Sleep and Melvins Live at the Fonda Theater in LA
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Sleep and Melvins are both legendary acts credited with some of the heaviest riffs laid to disc. Melvins has amassed their reputation on the back of one of the most prolific discographies in rock. Sleep earned their iconic status off of a trio of seminal stoner-doom slabs. It was not surprising when this double-bill of rumbling power sold out Hollywood’s Fonda Theatre for two nights in a row.
Melvins was birthed out of the 1980’s Pacific Northwest punk scene. But since the late 1990’s, guitarist/vocalist Buzz Osborne and drummer Dale Crover have called Los Angeles home. Crover was only half-joking during the band’s opening set on January 28 when he quipped “we’re a local band.” The Los Angeles scene has long accepted Melvins as one of their own. This was evident by the full room and the warm response when the stage curtains lifted to start Saturday night’s festivities.
It is impossible for Melvins to touch on their entire discography within a one-hour set. The audience on Saturday night was very pleased nonetheless with the variety that was covered. The band bounced back and forth throughout their discography from 1990’s Houdini (“Hag Me”) to 2014’s Hold It In (“Onions Make The Milk Taste Bad”) and multiple points in between. As always, Melvins threw in a few irreverent sludged-out covers for good measure, this time in the form of The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and Alice Cooper’s “Halo of Flies”.
Melvins kept stage banter to a minimum and plowed straight into the next set of riffs once a song ended. Bassist Steve McDonald (also of L.A. punk rockers Redd Kross and OFF!) made for an excellent addition to the live Melvins lineup, stalking the stage with a frenetic energy throughout the set. Osborne and Crover focused on bringing the heavy as usual, with Crover added extra spark by dismantling his entire drum kit at the end of the set, leaving the stage amidst piles of cymbals strewn across the Fonda Theatre stage.
Sleep took the stage after a 30-minute intermission. It is a testament to the staying power of Volume One, Holy Mountain, and Jerusalem/Dopesmoker that there is still buzz every time bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros (Om), guitarist Matt Pike (High on Fire), and drummer Jason Roeder (Neurosis) come through town to hammer out their classic riffs again. A different type of buzz also filled the room on Saturday night as mounds of marijuana smoke filled every corner of the room when Sleep started their set.
The aromatic scent of leafy green was appropriate window dressing as Sleep once again did justice to their influential discography in the live setting. The hypnosis of classic songs such as “Holy Mountain” and “Dragonaut” was capably replicated. The band’s sparse lighting and stage setup – mainly consisting of the band and a couple stacks of amps – meant that the focus was on the thunderous riffs being generated. There are no surprises during a Sleep set at this point, as the requisite standards off of Holy Mountain and an abridged Dopesmoker were presented for doom-lovers to absorb one more time.
The trio’s live performances put into perspective the musicianship behind the heaviness. Roeder was a perfect addition to the band’s touring lineup when he joined in 2010, raining down with the same amount of power he has given to Neurosis throughout their career. Cisneros and Pike expertly guided along the subtle chord changes as their sprawling compositions ambled along and reinforced Sleep’s musical output’s stature as a go-to even as many acts have come and gone in the years since their original dissolution.
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Wake Reaches Giant Proportions on “Thought Form Descent” (Review)
Calgary's Wake have been on a metamorphic journey. After a larval stage feeding off of the subterranean energies of crust and grindcore, the Canadian band spent some time maturing in a musical chrysalis nourished by infusions of black and death metal. Like a rare moth, Wake has now burst from their cocoon larger, stronger, and surprisingly colorful—it's hard to believe the band responsible for the gargantuan Thought Form Descent, out now on Bandcamp on digital and vinyl, is the same band that released Leeches ten years ago. Thought Form Descent is bold and catchy. It sees Wake almost completely shed their past grindcore inclinations in favor of big production and sweeping melodies. If anything, this nominally grindcore act has released one of the best post-metal albums of the past few years. Songs like "Venerate (The Undoing of All)" contain some of the band's most engaging riffs without sacrificing the ambition and violence that made previous efforts such as Misery Rites so striking.
