16th January 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
2026 is certainly off to an interesting start: did anyone seriously have what looks quite feasibly the first move in World War 3 on their bingo card? Consequently, the level of noise has simply exploded. There is shock. There isn’t much awe, but there is bewilderment, there is panic, and infinite speculation. And infinite noise.
Thankfully, 2026 is already offering up some interesting noise on the musical front, and for my money, the most effective way to tune out all that other noise is by turning off the TV, putting the phone down – or better still, switch it off and leave it in another room – light some candles, pour a drink and listen – properly listen, and engage, with some new music.
Saltire may not be the most soothing soundtrack to push aside all of the external turbulence, an obvious balm to calm a psychological spasm. In fact, it’s pretty grim at times, a big blanket of darkness which drifts and envelops, riven with top-end trilling whistles and a host of wide-ranging elements, both sonic and stylistic, which clash hard. But relaxation isn’t necessarily what the Dr ordered. Sometimes, the best remedy is one that shocks the system to the extent that all the other shit is displaced.
The band say of the album, “Through a time-based, panoramic view of past, present and future, the album’s composition is a dissection of familial cyclical patterns of violence, abuse and addiction, and whether supernatural events or one’s own choices impact fate. Each track is a voice spanning multiple dimensions and time frames of reference. Is our eventual destruction predetermined and independent of will? Or can we control the course of events through determined pleas at salvation?”
Right now, it doesn’t seem that many of us have any control over anything, particularly global affairs, and while some aspects of history do seem to be repeating themselves, this moment in time feels like a huge rupture in the flow of modern history. And all we can do is watch as things unravel, and at pace. It’s terrifying, and anyone who isn’t scared is deluded or simply burying their heads in the sand. But taking time out to bury my head in the sand for the duration of an album is necessary. And clocking in at over seventy minutes, this is a decent slab of time to pursue this objective.
From the outset, Bell Barrow’s Saltire brings some uncomfortable noise. ‘Death Lullabye’ is dark, droney, unsettling and uneasy. In contrast, the frenetic noise rock explosion of ‘Breath of an Acrobat’ sits in the field of the wild angular noise of, say, Daughters, while at the same time introducing a frenzied jazz element, and propelled by black metal drumming, but with the treble cranked to the max. ‘Cor Orans’, too, is a frantic blast of lo-fi gothy metal. This is tempestuous stuff, and with the treble up in the mix, the sound slices the top off your head, while at the same time slamming you in the gut repeatedly with a lump of wood.
Wide-ranging would be one way of describing this expansive exploration, which ranges from drone and ambient to New Age, from prog to post-metal.
The seven-minute ‘Beyond the Labyrinth’ is quintessential weird darkness, warping, droning, while the nine-minute behemoth that is ‘Sybian Interval’ builds dense, billowing clouds of dark noise, rumbling, swirling, heavy, oppressive, but rent through with screams of treble and whines like a dentist’s drill, which are counterbalanced by soft, vaporous watercolour sweeps. ‘We Reek of Utopia’ arrives in a muffled package of irony before the squalling assault of the title track applies scissors to the brain in a wild explosion of jazz-metal discord served with a heavy helping of ‘what the actual?’ And this is good. This is healthy. Music should challenge. Art should challenge. Saltire challenges on many levels: there are no songs to speak of, and the pieces veer wildly in stylistic terms. ‘A Carrion Call Rings Out’ plunges into heavy industrial noise, and it hurts.
They do threaten ‘an obvious tension and release feel to the style’, and they deliver on that, although the tension is significantly greater than the release, proportionally speaking. Saltire offers no pause for reflection, no sigh of relief, no time to simply sit back and reflect: it swings between atmospheric states most unexpectedly, most dramatically. It’s hard work, but at the same time elevatitive and revelatory.
By no means an easy album, Saltire offers angularity – and some significant reward.
AA
Aural Aggravation 