Archive for the ‘Recommended Streams and Videos’ Category

Following on from our effervescent review of All Are to Return’s monumentally brutal harsh assault in the form of their new album III, we’re inordinately proud to present a video exclusive of the track ‘Archive of the Sky’.

As the duo’s bio sets out, this is bleak music born of bleak times:

‘We have entered a new age of extinction – of poisoned lands, habitat destruction and encompassing climate catastrophe. AATR III reflects the harshness of life laid bare to the vagaries of capital, of uncaring generations heaping misery on their successors and the life-forms with which they share a fragile biosphere… Manmade disasters borne from decades of unfettered greed, of carbon capital plundering the earth and choking its habitants – capital unleashed through self-interested short-sightedness, decades of
corruption and denial of clear fact.

‘Our habitats swallowed by rising seas, engulfed in flames. As we drown, burn, or slowly parch and wither, we remember. Oceans heat and corals die as pale sludge in bright blue waters – thousands of years of unfathomable complexity undone in decades. Forests burn and ancient trees that were young when the pharaohs build their monuments perish in the flames. Poisons have spread through all ecosystems. The product of profit-maximizing agriculture at war with life. As insects disappear they signal extinction on a massive scale.

‘What is lost, is lost forever.

‘We will remember you through your shattered bones, your battered skulls turned fossil. We will remember you through your plastic deposits, your carbon waste, your radio-active poisons still leaking into our bodies. We will remember your bright and brief existence – and the inevitability of your demise.’

Dark times call for dark music, and All Are to Return bring it.

We are proud to present the apex of bleak in the form of ‘Archive of the Sky’. It hurts and we love it. Watch it here:

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AATR III Promo photo © Dejavie

Pic: Dejavie

Post-Punk duo, SUPERNOVA 1006 recently unveiled their latest single, ‘How I Need You’ via Negative Gain Productions.

‘How I Need You’ is a semantic continuation of SUPERNOVA 1006’s Chains album. It was planned to release it as a bonus initially. However, it looked isolated and self-sufficient. Therefore, it was decided to make the song an independent work. Its distinctive feature was a return to the old sound, characterized by the “stringiness” and buoyancy of a cold sound.

‘How I Need You’ gives the feeling of being immersed in a big cold black lake in which no one lives with the silence and comfort of a lonely existence. It is a sonic journey through a cyberpunk landscape, filled with pulsating rhythms and melancholic melodies.

The single release also features remixes from artists such as Casket Cassette, Giirls, CULTTASTIC & Blind Seagull.

Listen here:

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Within hours of receiving the devastating news that musical behemoth, recording artist and producer Steve Albini had passed away, former Pulled Apart By Horses guitarist turned electronic musician James Adrian Brown and Kingsley Hall of art-punk band Benefits set to work collaborating on their own take of one of Albini’s tracks. Kingsley and James’ interpretation of the classic Shellac track ‘The End of Radio’ fuses Hall’s provocative, moving vocals with Brown’s sonic sound-scaping; the cover is far removed from the original but is an apt tribute to the lost legend.

All proceeds from download sales will be donated to Steve Albini’s wife’s charity, ‘Letters to Santa’, which provides direct assistance to families facing urgent financial hardship.

Listen and download / donate here:

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CAMERATA MEDIOLANENSE unveil the occult video clip ‘Hermaphroditus’ as the second single taken from the Italian ensemble’s forthcoming new album Atalanta Fugiens ("Atalante Fleeing"), which is based on an enigmatic alchemist tome and slated for release on June 14, 2024.

