I may have mentioned before that I’m a sucker for the sound of vintage drum machines – partly by association with so many of the innovative acts which emerged in the late 70s and early 80s, which used them in a host of different contexts, exploring the near-infinite avenues these little bits of kit afforded. For a start – and perhaps most significantly – it was possible to make solid percussion without the need for a drummer or drum kit, meaning furthermore, thanks also to the advent of the portastudio, there was no need for a proper rehearsal space or studio to rehearse and record music. In fact, with relatively cheap synths, you could record as a band without even having a band. The other thing was that, if amped up right, these things could be immensely powerful. And so it was that we saw the emergence of acts as diverse as The Sisters of Mercy and Metal Urbain, Young Marble Giants, and The Human League.
Poly Ghost are a German synthpop trio, and ‘Ananas Ring’ is a quirky, fairly minimal tune that brings together the primitive sound of the aforementioned Young Marble Giants with the retro-chic of Stereolab, delivered with a humourous twist that could only come from a German act. Anyone who says the Germans lack humour is simply missing it. Absurdist wordplay might not be everyone’s bag, but from Die Toten Hosen to the deliberately clunky lyrics on St Michael Front’s first album, there’s no denying that there’s a thread of quirky amusement that’s uniquely German.
And so we arrive at Poly Ghost’s ‘Ananas Ring’, and while the twisted punning of the band’s name is one thing, the inter-language incongruity of ‘ananas’ – French for pineapple – with the English ‘ring’ (the French word for ‘ring’ is ‘bague’) from a German band takes messing around with language to another level. Despite the lyrics seemingly being in English, I have absolutely no idea what the song is actually about. But, I do have functional ears, which are totally sold on this quirky sound. The accompanying video is daft, and ‘Ananas Ring’ is a nifty tune that brings all the analogue, and the squeaky, inflected vocals just make it all the more wonderous.
The Australians seem to have a knack for full-throttle, high-energy punk-tinged guitar acts, where there’s a strong focus on fun. They certainly have a long punk heritage down under, with The Saints kicking things off way back in 1973, and their debut single, ‘I’m Stranded’ arriving within weeks of The Damned’s ‘New Rose’. Perhaps it’s the sun and surf, or just the broader culture in Australia which produces bands like this, cutting their teeth in tiny venues and even house parties.
Fun doesn’t have to be dumb, bone-headed or moronic: DZ Deathrays and Mannequin Death Squad are both notable exemplars who’ve proven to be popular exports here in the UK, and to that list we can add Annakye, demonstrating some songwriting savvy and an appreciation of the fact that a strong hook is everything.
‘Headstart’ is two-and-a-half minutes of big, buzzing guitars that shift from driving riffery to lurching stop/start with clattering drums that hammer in hard and paired with a bustling, busy bassline with some punch and bounce, it’s got moshery emanating from every second.
On paper, ‘Two seconds apart / head start’ isn’t much of a hook, but it’s all in the delivery – and repetition goes a long way when it comes to lodging it in your brain. Earworm? Nailed it.
Ah, the power of a strong intro… and the power of nostalgia. The beefy riffage that launches ‘Flux’ by London act Shockpowder… it’s bold and it’s grungy, and the vocals are dreamy melodic, drifting, and I’m instantly dragged back to the early 90s.
Formed in 2015, I wonder if the members of Shockpowder would even remember the early 90s, but they clearly have a strong affinity, and note that they’re ‘heavily influenced by post rock, shoegaze and metal bands such as God is an Astronaut, Alcest and Slowdive.’
What I get from ‘Flux’ is a wistful, emotive element which is carried on some amped-up guitars that are simultaneously jangling and loud, and in many ways reminiscent of early Ride, and, perhaps rather less well-known, Eight Storey Window. Why they never gained more recognition, I will never understand, but then, the era was littered with great bands who were criminally underrated. How long did it take for The God Machine’s greatness to be recognised? Too long, and even now, they seem to be something of a cult for connoisseurs.
