TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION
I can’t remember where the hell I got this 7″ from. Anyways, its my only foray into the word of Ladyscraper, who (on this EP at least) play mental speedcore with lots and lots of frenetic sampling. A lot of speedcore just hits the ground running and doesn’t stop, but Ladyscraper at least seems to have all sorts going on with the sampling. The drums are all over the place. Pure chaos. I love it!
I cannot adequatley convey how much I love this band. They are, truly, players of the most disgusting style of goregrind. Happy was I then, to find Traces Of Gore, a compilation throwing together all of the band’s split material, which aside from the tracks with Dystrophy, I have not heard yet, so this was most welcomed. Disgusting putrifying gore is the order of the day here, with a decent balance between riffing and all out blasting. Across the top of the mix, like an icing of feculent sewage on a poisonous cake, is De Groot’s unfathomable pitchshifter vocals. Honestly, this is perfection, as far as goregrind goes.
Light, sprightly (is that a word?) synthensizer music in the olde worlde / fantasy vein. I suppose you could call this dungeon synth, but this seems like more than that. I have Tolkien vibes, general high fantasy and massive worlds unfold as I lose myself in this lush music. Great stuff from Elixir!
Whiskertwister doesn’t seem to do subtlety. Which I suppose, is a good thing when it comes to this brand of early 2010s dubstep. The beats pound you in the head, and the bass slaps you in the dick. Over and over. Forever. Or, for a few tracks, at least. This kind of music hasn’t aged well, but it reminds me of a time and a place when it was exciting to watch a whole new genre emerge out of the murky electronics underground.
There’s been a lot of jostling from the LDOH camp as of late, and many splits have been dropped, of varying quality. It was only a matter of time, I suppose, until a new full length record was released by the latest incarnation of the band. I don’t have Facebook, and can’t seem to find any other info online, so I’m unsure who is in the band at the moment? Admittedly, I’ve only checked out the official album stream, and I can’t check liner notes as I have not bought a copy of this record. And I don’t think that I will. This is a gurgling, blasting mess of an album. One could say that is what one expects from a band such as Last Days Of Humanity, yes? Correct. And, of course, perhaps to complicate things further, if this record was attributed to an unknown or new band, I would definitely be singing its praises. But, at the risk of sounding like either an old fart or a gatekeeping arsehole, this album does not live up to the sheer aural carnage that the Last Days Of Humanity name promises. I don’t want to get too negative here, because on the surface level, it doesn’t so much as tick but punch holes through all of the usual boxes. Its just, after a few listens, its missing a soul; a purpose and a true feeling. This feels like LDOH imitating itself, but with the best bits taken out. I’m sad to say, that I find this record to be a disappointment.
Neptune Towers is super under-rated. Transmissions… is a stellar electronic composition, heralding styles all the way from dungeon synth to something in the peak-period of Tangerine Dream’s synthesizer output. Its a mesmerising listen, and one of great enjoyment.
Some lovely head-buzzing drones from the earlier portion of the Sunn O))) discography. “Mocking Solemnity” and “Death Becomes You” are excellent offerings, as is the uhhh, interesting take on Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, which is of course, completely and utterly unrecognisable. The biggest drawback with this album is the middle two collab tracks. I love Sunn O))), and I love Merzbow, but fuck if these works are not irritating as fuck. The second part, namely “O)))Bow 2” is probably a little more tolerable, but in general, these two tracks are a massive detraction from the excellence of the album.
What is considered by many to be a missed step by Cradle is actually one of my favourite releases for them. Depending on how old school the Cradle fan you are talking to is, Cradle either died with Midian, Damnation… or Nymphetamine. I can see arguements for all of the above, when comparing and contrasting to the original style and vision of the band, but all of the above are great albums in their own right (yes, even Nymphetamine. Fight me.). Damnation And A Day is gorgeously ambitious. Its not as intricatly woven and spookily, authenticatally gothic as say, Dusk… And Her Embrace, but Damnation has its eyes on the bigger picture, the long game as it were. I don’t think its possible for a band of this style, with this budget, and with a “one CD” time limit, to make anything even more epic than this. Boasting full ochestration and Sony’s big budget studio production, Damnation sounds a thousand times better than both previous albums combined. The album is split into several “parts” containing three songs a piece. These are separated by intermissions of orchestrated pomp and narration provided by some very evil sounding Welsh man. Honestly, there isn’t a bad song on this record. Sure, some of them do not necessarily need to be as long as they are, but the strongest “parts” are the opening three tracks and the closing three. The closing three are a hat-trick of some of the greatest Cradle material of all, and even if you hate this album, I implore you to try these tracks again. This is also the album that gave us “Babylon A.D.” and “Serpent Tongue” so let’s not be too quick to shit on it, no matter how terrible the album art is!
What a trip. Balanced between elements of harsh noise and creepy atmospherics, Haraam’s awkward, lurching electronics transcend out of the audible mire, writhing into shapes of pulsating body music. Hypnotic, danceable, weird and unsettling. I’m in love.
