Music Reviews

Haters, The – “Mind The Gap” – [Vinyl Communications]

lexi glass   4/1/2020   A Library, CD

Like a tube ride straight into the depths of hell, Mind the Gap is loud, unsteady descent into mechanical mayhem. The three tracks on this 1996 Haters album consist of the sounds of records being stapled together with a staple gun. Each pull of the trigger is amplified beyond recognition, and the noise – continuously spinning in repetitive cycles – seems to rise from the locked groove of a patchwork staple-sutured frankenrecord. On “Mind the Gap #6” (T1), a low sludgy bass pulse hums beneath metallic rumbles. “Mind the Gap #8” (T2) brings in the ambient blur of distorted voices. Just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, luckily for you, “Things Can Only Get Hater” (T3); the closer stitches the elements of the first two performances together into a hypnotic, twenty-seven minute trance.

Deny The Cross – “Alpha Ghoul” – [Tankcrimes]

whngr   3/30/2020   12-inch, A Library

Total Fucking Battery

45- local- power-violence- brutal- grind- hXc- hooks- misanthropy- heretical- raspy- note-intensive bass runs- blast beats- way too fucking short.Members of Spazz, Agents Of Satan, Municipal Waste, Plutocracy, Exit-13, Black Army Jacket, et al. lay down 18 tracks of bleak and devastating brilliance on this EP from 2016. I’m sorry that I never witnessed these bad-asses do their thing ’cause it is basically like my fucking dream sound ca. 1995 with nods to the M.I.t.B. bass slide thing and everything so I’m pretty sure I would have pissed myself. Now the country is on lock-down and the likelihood of pissing myself in public has become vastly less likely. Their drummer (Dave Witte) has moved back east, the majority of world is obliging to the empirical request to sequester, the economy has faltered if not begun to collapse, and this, like most of my dreams which lay in cinders around me, will never see fruition. Coincidentally that kind of negativity is a fitting mindset for an appraisal of Alpha Ghost. Though thematically a thread of recusancy, Heterodoxy, and the profane (no discernible FCC’s but FCC on Hospital Ballads [B3]) run throughout this blistering, seething, pane of wax, lyrically these songs are overtly personal and emotive. Staying true to the genre but pushing the envelope of technique, expression, and to my mind, relevancy. 

-Hospital Ballads (B3)   Uninsured Fucked, inhaling disease Skin is scaling From inside I bleed Uninsured System in shock Blood is contaminated My teeth crack and rot I am not immune
  C. Ramirez  2016

The cover-art is appropriate as well, which in this time of sweeping global pandemic, can only be interpreted as God sneezing on his flock.

“I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed.”

REV:15

Domo/Domo

carsonstreet   3/30/2020   A Library, CD

Formed at the beginning of 2010 in Alicante, Spain. Domo plays psychedelic and electrifying rock. Domo’s music is based on psychedelia and experimental rock. The starting point of their music is “the classical structures of heavy, hard and progressive rock of the seventies”. Lots of doom and sludge here too. Recorded, mixed and mastered in August 2010.

Ascended Dead – “Abhorrent Manifestations” – [Dark Descent Records]

whngr   3/30/2020   12-inch, A Library

Death Metal Fusillade

A massacre of iniquitous proportions surround a single track of euphonious yet unholy classical guitar (A5 Dormant Souls) that includes an adept cover of Last Ritual by death metal fore-bearers Possessed (B4). Wrathful drum abuse, shredding, battery, slicing, dive-bombing, guttural bellowing, finger picking, and ominous wind by this four-piece from San Diego, Portland, and then San Diego again. The drumming stands out on this album though the guitar work is also quite ferocious with a considerable amount of virtuosity which, for this miserable volunteer, is not necessarily, or even usually, a complement but Ascended Dead have unfurled an admirably vicious first album of extremely high-energy death metal that though forging little new ground does willfully and with malice aforethought lay waste to what remains of the blackened earth bequeathed to them by their progenitors.

Space Debris/Into The Sun Live 2006 Burg Herzberg Festival

carsonstreet   3/28/2020   A Library, CD

Space Debris is a German band that creates a complicated blend of classic rock jams, Krautrock, space rock, psychedelia and fusion jazz. A Hammond B200 with Marshall amp, Ludwig drums and a special recording technique help create a sound that is creative, experimental and comparable to early Deep Purple and Pink Floyd instrumental music.

