Posts Tagged ‘Album Review’

Slaughterday – Dread Emperor

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

Christopher Nosnibor

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

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

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

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

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

AA

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Beckton Alps2 – Winter

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

Christopher Nosnibor

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

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

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

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

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

AA

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Machinefabriek – Spelonk

Posted: 12 January 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Crónica – 20th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

As time passes, our tastes change. For some, they narrow and become more cemented, more deeply entrenched. There’s a broad acceptance that people become more conservative as they grow older – which may explain why, with our ageing population, we – that’s the western world – has become more in favour of conservative values, such as low tax and a belief that the past was a golden age in which hard work was rewarded, and of course, music was better. There is certainly more than a grain of truth in the boomer stereotype. And as a Gen X-er, I’ve observed people I grew up with, and /or have known for many years become set in their ways and their listening habits, locked in the 90s in their musical tastes, and becoming increasingly churlish about the youth of today and the like.

I consider myself fortunate to be surrounded by friends and acquaintances, both in real life and in the virtual world, who are deeply invested in new music. The fact I get sent new music of all kinds from around the globe is only half of the story, as it would be so easy to sweep vast swathes of it aside to listen to, and review, nothing but goth, contemporary iterations of post-punk and new wave, grunge, and reissues. In fact, I could devote my entire listening time and run a website dedicated to nothing but reissues and still be incredibly busy. It would probably garner a huge readership, too. But no: I am constantly encouraged to listen to new music, and the fact of the matter is that I thrive on it, and never fail to get a buzz from new discoveries. As such, since I began this journey as a music writer, my horizons have broadened beyond a range I would have ever imagined.

A measure of this is that my first encounter with the music of Rutger Zuydervelt, back in 2014, was marked by a most unimpressed four-star review, in which I said that Stay Tuned was ‘a bit of a drag’. While I don’t feel particularly inspired to revisit it now alongside my writing of this review, I feel I would likely have been more receptive to its longform minimalism now.

Spelonk is not quite as long in form – three compositions spanning a total of forty-two minutes, and sees Zuydervelt taking some time out from his dayjob to indulge in the act of creating for pleasure – or, perhaps, more accurately, creating out of the need to experience freedom, to feel that metaphorical – and perhaps literal – sigh of release.

As he explains, ‘Most of the music I make nowadays is commissioned for film, dance, or other projects. And I love it — it’s the best job in the world! — but sometimes I have to pull myself away from it, and make something purely for myself. My 2004 release Omval was one of these works, as is now Spelonk. These projects are always made in short bursts; once I start creating, things fall into place quickly, as if the ideas were (unknowingly) already there and just needed to get out of my system.

The three tracks that comprise Spelonk (simply titled I, II, III) are built with “hardware jams” that I recorded with my live setup. It’s all quite hands-on, with effects pedals, an oscillator, and electronic gadgets. The magic happens when combining different recordings, layering them, and hearing what happens. Listening is always a favorite moment in the process, with a welcome element of surprise. I guess it’s all about creating alien landscapes — alien also to me too — that are exciting to explore.’

‘Alien landscapes’ is a fair description of these sparse works, constructed with layers of ominous drone. On ‘Spelonk II’, there are chittering sounds which scratch like guitar string scraping against a fret, or perhaps a ragged bow dragging against a worn string, but by the same token, untranslatable voices come to mind. The drones are eerie, ethereal, and hang low like mist or dry ice: it’s not nor merely an example of dark ambient work – there is very much a 70s sci-fi feel to it, hints of BBC Radiophonic Workshop emerge between every surge and crackle as slow pulsations reverberate among the unsettling abstraction. Over the course of the track’s eighteen minutes, there is movement, evolution, and just past the midpoint, there is a shift, where trilling organ-like notes and digital bleeps emerge, evoking recordings from space travel, and, as rippling laser sounds begin to burst forth, vintage sci-fi movies and 70s TV.

There are moments of near silence as ‘Spelonk II’ drifts into ‘Spelonk III’, also eighteen minutes in duration. Here, clanks and bleeps bubble and bounce and echo erratically, unpredictably, over a backdrop of low hums and reverberations. The low-end vibrates subtly but perceptibly, and while the experience is not one which instils tension, the cave-like digital drips and sense of space, as well as darkness, is not relaxing. You find yourself looking around, wondering what’s around the corner, what’s in the shadows. And while there’s no grand reveal, no jump fright here, the second half of ‘Spelonk III’ grows increasingly murky and increasingly squelchy and unsettling.

