Archive for April 2017

Martian Cartography is an excellent album release by the criminally under-rated experimental duo Necro Deathmort. Mixing catastrophically heavy atmosphere with intelligent, progressive electronic work has always been ND’s forte, but on Martian Cartography, I find that this approach to sound design has finally had chance to spread its wings and fly. In some respects that means that this record isn’t as hard-hitting or droning as something off Music Of Bleak Origin or earlier, but the…

Didn’t really know what to feel about posting this, what with the “accusations” against Satanic Warmaster (who denies flat out being racist, despite some extremely questionable lyrics and releases). It is also a weird situation where a non-NSBM band has done a split with a band that is considered to be a NSBM act. Regardless, I’ve covered some pretty extreme shit here before, and have also written about Death In June and even Burzum, so…

10/10 split 7″ from Olso fastcore/PV maniacs Higgs Boson (who perhaps have one of the sickest bass tones ever), going head to head with British kings of start/stop savagery, Nothing Clean. Both bands churn out rapid-fire bursts of aggression, as, of course, you would expect, but with Higgs Boson not being afraid to slow things to a crawl pace for a few seconds to highlight the speed of the quick bits even more, or to…

O.A.P. (or Onanistic Anti-Peristalsis for short) were a death metal band based in Newport, Wales. I believe they finally kicked the bucket sometime around 2013/14 and Human Milkshake was their only album release. They featured members of death metal bands Necrocest and Cryptophile, as well as having local promoter / general all round good egg Sam Wall as one of the vocalists. Human Milkshake gets better as it goes on; personally I find the opening…

King Midas Sound is a beautiful collaboration between Roger Robinson, Kiki Hitomi and Kevin Martin, which (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) began life as a track for Kevin’s much more wider known project, The Bug. I find it hard to describe and categorize KMS simply because my exploration into this kind of music is incredibly limited (I got here through Godflesh, Techno Animal, etc.), although I can say that this is a incredibly…

Easily one of the best slices of death metal I’ve heard in the last few months, Cease Of Breeding’s only album, entitled Sounds Of Disembowelment, literally has the definitive death metal production sound, giving all of these massacres (I’m talking about the songs, geddit?) the room they need to breathe, and more importantly, brutalize, like a hundred daggers to the face and a thousand punches to the stomach all at once, or something equally as…

Aun are one of those bands that I constantly end up back at. For what is essentially noisy ambiance with synths and the odd guitar, this is quite impressive. Fantastic, shoe-gazy drones meet unfurling electronics in transcendent “songs” that average around the 7 minute mark; deep, involving worlds swirl into life, conjured from the chasms of nothingness by this bleak yet somewhat inspiring show of digital noise. Enter the Black Pyramid!

This has to be the benchmark to which all drum machine grindcore is judged. ANb’s first full length record is far cry from anything that has followed it (even the lightening fast pharmaceutical headfuck of Frozen Corpse… is a million miles away from this); the production is bassy, fat and bludgeoning, the guitars almost sludgy, and the shrieked, yelped vocals are almost drowned out by the cacophony of the strings and machine. And that harsh…

Ah man, this is just, like, so lush. That was probably the Welshest sentence I’ve ever written to describe music, but I feel like it is somewhat entirely justified in this instance; you tend to hear the term “nice” black metal bandied about to describe acts such as Alcest, but I don’t usually rate those types of acts. However, Deafheaven for some reason seem to be an exception for me. This band have managed to…

Salt Bath are a new band from the Newport area of South Wales, playing an abrasive form of back-to-basics noisemongery distilled through the blunt force weapons of choice – bass guitar and drums (with Venom Prison sticksman Sheehy on the skins). Uncomfortable Choices boasts an impressively all-encompassing production sound, courtesy of One Louder Studios, again in Newport. Imagine Big Black meets Melvins or if you want to go all out; Death From Above 1979 meets…

Jesus, what a glorious fucking mess. I am instantly reminded of the Pissgrave review I did recently; these guys are really, really similar, only Portal has a more dark and eery vibe, rather than the terrifyingly vivid, gory splurge of Pissgrave. It would not surprise me if the bands shared members or something (edit: I just found out how old this album is, guess that Pissgrave relation was wishful thinking). Anyway, this is some spooky…

