Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Little Window – Red Ant

Posted: 29 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

27th October 2027

Christopher Nosnibor

The name Little Window conveys almost childlike, playschool connotation. Or, certainly something vaguely idyllic, a sense of the safe, the cozy. Meanwhile the band describe their debut album as ‘a cure for societal heartburn’. Who hasn’t been suffering from that of late? It’s been absolutely relentless for six years now. It seems as if the world was biding its time during lockdown – which was nuts – to go full-blown crazy, and none of it has been pleasant.

And, indeed, it so happens that Red Ant emerged from some pretty dark places, as the band’s bio outlines: ‘Written through cycles of insomnia, grief and self-destruction, Red Ant embraces the horror and chaos of death and transmutation. “Explorations of the fracture and intensity of death’s confrontation had given way to a sort of expansiveness”, explains Eli. “I had not had that kind of levity in a long time, and it triggered a childhood memory of climbing up a steep rock face with my siblings barefoot. We climbed to the highest ledge, feigning the courage to jump into the lake below from the extreme height. Crowded on the small ledge together, we all looked down with sudden shock. Dozens of red ants were stinging our bare feet, having disturbed their nest under the moss. Our eyes locked for a millisecond in midair. A euphoric moment of synchronized recklessness, all having made the same ridiculous decision to immediately jump.’

It’s a common scenario. Traumatic and challenging experiences inspire the best art. For some, creativity is the best therapy – or perhaps, for some, the only way of dealing with such things. On a personal level, it’s relatable, too. I only specifically recall wearing shorts other than for PE on three occasions. On one of them, in school, I received a major telling off because the teacher didn’t like the way I had completed a design project. On another, my legs got so badly sunburned, the skin peeled for weeks. And on the other, I stood on a manhole cover by the front lawn. I’d have been about four. And suddenly, red ants were crawling all up my legs, like a scene in a horror movie.

Working through trauma by focusing and interrogating it by means of creative processes can be immensely beneficial. And Red Ant deals with those real-life experiences head-on, in that Little Window make some crunchy, riff-driven noise. And make no mistake, while some of the titles may on the surface seem twee, there’s nothing twee about anything on this album.

The album’s first track, ‘Dirty Bookshelf’ starts low and grungy with a dash of wonky math-rock and a vaguely jazz slant. It’s largely innocuous in real terms, but then Eli Howey’s tremulous vocals arrive, and suddenly, he’s an undeniable force of nature everything changes, and the result is something like a heavy psychedelic Melvins-inspired outtake from Bleach. This is very much the angle that pervades the album as a whole – raw, urgent, and driving, and with production to match the low-budget values of the early days of grunge before it got co-opted by major labels.

It’s by far the album’s longest song, meaning that following the slow-burn, the floodgates open for a succession of sub-three-minute riff-heavy cuts. But that isn’t to say they’re lacking in emotional depth or any sense of softer feelings: moreover, Red Ant is an exploration of contrasts and juxtapositions: the breakdown moments in ‘Weeks’ are poignant and emotionally resonant, Howey confiding ‘I can’t go to sleep / ‘cause sleep makes me weak / I can’t go to bed / ‘cause bed makes me sad’. And instead of the throaty roar which is commonplace in this kind of context, he swoops and soars. But nor it his style really emo, although it is disarming in its unpolished immediacy, its quavering tones almost folky in places – something perhaps most apparent on the haunted-sounding ‘Get You Good’, a tense, acoustic-led sliver of a song.

‘Goldenrod’ is a decorative yellow plant, and the title again connotes something delicate and wistful, contrasting significantly with the sonic manifestation of this full-throttle guitar blast. It’s all leading toward the bass-booming, blown-out fuzzfest of the title track, which rips through like a forest fire in under two and a half minutes, crashing straight into the wild and desperate ‘So Many Times’.

AA

I suspect that for some, Howey’s voice may be an obstacle for some, simply because it’s not the conventional style for this kind of big guitar noise. But then I remember as a teen struggling with Dinosaur Jr at first, because J. Mascis’ voice seemed so weak and reedy against the backdrop of so much loud guitar. It was only when I tuned into the way this almost piteous whine, coupled with such expressive solos, carried so much more emotional weight than the more overtly masculine rage of other guitar bands that it all made sense. And while Little Window sound nothing like Dinosaur Jr, it’s this rare quality, the emotional openness and fragility, which gives Red Ant its unique impact.

AA

LWPhoto_horizontal_2 (Credit- Starlyn Lu)

Pic: Starlyn Lu

The Pixel Rain – A Sense of Danger

Posted: 24 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

29th October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Hungarian-born vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Áron Siegler has been busy of late. Hot on the heels of the Glitching Sky EP – and I mean HOT, with a mere three weeks’ gap – The Pixel Rain drop their debut album, A Sense of Danger.

It seems that for him, like many of a creative bent, the current state of affairs, globally and domestically has not only instilled a sense of danger, but a sense of urgency. At the time of writing, the UK government has just taken down a number of its sites online due to a cyber security threat, but has added a new ‘survival’ page with a list of essential items it recommends every household has in stock in the event of war, a more extensive cyber attack, or extreme weather disrupting supply chains – including water and electricity. If we learned one thing from the pandemic, it’s that telling an entire population not to panic while giving guidance such as this is pretty much guaranteed to create just that.

