Archive for August, 2023

Bed of Snakes – Bed of Snakes EP

Posted: 15 August 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

Engineer Records

I have mentioned – more than once – that I’m not fan of punk pop. But I am a strong believer in that there are two kinds of music – good and bad – and that there are exponents of both in any genre. A quote that sticks in my mind is Morrissey’s declaration that ‘all reggae is vile’. Now, I’m no fan of reggae, but that doesn’t mean that reggae is shit, it simply means that most reggae is not to my taste – but then there are reggae-flavoured songs and bands I absolutely fucking love, from The Special to The Ruts, not to mention some of Bauhaus’ dub/reggae dabblings. But vile? I suppose this was one of those early hints that Morrissey was a racist twat, along with his comments about needing to be black to get on Top of the Pops or whatever it was. Only back in the mid-80s, it was simply viewed as being niggardly, misanthropic, and contentious because it made good press.

I know absolutely nothing about the band, or the release: this is one of those CDs that just arrived through my letterbox. Some people would worry about how people find their email address or whatever, but I’ve come to be comfortable with people sending me stuff, because, well, as long as it’s downloads and CDs and books, rather than death threats, it’s a good thing.

Bed of Snakes definitely sit at the punkier end of the spectrum, rather than the poppier end. and it’s an instant grab with ‘Bridge to Nowhere’. It has the drums right up front and centre, the guitars crackle with crunch and big speaker volume, and the vocals are lower in the mix than the mixed-for-radio stabs at success that’s depressingly commonplace. There is, to my ear, nothing more irritating than clean vocals at the top of the mix on a tune that purports to be punk… and even in general. Mix really does matter, and with guitar-based music, the vocals should sit in it, rather than dominate, way above it. Too much vocal just sounds… wrong. But this, this is perfect, And those vocals are gritty, full-throated, raw, they grab you, and they’re riven with energy and sincerity.

‘Over You’ slumps into middling mediocrity and it would take far longer than the song’s two minutes and thirty-seven seconds to list the bands it sounds like. For me, it’s two and a half minutes of wondering why. Why do something so derivative? Why, when you can clearly do so much better, be so much more exciting? I suspect that radio play is the goal. Let’s write the tune that could get radio play, guys! I get the rationale, but no-one wins here.

But they’re back hard and heavy on the closer, ‘Stolen Moments’. As on ‘’Bridge too Nowhere’, the guitars are big and gritty, and the sound is dense and there’s a punchy, passionate edge that feels real. And two outta three ain’t bad: Bed of Snakes have proved that they’ve got guts and grit, and some knack for riff-driven tunes. Let’s have some more!

Listen: ‘Purgatory’ by State of the Union

Posted: 15 August 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Electro-Industrial band, State Of The Union has unveiled their latest single release, ‘Purgatory’.

‘Purgatory’ is a song that explores the topic of suicide. As human beings, we go through the ‘ups’ and ‘downs’. Some of us have a harder time than others dealing with these emotions. Some of us can even get to the brink of suicide because we want to make it end as fast as we can.

In esoteric belief, a person who commits suicide disrupts their karmic flow and goes to a timeless place where one second could feel like a million years! This is very hard to comprehend within our own minds. To experience something like that, we have to have an out-of-body experience and travel to a very low-frequency dimension known as purgatory.

In some religions, purgatory is known as the place where spirits go to pay for their sins and burn karma before they move on to their next life experience. All in all, we will never know unless we go there. That’s why it is better to keep making powerful electronic music that makes club-goers dance their nights away to songs like ‘Purgatory.’

Listen here:

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War San – Carabanchel Prison EP

Posted: 14 August 2023 in Singles and EPs
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11th August 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

One of the great pleasures I derive from reviewing music, particularly that of experimental and ambient persuasions, is the amount I learn from reading about the inspirations behind the works. Because of the nature of these musical forms, the inspirations are wide and varied, but often reactions or responses to events or places, or even abstract concepts, and unencumbered by the conventions of lyrics, which are so often hampered and constricted by the limitations of meter, rhyme, even vocabulary and simple words themselves, lyrical songs fail to convey things which, on occasion, music alone can do. Because music speaks its own language, and has the capacity to communicate, to convey more than words. As a writer, and writing about ambient compositions, I am often acutely aware both of my limitations and the contradiction of the process, in essence, or reversing the magic of instrumental musical works to ‘explain’ them using rather blunter tools, but at the same time, I relish the challenge. Moreover, I have learned more of history and geography and beyond from my curiosity-led research than I ever did from my formal education.

