Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

Superføkk – Superføkk!

Posted: 2 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Fysisk – 4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The line ‘here we are now, entertain us’ from Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is on which has come to resonate with me more powerfully in recent years than it ever did at the time. It’s a sad fact that – and I like to think of it as being through no fault of my own – my attention span isn’t what it was, and I’m no longer quite as patient as I was. I can still listen to a twenty minute instrumental without any issue, but have to be in the frame of mind to do so. But then, as far back as 2018, Forbes reported that 24.14% of songs were skipped within the first five seconds by users of Spotify, some 29% skip in the first ten, and that increases to a 35.05% chance of a skip within the first 30 seconds. I very much doubt that we’ve grown more patient in the last eight years. An article published earlier this year at Mixreflect detailed the reasons listeners skip, and gave practical solutions like ‘How long should a song intro be on Spotify?’ with advice including ‘The practical target is 8 to 12 seconds for pop, hip-hop, and R&B; up to 20 seconds for rock and indie if something is actively developing throughout.’

It’s twenty-six seconds before the vocals start on the single edit of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. The intro to one of my favourite singles of all time, ‘Alice’ by The Sisters of Mercy occupies the first minute of its three and a half minute duration. And how long is the fade-in on ‘India’, the opening track on the eponymous debut album by The Psychedelic Furs? All very different songs, but each a classic in its own right. Are we really in a place where most people would simply skip before things got going? Instant gratification is one thing, but there is so much to be said for a good build-up.

Thankfully, there are musical fields where a slow-build and an unravelling over time is appreciated, and Superføkk – pitched as ‘a bursting new raptus project that shoots off in inexplicable directions’ which is ‘neither background listening nor pop music’ they’re described as having ‘a foot in many camps’ and ‘aim[ing] to break down established genre conventions and create a sound that is distinctly their own…. drawing inspiration from jazz/noiserock, electronica, and no-wave’. And their debit album contains just three tracks, the shortest of which is six minutes long (there is a four-minute radio edit, but I doubt that it’ll get much airplay on the likes of Radio 1 or Kiss FM, or that it’s going to convince the Spotify casuals to stick around, not that the algorithm is likely to insert it amidst a lengthy cycle of Taylor Swift and Charlie XCX or whatever.

And so it is that ‘Grønn’ provides our introduction to Superføkk, and it may be brief (in comparative terms’, but it packs plenty in. It’s jazz in that cacophonic sense, horns blaring and doing so simultaneously in all directions – not smooth or noodly, but an instant riot – before an extended atmospheric post-rock passage in the middle before everything goes off at once, giving us an expansive post-rock surge topped with the most extravagant sax break. The twelve-minute ‘River Igjennom’ is remarkably light and easy going for the most part, but around three minutes in, the levels of tension explode with frenetic drumming and strains of the most demented fretwork colliding with crazed sax chaos, and it culminates on some kind of huge prog-like grand finale which on the one hand seems entirely incongruous, but on the other, perfectly fitting. I can’t say I’m entirely into it. And then there’s ‘Piggeple’, another twelve minute multi-segmented opus.

Around the mid-point, it drops down to a spare bass, squalling synth, and processed-sounding vocals, and it’s only after this that things really seem to kick off, with a locked-in drum beat, throbbing, insistent bass, and some crunky guitar dischord. Finally, the noise-rock element is freed! And they do go all-out in the final minutes.

When they write that ‘Superføkk is neither background listening nor pop music’, but that it’s ‘immediate and danceable, but also unhinged, hard-boiled, improvised, and idiosyncratic’, they’re mostly accurate. There are some deep bass-driven grooves buried in the mix here, but the chances of me actually dancing it any of it are non-existent.

Recent weeks and months have delivered some truly outstanding – not to mention angry, bleak, nihilistic, and highly political – noise rock releases, perhaps most notably from Chat Pile, Kings Sans, and Remote Viewing, and each has hit hard and resonated in a deep and powerful way. Superføkk (which continually reminds me of Superbock, which is great stuff) lands differently. Not only is it largely instrumental, its noise-rock elements are blended – and at times buried low – amidst an array of experimentalism, and an emphasis on the warped jazz leanings of the composition. But, being as hectic as it is, it’s no less tense that the aforementioned noise-rock works. In fact, there are moments which are little short of dizzying, and you wonder if your brain might burst.

AA

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Chat Pile – Who Loves The Sun

Posted: 31 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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The Flenser – 4th September 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Chat Pile have only been around for seven years, but in that time they’ve cemented themselves as among the leading exponents of contemporary noise rock. Timing, when even accidental, counts for so much, though. Their debut EP landed in the spring of 2019, with the follow-up coming towards the end of the year. They were hardly a hit on their local scene, and then there was the pandemic, which did nothing for any band looking to build a fanbase through live shows. They managed to get signed, but it seems that the key element in their favour was the fact that since the pandemic, everything has been utterly fucked. Fucked beyond words, fucked beyond comprehension. And this is why the world has been crying out for horrible, sludgy noise to give a voice or a home to those myriad confused emotions, for a band that speaks both to and for them.