It’s not just a question of sound: any musician who’s spent enough time immersed in listening and paying attention to detail, and given the right gear, the right amp, the right pedals, the right production, can recreate the sound of their influences. But what counts is the feeling. ‘Flux’ is imbued with that vaguest, most inaccessible and yet essential ingredients – emotion. There’s something that goes beyond the minimal lyrics, reflecting on the ephemerality of life, something that goes beyond the distortion and reverb, hitting that indefinable spot of resonance. You don’t hear it, you feel it.
After this long, and having amassed a considerable catalogue, Shockpowder probably aren’t about to go stratospheric any time soon, but it’s the world’s loss, ultimately, because ‘Flux’ is, quite simply, a great song.
Cold in Berlin’s latest project, The Wounds looks to see the band scaling new heights of ambition, being a multi-record work consisting of an EP, The Body is the Wound, and an album, due in 2024, and promises ‘a musical vade mecum of what is to come in a fresh era for the band.’
I was gripped by Cold in Berlin from day one, on the release of their White Horse EP, a tense and intense burst of spiky goth which was razor-sharp and raging, bringing a zippy electro element to jagged guitars and a vocal that drew clear influence from Siouxsie and Skeletal Family. I must have conveyed my excitement pretty well, since my review is quoted on the BandCamp for the release, some twelve years on. Their debut album, Give Me Walls, still stands as a latter-day goth / post-punk classic.
Over the course of three further albums, the band have further defined and refined their style, becoming doomier, darker, heavier, but still with a clear commitment to concise and focused songwriting, proving that doom doesn’t have to be all about formless seven-minute dirges. I’m a fan of formless seven-minute dirges, but variety is the spice of life, and Cold in Berlin are one of those rare acts who’ve succeeded in creating their own niche in not one, but two crowded genre spaces.
Two of the EP’s four tracks have already been released as digital singles, both accompanied by visually striking videos. It so happens they’re the first two tracks on the EP, and they’ve been released in the order they appear. But the rest of the EP is absolutely on a par.
As the band write, ‘The lyrical themes dance around sex, murder, suicide and broken dreams, brought together in loose storytelling that allows listeners to add their own experiences and bring personal meaning.’ The words only begin to emerge after a few listens, after you’ve shaken your head clear from the initial impact. It’s a proper punch in the face, a full-force kick in the eye. The Body is the Wound packs four songs of equal quality back to back, and is as strong a document of the band’s work that they’ve laid down to date.
‘Dream One’ is a towering monolith which combines pulverising power chords with stark, icy vocals, and the effect is spine-tingling. Maya’s vocals have never sounded more powerful, more commanding than here. Then again, ‘Spotlight’, which slows the pace and amplifies the weight matches it, while emphasising the band’s doom leanings. It’s some heavy shit, alright, and hits with a punishing intensity.
The cuts which haven’t yet been unveiled are every bit as strong as those which have. ‘When Did You See Her Last’ twists stark synths and gothy guitars behind a chilling set of lyrics – the most spine-chilling I’ve encountered since ‘Shooting Dennis Hopper Shooting’ by The Twilight Sad.
To describe the final cut, ‘Found Out’, as ‘poppy’ might be slightly misleading, but it’s a question of context. There’s some stealthy picked reverby guitar that’s pure 1985 goth that laces the verses with some fine texture before the thunderous chorus blasts in on a tidal wave of distortion. And in some ways, it very much recalls their earlier works, only thicker, denser, more driving, more powerful on the riff front, and they deliver all-out epic compressed into less than five and a half minutes.
Not only is there not one remotely lesser track on this EP, but it’s consistent and utterly relentless from beginning to end: no breathers, no ballads, no instrumental interludes. In short, The Body is the Wound is an utter blinder and absolutely blistering, and if the album is half as good, it’ll still be their best yet.
My love of a good split release is something I’ve effused about variously here and elsewhere, and in a way, the contents of this particular split is pretty much secondary to the sentiment. The last thirteen years in the UK have been absolutely fucking shit. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. We can’t blame the government for the pandemic, but everything was shit a long time before that, and besides, we can blame them for the shitshow handling of everything, and for the way these disaster capitalist cunts milked every last penny of profit from it for their mates and their vested interests, their undisclosed shareholdings and all the rest.
