Archive for February 2020

Age Of Consent is a beautiful film from the arse-end of the 60s which I am so so glad I took a chance on. The plot is a bit wet, following an artist who lost his muse as he returns to the wilderness of a desert island, where he meets a young and nubile Helen Mirren. She becomes his model, and their relationship develops, but the problem is, is that he is a man in…

After Now, Diabolical the Age Of Nero feels like Satyricon’s “if it ain’t broke…” moment. Which is fine, in all honesty, as the album is fucking super solid, if not a little predictable. The songs are tight as fuck, from Frost’s drumming to the razor sharp guitars, this is the perfect balance of rock n roll swagger and lethal black metal precision. There’s too many good tracks to list them all, but “Black Crow On…

I made the decision to take this rare opportunity to listen to both of these records back to back, and post each one in succession. I started with, of course, Covenant’s OG In Times Before The Light; a hissy, hollow black metal experience. Not as necro as some entries in the genre, but there is an echoic hollowness to proceedings that even a layer of frosted synths cannot cover up. There is a magic and…

I’m unsure if anyone has ever used Times New Roman on a record sleeve and gotten away with it like Cathedral have here. Honestly, it seems like the guys were stoned as fuck when they signed off on that artwork, and the same goes for the EP itself. This is a gloriously mad little thing, which reeks of early Cathedral vibes, but hints at the psychedelic madness that would come on later records. “Cosmic Funeral”…

Noisy, grim and endlessly bizarre, Abruptum occupy a strange space between the words of noisecore, black metal and something altogether more avante garde. This mammothly-titled record is of no exception to this, and is a pretty challenging listen.

Forest Of Equilibrium is often written about as Cathedral’s slow and miserable gestation into the world of doom, but, I find that in more than just scratching the surface of this dusty tome of fantastical worlds and weeping riffs, it is very distinctly Cathedral, from Gaz’s riffs to Lee’s unique vocals. Yeah, this isn’t spaced out on 10,000 strong mushroom tea (lol, a bit OTT there), but this is nowhere near as depressing as people…

Super tight, ultra brutal and lightening fast brutal death metal is the order of the day. Ominous Bloodline lacks in originality but instead brings instead spades of slashing death metal intricacy, rabid energy and solid production values.

It seems a lot of people think that this is a bit of a bummer for Burzum to go out on. I’ve only listened to it a couple of times since it was released and whilst it is an easy listen, my first impressions – which have stuck with me until now – were that it was a cheap imitation of the earlier synth work from the same project. Sure, he’d upgraded from horrendous analogue…

As much as I initially enjoyed this reworking I still don’t really understand the whole point of this record. Like, why does it exist? It seems entirely un-Burzum to want to re-record past material in a more clear and well produced way. I suppose if the songs you released initially, even if loved all over the world, don’t match up to the vision you had as an artist, then that can be pretty frustrating. It…

The sounds of industrial landscapes are sourced and re-purposed into collages of weaving, constantly collapsing slabs of freeform noise. This is the second such collab between Merzbow and Davis. Bonus points from me for using the title “Inland Empire” for the final track.

When Covenant became Kovenant, I’m not sure if the world became a better or worse place. I love some of the Kovenant albums, but this kind of music hasn’t really aged well and is for me rather corny, and a product of the 90s. Imagine my surprise then, when I finally, after like 18 years or whatever, got around to listening to this re-recording. Immediately there is an industrial hue to it, like when an…

Sometimes power electronics can be a little try hard,  especially when try to capture the impact of the older days.  Blue Rabbit however is genuinely terrifying; a brooding, disturbing entry from a great of the genre. All of the narratives are pretty macabre, but the title track itself is particularly harrowing. Musically, it is a little bit dialed back compared to some of their peers, instead of blasting your face with noise, the band let…

In my younger days I always had a large respect for what Tool was doing, but in the constant lust for what was fast more brutal, or even more offensive, albums like Lateralus fell to the wayside for me. Thankfully, now in my wizened old age I can return to such records and see the beauty in them. Lateralus is like watching the mechanism of a very expensive Swiss watch in slow motion; all the…

