Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Corpus Delicti – Liminal

Posted: 27 January 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Twilight Music – 28th November 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

I’d apologise for being a little late to this one, but given that Corpus Delicti took some thirty years to reconvene for this, their fourth studio album, I think I can be forgiven. Formed in 1992, they kicked out three albums in quick succession establishing themselves as leading exponents the goth renaissance, or the next wave of goth (which wave is which… is a subject of debate, but that’s perhaps a topic for another time), before departing a short while after the release of Obsessions in 1995. During their time away, they’ve had more compilations released than they had albums, and it seems their popularity has grown significantly during their absence.

Their planned reunion in 2020 was scuppered by the pandemic, but they finally reemerged as a live entity in the spring of 2022 and now, finally – finally – they deliver Liminal. And if you’re into that later goth stuff – from Rosetta Stone to all things Nightbreed – it does everything you’d want it to.

From the outset, Liminal is dark and brooding, with fractal guitars and infinite reverb: ‘Crash’ brings the stark post-punk dynamics of X-Mal Deutschland paired with the soaring theatricality of The Associates, and it’s a work of high drama which evokes Bauhaus at their best. That’s by no means to suggest that it’s derivative, but it’s clear they know their heritage.

They also know how to bring kineticism and range, and how to sequence an album to best effect. ‘Room 36’ comes on like an industrial reimagining of Soft Cell, landing like She Wants Revenge cranked up to eleven, with lasers and guitars set to stun. ‘It All Belongs to You’ channels Bowie, but again via SWR and The Associates – at least vocally: instrumentally, there’s layered synth work and swirling shoegaze guitar all over. But for all the dark, Liminal is a work of magnificently-crafted pop.

‘Under his eye’ is an obvious reference to The Handmaid’s Tale, a book the which has become more resonant in recent times than could have ever been foreseen at the time of its writing and publication in 1985. Led by a rolling piano and augmented with sweeping strings, there’s drama galore. Between the driving guitar buzz and snaking bassline of the super-urgent ‘Chaos’ propelled by lolloping drums, and ‘Fate’, which brings an atmospheric shoegaze aspect to some trad goth stylings, there’s a lot going on here – and they pack in some really sharp hooks and strong choruses.

As an example of modern goth, Liminal brings so much of what’s missing from many recent releases in the same field – broad in range, big on energy, this is how it’s done.

AA

Band image - pic Loreleï J ade

Photo: Lorelei Jade

Irk / Algernon Cornelius / Care Home – Wharf Chambers, Leeds, 24th January 2025

Posted: 25 January 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Irk (not to be mistaken for Lancastrian newcomers Irked) certainly took their time over their second album, so the fact their playing its launch gig four months after its release is fitting.

The last time I saw them would have been 2018, in the now-defunct CHUNK, alongside Britney and Beige Palace (also now sadly departed), at the launch of debut album. Back then, CHUNK – a fairly basic rehearsal space which also hosted gigs – was the hub of an emerging DIY scene which spawned a bunch of noisy bands who emerged in the wake of the likes of Blacklisters, Hawk Eyes, That Fucking Tank. Fortunately, the Leeds scene is resilient and continues to thrive with new spaces and new bands popping up – and Irk are still here, despite geographical dispersal and general life stuff like jobs and families doing little to boost the time and energy available for creative work.

One of the new bands to have emerged more recently is Care Home. Care Home no doubt won themselves some new fans when they landed the coveted slot of supporting the Jesus Lizard last January. Tonight they’re a late substitute for Blacklisters, who were admittedly, an additional draw for tonight, but it’s hard to be too disappointed with the choice of replacement, kicking the night off in suitably noisy fashion. The interplay between the guitar and synths works well and affords them a greater range when it comes to the arrangements. The bass work alternates between a stop/start jolting and insistent solid four-four groove, and when paired with some busy, beat on every beat drumming, they’ve got a sturdy spine around which everything else hangs nicely. The vocals are straight-up, unpretty (post) hardcore shouting, an effluence of nihilism in t vein of Kowloon Walled City.