There’s heavy, and then there’s Triptykon heavy. Its a certain vibe and tone that the band can hit that sometimes just absolutely blows you away. Eparistera Daimones has a pompous name, but its fitting somewhat to the Giger-inspired gothic darkness that the band purvey, taking latter-career Celtic Frost to new depths of audible darkness.
Tu Carne are one of the more consistent goregrind bands, when it comes to full length records at least. Me Quedo Con Tu Dolor! is more or less the bands debut release, and they hit the ground running with their tried and tested, steady sound. That may not sound too thrilling when it comes the world of goregrind, but Tu Carne have a trademark to their hardcore-infused dirty grindcore. Not to mention, those pitchshifter vocals are unmistakable. Top stuff.
I’ve seen this band name bandied about for a while now, so our inevitable date was only a matter of fate’s interest. Here we are then, when mine own ears met the lucid and juice-drenched tunes of Tribbing Is My Religion. Think brutal death with drum machines, leaning more towards the chugging approach than the Mortician-esque explosion of blastbeats. Couple this with vocals that would make Gutalax happy and throw in a bunch of hilarious pornographic samples, and you have Lesbian Tribbing Squirt. Production wise, its a bit thin and could be mixed a bit better, but hey, in these circles beggars cannot be choosers. This could have been an awful lot worse! Anyway, enjoy it, sickos!
Widowmaker is – unfortunately – a disappointing followup to the all out carnage that was presented to us on Hatred For Mankind. Even today, it is hard to find such a densely evil recording. One could argue that the bar was set too high by the band’s debut, but there was a myriad of different ways their intense and meandering sound could have progressed. Sadly, a lot of Widowmaker is boring where instead it should be introspective, and the heavy parts never really meet the heights of what came before. I’m glad I went back to this after so many years since its release, and I absolutely love Dragged Into Sunlight in general, but this one was a bit of a miss-step.
Lemmy N Co’s third offering streamlines the adrenaline rush found on Overkill into a fairly similar yet still heavily enjoyable, classic Motörhead album. I mean, just look at that cover painting. The wheel is hardly re-invented, but its a decent companion piece and a solid discography entry for this workhorse of a band.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – when it comes to industrial black metal, it is really hard to beat Thorns. It seems when Snorre is not assisting in murders he is fully capable of producing some of the best, cold metal around. “Shifting Channels” is an absolute beaut of a track. I’m pretty sure it samples the door sounds from the OG Doom game, but I could be mistaken. What I was pleasantly surprised to find out however, after many listens, is that Hellhammer provided drums for this release (I always thought it was a drum machine) and Satyr (from Satyricon lol) provided vocals on a good few of the songs. The album was also released on his label, Moonfog. The more you know, eh?
October Rust is quite possibly the perfect album for autumn. Here, Steele et al hone their gothic rock chops and stray away – for the most part – from the doom metal and punk elements that coursed through their first few records. I read somewhere that Pete Steele wanted more “chicks” to be fans of the band, and that says it all with this album. The production is cold and dense, and the gorgeous keyboard playing leads most if not all of these songs. Steele’s vocals and bass are heavily prominant, the latter having a washed out chorus effect over it which is bizarre but it works with the overall vibe. Aside from the big hits as it were, it has been some considerable time since I revisited a lot of the tracks on this record, but I’m glad that I did, in time for Halloween, and in time the for golden leaves to fall in their thousands.
Haunting, beautiful and heavy doom metal from this proto-Sunn group. The vocal performances from Runhild Gammelsæter are stunning, a foil to the boggy doom of the band themselves. There is a dense Norse kinda feel here (hey, maybe its just the runes on the cover, eh). The only real downside is that there are only two studio recordings here, the rest of the record is made up of live or rehearsal recordings. The drop in quality isn’t so bad after an adjustment, but its still a bit of a dissapointment, considering how short this EP is.
I’ve read a lot of hype about this Mirror Reaper record over the last few months, especially when looking for new metal music. Can’t say that I am familiar at all with the works of Bell Witch, so going in blind I was expecting something in the vein of Sleep’s Dopesmoker. Colour me surprised then, when I found that this album was a more ambient affair. Mirror Reaper swells and builds, from the smallest sound to the largest slab of crushing doom. In a perhaps off-hand comparison as I recently listened to it, this is what Dragged Into Sunlight’s Widowmaker record should have sounded like, if you swap the doom for the death. Anyway, this is crushingly heavy and not afraid to go over a few set boundaries. Mirror Reaper is deserving of its reputation and I look forward to hearing more material by Bell Witch.
A new record from Lord Gore was not something that I expected to hear in 2020. Nevertheless, pleased I am, to be treated to such a delight. Its been a considerable amount of time since Lord Gore caressed our ears with their sinister yet sweet lullabies of death, and they have returned with a more streamlined and mature sound. Thats not to say improvement was needed in the first place, but Lord Gore have changed tack with Scalpels For Blind Surgeons. Whether that’s because of line up changes or not, I’m not sure. Great stuff, generally.