Who Loves The Sun is their third album, and it’s worth stepping back from my review to quote from the bio which accompanies the album, since it provides valuable context and traces the band’s evolution: ‘Whereas their debut album God’s Country depicted a particularly American flavor of dread, and the follow up Cool World showed a cruel planet defined by global systemic violence, Who Loves The Sun now peels back the skin on how a collective indifference for a decaying world defines this new century. Touring off the back of their previous albums in part lent itself a confidence in the universality of their music. Stin comments, “I’ve always felt that Chat Pile is such an American concept thematically, but it seems like that’s not particularly true – people all over the world are resonating with what we have to say.” Spanning imagery of coastlines devouring cities as a result of inaction on climate change, the dread of working dead-end jobs, and the species’ collective submission to data-driven inauthenticity, Who Loves The Sun depicts the common experience of existing in a doom loop which feeds the malaise that permeates all aspects of our lives.’

And yes: these are global issues they tackle here. America might be a bit more fucked than some other places, but ultimately, we’re all fucked (in part because of America, although that’s no fault of these guys).

It’s a murky, rolling drum, bouncing around in a sea of reverb which launches the album, ‘Creature’ lurching in mid-pace with a filthy bass and some sinewy guitar. The atmosphere is tense, the vibe mid-90s gnarly. I’m straight back to Touch ‘n’ Go and underground scuzz, the grainy gritty heft of Tad, Oil Seed Rape, Zoopsia, It’s heavy, alright, but it’s more than that: it’s sweaty, greasy, and it’s intense. The walls move closer, the air becomes denser, and it’s harder to breathe.

Who Loves The Sun isn’t a hooks and choruses album. It’s a thick, treacle-like trudge through a succession of gut-churning riffs. As such, it’s very much the soundtrack to the trawling through doom loops. On the face of things, they don’t sound like a band with massive international appeal, but the same was true of Nirvana and Slipknot. It’s more Bleach than Nervermind, though. The world at large massively underestimates the need to vent complex emotions through difficult, heavy music, and if anything, the last few years have elicited the need for music that’s darker and heavier than ever. It feels like we’re living in the end of times, and we need music that reflects it.

‘Break my face and call me your friend,’ Raygun Busch sings in a cracked, tired voice during a quiet moment on ‘Deep Blue’. Most of the vocals are either screams or otherwise buried amidst the wall of jagged riffery. ‘Same Rules’ starts quiet and dungy, and explodes into a nihilistic roar. Neither are friendly, but both articulate the existence within dark spaces, both internal and external.

AA

Landing mid-album, ‘Shrine’ is a classic quiet / loud composition , and it captures the grunge feel but with additional metal fury, and a harsh hybridization that blends metal with grunge filth. The same could be said of most of Who Loves The Sun. It’s dark, it’s jarring, and is heavy. It’s bleak and does nothing to entice you out to a brighter space. ‘Influence’ simply becomes more claustrophobic over its four-and-a-half-minute duration as it stomps its concentric circles of anger and anguish. ‘Family Funeral’ strays towards Shellac territory as it builds a bludgeoning wall of noise ahead of closer ‘October all the Time’. This is not an accessible or easy album. But it’s the album we need to express all of the angst that’s pouring in all directions right now. It’s also the answer to how we will get through it all. More big riffs. And more again.

AA

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Nonturn – Repeating Town

Posted: 30 August 2026 in Reviews, Albums
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Audiobulb – 22nd August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Every town, every city has its own unique vibe. Some we acclimatise to, others, we find uncomfortable. Others still, scary. Myself, I am not a fan of big cities, but have always felt comfortable in Leeds, but always feel on edge in Manchester. I can’t explain this. apart from the fact it’s rained almost every time I’ve been in Manchester, I’ve never had a bad experience there. In fact, I’ve had many positive experiences there, but still just feel something… it doesn’t sit with me, and I can’t settle. My experience of ‘international’ cities is limited: the only time I visited New York was when I was three, and beyond that, I’ve only been to London and Paris. I’m not sure Nicosia counts, being international in a different sense, and I expect that that’s perhaps another discussion altogether – although, for what it’s worth, while my fellow conference delegates proffered their passports to venture through the military checkpoints to cross the border into the Turkish territory to enjoy a meal, I remained in the pub in the Greek side of the Old Town with a book while I awaited their return. I have no regrets about this seven years on. But I digress. Every city has a feel, and not just a vibe, but a vibration. And big cities are in essence the same as smaller cities when you’re there, since they’re divided into various communities, segments, quarters, districts, whatever.