This climate of fear and suspense, the sense that we’re perpetually on the cusp of something seismic provides a large part of the drive behind A Sense of Danger, of which Siegler says,

“The main theme was the anxiety about how our society is edging closer to its collapse through politics, social media or climate catastrophes, but there were more personal topics as well simultaneously about toxic relationships, jealousy and a haunting past. Both ‘storylines’ ended up connecting with each other and found their inevitable end by the end of the album, which became surprisingly bittersweet even to myself.”

The musical inspiration for the album is the two-part structure of New Order’s Brotherhood, and he approached the writing process with the idea of giving the record two complementary halves, using the distinction between darker and more uplifting electronic sounds as a loose creative framework rather than a rigid stylistic division. The result, we’re told ‘is a cohesive collection of eight songs that moves through varying shades of tension, urgency, melancholy and melodic warmth’.

Four of the album’s eight songs featured on the Glitching Sky EP, although interestingly, while three of the EP tracks appear in the first half, ‘The Glitching Sky’ is placed as the album’s penultimate track.

This means that EP track ‘Sacrifice’, which raises the curtain on the album, sweeps in with a mix of grandeur and tension. When covering the EP, I described it as an ‘anthem’, and placing it up front makes for a bold, attention-grabbing opening, and the expansive, cinematic ‘Last’ follows, pitching bleak imagery against a thumping dance beat and widescreen guitars and sweeping synths. The production is immense.

AA

The first of the previously unreleased tracks, ‘All the Lovers’ drives in hard and fast, with some cybergoth / techno drum machine and bubbling bass action. At this point, industrial-tinged goth that takes cues from early NIN and later Depeche Mode has been done and done and done, meaning the field is crowded, and while it might not be the most gripping of the album’s tracks, the quality of the songwriting and the production once again stand out here. The title track closes the first half in grand and ambitious style, with expansive layers of synth once again going wide over a rumbling bass. Here, Siegler’s vocal sounds at it most tense, capturing that anxiety and paranoia which defines the album’s focus – and at the same time, coming closest to a delivery reminiscent of Dave Gahan’s soulful baritone.

The second half certainly feels lighter, more poppy: the rolling tom sweeps which pan through ‘Danse Macabre’ are evocative of arena rock, and the song breaks out into a buoyant Europop bopalong. It sets the tone, and while it certainly fulfils the rubric of the album of two halves, the second, in its more dance-orientated vibes, feels like something of a let-down. Tension and release in itself is often a good thing, but this is feels more like jetting off on a beach holiday in Spain and forgetting all the shit back home. And yes, ‘Pieces of Love’ goes full New Order in the break toward the end.

AA

I always found New Order disappointing – not simply in the wake of their flight as Joy Division, but for the trajectory they took after their dark and tentative debut, Movement. I feel rather the same way about this album. Hearing ‘Glitching Sky’ in this context, it does sound like a euphoric dance reimagining of New Order’s ‘Temptation’. Thankfully, – I suppose – the last song, ‘All Night Long’ isn’t a cover of the Lionel Ritchie song. But it is a mid-tempo electro-ballad, and anticlimactic in comparison to the promise of the where we started. It is certainly an album of two halves.

The Pixel Rain (Áron Siegler) by Evelina Klimova (Landscape 03) web

Photo: Evalina Klimva

Ministry – Hate to Go (Take Out Or Delivery)

Posted: 23 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
2

Cleopatra Records – 30th October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s hard to process the fact that at this moment in time, we are as far from 1985 and 1985 as from the end of the second world war. Similarly, it’s true that what might be considered ‘late-era’ Ministry has been in existence for longer than what one could call their main career. It’s been an interesting journey, from a largely forgettable synth-pop debut in ‘83, through a hardening sound as showcased on Twitch three years later, before things got really interesting and properly ugly with third album, The Land of Rape and Honey in 1988. Psalm 69 blasted them from being a cult act to a global force, arguably the definitive industrial metal act. They were on MTV with videos featuring William S. Burroughs. Although Filth Pig charted higher in many territories, and was a particularly, dark, heavy, and bleak affair, it was not a big seller, and everything since has been a case of diminishing returns, and not just in commercial terms. Not that they’ve ever been a particularly commercial band, despite major-label backing for some twenty years.

And while it’s true that Al Jourgensen has become increasingly fixated on blasting successive US presidents and their governments – particularly the Republican ones – one has to give credit where it’s due. It’s a worthy mission, and there’s a fair chance that he’d have called it a day sooner if he’d not had so much to rage about. He called it a day in 2013, only to return five years later with Donald Trump firmly in his sights in place of George W. Bush. The Bush years felt like an all-time low in US politics at the time…

And now we find the world at war, half the world on fire and the other half flooded, and wake up each morning wondering if it’s actually still here or if AI has ended it while we’ve been asleep. Small wonder Jourgensen had to have one last word on the state of everything. Sadly, it seems they’ve gone down the AI route for the videos, which is disappointing, particularly given the political context.

