Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Attrition – The Black Maria

Posted: 16 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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22nd March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Everyone has a different way of processing, everyone’s cognition operates differently. It’s all a matter of experience and perception. The broader one’s experience, and also one’s exploration of art – in all media, be it books, music, visual art – the broader the network of intertext and references available. Formative experiences and interactions are also a significant factor in the way we come to shape and comprehend our world. And so it s that the moment I encounter the words ‘Black Maria’, my mind immediately leaps to ‘Afterhours’ by The Sisters of Mercy – my first encounter with the term, long before I would understand that it was a term for a police van. Attrition’s latest release certainly doesn’t elicit images of dark vehicles, but does hint at the seedy backstreet scenes that the Sisters song brings to mind, with its sense of disconnection, of being outside yourself, .the paranoid twitch of sleep deprivation

The album’s brief intro track, ‘The Promise’ is a murky ambient piece with hushed spoken-word vocals which is build a mood, a sense of dark atmosphere and foreboding. This intro track thins has really become a vogue in recent years, to the point that it’s becoming predictable and even frustrating to be presented with an atmospheric opening piece which probably isn’t particularly representative of the album it prefaces.

In the case of The Black Maria, it’s a fair primer for the wildly varied, even cacophonous blend of musicality which follows. ‘The Great Derailer’ brings operatic vocals and some bold technoindustrial grooves, before ‘The Switch’ gives us some techno-heavy goth with strong hints of Twitch-era Ministry woven into the mix. But once again, against the busy backdrop that alludes to the likes of PIG and KMFDM, there are ethereal moans and wails which drape themselves hauntingly. I’ve loosely reminded of some of the contributions Gitane DeMone made to Christian Death around the time of Ashes, or maybe Jarboe on Swans’ Children of God, but this is somehow different, and if anything, more difficult to assimilate.

Attrition bring a vast array of styles to the table for a start. ‘The Pillar II’ is exemplary: a low industrial throb brings a heavy tension, an unsettling uncertainty, which manifests as a discomfiture in the lower regions of the gut. But the wailing wordless vocals evoke tortured souls, wandering in purgatory. There are tense strings swelling and holding a tight grip, you find your chest tightening and it’s hard to swallow for this clench of tension. It evokes physical response: I feel my jaw clench and my breathing growing more laboured as the track builds layers of sound: there’s a hum that tortures the ears, and when it falls away, the sensation is strange, empty.

Music box melancholy prefaces more ultra-tense violins on ‘The Alibi’, which really takes a turn for the disturbing. The dual vocals grate against one another, dark sinister, deranged, almost schizophrenic in their whispers. The layers are busy and there are serpentine instrumental intrusions amidst the strolling piano and skittering strings and the wild cacophony of backing vocals: the effect is absolutely dizzying. The title track draws the album to a close with warping, time-bending synth dissonance and pulsating bass which contrasts with operatic quailing providing the backdrop to a growled, menacing spoken word vocal – and then it goes large near the end, with industrial-strength percussion cutting through the melee.

‘Spooky’ feels like such a weak, tame adjective in the main, but it’s the best I’ve got when it comes to summarising the otherworldly discomfit of the experience that is The Black Maria. But throughout The Black Maria, Attrition channel all of the dissociation and disconnection, and I’d challenge anyone to listen to this and keep their feet completely on the ground.

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PIG – Red Room

Posted: 14 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Metropolis Records – 17th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

For a good many years, PIG lay dormant, moribund, mute. Gone, but not forgotten, having mingled with the milieu of industrial royalty since emerging in the ranks of KMFDM and retaining that connection and confluence while operating separately under the PIG moniker, Raymond Watts arguably reached his largest audiences in the wake of touring as support to Nine Inch Nails on the Downward Spiral tour. With pig’s heads on stakes at the sides of the stage, it was visual, visceral, and vital.

