Celestial North released her new single ‘Otherworld’ on Friday. this life affirming and glorious dreamscape is the lead single and title track from her forthcoming debut album ‘Otherworld’- released on the 7th of July 2023.
It was premiered on Chris Hawkins, BBC 6 Music show this week he described it as ‘Stunning. An uplifting, beautiful dreamscape to Utopia and might be the best music you’ll hear this week”.
Hear it here:
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Louisville KY alt-duo Feral Vices take on abusive religious systems on new single ‘Lock & Key’.
Lead vocalist and guitarist Alexander Hoagland says, “’Lock & Key’ is about the abusive religious systems that I think a lot of us grew up in where leaders were taking advantage of their positions for money, power, sex, or some combination of those. Being in that world, you’re taught that this is a blessing or that is a blessing when in reality you’re being taken advantage of and are forced to experience the evils of it alone because once you start tugging at the strings of that, the whole system falls apart. It’s a very hard and lonely place to be even though you’re surrounded by people and I think that makes it even harder to get out of or acknowledge the reality of. So, this song was my way of talking about that and processing it for myself.”
Watch the video here:
As a two-piece alternative rock band out of Louisville, KY, Feral Vices has created a sound and feel all their own. Drawing from influences ranging from Queens of the Stone Age to Refused to The Jesus Lizard and even The Dillinger Escape Plan, lead singer and guitarist Alexander Hoagland and drummer Justin Cottner bring a feel to the world of two-piece bands not yet well tread. Constantly touring and releasing new music, the prolific duo has earned spots on the stage with bands like Four Year Strong, Microwave, Save Face, and more. As well as having their song "Mass Produce Your Revolution" as the end credits to the Scott Adkins and Ray Stevenson film Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, Feral Vices is a band to keep an eye on.
Photo: Riley Aaron (@imrileyaaron)
When night falls onto the sub-arctic landscapes of the Land of the Thousand Lakes, in the twilight of forest and swamps, the veils between our reality and the otherworld grow thin. It is at those times that stories such as ‘the fairy tale that never was’ leak into the lyrics and music of TENHI.
On their sixth album, Valkama, which translates as ‘harbour’ or ‘shelter’ among other meanings, the Finns originally began telling of a journey that was meant as a fairy tale in a burning, war-torn village and the crossing over dark waters to an island of the dead. The island is called Verisurma (‘the place for those who have suffered blood-death’) in Finnish folklore, where those dwell that died in war or were killed with a blade, and who shed blood on its shore forever.
Yet, during the ten years that TENHI were working on the album, our reality started to bleed into the otherworld with its own terrors and wars. Year after year, the musicians felt their story becoming more and more real until the point was reached that the band decided to change course.
Although echoes of the original work are still audible in the final music and visible in the artwork, the album now feels more harmonious and comforting, even brighter. The journey from this world to the other is more abstract and peaceful while still crossing dark waters, but after a decade TENHI have found the harbour called "Valkama".
This transition of the story but also the long journey that the band undertook to reach their sheltering harbour are both reflected in the artwork of Valkama : An old wooden boat serves as a metaphor for various meanings such as a vessel, a coffin, a womb, a shelter, change, and the journey itself.
Valkama is now streaming in full at the link below; and TENHI have added a lyric video including an English translation for each song (click image for link):
New York experimental noise duo Cinema Cinema unleash their latest sonic exploration in the shape of Mjölnir in July, and this time they’ve got none other than polymath percussionist Thor Harris joining them. The album was recorded at historic BC Studio in Brooklyn, NY, with legendary noise producer Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, John Zorn, Boredoms).
Inviting multi-instrumentalist Harris into the fold inspires new direction for the ensemble. Exploring his creative repertoire, Thor makes use of BC’s synth collection along with an assortment of drums and arcane percussion pieces to leave his fingerprints on the proceedings. The trio submerge themselves in the strange beauty of chaotic sound, captured inside BC’s cavernous recording space.
Tracked just before the pandemic, Bisi spent time cultivating the sessions in the months that followed, helping shape one of the band’s most expressive records to date. This marking the third time that CINEMA CINEMA and Martin have worked together (2014’s A Night at The Fights and 2017’s Man Bites Dog), the familiarity breeds wild results.
The first flavour of those results can be heard on ‘War on You’. Hear it here:
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FEN release the dark monumental track ‘Wracked’ as the final single taken from the East Anglians’ forthcoming album Monuments to Absence, which is chalked up for release on July 7, 2023.
FEN comment on ‘Wracked’: “There are days when one is struck by a sense of such overwhelming black despair that it strikes almost as a physical force”, mastermind Frank “The Watcher” Allain writes. “We are literally wracked with sorrow, so overcome with the deepest sadness that it hits like a blow – staggering one backwards, grinding us to a halt. At such moments, one can only wait for the wave to subside, to retreat into the dark, yawning chasm of one’s own mind; and hope that the storm will pass as swiftly as possible. ‘Wracked’ speaks of those days.”
Listen to this nine-minute monster here:
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FRAYLE deliver a beautiful take on SOUNDGARDEN’s ‘Head Down’, fueled by the mystery of Gwyn Strang’s haunting vocals and down-tuned frying guitars. The fast-rising doom act from Cleveland, OH has furthermore illustrated this dark song with a stunning video, which you can see here:
The massive double album Superunknown Redux has been scheduled for release on July 14.