Singles ‘We Hate’ and ‘Singularity’ were promising enough: on the one hand, fairly standard fare for later-era Ministry in sonic and stylistic terms, but solid in terms of quality, and the album goes straight in heavy with ‘Crickets’. The guitars border on nu-metal, hitting like slabs of concrete, but the distorted vocals, samples, and driving percussion, all represent the Ministry hallmarks that go all the way back to songs like ‘Thieves’ – only here, there’s stab at a huge anthemic chorus. ‘Voices of Hate’ in many ways reprises ‘Hero’ from Psalm 69, with the speed metal thrash of Mötörhead, and while it’s solid enough, it feels rather predictable. This could serve as a summary for much of the album. It sounds like a Ministry album. Sludgy, metallic guitars grind away against relentless percussion, and there are samples galore. In fact, the samples take precedence over the vocals for the most part, and much of the supposed ‘commentary’ is represented by soundbite snippets of newscasts and the like.

AA

While sampling exploded in the early 80s with the likes of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire being early adopters of emerging technologies which facilitated (affordable) tape loops and the like, and hop-hop acts quickly took up and ran with it, it wasn’t until the late 80s and early 90s that samples became commonplace in a rock or metal context, and Ministry were at the forefront there. Thirty years (and more) on, it feels formulaic. ‘Delete’ starts out sounding like it might take a more experimental direction, but ultimately reprises parts of the backing for ‘TV Song’ before presenting a collage of samples against a dirty, low-slung-riff. The vocals are blazing with rage, but only partially intelligible. ‘We Hate’ adds a dash of glam to the chugging wall of grey fury, but not a lot else. The same is true of CD-only bonus cut ‘The White Man Lied’: it’s got some glammy swing and quite some groove behind it.

The six-and-a-half-minute ‘Grifter’ slows the pace and marks a welcome textural shift, too. It’s by no means one of Ministry’s best cuts, but its placement in the middle of the album makes it stands out, and there are Trump samples galore. All well and good, but snippets of Trump’s worst moments are added to social media on a daily basic. Every press conference, every rally, every post on ‘Truth’ social gives us more insane babble from his rapidly unravelling sociopathic narcissistic mind. Do we really need to hear any more of this demented shit? Maybe we do: the media has normalised his cracked rambling. And what Ministry do here is remind us that this is insane. And it IS insane. How the fuck have we reached this point where a dribbling, shitting, dementia-ridden dictator is the most powerful person on the planet? I say person, but at this point, he’s slipped beneath even being human. And still his supporters clap like seals at his every vapid statement, and proponents of the far right here in the UK lap up his endless shit and proclaim that following his lead is the way forward. The worst of it is that most of us don’t only feel powerless, but we are powerless when it comes to turning the tide, because we’re battling against billionaires and bots – funded by the billionaires. AI manipulation is rife, and we’re all fucked.

Someone I’m ‘friends’ with on Facebook spent a good few months posting AI images of herself and band they like, before announcing that they’d been made redundant, their job having been replaced by AI. Fast forward a few weeks, and they tell the world how, after searching and applying for new jobs with no success, they’re using AI to search for and apply for jobs for them. And this is where we’re at. No wonder Jourgensen felt the need to unleash another salvo of blasting fury at the world. Hate To Go is by no means the best Ministry album, or even an album that sounds like a definitive sign-off. It sounds more like a work of business as usual. But perhaps that’s to miss the point – or it is the point. What I’m trying to say is that while Hate To Go is the band’s official last statement, it’s one which shows an understanding that their work will never be done as long as capitalism reigns – a sentiment articulated on ‘Singularity’. This track seems to summarise the album’s purpose – to document the end of times, to place a marker in history where Al and co can say ‘we told you so, and we give u-p telling you now’.

Penultimate track ‘Burned Out’ is one of the album’s strongest, a driving nihilistic assault that finally sees Ministry hitting the mark in brutal fashion and harking back to Filth Pig.

Closer ‘We’re Still Here’ features Paul Barker, and with its electro-driven intro also represents a late return to form as well as an unexpected expansion on the usual sound, unleashing a choir for the finale. I’m not sure I love it, but credit due for a late left-turn.

So where does this leave us? Who knows? Is this even the final final album by Ministry? Maybe we should ask this again in another five years. In the scheme of the Ministry oeuvre, Hate To Go is nothing special, and in many ways adds little to their corpus. But at the same time, it feels like an album that had to be made.

50f95c5fa9b42e03c4a116e0c7895299c4302b76

Virgin Birth – The Dead End

Posted: 22 October 2026 in Reviews, Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

16th October 2026

Christopher Nosnobor

Well, this is bleak. And in reading the blurb which accompanies The Dead End by The Virgin Birth, which is described as ‘a collection of songs about exhaustion, isolation, dread, and the feeling that the path forward has narrowed considerably. It’s industrial punk for a world that seems to be running on fumes. There’s no solution waiting for you at the end of these songs… only a dead end’.

The Kentucky act have form for forging uncomfortable, challenging music, which at times harks back to the electroindustrial sound of Wax Trax! in the late 80s and early 90s, and occasionally with the confrontational, antagonistic stance of the power electronics scene, as exemplified by the likes of ‘From Behind’ (2024). Their last album, Total Annihilation, released in May of 2025 was every bit the exercise in nihilism its title suggested, and mined a seam of dark electronica with a sharp, serrated edge.

