Cold Comfort is, it would seem a ‘one man punk machine’. This double-A-side effort is certainly pretty punk, both in terms of musical style and approach, in that we’re talking about sub-three-minute three-chord thrashabouts with DIY production values, accompanied by a video for one of the songs that has recreated the experience of early Internet animations. And that’s a large part of the appeal.
It’s immediately apparent that Cold Comfort places some investment in quirky humour / irony: the song titles on this release are not-so-subtle inversions, although they’re a step up from sticking ‘not!’ after each of them. And it’s very soon apparent that subtle isn’t Cold Comfort’s forte, but there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, punk and subtle don’t really go together.
‘Suck My Blood (Please Don’t)’ is a two-minute blast of primitive overloading guitars and its grungy punk is rough and ready and exploding with energy. And yet there’s still time and space for a nagging lead guitar line and a hook reminiscent of DZ Deathray. On top of that, it inverts vampiric kink tropes with its parenthetical ‘Please Don’t’, as well as booting the machismo of horror conventions into touch in the video as a digitized CC runs away from bats.
‘I Shot The Messenger’ is more spirit of ’78, with heavy hints of The Fall pitched against a booming bass that’s pinned to a vintage drum machine track that’s got the ferocity of Metal Urbain and the bedroom basicness of Young Marble Giants.
It’s not pop-punk in the contemporary sense: it’s pop-punk in the way The Buzzcocks and The Adverts were punk while writing pop songs. It’s fun, but still kicks arse, and it’s a rush.
Fredrik Croona whose projects have included the likes of MENSCHDEFEKT, CROONA & CYNICAL EXISTENCE has announced a new project, AGAINST I and debut single, ‘Scum.’
“‘Scum’ is a dedication to all the lowlifes who treat other people like shit and care for nothing but themselves. People who are so full of themselves that they don’t see or care about anything else. This is the first song that opens the door into a carnival of the obscene, deranged & faulty people and to the darkness of human psyche.” – Fredrik Croona
Experimental and underground music, particularly of the electronic persuasion is a broad field, but, it would seem, a small world.
During lockdown, the Nim Brut label hosted a series of virtual gigs, where performers would submit sets accompanied by visuals, and the resulting streams were varied and eclectic, in the best possible way, presenting the full breadth of the melting pot of a diverse and disparate milieu. As is so often the case with events of this ilk, everyone was not lonely accommodating, but welcoming toward one another, celebrating the differences in style and approach.
Feast 5, back in August of 2021, was a belter, and not only because as half of …(Something) Ruined I got to unleash new brutal noise in a safe environment, but got to do so alongside some remarkable artists, notably Omnibael, who have featured a number of times here. Also on the bill was a performance so brief as to barely be an interlude, something I described as a ‘shifting wave of glitchronic ambience’ courtesy of Neuro… No Neuro, of whom I knew nothing, until today, when on the arrival of Faces & Fragments in my inbox, I learn that NNN is ‘a moniker of the electronic musician Kirk Markarian, an avid synthesist, drummer, abstract painter, and graphic designer residing on the alluvial plain of the Sonoran Desert, in dry and dusty Tucson, Arizona’.
The title is a fitting summary of the album, both its input and outputs, and the lived experience of listening to the thirteen pieces, which are as much collages as compositions.
As the liner notes explain, ‘Each track illuminates fragments of memory and speech, as they wander out of focus in the growing aperture of time.’
As such, each piece is formed, sculpted and layered, from an array of sounds and sources, snippets, and scatterings, fleeting and ephemeral; chiming notes ring out over soft washes, sporadic glops and plops, like drops of water falling in a cave, overlaid with brief fragments of voices. On ‘Everybody is Out to Get You’, those voices slow, distort, blur, into a nightmarish nagging. It drags on the psyche, against a skittering, jarring backdrop what warps and tugs unsettlingly, and makes for awkward, queasy listening.
Neuro… No Neuro’s own comments on the album’s formulation and function bring us closer to the heart of the state of confusion it creates, explaining, “Each track shares the ‘fragments’ of speech/memory, the growing aperture of time and loss of thought. While forming sentences via type has not declined (because there is time available), speech and recollection are steadily decaying into simplified phrases and poor playback for quick address.’
