Lines In Wax

TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION

Day: February 5, 2023

Blood – O Agios Pethane (1993)
death metal grindcore

Blood – O Agios Pethane (1993)

Blood remain one of the most criminally underrated bands in the grindcore world. You really have to peel back the surface layers to find appreciation for them. It’s weird, because they have been around since the genre’s heyday, and as another writer so well put, they are like an amalgamation of both early Carcass and early Napalm Death. O Agios Pethane proves however that Blood are so much more than the sum of their parts. On first listening, their loose, down-tuned grind can be perhaps quite easily dismissed, but stick around and you’ll see that the band are quite well travelled when it comes to extreme genres and influences, and melt them all together into some disgusting horrible turgid soup of an album. It is well worth your time.

Full Of Hell & Merzbow – Full Of Hell & Merzbow (2014)
grindcore noise & power electronics

Full Of Hell & Merzbow – Full Of Hell & Merzbow (2014)

I would be lying if I said that I got into this on the first listen. In fact, it has taken me several years to even consider writing about it. In that time I have done countless relistens, and not once has this record landed with me. I’m not even really sure what it is about it that doesn’t gel with me, but there you have it. A pointless review but one I’ve been wrestling with for years so I have to put it down and move on.

Guttural Secrete – Nourishing The Spoil (2013)
death metal

Guttural Secrete – Nourishing The Spoil (2013)

Today I noticed that the word “spoil” is in both album titles from Guttural Secrete. A pointless fact there for you.  Anyway, this is, much like its predecessor, a razor-sharp execution of the brutalest (is that even a word?) form of death metal. The speed and dexterity here is rather overwhelming; the songs are slick and polished, yet are delivered with the bludgeoning force of a spiked sledgehammer to the back of the skull.  Mike Hrubovcak killing it with the disgusting art as well. Tidy.

Skhemty – Sunrise On The Old Kingdom (2022)
dungeon synth

Skhemty – Sunrise On The Old Kingdom (2022)

I’ve been down a rabbit hole recently in regards to the inner-workings of the great pyramid of Giza. Not in a wacky “WaS iT a NuClEaR PowErPlanT1?!?!” kinda way, just generally trying to understand one of the oldest wonders of our world. When it hit me – I wonder if there is any like, Egyptian-themed dungeon synth or ambient music. Remembering the interludes from Nile albums, I set to searching the internet, and was immediately delighted to find out that, of course there’s bloody dungeon synth based on ancient Egypt. What a time to be alive!  Sunrise On The Old Kingdom is one of a few releases I checked out, and is probably the best of the bunch, at least in regards to active instrumentation and overall production quality. Tracks such as “Pyramid of Khafre” (big up to my mans Khafre woop woop), “Dendera Temple”, “Mirage Over The Dunes” and closer “Glow On The Nile” really show off the best elements of this project. Don’t go in expect standard ambient music with a few rehashed Arabian themes (like when a foreign town is shown on a TV show), these are fully-fledged compositions and deserve your full attention.