Now a trio, The Dead End sees Virgin Birth continue that trajectory, combining electro, punk, and industrial, and as the release notes point out, ‘where previous releases looked outward at collapse on a larger scale, these songs feel closer to the ground… more immediate, claustrophobic, and personal’.

And I want to focus on a couple of those words in the description before I plough into the detail of the songs themselves: ‘exhaustion’ and ‘dread’. Everyone is exhausted. All the time. to the extent that we’ve almost stopped mentioning it in conversation: it’s become the backdrop to life – or, perhaps more accurately, existence. It seems hardly any of us are really living any more: everyone is just dragging themselves through each day. It started during lockdown. In the UK, the bombardment of information, from the daily statistics to the ever-shifting lockdown rules, while everyone was trying to balance work and / or finances thanks to reduced furlough pay, while managing home-schooling, was beyond comprehension. We were mentally fried. And while I’m no conspiracy theorist, having read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, I have absolutely no doubt that many agencies – governmental and corporate – exploited that period of vulnerability. Five years on, we’re free to move… but the world is at war, we’re surveiled by CCTV and on-line virtually ever second of the day. Our movement and speech are constantly monitored. And tell me, honestly, if you never think your phone is spying on you? No wonder your exhausted.

And so to ‘dread’. As I already mentioned, the world is at war. Climate change has accelerated at such a pace that it’s less a question of if, but when, low-lying land will be submerged and crops fail, but AI could bring about the end of humanity before it happens. Call me a pessimist, but we’re fucked. But how, or when? It’s impossible to tell, but that sense of impending doom… it’s not paranoia, it’s not you. This is the news media, and social media, relentlessly prodding away with darkness. These day, I wake every morning at 6:30 and immediately check my phone – Facebook, news channels – to make sure the world hasn’t ended before I go downstairs to feed the cat and make a cuppa. It isn’t right, it isn’t healthy, but this where we are.

With The Dead End, Virgin Birth – now expanded to a trio – nail it in terms of capturing that fear and dread and intensely claustrophobic paranoia. The title track is an absolute rager, pat NIN, part Filter, part Stabbing Westward, part Pitch Shifter, it’s abrasive, full-throttle, and ‘PICK UP YOUR SKIN’ goes all out for the thudding techno groove, and also slams down some heavily processed guitar noise.

‘BEEF PONY’ sounds wrong and feels wrong: a glitchy collision of industrial and hip-hop that seems to draw influence from Faith No More and Godflesh, and drags in a bit of country and trance, too, but its success is all the attack. It’s also a reminder of just how impactful drum machines can be when used correctly. Here, the bass beats kick hard, and dominate the sound.

After the snarling industrial dance stomp of ‘GOOD BOOK’, ‘PERFORMATIVE LOSING’ delves into darker territories and I’m reminded of NIN circa ‘The Perfect Drug spun with late 80s Ministry. It’s ball-bustingly heavy, and is the perfect summation of the Virgin Birth sound. Heavy, intense, laden with anguish. It hurts. Don’t plead for mercy: accept that this is life now: constant punishment. Endless brutality. Relentless hurt. The brutally fucked dance piece that is the last track, ‘MYSTERY MAN’ is everything you need to know. It’s noisy. It’s intense. it’s claustrophobic. It’s bloody brilliant.

AA

Untitled design - 1

Chameleons / Lol Tolhurst / Kahula – Stylus, Leeds, 21st October 2026

Posted: 22 October 2026 in Live, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Christopher Nosnibor

Chameleons might be considered as being among the ‘also-rans’ of the early days of goth, along with the likes of, say, Rose of Avalanche and The March Violets. Despite gaining a solid cult fanbase early on, due in no small part to a stunning debut album, subsequently signing to Geffen in the mid-80s, as well as receiving substantial critical acclaim, they somehow failed to take off. Calling it a day after the release of their third album, Strange Times in 1987, they reconvened briefly at the turn of the millennium. Their latest reunion, now five years in, is approaching their longest continuous run, and has also yielded a new album and EP. And so here they are, arguably as popular now as they’ve ever been, and not as a nostalgia act but a going concern. The number of younger people in the audience tonight is also testament to this.

The doors are early – 7pm – and Kahula are on early doors – 7:10 – so play to a mere smattering of an audience. The five-piece from Manchester are like many of the new, younger emerging bands who are taking the post-punky / goth sound of circa 1984 as their template. They’re a bit early U2, with vocals which evoke Lloyd Cole and Ian MacCulloch. They’re competent, but uninspiring, and they’re met with polite applause.

1000098745

Kahula

Lol Tolhurst by way of a support act is quite something, and a definite draw here. In the wake of his two books, the most recent being Goth, which has been well-received, the co-founder of The Cure has been enjoying something of a career revival after the wilderness years which followed his expulsion from the band circa Disintegration.

Of course, his set of early Cure songs – from the period where was an active co-writer – isn’t a solo set, and he has a bassist and guitarist (who covers the vocal duties) accompanying his drums, and they open with a super-slow and supremely dolorous ‘The Holy Hour’. The bassist throws Peter Hook lunges. And then they’re straight into ‘A Forest’, which would have been more expected as a closer. ‘Siamese Twins’ is next after an intro from Lol which references the closing line and Sylvia Plath. Of course it’s bleak.

