Swedish progressive rock/metal innovators Pain of Salvation will release a very special reissue version of their 2002 album “Remedy Lane” entitled “Remedy Lane Re:visited (Re:mixed & Re:lived)” on July 1st, 2016 via InsideOutMusic.
They’ve unveiled a statc audio clip of ‘Rope Ends (Remix)’ on YouTube by way of a taster. Check its epicness out here:
Southern Lord – 10th June 2016
Christopher Nosnibor
Holy fuck. You really need to brace yourself for this. That it’s on Southern Lord and Hissing are described as a Seattle-based blackened/death/ sludge behemoth is a starting point, and the fact the band features a guy called Joe O’Malley, who happens to be the younger brother of Stephen O’Malley gives an indication that it might be heavy… but holy fuck. I’ve (thankfully) never been hit by a truck, but I get the feeling that listening to this is a very similar experience. Yes, it hurts.
My research tells me that the lyrics of the new EP are ‘thematically centred around the effects of the metropolitan environment on the human psyche and explore themes of agoraphobia, urban decay, and incarceration.’ The lyrics aren’t immediately apparent, but the sentiment is conveyed in no uncertain terms, and with unstinting, brutal force.
‘Cairn’ may be an innocuous enough title for a song, connoting a pile of rocks built up by walker to guide others, but there is nothing friendly about this six-minute onslaught. The bass frequencies are everywhere: it’s not a case of the track featuring a hefty bassline but the speakers groaning under the density of the all-consuming bass frequencies which shudder the cones.
‘Husk’ is a similarly terrifying experience, dense, brutal and gnarly. But mere adjectives can’t come close to truly conveying the experience. ‘Dense’ is overused, not least of all by me, to escribe a thick, heavy, impenetrable wall of sound. Hissing create a sound that’s dense to the power of ten, so dense as to almost possess physical presence.
Southern Lord – 10th June 2016
Christopher Nosnibor
I’ve said it before, but the reason the 80s produced so much exciting music wasn’t because of the emerging technologies, but because it was a decade of social and political turmoil, marked by widening division. Sure, post-millennium we laugh at the yuppies and the huge mobile phones and the computers with less capacity than a scientific calculator, but the present bears scary and depressing parallels with the past – although if anything, the stakes seem higher than ever before. The global economy is fucked. Ergo, we’re all fucked. The world is at war. It’s not some bickering over some distant islands or a couple of neighbouring countries quarrelling over borders that’s going on here: it’s 2016 and it’s nothing short of all-out, total war. These are supposedly civilised times, but it feels like the apocalypse.
Living in England, it’s easy enough to whinge about conditions living under the current government, primarily because they’re a bunch of greedy, smarmy, smug, lying cunts who loathe the poor, the sick and the disabled and whose only interest is self-interest, but I have a lot to be grateful for, and living in Greece right now would be a whole lot tougher.
Sarabante hail from Greece, and as the press release notes, it’s the country’s dark and difficult times which have provided much of the inspiration for Poisonous Legacy: ‘Heavily influenced by oppression and trying to withstand the ongoing crisis in their home country Greece, their new music is forged in times of extreme austerity, which has without doubt blackened their focus. As a result, the music on Poisonous Legacy is darker, filthier, more sincere and more destructive than before.
There are no two ways about it: Poisonous Legacy is a ferocious and devastating maelstrom of an album. It’s the sound of pure fury, rage distilled and bottled in shot-size explosions of power stronger than any of Brewdog’s gimmicky spirit-strength brews. The majority of the album’s twelve tracks clock in at under to and a half minutes. Poisonous Legacy is an album of punishing intensity and astounding force.
Instrumental interlude, ‘Forewarned Epilogue’, proffers a brooding, gothic sound by way of a reprieve from the full-throttle churning guitar, but to suggest it’s any kind of light in the darkness would be wrong. There is no light, only darkness. And there is no real respite.
Bearsuit Records – BS032 – 9th July 2016
Christopher Nosnibor
Bearsuit mainstay Harold Nono returns – not that he’s ever really been away – and once again, he’s come up trumps – and thankfully, not Donald Trumps. Swinging wildly from rumbling, dark ambience to mellowed-out doodlesome synthesised post-rock, Nono’s latest effort is as inventive as ever. But on this outing, he’s definitely set his sights on sparse scenes: a gentle piano tinkles in the subtle mists which hover and hum through ‘Otosan’,
There’s a sinister undercurrent that intimates ‘sci-fi horror film’ about the atmospheric ‘Atam No Nai Uma Ga Hashiru’: in contrast, ‘I’m Disguised as an Idiot’ sees Japanese traditionalism collide with western glitchtronica, while ‘Unbeaten Brothers and Sisters’ created a darkly atmospheric tension with its fractured samples and beneath-the-radar fear chords.
‘The Saline Revival Show’ is an achingly mournful piece, a sparse violin / cello arrangement that’s brooding, moving, and evocative. The post-rock echoes carry through into the sparse closer, ‘Watashi Wa Ie Ni Kaeritai’, rounding off an intriguing album that is – as you’d reasonably expect from Harold Nono, and as you’d reasonably expect from Bearsuit – difficult to place, but a lot easier to dig.
We’re not going to give this an intro. It’s a new video from Arrows of Love. It’s psychotic. It’s deranged. It’s noisy . It’s awesome. Watch it. If you don’t dig it, this isn’t the website for you.
Swans have shared the first full track from the forthcoming album, The Glowing Man, out on Young God (N America) / Mute on 17th June 2016.
‘When Will I Return?’, described by MOJO as a ;revelation’, was written, explains Michael Gira "specifically for Jennifer Gira to sing. It’s a tribute to her strength, courage, and resilience.’
But enough preamble. Listen to this:
Aural Aggravation 