Things went quiet for a time – a very long time – but since returning in 2016 with The Gospel, the releases have come thick and fast, with Red Room being the sixth album (if you include Pain is God, a compilation of EP cuts) since PIG’s phoenix-like resurrection

As the accompanying notes explain, ‘Watts has co-written much of Red Room with Jim Davies, a longtime member of Pitchshifter but best known for his acidic and acerbic guitar lines on many chart hits by The Prodigy. Several regular cohorts are also present and correct, along with some new additions most majestically heard on ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ as the PIG choir: Emily Kavanaugh (Night Club), Chris Hall (Stabbing Westward), Burton C Bell (Fear Factory, Ascension of the Watchers), I Ya Toyah, Chris Connelly (Revolting Cocks, Ministry), En Esch (KMFDM) and Marc Heal (Cubanate) are among those featured.’

First: it’s a hell of a roll-call of contributors. A veritable who’s-who, an industrial supergroup on a scale that pisses all over recent lineups for RevCo or Pigface. Second: Jim Davies’ presence is notable in terms of defining the sound. There’s a lot of sinewy detail in between the chugging riffs and bulbous sequenced synthy bass notes. Recent releases have seen Watts expose the poppier, glammier aspects of PIG, but these have been cast aside here in favour a sound which is altogether more reminiscent of mid-to-late 90s PIG, only minus the flamboyant orchestral strikes and string flourishes.

Blasting in with ‘Crumbs, Chaos, Lies’ – which deviates from the classic alliterative rule of three – the album gets down to the grind from the off, the track boasting some dirty low-end scuzz, the likes of which would have been quite at home on Sinsation or Wrecked, with overloading guitars that burst from the speakers rent with a serpentine synth line and some discordant piano. Layers? It has many, and the more you listen, the more you hear. Watts has long been a meticulous master of detail in the studio, and while Red Room is darker and noisier than some of its predecessors, it’s a masterclass in attention to the little things.

The title track is a proper PIG prime-cut: anthemic, but dark, bleak, and dirty, while ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ is reminiscent of previous ‘gospel’ flavoured pieces, but equally, I’m reminded of a grimier sweatier, sleazier version of She Wants Revenge. If ‘Does it Hurt Yet’ calls to mind Nine Inch Nails circa Pretty Hate Machine and the more low-key, robotic synth moments of The Downward Spiral, it’s worth bearing in mind that it was Watts who working this field before Trent, before Reznor contributed to Pigface, Watts was recording with KMFDM, and come 1988 (when PHM was released), he released the first PIG LP and worked as a touring member of Foetus.

‘Slave to Pleasure’ mashes a whole lot together, sounding like an industrial version of The Associates, while throwing nods to Depeche Mode and David Bowie. It’s high-energy and a killer tune which would go down well on the radio, if the whip cracks and general themes could pass approval. ‘Six Eye Sand Spider’ is again predominantly electronic but the layers ad textures are exciting, and the guitars, while packed down so, so low, bring both dirt and density the sound. ‘PIG is at Your Window’ is uncomfortable, and brings some bold brass and busy orchestral work atop the big, grinding blasts of guitar, not to mention a dash of .

Red Room captures PIG at their darkest and heaviest, but also marks a return to their eclecticism and experimentalism of the mid-nineties. It’s an unapologetically hefty set with some inspired twists.

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Maybeshewill – Fair Youth (2024 Mix) – 10th Anniversary Reissue

Posted: 12 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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InsideOut Music – 11th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Maybeshewill rose to prominence on the crest of the instrumental post-rock wave swiftly on their arrival in 2005, and while many of their titles and song structures, with brooding passages splintered by bold crescendos, were quintessentially of the time, what set them apart from their peers was the electronic element of their sound. Between 2008 and 2014, they released four albums, with Fair Youth being the final one. And then they called it a day the following year.