Nonturn’s Repeating Town is a work which is an assemblage of sound which captures, one way or another, the essence of Koenji, Tokyo. This is quite specific, and only highlights my observation that large cities are generally comprised of zones and areas within, and this is true of Koenji, which – and I make no apologies for turning to Wikipedia for into here –‘was largely unaffected by the 1980s building boom and therefore many of the houses and shops in the area are small and reflect the character of ‘pre-boom’ Japan. Due to its aging retail district and location on a major commuter route, the station area has become a center for small restaurants and ‘Live Houses’ which offer live music.’ It sounds pretty cool on paper.

Precisely how representative Nonturn’s Repeating Town is, I can’t really say. However, as Nozom Yoneda, aka Nonturn explains, ‘Every sound on the album was captured in and around Koenji, Tokyo: traffic signals, footsteps, air conditioners, construction, passing cars and fragments of conversation. These recordings are traces of real places, but they are not presented as documentary evidence or atmosphere. They are cut, repeated, layered and placed on a 96 BPM grid as sampling material.’

He goes on to add, ‘The title points to the method. The everyday city is already full of repetitions: signals return, footsteps pass, machines hum, routes repeat, voices appear and disappear. Nonturn listens to those repetitions not as background, but as a musical condition. Once removed from their original setting, the sounds stop describing where they came from and begin to act as rhythm, texture, accent, resonance and silence.’

Repeating Town contains seven pieces, each around five or six minutes long and each of which pulls together a host of drones and clanking percussion, interwoven with weird electronica. At times is ripples and weaves, at others, it jogs, picking up pace and evolving technoindustrial beats as it does so. Field recordings aren’t particularly apparent at in this hybrid of mixes, and as tone and texture from other sources build, there’s a creeping discomfort which builds. It’s an album which is built on glitches and trilling synth loops, whirring buzzes and the occasional explosive blast which disrupts an otherwise smooth surface. But there are whirring dentist drills and all sorts, all seemingly looped together and otherwise spun into a strange, soporific blend.

AA

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Ashley Reaks – Post-Hope World

Posted: 29 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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17th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

We’ve spent the last few decades with the present time being described as ‘post-something. Postmodernism made sense in terms of the lineage of artistic phases, coming, as it did, after modernism. But things did get murky , in that postmodernism wasn’t only about art, but culture, society, and the way technology has infiltrated all aspects of these. The arrival of the post-truth age must surely mark one of the most unedifying and shameful in centuries. I qualify this with the observation that we have spent our entire evolution seeking knowledge, enlightenment, progress. And here we are, in the twentieth century, and instead of advancing these things, we have an ultra-rich elite whose sole interest is self-interest, and with a love of money over all else, including knowledge and intellect – in fact, they despise knowledge and intellect, to the extent that they will chop the legs off every advancement we’ve made in the last two hundred years and rewrite history for nothing more than their own fiscal gain. This includes the denial of genocides and climate change. And what’s worse, people fall for this entirely false narrative and endlessly regurgitate the lies, on social media, and in conversation with families and friends.

So where does this all actually bring us – when it’s impossible to believe in anything, or even anyone? Well, Ashley Reaks pretty much captures that all-pervading sense of gloom and despondency with the title of his latest – his twentieth – solo album, Post-Hope World. Because yes, the fact of the mater is that we’re fucked. The question now is, what’s going to finish us first? World war? Climate change? AI going rogue and pushing the button or something? The world is on fire and missiles are poised in all directions, and it’s starting to feel like a race of the worst kind.

But for the everyday person, 2026 carries echoes of 1976 and the early 80s. Economic depravity, social unrest were the conditions which inspired the punk revolution and the rapid emergence of post-punk shortly after. And so it is that with Post-Hope World, Reaks gives us ‘nine songs about outsiders, damaged childhoods, authoritarian fathers, King Babies, conspiracy nuts, religious zealots, sneaky cunts, the end of one world and the start of another’, which are ‘musically rooted in late-70s /early-80s punk — Ruts, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Killing Joke, Dead Kennedys and Nirvana (not that Nirvana were 70s or 80s punk, but were borne of that same frustration at the sameness of cardboard culture in the late 80s and early 90s).

And so it is that Reaks channels that spirit of rebellion and disaffection through the album’s twelve tracks – rather than a spirit of resignation. Lead single ‘In With the Out Crowd’ kicks things off in energetic style, fizzing with energy, its intricately woven blanket of fretwork coupled with layered vocal melodies, before things lunge deeper and darker with the bass-driven title track – although the chorus again provides a powerful injection of melody that’s not a million miles away from The Stranglers, but equally could be seen as owing some small debt to The Adverts.

