Cold Spring is extremely proud to announce the first ever release of the legendary BBC radio sessions that the seminal Nottingham-formed industrial metal act Pitchshifter recorded for the late, great John Peel in the early 1990s.
These ultra heavy tracks were recorded over two sessions at the iconic BBC Maida Vale Studios on 28th April 1991 and 30th March 1993 and were sourced directly from the BBC Archives (with thanks), with careful remastering for CD and vinyl.
The 1991 session was recorded during the same period that saw the release of the band’s debut album, ‘Industrial’ (Deaf Records/Peaceville), with the 1993 session recorded around the time of its follow-up, ‘Desensitized’ (Earache).
“If you look on your Pitchshifter album sleeves, you will see that we always credited John Peel,” states frontman JS Clayden. “He was instrumental in getting the band out there and often played our music on the radio when no one else dared. The ‘Peel Sessions’ we did were a great honour and every time I met John he was always such a great guy…a legend.”
Founded in 1989, Pitchshifter’s early music can be described as heavy industrial metal, with the band long cited as one of the originators of the self-termed ‘Death Industrial’ genre along with Godflesh. These sessions and their first two albums define that classic period, before the group shifted towards the beat-driven, crossover industrial style that they are best known for.
Ahead of the release, the Peel Session version of ‘Gritter’ can be heard here:
In the debate of nature versus nurture, it’s noteworthy how many artists find themselves influenced in no small way not only by their formative years, but also the place or places where they grew up. There’s an entire thesis to be made from this, but here I make the observation because on Allens Cross, Empty Cut – a duo consisting of Douglas Fielding-Smith and Robert Bollard – have forged a work ‘Inspired by their childhood growing up in Birmingham they blend together all their experience and inspirations to create a noise that holds a heavy solid groove mixed with harsh noise and fuzzed out reverbed bass, topped with psychedelic synths, and chopped and screwed vocals.’
Birmingham, the city which gave us Black Sabbath and UB40, the second largest in England, with a population of over two and a quarter million, and has long been renowned for its diversity, and is a truly multicultural melting-pot. It’s perhaps unsurprising that cities like this – in contrast to so many predominantly white, often middle-class towns – are the source of musical innovation: throw in an element of social deprivation, the frisson of frustration driven by class and cultural disparity, and inevitably, this backdrop will fuel the fires of those with a creative bent.
Allens Cross is exemplary: as the blurbage summarises, ‘mixing together drums, bass, samples, effects and vocals they have created a sound that incorporates punk, hardcore, electronica, jazz, drum’n’bass, experimental-industrial and shoegaze.’ It’s one of those that on paper probably shouldn’t work, but thanks to the dexterity if its creators, works far beyond imagination.
It grinds in on a sample looped and echoed across a dirty bass and slow-building beat… and then everything slides into a doomy, sludgy sonic murk. ‘Bloodline; makes for a dank and difficult opening, five minutes of feedback and dinginess sprawling and lunging this way and that, culminating in a manic howl driven by frantic percussion and driving bass.
‘Fidget’ whips up a howl of feedback against a juddering stop/start bass, and with shouty vocals low in the mix, it brings a quintessential 90s Amphetamine Reptile vibe with a hint of Fudge Tunnel… until things take a detour into dub territory in the mid-section. When the noise blast returns, it hits even harder.
With none of the album’s eight tracks running for less than five minutes and the majority straying beyond six, it feels like there’s an element of slog, of punishment, inbuilt. ‘The Well Beneath’ certainly mines that dark seem of metal that plunges underground, but with the contrast of jazz drumming and some quite nifty bass work, at least until they hit the ‘overload’ pedal and everything blows out with booming distortion.
If ‘Fluff’, by its title sounds cuddly, like a kitten, or a bit throwaway, like that which you’d sweep up from the corner or the room, the reality is quite the opposite: a six-minute seething industrial sprawl, it’s slow-burning, dark and menacing, and a clear choice of lead tune… Not, but then again, with an echo of Eastern promise and a certain ambience, and the strains of feedback a way in the distance, it perhaps is the most accessible cut on the album.
