Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

Christine Plays Viola – F.I.V.E. Fear Increases Violent Emotions

Posted: 4 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Much as the whole ‘sounds like’ and ‘for fans of’ thing has become a standard shortcut which is, all too often, reductive and plays into the algorithmic feeding of artists by streaming platforms, it can be useful, at least when the references are accurate. Sometimes, a misrepresentative comparison can come to define an act’s entire career. I can’t be the only one who investigated Interpol because of the endless comparisons to Joy Division – and while I quickly grew to love Interpol, they’re as much like Joy Division as Suede are The Smiths. Sometimes these disparities are the result of poor journalism or sloppy PR, others they’re the consequence of a band’s own lack of self-awareness, confusing the input from their influences with what their music actually sounds like. Nevertheless, when a band is pitches as being ‘for fans of Faith or Disintegration-era Cure, and Closer-era Joy Division’, the connotations of glacial synth-orientated bleakness suggest they’re worth investigating.

And so I arrive at F.I.V.E. Fear Increases Violent Emotions (released in January), by Italian dark / new wave band Christine Plays Viola via the album’s fourth single, ‘Desolate Moments’ – in an example of an old-school promo cycle, where a single or two in advance would hype the album, and a trailing single or two would sustain momentum and (hopefully) grab some people who’d missed the initial build-up and release. This one’s had a long run-up, with ‘Jackie’s Curse’ surfacing way back in 2024.

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‘Desolate Moments’ is a spacious slow-builder, and fulfils the promise of some cold synths, the brooding vocals paired with some rolling percussion and throbbing bass. In many respects, it’s a quintessential slice of modern goth, in the vein of Corpus Delicti, with some hints of Depeche Mode swirling around in the mix. That’s not all that’s swirling around: the video, which is designed to replicate their live performance, finds the band members partially obscured by billowing smoke, clearly taking cues from The Sisters of Mercy’s seminal stage shows.

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It turns out that ‘Desolate Moments’ is representative of the album, too, certainly in terms of quality (one thing about old-school promo before the advent of the Internet is that you’d often rush to buy an album based on the lead single, only to find that it was the only decent track, and that the rest of the album was turd… this was particularly prevalent in the ‘80s, but I’d venture that Depeche Mode’s Ultra would have been better whittled down to an EP of the singles). And it’s an album that radiates darkness and classic goth vibes and sounds.

Opener ‘Sprout of Disharmony’ is nothing short of an instant classic in the vein of Rosetta Stone and Susperia, with spindly guitar work, sturdy on-the-beat bass grooves and metronomic percussion, and with a seven-minute run time, it certainly qualifies as epic. ‘My Redemption’, released as a single six months ago goes darker, more overtly electro, and brings in elements of industrial while still reflecting the goth sound of the late 90s and the turn of the millennium, and packing some strong hooks, too.

There’s a keen sense of theatre about Christine Plays Viola’s sound: they’re certainly not afraid to go big and play up the drama with finesse. ‘Confession’ lands with a sense of urgency, and is again driven by bold tribal beats reminiscent of vintage acts like Danse Society and Skeletal Family, while ‘There’s No Going Back’ swerves into early Nine Inch Nails territory, only more overtly gothy. While operating around elements taken from some well-established blueprints, Christine Plays Viola manage to offer no shortage of variety on F.I.V.E., the jittery ‘Black Noise’ changing tack halfway through, and the seven-and-three-quarter-minute ‘The Crypt of Mystery’ explores altogether more expansive territory which teeters on the progressive.

As an album, F.I.V.E. feels like a big work: it may only contain ten songs, but a fair few run well over the five minute mark, and the variety is indicative of the scale of the band’s ambition to articulate and explore the theme of ‘fear not as weakness, but as a force that shapes who we become’ in multi-faceted detail. And they succeed in their objective, with some great songs, too.

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Stine Janvin / Morten Joh – Or Gare: Funeral Procession Music from Ryfylke, Norway

Posted: 4 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Futura Resistenza  – 24th Match 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Well, it is Good Friday, so it seems an appropriate time to settle down with a large whisky and some candles to engage with an album of funeral procession music from Ryfylke, Norway. And as the title suggests, this is actually what this collaborative album contains:

Rooted in the bygone custom of ‘Liksong’ (literally ‘corpse song’) that was once sung by small groups of singers who guided rural funeral processions, Janvin and Joh tap into its uncanny, unbearably slow intervallic structures, reanimating the practice as a kind of ancient electronic microtonal devotional music. Voices and vocal effects, synths and melodic percussion seep into the cracks between major and minor, and the whole thing carries the creaking weight of ceremony, yet glows with an otherworldly modernity, as if a forgotten liturgy had been retuned for a dimly humming chapel of circuits.