Over the album’s duration, Spelonk grows in depth and darkness, becoming increasingly dark, strange, and unsettling. Rutger Zuydervelt makes a lot out of very little, to subtle but strong effect.

AA

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Bell Barrow – Saltire

Posted: 7 January 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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16th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

2026 is certainly off to an interesting start: did anyone seriously have what looks quite feasibly the first move in World War 3 on their bingo card? Consequently, the level of noise has simply exploded. There is shock. There isn’t much awe, but there is bewilderment, there is panic, and infinite speculation. And infinite noise.

Thankfully, 2026 is already offering up some interesting noise on the musical front, and for my money, the most effective way to tune out all that other noise is by turning off the TV, putting the phone down – or better still, switch it off and leave it in another room – light some candles, pour a drink and listen – properly listen, and engage, with some new music.

Saltire may not be the most soothing soundtrack to push aside all of the external turbulence, an obvious balm to calm a psychological spasm. In fact, it’s pretty grim at times, a big blanket of darkness which drifts and envelops, riven with top-end trilling whistles and a host of wide-ranging elements, both sonic and stylistic, which clash hard. But relaxation isn’t necessarily what the Dr ordered. Sometimes, the best remedy is one that shocks the system to the extent that all the other shit is displaced.

The band say of the album, “Through a time-based, panoramic view of past, present and future, the album’s composition is a dissection of familial cyclical patterns of violence, abuse and addiction, and whether supernatural events or one’s own choices impact fate. Each track is a voice spanning multiple dimensions and time frames of reference. Is our eventual destruction predetermined and independent of will? Or can we control the course of events through determined pleas at salvation?”

Right now, it doesn’t seem that many of us have any control over anything, particularly global affairs, and while some aspects of history do seem to be repeating themselves, this moment in time feels like a huge rupture in the flow of modern history. And all we can do is watch as things unravel, and at pace. It’s terrifying, and anyone who isn’t scared is deluded or simply burying their heads in the sand. But taking time out to bury my head in the sand for the duration of an album is necessary. And clocking in at over seventy minutes, this is a decent slab of time to pursue this objective.

From the outset, Bell Barrow’s Saltire brings some uncomfortable noise. ‘Death Lullabye’ is dark, droney, unsettling and uneasy. In contrast, the frenetic noise rock explosion of ‘Breath of an Acrobat’ sits in the field of the wild angular noise of, say, Daughters, while at the same time introducing a frenzied jazz element, and propelled by black metal drumming, but with the treble cranked to the max. ‘Cor Orans’, too, is a frantic blast of lo-fi gothy metal. This is tempestuous stuff, and with the treble up in the mix, the sound slices the top off your head, while at the same time slamming you in the gut repeatedly with a lump of wood.

Wide-ranging would be one way of describing this expansive exploration, which ranges from drone and ambient to New Age, from prog to post-metal.

The seven-minute ‘Beyond the Labyrinth’ is quintessential weird darkness, warping, droning, while the nine-minute behemoth that is ‘Sybian Interval’ builds dense, billowing clouds of dark noise, rumbling, swirling, heavy, oppressive, but rent through with screams of treble and whines like a dentist’s drill, which are counterbalanced by soft, vaporous watercolour sweeps. ‘We Reek of Utopia’ arrives in a muffled package of irony before the squalling assault of the title track applies scissors to the brain in a wild explosion of jazz-metal discord served with a heavy helping of ‘what the actual?’ And this is good. This is healthy. Music should challenge. Art should challenge. Saltire challenges on many levels: there are no songs to speak of, and the pieces veer wildly in stylistic terms. ‘A Carrion Call Rings Out’ plunges into heavy industrial noise, and it hurts.

They do threaten ‘an obvious tension and release feel to the style’, and they deliver on that, although the tension is significantly greater than the release, proportionally speaking. Saltire offers no pause for reflection, no sigh of relief, no time to simply sit back and reflect: it swings between atmospheric states most unexpectedly, most dramatically. It’s hard work, but at the same time elevatitive and revelatory.