We’re proud to share a video exclusive of ‘Fluff’ here:
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Elsewhere, ‘Hymn to Then’ pitches cold synths and rolls of thunder to conjure dark images, a stormy backdrop to an eye-opening hybrid of prog rock, industrial, and krautrock: the result isn’t only epic, but conjures images of Dracula and unseen horrors with its icy atmospherics, while the last track, the eight-minute ‘Shatter’ begins with an eerie take on Celtic folk
Allens Cross is a highly imaginative work, an album that draws together a broad range of styles in a cohesive form. Its impact lands by stealth, building as it does across a range of styles, often creeping under the skin, unexpectedly, to register its effect. Sparse synths laser-cut across distorted, arrhythmic percussive blasts, as a low-level crackle and hum of distortion hovers around the level of the ground. Fractured vocals add to the disorientation, and the experience is uncomfortable. You cower, and will for release, not because it’s bad, but because it’s intentionally claustrophobic, torturous, and so well executed.
This is perhaps a fair summary of Allens Cross as a whole. It is not, by any means, an easy listen. Enjoyable would be a stretch. But it is utterly compelling.
It is back! For its 25th anniversary, MESH make their long-time out of print and much sought after second album The Point at Which It Falls Apart available again!
It will be a party! MESH will celebrate this eagerly anticipated reissue with a special show in Dresden, Germany where the UK legends will be joined by BEBORN BETON! "The Show At Which It Falls Apart" will take place at Strasse E on December 14, 2024.
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MESH comment: “Well, ‘we should do a show to celebrate this re-release’ was just a flippant comment made at a barbecue in August”, vocalist and keyboarder Richard Silverthron explains matter of fact. “Less than an hour later, our tour-manager Jan Winterfeld, who happened to be in earshot of this remark, had actually booked the very venue in Dresden where the iconic chair picture for the ‘TPAWIFA’ front cover was taken! So it’s happening: a one off show with a nostalgic leaning towards this album is going to take place on the 14th of December 2024.”
To introduce the sound of their remastered album MESH treat everybody to a second single. The track ‘This Without You (Fallen Mix)’ is taken from the bonus CD. Hear it here:
French atmospheric doom-metal act IXION has recently unveiled the new and final chapter of their trilogy, titled Regeneration, which is now available for streaming online just a few days ahead of the album release.
They write:
How would we feel if we transferred our consciousness into a new biotechnological body ? Would we rediscover the world, with new-born’s eyes ? What to do with our mortal remains ? How to grasp time, or even the meaning of life, while you experience immortality ? These are some of the questions that arise over REGENERATION, the third part of our new album Evolution ! Combining the array of sounds and vocals of the first two parts, it also reveals some unusual structures and time signatures for us, like an hybrid and still ethereal doom metal!
Stream Regeneration now and immerse yourself in the haunting soundscapes and thought-provoking themes that define this atmospheric doom-metal journey:
Four years after their critically acclaimed album L’Adieu aux Étoiles, IXION returns with Evolution, a three-part concept album released as individual EPs. This ambitious project explores the evolution of mankind, its interactions with androids, and the rise of post-humanism and will be released on October 25th via Finisterian Dead End Records.
The first chapter, Extinction, released in April, delves into humanity’s struggle with mortality in a world dominated by advancing android technology. This EP guides listeners through atmospheric doom, blending symphonic and acoustic soundscapes that feel both epic and intimate.
Restriction, released in June, shifts focus to the constrained existence of robots and androids, emphasizing their desire for emancipation. This installment features a more electronic approach to doom metal, heavily influenced by ’70s and ’80s ambient electronic music, synthwave, and sci-fi classics like Blade Runner.