Tolhurst’s drumming is simple / sparse / motorik depending on your perspective, but hearing these early Cure songs live and in a – comparatively – intimate setting (Stylus has a capacity of 1,000) is, almost inevitably, moving, even in the absence of Robert Smith’s unique vocal. You can see from the body language that they’re feeling it onstage, too, inhabiting these oppressive sonic spaces.

IMG_20261021_2024511000098774

Lol Tolhurst

Their rendition of ‘A Strange Day’ isn’t instantly recognisable, and it doesn’t quite gel, mangling that essential lead guitar part. ‘M’, however, sounds perfectly crisp and brittle. The singer seems to struggle with some of the notes on ‘The Hanging Garden’, where the other two seem at their most comfortable. Lol introduces ‘All Cats are Grey’ as a ‘slightly different version’, and reminds us that they’re his songs too. He seems to have revisited a demo version or something for it, and it does provide an interesting insight into his contribution to the writing process for those early albums. It’s drummier than the studio version. Again, it’s the vocals which are the weakest element, and it’s perhaps worth noting that the guy onstage isn’t the one featured on the tour promo. Or perhaps not. ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ prefaces a band intro, before they give us ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, and at their scheduled end time, launch into ‘10:15 Saturday Night’ by way of a finale. And having promised a set of Lol-era Cure songs, that’s what they gave us.

Chameleons open a set loaded with newer material (five of the seven songs from Arctic Moon feature in the seventeen-song set) with ‘Where Are You?’, and they sound fantastic. Their LED backdrop is like a movie through the set., and I suspect some of it – at least – is AI generated, and I find a certain discomfort in this. Still, there’s nothing remotely artificial about the musicianship or the enthusiasm with which they play the songs.

1000098844IMG_20261021_212650

Chameleons

The jangling indie of ‘Lady Strange’ lands third, and sits comfortably alongside the older tunes.

‘I wish these songs weren’t still relevant,’ Mark Burgess opines before they drop the first truly vintage track of the night in the form of ‘Up the Down Escalator’ from Script of the Bridge.

Burgess’ voice is remarkably strong, and with two guitars, they sound muscular. Burgess looks office casual, and pretty limber, too. He swaps his bass for a 12-string acoustic for the epic ‘David Bowie Takes Me by the Hand,’ another one from the new album.

100009886010000988401000098855

Chameleons

He warns that Trump is just the prelude of worse to come before ‘Saviours Are a Dangerous Thing’, and they land ‘Soul in Isolation’ at the hour mark – and if my ears don’t deceive me, there are nods to The Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘There is a Light that Never Goes Out’ by The Smiths’ slipped in along the way, giving something of a medley feel to this already huge tune.

Hearing ‘Swamp Thing’ with fresh ears and in a live setting, it’s easy to understand why they were hailed as they next U2. Meanwhile, the epic ‘Feels Like the End of the World’ is one of the standouts on Arctic Moon, and so it proves to be in tonight’s set, too. They wrap up a colossal set with the killer brace of oldies, ‘Second Skin’ and ‘Don’t Fall’. It’s incredible that songs of this vintage can still sound fresh, but then, it’s incredible that Chameleons are this good after all this time.

Forensics – Dogtown

Posted: 20 October 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Gotta love the Leeds scene. It keeps on throwing up noisy bands who really capture the zeitgeist. Sure, the city’s been redeveloped and gentrified and is a world away from the dingy days of Thatcher’s Britain, which saw it become the heartland of the early 80s goth scene. But for all its plush shopping centres and slick office spaces, home to wealthy finance firms, and for the way university life is now less The Young Ones and more the domain of the well-heeled – most often from overseas – who can afford to take on forty grand’s debt with only limited hope of a better job – it’s still a place where there is considerable poverty.

My generation was lied to: we were promised ‘graduate jobs’ which paid salaries well above the national average. Call me a failure: after a three-year degree in English literature – followed by an MA, and then a PHD, I failed to land a job which paid a ‘graduate’ wage and eventually, twenty-five years after graduation, I had my three student loans written off. Yes, I’d advocate staying poor as a career choice, naturally.

I digress somewhat, but the Leeds scene has always been, and continues to be, different. More recent years has seen the city’s sound move away from goth to noisy shit. This fashion started in the mid 00s, with the likes of That Fucking Tank, Pulled Apart by Horses, and These Monsters, and there was oddball stuff like Forward Russia! And This Et Al, and while lumped in with the post-rock trend. iLiKETRAiNS (later I Like Trains) always stood apart. Leeds has long been… well, different.

Forensics are different, too, and quintessentially Leeds, too. As they pitch it, they’re ‘Influenced by a desire to establish a sound that was as gritty as it was unrelenting’ and ‘have set straight their objective from the start; to put the world to rights as an unforgivably noisy 5 piece unafraid to incorporate influences from noise to hardcore punk, from black metal to garage rock’.