Something happened in the years which followed. Not to the band themselves, but in the culture. As so often happens, their reputation and the appreciation for the band seemed to grow in their absence. There’s inevitably an element of nostalgia involved, but with fashions being ever cyclical, post-rock’s popularity was somewhat diminished by 2014, largely due to oversaturation, no doubt – how many instrumental bands playing seven-minute songs with chiming guitars and crashing crescendos all wanting to be Explosions in the Sky do you need to see on a single evening, and how many such lineups do you need in a week, month, year, lifetime? But as time passed, there emerged a new generation who hadn’t been going to gigs in the mid-noughties, who’d missed out, and thus grew a renewed interest.

Maybeshewill reconvened in 2020, releasing No Feeling Is Final in 2021, an album which, seven years after Fair Youth, further cemented their style and certainly didn’t disappoint.

As 2024 marks the ten-year anniversary of Fair Youth, it seems an appropriate time to review the merits of a definitive album – here, reassessed, remixed, and remastered. Jamie Ward comments of the new mix and master: “With 10 years more mixing experience under my belt I feel a bit better placed to conquer the wall of sound and get a little more separation between the instruments to really bring out the details of those arrangements. In general I’ve tried to make things hit a little harder and be bit a more vibrant and technicolour.”

I haven’t been anal enough to play the two versions side by side or to really focus on those minute details which some fans will likely revel in for hours, and I sincerely hope they do. There is a certain and quite specific pleasure in rediscovering an album you know intimately, finding fresh details and dynamics along thee way, but this is perhaps more the material for fan forums and individuals to immerse themselves in.

For me, it’s been a long time since I’ve listened to this album – not because I don’t rate it, but because of the sheer volume of music in the world vying for my attention.

From the very start, rolling piano and brooding strings pair with chiming guitars, strolling bass, and solid percussion to make mood music that’s not meek or fay, but driven and dynamic, with remarkable texture and depth, and it draws you in instantly. There’s a magical musicality to ‘In Amber’, largely derived from the piano which ripples and rolls its way through the surging guitar.

The title track is one of many which, with vocals, would likely have made an epic academy-size venue-filling anthem, and ‘All Things Transient’ has soundtrack written all over it. The quality of the compositions – and their execution is impossible to fault, as they present back-to-back tunes which are solid, energetic, expansive, imaginative. ‘Sanctuary’ is mellow but at thew same time has drive and energy, pulsating shoegaze with a solid rock spine in its tight rhythm section, which stands in contrast to the rather more mathy, jazzy, folksy ‘Asiatic’.

The album’s eleven songs showcase a real range, and Fair Youth represents not only a high point in the band’s career, but also in the post-rock oeuvre. It’s an album of a rare consistent quality, and holds up as well ten years on as it did at the time – if not, perhaps, better.

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Mayflower Madame – A Foretold Ecstasy

Posted: 11 May 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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10th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Back in April 2020, writing on the release of their second album, Prepared for a Nightmare, I remarked that it had been four years since their debut, Observed in a Dream, and it had felt like an eternity. And here we are, a further four years on, and ‘A Foretold Ecstasy’ has landed as the prelude to album number three, due in the autumn.

Here, they’re straight in with that tight, solid rhythm section – a chunky bass with a hint of chorus to fatten it out while also giving it that classic spectral goth sound, melded to a relentless four-four metronomic thump, minimal cymbals, no flamboyant fills, just taut, a tense, rigid spine around which the body of the song grows. This, of course, is the foundation of that vintage gothy / post punk sound which originated with The Sisters of Mercy and, thanks largely to Craig Adams – who is arguably one of the greatest bassists of all time by virtue of his simple style of nailing a groove and just holding it down for the duration – carried on in The Mission. The Mish may lack some of the style and certainly the atmosphere and lyrical prowess of The Sisters, but the musical ingredients – and in particular that unflinching rhythm section – are fundamentally the same. And so it is that while the dominance of that thunking bass and bash-bash-bash snare may have become something of a formula, it’s hard to beat and absolutely defines the genre.