The final chapter, Regeneration, was issued on October 18 and imagines a future where human consciousness is transferred into new biotechnological bodies. This EP merges the styles of the previous releases while introducing fresh structures that bridge hybrid and ethereal doom metal elements.
Having just embarked on their European tour, RATS OF GOMORRAH also drop the video single ‘Swarming Death’, which is also the opening track of the German death metal duo’s forthcoming debut full-length Infectious Vermin. The album is scheduled for release on January 17, 2025.
RATS OF GOMORRAH comment: “This track is an amalgamation of everything that we have to offer: a lot of ‘blegh’, grooves, hard hitting drums, and a catchy chorus!”, frontman Daniel Stelling writes. “The lyrics of ‘Swarming Death’ spin a tale that began with the track ‘Rats of Gomorrah’ on the 2021 Oblitherion EP of our predecessor band Divide. It deals with no less than world domination!”
Check the video here:
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Here they come: a crawling, sprawling, gnawing mass of vicious rodents on a rampage. RATS OF GOMORRAH unleash their debut full-length "Infectious Vermin" onto a horrified world.
If the image of a malicious horde of rats does not give you the creeps, maybe the fact that "Infectious Vermin" is the result of the German duo’s frustration with the metal scene and its reluctance to any change does. No worries, although RATS OF GOMORRAH are averse to simply regurgitating all the tired clichés of an average death metal album, they have not completely abandoned that ship. They just took some detours into heavy and speed metal territory, kept vocal pitching varied, and added some hot spices such as crust-infused riffs and catchy choruses.
As with their previous releases, RATS OF GOMORRAH diabolically wrapped environmental, social, and even political issues into Lovecraftian horror themes. A gnawing feeling that there is a rat in everything does also persist. And for the first time, some lyrics are even intimate and personal.
RATS OF GOMORRAH are one of those bands that have a much longer story behind them than their emergence under that name suggests. Strictly speaking the German duo only crawled out of their hole with a new rodent moniker in 2023. Yet they also started out with over a decade of death metal experience under their pelt.
Guitarist and vocalist Daniel Stelling and Moritz Paulsen on drums had already been a part of the internationally active Northern German death metal trio DIVIDE since 2009, which had become a duo in 2016. In this formation the musicians that have claimed BOLT THROWER, CARCASS, and VADER as major sources of influence managed to establish an excellent name in the death metal underground. In fact their standing in this scene grew to such an extent that DIVIDE was able to tour not only throughout all of Europe, but also in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and even in India. In 2022, they even won the German competition of the Wacken Metal Battle and were awarded a slot at the largest and most famous metal festival of this planet.
Despite their legacy and all the hard work that it took to establish their name, the duo was not content to remain within the limitations of their stylistic mould. Although they stayed true to death metal, they already started to make their music more rough and dirty, expanded their horizon with elements from black, thrash and other influences from extreme music, and even added a healthy dose of weirdness. Out of respect for their previous works and acknowledging the changes, the two Germans decided to change the band name to RATS OF GOMORRAH. As befits such rodent vermin, you may expect deep growls, thrash-infused riffs, blast beats and of course: rat-like shrieks!
Hopefully, by now there is an itchy feeling on your skin, and rustling noises from behind your walls, while a sense of dread and panic is spreading. The best antidote: blast Infectious Vermin on ten – and never a rat will you ever see more. Well, maybe a neighbour or four knocking on your door. So what?! Tell them all that RATS OF GOMORRAH rule supreme!
The Lovely Eggs really are the best advert for the DIY ethos going. Here we are, in the 300-capacity Crescent in York, just over two years since their last visit, and whereas then – again, on a Sunday night – there were twenty-eight tickets left on the door, they’ve sold out well in advance this time. This is likely due in no small part to the release of the absolutely cracking Eggsistentialism earlier in the year, but equally their ever-growing reputation as a truly outstanding live act.