AA

It’s inevitable that any Reaks release will venture into dub and / or reggae at some point, and ‘I Wanna Be a Stain on Society’ leans unashamedly into the aforementioned Ruts influence. And that’s to the good: if you’re going to take inspiration from forebears, make it the good ones. The Ruts belonged to the first wave of punk, the class of ’77, but it was clear from the outset that they stood apart from their peers. They remain criminally underrated, but it’s clear why they’re henry Rollins’ favourite band, and anyone familiar with Reaks’ work will have made the connection between their punk / dub crossover and his unique genre hybrid style.

But nothing Reaks does is ever just a gathering together of ideas lifted from his various influences. These are always a conduit to him delivering his own ideas – both lyrical and musical – and in this context, he has long offered a unique voice. Yes, ‘King Baby’ may be an unexpectedly straightforward poppy punk tune, but its three-chord thrashalong and sing-song vocals provide the perfect platform, for his powerhouse takedown of the orange clown currently occupying the Whitehouse.

AA

In the spirit of punk, Post-Hope World pulls no punches, but does bring some heavy-slugging riffs, with some hefty drumming behind them, ad never more so than on ‘Daddy Was’. It’s The Damned in the 80s that come to mind listening to ‘War On the Home Front’, another high-octane kicker, and the same is also true of the infectiously poppy final song, ‘Sneaky Cunt’. If it was called anything else, and had a different refrain, it would be all over the radio, or would have been or should have been, if radio networks still existed. But true art refuses to censor or self-censor, and that’s as it should be.

Post-Hope World feels like one of Reaks’ more accessible albums, but in terms of messaging, it’s one of his most vital.

AA

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Grey Shores – Dark Waters of Night

Posted: 26 August 2026 in Reviews, Albums
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4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

When selling themselves – or however else you may describe what bands or their PR do with their biographies and the blurbs which accompany releases – acts tend to go either one way or another. The first is to focus on context and heritage, and locate the music within a lineage amidst a list of touchstones. The second is to cast all of that aside, and accentuate the innovation, the difference, and the departure from all of that. Both approaches come with risks, albeit quite different ones. The former suggests that the band is derivative, and builds a certain expectation before the listener has heard a note. Not that it was Interpol’s fault that every critic under the sun sold them as Joy Division clones, which meant that I was sorely disappointed the first time I heard Antics. It sounded like so much indie, and I felt hugely let down. I came around pretty swiftly, but only once I’d come to terms with the fact they were, in reality, fuck all like Joy Division. Meanwhile, the latter sets the expectation that you’re about to hear something that’s nothing like anything you’ve heard before, and as a jaded critic of many years, I find myself sitting at my desk, adopting a mindset which is visually represented by arms folded, torso tilted back away, face wearing a light sneer that says ‘come on then, let’s have it,’ or perhaps even ‘here we are now, entertain us’. More often than not, these artists, too, fall short, as I find myself wondering if they live in a cultural vacuum, and how they could have possibly not heard X, Y. or Z, whom they sound so very like.

It’s in this latter category that Stockholm’s Gey Shores fall, when they forewarn that ‘a new voice is about to emerge from the depths of the Swedish underground. Grey Shores, the atmospheric black metal duo formed by Martin Andersson and Vilhelm Andersson, are preparing to release their debut album, Dark Waters of Night, a work that merges the emotional depth of post-rock with the cold intensity of black metal… Musically, Grey Shores inhabit a space where black metal, post-rock, and melancholic metal converge. Vilhelm Andersson’s background in atmospheric and post-rock music brings layers of texture, melody, and emotional nuance, while Martin Andersson contributes the harsher elements that form the album’s backbone.’

Don’t get me wrong: I’m genuinely thrilled by the prospect, but am equally prepared to be disappointed within the first three songs. Because not only am I jaded, I’m being sucked into the world of the ever-diminishing attention span. But hey, I can usually manage three songs rather than three seconds before making my mind up and hitting skip (boycotting Spotify likely helps with that, as does being old enough to remember buying an album and playing it several times even if you hated it at first and finding that over time, you quite liked it after all).

Dark Waters of Night contains just seven songs, and while the majority are around the five minute mark, there are a couple which are substantially under three.

Funnily enough, the opening bars of ‘Nothingness by My Side’ evoke the rippling chimes of ‘Untitled’, the first track on Interpol’s Antics, before drifting into a spacious, atmospheric soundscape – before, a mere fifty seconds in – rasping black metal vocals ride in on a wave of overdriven power chords. The song certainly exploits the dynamics of post-rock, with melodic, dreamy vocals washing across delicately picked clean guitar, propelled by jittery, almost jazzy drumming in the verses, and there are hints of Oceansize and Explosions in the Sky here, but instead of surging crescendos, we get screaming black metal fury. I’m sure if I spent long enough searching, I could find something akin to this, but right here, right now, to my ears, this does offer something different and sees the band deliver on their promise, and it’s exciting.