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This new bent is clear from the opening seconds of "Infinite Inward," where the sweep of synths and wash of impressionistic guitar set the tone for what follows. While Wake have never been shy about incorporating elements of hardcore and post-rock, these felt more like important exterior fittings, even on 2020's daring Devouring Ruin. Thought Form Descent, by contrast, is built on a foundation of strong melodies. Early single "Swallow the Light" was a preview of this when it came out in May. Powered by muscular riffs and adorned with soaring clean vocals, the song is far more approachable than almost anything on a previous Wake album. To the longtime fan, tracks like "Swallow the Light" will feel familiar for their punishing harsh vocals and eruptions of frenzied drums, but those looking for a poppier song structure and post-metal's grand gestures will find plenty of points of access, too. Accessibility is something of a throughline here. Wake might still have the street cred of a basement-show act, but Thought Form Descent feels purpose-built for bigger stages, light shows and video backgrounds. The one element that still feels firmly rooted in the metal underground are the esoteric lyrics—heavy on descriptions that tend toward the Biblical, Kyle Ball's masterful harsh vocals splice together apocalyptic images with lots of "-tion" words much as one would find on any imagistic death metal record. However, the stories Wake are telling here feel sonically far beyond any niche sci-fi project or Lovecraftian journey through the depths. Perhaps it's the sheer altitude that sets this music apart—far from being a circle-pit catalyst, Thought Form Descent feels lofty, looking beyond tropey aggression for an almost spiritual resonance. "Bleeding Eyes of the Watcher," a name that could be appended to just about any sonic treatment of the paranormal, is instead the title of the album's nine-minute epic closer, which swoops into the stratosphere before making an excursion through a thundercloud and back out. Thought Form Descent is the sound of a band soaring to their highest heights yet. Of course, you have to leave some stuff on the ground when taking flight—Wake are no longer the harsh, grinding Albertans who started this journey thirteen years ago, but instead are older, wiser merchants of chaos. To be clear, the chaos is there, but as much as this, their sixth full-length, is the sound of worlds ending, it's also the sound of artists conscious of their own ability to create and destroy. What they've created here—a bombastic, cohesive, and ecstatic demonstration of elemental power—is among the most captivating releases of 2022 so far. Wake have made a further case for a spot among contemporary metal's most innovative acts....
Thought Form Descent released July 22nd via Metal Blade.Gallower Seek the Thrashing Delights of “Eastern Witchcraft” (Early mLP Stream)
It’s easy to be skeptical of thrash metal in 2022 following decades of burnout, tired rehashes, and unfunny, energy-less hacks profaning the altar the classics set up in an uncool way. Poland has been a minor mecca for ancient necromantic steel in recent years, however, and youngsters Gallower understand that a certain fire is needed to make this stuff without it being a snoozefest; their new short-length Eastern Witchcraft is a pleasure of hard-hitting evil thrash the old way, unafraid to be truly ferocious despite a great ear for catchiness and memorability that is often lost when bands attempt a more relentless approach. “Witchcraft” is a great word to toss into the name of the release, because storming witching metal is very much what’s happening on this killer new mLP. The vocals drop with a speed of delivery that’s almost more Walkyier than Angelripper despite the clear hints of Sodom in their sound, and melodic solos and unashamed hints of even older heavy and speed metal keep Gallower from falling into the same stale traps that similar bands so often stagnate in. At only 16 minutes long this is a nice little treat both to sate a thirst for more Gallower in between albums and also just to dive into their sound for the uninitiated. Give it a listen and read the band’s thoughts on the release in the quote below:
After the debut album Behold the Realm of Darkness the time has finally come to release our new Mini LP Eastern Witchcraft Infused with thrashing speed mixed with dangerous doze of ancient black magic, this record brings old visions of blackened thrash. Eastern Witchcraft reaps your soul, the only salvation you may find in a prayer to the old Speed Metal Godz!...
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Eastern Witchcraft releases July 29th via Dying Victims Productions.
