CNTS, the Los Angeles-band featuring members of Dead Cross, Retox and Qui, have debuted a second song from their forthcoming album (Thoughts & Prayers, 29th March) with today’s release of ‘I Won’t Work For You’ and its accompanying video.
Matt Cronk shares the story behind the song: “’I Won’t Work For You’ was inspired by the talking point being bandied about, mostly by conservatives, that ‘nobody wants to work anymore’ after having collected unemployment during the lockdown. I think a more accurate way to frame that is that nobody wants to work for people who treat them badly. Nobody wants to work without the expectation of fair pay and dignity. Nobody wants to work for the sole purpose of enriching someone else, and nor should they! Work sucks. I think a lot of people, myself included, are inspired to find more equitable means of supporting themselves or at least expect more from their employers.”
Michael Crain adds, very succinctly: “Bosses suck.”
The video, directed by Meriel O’Connell, who also crafted the band’s ‘Smart Mouth’ clip, was filmed at a pizza joint where Michael Crain worked. During tough times, Crain occasionally treated Cronk to a free slice.
Pissed Jeans is sharing the Joe Stakun-directed official video for “Cling to a Poisoned Dream,” a bruising meditation of harsh truths, and a highlight from their excellent sixth album Half Divorced, out this Friday, March 1st, worldwide on Sub Pop.
Next week, Pissed Jeans will appear on The Best Show with Tom Scharpling on March 5th and will also host an hourlong takeover of NTS Radio on Friday, March 8th (5pm GMT).
Watch the video here:
The twelve songs on Half Divorced skewer the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood. Pissed Jeans’ – Matt Korvette (vocals), Bradley Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass), and Sean McGuinness (drums) – notorious acerbic sense of humor remains sharper than ever as they dismember some of the joys that contemporary adult life has to offer.
Half Divorced was produced and mixed by Pissed Jeans and recorded by Don Godwin with assistance from Mike Petillo at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland, and mastered by Arthur Rizk (co-producer and mixer for Why Love Now).
We love a bit of Pound Land here at Aural Aggravation, so we’re particularly proud to be able to break some news and present an exclusive in the form of the video for ‘Pistol Shrimp’ waaaay ahead of the release of the forthcoming album.
Following 2023’s critically-acclaimed album Violence, Pound Land return with Mugged which despite being their 7th album release, is their first to have been fully recorded in an actual studio.
Recorded live in one intense day at Tremolo Studios, Stoke-on-Trent (UK), Mugged is a 48-minute whirl of raw frustration, kitchen-sink surrealism and filthy noise-punk sludge, soundtracking vitriolic stream of consciousness societal observations.
It’s also the first album to fully feature the full Pound Land band that many experienced on last year’s UK tour: Founding duo Nick Harris and Adam Stone, along with Rich Lamell on bass, Steve Taylor on drums and Jo Stone on sax. Additionally on this album, Jase Kester of Omnibadger/Omnibael joins on electronics.
Dutch artist and Nordic folk pioneer Kati Rán presents the new single ‘Stone Pillars’ together with the news of her signing to Svart Records, based in Finland, for the 2024 release of her long awaited 13 track full length album SÁLA.
The track “Stone Pillars” written and performed by Kati Rán, explores new prophecies, stone circles, and the hand of the spinning Fates. Lyrically, “Stone Pillars” hints at the Icelandic oldest counsel tradition of the Allting, old Nordic Gods, and a prophecy by a female seer. With Norwegian metal vocalist extraordinaire Gaahl (Gaahl, Wyrd, Wardruna) and Mitch Harris (Napalm Death) on backing vocals, Icelandic choir, and the resurrection of a rare lava stone marimba (Sígur Rós, Steindór Andersson) the new single “Stone Pillars” by Kati Rán is deeply set in a Nordic landscape, as the 1st single of the new album “SÁLA” (24th May 2024).
Kati Rán is known for her collaborative audio work for Netflix’s tv series VIKINGS: VALHALLA, films and work for videogames, her stage appearances with Wardruna, Myrkur and Gaahl’s Wyrd to name a few, and her previous releases of the successful album; and Nordic dark folk tracks “Blodbylgje” and Icelandic track “Unnr | Mindbeach”; that run millions of streams and gathered a tightly knit Nordic Folk music loving audience around her.