So much information is simply not given to us, and so much history – recent history – is lost to us, unless it has a specific local interest, and even then, many people who are natives to the very town or city they life often know woefully little of the heritage which surrounds them. I am guilty of this also, knowing comparatively little of my locale, although it was again my own curiosity which compelled me to learn the history behind the existence of a brick and concrete bomb shelter in my own back yard.

Globally, we’re so wrapped up in the moment, and a nostalgia for the recent past that the history of a generation or more ago may as well be Elizabethan rather than Victorian or Georgian.

And so it is that I had absolutely no knowledge of Carabanchel Prison… which of course meant that I simply had to find out about it. How did I not know about the largest prison in Europe, built between 1940 and 1944, and operative until 1998? Disused and abandoned for a decade, plans to convert the immense brick complex to flats came to nothing (can you imagine actually living there) before it was demolished in 2008. So many questions… about its occupants, about it mere existence, about its collapse… so many questions about a place which housed political prisoners after the Spanish Civil War, and many more besides.

This EP is, in fact from the soundtrack to a forthcoming movie, released next month. As the accompanying notes explain: ‘The film portrays a person painting a line from the prison’s epicenter to across the wall. The abstract textures that drown the images are created by streams of water. The film was shot in 2006, inside the prison of Carabanchel, Madrid. The prison had then been closed and abandoned for over 10 years. It was finally demolished in 2008. The tapes were edited in 2023, 17 years after its making. The film features Ragnar Bey as the painter.’

Painting a line through aa disused prison my seem a rather curious film project, but no doubt context bolsters its content. But the soundtrack…

Across three pieces, each around four to six minutes in duration, War San (Swedish composer Kim Warsen) leads us through the building’s structure, and the titles correspond with the location: ‘Wall’, ‘Cell’, ‘Exit’.

Despite taking the form primarily of an elongated, wavering drone, ‘Wall’ has soft elements, trilling long notes as though from some pipe or another: not a pipe organ or bagpipe, but something long, droning but at the same time bright, airy. Meanwhile, ‘Cell’ feels almost spiritual. There is an oppressive darkness which pervades, and lingers at the corners throughout, but the overall sensation blends contemplation with optimism, before ‘Exit’ breezes, cloudlike towards freedom.

Perhaps, then, this EP’s function of a soundtrack to a post-abandonment creative project means any presupposition about it being a place of confinement is mistaken. Instead of chewing over its darker history, Carabanchel Prison invites us to reflect on the fact that those days are over now, and looks to a brighter future. It traces a line – quite literally – from confinement to exit, and to freedom. If only this was possible for more historical dates and places.

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Watch: ‘Bad Machine’ by Soda Blonde

Posted: 14 August 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Irish indie favorites Soda Blonde are delighted to reveal the music video for their latest single ‘Bad Machine’, the first from the band’s upcoming Dream Big album, due for release on September 8th.

‘Bad Machine’ fuses warm vocals with fuzzy synths, bringing a sense of sonic pleasure with its self-acceptance message. Indie pop and vibrant electronica combine to create a song with vigour and excitement.

When discussing the single’s new music video, guitarist Adam O’Regan writes: “For this video we wanted to explore the idea of ‘malfunction’. In an age of increasing automation, artificial intelligence etc, it’s easy to imagine the many ways things could go awry. But also, we just wanted to break stuff! Our talented & hardworking production designers built the set in 2 days, and we destroyed it in 10 mins of 16mm film.”

Soda Blonde has grown tremendously in the years since their debut, and it shows. Whereas 2021’s Small Talk was an anxiety-fuelled coming-of-age record about navigating our twenties, Dream Big is a mature awakening to the world at large; one that dives deeper and hits harder than its predecessor.

Dream Big is as much a product of self-reflective reckoning as it is one of submission, and both of these experiences are borne out in its songs. Soda Blonde begins Dream Big by asking what they’re willing to sacrifice in order to achieve their dreams, and as the album continues, they wrestle with the sheer weight of that question.

