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.
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.
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.
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
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!
Today, we share the mysterious and poignant track ‘Moonshiner’ from the eponymous solo album by guitarist, producer and composer Alessandro ‘Asso’ Stefana. The album is due for release on 17th May 2024 via Ipecac Recordings, with PJ Harvey as Executive Producer. ‘Moonshiner’ is one of the track from the albums featuring the voice of Roscoe Holcomb taken from the Smithsonian Folkways archives.
Asso describes his use of the archives as “a powerful and moving testimony to a bygone era… I have always been fascinated by the idea of mixing folk, a music so intimately linked to the land, with something that goes beyond the boundaries of the genre.” One of Asso’s aims for this album was for it to feel “suspended between earth and sky” – the interplay between decades old recordings with new improvisations evokes feelings of being grounded and untethered at the same time.
Montréal guitarist and producer Kee Avil returns with Spine, the follow up to her 2022 debut LP Crease, an intricately constructed, knife-edge take on avant-pop which garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of The Year along the way.
Kee Avil’s music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant, and with her sophomore release Spine, she strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much rawer sound. She calls it folk—and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences.
Avil says: “‘Gelatin’ sounds like rock and mud to me. It’s dense and heavy, viscous. It feels like it emanates from underground, underwater. It took a while for this song to come together – it started off with just voice and foley for a long time. When the beats were put in, it finally all glued together.”
French psychedelic/prog-rock collective Djiin will have recently revealed a music video for a brand song of their forthcoming fourth full-length album Mirrors due out on May 3 via Klonosphere Records/Season of Mist.
The follow-up to 2021’s third album Meandering Soul was recorded, mixed and mastered by Peter Deimel at Black Box Studio and sees Djiin further honing their exciting and powerful blend of psychedelic stoner rock and 70’s progressive rock. Written during the last four years by Chloé Panhaleyx (Vocals/Electric Harp), Allan Guyomard (Drums/Backing Vocals), Tom Penaguin (Guitar/Backing Vocals) and Charlélie Pailhes (Bass/Backing Vocals), "Mirrors" is full of powerful and fuzzy riffs, twisted beats, psychedelic melodies and vocal incantations that invites listeners to embark on transcendental and magical journey. The use of the electric harp in this “classic” rock line-up adds a unique and surprising sonority that accentuate the band’s mystic and ritualistic universe.
Anglo-Finnish progressive metallers Wheel recently announced the release of their much-anticipated third studio album Charismatic Leaders on the 3rd May 2024 (InsideOutMusic). The album was meticulously crafted to meet Wheel’s ever-heightening benchmarks and recording with engineers/co-producers Daniel Bergstrand and Fredrik Thordendal (Meshuggah) stretched from August to December 2023. The end result, mixed by Forrester Savell, has consolidated all the gains of what came before: singer/guitarist James Lascelles, lead guitarist Jussi Turunen and drummer Santeri Saksala’s third album represents their heaviest and most conscious music to date.
Today they launch the albums third single, ‘Disciple’, and you can listen now here:
The band will be celebrating the release of their new album with their first ever shows in Australia (supporting label-mates Caligula’s Horse) as well as their first ever North American headline shows. Later in the year the band will return to Europe for further headline dates, and you can find the full list below:
31st October – Olympia, Tampere, Finland
1st November – Sawohouse UG, Kuopio, Finland
2nd November – On The Rocks, Helsinki, Finland
7th November – Lutakko, Jyväskylä, Finland
8th November – Finlandia-Klubi, Lahti, Finland
9th November – 45 Special, Oulu, Finland
15th November – Logo, Hamburg, Germany
16th November – Melkweg Up, Amsterdam, Netherlands
17th November – 013, Tilburg, Netherlands
19th November – Rebellion, Manchester, UK
20th November – Cathouse, Glasgow, UK
21st November – Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, UK
22nd November – 1865, Southampton, UK
23rd November – Underworld, London, UK
24th November – Thekla, Bristol, UK
26th November – Kavka, Antwerp, Belgium
27th November – Luxor, Cologne, Germany
28th November – Colos Saal, Aschaffenburg, Germany
30th November – Backstage, Paris, France
2nd December – Komplex, Zurich, Switzerland
3rd December – Legend, Milan, Italy
4th December – Backstage Halle, Munich, Germany
5th December – Analog Music Hall, Budapest, Hungary
Avant-garde green metal outfit BOTANIST conclude the sowing of new singles with the track ‘Royal Protea’, which is taken from the forthcoming album Paleobotany that will begin to bloom in shops on May 17, 2024.
The ancestors of the flowing plant family of Protea evolved about 75–80 million years ago on the supercontinent of Gondwanaland, which covered most of the southern hemisphere. Due to the continental drift of earth’s tectonic plates, Gondwana separated into smaller parts that form today’s southern continents. In present times, Protea are mainly found in the area of South Africa. Its largest species, the self-fertilising Protea cynaroides, which is also called Giant Protea and King Sugar Bush is the country’s national plant.
Listen to ‘Royal Protea’ here:
AA
On their twelfth full-length Paleobotany, BOTANIST take us back more than 70 million years to a time when dinosaurs ruled the planet and early forests began to turn to coal. Before the age of giants ended in flames with the apocalyptic impact of the Chicxulub asteroid, some families of plants that still have descendants today also grew much larger.
Paleobotany comes with all the trademark characteristics that set BOTANIST apart from all other metal acts on this planet. Lyrically, the band from San Francisco, CA revolves around species of plants – in a clean break from the usual genre stereotypes like Satan, dragons, and booze. Their music clearly has its foundation anchored in ‘metal’, but instead of 6-string guitars the Americans use 110-string hammered dulcimers. To the confused horror of traditionalists, BOTANIST fit these percussion-stringed folk instruments with magnetic pickups and distort them through various perverse means that range from amplifiers via analogue tape to digital manipulation. The resulting sound is as unique as spectacular.
Aural Aggravation 