Amidst the raging metal tempest of ‘The Withering Tree’ arrives a moment of calm which is almost folk in flavour alongside the chiming post-rock atmospherics, while ‘In The Pale Light’ offers a sound that’s quintessentially post-metal, and brings some magnificent lead hooks. The demonic howls provide quite the contrast, and then the mid-section makes an unexpected switch toward the expansive, and brings with it clean, melodic vocals. It borders on the schizophrenic, but it works, as they stitch the transitions practically seamlessly, sometimes overlapping.

‘Herald the Dark’ hints towards the territory of lighter-waving anthem, at least to begin with. But what starts out as pretty tame, swiftly gets gnarly, while preserving the anthemic qualities. Nevertheless, while it’s perhaps the album’s most ambitious track – at least commercially – it’s also the weakest musically.

On ‘Sights of Woe’ they step up the cinematic aspects with the introduction of choral backing – and some classically overblown fretwork. At this point, it’s clear that Grey Shores really are committed to pushing black metal to new places, and the gentle instrumental fade of ‘January Wolves’ is simply a perfect post-rock wind-down. Dark Waters of Night is not only a great album – detailed, textured, varied, dynamic, incendiary – but one which delivers on its promise.

The quality cover art warrants a bonus thumbs-up, too.

AA

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Nephila – HULDRA

Posted: 24 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Majestic Mountain Records – 28th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

They’ve been going for almost a decade now, although they’ve not been the most prolific of acts during that time. as their bio reminds, ‘Following the release of their first single in 2018, Nephila quickly established themselves as one of Sweden’s most intriguing new rock acts. Their acclaimed debut album embraced the warmth and swagger of classic 70s rock while hinting at something darker beneath the surface, earning a nomination for Rock/Metal Album of the Year at Sweden’s prestigious P3 Guld Awards in 2022’.

The promise of a band re-emerging, transformed is intriguing. And that may be so, but for all its bold energy, powerful hooks, chunky riffs and eye-popping solos, HULDRA still feels like an album so deeply rooted in the past as to be, while not a tribute, an homage to the past.

‘The Hidden Folk’ is a prime example of overblown 70s rock production. I suppose it’s in some ways representative of the way things split in the late 60s and into the 70s: you had the rock titans, dominated by Led Zeppelin, who added a harder edge to blues-based rock and took it in more extravagant directions, and, formed in the same year (1968), Black Sabbath essentially invented heavy metal, and at the same time created the template for stoner, sludge, and doom rock. Both bands have proven to be equally influential, and the hard rock / hair rock explosion of the 80s simply couldn’t have happened without Led Zeppelin. But in recent years, the rock-god blues swagger of Zep has sounded pretty hackneyed and cliché, while the spirit of Sabbath has felt more culturally relevant. With its fast-paced folk-inspired multi-layered guitar solo, multi-layered vocal, and organ work, all augmented by a huge production, ‘The Hidden Folk’ just feels like too much. And it’s largely representative of the album as a whole. ‘Ash Their Bones’ brings some jazzy grooves to the Doors-meets-Zep prog-hued party, and I daresay there are plenty who would really dig the energy, especially live, and especially at a festival after a few bevvies. But there’s no quantity of beer or cider that could convince me when it comes to this, which at times comes on like a rock reimagining of ABBA.

AA

I’m not knocking the musicianship. In fact, it’s often the case that the most technically competent musicians who make the worst music when it comes to prioritising musicianship over composition, and this very much feels like the reason HULDRA fails. The flamboyant, expansive musicianship and overflowing, lavish layering of the production takes maximalism to the max – and without the songs, it’s just too much with too little.

AA

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King Sans – Sell the Cow

Posted: 23 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Dipterid Records – 21st August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Chicago noise rock duo King Sans, consisting of Jake Steven James (guitars, synths, vocals) and Izabella Rose (drums, vocals) describe themselves as ‘cryptids of noisepunk’. Make of that what you will, but they’ve gone all out on the ‘cow’ theme of the title on the cover of their debut album and accompanying promotional shots.

This very much feels like the culmination of their work to date: since 2024, they’ve released half a dozen singles, four of which have made it onto the album. As such, Sell the Cow stands as a document of their evolution, from the raw and raucous blues-rock-via-Melvins blast of debut single ‘Liar!’ – all one minute and twenty-seven of it (remixed / remastered for the album)– to new and previously unreleased songs like ‘Sold.’, which opens with a piano part lifted from Mozart before crawling into sludgy morass of dark ambient experimentalism. It so happens that ‘Sold.’ bookends the album neatly, as the opener, ‘Two Figures’ is a brooding, atmospheric piece with droning fear-chord synths, jumpy incidentals, and a suspenseful spoken-word vocal that gives way to thumping tribal drums and dingy bass. These three songs alone are demonstrative of their huge ambition and stylistic range and illustrative of their operating far beyond the parameters of both noise and punk.