Watch the video for ‘Bad Machine’ here:

Tour dates below:

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Torpor – Abscission

Posted: 11 August 2023 in Albums
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Human Worth – 15th September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It may not be apparent from my review output, bur I am uncomfortably familiar with experiencing torpor. That weight that descends like a cloak and simply loving is as much as you can manage, and in no time, half an hour, an hour has elapsed, and… what? Where does the time go? Where does your life go? For many of us, work eats our lives, as does just doing whatever it takes to keep afloat and on top of things. I will admit to being less familiar with abscission, which I had to look up to find that it’s ‘the shedding of various parts of an organism, such as a plant dropping a leaf, fruit, flower, or seed. In zoology, abscission is the intentional shedding of a body part, such as the shedding of a claw, husk, or the autotomy of a tail to evade a predator,’ according to Wikipedia.

I get the sense from listening to Abscission that this shedding is rather more metaphorical, and that the album is more of a work of catharsis, shedding skins and layers of shit, of unwanted emotions, to feel lighter, to emerge somehow freer, less encumbered by emotional baggage. But this is also something else. More than merely a shedding of dead skin, the experience of listening to Abscission is closer to tearing the skin from your body, the flesh from your bones to escape your corporeal being. Bloody, brutal, unspeakable pain.

On Abscission, Torpor bring the weight, the crushing weight that drags you down at every limb, your spine, your guts, your heart. The first track, ‘Interior Gestures’ is pure leaden punishment. It starts with megalithic raging, guitars like slabs of basalt, the guttural vocals growling and snarling beneath it all, before shifting into a dark yet graceful expanse, and for a moment, you can breathe, and feel a radiant energy. There’s something about slow, heavy music which is, in some instances, uplifting, and Torpor’s gentler passages are truly magnificent, delicate, elegant, even.

‘As Shadows Follow Body’ has a few delicate moments, but for the most part, it’s simply devastating. If the likes of Neurosis and Amenra are perhaps obvious touchstones, where Torpor stand apart is that they make both bands sound like PWL era Kylie. This goes beyond heavy. When everything is churning low and slow, you feel your muscles wilt and body sag. It’s how you perhaps imagine being hit by a truck, or the implosion of a submarine where the intense pressure simply collapses your body. I may be alone or in a very small minority in imagining these things, but sometimes, articulating the experience of particularly intense music requires something of a stretch when it comes to articulation, and most similes and metaphors simply fall a long way short.

I can’t decide – perhaps because my brain is melting – if it’s appropriate or ironic that listening to Torpor should induce torpor. I’m feeling numb, weary, my back and libs ache, likely from spending hours observing bad posture practices during my dayjob before returning to the same position to sift take care of life admin and review submissions. And listening to Abscission only seems to accentuate my aches, because listening to it feels like carrying a heavy load, for miles, in intense heat.

‘Accidei’ locks into a grinding repetition that’s reminiscent of early Swans or Godflesh, and crawls sluggish and sludgishly, before the album’s shortest song, ‘carbon’ ploughs into the depths and tears the ground apart.

‘Island of Abandonment doesn’t so much plunge new depths of heavy, as sound like the real-time death of an underworld god. It does pick up the pace around the midpoint, building to a sustained crescendo that feels like a typhoon. By the end of its enormous eleven-minute assault, I find myself at a loss. I’ve been covering heavy music for a long time, and have spent it developing my descriptive vocabulary. But words fall short, so short, in the face of this. This is another world. Enter it at your peril.

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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO STREAM: Watch ‘Liar’ by Pound Land

Posted: 11 August 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Aural Aggro faves Pound Land have unveiled an eye-bleeding, brain-melting video for the track ‘Liar’. It’s taken from their recent Singles Club compilation, released last month on Cruel Nature, which collects all the digital singles released between April 2022 and April 2023 in a physical form. It also emerges ahead of new album Violence which is out next month.

Check it here (and please watch to the end….)

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The Bagatelles – Vol.16

Posted: 10 August 2023 in Albums
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Tzadik Records – 8th September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Everything seems to trigger some recollection or another. This is perhaps one of the greater pleasures of interacting with art in any form. As a child, I recall an old bagatelle board sitting in the shed. It always struck me as a quaint item – essentially a wooden board with nails stuck in it, some kind of hybrid between billiards and pinball, with a pile of very heavy, marble-sized metal balls.

If this triggered recollection seems random, that’s because it is, something beyond my control. But then despite everything, it comes to seem relevant, as Vol. 16 – which presents, as the press release puts it, ‘Big Band interpretations of John Zorn’s Book of Bagatelles’. It goes on to explain how ‘Zorn commissioned London-based Jewish composer, Eastmond to make an album from a selection of his 300 pieces: Book of Bagatelles. Arranged for 12 Musicians, the ensemble features some of Europe’s most celebrated creative musicians and improvisors alongside young rising stars of the UK scene.’