By no means an easy album, Saltire offers angularity – and some significant reward.

AA

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Total Annihilation – Mountains of Madness

Posted: 1 January 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Testimony Records – 16th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Four albums in twenty years isn’t a particularly impressive work-rate, but I’m assuming that liker the majority of bands, the members of Total Annihilation have not only day jobs, but families and all of the stuff that adults tend to. The fact that they’ve managed to continue making music – and earned themselves both a fanbase and level of reputation – is no small feat, and is a testament to their commitment to making music. This seems to be where a lot of people lose their way in life, and end up feeling bitter and unfulfilled, accepting the process of succumbing to the drudgery of capitalist structures, and becoming increasingly resentful of the way that parenting and domesticity take over. These guys clearly have no shortage of rage, but it’s not over how their lives have turned out, and of course, they have an outlet – a substantial outlet driven by heavy guitars and pounding hell-for-leather percussion… a healthy outlet. It’s an observation I’ve made before that metal gigs are some of the friendliest, least threatening, environments I’ve experienced, and the more extreme the metal, the nicer the folks. There are always exceptions, as the 90s Norwegian black metal scene evidenced, but by and large… extreme metal channels those difficult emotions, the anger, the rage, the hatred.

Mountains of Madness promises ‘all the Swiss precision and trademark elements their following has come to expect of them but also with more of everything: more tempo and serious speed, more brutality, more power, more thrash, more death but also more harmonies, more melodies, and more musicality!’

I’m not entirely sure that what we want from a death metal album is ‘more harmonies, more melodies, and more musicality’: me, I want more grunt, more grind, more attack, more brutality. May be I just like punishment, maybe I just want music that bludgeons and batters, maybe I seek catharsis through sonic violence.

The blurbage also informs us ‘There are also more tentacles, more jaws, more razor-sharp teeth, more twisted mutation, and definitely more evil! Talking about tentacles, the album title points already towards the famous cosmic horror novella At the Mountains of Madness (1936) by American gothic author H. P. Lovecraft, who has been a constant source of inspiration for the metal scene in general and TOTAL ANNIHILATION in particular…

Yet for Total Annihilation all this horror is not just escapism for entertainment but it serves a meaningful purpose. The album is permeated by a deep moral disgust and burning anger towards all the evil and reckless destruction that humanity forces onto itself and all other forms of life on this planet and earth itself. Mountains of Madness is conceived as an echo of and a bold manifesto about the state of the world as well as an artistic sign of our time.’

And there it is: it’s hard to argue, if you have any sense if the current state of the world, that we’re fucked. The question at this point seems to be less ‘will humans become extinct?’ and more ‘will we become extinct through war or climate change?’

‘The Art of Torture’ brings the rage in frenzied blast of beats, riffery, and raw-throated vocals. there is, of course, the obligatory monster solo which occupies the majority of the second half of the song, but the title track brings an instant shift. Yes, it’s very much driven by dingy guitars and pulverising drumming, but it snarls into the abyss and is gnarly and heavy, and while there are some bursts of obligatory fretwankery which feel very much template-driven, it brings the weight – before ‘Chokehold’ grinds in hard, overloading volume and thick distortion paired with rapidfire double-pedal drumming and some wild harmonic guitar soloing.

Mountains of Madness hits hard. Across the eleven tracks, Total Annihilation bring riffs galore, and while there is melody in the lead guitar parts, it’s hardly tuneful in the conventional sense. The sound is solid, the bass and guitar both chunky, the drums blasting, and the pace and rabidity seem to increase as the album progresses.

AA

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In A House Of Heartbeats – Divination of Dreams

Posted: 30 December 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Ripcord Records – 16th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

What do we know about In A House Of Heartbeats? Personally, nothing, and I can’t be alone in that, so will draw on the band’s bio to provide some necessary insight by way of an introduction: ‘Emerging from the shadows of Essex’s underground scene, instrumental trio In A House Of Heartbeats have been quietly sculpting soundtracks for euphoric nightmares since 2022. Their music, steeped in atmosphere and cinematic tension, walks the line between dream and dread, an ever-shifting blend of post-rock, doom, goth, and shoegaze, filtered through inspirations that reach far beyond the musical world.