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Care Home

Algernon Cornelius proved to be an inspired choice, breaking up a rock-orientated bill with some highly inventive and energetic hip-hop. Pulling together a truly visionary array of sources, spanning jazz, punk, and metal and even sampling a Beige Palace song, it’s all going on during his lively set.

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Algernon Cornelius

Irk’s set is a squalling blast of noise from beginning to end. The bass is simply immense. Recorded, it’s not immediately apparent that the sole instrumentation is drums and bass – and not only because various guests add additional detail in various form, but this means that on stage, the fact they blast out such a dense racket with so little only accentuates the impact. But that bass… the sound is pretty varied and big on texture, from the rib-rattling mid-range, compressed sound which resembled tearing cardboard to the bowel-quivering low-end, there’s substantial range. Meanwhile, Jack Gordon hollers and howls through a host of effects and distortion, and this show – like the album itself – was worth the wait.

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Irk

With ‘The Seeing House’, they’ve really honed things and learned the benefits of shifting tempo and tone: ‘Eating All of the Apple’ is the perfect example of how they’ve absorbed the sparser, joltier aspects of Shellac’s output on board. Gordon’s vocal has more range, too, veering toward more gothic territory. And still they slam forth colossal riffs, paired with meaty beats and rabid yowling.

But for a serious band, they just can’t do serious when it comes to their shows: there’s a comedic elements to Gordon’s delivery and postures, not to mention the chat between songs, where he would take time to share wisdom he had discovered on that Internet from the mini-ons, printouts of which he would hand out to members of the audience.

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Irk

There’s something so, so quintessentially Leeds about Irk – quirky, self-effacing, a disparity between the abrasive noise and the affable nature of the people themselves – and they are genuinely nice guys. But this is so often the case: the music is the outlet. And the atmosphere tonight is one of warmth, of camaraderie. A lot of people know one another. This isn’t a scene in the sense of posing, self-importance or smugness, but one defined by camaraderie and mutual appreciation.

Irk’s set was punchy and abrasive, delivering fifty minutes of intensity interspersed with comedy, making for an event which felt like the perfect launch for the album. And I shall treasure my numbered, annotated minion forever.

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Elkeyes – Elkeyes

Posted: 23 January 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Bearsuit Records – 23rd January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s been a little while since our favourite label for oddball quirky stuff, Edinburgh’s Bearsuit Records, tickled our eardrums with new noise, but they’re kicking off 2026 with the eponymous debut from Elkeyes, a new addition to the roster. And suffice it to say, it’s a good fit in their catalogue of curious compositional contortions. And since we have Wolf Eyes and Hawk Eyes, KATSEYE, and, er, Eagle Eye Cherry, why not Elkeyes? It’s an interesting choice of creature, but one which seems appropriate for this intriguingly leftfield musical project – although my eternal internal game of Mallett’s Mallet leads me to conclude that Elkeye Brooks should also be a band name. Christ only knows what they would sound like, but surely it would be no stranger than this twisted concoction, which should be filed in the ‘experimental electronics’ section.

‘Trial’ conjures the disorientating bewilderment of Kafka’s labyrinthine novel via the medium of sonic collage which brings together warping synths, clinks and clatters, disembodied, ghostly voices, sweeping string and echo-laden horns which add the most incongruous – yet somehow fitting – jazz element imaginable, plus fizzing blasts of extraneous noise.

‘Yamanote Line’ twitters and flaps its way into the realms of ambient abstraction, building atmosphere and an air of the uncanny. It’s not dark in the horror sense, but sets the nerves jangling, particularly in the quieter passages which evoke bleak moorlands and deserted cemeteries. This is the beauty of abstract, ambient, instrumental works, works which are free from the constraints of conventional form: rather than direct the listener in a specific direction, they encourage the opening of neural pathways and invite the formation of visualisations and ideas by free association. The scraping, trilling string sounds, stark piano chords, and random chimes which reverberate through the haunting ‘Thalassophobia’ (the fear of deep bodies of water, such as the ocean, seas, or lakes’).