My musical palette has certainly expanded through the years, and I have JG Thirlwell to thank for this, as well as Gallon Drunk, for opening my eyes to wild and near infinite possibilities in terms of incorporating orchestral and brass elements into rock and guitar-based music. Everyone needs a route in to forms which aren’t readily digestible and certainly aren’t the norm for most.

There is nothing that’s especially digestible about this raging, ragged, woodwind-blasting behemoth, and that’s as intended. Actually, that’s not entirely true. There are moments, near the start, of the ten-minute opener, ‘Bagatelle #256’ which are immensely palatable in a smooth jazzy way, the kind of smooth jazzy way that might have you nodding along, and your friends saying ‘nice’ in a raspy whisper. But while there are some toe-tapping moments, the majority of this release is eye-popping, bursting as it is with some crazy shit that flies off in all directions at once.

There are some monster stomping moments, ‘Bagatelle #78’ is a proper full on dinosaur thump, and contrasts with the meandering drone of the next track, ‘Bagatelle #143’.

It’s all going on here, and sometimes it feels as if it belongs to a cartoon soundtrack, while at others it sounds like all-out sensory overload. There are some rather nice moments, expansive explorations of soundscapes while afford periods of laid-back-reflection. But then, there are as many moments of truly crazy shit, with everything exploding everywhere, highlighting insane range of this album.

If the climax of ‘Bagatelle #143’ would sit comfortably in the soundtrack to a cartoon, the start of ‘Bagatelle #63’sits in the bracket of headache-inducing wild jazz frenzy. And that’s something that this album quite unexpectedly highlights – the way in which there is no way of predicting the highs and lows and insane range that this album presents. When it’s chilled it’s nice; when it’s racing all over the shop, it’s fucking mental.

The Bagatelles – Vol.16 is all over the place, and it’s a truly wild ride. It goes from oompah to film soundtrack in an instant, and it’s impossible to keep up. And that’s its appeal.

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Watch: ‘Hell Is In Hello’ by Industrial Puke

Posted: 9 August 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Swedish crust/death-metal unit Industrial Puke have recently shared a music video for a new track off the band’s debut album “Born Into the Twisting Rope” is, which was released in mid-May on Suicide Records.

Filmed and edited by Mathias Coulouri, the video for this new track titled ‘Hell Is In Hello’. Watch it here:

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In 2017, with fresh memories of previous musical trials and tribulations, Jens Ekelin (Rentokiller) called out for comrades sharing a love for Disrupt to start a new band. Swiftly Linus Jägerskog (Burst) and Marko Partanen (Rentokiller) both roared out a non-hesitant YES! and off Industrial Puke went. Following a long period of writing music and finding members, Mattias Rasmusson (Obstruktion/Blessings/Gust) and Erik Harald (Rentokiller) completed the line-up and recording ensued.  

After the band self-released the debut single and video ‘Mental Taxation’ in June 2022, Gothenburg-based Suicide Records offered to work with Industrial Puke. The partnership began with the release of the debut EP Where Life Crisis Starts in September 2022. 

The album shows Industrial Puke honing in on their collective influences from hometown Gothenburg, the Swedish hardcore and death metal-scenes as well as the furious energy of acts like Disrupt, Kontrovers, Drop Dead and Napalm Death. The idea from the get-go was to focus on short straightforward songs and this album leaves little space for contemplation or rest.

From the galloping opening in ‘Mental Taxation’ to the raging closer ‘Innards on the Outside’, every song has its own belligerent identity. There is d-beat mosh on ‘Reactionary Warfare’, high-velocity crust on ‘Neurosexist Motherfucker’ featuring vocals by Hanna Stjernlöf of Socialstyrelsen, heavy HM-2 groove on ‘General Gluttony’ and relentless death metal in ‘Hell Is In Hello’. The lyrics deal with issues of self-doubt, conservatism as the new black and feeling out of place in crowds and out of touch with the world.

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Heroin – Discography

Posted: 8 August 2023 in Albums
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Southern Lord – 28th July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Southern Lord are at it again, with an archival release of a cult hardcore act whose legacy is larger than its output, following the BL’AST and Neon Christ releases. It’s truly a joy to see the label move beyond its immediate back garden of drone and doom to use the platform its created to showcase the bands without which it likely wouldn’t exist. Originally released for Record Store Day, this second issue comes on vinyl and digital formats, it’s a comprehensive retrospective, which contains ‘all of the out of print 7”s and 12”s, compilation tracks, as well as the session the band recorded at the infamous Inner Ear Studios in Washington, DC, and never heard before unreleased songs.’