The duo, with Janvin on vocals and electronics and Joh on synths, tape machines, and percussion, also enlisted Lucy Railton (cello) and Jules Reidy (electric guitar).

The nine tracks present a remarkably structured, linear funeral journey – and while the premise of the album is already most uncommonly literal, so is the linear structure, which begins with ‘Leaving Home’ and concludes with ‘Postlude’, which it arrives at via ‘Pasing neighbours’, ‘Before the burial site’, ‘By the grave’, ‘Lowering the coffing’, and ‘Processing grief’, among other almost instructional titles.

The pieces them selves are quite minimal in their arrangements: drones, hums and haunting, folk-inspired vocals, bathed in reverb and surrounded by echo come together to create soundscapes which are haunting, and, at times, other-wordly. ‘Pasing Neighbours’ is a slice of detached, rippling electronica, which on the surface couldn’t be further removed from ancient Nordic rituals… and yet Janvin and John succeed in subtly manipulating the sounds to conjure something which reaches deep into the psyche with its rippling dissonance.

There’s a gravity to this album which underlies the twisting, processed electronic experimentalism which is befitting of the subject and the context, and while ‘Passing neighbours’ does amalgamate shoegaze with robotix 80s electro, it doesn’t feel disrespectful to the source.

‘Rest – Bordvers’ which features Jules Reidy) is a sliver of ghostly folk which sounds like spirits ascending over an early Silver Jews outtake, and ‘Before the burial site – Jeg Raader Eder Alle’ is a heavily processed, almost space-age reindentation of a folk incantation – but it’s the haunting, eight-minute ‘By the grave – Akk, Mon Jeg Staar I Naade’ which really grips the attention with its ghostly wails and insistent pulsations and expansive, arcing drones. The dronerous ‘Lowering the coffin’ features vintage spacemuzak ripples and reverberating ululations contrasts sharply with ‘Processing grief’, which begins hymn-like, before swiftly transitioning to shuffling, fractal synthiness reminiscent of Tangerine Dream.

One suspects that in this modernisation, in this translation, something has been lost. But at the same time, this interpretation serves to keep an ancient heritage alive. And this is the sound of dark woodland, of glaciers, of spartan spaces – ice-dusted woodland. Often, it’;s trult beautiful, and this is nbowhere more clear on ‘Acceptance – Kom, Menneske, At Skue Mig!’, another piece which is more than seven minutes in duration.

The final track, ‘Postlude’ is gentle, and even alludes to a brighter future on the horizon. For mem it feels a little soon, although there s no use of timescale by which to orientate oneself available in the immediate entrance of the accommodation.

Having spent the last three years processing – and documenting – grief following the loss of my wife, Or Gare: Funeral Procession Music from Ryfylke, Norway is a difficult album to approach on a personal level. But there are times in this expansive, exploratory work, that death, in all its suffering, has been muted and spun into niceness – if not a palatable, packageable sound.

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Small Rocks – The Future in a Rearview Thumbnail

Posted: 1 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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6th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Matt Wand is best known for his work as a founder member of experimental samplists Stock, Hausen & Walkman between 1989 and 2001, although his body of work in collaboration with other artists, and under numerous pseudonyms, and as a solo artist is extensive. His latest project came to my attention via a friend, and a tape, and suddenly it felt like the 90s again, when word of mouthy was the most likely source of introduction to new music – alongside the weekly inkies and John Peel. Not that I’m about to harp on about the good old days, particularly as I have the good fortune to be fed a constant stream of music that never fails to amaze and confound, but it does highlight and remind just how limiting the force of the algorithm is, the endless conveyor belt of ‘if you like this…’ and services simply lining up the next track in an eternal playlist which subscribers tend to passively permit to pass into their ears, and how the cultural relationship has changed over time. And yes, something has been lost: endless streaming music on tap isn’t the boon it’s often hailed as. Spotify and the like delivers sonic wallpaper. How many of its users will listen to an album end-to-end and multiple times in sequence over the course of a week and a month, really engaging and excavating every last detail while it beds in?

I’ve begun with a digression, but the joy of music – for me, at least – is the way in which it inspires trajectories of thought, often in the most unexpected directions. It’s as if it has the capacity to unlock doors to forgotten recesses within the mind. Anyway, to shift focus specifically to the album at hand, while credited to Small Rocks, the album’s cover (the artwork of which is almost as disturbing as that of the first Toe Fat album) appends this with the words ‘in dub’, and this very much gives a clue to the contents – that is, fourteen instrumental compositions centred around dense, strolling basslines and sparse, echo-soaked beats.