Locrian Rewakens With “Cenotaph To The Final Glacier” (Video Debut + Interview)
Hey cool, Locrian is back! It's been a long time since we've heard from this displaced Chicago trio, and, now separated into multiple parts of the country, Terence Hannum, André Foisy, and Steven Hess reconnect with their long-standing band's experimental underpinnings to create the abstract New Catastrophism. In some ways hearkening back to Locrian's earlier days and, in the case of new song "Cenotaph To The Final Glacier" (streaming below), even earlier, New Catastrophism's futuristic take on something called "drone metal," a mixture of drone, krautrock, and power electronics with a metallic edge, brings Locrian's past into the present. Echoes of their debut Drenched Lands' impressionistic and (traditional) percussionless sounds are certainly a backdrop here, but, as drummer Steven Hess mentions in a new interview which can be read below, Locrian also looks forward with a stronger "jam'' sense and years of experience guiding these semi-improvised passages. Watch a video visualizer debut for "Cenotaph To The Final Glacier" and read a lengthy excerpt from an interview whose transcription was botched by technology below.
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https://youtu.be/lVJSNlELNP0...
We could start with the obvious: it's been a long time since we've heard from you guys, so I was wondering if you could account for that period of time, and what made you want to pick up Locrian again?. Terence Hannum: Well, it never really ended for us. It's been seven years but it's been seven years of… I mean literally like I think. Recently I was going through emails and realized we have tons of just back and forth about ideas, songs, demos. Getting together or you know, whatever so it was never idle time. There's always been something, whether it's sharing a book or an article or an idea or riff. It's never been like we're not doing something, it just kind of got to the point of what we have to do something, we have to actually make something. André Foisy: And I mean at the end of 2016 I moved out of Chicago. I took a job in Virginia, I bought a house, I moved out of Virginia, I moved back to New York state, which is where I'm originally from, I started a new job. I started a PhD program. I became the President of this national assessment association at Tampa at the same time, and I started this other job that was more demanding on my time. And so time wasn't available for me to dedicate to doing all the things that I do in Locrian so we've been working, but just in a different way and excuse those things. I mean we never really stopped, but like the things that you know we just we just stopped sharing things with the public for a bit and it's never something that I intended on ending, but it was something that you know we just were working in a different way for a couple of years, for I guess seven years and it seems like it's flown by and COVID happened. Steven Hess: We all have things that we need to do, and we always talk, we talk like every week or every other day. TH: Every day, SH: And you know, we had been discussing and writing stuff for a new record. Before COVID and we had demos, and we were getting ready, we were getting ready to go into the studio. We wanted to go into Electrical Audio here and then go what happened and that put everything you know kind of on hold, so we couldn't do the record that we wanted to do. So we uh we all just kind of sat. TH: I mean it's just so hard to make plans, I mean. Even now I think we're kind of in this weird like make believe moment where it's again we're gonna have a million tours and we're all going to be like it until someone gets sick on your tour it's like, then what you know, like we're in this very strange time. AF: We didn't end up making the record that we planned on making for a few years. We ended up making the record that we needed to make for ourselves. If people think it's more of like an homage and to our early fans, I think, in a way it's like the location, looking back at where we started and sort of like synthesizing all of the things that we intended on doing when we started out and so that's New Catastrophism and Ghost Frontiers. So with this returning to this older style with everything you've learned, thus far, what was it like kind of returning this older mindset, this is partially improvised drone and electronic sound. AF: We had very little planned, but when we were in the studio were like, "All right, here's this next track and we came up with a semi structured plan for each track," and it's this plan that I think exists in our gut more than anything. So what you're hearing on this record is really just like coming directly from our gut really rather than from meticulous planning over the last seven years, and I think that's what we need. TH: There were a handful of things that were in the ether. We practiced a little bit of one of the songs, but it was like a total jam. The studio has been such an important instrument to us that this was neat. This was just a great way to dive in with very little expectation at the beginning that became exciting to make. Every day was like it was building up with all these ideas and energy. In some ways, it was like I think it was like freedom, you know, in a way, like it was like we didn't have to make a song, we could do these moods or textures that we wanted to make. SH: Going back to the old days you know or to the fans who like the early Locrian. I also think that we're pushing a little bit forward to this–it's not all like, you know,...