Ironically, ‘The Dark Forest’ is the most light-hearted piece on the album, skipping oscillations and chiming chanks like dappled sunlight skips around this way and that on the album’s shortest track, although it does fade to darkness with a gong-like rumble and some dissonant chimes at the end.

There are vast expanses of minimalism. Soft tones drift. Time sits in suspension. Voices ring out – operatic, ghostly – amidst spacey swirls of phase. ‘Breathing the Blues’ is barely there at times, and the final cut, ‘Fallen’ is similarly sparse.

Over the course of these eight tracks, Elkeyes wander into some dark places, riven with static and low-level rumbles which disseminate tension, scrape at the cranium, gnaw at the intestines and fuck you up by stealth. In places, this feels like a slow unpicking of the seams of musical conventions. It’s sparse and transportive, hypnotic and simultaneously tense and soothing. Elkeyes are all the contradictions. And that is reason to love them.

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Blue Monday! feat Flat Moon / Trip Sitter / Gents & Ginger / Pedestrian – The Fulford Arms, York, 19 January 2021

Posted: 22 January 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

The third Monday in January has been labelled ‘Blue Monday’ because studies have found it to be the most depressing day of the year. Christmas and new Year are but memories which have faded into the eternal darkness of dull days where sunrise happens after going to work – if it happens at all – and sunset has happened not long after lunch. For those on salaries, after the early pre-Christmas payday, bank accounts are drained and it’s still a long, long way till January payday, it’s cold and wet and frankly it’s all shit. For those not on salaries, the same is true minus the January payday. And that’s before you throw in the prospect of World War 3 and markets crashing around the globe while AI is rapidly taking over everything. So the idea of a cheap – four bands for three quid in advance cheap – gig with an uptempo party vibe and something of a ‘beach party’ theme is genius. Simple, but genius. In terms of marketing and the economy, enticing people out to put a few quid over the bar is infinitely better than everyone staying home vegetating while watching shit TV, and I’ve written variously on the therapeutic properties of live music.

This bill wasn’t quite as therapeutic as I might have hoped. I’m absolutely not averse to fun, but can’t say I’m mad keen when that fun is appended with a ‘k’. Because of a last-minute change from the advertised running order, Trip Sitter and Gents & Ginger (who were originally supposed to be on third and second respectively) swapped places and as a consequence, the first half of the night was very funk-orientated. It’s a matter of taste, of course, and the audiences – it seems there’s a different crowd in the room for each act, which feels strange (I’m accustomed to bands bringing their own fans and not all of them sticking around for all of the acts, but this was like a shift-change in the audience each time there was a switch on stage, and each lot brought a very different atmosphere) – would tell quite different stories.

Reformed for tonight only, former college act Pedestrian bring a ska funk groove, and one song sounds far too much like RHCP to be forgivable. In fairness, they make up for it with a Mr Bungle cover. While they’re tight, handling the complex song structures with precision, the stage energy is quite low and seemingly self-conscious for a party band, but their mates go absolutely fucking ballistic. I find myself cowering beside the speaker to avoid being moshed to death by 6’6" sixth form virgins who seem hell-bent on breaking one another’s limbs.

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Pedestrian

Gents & Ginger offer up some sort of lounge jazz muso wankery involving chords that require eight fingers spanning five frets, and with bad shirts. They play with eyes squinted and looking like they’re inhaling their own farts. The bassist has a knitted teacosey on the head of his guitar, and the last song sounds like Kings of Leon or something. They go down ridiculously well, too. I need more beer.

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Gents & Ginger

Trip Sitter proved a very different proposition, the foursome offering a Latin spin on 80s rock. And they do actually rock out and venture into blues territory with some style. And the last song of their energetic set is Eurovision worthy.