A number of the tracks on here – ‘A Lung Full Of Woofer Gas’, ‘Give Me Back Me Bucket’, and ‘Blind Mute Specialist’ – date back to 2002’s three-way split album Dub TribunL, which featured Small Rocks alongside Atom™ and The Rip-Off Artist. This is an album which has been a long time in its gestation.

Leisurely grooves and rippling reverberations abound, with puns and wordplay making for an added bonus – ‘Curlew Curfew in Corfu’, anyone? On ‘Bassically Unsettled’, the thick, rubbery bass bounced its way through subtle and mildly disorientating tempo changes, while ‘Mirror Sigil Manoeuvre’ is sparse and spacey, the beats landing like drips from stalactites in an immense cavern. And yes, as minimal as it is, the sounds are mentally and visually evocative.

Landing in the middle of the album – or the end of side one on the cassette – ‘The Moss Veil’ is less dubby and more a work of dark ambience with hints of Dr Who amidst the dank swampiness and sporadic whirrs and bleeps. It calls to mind the weirdy sci-fi sounds of soundtracks of the late 70s and early 80s and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The title track, which raises the curtain on side two, is more uptempo and verges on being some mutant drum ‘n’ bass, before the multi-00layered ‘Keep Quiet & ROT (mit bADbLOOD JA Kötting) ‘, which takes a swerve into more industrial territory, while hinting at the cut-up tape experiments of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, conducted in the later ‘60s and early ‘70s, while at the same time coming on like a reggae Butthole Surfers. It really is all going on here on The Future in a Rearview Thumbnail. ‘a Lung-full of Woofer GAS’ is a hybrid of dub with minimal techno, and ‘Give fe me back Me BUCKET’ brings an industrial-strength percussive clatter that owes as much to Test Dept as any other act, while ‘The Custodian’ closes the set with a warping, glitchy tension that’s again infused with a more retro vibe, although the distant snare which lurks in the background is swamped in reverb and vocal fragments float around in a dubby fashion.

The Future in a Rearview Thumbnail is a rare expression of experimentalism, an album which dares to venture in different directions, and celebrates its strangeness.

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MESH – The Truth Doesn’t Matter

Posted: 27 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Dependent Records – 27th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Now in their thirty-fifth year, MESH have always unapologetic in the way their music reflects and incorporates their influences, spanning Yazoo, Depeche Mode, Giorgio Moroder, Massive Attack, and Depeche Mode. It’s the latter that seems to cast the longest shadow over their latest offering – an album brimming with uptempo anthems propelled by driving beats, urgent synth bass grooves and busy sweeping lead lines.

In this context, it’s often all too easy to get swept along on the tide of electric energy and skim over the lyrical content, which is considerably darker, as the title reflects. As they summarise, ‘This is the age of post-factual lies…’ and as they grapple with difficult times, there’s ‘a dark undertone that occasionally seeps into their new songs’. There’s a feeling that anyone who isn’t affected by the current state of the world is either ignorant or in denial, and for those operating within the arts or any creative fields, I would question how it’s possible to create without these external conditions filtering into the work. And how can anything not be political right now? Time was – not so long ago – when a lack of acceptance or belief in official versions of events was the domain of fringe conspiracy theory. Now governments blatantly lie to our faces: Israel are adamant that every death in Gaza was a member of Hamas, or otherwise a ‘human shield’, the USA insist that they’ve won the war with Iran and have decimated their nuclear capabilities which were likely to destroy the entire Western world tomorrow, and the UK government insists it’s in no way involved or even complicit in any of this. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to see in the Epstein files. Right.

For all that, there’s a lot of emphasis on relationships and the like. Timeless issues, which cut to the core of the human condition, but not necessarily hitting the heart of the zeitgeist. But it’s impossible to be contemporary and timeless, I guess.

On The Truth Doesn’t Matter, MESH are straight out of the traps with a brace of back-to-back anthems, before arriving at the slower ‘I Lost a Friend Today’, which conveys a deep, painful sincerity – but at the same time it emotes with the dramatic flourishes that only a band with gothier leanings could pull off. But then the buoyant disco beat and skittering, soaring synths of ‘Trying to Save You’ somewhat undermine the sentiment. The same is true of ‘I Bleed Through You’, on which some heavy words are diminished by a poppy disco backing.

‘Kill Us With Silence’ follows the same template, but the dark shades are overtones rather than undercurrents: the gothier leanings work well here, as do the more experimental shades of the sample-soaked ‘1031030’, which has a read 80s vintage feel to it.