Shrinebuilder was the only studio record by the band of the same name, which was a super group consisting of Dale from the Melvins, Al from Om and Sleep, Wino from Saint Vitus, and Scott from Neurosis. It is a fairly polished affair, which is a solid listen, with most of the guys sharing vocal duties. Some of the tracks are quite monolithic, but standing up to all the other projects that these guys have…

Harvesting The Cunt Nectar (yes lol) is the only full length record from bizarre hyper-fast drum machine goregrind unit, XXX Maniak. The band’s linear notes, backstory and attention to gory detail really made this record stand out to me when it was released; the type of thing that perfectly appealed to the grotty 17 year old finding his footing in the world of grindcore. In the seemingly endless sea of digigrind projects on MySpace, XXX…

What in the holy mother of fuck did I just watch? Like, this is a mess. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I honestly don’t know. What starts as a slasher setting quickly devolves into a clusterfuck of Satanic rituals and insane plot twists. The plot can literally go fuck itself, but I have to commend this film on its gore, it’s cast (eyes are now firmly back in skull) and its…

There’s a lot of buzz and hype around this woman right now, so I was afraid of being disappointed. I can happily (is that the right word?) confirm however, that this is a dark and disturbing listen. I’m getting heavy Gnaw Their Tongues vibes off this, but the blend of dark atmospheric noise and classical music, along with multilayered vocals, it’s pretty unique. My one complaint is that the album is top heavy, and trails…

Arguably, Toxicity is the record that blew up System Of A Down. “Chop Suey” (or “Suicide” as it should be called) and the title track might be hideously overplayed, fodder to both TV music channels and the flaccid rotations at crappy rock bars, but the album as a whole is a work of bloody genius. SOAD retain the chaos present in their debut recording but bolster that with more solid song structuring, flourishes of different…

What is this? Sounds like Marilyn Manson and Big Black fucking (on steroids) whilst at an Einstürzende Neubauten show. Is that an obtuse discription? Why, yes it is! But, End Position is a dense and disorientating trip through an industrial hell. Pretty nice, if I’m honest.

I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that Pyroclasts blew my mind. It’s the group’s second record in a fairly short period of time, so I wasn’t expecting the world when going in to this, but Pyroclasts showcases enormous slabs of drone rituals, each one as massive and totem-like as the last. The tones are stunning; avalanches of folding sounds and gargantuan waves of distortion.

Creeping, brooding, claustrophobic. Yet, somehow beautiful, delicate and sprawling. Perdition City came earlier in the band’s discography, as they veered away from black metal to making these contemporary and what I can only describe as urban soundscapes. Glorious stuff.

The First Cumming, is (in perhaps a fairly explanatory manner) the debut record from Laaahdahn surgically precise butchers of death metal, Basement Torture Killings, featuring six tracks of gore-drenched brutality packaged in a DVD case. Weirdly, I can’t find a link to this anywhere except on Spotify, so if you’ve got an account on there, fire it up and have a stream.

I can’t decide whether the abnormality that is Class Of Nuke ‘Em High is either genius or hideously hideously bad. The plot suffers some pacing issues, for me I found it hard to stay focused during the first act (yes, even with all those nude “teens” lol) but the payoff comes towards the end. This is a Troma classic so I won’t go into the story itself, but it’s worth saying that the effects are…

Forecast today is jazzy with a sprinkling of funk, my dudes. This is perfect sitting on the train going out for the day kinda tunes. Fresh, massive dollops of inspiration are heaped on top of good vibes and enough edge of your seat moments to keep things interesting.

LOL this record is all kinds of sleazy. In parts, that comes across as pretty evil and sinister, other times just infantile. Nevertheless, the riffs are great, the production is perfectly balanced (that bass hums through the mix), making Ampeauty a nasty metal record for those who like to stroll on the sicker side of life. Happy valentines day from us here at Lines In Wax!