Mayflower Madame have always sat more toward The Mission end of the spectrum, whipping up songs which owe a certain debt to Wayne Hussey’s layered, cadent guitar style. But what they bring that’s unique is a swirly, psychedelic / shoegaze hue, a fuzzy swirl of texture and light. There’s a dark decadence, a lascivious richness to Mayflower Madame that accentuates the dramatic aspects of the gothiness: theatrical, flamboyant, but without being hammy or campy. And of course, Trond Fagernes’ vocals drift in an ocean of reverb, and the cumulative effect isn’t simply atmospheric: it carries you away on a sea of mesmeric sound.

With layers of synth which drift like mist across a production that balances dreaminess with a driving urgency, ‘A Foretold Ecstasy’ floats between haunting verses and surging choruses – and it’s hinting at their best work to date.

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PHOTO CREDIT: MIRIAM BRENNE

Monta At Odds – Forget About You

Posted: 9 May 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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The Record Machine – 12th April 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The latest single, ‘Forget About You’, from ‘nouveau post-punk troubadours’ Monta At Odds’ is pitched as ‘a dark-natured opus about resisting attraction, especially when the bound proves hazardous.’

The trio, consisting of Mikal on vocals, Krysztof wielding the baritone guitar, and founding member Dedric polymathing on all other sonics are aiming for a ‘danceable mixture of eras past and present to match this raw but crisp sound.’

It’s very much of the school of neo-new wave / post-punk from circa 2004-2006 – think of Editors breaking through, Interpol’s Antics, and the likes of The Organ, and The Cinematics – particularly The Cinematics, in fact – with the electro element of She Wants Revenge’s debut. It’s post-punk with that clear contemporary slant, and a heavy dose of New Order’s buoyancy and accessibility. There’s shade around ‘Forget About You’, but a lot of sunlight and vibrancy, too: the crisp, clean, vaguely brittle guitars positively jangle against a thumping disco beat, and the melancholy is cut through with eyes cast to bright blue skies and a forward-facing optimism.

It’s only while writing this that the fact 2004 was twenty years ago has begun to register. What goes around comes around, of course, but twenty years is a generation, broadly – it seems, in my ever-lengthening experience – and the time it takes for kids to start picking up their parents’ record (or CD or whatever) collections and start drawing influence and inspiration. I say ‘or whatever’ because I do worry about the future. I worry less about styles rolling round in a repetitive cycle than what music will be coming through another twenty years from now. How is it going to go when it comes to teens raiding their parents’ Spotify playlists and finding nothing but Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, and, er, does anyone listen to anyone else? Of course I’m dramatizing slightly, but the point is that so much of the mainstream has become focused on quite literally a handful of artists – and what will be their legacy? Does Sam Smith capture an element of the zeitgeist beyond his identity? What does Dua Lipa speak of, and who does she speak to? A part of the problem is that where we used to have shows like Top of The Pops, The Tube, The Roxy, The Chart Show (with its alternative charts and other segments) and the Top 40 on Radio 1 (followed by something rather more alternative), the charts were pretty open and it was possible for stuff that wasn’t slick major-label sonic wallpaper to chart. This meant that it was possible to encounter something different without having to go to great lengths to seek it out. Now what do you do? Where do you go? How do people source music beyond the endless pumping of algorithms?

‘Forget About You’ hits me with a sense of nostalgia I had not anticipated, and which isn’t welcome: for some, nostalgia brings golden-tinged fuzziness and a warmth, an uplifting sensation. For me, it’s more like the sand tricking down in a sand timer, a slow-sapping pull in the guts, a seeping sadness. 2004 was twenty years ago. Less ‘yay, good times’ and more ‘fuck, I’m that much closer to death and twenty years have evaporated with depressingly little to show.’

Nostalgia isn’t a defining element of ‘Forget About You’: that’s simply something I bring to the table, highlighting the way that reception and perception colour the way an individual responds to music. It’s uptempo and catchy, bouncy even, and ultimately danceable, and neatly balances darkness and pop.