MESH are definitely at their best when they go dark, and when they go experimental. Single cut ‘This World’ straddles the different aspects of the album, and as such, is arguably the single song which most accurately represents what The Truth Doesn’t Matter. The same is true of ‘Exile’: it’s a belting dark pop tune, but it’s a bit too Erasure to really reach those emotional depths.

There’s no lack of quality or consistency here in terms of songwriting or production, so the only issue is its stylistic focus, or lack of, and just how poppy it is for an album which aims to venture into dark domains. But sixteen tracks is a lot, especially when the majority are four or even five minutes long. The Truth Doesn’t Matter, but focus does, and while it’s not a bad album, trimming it down and concentrating on the theme of its title would have likely made for a more focused album, and one with greater impact.

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Rayan Haïdar – Cities burn as we dream of a return

Posted: 26 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Dragon’s Eye Recordings – 20th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The sad fact is that many of us have become somewhat numbed by the endless live rolling news of war in recent years. It’s easy to do when smoke and rubble and statistics are standard. In some ways, COVID – or more specifically, the media coverage of the pandemic – prepared us for it, by keeping us in isolation with only the TV and Internet to connect us to the outside world. As the numbers kept ticking up, as the number of deaths grew, so did our panic, but equally, so did our sense of distance. Unless we had directly lost a friend or relative, it wasn’t quite real.

And now, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the genocide in Gaza – it’s not a war – and its escalation to surrounding areas, plus in recent weeks Iran and the whole middle east exploding, our shock and alarm gradually becomes mutes by overexposure and – worse – for many, a lack of concern over something that’s so distant. There’s annoyance at rising prices, particularly of fuel, but little more: people go about their lives as normal and don’t give too much thought to what life must be like for the people living in these places – or how it must be to have friends and family in constant fear for their lives, what it must be like for those who have fled to witness the scenes and the news reports, and likely see a huge disparity between the versions.

Cities burn as we dream of a return gives pause for thought and to reflect on these things. He’s a Beirut-born, Paris-based multi-instrumentalist, and the album is described as ‘a profound meditation on displacement, longing, and the impossible distance between memory and its aftermath’.

As the accompanying notes detail, ‘The album began as home recordings in 2024 — fragments inspired by Beirut and the quiet melancholy that had always permeated Haïdar’s childhood place. Shortly after beginning work, the aggression against Lebanon escalated, and Haïdar found themselves in the surreal position of documenting their relationship to home while watching that same place be destroyed from afar. The recordings became inseparable from the violence unfolding in real time, each track absorbing the grief and anger of witnessing loved ones continually hurt with no ability to intervene.

‘As Haïdar entered 2025, they continued recording, carrying more grief and anger than when they had begun. What emerged is not simply an album about a place, but about the way we carry our homes and the people we love within us—how they become part of our interior landscape regardless of physical distance or destruction.’

In context, what’s perhaps surprising about Cities burn as we dream of a return is just how gentle it is. Each piece takes the form of a masterfully spun cloud of abstract ambience, the layers and textures twisting and merging and separating, a constant flux, as distant samples echo through the mists.

The tone does, however, shift somewhat as the album progresses. Although indistinct, the samples appear to convey a narrative of increasing anxiety, as do the titles. The title track’s serenity is broken by the sound of panicked voices, while ‘On people we once met and places we once saw’ is imbued with a heavy air of melancholy beneath its soft flow. With it comes the realisation that many of those people and many of those places either no longer exist, or are otherwise altered beyond recognition. Everything changes, everyone changes, but the difference between growth and progress over time, and absolute destruction is beyond compare.

‘At dusk, looking down’ draws the album to a close with an achingly haunting atmosphere and a sense of loss that’s difficult to define but nevertheless inescapable. The album’s six pieces are subtle, gentle, and comparatively sparse, and much of the emotion they convey is indirect and implied. Cities burn as we dream of a return is nuanced and contemplative, and quietly moving.

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Neurosis – An Undying Love For A Burning World

Posted: 22 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Neurot Recordings – 20 March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Unless you’ve been keeping a very close eye, or have been privy to insider information, you could be forgiven for thinking Neurosis were done as a band. And reasonably so. It’s been ten years since their last album, and it’s been almost four years since word emerged that founder and vocalist Scott Kelly had departed the band under a cloud and announced his retirement from music.