And I’d keep hearing people defending Johnson, saying ‘he’s doing his best’. Only, he wasn’t. The dishevelled cretin would roll out of bed, half-cocked and probably half-cut after one of the lockdown parties he claims he didn’t know about, babbling bollocks, his only interest being self-interest. And the worst of it is that he wasn’t even the worst. And yet still people defend them, still people vote for them.
I remember watching the news after the last election, and a woman in her 70s appeared being interviewed on a street in Peterborough. She went on about how she was ‘thrilled to bits’ to have the Conservatives back and to have a Conservative MP: she ‘turned out in the pouring rain’ to put her ‘little cross’, and tells why she voted conservative, and how pleased she is that they got in:
“Well it’s the education system really. Oh, and the homeless. So many homeless people here, I’ve never seen it like this.”
And why’s that then? After years and years of Conservative government, you actually buy the line that they’re the part of change? When you say ‘the homeless’, what do you expect this government to do about them? Hire 20,000 more street cleaners by actually retaining 10,000 existing street cleaners and hiring 10,000 more over the next 40 years to come and toss them into refuse trucks? Or round them up into camps and line them up for euthanisation? I’m guessing she meant clean up the streets rather than help them, because well, where’s the fiscal value in that? Anyway, good luck with recruiting minimum wagers to dispose of the bodies once you’ve closed the door to all the Poles and other EU nationals who are currently propping the country up by doing the jobs no-one else wants.
I feel the rage. Every single day. And I feel the urge to punch Tories, and their voters, every single day, too. The current crop of Tories are fucking fascists, and anyone who supports them is complicit.
This EP’s three tracks are a head-shredding blast. Tyrannus bring us ‘Bricks And Flesh, Ashes And Iron’, five minutes of blastbeat-driven snarling black metal that’s both fast and furious, not to mention utterly relentless. It gets the pulse racing alright,and as dark and gnarly as it is, it’s pure, it’s raw, it’s exhilarating, and the guitar solo is absolutely wild.
Magicide give us two tracks, each a minute and thirty-nine seconds long. The contrast is the perfect reminder of the joy of the split release: their offerings bring a different shade of brutality, of pulverising pace. It’s a new hybrid, too, combining frenetic drum ‘n’ bass beats and an industrial edge which calls to mind turn of the millennium Pitch Shifter when they moved away from guttural industrial to create a beat-heavy, post-Prodigy Nu-metal hybrid. Black metal with tripping, stuttering rapidfire drumming, this is simply eye-popping. Thick, trudging riffs growl against grinding percussion and explosive breakbeats. There’s a load of shouting and growling, but the only audible lyric comes when everything pauses for a split second, and the line ‘this is Tory punching music’ rings out crisp and clear, in a strong Scottish accent.
And it is. The EP is full-throttle, an adrenaline rush that really gets you pumped. The message is clear and hard to disagree with for anyone with a brain or a soul. Whether you’re on board with new new labour or not, fuck the Tories. And feel the rage through this EP.
New single ‘Showtime’ from Russian ‘occult wave’ / goth duo, Raven Said, arrives just over a year on from the EP Chants to Dissolve, and it promises to be the first from their next full-length release.
They describe it as ‘a kind of exciting prologue telling about the themes of a personal awareness and braving of one’s own internal boundaries. It’s transcendence of individual subconsciousness, even in the face of the inner fear or the despair. When you’re getting the power to create and transform despite seeming hopeless; when the curtain is raised and time freezes for a moment, when the stage is lit with the spotlights and the noise of the crowd is heard ahead, you take a step towards… Showtime!’
This reminds us that there is considerably more to Russia than the news of the Western media, where they’re broadly portrayed as ‘bad guys.’ We rarely stop to consider the reality of daily life in other countries – or, indeed, how our own countries are perceived internationally, while we’re getting on with everyday life, and generally struggling to stay afloat. In all this, we rarely see the people, the society, and fail to separate these things from their governments, their diplomats, and their military.