As William Burroughs said, the function of writing is to ‘make us aware of what we know and don’t know we know’, and this was particularly pertinent in the context of the cut-up texts he produced, essentially collages of other texts designed to recreate the real-time experience of memory and sensory awareness, and the simultaneity of events. We do not live in linear time; we experience multiple sensations simultaneously; thoughts, sounds, conversations, things happening around us all occur on the same timeline, in layers, and our memories record these experiences. This is the sensation that Neuro… No Neuro recreates with Faces & Fragments, from the stop start jittering of ‘Slice of Mind’, to the trickling sedation of ‘And the Energy Goes Back to the Ground’.
The faces blur into anonymity after a while; people look alike and are strange or strangely familiar, and things can get confusing after a while. Faces & Fragments may not – and probably doesn’t sound just like your internal monologue or the soundtrack to your life, but structurally, the resemblances are clear once you step back and reflect. Our thoughts are a jumble of intrusions and overlaps, with memories and recollections triggered by the most random associations and events, sometimes with seemingly no trigger at all, and all flitting through at the same time as you’re watching TV or scrolling through social media shit on your phone as messages and emails ping in and there are conversations and the radio or TV is dribbling away while dinner’s bubbling away in the oven. Life never stops: it happens constantly and all at once, overlapping, overwhelming. Faces & Fragments is a slice of life.
Fresh off their first UK tour since the days before Covid, The Kut has released a brand new single ‘Satellite’. Emotive, powerful and featuring a guitar solo straight out of a Clapton ‘How To’ school, the track released on Valentine’s Day as the second single from her forthcoming sophomore album. And now there’s a video to accompany it, which you can watch here:
Announced a Double Award Winner in UK Songwriting Contest this week, winning both the UKSC Rock Award and UKSC Music Video Award, The Kut (PhD) is a rising rock multi-instrumentalist who performs and records alongside a collective of women in music.
The award winning ‘ANIMO’ (meaning courage or spirit) was released in November as the first single from the forthcoming long player. The single charted at No.8 in the UK Physical Singles Chart and No.35 in the UK Sales Chart.
Premiered by Johnny Doom at Kerrang! Radio, the record received playlist support from Janice Long, BBC Radio Wales, Planet Rock, BBC Introducing, Amazing Radio, Total Rock, Primordial Radio, Hard Rock Hell and upwards of 1500 plays worldwide. US Radio is well represented too, with FM playlising in 20+ US States including at 91X, San Diego, The New Music Foodtruck, WVUR, Chicago, WOOL, Burlington, WCSF, Chicago, KXT, Dallas, KXUA, Fayetteville, KFCF, Fresno, KXFM, Laguna Beach, WVZA, Marion, KBRE, Merced, KFAI, Minneapolis, KZMU, Moab, WODU, Norfolk, WRKC, Philadelphia, Radio Phoenix, KMUD, Redway,KAMP, Tucson, WQRR, Tuscaloosa, WERA, Washington, KPCA, California, KUPR, New Mexico, WDWN, New York, WNIA, North Carolina and WVUR, Virginia. The music video has now also been playlisted on LATV, adding to previous US support from MTV, MTV-U AXS TV and Music Choice.
On release the record featured at No.12 in the US NMD NACC Top Singles ‘Heatseeker’ Chart, and subsequently made its debut in the US Submodern Singles (Airplay) Top 100. Funded by Arts Council England, the award sees in the release of ‘Satellite’ as a second video single from the forthcoming album, alongside touring and documentation from behind the scenes at rehearsals, at the studio and on set.
“Every single release we are challenging ourselves to grow and level up!” The Kut shared in a post from East End Studios, London. The new music video for ‘Satellite’ is directed by Mike Gripz of Smith Town Studios, and expected for release next week. Featuring Diana Bartmann (drums), Alison Wood (keys / bvs), Jennifer Sanin (bass / bvs) alongside The Kut (vocals / guitar), the single’s powerful message is expected to pull some heartstrings this Valentine’s. Dedicate to ‘everyone who’s had my back when I needed it most’ the single is produced by James LeRock Loughrey and was recorded at Axe & Trap Studios, Wells. It releases at all digital retailers, with CDs via the Criminal Records store.