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Trip Sitter

Flat Moon won me over the last time I saw them, despite reservations. Tonight…. No. Perhaps I was listening with different ears. Perhaps the very, very different crowd that suddenly packed to the front created a very, very different atmosphere. They were shouting and dancing and hugging and having a good time, but something just felt jarring, and Flat Moon were cocky and exuberant throughout their set of jizzy jazz-infused ska cuntery.

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Flat Moon

But loving all the bands is not always a prerequisite to a good night: seeing friends and simply getting out is enough. At this time of year, finding the motivation to leave the house can be the issue, and seeing friends doesn’t have to entail talking loudly over the bands, either. The bands could play, they went down well, people came out and supported live music. Good. And that’s all you need.

The 113 – Leach

Posted: 21 January 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

I find it most disconcerting shopping in my local Co-op. The self-service checkouts film you, and you can see yourself on the screen above your head while you scan your items. Surveillance and facial recognition is everywhere now. The other day, I passed a venue where a guy in a flat cap was ordered my security to remove his hat and “look into that camera” before being told he could replace his cap and enter the venue. We really have come to this: you can’t go shopping or go for a drink without a capture of your visage ‘for security’. I appreciate that shoplifting is at a record high and violent crime is rife, but is this really the solution? How about asking why we have these issues? And what happens with these captured images? Who views them? How long are they stored, and where? Are they being passed off to train AI?

The ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about’ argument is missing the point, and no longer holds water. The state of things in America with brutal ICE raids where countless American citizens have been mauled, detained, and even murdered (because regardless of the official line, Renee Nicole Good was murdered: those shots were not fired in self-defence, and we live in a horrible, brutal, fucked-up world). And this shit affects you. Well, it certainly affects me, and I know I’m not alone in feeling jumpy, on edge, endlessly anxietised by the prospect of what may happen next, the prospect of waking up to discover that WWIII has broken out while asleep.

This new single by 311 touches on this, significantly, as it happens. as their bio notes summarise: ‘Propelled by discordant guitars and thunderous offbeat rhythms, ‘Leach’ is an abrasive dystopian statement on surveillance, data harvesting and the quiet unease of modern digital life; both a rallying cry against the advancement and negative impacts of big tech, and an honest admission of powerlessness and inevitability in the face of it all.’

It’s a killer single and yet again evidence of just how fertile Leeds is as a spawning ground for fantastic bands. London, Manchester, even Sheffield receive so much hype, but despite being the epicentre of goth in the early 80s and the place for post-rock in the mid 2000s, Leeds seems to be criminally lacking in recognition for its contribution to music, despite Blacklisters, despite Pulled Apart by Horses… and 311 are another bands that should be flagging the city on the national – and international – radar. Because ‘Leach’ brings it all, from churning math-rock, angularity and anguish, colliding post-rock with post-punk and huge energy, they pack menacing and searing riff energy and… and… yeah. This is good.

It’s worth remembering punk and post-punk emerged from terrible times, where it felt like music offered a rare escape, both for those who created it and attended shows. And here we are again.

AA

Cindytalk – Sunset And Forever

Posted: 20 January 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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The Helen Scarsdale Agency – 30th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Cindytalk has been going almost literally forever, at least in terms of the life cycle of bands. A brief scan of my own archives reveals that the last time I wrote of Cindytalk was way back in 2013, covering A Life is Everywhere, released on the esteemed experimental label Editions Mego. The musical vehicle of Scottish musician Cinder, with an ever-shifting supporting cast, Cindytalk has been in a constant flux and perpetual evolution since the project’s formation in the early 80s – emerging from the post-punk scene and exploring every direction since, a career defined, as they put it, ‘by a continued process of disintegration and regeneration’. This is the very essence of the avant-garde, which was built on a manifesto that said that its function was to destroy the old to build the new. And implicit within that concept is the need to destroy its own creations in order to progress. Cindytalk has very much espoused that ethos over the course of the last forty years or more, with a career defined by perpetual reinvention.