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Mother of All – Global Parasitic Leviathan

Posted: 5 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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12th April 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Having showcased single cut ‘Hypocrisy – Weaponised’, released ahead of the second album by progressive/melodeath act Mother of All, I was keen to get my lugs around the album in full, not least of all to see if I could get a handle on what ‘melodeath’ is. There doesn’t seem to be a week where I don’t stumble on another microgenre. This isn’t something exclusive to metal, although it certainly seems to be the strain which contains the most minutely fragmented forms.

While now a full and proper band, Mother of All is Martin Haumann’s concept. As the bio informs us, ‘With a background in The Royal Danish Conservatory and extensive training in different musical disciplines, Martin draws on varied and unusual influences to create a unique vision for Mother of All, but his prime inspiration comes from the deep cauldron of metal. Continuing to explore the art form with Mother of All, Martin creates songs that are diverse and eclectic in nature by incorporating melodic and progressive elements into death metal.’

On the evidence of Global Parasitic Leviathan, that means some crunching riffs played fast and furious and driven by rapidfire drumming, but with a lot of fast, flamboyant licks which are big on harmonics and fretwork tapestry. While the contrast is nicely separated and the detail adds layers to the thunderous assault, I can’t help but feel it falls into that self-made trap of showcasing technical skills to the extent that it undermines the overall power of a song at times.

Again, it’s a trait common across the board, but particularly in metal that there seems to be a compulsion to overcompensate, but overshowing the technical competence. It happens a lot in writing, too, though, particularly among newer writers who feel the need to demonstrate their writing skills by overwriting, packing in superfluous adjectives and paragraph upon paragraph of detail because look! I can do this! Well done. But how about you actually tell us a story? Or, in this context, play us a song?

Mother of All have some songs, and they’re burning with incendiary rage, and when they knuckle down and let the fury flow, they absolutely kill it.

The sentiments are solid, and the song titles speak for themselves: ‘Corporate Warfare Leviathan’, ‘Debt Crush’, ‘Merchants of Self-Loathing’ all rage antagonistically against the machines of capitalism and corporate domination, and when they trim the flamboyant fretwork and focus on delivering brute force, as on ‘The Stars Already Faded’, they really hit hard, Haumann’s raw, raging vocal a magnificent articulation of tortured anguish. ‘Debt Crush’, too, is five minutes of full-throttle fury, and although ‘Merchants of Self-Loathing’ gets a bit rap-metal, it’s in the Judgment Night vein and so deserves a pass. ‘Pillars’ seems to lean on Neil Young during the intro, before going all-out raging metal. Keep on rockin’ in the free world, indeed. The sentiment extends beyond genre, of course.

Global Parasitic Leviathan isn’t short on ideas and positively froths and overspills with technical ability, as they’re keen to show us, over and over. But, and this a lesson that takes time – less is more. Global Parasitic Leviathan is good, and it’s consistent in style and tone, but I can’t help but feel that tempering the fretwork would hit harder, because when they really riff out they’re utterly pulverising.

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Watch: ‘Som Et Barn Mod Dit Bryst’ by Demersal

Posted: 5 May 2024 in Reviews
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Fresh off a European tour with country-mates Kollapse, Danish screamo/hardcore collective Demersal today share a music video for a brand new song off the band’s forthcoming self-titled second album due out on May 10th.

"’Som Et Barn Mod Dit Bryst’ is the last song on our upcoming self-titled album,” says the band. “The song is essentially about the importance of taking part in communities with people you love and trust – whether it be family, music communities, activism, friendship, romantic relationships and so on. The whole album is mainly about facing global crises – climate change, war, extremism and so on. It can seem immensely incomprehensible to figure out what one can do as an individual to make a difference in a global perspective. But one thing we can do is to find comfort and love in the people we trust, as a way of dealing with our world that, in many ways, is slowly decaying.”