‘Showtime’ is what one might call a ‘banger’. Thumping disco beats and bold layers of synth provide the musical backing for the vocals, delivered in a brooding cross between a croon, a whisper, and a growl, packed with classic goth theatricality, and their touchstones of Clan of Xymox and second-wave goth acts like Rosetta Stone onwards, are strongly in evidence, crunching them together to create a synth-driven song that’s strong on both melody and groove.
The latest offering from Mark Beazley’s Rothko follows 2022’s Let Space Speak EP, and standalone single ‘Summer In October, Winter In July’, which was an uncommonly loud and abrasive work by his usual standards, although, in context, it made sense, as he wrote, ‘Things have been blurred, uncertain, scary…here’s to certainty soon’, adding ‘I got my brain scan results today, they all came back showing nothing untoward. Good news on a personal level after such uncertainty, but close friends of mine have not had such positive news this year. This is for all of us.’
It would be a stretch to say I found solace in those words following the loss of my wife at the beginning of the year, but having found grief to be an extremely isolating experience, even with the support of friends, it helps in some small way to realise that you’re not the only one dealing with extreme personal difficulty. It’s easy to go through life feeling somewhat blasé, shrugging ‘hey, what’s the worst that can happen?’ But when confronted with the stark realisation of ‘the worst’, your mindset changes. And after the worst has happened, what then?
The five compositions on Bury My Heart In The Mountains take their titles from the names of peaks in the Swiss Alps, and capture the brooding beauty of these spectacular summits. Mountains possess a powerful magnetism: simultaneously alluring and foreboding, they can mean so much to so many. It would be misguided of me to even begin to attempt to comprehend or to make assumptions about Beazley’s own relationship with these impressive peaks – I can only know my own relationship with those I have climbed or otherwise stood in awe of, here in the UK, particularly the Lake District, a curious blend of exhilaration and tranquillity, joy and fear. Because the mountains may provide the perfect escape, the ultimate experience of life-affirming freedom, but you can never treat them with too much respect, and while they may in themselves be immutable, they’re prone to rapid change when it comes to conditions, and each mountain has its own character of sorts – and this is something which the six pieces on Bury My Heart In The Mountains conveys in the most nuanced of fashions.
The first track, ‘Monte San Giorgio’ extends beyond eleven minutes in duration and brings together all of the different expressions of terrain and the associated emotions, marking the start of an exploratory adventure that’s contemplative and largely calm, but not without peaks and troughs and moments of mounting drama.
Field sounds create a thick atmosphere at the start of ‘Monte San Salvatore’, with cooing and gurgling, and extraneous sounds, before delicate picked guitar notes drift off into the crisp, clear air, while it’s Beazley’s bass which dominates the grumbling yet expansive ‘Säntis’. A chill wind blows on the arrival of ‘Monte Tamaro’, before drifting into a brittle, cold conglomeration of chimes and drones. The final track, ‘Monte Bre’ is but a brief outro, all of the elements of the preceding compositions compressed into a minute and a half, bringing calm and tension simultaneously. It’s unexpected, sending ripples of disquiet through the stilling waters left in the wake of the slow ebbing of ‘Monte Tamaro’ moments before. One suspects that this brief judder is intentionally placed, and leaves the atmosphere that bit less smooth and soothed than before, a reminder that it doesn’t do to become complacent or too comfortable or settled, because life is full of surprises, and you never know what’s around the corner.
I’ve harped on about my appreciation of physical releases a fair few times here, and while I am myself striving to declutter my home of late, miscellaneous crap is more clutter than collections. Placing CDs and records snugly on shelves satisfying, and collections are the culmination of what can be a lifetime’s work. I started collecting at the age of around thirteen, having discovered The Sisters of Mercy via Floodland, and the fact that they had a significant back catalogue which wasn’t available on cassette in WHS or Boots, and so started hitting record fairs, which were commonplace at weekends in the late 80s and early 90s.