Existing for only four years, releasing just eighteen songs in that time, they’d called it a day before most people even heard of them. Like so many short-lived bands, their impact and influence only began to spread posthumously. There’s something genuinely cool about this, with bonus point for not having reformed, staying true to the original hardcore ethos.

As the accompanying notes observe, ‘the fact that the band’s entire output plus unreleased material, numbering thirty songs in all, fits – quite comfortably – on a double LP speaks for itself in many ways. Yes, this is hardcore, and you know the score: fast, furious, faster, more furious.’

Listening to Discography, it’s not pretty, and some of the recordings are pretty ropey. And ropey isn’t just ok, it’s good. It’s raw, it’s real. If it’s clean and polished, it ain’t hardcore.

This is indeed fast and furious, and utterly brutal, and triumph of bass and raging guitar-driven noise, The thing that’s hard to assimilate for me, being the age I am, is that 1993 was thirty years ago. Hardcore exploded in the mid-80s and was still in its heyday early 90s, parallel with the emerging grunge scene. Nirvana’s Bleach espoused the same values. And listening to Discography, what’s remarkable is the sound. It’s no-fi, it’s dirty, it’s gnarly. With the exception of perhaps black metal and crust punk, there aren’t really any other genres that hold such low production values in such high esteem. The gnarlier, the more authentic. And this is gnarly alight. Some of the tracks are barely above four-track portastudio tape quality. But too look at the context: four-track cassette portastudios were still hugely popular until the mi-late 90s. The world has changed beyond recognition in the last thirty years, meaning that recordings from the late 80s and early 90s feel like they’re nor not so much a lifetime, but another world.

Of the thirty tracks here, only three extend beyond three minutes. And yet, within these concise packaged of noise and fury, they somehow find room for some gentle, even borderline experimental passages. Heroin had range, and texture. But of course, first and foremost, they had fury and they had fire, and they had rage and volume. And Discography is essential listening.

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Listen: ‘Distractions’ by Miss FD

Posted: 7 August 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Electro-Industrial music producer Miss FD has just released her latest electrifying single, ‘Distractions’. The track showcases a combination of dark, pulsating instrumentals, and sinister female vocals.

‘Distractions’ envelops listeners in a dystopian realm, where glitchy electronic textures intertwine with gritty industrial elements to create an immersive cyber industrial undercurrent. The turbulent fusion of atmospheric soundscapes, aggressive beats, and haunting melodies sets the stage for lyrics inviting listeners to question and reflect on the constant bombardment of distractions thrown at us, keeping us from truly grasping the rapidly evolving events taking place in the world around us.

‘Distractions’ is out now through Quantum Release Records, available worldwide on all major streaming outlets.

Listen here:

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Miss FD is an underground dark electronic music artist, singer, songwriter, producer, and performer. The project began in 2009 and has since captivated audiences from the dark music world with a unique combination of haunting yet upbeat music, thoughtful lyrics, and mysterious and sensual vocals.

Miss FD released her debut single ‘Together Forever’ in 2009 to positive reception. This was swiftly followed-up in 2010 with her seminal debut album Monsters in the Industry. Her original style focused on electro-industrial, dark synthpop, and darkwave related genres. From 2010 to 2017, Miss FD went on to release a string of singles including ‘Love Magic’, Down in the Dungeon’, ‘Infatuated’, ‘Cry For You (Haunted)’, ‘Unraveling’, and ‘Electropop Sickle’. She also released two more albums, 2011’s Love Never Dies and 2013’s Comfort for the Desolate.

2018 saw Miss FD combine all her musical prowess over the years for her definitive industrial-rock album “Transcendence”. “Transcendence” also included a collaboration with Vulture Culture, whom she would further collaborate with on the singles ‘Ashes Of Stars’, ‘Spitfire’, and ‘Faster Than Light’.

Following her 2020 singles ‘Keep Going’ and ‘Pandemic 2020’, Miss FD released her three-song EP “Adore”, and the single ‘Your Core’, which were heavily infused with futuristic and cyberpunk elements. 2022 saw Miss FD exploring Göbekli Tepe in her three-song dark pop EP, “As Above, So Below”, followed by her cyberpunk single ‘Menticide’. 2023 brings the release of Miss FD’s latest cyber-industrial single ‘Distractions’.

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