“The video consists of footage from our recent tour with Kollapse in Germany, France and Switzerland. It portrays one of the communities that we value and trust – our band and the scene we’re a part of."The video consists of footage from our recent tour with Kollapse in Germany, France and Switzerland. It portrays one of the communities that we value and trust – our band and the scene we’re a part of.”

Watch the video here:

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boycalledcrow – Kullu

Posted: 4 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Mortality Tables – 3rd May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

As much as this is an album it’s an historical document, and one they’ve had to blow the dust off ahead of its release. Kullu was recorded by Carl M Knott, aka Boycalledcrow, as a series of field recordings as he traversed India in 2005 and 2006.

As the accompanying notes explain, ‘The album is an audio travelogue of Knott’s travels through India in 2005 and 2006, just after he’d graduated. That journey was part of Knott’s concerted efforts to overcome the intense feelings of stress and anxiety that had gnawed away at him throughout his adolescence. Along the way, he documented his travels in a blog and accumulated countless memory cards of photos and videos.’

Life has a habit of delaying projects, of getting in the way (I have a number of book-length projects which I embarked upon circa 2010 which are languishing, incomplete, on my hard drive, and have every sympathy). When a project has lain so long, has been placed on a backburner, or whatever else, how viable is it after eighteen years? Is it really worth resurrecting? Yes. Always, and especially if / when it’s personal.

You read and hear often talk of ‘closure’, and usually it’s in relation to a bereavement or a specific trauma. But life is trauma: a path strewn with rocks of trauma to trip you unexpectedly.

Kullu is a road trip, a narrative, and also an exorcism, a sequence of processing, a coming to terms.

More than anything – and any critic’s outlook is limited to their experience – I’m struck by the range of sounds and the way in which Kullu is an album that expands over so much ground. At the outset, the beats are to the fore and Joujouka come to mind initially, as percussion thunders loud and hard, but before long, things start to melt and dissolve into entirely less form-shaped compositions. Twisting between ambience and various shades of dissonance and slow-shifting pulsations, Kullu grates and scrapes its way through a twisted journey of difference, of fresh terrains, ranging from ominous vocal and semi-orchestral compositions like ‘Kanashi’, to clanging, clattering, altered and warping. There’s a lot going on and I sometimes wonder if I’m equipped to cover this. But ultimately there is always room

Kullu presents all the moods, all the vibes, all the breadth of experience. It’s often discordant and difficult, and that’s as it should be.

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Kee Avil – Spine

Posted: 1 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Constellation – 3rd May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Ah, that difficult second album. Kee Avil set the bar high for herself with her debut, Crease, two years ago. Crease was a highly experimental, boundary-pushing collection of compositions, which was as challenging as it was entertaining. But the trouble with setting out one’s stall in such a fashion is that you can’t retread the same ground, you can’t do the same thing twice, you can’t repeat the same experiments and expect different results. Not to suggest that Crease was in any way a ‘novelty’ record, but experimentation and avant-gardism has to be ever new, fresh, and novel. Pushing the boundaries requires an artist to continue to push them further, to expand the parameters, or otherwise risk being confined withing the limits set initially, at which point, it becomes prescriptive, a template. Small wonder, then, that Avil found the process for Spine to be quite different from Crease. But, unlike many artists who struggle to regain the creative spark in the wake of their debut, whereby some languish for years in a creative trough only to return with some second-rate slop (there are many articles devoted to examples of the ‘sophomore slump’, and I feel neither need nor inclination to recap on them here), Kee Avil seemingly found herself fizzing with ideas, as her bio details:

‘Spine was written in Kee Avil’s home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months—a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: “This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch.” In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts.’

Touring does seem to have a habit of affecting the creative flow. It seems almost as if the industry model with its cycle of release – tour – write – repeat – serves to doom artists to dealing with unnecessary pressure to deliver, and it’s entirely self-defeating since inspiration simply cannot be forced – it’s something that happens. And it happened for Kee Avil, for sure.