But while vinyl and cassette have been enjoying a sustained renaissance, CDs remain at a low ebb, and this is a sad state of affairs. Considered by many to be inferior by virtue of their clinical, impersonal nature, they’re the perfect balance of a physical format, and practicality, in that you can skip tracks, for a start.
Receiving a CD copy of Aches’ release through my letter box truly made my day, initially for the simple reason that this is a wonderful physical product – a hand-numbered digipak with a nice sleeve, with a Japanese-style wraparound strip, although it’s not an Obi but a semi-opaque slip which bears the band logo and the track listing. It has quality written all over it, and it’s a joy to hold it. If it sounds like I’m being a physical format enthusiast wanker, so be it: the element of tactility is completely absent from the streaming / download experience, and those who have never experienced it are missing out.
And so turn my attention to the band – well, another experience, but of a different kind. Aches aren’t quite a supergroup, but featuring members of Helpless, Gunderson, The Imperfect Orchestra, and Caracals, they are very much a new hive mind collaborative collective that represents the best of the Plymouth scene – a city which isn’t particularly renowned for its musical exports, but did bring us the unparalleled Cranes at the very least. Aches are a whole lot heavier than Cranes, though.
Heave-ho! ‘Sky Shanty’ comes in hard with a roaring grunt and heft that strains the guts and blasts on a tidal wave of brutal black metal guitar. The roaring impact is enough to stop your breath for a moment. The band’s bio explains how they draw inspiration from writings on capitalism, neuroscience, and drug use, as well as from personal experiences and research on mental illness and suicide, and that this release ‘responds to the feeling of hopelessness we feel, as combating climate change is increasingly minimised by those in power in return for gargantuan profits of archaic industries…’
It may be an incorrect and assumptive joining of the dots to suggest they’ve individually been impacted by these in various ways, but when one in four are likely to suffer mental heath issues in any given year, it’s not unreasonable – but it’s reasonable to recognise the fact that any release which confronts these issues is culturally critical. And those feelings of hopelessness… One suspects they’re widely relatable, and anyone who doesn’t clearly has too much money, and this is about you.
Aches don’t require a trigger warning: life doesn’t come with trigger warnings, after all. But Aches confront all of the topics head-on, and 42 Year Sunrise is hard, heavy, unflinching.
If ‘Sky Shanty’ is fucked-up post-hardcore noise rock, then the brutal ‘Bruxism’ start out hard and heavy before drifting into softness. I’m reminded more of Bjork and Zola Jesus during this soft close. Spinning together dramatic post-punk and elements of post-rock into a multi-faceted roaring torrent of raging anguish which essentially encapsulates the essence of 42 Year Sunset. ‘Bruxism’ is a post-hardcore explosion; switching rapidly between psychotic mania and theatricality, equal parts Dillinger escape Plan and Muse via Oceansize. To pack this much into just over four and a half minutes is a monumental feat which evidences just how articulate and accomplished this release is.
The shortest track is also the heaviest, with ‘Is That It’ bringing a barrage of crushing riffs and packing about three songs’ worth into less than two frenzied minutes, before the monster title track brings forth absolute devastation. It’s a slow, heavy, monotonous crawler that slugs relentlessly. The way the drums roll and patter busily while the guitars grind at a snail’s pace and you feel this pulling at you slowly like a thread tied to your intestines. Five minutes in, the bass cuts in low, slow, dark and heavy, and by the eight-minute mark, it’s burst into a shrieking riot of demonic torture that’s gother than goth: it hurts.
With 42 Year Sunset, Aches articulate the anguish of feeling utterly powerless in the face of everything as it piles up, end on end. It packs so much force, and it hurts. Aches bring the pain, and this is a phenomenal debut.
Regular readers – and fans of Argonaut – will have probably observed that we’ve been pretty consistent in plugging their open-ended album-in-progress Songs from the Black Hat, which has seen the li-fi DIY indie act self-release a song a month via BandCamp. But October’s tune is today getting an official release on a real label – namely Criminal Records, home of The Kut, with whom they’ve released two previous albums.