Watch the video, directed by Alan Factotum and Carmen Onophrii, here:

CAMERATA MEDIOLANENSE comment: "The song ‘Hermaphroditus’ is based on the thirty-third emblem of the treatise ‘Atalanta Fugiens’ written by the German alchemist Michael Maier and released in 1617", composer, multi-instrumentalist, and choir vocalist Elena Previdi reveals. "The Hermaphrodite, also called rebis (‘double thing’), is the fruit of a chemical marriage between opposites: the masculine and the feminine, naturally, but also the sun and the moon, hot and cold, blood and milk, gold and silver, or even, as in this passage, sulfur and mercury. The Hermaphrodite therefore represents divine perfection, which is achieved at the cost of unspeakable suffering that underlies the process of transformation of derangement into stillness, and that underlies the conflict between delirium and reason. Musically, a timeless voice starts the tormented alchemical process generated by the two choirs and the two harpsichords. The direction of the music is clear and neat, but at the end the funeral march of the horns makes its way. "

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“’These Things’ was the last song written for Delights Of My Life. Often the last song is written with the aid of what has come before it, the other songs on the record.
We have one song to write, or so we think, now then, what shall it be and why? I think that I asked this question. We will never know. And I also think that I thought that it might be novel to have a song with a very clear form (four times through a melodic verse, with a tag at the end that wraps it nicely). That, and that the record may very well appreciate a song with little to no improvisation. A straight curveball!

Eric Cazdyn, who made the ‘These Things’ video (and around 18 other videos for my music) may have heard the song similarly. He has certainly given me that impression. What I see in the video is a very simple movement or gesture, but with an immense amount of minimal detail. Well, that is how I often describe the dance of Angela Schubot, although she is just on the verge of dancing here in this video. She dances like vegetation. Or, she shows me again and again that vegetation is a dancing world.”

— Eric Chenaux

Check ’These Things’ here:

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Today, Thou share ‘Unbidden Guest’ from their upcoming album, Umbilical.

About the track, Bryan Funck comments, “Physical deterioration by way of psychological disarray. Retreading a well-worn path of self grievance. Othering mental illness and learned behaviour in order to crush them under the dominance of epistemic willpower. ‘The last time you cried, who’d you think was inside?’”

Listen to ‘Unbidden Guest’ here:

Thou has always been a force of raw energy and unapologetic dissent, defying easy categorisation and challenging listeners to confront the complexities of existence. Their forthcoming album, Umbilical, is their firmest nod to the raw intensity of obscure ’90s DIY hardcore punk. It’s a record filled with mosh-ready riffs, heavy breakdowns and scathing vocals. The band’s aesthetic and political impulses have always been punk and like anyone embroiled in the subculture Thou have been exploring what it means to exist within and without a rigid morality. That exploration takes thematic centre on Umbilical and their self-assessment is as harsh as that of the world around them.

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Photo credit: Liam Neighbors

It’s a good day when two of our favourite Australian alternative acts come together to release a single, especially when that single represents the best of both, and comes on with a bustin’ cyclical riff reminiscent of Bleach-era Nirvana and packs everything into a magnificent no-frills, no-fat two-and-a-half minutes.

Today is that day, when Mannequin Death Squad unveil ‘Safe and Warm’ featuring DZ Deathrays.

It’s the nuts. Get your lugs round it here:

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Norwegian grindcore innovators Beaten to Death have recently shared a video for a brand new track off the ban’’s forthcoming sixth full-length studio album Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis, which is scheduled to be released on May 31st via Mas-Kina Recordings. 

Watch the ‘Enkel Resa Till Limfabriken’ video here:

As always, the record was recorded live and mixed by guitarist Tommy Hjelm, and just like the previous two releases, William Hay signs the amazing illustration that adorns its cover.

The Oslo-based five-piece claim that they have all “aged horribly” since the band’s acclaimed last album, Last Maar, Ik Verhuis Naar Het Bos, was released in 2021 and have embraced that natural process and its theme within this new effort, but dismiss any thoughts of a band slowing down and settling into a more relaxed acceptance of things though for Beaten to Death are as uncompromising and voracious as ever and Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis ensures no one will have any doubts. Unleashing their familiar and fiercely individual torrents of grindcore dispute with melodic discord, the new offering is Beaten to Death at their most physically merciless, creatively ravenous and gleefully mischievous.