Described in the press blurbage as ‘a labyrinthine opus, one that returns to the themes of the sacred and profane that have rippled through all of Cindytalk’s recordings’, Sunset And Forever opens with the eighteen-minute exploration which could reasonably be described as a (dark) ambient work. And it is dark. Spectral voices and spirits haunt every second of this unsettling drone-led work.

‘Labyrinthine opus’ is a fair description for an album which begins with a sprawling eighteen-and-a-half-minute ambient monolith, where falling objects cascade in caverns of reverb before slowly undulating drones gradually grow and turn. At times dense, at other more nebulous, around the mid-point, the scraping trickle of ‘embers of last leaves’ turns into a darker place, and is ruptured with percussive crashes and unpredictable extranea, while haunting voiced fade in and out through the swelling churn of abstract noise. This first piece, alone, feels like an album.

With seven tracks and a running time of around sixty-mine minutes, Sunset And Forever takes it time in exploring sonic contrasts, with graceful sweeps of watercolour synth washes underlaid with scratches and hisses and harder, uneven textures, the sonic equivalent of cobblestones underneath a velvet rug – or somesuch. Put another way, the soft and gentle is rendered uncomfortable by something altogether less soft or comfortable beneath, and hidden beneath a pleasant surface, and those hidden elements are reason to tread cautiously or risk twisting an ankle. It’s almost as if each track contains two compositions overlaid, a kind of collage or a palimpsest of a gentle ambient work and an altogether less gentle noise construction.

On ‘tower of the sun’, the dissonance and angularity rises to the fore to make for a skin-crawling ten minutes, while ‘my sister the wind’ screeches and scrapes, shards of drilling treble buffeted along by a train-track rumble.

The sound – and the meaning – of Sunset And Forever is forever just beyond grasp. For as much as the sounds and textures rub against one another and create discomfort, as a whole, it’s vague, indirect, hazy. It concludes open-ended, with questions unanswered and leaves a sense of uncertainty.

AA

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Eville – Blow Up

Posted: 18 January 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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16th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Woah. They’ve gone and done it again. Eville continue to chart their own ascent through their single releases, and having previously toured with Glitchers and played at Reading and Leeds last year, they look like they’re on the brink of really ‘blowing up’ as tour support for As December Falls. They’re a band that tours hard and wins fans at every show, and that’s coupled with a steady output of singles over the last couple of years, culminating in the Brat Metal EP late last year. They’re kicking off 2026 where they left off last year, and ‘Blow Up’ is another rip-snorter, an audacious hybrid of slugging nu-metal, hyperactive rave metal, and autotuned pop.

As such, ‘Blow Up’ draws together all of the elements of their previous releases, and, true to form, compresses them into a pumping three and a half minutes (which is actually quite long for them). It’s not quite a party tune, but it is a beefy riff-driven banger with real bounce. It’s more electronic, more processed-sounding than any of its predecessors, and leans more into pop territory than metal – at least in the main – but the late-landing mid-section goes heavy… And then it bounds to the finish line with another surging chorus.

Right now, it seems as if Eville are reinventing nu-metal for the 2020s, and on their own terms. They’ve got Kerrang! jizzing themselves over their every move. And rightly so. This is a new kind of metal. Power to them.

AA

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Cwfen / Helve / Acceptance – Wharf Chambers, Leeds, 17th January 2026

Posted: 18 January 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

That a quarter of the tickets sold in 48 hours, and the show was sold out a full three months in advance speaks for itself. It’s been a huge twelve months for Glasgow purveyors of epic goth-tinged doom, Cwfen. It was only last February that they played their first show south of the border. Since then, they’ve toured supporting Faetooth and released their monumental and widely-acclaimed debut album, Sorrows, which has had Kerrang! positively frothing with enthusiasm. And they deserve all of this. There’s something quite special about Cwfen: they’re in a league of their own, and certainly not simply your run-of-the-mill doom band. Make no mistake, they’re full-on and heavy – in places gut-churningly so – but they have so much more going on, especially in terms of melody and dynamics.

