GRÀB unveil the lyric video ‘Kerkermoasta’ (English ‘dungeon keeper’) as the first single taken from their forthcoming new album Kremess (English: ‘funeral feast’’ German ‘Leichenschmaus’). The sophomore full-length of the Bavarian black metal duo has been scheduled for release on February 21, 2025.
GRÀB comment: “Our first advance single ‘Kerkermoasta’ is probably the most in-your-face track of the album”, vocalist and lyricist Grànt states. “It also shows a wide range of basically everything that makes our sound unique. Some parts remind me of the best days of such bands as the Norwegians Gehenna. There is also a dulcimer that introduces the melody, mid-tempo, blast beats, groove, and a slow ending. On the lyrical side the Bavarian word ‘Kerkermoasta’ literally translates to ‘Dungeon Master’. The dungeon keeper in question is the Grim Reaper himself. In other words: Life creates the doorway, death holds the key.”
It may have been out a few weeks now, but it would be remiss of us to pass on the opportunity to shout about the debut single from Hull trio Wench! following their blistering York debut…
Bursting out on to Hull’s vibrant live music scene are WENCH! & they’ve already made a massive impression at a handful of explosive gigs & local festivals. Fuelled by female rage, this angry punk trio now share their debut single ‘Shreds’ – a track about being wronged in a relationship & getting emotionally ripped to shreds by the experience.
Produced at Hull’s renowned Warren Records studio by local indie, alternative producer Adam Pattrick, ‘Shreds’ is about the courage it takes to allow yourself to be vulnerable in situations & how this is often disrespected by abusive people we come across in the everyday.
The band explain:
“’Shreds’ is a song for anyone who feel intimidated by social situations to an extent they don’t say what they mean. We believe in expressing ourselves in a raw & unfiltered way which can sometimes backfire but enables us to speak from the heart. As a band, although we feel our songs can have a deeper meaning, we like to describe said songs in just a few words, being direct while refusing to be polite & quiet about the issues we face”.
The innovative WENCH! comprises Kit Bligh (Lead Vocals, Drums), Hebe Gabel (Bass, Flute) & Sev Speck (Guitar, Backing vocals). Fusing Riot Grrrl punk with & alternative rock & pop, this all-female, all-queer outfit are actively speaking out about misogyny & mistreatment of women, ensuring their gigs are a safe space. Inspired by a whole host of artists including Eddi Reader, Steve Gadd, Patti Smith, Lambrini Girls & Hull’s burgeoning folk scene, the band were formed while at college, with each member coming from a differing musical background. Sev being influenced by folk, Hebe by blues & Kit by a mix of soul, jazz & rock, but with a common bond of aspiring to be in a riot grrrl-style band.
WENCH!’s music is for those who feel they’ve been mistreated, for the powerful women who’ve been tied down by the patriarchy, for the weirdos who’ve been told they don’t fit in, as well as anyone who wants to have a memorable time at a one of their sweaty gigs.
It’s been over four years since …(something) ruined unleashed their debut EP, bearing the utilitarian self-explanatory title of EP.
Absent from the live circuit, one may be forgiven for thinking that that was it. But no.
Seemingly out of nowhere, today sees the arrival of a new release, a AA-sided single, containing two slabs of truly brutal anti-corporate, antagonistic, antisocial, annihilative noise.
Finnish progressive heavy psychedelic rockers Craneium are thrilled to announce they’ve officially signed with Majestic Mountain Records. To celebrate this exciting occasion, the band will release their brand-new single Empty Palaces’ today, available on all digital platforms.
AA
In a statement from the band, guitarist Martin Ahlö shared: “A friend of the band gifted us a book on old Egyptian magick, and some of the spells carried really empowering messages. It also inspired the themes that we explored a lot in our music at the moment: the inevitable decay of mankind’s empires and monuments at the hands of nature and time.”
Drummer Joel Kronqvist added, “We’re beyond excited to share a new single called ‘Empty Palaces’ with the world. This track is the perfect blend of our signature 90’s edge mixed with the soulful, retro vibes of the 70’s.”
Known for their ability to seamlessly blend classic riffing with dynamic atmospheres, Craneium explores the ebb and flow of light and heavy, drawing inspiration from ’70s hard rock, ’90s desert psychedelia, and various other musical influences. Their sound stands as both timeless and uniquely their own.
Formed in 2011 in Turku, Finland, Craneium has made a name for themselves with electrifying live performances across the Nordic countries and Europe. Having shared the stage with acts such as Skraeckoedlan (SWE) and Mars Red Sky (FRA), Craneium continues to spread their powerful sound to fans worldwide.
The band has already released four albums and two split releases and is currently working on a new full-length album, tentatively scheduled for release in 2025, now under the wing of Majestic Mountain Records.