Kati Rán elaborates: ”Signing to Svart Records was for me the most natural next step to collaborate and release my music with long-standing expertise in bringing out amazing artists and vinyl for true music connoisseurs, and to be able to bring my audience a full experience to enjoy my new Nordic Dark folk album SÁLA (Old Norse for both “sea” and “soul”). My album SÁLA has been tenuously crafted and produced together with Jaani Peuhu (Swallow the Sun, IANAI, Lord of the Lost, Hallatar) and is curated of sorts by my many years of writing, researching and travelling the Northern landscapes; taking on board with me incredible artists, sounds, musicians and producing it together closely with Jaaniand also Christopher Juul (Heilung) to breathe the Nordic soul into the heart of this album. It’s exciting to open the gates to SÁLA with the release of STONE PILLARS. It embraces our most vulnerable side, questions our mind, and attempts to resurrect, or reposition ourselves through spinning with the Fates. It dips right into the heart of things”.
Kati Rán’s new album SÁLA will be released 24th of May 2024 on Svart Records.
NYC-based electronic punk band LIP CRITIC have detailed their anticipated debut album – Hex Dealer – out 17th May via Partisan Records. To coincide with the announcement, the band has shared the album’s lead single and accompanying music video: ‘Milky Max’.
‘Milky Max’ is a pulverising slab of electronic hardcore. The song’s shapeshifting groove anchors a sound that’s theatrical, captivatingly irreverent, and completely outside so much of modern experimental music. Meanwhile Bret Kaser’s vocal delivery feels like it’s being delivered by a cult leader who has occupied the announcer’s booth at a football stadium and refuses to come out (“All my life I just wanted to live / Now I gotta die just because of what I did”).
The official video for ‘Milky Max’ showcases a fully playable video game inspired by the song and designed by Jesse Natter (brother of Lip Critic drummer Ilan Natter). Direct link to play the video game HERE.
Check the video here:
‘Milky Max’ follows previous singles ‘It’s The Magic’ and ‘The Heart,’ which earned early critical acclaim from NME (“on their way to becoming the next great NYC band”), Paste (“an apocalyptic wasteland of NYC’s best underground punk”), Rolling Stone (‘Songs You Need to Know’), Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC 6 Music, and Matt Wilkinson (“totally essential”).
Produced in collaboration by vocalist Bret Kaser and Connor Kleitz, ‘Hex Dealer’ represents an evolution of the eclectic style that the group began cultivating on earlier projects. Drummers Danny Eberle and Ilan Natter combine breakbeats and pingy snares with heavy cymbal and tom work, creating a singular mixture of classic punk/hardcore and electronic styles. The end result is 12 frantic tracks of postmodern pop for the genreless future. A project of wide-reaching sonic and thematic curiosity, above all ‘Hex Dealer’ is an inquisition into the state of spiritual marketplace and the isolating results of consumption.
Audiences have also already been captured by the sheer energy and undeniable chemistry as they toured the US, sharing stages with IDLES, Screaming Females, and Geese, and made their way across the UK / EU including a stop at the Pitchfork Festival in Paris. Lip Critic will tour extensively behind ‘Hex Dealer’, including stops at SXSW, End Of The Road and further UK dates. UK dates are listed below.
LIP CRITIC – UK TOUR DATES: 13 May – The Louisiana – Bristol, UK 14 May – The Deaf Institute (The Lodge) – Manchester, UK 15 May – The Windmill – London, UK 29 Aug – 01 Sep – End of the Road – UK
Today, the long-running New York band A Place To Bury Strangers announce the single/video ‘Change Your God’, from their new 7-inch series, The Sevens, via Dedstrange. ‘Change Your God’ appears alongside ‘It Is Time’ in the first instalment of the series, out digitally today and physically this Friday, 23rd February. The Sevens are four 7-inch vinyl records on white vinyl being released each month from now through April. They unveil a treasure trove of previously unreleased tracks from A Place To Bury Strangers’ critically acclaimed sixth album, See Through You. Renowned for their visceral sonic assault and immersive live performances, A Place To Bury Strangers has cemented the end-all-be-all space for over-the-top post-punk/shoegaze destruction. With this special vinyl collection, the band invites listeners to delve deeper into their sonic universe, exploring uncharted territories and hidden gems.