Performing as late headliner on The River Stage, Isle of Wight Festival in September, The Kut has recently taken part in the Music Venue Trust x The National Lottery #ReviveLive Tour, with one rescheduled tour date remaining. The multi-venue event features a series of special shows in grassroots venues with the aim of kick starting the return to live gigs and featuring performances from Enter Shikari, Feeder, Becky Hill and many more.
In 2018, The Kut’s debut album ‘Valley Of Thorns’ reached No. 7 in the UK Rock Albums Chart and No. 18 in the UK Independent Albums Chart. The record was released on Criminal Records, now home to a host of rising artists including Weekend Recovery, The Last Siren, LORI, Mike Walsh, Argonaut, Calaveras and most recently music critic Everett True.
After a five-year wait for new music, Ruby the Hatchet are premiering the track ‘1000 Years’ from their new EP Live at Earthquaker, their first outing for Magnetic Eye Records. The three-track set is scheduled for release on April 22, with pre-sales commencing today.
Live at Earthquaker features early organic and raw versions of two brand-new songs recorded entirely live at EarthQuaker Devices headquarters in Akron, Ohio during the band’s US tour with KADAVAR, with the cherry on top being the physical format debut of their raucous version of URIAH HEEP’s 70s anthem ‘Easy Livin’’.
The EP’s two new songs will reappear in fully-produced recordings on the New Jersey riff-rockers’ new studio album that has been announced for 2022.
The video clip for ‘1000 Years’ was recorded live and produced at EarthQuaker Devices, and you can watch it here:
Pitched as being for fans of Primus, Lightning Bolt, Swans and Mudvayne, the accompanying text informs us that ‘Regurgitorium was haphazardly constructed with the sole goal of distressing and alienating their few remaining friends and family. Members of Warren Schoenbright, Wren and Deleted Narrative come together to deliver angular drums, discordant bass, and harrowing vocals accompanied by themes of existential paradoxes and day-to-day despair. The result being something best described as “Not Subtle”.’
If there was ever a strong and perfectly nihilistic reason to make music, that has to be it. It’s one of those hilarious band clichés that get wheeled out when they say they make music for themselves, and if anyone else likes it, then it’s a bonus. It’s almost impossible to not to be sceptical, because, well, fuck off. I mean, I believe Nirvana were sincere in not wanting international mega-stardom and that they wrote In Utero to get back to their roots and piss off casuals and their major label, but they still wrote songs to be heard by an audience – just a more select one. Of course, it depends on your ambitions as an artist, but I would say it’s better to have a small but devoted fanbase than one consisting of a larger but fleeting, fickle bunch of casuals whose interest will have cooled faster than their post-gig McDonald’s fries.
Regurgitation is not subtle, but it is high impact, and it’s a monster racket from the outset, with a clunging bass-rattling racket and squalling guitar mess of noise bursting forth with ‘Parapraxis’. It’s a minute and a half of total mayhem.
They hit optimal Big Black drilling grind on second track ‘Bachelor Machine’: the bass sounds like a chainsaw, while the guitar fires off tangential sprays of metallic feedback and harmonics, bringing together ‘Jordan, Minnesota’ and the intro to ‘Cables’. It’s a brutal squall of noise, and it goes beyond guitar: it’s sheering sparks off sheet metal that singe your skin as they fly, and it really makes a statement about both the band’s influences and intent. It’s messy, and it’s noisy. And it’s perfect.
Every track just gets nastier, more deranged. ‘Elective Affinities’ is all about wandering verses and choruses that sound like a seizure. Everything is overloading all the time: max distortion, max reverb, max treble, max crunch: the bass sounds like a saw, the guitar sounds like a drill, the drums sound like explosions: it’s intense, and it’s punishing, in the best possible way. It’s the sonic expression of a psychological spasm, and everything goes off all at once.
There’s no obvious sense of linearity or structure to the songs on Regurgitation. There’s a bass that sounds like a bulldozer grinding forward at the pulverising climax of ‘Bone Apple Teeth’. And then things go helium on ‘Wretched Makeshifts’: it’s like the Butthole Surfers gone avant-garde. And then there’s the stark spoken word of ‘Silentium’, which is tense, dark.