They pack in some high-octane bangers along the way, too: previous single ‘Jumpstart’ isn’t just appropriately titled, but appropriately placed in the track sequencing, kicking things into overdrive immediately after the more experimental intro. It’s a taut and explosive two-and-a-quarter guitar-driven minutes of stomping glam punk with a dash of the kind of mania that defined the first Pulled Apart by Horses album.

‘Let me Lie’ is the most excitable-sounding example of stoner sludge I think I’ve ever heard. It’s like Melvins on speed, and seems to manage a nod to Lene Lovich’s ‘Lucky Number’ somewhere in the melee. Herein lies much of the thrill of Sell the Cow. There’s a lot going on, so many different references and ideas drawn from across a vast musical swathe, that each listen reveals something different, something new.

‘Dienen’ is another which melts together thick, scuzzed out low-end overdrive with a kind of glam-influenced stomp and doomy power chords. That they manage to render this preposterous combination without sounding like the Spinal Tap of sludge is an achievement, but the fact it’s followed by ‘Lasting Hold’, which takes things a step further is almost beyond comprehension. The verses are soft, with a delicate, gentle vocal and almost folky, with an atmospheric, spiritual-sounding feel, while the choruses erupt into screaming filthy metal – and they take this idea further on the operatic art-rock infused thrash of ‘S.Y.D.’ Yes, it’s almost impossible to keep up with everything that they’ve got going on, and I keep finding myself thinking ‘this shouldn’t work’. But it does. And it works well.

There’s birdsong and a pastoral feel to the lulling ‘the floodplain’, while puntastic single ‘No Diddley’ is a squalling blast of guitars that’s equal parts blues and rock ‘n’ roll and noise rock, with a dash of Suicide.

Sell the Cow is the album you didn’t know you needed, but believe me, you sure do.

AA

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Remote Viewing – State Violence

Posted: 22 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Human Worth – 18th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Remote Viewing’s second album, Modern Addictions (2023) was a hypercharged, uncompromising beast of an album. This came as no real surprise, given that, as their bio reminds us, ‘Remote Viewing are formed from the ashes of Palehorse, consisting of current members of Million Dead, Sly & The Family Drone, and Hands Up Who Wants To Die’. Sure, when most people hear the word ‘supergroup’ they think of Hollywood Vampires, or Audioslave, or, I dunno, The Travelling Wilburys. They’re ‘super’ by virtue of big names coming together, but their output has a tendency to be underwhelming, because there tend to be super egos cancelling one another out and stifling any spark. But a supergroup at this level – a coming together of musicians of quite different stripes, but all with something different to contribute – in my experience, brings a different kind of energy. Perhaps it comes from the sense that they need to prove themselves, but equally, from the thrill of collaboration. This is the thing with collaboration: sometimes it gels, others it doesn’t. Modern Addictions proved that Remote Viewing gelled, coalescing into a colossal guitar-driven powerhouse.

Imagine my frustration at only being able to be in one place at a time when I pitched up at The Brudenell to see Mogwai to discover Remote Viewing were supporting Humanfly in the other room.

State Violence is pitched as ‘Their most direct statement yet… an unapologetic reflection on the increasing levels of injustice, social division, extreme wealth and human atrocities we are seeing the world over’.

Direct statements – certainly credible ones – have been in short supply in recent years from the political classes, and worse still, criticism of their actions – and inactions – have been subject to increasingly harsh penalties. While one genocide has been televised in real-time around the globe, it’s been all too easy for people to fail to even appreciate the state of things in Sudan, and to shrug off the war in and around Iran as being a distant thing. Here in the UK in particular, there’s a sense of collective smugness that we’re ok because we’re not there, and we don’t have to contend with ICE either, and it’s from that state of bubble that we conveniently overlook that to criticise the state of Israel using the wrong terminology could see you lose your job or even imprisoned. A portion of the populace has been distracted with finger-pointing at immigrants as the reason their lives are shit. Meanwhile, peaceful protest in support of a direct action group has been outlawed.

This is the point at which State Violence arrives, and hits the spot, and does so by driving straight to the heart of a very British way of living.

‘#makemoneymakelovemakemoney’ kicks off – literally – in a rabid squall of dingy guitar accompanied by churning bass and a raving vocal performance, a raw-throated scream. A hybrid of sludge, black-hued metal, and noise rock, there are some blankly nihilist passages which call to mind Kowloon Walled City – but when they slam the pedals on, the overdrive is a speaker-ripping blast. Opening an album with a six-minute mid-pace trudge that makes the skin crawl is inspired: it’s a move that will grab those who are on the market for a challenge, and send the rest running after a minute or so – if that.