Nevertheless, one would have probably expected some kind of hype, a build-up to the first album in a decade by these post-metal colossi. Perhaps they felt a little reluctant under the circumstances of quietly ejecting Kelly in 2019 he admitted abusing his wife and children, keeping quiet on the matter out of respect for privacy from his wife. The fact they expelled him well before the news broke in 2022 sends a clear message on the position of the remaining members, who, after time has passed, have recruited Aaron Turner, formerly of Isis, and then Sumac. I shan’t dwell on how it must feel as a band to discover that one of the people they’ve worked with so closely for so many years is a piece of shit, an abusive lowlife, but will swerve here onto the topic of how Tom Meighan, formerly of Kasabian has been welcomed back to the gig and festival circuit following a conviction for domestic abuse largely on the basis that his abused girlfriend forgave him and went on to marry him. But that’s how it is with abuse. Victims don’t leave, and there comes to be an understanding that it’s in the past and the abuser is somehow rehabilitated and everything is ok now, so the world moves on.

This shouldn’t be the cloud that hangs over Neurosis’ new album, and because of how they’ve dealt with it, it isn’t really a cloud, but something which needs to be addressed by way of context, rather than skipped over or swept under the carpet. Thankfully, Kelly doesn’t get a pass, a career rehabilitation after a break, and with a respectful hiatus and Turner coming into the fold, An Undying Love For A Burning World marks the opening of a new chapter for Neurosis.

The album’s title encapsulates the place in which the band – and, indeed, many of us find ourselves, and the statement from the band on its release expands on this:

“We need this, perhaps more than ever, and we suspect we are not alone. The trials and tribulations in our personal lives and as a band, combined with simply trying to navigate the insanity of our society, with the stress, anxiety, and isolation that come with it can be excruciating. Add to that the existential confusion and sorrow of the climate crisis and the sixth mass extinction.

“It is enough to cause you to completely lose your mind if you can’t find release or catharsis. This strange emotionally charged music has always been our method of trying to survive this and this is what we’ve always been singing about. When you have spent a lifetime engaged with these energies and utilizing this form of expression to purge and purify, it feels detrimental to our well-being to let it sit idle and neglected. This was now or never.”

First, the pandemic. Then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Then Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And now – effectively – World War 3, with gas and oil facilities ablaze, all while the oceans rise and the global climate becomes evermore inhospitable. It’s a battle to simply exist and keep it together at times, because the last few years have felt truly apocalyptic. And STILL people are shitting on one another: displays of racism and misogyny are becoming more rife and more extreme and as much as there’s abundant cause to fear for the imminent elimination of the human species, there’s a strong case in favour of it for the good of the planet.

And so it is that An Undying Love For A Burning World is a difficult album, in that it grapples with these difficult, ugly, and complex issues.

“The dissonance is deafening!” Turner hollers on the brief intro piece, ‘We Are Torn Wide Open’, before blasting into the jarring noise blast of ‘Mirror Deep’. Immediately, this feels like a different Neurosis. They’ve always explored tone and texture, but this feels different: fast, hard, heavy, with a punkier edge to the driving metal blast. This rages, hard. The riffs and jarring, dissonant, and Turner’s vocals bring a different kind of energy. And it’s an energy that’s a vital injection.

Of course, there are still megalithic lumbering riffs: ‘First Red Rays’ brings the first of them, and it’s a crushing trudge, but then suddenly everything explodes. It sounds as if they’re playing for their lives, and purging hard here. Even the expansive instrumental passages are imbued with an emotional heft that’s intangible and fundamentally inarticulable, and while the nine-minute ‘Blind’ offers some atmospheric passages, they’re decimated by raging riffs, and ‘Seething and Scattered’ sure as hell does seethe from its very core.

The last two tracks are both immense, clocking in at ten and seventeen minutes respectively, but far from being meandering plods – and there are quieter, gentler passages which have an exploratory edge – they’re both dynamic explosions brimming with anguish, and riff and rage hard. The final track, ‘Last Light’ begins with a Suicide-like pulsating electronic beat and fizzing electronics before the riff piles in, and takes off with with some expansive space-rock vibes and a nagging hint of shoegaze, and it’s as majestic as it is monstrous.

This is the sound of a band reinvigorated, and, more significantly, grappling with issues, both personal and circumstantial. It’s a band striving to push forward, a band unbeaten but emerging from and processing a trauma. The world is burning: that’s not political or controversial, but it’s difficult to assimilate and contemplate what the future holds. An Undying Love For A Burning World takes the listener down to the darkest depth, but also hints at hope. Right now, hope is all we have, and it’s hard to cling to… but cling, we must. Otherwise, what else is there?