Listening to Regurgitation is like taking blows to the head in rapid succession. It’s not just the hits, but the dazing effect. Everything mists over, you don’t know where you are, and you’ve even less idea what the fuck this is. It’s bewildering, overwhelming. ‘Railways Spine’ is a nerve-shattering explosion of feedback-riven chaos and there is no coherent reaction. ‘Untismmung’ is the epitome of wordless anguish, this time articulated by means of experimental funk that yields to head-shredding noise. Noise, noise, noise: I keep typing it, and that’s because Regurgitation is relentless in its noise. It’s noisy. So many shades of noise. It’s fucked up. It’s deranged. It hurts. There is just so much noise, and no escape from it. Not that you should seek escape: bask in the brutality, the yawning bass grind and King Missile-like spoken-word segments that provide the brief passages between the blasts of noise, noise noise.
Closer ‘Vomitorium’ sounds like a collision between Shellac and Suicide, and the maniacal laughing at the fade sounds like the only sane reaction to all this madness.
A Place to Bury Strangers find tenderness in the unlikeliest of places with ‘Love Reaches Out’, the fifth single and new music video from their critically acclaimed sixth album, See Through You, out now (digitally) and on March 11th (vinyl) on Dedstrange.
“’Love Reaches Out’ is the hope at the end of the tunnel that concludes this album,” says Oliver Ackermann. “I went through such a traumatic experience writing this record and yet people were there to help me, so this song is about appreciating and thanking them.” With its triumphant marching snare and a hooky bassline, ‘Love Reaches Out’ concludes See Through You on a warm and fuzzy note—though not the guitar kind. No circuit can contain the electrifying joy of two souls united. “Moments like this highlight how much [Ackermann has] grown as a singer,” writes Heather Phares at AllMusic. In her review of See Through You, she praises ‘Love Reaches Out’ as “Ackermann and company’s most empathetic song to date.”
In the music video directed by horror auteur Gabriel Carrier (For The Sake Of Vicious, The Demolisher), the third in a series of horror movie directors the band reached out to, a woman unexpectedly encounters and reaches out to a shapeshifting entity in the most unlikely manner. This entity befriends her after it was left for dead and gives her the support needed to help battle her own anxiety and inner demons. “It reminds us not to turn a blind eye to the small things and that friendships can manifest in the most unlikely ways,” says Carrier.
While the majority of their output belongs to the post-85, second wave of post-punk / indie-goth, both (timewise) and sonically, Salvation’s roots actually go back to the murkier days of when The Sisters of Mercy were a true Leeds band, living in a dingy terrace in LS6 and recording at Kenny Giles’ 8-track studio in Bridlington and running a label not so much on a shoestring, but on zero budget and Letraset.
Salvation’s first ingle, ‘Girlsoul’ was released on Merciful Release in ’83, and was produced by Eldritch, before a parting of the ways not dissimilar from that which befell The March Violets took place, and while their second single, ‘Jessica’s Crime’ was produced by Wayne Hussey in 1984, the mini-album Clash of Dreams which was scheduled for A Merciful Release in 1985 was shelved and only got to see the light of day in 2014.
By then, they had evolved into the more accessible indie-goth sound, which emerged circa 1985-6, and which perhaps not coincidentally corresponded with The Sisters of Mercy’s evolution towards a more commercial sound with the arrival of Wayne Hussey and their signing to WEA and the release of ‘Body and Soul’ and First and Last and Always, before the split that led to the emergence of The Mission.
But their coming together with Hussey early on marked the beginning of a longstanding partnership: in fact, it was in 1990, supporting The Mission at Sheffield City Hall I first encountered Salvation, which would have coincided with the release of their major label debut Sass, which marked something of a more commercially-orientated direction, and would also represent the band’s last new material as the band crashed under the pressures of relentless touring.
Fast-forward to 2020, and the band have emerged from their retirement to tour Europe with The Mission. We Gave You Diamonds… Live at De Casino was recorded Live at De Casino, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium on March 7th 2020 on the final night of a four-date tour supporting The Mission, and it’s a career-spanning showcase of a set that captures salvation on fine form, and Daniel Mass sounds relaxed with his chat between songs.