Spine is brimming with discord and dissonance, angularity and oddness. ‘Felt’ fucks things up from the very off with warped, wrangling, jangling guitar that twists and mangles across flickering, stammering beats and extraneous noise that gets in your ears like a hatched moth fluttering against your eardrum. It’s a cringy, unsettling sensation, and it’s not really all that pleasant, and Avil breathes and croaks her way over it.

‘the iris is dry’ is magnificently weird, a close, breathy semi-spoken word muttering about lamps and eyes and angels, and it’s tense and claustrophobic and claws its way into your cranium. ‘It makes no sense,’ she croaks by way of a closing refrain, and it’s hard not to agree.

‘remember me’ continues the form of minimally-arranged alternative / eerie indie with a dark folk vibe crossed with a vocal style that sits in the realm of spoken word with a performance art delivery: Avil doesn’t sing, but whispers and breaths the words in a fashion that creates a palpable tension.

‘Gelatin’, released ahead of the album is entirely representative: taut, glitchy, the vocals mixed in a way as to be in your ear and at the same time detached: it’s awkward, uncomfortable. This is true of Spine as a whole.

The only real difficulty in Kee Avil’s second album is for the listener: with its shuddering percussion and harsh frequencies, as well as the up-front vocals, this is a challenging work. And this is a good thing: art should be challenging, and the quality is outstanding.

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Reviser – Burn It Out / Assassins

Posted: 30 April 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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15th March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

While releasing a double-A-sided single is one option, in the digital age, releasing two singles simultaneously is also a viable option. It doesn’t coast any more, but does probably double the likelihood of scoring hits, and double hits equals double download potential. It’s the 2024 equivalent of releasing a single on multiple formats, only not nearly the pain in the arse collectors had to suffer in the 90s, heading down to the local record shop to bag the regular release on 7” and 12”, cassette and CD, and then again the following week for a limited edition format. Because back then, these strategies would have an impact on chart placings, and chart placings mattered, receiving airplay on the UK Top 40 on Radio 1on a Sunday evening, and the chance of further exposure on Top of the Pops. Now, if any fucker downloads your release, you’re doing well, because infinite streams may be something to plug but the revenue is not. Yay, fifty thousand streams… we earned 10p.

As usual, I digress.

Reviser are pitched as sitting alongside ‘classic 80’s bands such as Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, and Killing Joke, REVISER sounds complimentary to such contemporaries as Actors, Soft Kill, and Drab Majesty.’

So many contemporary acts align themselves to The Sisters of Mercy while offering but pale ghosts of imitation, and I find myself feeling deflated on a constant basis. Reviser do at least offer something, in the deep, grooves which likely come from baritone guitarist and vocalist Krysztof Nemeth, which shares some commonality without being a lame tribute-style rip-off. The baritone guitar is a rare and underrated instrument, showcased to strong effect by Leeds duo That Fucking Tank. Here, with its thicker tones, it manifests as a foot-to-the-floor low-end groove that clearly takes its cues from ‘Alice’ and choice cuts from First and Last and Always.

‘Burn it Out’ is synthy, but there are flickers of fractal guitar which float across a thunderous drum machine. Krysztof Nemeth – while not remotely ‘gothic’ in his vocal delivery, eschewing melodramatic baritone in favour of singing ‘straight’ brings further layers to the band’s evolving atmosphere. ‘Assassins’ again brings that solid 4/4 groove melded to relentless drum machine, reminiscent of ‘Lucretia, My Reflection’ (I’m thinking this is no accident), combining reverby guitar and wispy synths, finishing it all off with some processed vocals. It’s a bit post-Depeche Mode electrogoth, but the guitars provide texture and the songwriting and the delivery is on point, hitting the balance between that mechanised detachment and a the twitch of human heart.

This takes you back to the spirit of 83/84, when their forbears were knocking out black gold, and a single, at its best, was a tightly-packed statement of dark intent. These singles – taken together – deserve your attention.

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