Philadelphia-based art-rock duo Tulipomania are back with ‘I’ve Been Told – Absolution’, the first offering from their sixth album Absolution, inspired by an invitation from acclaimed author Jeff VanderMeer to contribute music as part of the publication of his latest novel Absolution, the surprise fourth volume in his award-winning ‘Southern Reach’ series.
With a pressingly mournful urgency, this soundscape resonates with the complex energies enveloping VanderMeer’s novel, the author having invited the duo to create music inspired by ‘Absolution’ while still a work in progress. Hearing that VanderMeer took inspiration for the ‘Absolution’ novel from their Dreaming of Sleep album, the duo enthusiastically accepted the challenge.
Alternately categorized as cult synth punks, glam-leaning, post-punk, art-rock and muscular chamber pop, Tulipomania is Tom Murray (lead vocals, synthesizer, electronic percussion) and Cheryl Gelover (synthesizer, background vocals) – they first began their collaboration through projects for experimental film and animation classes. Tulipomania evolved from those experiences. Their new Absolution album includes four new tracks inspired by VanderMeer’s new novel, plus ten alternate versions of the songs that originally sparked VanderMeer’s interest, reimagined as a cohesive sonic experience.
It’s an exciting development for the duo to be involved in this new chapter of the Southern Reach Trilogy with Absolution being the brilliant, beautiful and terrifying final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time. An instant sensation, it has been celebrated by the New York Times, Stephen King and many others. With each volume climbing the bestsellers list, accruing awards, it was ultimately adapted in a movie – now a cult classic. The trilogy has now sold more than a million copies, securing its place in the pantheon of 21st century literature.
In the liner notes to the album, VanderMeer lends insight into his creative process: “I remember being in the middle of the ecstatic visions that formed my novel Absolution and discovering Tulipomania’s music for the first time, around August of 2023 – this very album’s doppelganger, in fact. The original mix of ‘Dreaming of Sleep’. It felt like a revelation – hypnotic, pulsing music that got deep hooks into my brain, so I couldn’t stop listening to the songs. Like a lighthouse’s roving light, the songs felt like a beacon, and the recursive nature of the composition, the sense of a beating heart, a thick muscle at the core of them, combined with the surreal lyrics got deep into the novel’s DNA. … So I was really pleased that this opportunity for this wonderful contamination of (novel / album) to go the other way – the Absolution remix of ‘Dreaming of Sleep’, with four new Absolution tracks! I really love this band so much – to the point I’ve listened to and recommend their entire back catalogue – that it’s an honor.”
On Absolution, Tulipomania is immersed fully in electronic means of creation – the exception being a sole accent played on electric guitar on the last track. This record involves Executive Producer Howard Thompson, renowned as a record industry executive (Elektra, Island, Almo Sounds), credited for having discovered and / or worked with Adam and the Ants, Billy Bragg, MC5, Mötorhead, PiL, Psychedelic Furs, Robyn Hitchcock, The Sugarcubes and Suicide, among others.
AMBER ASYLUM reveal the title track taken from their forthcoming new album Ruby Red. The tenth regular full-length of San Francisco’s neoclassical dark ambient quartet has been slated for release on February 14, 2025.
AMBER ASYLUM comment: “The title track of our new album, Ruby Red, is a poignant dirge that directly addresses the pain and loss inflicted by the pandemic, riots, war, and the looming specter of death”, frontwoman Kris Force writes. “Its haunting melody resonates with the collective sorrow and anguish felt in the aftermath of recent upheavals. Through mournful vocals and evocative instrumentation, the song serves as a solemn elegy, amplifying the echoes of grief caused by these tumultuous events. Each note carries the weight of collective sorrow, inviting listeners to confront the harsh realities of our world and to find solace in shared experience.”
Listen here:
AA
In times of trouble, women have often had to bear an even heavier burden throughout history. On their tenth full-length Ruby Red, San Francisco based all-female quartet AMBER ASYLUM offers a haunting reflection on turbulent eras, and blends instrumental passages with evocative lyrics. Ruby Red combines dirges, introspective laments, and powerful songwriting that evoke both despair and hope. The album transitions between themes of pain, loss, empowerment, and mortality, while creating a sonic landscape that is both raw and introspective. "Ruby Red" features bass, classical strings, percussion and kit, modular synthesis and female voices.
Ruby Red differs from its predecessor in the expansion of focus and depth. While earlier albums centered more on personal emotions, relationships, and journeys, Ruby Red broadens its scope to address global issues such as societal upheaval, war, and human rights. This album navigates both the personal and the global, and aims to illuminate the seen and unseen forces that influence our shared reality.
Musically, AMBER ASYLUM balance driving neoclassical elements with the raw power of pounding bass and drums, adding a potent, rhythmic force that contrasts beautifully with the quieter, brooding strings on Ruby Red. The bass and percussion create a compelling pulse that underpins the tracks, adding both intensity and depth to the album’s darker moments.