New Catastrophism releases August 12th via Profound Lore Records.Nadja Leaves Drone/Doom Metal’s Tenets “Blurred” With New Single (Track Debut + Interview)
I was trying to figure out how to write about Nadja again when I realized something: for all the flowery language I use, it all masks one sentiment. I love Nadja, and I have for a long time. Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff's shoegazing take on crushing, minimalist drone/doom is both as admirable as it is unique (you wouldn't mistake them for Jesu), but it is also versatile. Take, for example, "Blurred" from this duo's upcoming Labyrinthine album. Traversing drone/doom metal's feedback worship, single note meditations, and dreamy jam sessions, Nadja, especially when paired with Elizabeth Colour Wheel vocalist Lane Shi Otayonii, who handles vocals on this song (streaming below), finds themselves offering a powerful genre survey in drone/doom art. The rest of Labyrinthine, featuring guest spots from Alan Dubin (ex-Khanate), Dylan Walker (Full of Hell), and Rachel Davies (Esben & The Witch), positions itself as a masterclass in drone/doom's wide spectrum, and is only further evidence that I Love Nadja still, even, like, 15 years later. Listen to an exclusive stream of "Blurred" (with the previously released "Necroausterity") below.
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This album features guest vocals on each song–what was the process like finding these vocalists and how did you decide who would fit for each song? We started with our usual skeletal sketches of songs, which normally we would flesh out with noise and ambient textures...but in this case, we found the spaciousness of these sketches appealing and decided to recruit vocalists as something of a different approach to our usual methods… and specifically vocalists who would fill the absence of the ambient sounds we usually use. How do you feel vocals function in the Nadja context then? Are they simply another layer of noise or something else? When we do them ourselves, they definitely function that way, more as another texture or melodic line, rather than a focal point. But with this album, the vocalists have such distinctive deliveries, we definitely highlighted the vocals in the mix much more than we normally do. Did you find yourself tailoring songs with the individuals you wanted in mind? To a certain degree, yes. We have talked with Alan for a while about doing something together, so the track we gave him we were already imagining his voice on it. This album features a distinctly heavy Nadja which is separate from the more dreamdoom and slowcore approach from recent material. What made you want to revisit this earlier style we heard on albums like Touched and Truth Comes From Death? I wouldn't say that was exactly intentional when we started working on the songs, more that they developed that way during the process of recording and editing/mixing. Though I had to force myself to resist the urge to add more ambient layers....
Labyrinthine releases September 6th. To be released on CD by Broken Spine & limited cassettes by: Katuktu Collective (US), Cruel Nature Records (UK), Bad Moon Rising (Taiwan), Adagio830 (Germany), Muzan Editions (Japan), UR Audio Visual (Canada), Pale Ghoul (Australia), & WV Sorcerer (France/China).Coldworld Takes Listeners On A Wintry “Walz” (Track Debut)
Coldworld's full-length outings are a rare gem in black metal's frigid wastelands. Having only two under his belt, Autumn follow up Isolation shows a further depthening of multi-instrumentalist Georg Börner's signature expressive style. "Walz," from the upcoming Isolation, is a rhythmic venture into winter, solitude, and the emotions which we bottle for so long. Börner's melodic, almost "depressive rock"-ing take (for lack of a better established genre term) on black metal is refreshing, eschewing the more "dsbm" elements of previous works in favor of something more energetic and free. Listen to "Walz" ahead of Isolation's September 30th release below.
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https://youtu.be/Hqf-sMKmr4g...
Isolation releases September 30th via Eisenwald. Preorders are available here.Municipal Waste Smash Skulls On “Electrified Brain” (Interview)
Richmond, Virginia’s hard-partying, crossover thrash metal mutants, Municipal Waste, have unashamedly stuck to their guns since its 2001 formation and has become one of the leading bands in the so-called thrash metal revival. On its seventh full-length album Electrified Brain, Municipal Waste does what it does best, and that’s to create fast, fun, raging, ripping, punky-thrash metal. Continuing on with their vocalist Tony Foresta, guitarists Ryan Waste and Nick Poulos, drummer Dave Witte and bassist LandPhil Hall, the band preserve its signature sound on the new album. After 21 years, Municipal Waste still know how to party—as well as put on a high-energy show. The band sounds severely lethal, a trait it has perfected since its formation. The quintet took a bit more time to craft its latest record — mostly due to the global pandemic — but they definitely used their time wisely to create 14 blistering tracks. However, after relocating to Florida a couple of years ago, Foresta found it difficult to get together with the rest of the band to work on songs. Plus, when Covid-19 hit, they found themselves even further apart from collaborating together. In fact, the sessions for this album’s recording is the first time the band reunited in person after more than a year. During a recent phone interview, Foresta talked about the writing and recording process for the new album, the band’s signature sound, its members’ other musical projects, Municipal Waste’s own beer brand and more.