‘Retrain as a Swan’, the album’s lead single is one of the least single-like singles you’ll hear all year. It’s great, but it’s bereft of hooks or an obvious road in, and is, instead, a gut-churning sonic assault. The title, incidentally, was the lead line on a poster / flyer / meme which proffered a parodic take on training and recruitment advertisements, and highlights just how typically British State Violence is in its outlook and humour. Yes, humour. Remote Viewing remind that rage doesn’t have to be without humour, and that if anything – and again, this is a uniquely British trait – the more abstract or self-deprecating, or sarcastic, the humour, the better.

The sludgy squall of ‘Disrespect the Arts’ appears to be a raging attack on the way that not only funding for the arts has been stripped (something also in a state of advancement in the US) and the teaching of art and music cut from school syllabi and courses in the arts – including those in literature – dropped from university programmes, while creative jobs are being canned in favour of fucking AI, which is killing the planet but benefits billionaires. Go figure. ‘HUMAN RIGHTS’ is just straight-up, slowed-down and sludgy, trudging, pounding, relentless, Godflesh heavy. It’s like the heels of heavy boots pounding on your chest, knocking the air out repeatedly until you have no breath, and feel blacked out and lifeless.

The nine-minute ‘Accidental Holiday’ marks quite a contrast, exploring spacious, post-rock territory for the first three minutes, before the riff powers in, and then… POW! All the rage explodes here. If it’s not one of the sludgiest, most brutal, slugging doom riff blasts you’ve heard this year, you haven’t actually heard it. But at the same time, it alludes to post-metal and neoprog, and the guitar textures and the spaces are remarkably well calculated: it’s so clearly apparent that there’s a rare musical intuition between these performers that however dark and gnarly State Violence gets, it’s still exhilarating.

But it’s the two-and-a-half-minute closer ‘Birds of the Feather is on in 7 minutes’ which really encapsulates what State Violence is all about, in that is encapsulates the absurd disconnect between the backdrop to life, and actual life as lived in Britain. It manifests as a delicate, slightly warping, droning sliver of post-rock ambience, and its difference from the rest of the album is significant. That seven minutes is time to make a cuppa and fetch the digestives before settling down to some crap TV. “I don’t watch the news, me, it’s too depressing,” people say. I say, “know your enemy”. But who needs news channels to pump state-sponsored propaganda when they get fed rage bait shit while scrolling social media and watching Love Island? State Violence is more about them than for them, but for those who need a visceral soundtrack that screams back from the void, Remote Viewing have delivered it.

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Circuit3 – Metanoia: Music From Therapy

Posted: 19 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Mortality Tables – 14th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Ordinarily, I tend to pave the way to grappling with a release with some form of discursive preamble, but here, I feel it would detract from the work itself. Instead, I present the context for Metanoia: Music From Therapy directly from the accompanying notes, and without comment:

The first spark for Metanoia came from a simple plan to meet for a drink after a gig. Peter Fitzpatrick (Circuit3) and Mat Smith from the Mortality Tables imprint ended up talking about trauma, therapy, and the parts of ourselves we usually keep out of sight. That conversation led to a small, recorded experiment. From there the music began to take form, guided by fragments pulled from their notebooks.

Metanoia grew out of therapy and the slow process of letting difficult truths surface. Instead of singing those words, Fitzpatrick shaped them through analogue machines. The title refers to the deep shift that can follow self-reflection: a break, a reset, a way of living with more honesty.

A defining moment in the project was the opportunity to work with Vince Clarke, a long‑standing influence on Fitzpatrick’s music. They created an eleven-minute piece titled ‘The Hope’, named after the bar near Farringdon, London where that first conversation between Fitzpatrick and Smith happened. The collaboration feels like a dialogue across time: the artist Fitzpatrick once was, the one he is now, and the one emerging through this process.

Metanoia is not a linear or predictable account of trauma, breakdown, and recovery. Instead, it moves through a series of moments and memories that surfaced during therapy.

Vince Clarke crops up with remarkable frequency around Mortality Tables artists and releases, and his presence proves to be a positive one. There’s nothing here, or on other releases, which directly hints at Clarke’s celebrated electropop career

‘Cracked Eyes’ offers minimal, dulcimer-like tones, the notes fuzzy around the edges, as the backdrop to a skipping, fractured vocal loop which resembles to some extent one of William Burroughs’ tape experiments, the phrase, or phrases – muttered, mumbled – reverberates in fragments, overlapping, cutting in and out while played at different speeds, to quite unsettling effect.

A number of the pieces – in particular ‘Mood’, and ‘Where Are We Going?’ are comparatively brief interludes, and some of the instrumentals, such as ‘Imperfect’ are very much in the vein of Tangerine Dream or Mike Oldfield, built around sift, rippling notes and textured drones – flowing sounds of tranquillity, which don’t immediately evoke trauma or anguish. But of course, trauma and anguish aren’t necessarily endless stricken screaming, and therapy – the key to unlocking this album – can, for many, bring moments of peace and clarity amidst the painful psychological excavations.