‘Dogtown’ is raw and biting. It’s built around a dingy, grainy garage-rock bassline, and during the verses, a sinewey guitar line twists through skewed angles in a fashion that calls to mind The Jesus Lizard, and, by some kind of default, Blacklisters. Then the chorus drives straight ahead with a racing urgency, the rabid punk vocals reminiscent of a screamier Wayne Barrett of Slaughter and the Dogs. It’s fierce.

AA

wtlk-vwRyhxh_BlI

Deafkids / Kombi / Error Control – Boom, Leeds, 18th October 2026

Posted: 19 October 2026 in Live, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Christopher Nosnibor

Doors opening at 7 suggests an early start and early finish, and sure enough Error Control is on at 7:30. It’s very quiet in terms of attendance – so quiet initially I’m wondering if I’ve got the wrong night, but the beer’s decent enough and there’s some pounding, beat-heavy industrial noise pumping from the PA.

There’s a pattern emerging here: bands on respected underground / independent labels landing in Leeds to play to small but enthusiastic audiences play some of the most outstanding gigs I’ve witnessed all year. This was true of Might and Noisepicker when they played the Duck and Drake, and the same is true of Deafkids, who have brought Kombi, also from Brazil, along as the main support. It’s the tenth night of a world tour which has already seen them play mainland Europe, UK, and Ireland, with a stack more UK dates before heading back across Europe and onto Japan before a final haul round South America. These guys work hard. I do wonder if Angine de Poitrine’s long-sold out (and probably oversold) show at the O2 may have pulled some people away, and likewise the Ambient Leeds night at The Fox and Newt, but it doesn’t seem all that probable. So where the hell is everyone? Still, those present make up for number in terms of enthusiasm, and get to witness something special.

Error Control, playing blindfolded, creates a punishing wall of noise worthy of Merzbow. He begins by tentatively locating the monitor and draping the mic on it to generate a sustained feedback, which then goes through a succession of pedals and bits, which he tweaks and bashes to evermore brutal effect. It’s the kind of noise that’s both exhilarating and immersive, the harsh blast rendered even more intense by the use of only red lighting, which strobes. As he climbs up onto his bench in front of the stage, a potential health and safety nightmare reveals itself, but he gradually returns to the ground, where he proceeds to hail his pedal board onto the floor, and the set ends abruptly while he’s standing on the pedalboard and everything cuts out.

DSC06358DSC06400

Error Control

It’s only after I get home that not only have I seen him perform in person once before, but that performing with …(something) ruined, we’ve also featured alongside one another at two virtual gigs during lockdown.

Kombi’s set is a fine example of exploratory, experimental music, which reveals different facets as the set progresses. Billowing dark ambient with guttural growls gives way to fractured guitar and crackling contact work, a convergence of avant-garde and industrial. On the third piece, he unleashes Sunn O))) -like power chord drone. The second half of his set is a continuous extended piece built around dank loops and drones and wailing feedback, whereby the low frequencies bother the bowels and the shrill squall of treble terrifies the eardrums.

DSC06409DSC06418DSC06446

Deafkids are having some technical issues and start twenty minutes later than advertised. Oh, but they’re more than worth the wait. And if they’re disappointed by playing to around twenty-five people, they don’t let it show, and their set is an absolute blinder.

They’ve not only captured the sound and feel of new album, CICATRIZES DO FUTURO (SCARS OF THE FUTURE), but take it to a whole other level live. Not for the first time, I’m amazed that there are just two guys up there: with a combination of pre-recorded drum loops, prerecorded and live guitar and extraneous noise loops, infinite delay on everything, especially the vocals, and some truly remarkable drumming, they conjure a dense, powerful sound, dominated by a thunderous barrage of percussion.

DSC06450DSC06508

Marian Sarine’s drumming is something to behold, often playing the congas with one hands while working his way around snare, toms, and cymbals with a stick, effortlessly switching to two sticks, and occasionally two hands. He smiles a lot, too. The resulting battery lands like Test Dept meets Swans, but with some techno breaks and a Latin twist. Oh, and there’s some looped beatboxing, too. Because they need more beats. It all builds to a head-shredding wall of noise. This ultra-percussive explosion is paired with abstract guitar work and vocals swathed in cavernous reverb and endless echo. It’s totally hypnotic, propulsive.

DSC06503DSC06550

With so much percussion, it’s got groove. It’s techno, trance, dub, shoegaze, and noise rock all at once. And some flute. It all makes for an intense fifty minutes. And it’s all done by ten past ten, which is ideal on a Sunday night.

Meryl Streek / Bad Nights Sleep / Heavyset. / Texas Forever / Emilia Slade – The Fulford Arms, York, 16th October 2026

Posted: 18 October 2026 in Live, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Christopher Nosnibor

Listening to Stories They Don’t Teach You in School earlier, I was – not for the first time – struck by the raw, unfiltered nature of Meryl Streek’s lyrics. On discovering supporting Pigs x 7 earlier in the year, my first impression was that he was a bit of a novelty act, although I’d changed my mind completely after about three songs. Explaining what he does to anyone has proven a challenge. Yes, I have to concede, it’s a bit like Sleaford Mods… but really not at the same time. We’ll return to this later. But for now, he’s the reason I’m here having been hooked by that last show here. And tonight is sold out. It’s the first night of the three-day One For the Road festival, which is an annual event here, and has been since 2013 – although as far as I can recall, this is my first time here.