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The new album features more of the same great Municipal Waste anthems. What were you trying to achieve with this record? We've never really tried to change our style, because that's not really the kind of band we want to be. I feel like we just want to improve the style that we're good at, or the style that we like playing. The stuff that we like, that we thought we were good at and that we enjoy playing, we just try to grow from that rather than trying to write some fucking bullshit. Was there anything different that you wanted to experiment with, either with the tones or the dynamics or the tempos, that you haven't tried before? We switch up the tempo a little bit more on this record. There's a little bit more of a heavy metal influence on this record, which we kind of delved into a little bit more because we’ve just been listening to that shit a little bit more lately. I think we wanted to have the production sound a little bit heavier, and a little bit tougher sounding than some of the stuff we've done in the past. Some of the records in the past sounded a little thinner than what we were intending it to come off as. So we were very careful as far as wanting it to sound a bit thicker. There's a lot of thick grooves and some great chugging riffs, it seems like you're more focused on creating for the song; the song structures as a whole. I'm not even sure how that progressed into that. But it might have a lot to do with having two guitar players, where we're locking in tighter; a little bit differently. Sometimes, when you slow the beat down a little bit, it's easier to pick it and it sounds heavier when there's two guitars doing that. So maybe that's just something that kind of bled into the songwriting that we’ve just been kind of learning now that Nick’s been an addition to the band. I don’t really think about it because I don’t really play an instrument. Around 2018’s The Last Rager, I think you guys were already starting to write for this new album. Originally, you were planning for a mid-2020 release, but of course Covid-19 fucked that all up. But did this delay actually allow you to hone your craft and work on the song structures more? Yeah, for the most part. We were already well into writing the album when Covid-19 hit. We were actually kind of rushing it to get it done going on tour with the Black Dahlia Murder and Testament. We were rushing to get our shit straight before that tour and then Covid-19 happened. Then Tom Hanks got Covid-19 and everything shut down! He started the panic (laughs). So, obviously we weren’t going to go on tour anytime soon. After we got over the initial depression of it setting in, we just said, “Fuck it man,” and just focused on writing music. We just looked at the slate we had, and figured out what we could improve on the songs and just kept writing and then we went back to some of the songs that we threw away and fixed them. We did take great advantage of the time that we had at home, rather than trying to push out a record in the middle of the pandemic. I think the band sounds tight as hell on this album. What's the camaraderie or musical chemistry like between all you guys, especially once you get on stage? Obviously, writing and playing live is a totally different beast. It's a little bit more stressful writing, but when you get it done, it's really rewarding. The first shows back were pretty incredible for us. I moved away about a year before the pandemic happened. I had already left, so when I was going to start flying back to record, the pandemic was already in full swing. By the time we actually played shows, it would have been over two years. Besides the recording session, it was over two years when I was on stage with them in the same room playing music besides the recording. So that was pretty crazy. It was almost two years in the recording session, actually. And then it was an additional six to eight months before we actually played a show again. What was your lyrical inspiration this time around? Are there phrases or certain words kicking around in a notebook or your head for future development? How do you go about crafting lyrics to the music? Yeah, there's definitely developmental ideas. Stuff that's on this record were ideas from about three records ago; The Fatal Feast (Waste in Space). There’s songs on The Fatal Feast that were ideas from The Art of Partying, we're just bouncing around ideas. I keep a lot of ideas in the chamber and on deck for creative purposes. There's all sorts of themes as far as the album goes lyrically. My favorite is we did one about this riot at a baseball game in Cleveland and that song's called “Ten Cent Beer Night.” It's actually a true story, which it sounds like it's a story that we would make up, but it actually happened. And of course it happened in Cleveland! The cover art created by James Bousema is really cool and the colors really stand out. He’s a relative newcomer of an illustrator compared to Ed Repka, Andrei Bouzikov and others who you’ve used on previous covers. How did you decide on him, what was the concept and what direction did