Sleaze Servant is the new EP from long-time techno-gore-grind filth mongers, Libido Airbag; a “band” so balls deep in scum and vulgar sounds that even your gran loves a dance to some of their older tunes. They’ve hardly pumped out volumes of material in their long existence, but the fact that they can still develop and spew out fresh sounds in such a restrictive genre is a testament to gore and porno grind, especially the…

I’ve had this for so long but the sodding thing is so small I keep losing it amongst my CDs! The Agathocles stuff here seems to be original tracks, which is refreshing in itself, but the greatest surprise is that they are also somewhat strangely melodic; it is the same lo-fi high quantity of shredding mincecore, but with strange, almost ethereal guitar leads over a few of the tracks. Just when I’d thought I’d heard…

Look Past The Gore… is the long awaiting debut album from Barrow-based death metallers Repulsive Vision. It is to my knowledge that RV have been around for quite some time in various different line ups, with the most recent incarnation of the band solidifying suitably enough for a much-overdue full length to finally gestate. I am pleased to say that it has been well worth the wait, as this is a serious slab of death…

You’d think that given the opportunity, I would do everything in my power to throw mud at this band, but the reality here is that I have to admit that this is a decent fucking record. The production is solid, the riffs are intense and the vocals are on point. As with the previous release, Vorarephilia, the main downside is that for some godforsaken reason the band used a drum machine in lieu of their…

(I implore you to forgive me the ridiculously low quality of today’s upload. This is literally impossible to track down online, and I unfortunately do not own a copy of the super-limited lathe cut 7″. That being said, if anyone has any hi-res scans of the cover art that would do this post more justice, then please, by all means, feel free to get in contact with me, and of course upload the pictures to…

Hallucinocide is one of the noise identities of Chilean artist Vicente Perez, perhaps most well known for his other project, Bucket Of Piss. The Peel Session isn’t quite so drumstick-meets-saucepan-core as his more “meme’d” project, but it definitely offers up a much more violent and vital exercise in proper harsh noise. Comprised of two tracks, each clocking in at over 20 minutes, The Peel Session is a meandering listen covering a broad spectrum of the…

Phyllomedusa has been sneaking doom metal tracks into his (?) gory repertoire for quite some time now, but Fijian Holiday marks the point where the stark lines of contrast have blurred so much that the multitude of perplexing styles this project perpetuates have finally come crashing together into one big sticky disgusting bog of beautiful, nauseating mess. Almost sounding like slam in parts; this record crawls and grooves with absolute menace. Phyllomedusa can do no…

Wraith are a ridiculous metal band from the UK, who I can only imagine expired quite some time ago, falling into the pits of obscurity along with dozens of failed major label deals and washed up airbrush artists. I mean, wallowing in the mire of death and grind for so long has exposed me to some absolute shiners when it comes to record sleeves, but whoever painted this deserves a fucking medal; that has to…

I find that Nine Inch Nails’ release history is constantly hit-and-miss. This latest EP is absolutely no exception to that rule. How can something that is only 5 tracks long be so “meh”? I mean, surely it is either going to be shit or it is going to be great? No. Not Nine Inch Nails. Not Not The Actual Events (see what I did there?). Below is easily the best track on the whole release….

Here we have the Earth EP by South Wales based acoustic singer/song writer Craig Watkins; a well put together collection of soulful acoustic material, with lots of raw energy and passion coming through, with a very real sense coming off of it all as an artist (real in the sense of you can tell he’s passionate about what he’s playing and what he’s singing about, which is always great to hear). Production wise the EP…

Before we start can we all just take a moment to bask in that truly awful album art? Why did the zombie guy take the time to keep his pants on? Oh, the mirth! Maybe one day when I’m old and dying alone in sheer misery I will make an archive of awful record covers to stave off depression and an early suicide. But anyway, as usual, I have digressed… Thankfully the music isn’t as…

This latest Kendrick Lamar record is a strange collection of what is supposed to be left over tracks and ideas related to the rapper’s previous record, To Pimp A Butterfly. Musically, it has a lot in common with the beats and instrumentation of that album, but as these songs are demos, there is a welcome rougher feel to things. At first the vocals seem a little lo-fi, but every falls into place quickly and the…