Track back to 2015, the first time I saw them: it was a part of the sadly gone and fondly-remembered Long Division festival in Wakefield. They weren’t a new band even then, and while they drew a respectable crowd, were just one of many punky indie bands on the circuit. Seven albums in, and having stood up to gouging from arena venues on merch from support acts and done quite literally everything themselves these intervening years, they’ve risen to prominence not only as a super band, but the definitive outsider band. And, as with last time around, we have a curated lineup with a fellow Lancashire band opening, a poetry / spoken word performer by way of an interlude, before their own set. Previously, we got Arch Femmesis and Thick Richard: this time, it’s British Birds opening, and Violet Malice providing the off-kilter spoken word.
Both are excellent. I was hugely enthused by the return of British Birds to York, having first seen them in this very venuesupporting Pale Blue Eyes, and they did not disappoint. Their set is packed solid with hooks, harmonies, jangle… and tunes. A solid rhythm section and some twiddly vintage synth tones provide the base for two- and three-way vocal interplay. In the five months since their last visit, their sound seems to have grown meatier, more solid, and they’re tighter, more focused, and Emma Townson, centre stage on vocals, keyboard, tambourine, and cowbell is more nonchalant and less six bags of Skittles exuberant in her performance, but there’s a really great vibe about them on stage, and they feel like a cohesive unit, and one with great prospects if they maintain this trajectory.
British Birds
Violet Malice is not from Lancashire, but Kent. It’s appropriate. It could almost be a typo or a mispronunciation. She belongs to the glorious lineage of snappy poets who are likely to go down better at a rock gig than your average spoken-word night which clearly has an arc from John Coopeer Clark forwards. She tells it like it is: and how it is is hilarious, but uncomfortable. I’m reminded of Manchester writer and spoken word performer Sue Fox, and the way an audience will lap up her visceral monologues about cocks and cunts, howling with mirth but breathless as they ask themselves ‘did she really just say that?’
‘Stop eating your own food and jizzing on about how good it is’, Violet intones in a blank monotone. Her best line comes in ‘Posh Cunt’ where she drop ‘enough cum to make 24 meringue nests’. It’s fair to say that if a guy had delivered the line, it would not have had the same impact, and this is but one measure of the ground which still needs to be made up. But Violet Malice is leading the charge – as, indeed, are The Lovely Eggs. What they’ve achieved with this lineup is strong female representation without being male-exclusionary: they’ve not gone on a Dream Nails kind of anti-male campaign (which is simply inverse sexism) and there’s no adopted policy of hauling single men off for interrogation by security, a la The Last Dinner Party in Lincoln. It’s as strongly feminist as it gets: no-one is alienated, and the demographic across both genders and ages is well-balanced.
Violet Malice
My notes pretty much run out during The Lovely Eggs’ set, and I make no apology for this. When this happens, it means I’ve either overimbibed or am just so in the moment I forget, and tonight, it’s very much a case of the latter.
They’re straight in with ‘Death Grip Kids’, with the killer opening line ‘Shove your funding up your arse!’, of which I wrote elsewhere, ‘the song is a proper middle finger to the industry and the establishment, a manifesto which encapsulates the way they’ve rejected the mechanisms and payola of labels’. More than a song, it’s a manifesto, which sets the tone for their bursting-with-energy hour-long set.
The Lovely Eggs
‘Magic Onion’ is a standout; ‘I am Gaia’ brings the obligatory mid-set slower tempo tune, ahead of leading a big old singalong with ‘Fuck It’, and the second half of the set is just incendiary. The packed room is united and uplifted and collectively uplifted. There’s no encore, no artifice, just pure, life-affirming entertainment: everything you could want from a gig. The Lovely Eggs really are the best.
Shoegaze band Mondaze will release their second album ‘Linger’ on 22 November via Bronson Recordings.
They have recently shared their new single ‘Son of the Rambling Dawn’, which adopts a visceral and physical perspective. It delves into “the fleeting nature of life and the unavoidable fate that accompanies it, where uncertainty reigns and everything is destined to change.”