you give him? Our friend Gerardo told us we needed to check this dude out. His artwork is killer and we were lurking on his Instagram. This guy can do multiple styles, and is very versatile and creative as well. That's how Andrei Bouzikov is, too. And that's what we were kind of looking for, just someone fresh in there who was a fan of the band as well. So that was really cool. Once we threw the idea out at him, he had the cover done in about a month. I think it was a really fast turnaround. I think we only had to go back and forth with him a couple of times, where sometimes with artists you have to go back a lot. Especially me and Ryan, art wise, we're the most picky human beings on the planet and we’re kind of a pain in the ass to work with in that aspect. But, it comes out cool. Everybody seems to be happy with it. I really love what James did. He was definitely one of the easiest people we've worked with. All of the Municipal Waste members are also involved in other projects such as Volture, Cannabis Corpse and your own band Iron Reagan. What’s the latest news on it? The last full-length was 2017’s Crossover Ministry but you also did a split with Sacred Reich in 2019. This record took a lot out of me. We really poured our hearts into it and worked our asses off on this record. I didn't want to get distracted with other projects. We already put Iron Reagan on the back burner in 2019 anyway, just because me and Phil were just kind of overworked already. (With) me relocating to Florida also puts an extra workload on what I'm trying to do. The main thing was definitely getting situated, moving down here and getting my life in order, focusing on my shit. And Municipal Waste’s new record. That was all I've been focused on. I don't really think that Iron Reagan is going to be active for an extremely long time. That's not even in the cards right now. Everyone else is working on new projects; Ryan's doing BAT, and Phil has a new black metal project coming out. And I'm doing a new band down here. I have my own little Florida band with Paul (Mazurkiewicz) from Cannibal Corpse. We'll be releasing a song in a week or so; everyone's just kind of growing in different directions. How did you get Mark “Barney” Greenway from Napalm Death to guest on “Putting On Errors”? That song and a song called “The Bite,” where we have Blaine (Cook) from the Accused doing guest vocals on it. That song is kind of funny lyrically, it's got a funny theme. Obviously, it’s a play on words, it’s about doing your own shit and not worrying about other people's expectations of you, especially society's expectations of what's right and how people should act. I thought it'd be a funny song. If you knew Barney, he's got a good sense of humor and definitely has his qualms about society's expectations. We thought it'd be a cool song to have him do guest vocals on. It’s one of those punkier, fast kind of songs. It's kind of cool to hear him sing and do vocals on a song of that style. The album was produced by Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Code Orange), who has produced a lot of bands. What were you going for sound wise? We always tell the person recording us that we want to sound like we sound live, but heavier. Everyone always wants it heavier. Our live sound comes off pretty aggressive, and we want to capture that. Arthur has as a background in hardcore punk and metal and heavy metal, which is all the kinds of shit that we're into. So I think it was the best idea to have him do the record because when we tell him shit like that, he knows exactly what we're talking about. I think he was able to get what we had in mind. I think I really liked what he did with the drums, too. I think the drums sound pretty fucking crazy on that record. It sounds like it has a big ol’ butt on it! (laughs) I believe you’ll have a new beer offering from Three Floyds Brewing soon. The most important question is, how many free cases do you get from each batch? Three Floyds is one of our favorite breweries. They do Zombie Dust, Dark Lord. They have a ton of killer shit. We’re very excited to have killer fucking beer coming out again with those guys. It’s not our first beer we’ve done with them, but hopefully it won't be the last as well because we're really stoked on. The artwork is insane. I can't wait for people to see it. I think this is more of a sit on the beach and drink, or sit in the backyard chugging kind of thing. They hook us up. Not only do they give us our own beer, but they fucking load us up with their other beers, too. And that's good company to be in. With this new album just freshly released, what's next for Municipal Waste, including touring plans? We’ll be in your area in mid-August with At The Gates; we’re doing a little full run of the US with them. And then we're playing a festival in Virginia. Then we're going to shoot over to Europe and play with Anthrax. We're going to do six weeks over there with them. That should be a killer tour. That's pretty much what the plan is right now, and that's enough for us, especially just for the rest of this year. We don’t even know what we're doing next year yet....