When I arrive, I’m held up waiting at the door because the woman in front of me, who’s probably about 60, is getting stroppy with the door staff, first because she doesn’t want her to take the stub from her ticket, and then because she doesn’t want her wristband putting on, or too tight, and starts walking off before said wristband has been attached to said wrist. I report this aberrant behaviour because it’s in some way illustrative of a sector of tonight’s audience, emblematic of the world post-lockdown, where people have seemingly forgotten how to interact or how to behave, particularly people of a certain age. Yes, it’s sold out, so inevitably it’s rammed, but I’m shocked by the number of times I get nudged and knocked by people moving backwards or sideways without considering the space around them, and the fact there are groups of people holding conversations at the bar when there are others wanting to get served.

Emilia Slade, who’s up first, and as such opens the weekend’s proceedings, is playing without her full band, is here in the capacity of acoustic singer songwriter, and serves up some emo-hued introspection and confessionals, with a side-serving of environmentalism, and a cover ‘The Obituaries’ by The Mezingers. Texas Forever, whose main purpose of existing is to play this festival each year, are the heaviest and most ferocious guitar band on the bill, playing some fairly fiery hardcore, but with a Yorkshire twist. Their most interesting feature is the dynamic of the twin vocals, which find guitarist Jonny Gill, of Lyon Estates and (formerly?) On The Ropes, adding countervocals to powerful effect, and it really sets them apart in their field. But as most of their songs are only a minute or two long, there’s a fair bit of chat to fill out a half-hour et.

DSC06163DSC06168DSC06173

Emilia Slade / Texas Forever

It’s not just Texas Forever: for a festival that’s such a York scene thing, it’s noticeable how few of the local acts I’ve seen elsewhere, and the same is true of the crowd. As I come here often, and am accustomed to running into people, it’s rare that the only people I know or even recognise are the venue staff, and one gets the impression that for many of those present, this is their sole annual outing. This makes the presence of Meryl Streek even more incongruous. And – spoiler alert – Meryl Streek is incongruity defined, in any context.

When the festival started in 2013, country / folk / Americana acts were ubiquitous in York. Heavyset. take us back to those days. One of the songs has a guitar line that sounds like a fiddle. The punctuationally frustrating Bad Nights Sleep – a beardy six-piece – serve up some middling, middle of the road 00s emo punk pop crossover. Rarely have three guitars (plus bass) given so little impact. But then, they have middling, middle-of-the road song titles like ‘Call Your Mother’ and ‘Dance a Two Step’, and ‘The Kids Need New Shoes’. Seeing the middle-age women swing their handbags and the anorak-sporting older guys swaying to this, I begin to relish the prospect of them shitting their pants to Meryl Streek’s rage. ‘Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers’ dives into a Pink Floyd prog wankfest of intertwining solos, and they have a song about being a rock n roll band that sounds like the fucking Commitments. Towards the end of the set, they do land a song that’s half decent, a bit Oceansize, a bit Biffy Clyro, but it’s not exactly adequate compensation. And yet there are people – older men – rushing for set lists and to have their festival posters signed.

DSC06213DSC06227DSC06234

The Heavyset. / Bad Nights Sleep

Credit to these crets, they mostly stepped back rather than left, mean that Meryl Streek got to pay to a packed house. He did so in near darkness, too, with the entire lighting rig off, and turning off the illuminated stage backdrop off for large portions of the set, with the sole illumination being a torch, and even then, only occasionally. But , while in near-darkness for over half an hour… what a set! Largely culled from the new album, Stories They Don’t Teach You in School, released just this week, it’s forty-five minutes of relentless, explosive rantology.

My first thought, in terms of the Sleaford Mods comparisons, was that while the Mods are all about the anti-performance shtick, Meryl Streek puts on a performance. But watching him in a smaller venue tonight, there’s a sense that this isn’t a performance at all. The relentless pacing back and forth, the frenzied energy that emanates from every pore as he spits out his words at a hundred syllables a second, it’s art, but it’s not show: this is necessity, this is how it has to be, because he can’t be any other way. Streek isn’t doing this for fun, he’s doing it because he has to, and the relentless stream of vitriol is the only way he can stay even remotely sane. It’s powerful – and then some. Every second, you get the impression he’s reliving some trauma or another, and he channels it and channels it, and when he runs out of words or feels he needs to psyche himself up for the next lyrical onslaught, there’s a phlegm-shifting, guttural “wwurrgh!!!” before he resumes his endless stomping.

DSC06244DSC06261DSC06351

Meryl Streek

A mash-up of dance, trance, punk, and shoegaze, there’s a lot happening in the laptop backing track, which is also littered with sampled, often lifted from new reports on murders and suicides, common focuses of his songs. There are no two ways about it: Streek focuses on dark topics, and some would likely say his material should carry trigger warnings. But fuck that: life doesn’t come with trigger warnings and we need to face up to this stuff.

The fact he’s made multiple charts, including the UK album chart in the week of the release of Stories They Don’t Teach You in School is immense, and proves there’s a market for DIY music that’s ugly, brutal, and speaks honestly of the human condition.