The sound is a contemporary and dynamic take on shoegaze, with guitars returning as a central element that creates an immersive experience and intricate layers, smoothly blending different influences to convey a modern sensibility.
Listen here (click image to play).
Since forming in 2018, Italy-based Mondaze have defined themselves as "heavy shoegaze", taking inspiration from bands like genre-giants Swervedriver and Ride, but also contemporary bands pushing through the limits of the genre like Nothing and Ringo Deathstarr. With Linger, they aim to amplify the melancholy tones of their frustration and rage. These sonic characteristics drove them to work with Chris Fullard (Idles and Boris) on mixing, and Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher) for mastering. The result is an album with roots, yet distinctly modern featuring arrangements that skillfully blend contemporary styles with dreamy and eerie atmospheres.
The innocence mission is releasing ‘Midwinter Swimmers,’ the second single, video and title track from their first studio album from the innocence mission in four years. The album sounds immediately like an old friend. At the same time, it’s a new kind of adventure for the beloved Pennsylvania band of high school friends Karen Peris, Don Peris, and Mike Bitts, having both an expansive, cinematic quality and the strange, lo-fi beauty of a newly discovered vintage folk/pop album, brimming with melody. Midwinter Swimmers is being released November 29 by Therese Records in North America, Bella Union in the U.K. and PVine in Japan.
Watch the video here:
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‘Midwinter Swimmers’ is the second in a trio of songs on the new album (the second being the title song) about missing a loved one who is away, and of how love can transcend distance, Karen says. Piano melodies and high electric with strummed nylon string guitars make a glimmery soundtrack for this tune. Karen Peris thinks of this as ‘a small song of looking ahead to the arrival of a loved and dear person.’ In part of the landscape, swimmers are seen from a distance and are refracted through tears and made more beautiful that way. The contrast of swimmers in the winter is connected with early flowers that, though fragile in appearance are especially hardy, enough to appear when it is still snowing. And this connection in turn becomes linked with the bravery of the person who has been away and will soon return.
This attentiveness to small detail typifies the way the innocence mission’s songs look closely at everyday moments as miraculous worlds of their own. Karen’s words stand on their own as poetry, with a particular sense of place and color, of the visual, that communicate universal experiences of change and loss, and of love, hope, and gratitude.
Following in the wake of their North America Tour 2024, Synth pop trio BEBORN BETON drop the second single ‘My Monstrosity (EMMON Remix)’, taken from the forthcoming new EP To the Stars, which has been scheduled for release on November 22, 2024.
BEBORN BETON comment: “When searching for artists to remix a track from ‘Darkness Falls Again’, we had one goal in mind: to collaborate with incredible female producers and performers whose work we admire", vocalist Stefan Netschio explains on behalf of the band. " While some were unavailable or tied up with other projects, we were thrilled to be able to collaborate with two of our favourite artists. One of whom is the immensely talented Swedish artist Emma Nylén, known as EMMON. She has re-imagined our track ‘My Monstrosity’ with her unique artistry, breathing new life into it with her beautiful and energetic remix. We could hardly wait for you to hear it, and here it is!”
‘Crippled Crow’ is the final single by Norwegian band Mayflower Madame’s much anticipated upcoming album Insight, out on 1st November via Night Cult Records/ Up In Her Room/Icy Cold Records.
Compared to the album’s previous singles, this newest track expands on their distinctive fusion of edgy post-punk and dreamy shoegaze, incorporating aspects of noise-rock and darkwave. Driven by a driving bass line and dynamic drumming, the song leads you on a captivating journey – from the haunting verse melodies to the intense guitar passages in the choruses, culminating in a powerful ending. It evokes feelings of longing and remorse amidst the wintry streets of Oslo, intertwined with a burning desire for transformation and catharsis.
Check the video here:
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Mayflower Madame return to the UK and Europe for a tour in November. Tickets are available here.
Aural Aggravation 