Electrified Brain released on July 1st via Nuclear Blast.Cara Neir’s Digitized Black Metal Exploits Continue on “His First Daemon” (Early Track Stream)
Being a long time Cara Neir fan, I've come to expect the unexpected. As a band that began their career as a punk-tinged black metal act but have since gone on to craft material in the vein(s) of post-black metal, deathgrind, blackgaze, and a myriad of other sub-subgenres, supporters of Cara Neir practically live on their toes. Even so, the pivot they made last year into chiptune influenced (chiptuned?) black metal with Phase Out caught many of their followers unaware. 8-bit remixes of existing black metal songs have littered the internet for years, and sound fun if not a bit incomplete and after the fact. To hear Cara Neir incorporate glitching bleeps and bloops into the foundation of their music elevated it beyond a humorous late-night Youtube detour to something a bit more legitimate. As the first song released from their forthcoming 8th full-length album Phantasmal, "His First Daemon" is a continuation of the electronic blackened grind stylings we first heard on Phase Out. More recently, the band has not been shy about their love for zany early-aughts Myspace-core, and this track has that influence on full display. Garry Brents' repertoire of discordant riffs oscillate between chugs, panic chords and math-y displays of technicality. His playing is ripped right out of 2004, but feels refreshing in its urgency. Shaping his frenetic riffs are a collection of chaotic electronic chirps, giving the impression that this song exists within the confines of a memory card getting its data wiped. Meanwhile, Chris Francis' vocals sound omnipresent and like they're coming from everywhere at once, surrounding you in a circle of frenzied shrieks and gutturals. He is one of the more versatile and underrated vocalists active in the scene today and his performance here only solidifies that thought. "His First Daemon" is a track that indulges in the wackiest of Cara Neir's impulses, and though only mere 40-seconds long, it encapsulates everything about the band during this phase (pun-intended) of their career. It is an excellent primer for the audial insanity of Phantasmal, which releases July 29th through Zegema Beach. Listen below.
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Metal Progressive #1: How Terrorizer’s “World Downfall” Foresaw a Capitalist ‘End of History’
This new column examines how heavy metal can be progressive in thinking, regardless of execution -- and what better record to start with than LA death/grind legends Terrorizer's pulverizing debut?
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Before delving into its intriguing thematics, it's important to first clarify just how significant Terrorizer's World Downfall is within the grindcore pantheon. The L.A. band's debut album is a savage and exhilarating cut of early grind that, alongside other seminal releases like Repulsion's Horrified and the first few Napalm Death albums, has earned its place as one of the genre's foundational texts. The guttural vocals, the precision blast beats, the relentlessly kinetic riffs - Terrorizer's debut was vital in helping to define grindcore's musical identity. As well as this seminal musicianship, World Downfall also helped cement the genre's thematic identity. Like its mesmerizing cover art, the album's worldview shares much in common with that of Napalm Death - the English band born in the UK's politically-radical crust punk scene. Both bands' music from this era adroitly reflects the time of its creation - the conservative 1980s obsessed with rugged individualism and the relentless pursuit of financial wealth. World Downfall's internal language is scathing in its critique of this period. References to "gain", "greed", "power" and "propaganda" all recur, alongside more violent imagery that eschews gore or the macabre in favor of harsh displays of psychological violence....