“When looking back at the recordings that were done around the time of See Through You, there were a bunch of great tracks that just captured life back then and really had something incredible going on,” says frontman Oliver Ackerman. “Even though they are a bit raw and a bit personal, I thought it would be a mistake if they didn’t come out. I thought it would be best to go back to my roots and put out a series of 7-inches the way A Place To Bury Strangers started. That strange weird format where the tracks each speak for themselves; no album context to muddy the water. These tracks are such a contrast to the way I am feeling now and the current songs we’ve been working on so slip back into this moment in time.”
Watch the video for ‘Change Your God’ here:
AA
A Place To Bury Strangers Tour Dates:
Thu 22 Feb – Queens, NY @ TV Eye [The Sevens Release Show]
Thu 21 Mar – Boise, ID @ Treefort Festival [The Sevens Release Show]
Doom mountaineers Cancervo streams ‘Sacrilegious Mass,’ the first single from their third LP, III, set for release on 29 March via Electric Valley Records. On the album, the Italian trio continues the tradition of chronicling the myths surrounding Monte Cancervo — the Bergamo-based mountain that stands as the inspiration behind the band’s moniker as well as the thematic backdrop for their music.
On the theme of ‘Sacrilegious Mass,’ Cancervo informs: “The Sacrilegious Mass, celebrated in Val Vedra, is an ancient story about a herdsman and his rebellion against the conventions that required him to go down to the village for the celebration of Holy Mass. The brave man decided to create an altar and celebrate a sacrilegious mass that was interrupted by God. All the presents were engulfed in flames and bound for eternity to the underworld.”
Portuguese blackened post-metal collective Music In Low Frequencies have just dropped a music video for a new track off the band’s second full-length album Catharsis, which was released in early December via Raging Planet Records.
Check it here:
AA
The band offers the following comment about this new track: “’Unconsciousness’ talks about a variety of ambiguous feelings residing in our inner self. It’s the expression of the unquieting sensations that come from loving someone too much, and as you rise them to a godlike level, you start seeing all the toxicity coming from there. While you can see the beauty of it all, you also become aware of all the inherent harm and danger. That’s something that hits us all sometime.
“You can consider it as a love song, but above all we wish you’d listen to it as a song of hope and inspiration. The imagery we created for this video is particularly dark, with slightly bright tiny details, for we intended to recreate the vibe of the message going with the lyrics of this song and also with the hovering drone guitars.”
Formed in 2012, Music In Low Frequencies, is a gathering of three old friends that thrive throughout the music they create together. They were born from the desire of making something meaningfully intimate with hints of the harshness of our times. With that being said, it is understandable that their sound is charged with gloomy melodies, heavy riffs and doom tunes.
They released their first album Sowing the seed in 2014 and promoted it through Europe, headlining some shows and also playing in some important festivals in Portugal and other smaller showcases. They went through a period of time where creation was delayed by some other important matters, but soon time passed and new melodies started to follow.
Music in Low Frequencies felt they wanted to go deeper down the rabbit hole as they started to feel the urge for darker and sludgier notes. They refine and redefine their sound and Catharsis is born. Resembling the atmosphere of these past times, this album is the result of a period of darkness, reflection, contemplation of the soul and purgation of the spirits and it hopes to embrace all the heavy spirits we have within our minds and put them to rest. Catharsis wishes to indulge all the senses whatsoever, and purge all the demons we carry through our music. “
Skate punk band Totally Slow infuses melodic hardcore with a creative surf vibe and a 90s basement punk ethos. Their music is a blend of razor-sharp hooks and left-leaning politics, delivered amidst a wall of guitars. Eddie Sanchez (Night!Night!, Solar Halos, The Love Language) has recently joined on bass, completing the current lineup which includes Andy Foster, Chuck Johnson, and Scott Hicks.
Having shared the stage with various acts, from Agent Orange to Laura Jane Grace to Man or Astroman, they bring a diverse musical experience to their audience.
In celebration of their fourth LP, the band unveils the melodic punk anthem ‘Future Burns.’
“This song describes a state of emergency. When the concentration and focus that an urgent situation demands, completely overruns and obliterates the concept of time. An hour becomes a few seconds, or the other way around – the usual routes of communication fall flat to the ground and become unnecessary. Somehow there is this telepathic understanding of what has to be done. The image is a large field of withered grass standing in roaring flames, with a handful of people desperately trying to put the fire out” – Erika Angell
Her debut album The Obsession With Her Voice is out 8th March 2024.
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