Only two of the eleven songs ‘(Clearing Out the) Debris’ and ‘Paint it Rose’ are from Sass, and the set is otherwise culled from their independent years, kicking off with ‘The Answer’ from 1986’s ‘Seek’ EP. It’s clearly of that mid-80s vintage, but still sounds fresh and is delivered with an energy that translated through the medium of the live recording, with its thumping bass and flowery guitar flourishes both crisp and clear. ‘Ladyfaithe’ from the same EP, which would subsequently their 1987 debut album Diamonds are Forever is also dropped early.
Mass probably doesn’t need to announce that they’re from Leeds at the start of the set: they sounds like a Leeds band, to the core. They also sound like a band who are having a blast, and the songs are played with precision and power, and they’ve held up well despite the passage of all the years: ‘All and More’ still kicks ass with twisty guitars and a solid bass groove, and reminds us just how strong they were at penning sharp hooks and nagging guitar lines.
They delve right back as far as ‘The Shining’ (a standout and a personal favourite that always gets lodged as an earworm whenever I play it) from their second single as well as the unreleased ‘The October Hour’ from the debut that never was. ‘Payola’ and ‘Pearl Necklace’, the B-sides from their single release of Donovan’s ‘Sunshine Superman’ from 1988. Yes, it’s a blast from the past, but this doesn’t have the vibe of a nostalgia trip: Salvation sound like a band reinvigorated and energised and feeling the songs.
And now, as we finally crawl out of the seemingly-eternal suspension of life that was the Covid pandemic, Salvation are once again set to play as support to The Mission – although the handful of dates isn’t quite the crippling schedule of thirty years ago. On the strength of We Gave You Diamonds, it’ll be worth making it down early doors, and with any luck they’ll be booking a few headline shows of their own before long.
The Neuro Farm recently unveiled their new release, the goth-rock Vampyre.
Vampyrism is a curse dating back to biblical times. Our titular heroine, lured by the promise of immortality, is given this curse by the egomaniacal leader of a vampyric cult. But within the cult there is a growing sense of disillusion, and she builds her own following.
Eventually, she spurns her maker, rebelling against him and his decaying institution. She says a final farewell to her mortal husband, turning away from humanity and embracing her new nature. She slays her former master in the “midnight massacre” and declares herself queen.
They’ve produced a lyric video for one of the tracks, the dramatic, operatic dark electro ‘Confession’, which you can watch here:
Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a slice of blues-hued alt-rock that deals with paranoia and a sense of disconnection from other people, right? Blackpool’s Rendered land their second single on Valentine’s day, and it’s a proper punch in the kisser
It begins with a slow-build, a big, spacious guitars chime that’s bordering on shoegaze before exploiting a classic quiet / loud verse / chorus, and when the guitars kick in for the chorus, boy do they kick in strong. It’s the perfect vehicle for the lyrics which wrestle with internal contradictions and the troubles of mental health; the fear and loathing, flipping between the urge to lash out and to simply hide.
‘Paranoia’s what they tell me I got /Well it’s real to me and it won’t stop now / (Must be the enemy!)’ guitarist/vocalist Dale Ball hollers in a blend of pain and panic, articulating the anguish of decoding situations; after all, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you, and just because you feel you can’t trust anyone, doesn’t mean you’re delusional or overly fearful, and it’s a fact, not hype, that you can’t be too careful… but then, to what extent can fear rule your life before it’s no life at all? It’s a fine line, and right now, so many people are so on edge about everything. The language of fear used to ensure compliance during lockdown gave many the jitters, and shaking that fear isn’t proving so easy. Then you turn on the news, there are stabbings and murders of random strangers all over, the government has been proven to have bene constantly lying the whole time, and now continue to lie about the fact they’ve been lying in the face of concrete evidence, and who can you believe or trust when you can’t even trust yourself or your own instincts?
Well, you can trust Rendered to deliver solid tunes with real resonance, if nothing else, and ‘Must Be The Enemy!’ is the proof.
Aural Aggravation 