The Angels Of Light took the heavily textured work of late 90s Swans and moulded those sound collages into moving, gorgeous folk songs. It is of course, in reality, a slightly more complicated story than that, and there is a lot to unpack here, a lot of nuances, however there is a beauteous simplicity to the tracks that betrays the denser roots that lay beneath the sparkly surface of these melancholic hymns. I find New…

Nyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaahhhhhhhhh! Asides from the fact that M. Shadows sounds like a goddamn super villain, City Of Evil has aged fairly well. It is a slick yet clumsy monstrosity of a record, with a lot of it’s saving grace lying in the production. This could easily have been a garbled mush of bad GNR worship. The most notable performance for me though is the busybody drumming of The Rev, who was an incredible drummer, and arguably,…

This is a strange one. The movie starts off as one of the more depraved exploitation films I’ve encountered thus far; scene after scene of gratuitous nudity and horrendous violence towards women randomly peters out after half hour and the movie turns into this slow investigation / psychological piece. It is bizarre to see pretty much all of the slasher kills over and done with in one go, and honestly, it really effects the pacing…

Christian Death’s discography has been spotty; and is very hit and miss. Sex Drugs and Jesus Christ pretty much embodies that fact for me, being a meandering journey through a variety of different material, all of which being perplexingly “trademark” Christian Death, yet varying wildly between track to track. This should, in all honesty, showcase the pair’s musical chops, but some of the time, the record just completely loses its way as it jumps here…

I’m unsure if this is a bestial classic or just a total fucking mess. In fact, it’s probably the perfect avalanche of both. It conjures memories of my time listening to Blasphemy or Revenge, so I’m glad I gave this one a go. I’m a bit rusty on thee pits ov black metal outside of Norway so was fuckin’ enlightened to come across this. No gods, no production, no mastering! Ha!

Bitchagram is the somewhat uninspired debut of the groovy goregrind project 666 Shades Of Shit. If bludgeoning chunks of metallic sludgey grind is your thing then by all means carry on and tuck in. Otherwise, I’d probably give this one a miss, or go for the follow up record.

There is an unique charm to the first System record. It is much rougher around the edges than the later offerings, and the vocals employ more shrieks and growls, akin more to metal than the unique brand of rock SOAD would go on to produce. You can almost smell the air and tell which year this was recorded in; the way alternative music was going around then… well let’s just say this record is symptomatic…

I’ll be honest with you, it was the cover art that drew me in here. It reminded me somewhat of the blasphemous inkings of Akercocke drummer David, and it was enough to draw me into Archgoat’s heretical and enormously noisy world. Heavenly Vulva (LOL) is not as abrasive as say, Blasphemy or Beherit, but it is a 15 minute uncompromisingly brutal attack in the style of black metal. It isn’t particularly “grimm” or even “khold”,…

I’ve forgotten how much I love Bowel Rot (what a sentence) or even just the varied works of one Bobby Maggard in general. Gonorrhoea Infection is a gory, super mushy downtuned romp that is effortlessly disgusting and very highly recommended grinding noise. Please disregard the absolutely horrendous cover art, which does this noise no justice.

I love Big Black, but for some reason I never have them in my rotation all that often. A colleague at my previous job swore down that Atomizer was their best album, and I had to admit that I had never heard it, so out I went and got stuck in. I just love those abrasive, hollow walls of guitar noise. It shouldn’t work but it does when you mount layer and layer and layer…

I think if there is one album in the world that I could describe as being “just lovely”, then Air’s Moon Safari would be it. I’m probably being a pleb here, but it invokes feelings in such a way that it makes electronic music sound new, fresh and exciting. I get a heavy “we can go anywhere” vibe off this, for all its 90s cliches.

The Beginning Of All Things To End is a compilation album that puts Mudvayne’s first EP from 1997 alongside some crappy “Dig” remixes and the full 17 minute version of “LD.50”, which is the trippy electronic shit that appears on the album of the same name (y’know, that shit in between songs that has sped up Terrence McKenna samples?). The only thing of any worth here is the OG Kill, I Oughtta tracks. They don’t…

More Aphex Twin is always a welcome. Collapse is a compact EP featuring several fresh new cuts of ticking, bleeping, blopping electronic goodness, blown along with wispy, dreamy synths. I’ve recently got myself some Tin T2 IEMs and this kind of music just absolutely melts my head on that kind of stereo stage. Glorious.