‘Burnout’, on the other hand, it tense, the sound of a palpating heartbeat and panting breaths, albeit against an overtly uplifting electronic backdrop. This is something I personally find more relatable in some sense, and I suppose this is the leading point to observe when it comes to Metanoia: clearly, it comes from a deeply personal space, and some listeners will relate to some aspects more than others based on their own experiences. I know many people who have been through therapy, for a wide array of reasons, and with mixed experiences and outcomes. The trilling 70s synth sounds which course through the six-and-a-half minute ‘Shielding from the past’ seem to make sense, with their soft ambient cushioning, and despite their more sci-fi leanings that seem to tip a hat to Dr Who. Titles like ‘What If Everything Goes Right?’ take the listener through the difficult journey of self-doubt and catastrophising, before finally arriving at the eleven-minute finale, ‘The Hope’. And while there are undercurrents of doubt as articulated through darker shades, particularly at the start of the track, it does, ultimately, bloom into light.

Metanoia may be non-linear – and I understand this is often true of the journey through therapy, which can be riven with setbacks and periods of stasis – but it very much concludes with a piece which feels like the sun breaking on a new dawn, the curtains opening on a new chapter.

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Perverts In White Shirts – CULTurally appropriated songs and revisited memories

Posted: 18 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Misanthropic Agenda – 4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

As titles go, this is one of those which is closer to an explanatory essay than a mere title. My last encounter with Perverts In White Shirts was four years ago, on the release of Meaning What Exactly? The tracks were lengthy, but the album was short¸ at least competitively. In contrast, CULTurally appropriated songs and revisited memories is an absolute monster: making a departure from the four longform pieces on Meaning What Exactly? presents twenty-eight individual pieces which find Nathalie Dreier and Dave Phillips plunge into some particularly heavy territory, and not without personal weight, either. I shall quote from the accompanying notes:

Rooted in Nathalie’s isolated upbringing in the controversial Children of God cult, the album draws on fragments of this group’s music, alongside songs and texts from other fanatic movements and gurus. Working with this source material, the anarchic, tongue-in-cheek

Perverts in White Shirts transmogrify, decontextualize, and reimagine melodies and words previously steeped in ideology, isolation, and indoctrination.

Before I start, I would like you to consider the time investment that reviewing an album that’s some two hours long demands, particularly when the final track runs for nearly half an hour. And from the outset, it’s a challenging work. ‘Truth’ warps and twists, and while ‘Come to Mommmy’ is, on the surface, a work of slow, psychedelic folk, it soon becomes apparent that this is the sound of dysfunction, and as we’re carried on through the album, the warped weirdness of the CULTurally appropriated songs and revisited memories reveals itself.

They describe the album as ‘a two-hour cringe-pop journey of disarming, catchy tunes’.

It’s not. It is two hours long, but it’s more a hybrid of dark ambience, samplism, and William Burroughs-style audio cut-ups. And it’s a headfuck. No, it’s more than that. In places, it’s not just disorientating, but nausea-inducing. It sounds, and feels, deeply wrong, and no more so than when it’s at its poppiest, its mellowest, its most accessible. Something at the heart of this album is deeply disturbing, in the horror movie sense.

Shouting and chanting and heavy reverb collide with ominous, tingling electronica, and dolorous low-end bass drones which border on dungeon synth. ‘Love is the Only Weapon’ is exemplary, and deeply uncomfortable. ‘dedication to the tackling of the beast’ pitches a processed, almost robotic vocal, the words abrim with religious connotations, against a low rumbling electronic bass.

‘Never Forever’ is stark and sparse, almost dubby, a work of minimal dance even, but there are horror movie hints to the vocals which reverberate dissonantly, hauntingly, around the rattling beats and slow, exploratory bass, which resonates… and then out of nowhere, the half-minute long ‘The Answer’ explodes in an industrial blast which is nothing short of explosive. In contrast, ‘A Change’ is a low-tempo crawler that’s rich in atmosphere, and positively eerie, its whispered vocal bordering on the subliminal. Against this is the euphoric ‘Love’. But that euphoria feels like the result of manipulation, and not because of the power of the suggestion from the notes. Listening to the warping, wefting, twisting otherness of CULTurally appropriated songs and revisited memories is an uncomfortable experience, which has nothing to do with spirituality and everything to do with the fact that humans are fucking weird. Apart from in Pet Sematary, how many scary hauntings can you list from other species? Where are all the demonic cats, the spirit dogs and rabbits? Brion Gysin said that ‘man is a bad animal’, and it’s hard to argue.

Similarly, CULTurally appropriated songs and revisited memories is a horrible album. It trawls through terrain that’s unplotted, and doesn’t stop at the waymarkers where there are, well, anything. The duration is a slog. You crawl your way to the end and just want to lie down. Sure, it’s psychedelic, but mostly it’s torture.

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