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Loaf of Beard – Privilege and Other Poisons

Posted: 18 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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skoghall rekordings – 18th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Patience is supposedly a virtue… but then apparently, there’s no time like the present. And you’re supposed to strike while the iron’s hot. Clearly, Trump and his negotiators and so-called ‘Minister of War’ figured there was no time like the present even while negotiations with Iran were progressing nicely, with Iran offering substantial concessions around their nuclear programme.

Loaf of Beard’s follow-up to 2023’s Dog had been scheduled for a couple of months’ time, but from nowhere, it’s been brought forward and landed yesterday. It’s not even a Friday, let alone a Bandcamp Friday! Still, after LoB material got an airing on a jaunt of the UK late last year, this might be considered an example of striking while the iron’s still a bit warm, and moreover, given the way things are going, there really is no time like the present inasmuch as we can’t guarantee there will even be a future. There is an urgency to making art right now, and putting it out there FAST isn’t so much about keeping it relevant – although that is a factor, since events are happening at such pace it’s nigh on impossible to keep up – but about processing all of this shit and conveying the intense and myriad mixed emotions these insane times engender.

As they write in the accompanying notes, ‘In these constantly changing and worrying times it is somewhat of a relief that certain artists go out of their way to document humanity’s descent into fucking stupidity and greed’.

Loaf of Beard – a duo consisting of Chisel and Rabies Beefburger tackle these serious matters with an element of humour, Chisel ranting and chanting in a distinctly north of England sprechgesang over uptempo lo-fi drum machines and scratchy electronica. There’s something uplifting about both the musical and lyrical simplicity. On ‘All Of This Lot Can Get Fucked’, Chisel reels off a list of politicians and other public figures, with a chanting refrain of ‘get fucked’. It’s simple but effective, and in a just world, they’d be playing to hundreds of people all singing the words back at them in a display of unity. But that’s not the world we live in, as they point out on ‘Shit Mic, No Fans’:

Some might say I’m the laziest rapper

I have to admit, that there’s none crapper

All the fucker MCs come along and diss me

I spit out rhymes, they just dismiss me

The irony is that this isn’t a million miles away from Sleaford Mods in many respects., and I suspect they’re aware of this fact. When you boil it down, it’s sweary sociopolitical rants with repetitive hooks delivered over minimal electronic backing. But while there is humour here, at times, Privilege and Other Poisons is unafraid to venture into dark territory, and this is nowhere more apparent than on ‘B.A.E’, where they call out the manufacturer of arms and ‘informational security’, whose share price has absolutely skyrocketed in recent years, since Russia invaded Ukraine and war has essentially spread around the globe, with the lugubrious refrain of ‘B.A.E and their profits of death’. And this is how the world works under capitalism. A small – very small – minority coin it in while everyone else’s lives crumble and tens of thousands of people – innocent civilians – are slaughtered because some cunts in suits who wield power beyond imagination are petulant pieces of shit who want global domination like in a stupid movie and think it’s a game.

Elsewhere, ‘Claptrap Fåntratt’ sounds like The Fall circa Light User Syndrome (which is severely underrated in the scheme of their oeuvre). ‘Freeze Peach’ goes full-throttle raging electro/punk thrashabout, with Chisel foaming at the mouth with the chorus of ‘take your fucking flags down dickhead’ before going all-out Beavis and Butthead. ‘I Feel Like a Twat’ serves up a slice of cheesy jazz-infused disco funk, and knowing its awfulness is conscious and intentional only raises the level of awkwardness. This is Loaf of Beard all over. They exist to make you feel uncomfortable – and they succeed. And I for one respect that.

Semi-ambient pastoral contemplations about wildlife and sightings of elk make for some welcome respite: it’s not healthy to be raging all the time, and however fucked the planet may be, nature is resilient. It’s us who need to become extinct.

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The Shits – Diet of Worms

Posted: 18 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Rocket Recordings – 3rd April 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Opening an album with an ear-splitting shriek of feedback is a statement of intent, and a challenge to the (potential) listener. Opening an album with an ear-splitting shriek of feedback by way of launching into a seven-minute discordant racket is special, particularly when you’re not Sunn O))). It takes some confidence, and is an immediate ‘fuck you’ to anyone who might be looking for some melody. But then, it’s fair enough. You’re not going to be looking to attract pop kids when you’re a noise rock band called The Shits. But over the course of its seven minutes, raw and ragged opener ‘In A Hell’ brings a nagging lead guitar line which stretches back and forth over a repetitive riff where the rhythm guitar follows the bass on an ascending riff through an ever-amassing wall of noise. Woah. In a way, I’m reminded of The Fall, specifically Hex Enduction Hour, crashing in with ‘The Classical’, which is absolutely all over the shop, discordant, swerving here, there, and everywhere, likely deterring many from venturing further, while encapsulating everything about the band and the album in that opening salvo. So if ‘In A Hell’ doesn’t do it for you, leave now, and promptly, because you’re only going to get more of the same, only more so. ‘In A Hell’ is a beast, and will likely send many running ion the opposite direction. Fine. It’s their loss.