Unleashed on the grindcore scene back in 2011, Beaten To Death has quarrelled with and dismissed expectations of the genre and the boundaries of any hardcore fury from day one. It has seen their five full-lengths from debut Xes and Strokes through to Last Maar, Ik Verhuis Naar Het Bos greedily welcomed and frequently acclaimed. Of course their sixth full-length holds nothing back in its dismissal of trends and expected processed procedures in its making either, broadly grinning at both and having fun with the themes it takes apart.

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Now ahead of their appearance at Desertfest London next month and their upcoming UK tour with High On Fire, SILVERBURN, have shared a new lyric video for ‘Pain Body’.  ‘Jimbob comments,

"Pain Body is an energetic cleanse, an aural exorcism of toxic spectres. True catharsis and a sonic healing rite.”

Watch the video for ‘Pain Body’ here:

Welsh metal visionary Jimbob Isaac, known from his previous bands Taint and Hark, recorded the album during lockdown in 2020. He handled all vocals, guitar, bass and drums himself. With this album, Jimbob has meticulously crafted a wholly uncompromising solo offering in the truest sense. It has been said that extreme conditions demand extreme responses, and Self Induced Transcendental Annihilation (‘SITA’) began as an elemental response to the almighty global gut-punch that surrounded it’s creation.

From the world-ending double-kick maelstrom of opening track “Annihilation” to the cinematic, discordant chug and release of “Etheric Crush” this album draws from Isaac’s beloved eras of 90’s metal and 00’s metallic hardcore, noisecore, space and sludge metal and bands like Botch, Mastodon, Knut, Converge, Keelhaul, Crowbar, Sepultura, Neurosis and Helmet.

SILVERBURN tour w/ High on Fire

June 14th – Islington Assembly Hall, London, England
June 15th – Rebellion – Manchester, England
June 16th – Slay – Glasgow, Scotland
June 17th – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, England
June 18th – Thekla, Bristol, England

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Following the release of their raging & explosive debut EP Triple Death, East Yorkshire based noise punks Bug Facer are back with penetrating new single ‘Fiery Demon Attacks Old Man On Bridge’ – a Tolkien-esque fantasy garage punk track heavily inspired by The Lord of the Rings, that started life as a riff & a shout!

Released on Hull based label Warren Records, ‘Fiery Demon Attacks Old Man On Bridge’ is the first track to be written by their new 4-piece line-up & was produced by local indie ‘master of the faders’ Adam Pattrick.

The track follows a fellowship’s passage through an old mine infested with Goblins & Orcs who battle with an aged wizard & the Demon of Hellfire. As always, the release offers an insight into the band’s overarching concept around their music, in which they aim to deafen audiences with pure primal musical grit & emotion!

The band say of the release “We wrote a track like this because as a band we don’t necessarily take ourselves too seriously. Music is about creativity & having fun, not every track has to have subliminal meaning. Just have a bit of fun!”

Listen to ‘Fiery Demon Attacks Old Man On Bridge’ here:

Bug Facer was formed after long-term friends James Cooper (guitar) and Will Longton (drums/vocals) left their previous band Woodlouse, a psychedelic progressive rock act, wanting to explore a darker tone, delve into primal rhythms & strip back their sound. Through interactions on the local music scene, the band next recruited Tom Steel on bass & vocals plus Josh Burdett on guitar which brought an extra layer of grit & warmth to their already huge sound. Taking inspiration from bands like Thee Oh Sees, The Jesus Lizard, Tropical Fuck Storm, Sepultura, Code Orange, Slint & Black Country New Road they began jamming, adopting a trance like approach in rehearsals, waiting for moments of magic to appear from the darkness.

Describing themselves as a noise punk band forged from sand & broken glass, ready to make some music for cave people to grind bones, gnaw at rocks & howl around a fire pit to, Bug Facer’s scratchy fuzz dissonance is born from an ancient primordial power & their goal is to rattle the bones of anyone within a thousand-mile radius.

With a growing number of gigs at Hull’s New Adelphi Club their vision is fast becoming reality… & talking of visions, when band member Will was a young lad he thought he saw the ghost of Michael Jackson, only to find out later that day that Jackson had indeed died!

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