This is an outstanding lineup. All three acts are heavier than lead, but each offers something quite different. This matters, because however much you may love a headline act, its tiresome and takes the zip out of an event if the supports are lesser versions of the headliners. I’m reminded of the mid 2000s, when you’d get four instrumental post rock acts on a bill, and I’d find myself crescendo’d out by the end of the second set and be falling asleep on my feet during the headline set, and also the time industrial noise duo Broken Bone supported Whitehouse at the Brudenell. Nothing like having a third-rate tribute act who think they’re amazing as a support.

Leeds is a significant spawning ground for metal acts of all shades, and both Acceptance and Helve showcase the depth of quality on offer. First up, Acceptance bring the weight with some heavy tom-led drumming behind the blanket of guitar. Theirs is a dense wall of screaming anguish, with billowing smoke often obscuring the stage. For all that, there’s remarkable separation between the instruments, and the remarkably thick but clean bass cuts through nicely. By the end of the set, the vocalist is crawling on his hands and knees, drained, having poured every last drop of emotion and energy into a blistering performance. When the opening act could easily be headlining, you know you’re in for a good night.

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Acceptance

Helve’s bassist is wearing a Swans Filth T-shirt. This is something I would consider a recommendation. As it happens, they sound absolutely nothing like Swans, being a full-on metal act, but they are as heavy as hell. With two guitars and bass and massive amps and piles of pedals, there’s no room for the lead vocalist on the small stage. Compared to Acceptance, who play everything at breakneck pace, Helve’s songs slower, more atmospheric, offering a sound that’s more post metal. Applying a screwdriver to his guitar strings, the first guitarist conjures some strange droning sounds at the start of their set. Their riffs are slow and dense, and whole there’s some nice mathy detail along the way, the end of the set brings a full-on chug-blast in the vein of Amenra.

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Helve

While Helve clear out and Cwfen set up, we’re treated to Shellac’s first album by way of entertainment, and when Cwfen hit the stage, opening with ‘Bodies’, it’s like a bolt of lightening. More powerful than even the volume is the stunning clarity of the sound, replicating all the detail of the studio recordings but with the added potency of the immediacy of being in the room and mere feet from the band. The song’s nagging lead guitar part is an instant, hypnotic hook.

Perhaps recognising that Sorrows is perfectly sequenced, the set is, essentially, the album played in order – with the addition of a new and unreleased song, ‘Revenge’, which is inserted – most comfortably – in between ‘Reliks’ and ‘Whispers’.

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Cwfen

For such a dark band, they seem pretty happy on stage, Agnes in particular beaming throughout the set. She’s every reason to: they’re on immaculate form, and the entire room is captivated and shows its appreciation. Each member brings something quite particular to the table: gum chewing barefoot bassist Mary Thomas Baker doesn’t simply play, but becomes the groove, a solid foot-to-the-floor low-end thud that’s more goth than anything else; drummer Rös is pure precision, while Guy deNuit manages to sound like he’s playing multiple parts at once, creating a magnificently textured, layered sound. Agnes, for her part, in addition to some tidy guitar work, is a formidable vocalist with immense presence, effortlessly shifting between commanding clean vocals to a banshee howl in a breath.

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Cwfen

The screaming metal verses of ‘Penance’ give way to a sweeping , majestic chorus, and I find myself blown away in the same way I was the first time I saw them. This is indeed a rare feat. But then, if anything, they’re even better now than a year ago, even more powerful.

Talk about an early peak. I may well see other gigs which equal this one, but the chances of a night which surpasses this before the year is out are, frankly, slim. Bad Owl have done an outstanding job in curating this lineup, and Cwfen are as good a live act as you’re going to find.