You know an album’s going to be good when the opening track sounds like the finale. And yes, with Diet of Worms, The Shits deliver something extraordinary. It’s a filthy mess of overdriven guitar and vocals thick with phlegm and fury, and it’s nothing short of magnificent.

‘Tarrare’ brings the searing proto-punk three chord thrash and wah-wah frenzy of The Stooges with the rabid nastiness of The Anti-Nowhere League and a hint of the derangement of the Jesus Lizard, and ‘Then You’re Dead’ piles straight in with more gritty riff-driven nihilism delivered with fervour and everything cranked up to eleven.

There’s nothing pretty about this. There’s nothing especially new about it, either, but The Shits play with a rare, raw energy, and it’s this which makes Diet of Worms stands out. ‘Change My Ways’ is a sneering roar, with hints of Uniform but very much indebted to Public Image. It’s a punky, noise-rock juggernaut. Single cut ‘Thank You For Being a Friend’ doesn’t exactly seem to radiate effusive gratitude in its delivery and lands more like being punched in the gut. Repeatedly. For nearly six minutes.

AA

AA

The whole album is a sprawling, dingy, full-on, the songs built around simple, repetitive riffs bludgeoned away at for however long – nothing fancy, just fire and fury. Diet of Worms is unapologetic in its bluntness, attacking from the first scream of feedback to the final afterburn.

AA

AA

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Bell Barrow – True Human Trough

Posted: 16 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Saccharine Underground – 27th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Bell Barrow are on fire right now. And so is half the world. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that they thrive on war and global turmoil, so much as feel the compulsion to create in the face of global crisis. I may be projecting a little here, but seriously – come the fuck on: how can anyone not feel all-consuming, abject terror right now? We’re hearing a lot of Israel claiming an ‘existential threat’ from the supposed nuclear activities of Iran right now – although this seems a little lacking in credibility, since it can’t also be true that the USA ‘annihilated’ Iran’s nuclear capabilities last summer. I mention this in my preface to the review of True Human Trough because although the current events aren’t mentioned specifically, it’s clear that this is an act who are tuned in to current tensions as well as ecological concerns, and who channel the energy of anxiety into their music.

As they themselves write, “These compositions function as experiments in torture empathy: forcing the listener to inhabit the suffering inflicted on our ecosystem by human dominance while simultaneously confronting a far older truth—that humanity’s power is temporary, localized, and ultimately irrelevant. Plant life, scavengers, and insect civilizations speak here through perceived chaos, not to ask for mercy, but to assert inevitability. True Human Trough reflects agony, yes—but more importantly, it documents supremacy. We may poison this world for now, but be clear…in the universal order, they rule in the end.”

I admire their optimism, and for what it’s worth, I share this hope. Because right now, it feels as if our species is suffocating the planet harder by the second. And suffocating is how the first track on this frenzied sonic blitzkrieg of an album feels. ‘Solunar Theory’ is a melting morass of experimental jazz immersed in a wall of phased reverb. Time signatures collapse into chaotic discord on ‘The Unbirthing of Jackals’. Everything lurches, drunkenly, it’s a dizzy stagger that’s powerful enough to unsettle the guts and leave you seeing stars. This is a woozy cacophony rendered all the more brain-frying by the wild application of reverb. Everything is off-kilter, the EQ is all over and there’s flange and phase and good old-fashioned manic musicianship, melting Beefheart and Zappa and Trumans Water in a cauldron with The Necks and Throbbing Gristle. Reading that back, it actually reads like some fucked-up Victorian era recipe that’s only missing some tripe and trotters to top a truly foul soup. Bell Barrow simmer up a pretty foul sonic soup even without these ingredients: ‘Neckless of Tongues’ delivers it

‘Infauna’ refers to the animals living in the sediments of the ocean floor or river or lake beds, while ‘bloat stage’ is occurs during the decomposition of a corpse. Yes, I looked this up while experiencing the obliterative force of ‘Bloat Stage Infauna’, and in context, it all makes sense. ‘Rites of Silent Spring’ is almost black metal in its frenetic frenzy, but of course, it’s also a jazz-infused instrumental which is a long way removed from black metal – which pretty much sums up True Human Trough, an album that’s everything all at once.