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World Downfall's brutality is unique to this era, a period defined by the rise and consolidation of the neoliberal ideology. Under the leadership of Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher, this intensely market-oriented, economically-liberal brand of capitalism helped transfer swathes of global wealth into the hands of the upper echelons of power. Economic policies that deregulated markets, privatized public bodies and increased the influence of the financial sector were all brought in at a breakneck pace, shifting power and resources away from the working class and into the hands of capitalist elites. Terrorizer use World Downfall to lay bare the blatant moral emptiness of this era and its predominant ideology. Several tracks tackle specifics -"Corporation Pull-In" attacks abhorrent business practices, "Infestation" critiques systemic groupthink. There's also sharp psychological portraits of life in a vicious, market-driven world, in particular "Storm Of Stress" - a sad study of the worries and struggles that come with being trapped within the permutations of an all-pervading, oppressive system. Most intriguing, however, is the more abstract utterances on tracks like "After World Obliteration" and ‘Human Prey". Both lyrical screeds are freed from spatio-temporality, portraying a hopeless, obliterated world that, when paired up next to the rest of the most temporally-specific tracks, envisage where following this ruthless ideology will lead the world. "After World Obliteration" imagines "nations falling to defeat" via "suffocation, no way out" (from the pervasive, insidious influence of destructive capitalism?), while "Human Prey" "looks into the future" and sees "the devastation, mutilation of mankind". At this point, it's crucial to clarify that Terrorizer, despite the grim clairvoyance on display, are not nihilists. They care deeply for humanity and believe keenly in the strength of the human spirit, as evidenced by the shafts of light that burst through their debut album (see: "Infestation"'s closing line - "never let them take control / uphold your words and don't back down"). Their pessimism regarding the future stems from the brutal nature of the system and its domineering influence, as though their philosophy preceded the now-common leftist mantra ‘it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism'. In the same year of World Downfall's release, the political philosopher Francis Fukuyama published his essay The End Of History? Both this essay and his 1992 book The End Of History And The Last Man posited the notion that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the evolutionary process of history had ended, due to the triumph of liberal democracy over the forces of communism. Fukuyama suggested that Western liberal democracy and its corresponding capitalist market economy had won a grand ideological battle and was now set to become the final form of world government. This idea was, of course, deeply controversial. The intervening three decades have provided a litany of reasons against the thesis, from the rise of authoritarian capitalism in China and Russia to the political and institutional rot we are currently witnessing in the Western world. Numerous thinkers also critiqued the notion, notably postmodern philosopher Jaques Derrida, who in 1993's Specters Of Marx rubbished Fukuyama's claims by pointing to the extensive violence, oppression and inequality that this supposedly triumphant ideology depends upon. However, aspects of Fukuyama's concept hold undeniable power. Unlike its interpretation by some critics, the notion that history had reached its endpoint is not an inherently positivist one. In fact, Fukuyama states in his original essay that "the end of history will be a very sad time", one defined by "economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands". He imagines a world stifled, homogenized and crippled by a "nostalgia for a time when history existed" - in short, a world much like the one imagined by Terrorizer on World Downfall. The album's lyrics brilliantly portray this sense of sociopolitical homogenization. "Strategic Warheads" uses imagery of apocalyptic conflict as a pointed metaphor for the similarly-world ending triumph of neoliberal capitalism. The track imagines the post-historical world as a wasteland of ideas, the result of a "cut-throat system" and "nations falling to defeat". It features the repeated mantra of "nothing left but wasted years" - a mournful lyrical barb that mirrors the hollow ideological wilderness of Fukuyama's vision. Fukuyama concludes his essay by invoking the potent image of a period defined by the "perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history". This prediction of an era defined by a dearth of ideas would be thrillingly-expanded on by the late theorist Mark Fisher and his notion of ‘capitalist realism'. Fisher saw the end of history era as one where capitalism had become so dominant that it was now impossible to imagine a coherent alternative to it. World Downfall is packed full of allusions to this ideological stasis, from "Enslaved By Propaganda"'s blunt but ruthless understanding of social malaise ("entrapment by society") to "Corporation Pull-In"'s vision of a world ruled by the profit motive, where there's "no way out of this misery". World Downfall's psychological landscape is dominated by this feeling of being trapped, of being stuck in the jaws of a malevolent creation that is not only stifling, but actively destructive. The ultimate reference to this grim, post-historical world is the album's title. From Terrorizer's 1989 perspective, they had witnessed the ascent of neoliberal capitalism and the title of their debut adroitly envisions the ruinous consolidation it would soon bring about. In their own way, they got it more right than Fukuyama did. The neoliberal hegemony is collapsing around us, yet wealth, resources and power are still being disproportionately funneled to those at the very top of the economic food chain. The western world is in a state of downfall and we must do all we can to build new ideas—to "never run from the system, face it strong and proud"....
World Downfall released November 13th, 1989 via Earache Records.…