Ona Snop

Cheap Thrills #1


Like many of you, I have fond memories of Invisible Oranges’ Bandcamp Vault series that ran for several years. Cheap Thrills will be reviving this concept with a special twist, focusing on free and “name your price” releases (with a few exceptions here and there). These will be albums, EPs, and demos whose low to non-existent asking prices belie the quality of the music. You can technically download these releases without paying a cent, but I recommend supporting the artists who are so passionate about their music that they are willing to let the listener set the price.

Without further ado, here’s the first edition of Cheap Thrills, comin’ straight from the underground.

–Alex Chan

DesiccationCold Dead Earth
June 13th, 2022

Hopefully I’m not the only one who reads the album title as a terse refutation of The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place (albeit 20 years after the fact), because it turns out that Desiccation is quite unhappy about the state of the world. The band’s debut album Cold Dead Earth aims to channel the “existential dread” of late stage capitalism and climate change, but while there is little hope to be found, Desiccation’s brand of blackened doom conveys this without becoming monotonous or drawn-out. Each song is made up of distinct movements that seem to build and release tension at exactly the right moments. A lumbering doom metal passage can seamlessly transition into a quiet instrumental interlude before picking up speed and building towards a thunderous black metal finale. As a result, Cold Dead Earth is a surprisingly diverse album despite its grim outlook.

DowncrossHexapoda Triumph
March 3, 2022

The banner on Downcross’ Bandcamp page reads “Eliterian Satanic Rock”, and I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out that first word. Eritrean? Elite? Who knows.

Luckily for us, “Downcross” is much easier to understand as far as made-up words are concerned. It is perhaps the most straightforward and efficient representation of this Belarusian duo’s approach to music, which is apparently to make blasphemy as catchy as possible. Hexapoda Triumph is fundamentally a black metal album, but Downcross spices things up with dashes of rock n’ roll swagger and a hint of punk ‘tude. Take the delightfully named “Where Spheres Myroblys with Pus”, which alternates between anthemic, fist-pumping riffs and melodic black metal propelled by tremolo-picked guitar and blast beats. There’s even a fantastically evil little bridge where drummer and vocalist Ldzmr lets loose a few ear-splitting shrieks like he’s Stace McLaren from Razor. You’ll be having so much fun that you won’t have time to wonder just what the hell “myroblys” is supposed to mean.

Ona SnopOna Snop
June 3rd, 2022

Today’s forecast: arterial spray, saliva, and tears? Perhaps I’m taking the cover of Ona Snop’s self-titled EP too literally. In any case, the Leeds-based quartet does seem to specialize in that sort of high-impact cartoon violence. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense either – after all, there is an inherent absurdity to the extreme end of the hardcore spectrum. Ona Snop has been described as grindcore, fastcore, and powerviolence, but what matters at the end of the day is that you’re getting 9 minutes of ludicrously hyperactive punk that is perfect for anyone looking for a fun way to develop CTE. By the end of this EP, you may very well end up like one of the misshapen characters on the cover.

Hanging FortressDarkness Devours
November 6th, 2020

When I had the good fortune of seeing Sanguisugabogg and Mutilatred live a few years back, the one-two Buckeye death-punch knocked me flat on my ass (in Sanguisugabogg’s case, quite literally). I figured there was something in the water over there in Ohio, probably some toxic runoff seeping into Lake Eerie and causing all manner of nasty things to grow and fester. Little did I know that around that same time, Hanging Fortress was also emerging from the muck with their own depraved take on death metal. Darkness Devours was their debut album, and it’s a shame that I only found out about it last week, nearly two years after its release. Each massive, bludgeoning riff hits like a dump truck full of skulls, and what becomes painfully clear about a minute into the first track is that this is the sort of music that will absolutely turn the average crowd into a bunch of ravening maniacs. Here’s hoping that they join their Ohio death metal brethren on an East Coast tour in the near future.

SeinThe Denial of Death & ZeitS/T
April 28th, 2021 & September 24th, 2020

I might as well turn this last one into a double feature! Last year, I stumbled across The Denial of Death, a melodic death metal album by an Italian band called Sein. It was clear At the Gates worship from beginning to end, packed with upbeat Gothenburg-style riffs—so imagine my surprise when I found out that half of Sein is also in a pretty awesome band called Zeit that trades the Swedish death metal influence for a sound reminiscent of late 90’s/early 2000’s mathcore. Fans of Converge and Cave In/Mutoid Man will enjoy the zany guitar theatrics on display throughout the album as well as the dozens of dizzying tempo and time signature changes. Both Sein and Zeit are clearly zeroing in on particular sounds, but if you’re a fan of either (or both) of those styles, today is your lucky day!

That’s all for this installment of Cheap Thrills. If anything caught your interest, be sure to support the artists however you can, even if it’s just recommending them to a friend. Cheers!