The production and mix is deranged, demented, furious. There’s no intention of softening the blows here: Bell Barrow are set on bringing pure mayhem and disruption – of the best possible kind.

We are living through historical moments in real time. As we hurtle towards self-extinction – it’s more a question of by which means than if now, what with the pace of climate change, AI’s rapid and unfettered advancement and now – let’s call it what it is – the onset of World War 3 – with True Human Trough, Bell Barrow have created a work which soundtrack the next stage of the end of times.

AA

Jeremy Moore by Fleurette Estes- February 2026 - Landscape 001

AA

Jeremy Moore by Fleurette Estes

Machine Mafia – Red

Posted: 15 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 27th March 2026

The work ethos of Pound Land always makes me think of The Fall – and the same is true of the relentless repetition of their compositions. And it comes as no surprise that Red, the second studio by Pound Land side-project Machine Mafia, consisting of Jase Kester and Adam Stone, was recorded in a single day. Keeping things in-house, it was mastered by Agent Kester, too.

Whether or not the album’s title is in any way connected to its being recorded at Big Red Studios in Macclesfield, we don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. What matters – and what we are told – is that ‘Lyrically, Red explores themes such as the sanctity of personal freedom, the dreary mediocrity of business academia, the medicalisation of human behaviour, the strange comfort found in boredom, and supernatural motorcycle-riding anti-heroes with flaming skulls.’ Some of these topics I find personally relatable (my brief time as a university tutor was not enjoyable, essentially working a zero-hours contract teaching modules miles beyond my own field of research, to receive poor feedback from students who’d shelled out thousands for a degree and felt let-down by having a tutor who wasn’t a specialist, and only worked limited hours, so wasn’t sitting in their office for drop-in visits or able to respond to emails immediately. My favourite was a student emailing me five minutes before an essay submission deadline asking where the submission sheets were on the website while I was on a train with no access to my emails), others less so (I simply don’t get boredom: there’s always too much to do). But what I absolutely get is channelling all the frustration into something creative.

Given that Pound Land are kings of gnarly, repetitive, grinding noise and that Kester’s work outside Pound Land (Plan Pony, Omnibael / Ombibadger) has explored numerous shades of abrasive racket, that Machine Mafia create an unholy din is to be expected, and that’s what they provided with their debut album, Zoned, released almost a year ago to the day of this, their second full-length. But whereas Zoned tended to deliver short, sharp sonic assaults, with the majority of the thirteen tracks clocking in at less than five minutes, Red really pushes the boundaries, the five track release dominated by a brace of megalithic monsters in the shape of the thirteen-and-a-half-minute ‘Business Studies’ and their epic rendition of Suicide’s ‘Ghost Rider’ – which is even more manic and more brutal than the one performed by Foetus with Marc Almond. As for its colossal elongation, although the original is a mere two and a half minutes long, its hypnotic, repetitive groove could readily withstand looping into eternity. The Sisters of Mercy used to run it for six minutes or so as an encore in 1984 and ’85, Eldritch cutting loose with the Alan Vega screams. Machine Mafia tweak the tempo up a notch, and it’s a messy, dirty blast of electropunk, Stone spitting and whooping the words through the mangled metallic whir of overloading electronics.

It’s the perfect finale, and sits perfectly with the originals, which are a mess of pounding beats, squalling feedback, and angry vocals. The first of these, ‘NO’, is a relentless howl, five minutes of nonstop thunder and ear-splitting treble, Stone rabid and raving.

‘DSM’ is more straightforward noise rock, a bass-driven blast with layers of feedback. The format is repetition, repetition, repetition, like a noise reimagining of The Fall, drawing in elements of Metal Urbain. ‘Business Studies’ is simply brutal, a bludgeoning bastard of a noise with the refrain ‘fuck business studies’. ‘It’s all shit and piss’, Stone summarises with the kind of anguish that feels like he’s bursting out of his very skin. The vocals are thick with distortion, the glitching bass blasts from the speakers with dangerous density and it’s all wrapped in a mesh of feedback that makes The Jesus and Mary Chain sound like easy listening. ‘Boredom’ takes its cues from Throbbing Gristle’s ‘Discipline’ and adds wild feedback to the mix. It’s punishing.

There’s an additional, unnamed, ‘secret’ track a little way after ‘Ghostrider’, and it’s a messy, lo-fi mess of crashing drum machines and grinding synths over which Stone rants so hard you can almost hear the spittle. It sounds like early Uniform – stark, harsh, rabid.

Uncompromising doesn’t come close. Red is absolutely fucking punishing. If you’re into dense, dark, nasty noise, you need this.

AA

AA

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