AMBER ASYLUM have taken inspiration for the lyrical concepts of Ruby Red from significant global issues such as the pandemic, riots, war, political turmoil, the threat to women’s rights, and empowerment, all while maintaining a deep connection to the extramundane. It reflects on mortality and the inevitability of death as part of a greater cosmic order, intertwining these global crises with metaphysical reflections on the resilience of the human spirit.
AMBER ASYLUM were conceived by composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist Kris Force in the Californian city of San Francisco in 1990. Throughout their ever-changing musical evolution, the band has shifted throughout a variety of styles and collaborated with a host of musicians such as Steve van Till (NEUROSIS), Sarah Schaffer (WEAKLING), John Cobbet (HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE), Leila Abdul-Rauf (VASTUM), among many others.
With Ruby Red, AMBER ASYLUM perfectly capture the growing dread and horror of many of a new dark age falling in our time. Yet the Californians balance the eerie and unhinged with a fragile beauty and blossoming of hope. Ruby Red is a most fascinating soundtrack of all that is to come. Listen carefully.
Cardiff Shoegazer’s ‘WYLDERNESS’ are back with a brand new single. ‘Big Idea’ will be released digitally on Monday 18th of November 2024.
Taken from their forthcoming new EP entitled ‘Safe Mode’ which will be released in 2025.
Woozy sun-drenched pop wrapped in a wall of stabbing fuzzy guitars and mesmerising shoegaze,echoing the sounds of Ride, DIIV, Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo.
Wylderness’ eponymous debut album, released in 2018, was championed by Steve Lamacq (BBC 6 Music), Huw Stephens (BBC Radio 1) and was part of Radio 1’s Best of BBC Music Introducing. It garnered critical acclaim from Clash, DIY and Drowned in Sound, with the song On a Dais being featured on the US version of the TV show Shameless.
Wylderness have played shows for Huw Stephens, Sonic Cathedral, Swn Festival and support with Acid Mothers Temple.
The Cardiff band’s second album, Big Plans for a Blue World (2022), was recorded with an expanded line up and featured added layers of vintage synths and clarinet. It placed no.28 in Far Out Magazine’s Best Albums of 2022 and charted in the North American College & Community Radio Chart.
Wylderness are Ian (guitars/vox), Jim (bass/guitars), Ben (drums/percussion), Dan (guitars/vox), and Harri (clarinet/keys).
Ipecac is honoured to release the new album from legendary musician, composer and arranger, Jean Claude Vannier. Jean Claude Vannier et son orchestre de mandolines, out on Feb 14th, 2025 is a playful album of beautiful reveries composed on mandolin and accordion, that are both poetic and unrestrained. As of now, the new track ‘Comme les enfants savent aimer’ is shared.
About the new track, Vannier comments;
“When I was a child, my parents often took us to dinner at the restaurant in Parc Montsouris. There was a bandstand by the lake, with a few mandolins playing fashionable tunes, and the moon was shimmering on the surface of the water, where an enigmatic boat was moored. I would have loved to have gone with the waves, with the mandolines. Later, I spent many a night lying in the boat, dreaming of this music of love. All these memories led me to record this album with my mandolinist friend, Vincent Beer Demande.”
A pinch of strings, a hint of childhood, melodies that touch the heart, orchestration that is always unexpected… these are just some of the elements to emerge from this album.
Hear ‘Comme les enfants savent aimer’ here:
AA
Photo credit: Léo Alestro
AA
The album title translates as Jean Claude Vannier and his mandolin orchestra, and this marks the first time that the ever-creative composer has written specifically for the mandolin. The album features fellow enthusiast Vincent Beer-Demander, whose mandolin is multiplied by an orchestra to form a singular sound palette, carefully combined with the accordion of Grégory Daltin.
Mike Patton, who collaborated with Vannier on the 2019 release, Corpse Flower, has this to say about getting to put out his new album on Ipecac, ”Jean Claude is a dear friend, mentor and a wonderfully gifted and decorated composer. Read: LEGEND. To have worked with him is an unmitigated honour. His writing and arrangements have influenced an ocean of artists and I call myself one of the lucky ones who have crossed his path. He was writing ground-breaking stuff before I was born. He has affected me deeply and I’m forever grateful and in AWE.”
The album was created as a music score for a non-existent silent film, and tells the love story of a young boy we follow through time. The second single tells more of the story…
So at night, during the week, I’d climb the facade of her building, we’d kiss through the glass and me hanging off her balcony.
On the third floor.
It felt like a condom, this cold tile between her lipstick and our two tongues working like crazy.
We loved each other like children know how.
As if for the last time.