Nathan explains the band’s methodology for the album’s continual evolution this: “At band practices we each write song titles on slips of paper & put them in the hat. One is then picked at random. We jam around that title & see what alchemy occurs. Most times the magic flows & the combined band chemistry creates something we are really pleased with.”
With two previous albums on Criminal Records, Argonaut’s newest release is produced by Jack Ashley of Popes Of Chillitown, and mastered by The Kut who was drummer/producer on Argonaut’s self-titled debut.
I still can’t hear the world ‘vulnerable’ without thinking of Nathan Barley and an image of David Bowie pissing into a Dualit toaster, but perhaps, particularly since the pandemic and our government’s shameful treatment of the poor and the disabled, I’ve become significantly more sensitive to the way in which vulnerability can be life-shaping, and rarely in a positive way.
Whereas perhaps even in the not so distant past, vulnerability was perceived as being synonymous with weakness, a great many of us understand that it is a fundamental facet of the human condition, and recognise that almost everyone is vulnerable in some way at some time or another. This may not be true of the right-wing tossers who scoff at showing vulnerability – or sensitivity to it – as being ‘soft’ and ‘woke’, but anyone who is a reasonable human being can empathise with how circumstance and life events can place strain on an individual, and just as we’re getting to a place where we can talk about mental health without being stigmatised, so we appreciate that to show vulnerability in fact requires strength in a way we didn’t not so long ago.
The fact that ‘we’ are the vulnerables – all of us – is the crux of the song’s lyrics, along with the painful truth that others will exploit vulnerability for their own ends:.
We are the vulnerables
And we are being used
We are the vulnerables
Me and you and you and me and you
Because it’s Argonaut, it’s a natty tune in the classic indie / alternative style: Lorna’s vocals are sweet and ultra-poppy and there’s both jangle and bounce to the instrumentation – but Nathan can’t resist bringing blasts of fizzy, fuzzy distorted guitar. It all stacks up to a superbly catchy indie pop tune from a band who have quite a catalogue to catchy indie pop tunes to their credit, and no doubt plenty more to come.
A Void, the Franco-English trio based in London are one hard-gigging, high-output unit. And for all of their grunge credentials – Camille Alexander is our contemporary hirsute Coutney Love with her raw, raging vocals and absolute lack of fucks given when it comes to adhering to societal norms of appropriate behaviour – they’re also a band whose focus seems to be on fun. And their main objective is to entertain themselves first and foremost, and the audience second. Not in a selfish way, but in a way that places creative freedom above any market or commercial considerations. These are reasons to love the band already.
I got quite excited about their second album, Dissociation, back in September of last year. A year on, I still return to it while I’m cooking on an evening, as I also do their debut, Awkward And Devastated. There’s a reason for this: A Void have a knack for great tunes, and following the grunge template, they’ve absolutely nailed that contrasting quiet, melodic verse / roaring explosion of a chorus. As a teen in the 90s, I was absolutely hooked on Nirvana and the grunge scene: I first encountered Hole playing ‘Teenage Whore’ on Snub TV and was blown away by the viscerality of it. Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots didn’t give the same vibe, but some of these bands just spilled their guts in a way that we hadn’t seen and set a precedent. Many bands have done their best to emulate, but fee have succeeded. A Void are among the few, and the reason they possess that power is because they’re keeping it real and there’s no polish or pretence here.
So what’s this? Following their first new material in a year in the shape of ‘Save Yourself’, ‘Gutter’ is fairly subdued in relative terms: there’s no ear-splitting overdrive and shrieking catharsis on offer here. But what we get is a song that’s quintessential A Void. The guitars may be clean in the main, but they lurch from delicate picking to driving in a fraction of a moment. There is a breakout of big overdrive around the midpoint, and it’s a rush, and in this context, ‘Gutter’ is perhaps their most ambitious composition to date.
Volatility is A Void’s signature style, and ‘Gutter’ brings it. The angst may be a little more reined in, but don’t for a second think it’s an indication that they’re mellowing. This is 100% kick ass, and it’s almost guaranteed that the album will kick arse, and then some.
Aural Aggravation 