The Arena is a mid 70s exploitation shit show featuring the excellent Pam Greer. The main girls are pretty decent (or at least funny) actors but the supporting cast are appalling. The plot makes literally no sense and the ending is absolute trash but there is something endearing about this awful movie. It has zero redeeming features but there is something about which has put a smile on my face, regardless. I think that probably…

Where does porn end and exploitation film begin? Sometimes the line is blurry, or hard to define. In the case of Behind The Green Door, the line is pretty clear cut. Starring the same lass that was in Cronenberg’s Rabid, Green Door tells the story of a girl who is kidnapped and taken to an elite sex club, where she is fucked in all manner of ways from (and to) Sunday. Apparently, this did so…

This record brings back memories of Red Sun fest in Cardiff, fuck – 5 years ago! These guys played around the same time as Grand Collapse and I mega enjoyed their combination of punky crust and darker elements. Arrest Days captures the band’s energy and vibe effortlessly. It’s not a long record by any stretch, but it’s fucking great. I don’t think these guys have done all that much else, which is a shame. Arrest…

Well this was just glorious. Eery yet hilarious from the outset, what this lacks in Cronenberg’s infamous body horror FX it makes up for with hilarious attitude and plot. A sexually promiscuous young woman and a scientist of sorts have brought an unstoppable parasite to a housing complex. Weird shit, and almost surrealist in some ways, I’m sure there’s a bigger message here that maybe I am missing. Nevertheless, there’s enough nipples showing through tops…

Painkiller is not a million miles away from the early Naked City stuff, if not a little more streamlined – if that is even the right word! Guts Of A Virgin, as you may be able to guess by the title, is a much more brutal affair. The controversy surrounding the album’s censorship aside, this is a disturbing and batshit insane mishmash where the lines between jazz and grindcore are completely blurred.

Forensix is probably my favourite Desecration record. There is just something about the pace and vibe that makes it stand out amongst the other records. There’s a ton of killer tracks here, most of which were live staples of the band’s performances for many years to come. The bass pops and clanks, the riffs are razor sharp and the vocals rabid, and the drums… well, Mikey is an animal, what can I say. Aim! Fire!…

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that’s some interesting singing there, Varg. Fallen was the first record I heard when Burzum returned. He released a bunch of records in a fairly quick succession, to little or no fanfare, so I was rather taken aback with this record and also Belus and that one compilation of re-recorded oldies. I feel like a lot of people wouldn’t even sneeze at this later stuff. Some of the magic of the earlier stuff is…

Often regarded as a classic of the doom metal genre, on Trouble / Psalm 9 the band take a more traditional rock and or roll approach, encompassing heavy – how should I say – Sabbathisms and elements of drowsy blues to their rocking sound. It’s not as heavy as Vitus or the aforementioned Sabbath, but it’s still a staple in the beginnings of doom.

Having finally watching this uhhh… “movie” I can see why it remains unrated. Ilsa is essentially a porno, with dump trucks of full frontal female nudity, and even more horrendous torture and “snuff porn” in the way of nubile young beauties being put through a series of increasingly disgusting medical “trials”. It’s a tough watch, even for a seasoned gore or sexploitation nerd, but it’s definitely one for the history books. In my opinion it’s…

I’m unsure of what to really make of this one. It seems to pre-date all the awful cyber grind of the 2000s, instead being a product of the 90s where hip hop and nu metal douchebaggery bled into the extreme music worlds. That being said, Cybergore has some decent riffs, and some interesting variations on the theme of techno shit mixed with metal. This sounds like a soundtrack to a long lost 90s shoot ‘em…

Animosity provided no great step forward from the material presented on World Of Lies, although I will say that the riffing is slightly less mournfully melodic as its predecessor and the programmed drumming is a little less chunky. It is however, as a whole, more refined and to the point. To some, it may just feel like another album being dropped, but to me it doesn’t fuck around, and is entirely savage as fuck. It…