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Slaughterday – Dread Emperor

Posted: 15 January 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Testimony Records – 13th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

When I first started Aural Aggravation – kinda by stealth, with no fanfare – back in October 2015, with a review of Philip Jecks’ Cardinal, it was with a view to using the platform to break away from more conventional and comparatively short-form reviews to indulge in more personal, reflective, essay-type analysis. But with a bursting inbox and a desire to provide coverage to as many acts as possible, sometimes it’s not always appropriate to spend hours and column inches pondering the context and the content through a framework that sits between reception theory and gonzo journalism. More to the point, there simply aren’t enough hours.

Slaughterday is an old-school death metal duo, and Dread Emperor is their sixth album. They promise ‘crushing doom-ridden ultra-heavy parts to calculated outbreaks of utter brutality,’ and cite as lyrical inspirations ‘H. P. Lovecraft and other masters of horror’. They go on to add, ‘while sinister things crawl and creep through the duo’s timeless brutality, they have always portrayed them with a sinister flair of their own. These days, the band has repurposed those monstrous creatures as metaphorical ciphers for relevant contemporary topics’.

Titles such as ‘Rapture of Rot’, ‘Necrocide’, ‘Obliteration Crusade’ and ‘Astral Carnage’ speak for themselves, and the ‘crushing’ ‘doomy’ aspects they focus on in their pitch are very much to the fore: ‘Enthroned’ lifts the curtain with some slow, heavyweight riffery, and paves the way for the rabid attack of ‘Obliteration Crusade’.

That bands which blast out frenetic guitar mayhem at a thousand miles an hour with impenetrable growls and howls by way of vocals go to lengths to sell the merits of the lyrical content is something which is a source of vague amusement – I mean, as if you could make out a single word by ear. But it’s beside the point, really: as I’ve touched on before, it’s about the conveyance of sentiment, the implication of meaning.

On Dread Emperor, Slaughterday leap and lurch from bowel-bursting heavyweight sludge-trudge to flamboyant pirouettes on the frets. As they say themselves, they ‘deliver everything that they excel in, which is also precisely what their fans want from the duo’: as such, it’s no criticism to say that Dread Emperor ticks genre boxes, because it’s mission accomplished for the band. And it’s hard to argue otherwise. Dread Emperor delivers riff after riff, drives hard, brings the heavy and snarls, growls and spits its way with gut-churning malevolence from beginning to end.

AA

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Beckton Alps2 – Winter

Posted: 13 January 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 21st December 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

I fucking hate winter. And I fucking hate capitalism. These two statements are, in some ways, at least connected. Believe it or not, while the life of a serf is broadly associated with an existence synonymous with slavery, under feudalism, serfs were homed, and – harvests permitting – lived from the land they tended in exchange for providing some of their yield to their lord. As such, it was a system based on reciprocity. During the winter, when there was no work to be done, the serfs would rest, and without books or any of the mod cons we take for granted, would tend to live their lives around daylight hours. Even in Medieval times, a period in history commonly associated with barbarism and a comparatively primitive society, the landed gentry recognised that the people they owned were among their most valuable assets.

Under capitalism, the workforce has become expendable. There’s always another sucker, someone more desperate, who will work longer hours for less money to pay for their rented accommodation. For all the progress we’ve witnessed in giving workers rights in recent years, conditions remain pretty shit.

Since the industrial revolution and the ever-accelerating development of technology, capitalism has sought to squeeze every possible hour of labour from the workforce. Ill? Have a Lemsip and crack on, pussy.

My hatred of winter, then, is largely because of the demands of capitalism. It’s dark when I wake for work, it’s dark before the end of the working day. Many who work in offices or shops will be stuck indoors for the entire – brief – duration of daylight hours (if it actually gets light) and this simply isn’t healthy. I feel sluggish, lack motivation, and suffer from some crushing low moods, often wishing I could simply hibernate.

So arriving at Winter by Beckton Alps2 – the final part in the series of ambient concept albums released throughout 2025, imagining Stone Age people reacting to the changing seasons – I feel in some ways that little imagination is required. Technologically, we live in a different world. As beings… we have evolved… but only so much.

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