Parallel to Superunknown Redux, Magnetic Eye Records will release the by now customary companion album entitled Best of Soundgarden Redux that contains further 15 cover versions of deep cuts and all-time classics from across SOUNDGARDEN’s extensive catalogue recorded by more exciting artists.
FRAYLE comment: "Soundgarden was an integral part of our development as musicians from an early age with brillant songs such as ‘Fell on Black Days’,”’Black Hole Sun’, the list just goes on and on", singer Gwyn Strang writes and multi-instrumentalist Sean Bilovecki continues: "For ‘Head Down’, we deconstructed the song and switched its timing to 4/4. The song as recorded by Soundgarden has overlapping drum parts and complicated timings for example. We stripped it down and gave the track elements of tribal drumming, while we added layers of vocal harmonies and voices coming at the listener from all angles."
Frayle by Jeremey Saffer
Death Pill, the hardcore punk trio from Ukraine, released their debut album on 24th February, a year to the day that Russia invaded their country.
Tracking started during Covid and was completed in late 2021, only three tracks were mixed before the war hit. However the band and their production team were able to somehow continue and finished everything including the artwork in 5 months whilst the Russian invasion rolled on. A testament to their drive and single mindedness.
The band are currently mid-way through their ‘Over My Dead Body’ European tour, which defiantly began in Kyiv, Ukraine on 20th May. Now the band have shared a new video for ‘Would You Marry Me’ with the bassist Natalya commenting, “This is a song about a rejected wedding proposal. Mariana wrote it after she proposed to her boyfriend and he turned her down. I shot this video when I moved to Barcelona and my best friend came to visit me. She became the main character, and I did the whole production. It took me about 72 hours to finalize the idea, shoot and edit it. I put my pain and suffering into this video, it’s a reflection and experience of personal rejections, dedicated to all the broken hearts.”
Watch the video now:
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DEATH PILL ‘OVER MY DEAD BODY TOUR’
JUNE
2nd – Germany, Bochum, Wageni
3rd – Germany, Ellerdorf, Wilwarin Festival
9th – UK, Bradford, 1 in 12
11th – UK, Manchester, Retro
12th – UK, Bristol, Louisiana
13th – UK, Brighton, Green Door Store
14th – UK, London, Lexington w/ Shooting Daggers
Death Pill by Tementiy Pronov : Slippy Inc.
Continuing their project of releasing a single a month, Argonaut’s apparently unique open-ended album, Songs from the Black Hat makes a bit of a swerve on this outing, in that it’s neither an original song nor a studio recording.
The single for June is a live cover version of the Stooges punk rock classic, performed in all of its ‘raw power’ at the Hope and Anchor on 4th February 2023, and is accompanied by some far-out artwork that’s absolutely barking.
Listen here:
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Godflesh share new track "LAND LORD" from their forthcoming album, PURGE. It’s a track which spirals out in pent-up rage from the first second, distorting and mutating 90’s drum and bass through the Godflesh filter.
About the track Justin comments, “’LAND LORD’ references ownership, entitlement and the objectification of human beings, as practised by almost anyone who wields power.”
Listen to ‘Land Lord’ here:
With the highly anticipated new album PURGE, Godflesh brings a whole host of new dirges and laments. Amongst the many layers of dirt, PURGE mangles 90s hip hop grooves and puts them through the Godflesh filter to create something futuristic in style – and utterly unique.
Both minimal and maximal, Godflesh deliver alien grooves that swing whilst also retaining the psychedelic, bad trip edge with layer upon layer of filth and heaviness – that Godflesh have always been known for. This is, and always has been, feel-bad music.
The title alone – PURGE – references directly how songwriter and creator Justin K. Broadrick utilises Godflesh’s music as a temporary relief from his diagnosed autism and PTSD. It’s the next stage in a journey he has been on since he began creating music, feeling alone and like an outsider in any scene or group, from childhood through to adulthood.
The music of Godflesh gives Broadrick the means to express a lifetime of feeling misunderstood and overwhelmed by hyper-sensitivity. The band is the vehicle to provide some sense of catharsis and transcendence; a way of communicating overload, as well as the constant disenchantment at the human condition, and man’s abuse of power and the systems that chain us.
PURGE references the cycle of horror that man always has and always will put us through; those in positions of power revel in the infliction of pain and horror upon individuals – in the name of their religion, their power, their money, their flags…
PURGE is out on 9th June.
Norwegian metallic hardcore four-piece group SPLIT//BITE have recently shared a new song off the band’s debut EP, which is set to be released on June 9th via Loyal Blood Records.
SPLIT // BITE is a fresh new four-piece group from Bergen, Norway, yet all members have a vast experience in other projects from the local hardcore and metal scene. The band’s debut EP "404 ends" shows a highly-energized quartet playing a chaotic and pummeling metallic hardcore full of heavy riffs and caustic vocals.
Set for release on June 9th via Loyal Blood Records, this new EP is according to the band "about establishing a precedence in a society defined by cultural norms adapted to your average joe. With this we bring about subjects like existential anxiety, apathy, and also artistic freedom. We preach this through our intensive tempo, and a clear message from start to end."
Listen to SPIT//BLOOD here:
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