O’Dwyer, Aine – Gegenschein

carsonstreet   3/27/2020   12-inch, A Library

Aine O’dwyer/Gegenschein

This is a mystical frightening drone. Just the kinda thing to help scare the peasants into believing. It really works on a number of levels including psych, classical, medieval folk and drone. Two side-long tracks. Gegenschein (gegen-schein) was recorded at the Franciscan Friary in Limerick city. Áine (awn-yuh) gained access to the Friary in 2012 and explored both pipe organ and space in its disused state. What becomes of a sacred space after the dispersion of the spirit, after the light has been switched off and it has been de-consecrated? Read the information on the back of the sleeve about the Mayan legend and interpretations of a new era for all earthly inhabitants undergoing a spiritual transformation. I love this record and so will you or you will be going to hell.

New Improvised Music From Buenos Aires [coll] – [Esp-Disk]

Hemroid The Leader   3/26/2020   A Library, CD

14 tunes between 8:22 & 1:38. ESP Disk. Mostly jazz with chamber, electroacoustic & noise. Heavy, not swinging: repeated destabilizations, shocks & devaluation underpin tension, crisis & terror. Mouthpiece sounds, processed audio, silences. Inhabits a unique space, not the usual skronk. Cool book.

Sinneplakken – "Sinneplakken" – [Time Released Sound]

humana   3/26/2020   A Library, CD

The Kleefstra Brothers hail from the Netherlands, with Jan writing the lyrics and Romke offering his guitar and effects. Other musicians join them to create the atmospheric sounds on this CD that are hinted at by the track titles. The vocals are like a voice-over to a fascinating film that is rather dark and haunting. A lot of people will appreciate this.

Primitive Isolation Tactics – “We Are Flaming and On Fire” – [Oxen]

lexi glass   3/26/2020   A Library, Cassette

Primitive Isolation Tactics is the alias of Taylor Geddes, of the Montreal-based distributor of fine noise, Scream and Writhe, and the Absurd Exposition label. This 2019 c20-length cassette on Oxen is his second release under this name. A massive storm slowly approaches at the start of “Alienate” (A) and sweeps us into its turbulent core. High speed winds kick up swarms of scrap and debris, until we reach brief moments of charged stillness, a dead calm. A heavy, smoldering pulse weighs down “You’ll Burn. You’ll Burn. You’ll Burn” (B) as an inferno of electric shocks, high-pitched squeals, strangled moans and searing noise flares, and, finally, flames out.

Bölzer – “Hero” – [Iron Bonehead Productions]

whngr   3/19/2020   12-inch, A Library

Crushing Expressive Two-piece

Impressively full sounding guitar work and a decisive pummeling from these two beasts from Sweden circa 2016. Incredibly heavy riffs with gnarly hooks that will impregnate themselves and swell in your brain like an intracranial hematoma, spewing sonic devastation in to the folded lobes of sentience. To attempt to slide Hero into any single genre minimizes the incredible effort and accomplishment of this album, they draw expansively from several and yet still carve out some territory that is decidedly unique. Rest assured, this is metal but I’ll warrant you haven’t heard anything quite like it. The bass is handled proficiently by Okoi Therry Jones and the upper detuned strings of his ten-string guitar (WTF?) but what ultimately strikes this miserable volunteer dumb are the melodies that are spread liberally between the rhythm. From shimmering chords to single-note picking like a crow stabbing away in a metered pattern at its quarry, to a proliferation of trem-picked savagery. And then there are the drums. A massive barrage awaits. Raining down from the heavens and crashing into his skins like a mighty ocean against its craggy shore. Unfortunately, I simply am not qualified to speak on drum technique or potential influences, but I can speak to Fabian Wyrsch’s ability: this guy fucking batters. There is a deeper resonance though. Something beyond the instrumentation or style. It seems to me that this is a highly personal project, one with an ethos and a trajectory. Complex concepts that are alluded to but not thoroughly revealed. A tenuous step towards arcane knowledge and the spiritual realm and off the well beaten path of the Luciferian, the atheist, or the heretic and forging ground more akin to the Magi or the Shaman. Hero endeavors to partially break away from the sound of their previous recordings, sparingly employing some clean vocals that may make you want to initially pan this release or maybe you’re too cvlt for Bölzer’s first LP which is respectable. I appreciate your narrow mindset, you are thoroughly dedicated to the banner that you have been waving for the last few years or decades but I am a multi-faceted monster. One with a fairly short attention span that craves stimulation (perhaps you know of what I speak), so when a band takes a chance and leaves the confines of their following’s expectations my ears will tend to twist towards the sounds not yet heard. The ones begging to be processed. An often remunerating endeavor. I advise you to do the same. You will be rewarded, if not in this life… then perhaps the next.