Jean Claude Vannier, whom the press refer to as “the rare bird”, has worked over the past 60 years most famously with Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, as well as artists such as Beck and Sean Lennon. He’s worked on countless soundtracks, released six solo albums and is a French pop-culture icon who’s composed for Eurovision, directed videos, exhibited paintings, hosted radio shows and published short stories.
This new album features mandolin virtuoso Vincent Beer-Demander, who has won multiple awards and collaborated with the French National Orchestra, Czeske Philharmonic, Mid-Atlantic Symphonic Orchestra and hundreds more around the world. Sounding like nothing else that either Demander nor Vannier has done before.
Also featured is Grégory Daltin, whose accordion playing brings another dimension to this beautiful album.
We Are Bodies is the British duo of Dave Pen and Robin Foster. They create anthemic electro-prog soundscapes that combine guitars and electronics with lyrical subjects inspired by love, loss, paranoia and…. robots.
Dave Pen is a south coast-based vocalist and guitarist who is also one half of the alternative/electronic group BirdPen and co-frontman with the experimental trip-rock collective Archive, who have built a huge continental fanbase during three decades of activity that has seen them sell out arenas and achieve significant album chart success in multiple territories.
Based in north-west France since the late 1990s, Robin Foster is a composer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist with a penchant for creating brooding soundscapes packed with lush cinematic textures, underpinned with his signature guitar sound. He has written scores for award nominated movies, Netflix and Amazon Prime dramas, numerous TV commercials and has released several acclaimed solo records with guest vocalists that have included Pen.
The duo began collaborating in 2011 and released an eponymous debut as We Are Bodies in 2015. Its long-awaited follow-up, the genesis of The Love Was All We Had was as a pandemic project with ideas emailed back and forth across the Channel themed around what was occurring in the world at that time. Its focus then switched to the present, with the lust for power and war taking centre stage. The album finally took shape, its songs primarily concerned with love and loss, both on a personal level and for mankind as a whole.
The music is a mixture of the stridently luxurious and atmospheric, with Pen’s lyrical subject matter describing love from different perspectives. This includes new single ‘Dancing In The Midnight Howl’, a song about a pair of lovers torn apart, with the male protagonist having a recurring image in his mind of his partner dancing and longing to escape the mess of modern society to be with her. It follows ‘Lost’, an upbeat earworm about a twisted relationship that was released in early October.
“Do not tell me to smile / I’m feeling volatile,” Eva Sheldrake warns menacingly against a dense, churning chug of overdriven, distorted guitar. Sporting a pink bikini but wielding a baseball bat, you can sense things are about to kick off. And oh boy, do they kick off.
Eville have balanced fire and fury and dense nu-metal guitars with killer hooks and keen melodies from day one, and ‘Messy’ represented a peak in terms of their accessible but hard brat metal stylings, but something has happened here.
Eva’s clearly the band focal point, and as the vocalist and lyricist, to some extent sets the agenda, and on the evidence of ‘Ballistic’, she’s reached her limit and she’s calling it out on shitty men being fucking cunts.
Daily, there are articles in the news and music media about men who are sleazy, rapey, slimeball abusers as victims – exes, fans, colleagues – reach their limit and speak out. Even when there’s no abuse involved, women are faced, daily, with leering, with looks, with salacious comments, patronising mansplaining, being told to cheer up, or to smile, and simply endless shit from twatty men who feel entitled to invade their space in any way they please. ‘Ballistic’ is an explosion of rage that simply says ‘enough is enough’. As such, there’s less focus the accessible melodic elements and everything is channelled into the message, with the medium corresponding with zero compromise.
The familiar stuttering beats kick in at the start before ‘Ballistic’ fulfils the title’s promise and explodes like ‘Firestarter’ on steroids. The band’s performance sees Eville take a giant leap to a brand new level: the guitar is a concrete wall, the drums thrash frenetically, and the vocals… Sheldrake howls like a demon, a full-throated roar, while simultaneously, the accompanying video shows the band taking their bats and smashing various objects in pure unbridled anger.
‘Fuck the system! Go ballistic!’ It’s a simple hook, but pure perfection in its concision. It’s a battle cry, it’s rousing, it’s time to fuck shit up. It is not time to accept the status quo, to tolerate bullshit and plain shitty behaviour.
It’s sheer coincidence that ‘Ballistic’ has landed just a week after the dismal US election result, and misogynistic wankers started ‘your body, my choice’ trending on the festering cesspit promoting every ‘ism going in the name of ‘free speech’, but with this timely release, Eville have delivered an uncompromising anthem that shoves it to all the incel bros and all the other douches. They’re not all necessarily rabid Andrew Tate fans, but just your everyday casual sexist creep.
Clocking in at two and a quarter minutes, ‘Ballistic’ is everything Eville have promised to date, and more, delivering an absolutely definitive statement, and one the most powerful songs you’ll hear for a long time to come.