He spits and snarls his way through ‘The Chancer’, and ‘Kelly’ is both powerful and devastating, and closes with the ripping pairing of ‘Death the Landlord’ and anthemic single cut ‘If This is Life’. Never has such passionate rage and relentless negativity felt so magnificent.

Listen: ‘To Be Eviscerated’ by The Body and Cel Genesis

Posted: 17 October 2026 in Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

The Body and Cel Genesis have shared ‘To Be Eviscerated,’ the final preview of their collaborative debut, Whole Wide World, out November 13 via Thrill Jockey.

Following previous singles ‘Candy Crush’ and the title track, ‘To Be Eviscerated’ opens with rattling toms and ominous electronics before erupting into a barrage of blown-out noise, impassioned vocals, and restless percussion. It captures the tension at the heart of the Portland and Oakland projects’ collaboration: creation itself becomes an act of defiance, a way to carve out something meaningful from a world facing oblivion.

About the track, Chris says “Love this track, composed of an insane array of genre elements, from industrial textures to dubstep-inspired subs, roto toms to gabber kicks, all married with three distinctly horrifying vocals. An unhinged, dynamic, yet cohesively powerful banger. Perfectly captures the collision of elements and influences represented by this exceptional collaboration.”

Hear it here:

AA

The collaboration took shape on tour, with few rules established ahead of time. Cel Genesis’ maximalist compositions and aggressive editing collided with The Body’s improvisational instincts, allowing both projects to push their respective approaches into unfamiliar territory. Drawing on trance, distortion, and experimental electronics, the resulting album is driven by the visceral interplay of dual drumming from Lee Buford and Nick Cowman, alongside the combined force of both groups’ vocals.

Recorded at Machines with Magnets by Seth Manchester, with additional recording by Andrew Oswald in California, Whole Wide World evolved over two years of recording and meticulous editing. Some songs began with electronic beds generated by Cel Genesis, while others grew from live drums, with each group reshaping and reimagining the material.

Whole Wide World is dense and heavy, yet made with joy. Its songs confront today’s harsh realities through the eyes of an unrelenting optimist reckoning with the death of possibility itself.

AA

Body and Cel

Photo: Chris Danko

Matt Rösner – Lost Meridians

Posted: 16 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Room40 – 16th October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Writing on Lost Meridians, Jonathan Wilson observes that ‘traditional instrumentation is manipulated, twisted, stretched and weaved into endless webs. Recorded with whatever was at hand, like a phone or single mic, these short and sharp moments have been pushed far beyond their original convention. Sparkling highs and low sub sonics seem to linger throughout asking more questions than offering answers,’ adding ‘this is music to pause to, this is music to slow down to, this is music to dream to… But mostly, this is music to remind us that sometimes the unexplained things around us are just as important as the things inside us’.

The unexplained has – at least for those of us who are a certain age – connotations of The X Files, but also, to an extent, Tales of the Unexpected, and The Twilight Zone, resurrected post-millennium.

Now, some of the things – at least where the titles are concerned – on Lost Meridians are quire easily explained, not least of all the first composition, ‘Mountains, standing steadfast’. It’s gentle, slow, contemplative, hazy, and in many ways reflects, in sonic form, the experience of gazing up at peaks, partly obscured by cloud, in a moment of calm.

Each autumn, I make a trip with my daughter to the Lake District. We stay in a cottage on the shore of Windermere. The cottage has a private jetty, and we scattered some of my wife’s ashes there the first year we went. Looking across the water towards the ridge on the far shore, and, behind that, Coniston Old Man, I have felt that sense of stillness that comes from being in nature, and also the sense of insignificance. The mountains, the lakes, were here millennia before us, and will remain for millennia after. We’re just passing through, and all we can really do is make the most of the time we have, however brief – and for some, it’s briefer than others. I find comfort and solace in the fact she knew and loved this magnificent landscape, and we shared time in it, as a family, and that consequently, our daughter feels a deep attachment to these surroundings, too.

‘At First Light’ features almost unfiltered folk elements, with a gently-strummed classical guitar standing in the foreground against a vague, eddying background, which at times tapers off to nearly nothing, while the immense, nebular drift of ‘A Vastness, unresolved’ mirrors the connotations evoked by the title perfectly. Indeed, we exist as dots within a vastness that’s beyond comprehension, and as such can never be resolved.

‘Across a line’ consists of two parts, the first of which chimes and rings but briefly before fading out to be replaced by a droning roar – heavy rain? a waterfall? wind? static? – which in turn fades beneath a soft watercolour wash of sound, and it’s remarkably soothing. The pairing of the final two pieces, ‘Fractures in Silence’ and the title track, are each six and a half minutes in length. The former takes the form of a long, slow undulation, which sounds in some respects like the dying wheeze of a broken church organ, culminating in what sounds something like an elongated cymbal crash and frozen-frame electronic glitch. The latter gradually fades in, a low, rumbling hum which hangs like a dense, churning sonic cloud.

Over the course of the album’s forty-one minutes, Rösner creates some richly atmospheric moments, the elements interwoven into a magnificently textured tapestry.

AA

RM4276 front

Older Entries
Newer Entries