feet in their own unique and super-brutal niche of death metal. If I ever want to listen to Gore & Perversion I come to this release, although the original has now been re-released several times with censored artwork.

Unholy Grave – Angry Raw Grinder (2007)
grindcore

Unholy Grave – Angry Raw Grinder (2007)

You simply can’t beat Unholy Grave at their game. Okay, so they kinda fall into the same trap as Agathocles with releasing billions of EPs every week (slight overstatement maybe) but at least with Unholy Grave they have much a higher ratio of original-to-rehashed material than Agathocles. But if it’s raw, uncompromising grindcore that you are looking for then you don’t have to go much further than Unholy Grave. This 2007 release doesn’t exactly break new ground but then again it doesn’t really need to; it’s Unholy Grave through and through and doesn’t necessarily need to be too forward thinking. We all know what they do and they do it very, very well. This type of attitude would kill other bands (or genres – just look at the underground black metal scene) but somehow, and I don’t know how, Unholy Grave keep managing to spew out endless reams of chaotic noisy grindcore. With the recent passing of their drummer not tripping up the band at all- despite the magnitude of the loss – we can see the conviction and dedication of Unholy Grave to their brand of music is as hard as concrete and as strong as it was in 1993.

Scorn – Anamnesis (1999)
electronic metal

Scorn – Anamnesis (1999)

Anamnesis is a ‘rarities’ collection from Mick Harris’ genre-spanning project Scorn. It’s actually a bizarre cross-section of the sounds that Scorn had made up until the late 90s; encompassing the early Nik Bullen material, the loud beatwork of the Logghi Barogghi era and the minimalist, bass heavy electronic beats that would come later. It’s all a bit of a mess, to be honest. It’s like this CD can’t decide if it’s a b-sides collection, a remix album or a super cool round-up of unheard stuff. It’s great though, if like me, you’ve rinsed all life out of nearly every Scorn record and want to hear some long lost material from the vaults. There are some quality beats and vibes on here, especially the more minimalist stuff. When lined up back to back with the older stuff you kinda realise how much of a snoozer Nik Bullen is with his vocals (and this is coming from someone who loves Vae Solis). The track here from that era sounds like Godflesh withering in the final stages of a long battle with AIDS. Not a bad CD overall but definitely not the place to start with Scorn. There is some phenomenal material out there linked to this project.