‘From arthouse cinema and silent film to folklore, myth, and the murky corners of the subconscious, the band construct deeply absorbing sonic “journeys” rather than conventional songs. It’s a style that encourages deep listening: passages unfold with deliberate patience, building from whispered ambience to tectonic weight, always leading the listener somewhere unexpected.’

They pack pretty much every musical aspect of their broad range into the album’s first track, the behemoth that is ‘In a Perpetual State of Wonder’. A hiss yields to a drone before a colossal riff and soaring lead guitar crash in on a surge of powerfully atmospheric post-metal portent… and that’s just the first minute and a half. Spindly gothy guitars weave spidery webs over rolling tribal beats before the next round of the riff. Towards the end, the pace picks up, and drags the listener headlong into a thrumming tremolo-driven blast that’s like a black metal My Bloody Valentine. I went for a seven-mile walk this morning, and it took me just over two hours but it was nowhere near as mentally and physically intense or exhausting as this eleven-minute blizzard of guitars.

Next up, ‘Cambion’, which first surfaced back in December 2024, is altogether more sedate, at least initially, with a chiming, almost folk-infused prog-flavoured intro creating a calmness before the inevitable storm which pounds in with a sustained post-rock crescendo before things get heavier… and heavier. The level of detail, the attention to texture and the frequent twists and turns make this feel like an entire album compressed into a single – albeit lengthy – track. Along the way, chunky bass rips and guitars chime and soar, and I find myself thinking I must be into the next track, but no.

The sample-laden post-rock drift of ‘Parasomniac’ (that would be someone who suffers from the effects of ‘a category of sleep disorders that involve abnormal movements, behaviours, emotions, perceptions, and dreams that occur while falling asleep, sleeping, between sleep stages, or during arousal from sleep’ (according to Wikipedia)) is reminiscent of Maybeshewill, and provides a welcome interlude between the epics before ‘Oneiromancy for Beginners’ lands with the gutsy punch of Andsoiwatchyoufromafar – surely one of the most remarkable and potent riff-driven acts to have emerged from the early noughties post-rock scene. This is a band bursting with ideas and bursting with energy.

The final two pieces, in combination, form a whole, as the Shakespeare-referencing titles suggest: ‘Drift into Sleep…’ bleeds into ‘…Perchance to Dream’, with its title casting a reference to Hamlet, to forge a twelve-minute opus that begins with a ticking clock and a sample from a guided meditation recording which is almost a carbon copy of a recording used for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). It’s likely uncomfortable for anyone who’s been through it, and I find myself squirming through the juxtaposition of soothing, flat vocals and churning noise, but suspect that’s part of the objective here. It’s disorientating and challenging, the second part conjuring atmospheric distortion and endless space with ambient tones and bold sonic washes, before slowly strolling towards an immaculate conclusion, defined by a smooth, swirling climax.

Divination of Dreams certainly delivers on the promise of ‘an ever-shifting blend of post-rock, doom, goth, and shoegaze, filtered through inspirations that reach far beyond the musical world’, and it would be impossible to deny that the end result more than achieves the ambition. Everything about Divination of Dreams is immense, from its ambition to its overwhelming listening experience. It simply covers so much ground – and does so with a rare confidence and finesse. It’s a rare beast, and a spectacular work.

AA

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Photo: Charlie Hill

Richard Francis – Combinations 4

Posted: 26 December 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Room40 – 19th December 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

2025 has been something of a year of noise for me – on the reviewing front, for sure, but perhaps more so on the creative front. Noise doesn’t have to be confrontational or antagonistic. Moreover, it can most certainly be a release. Richard Francis’ latest offering, Combinations 4, is a work which offers up some substantial noise, with a broad exploration of frequencies which are immersive rather than attacking. Churning, droning, unsettling, it spans the range of what noise can do without venturing into the domains of the harsh. Nevertheless, this makes for a pretty challenging work.

Francis’ summary of his working practice and of this album is worth digesting, for context, as he writes clearly and factually:

‘Since 2010 all of the recordings I make and release are improvised live takes, recorded down to a stereo digital recorder with very little editing other than EQ, trimmed beginnings and ends, and the occasional layering of two tracks together… I arrived here through spending many years prior trying to build an electrical system (which I now call the ‘fugue system’) that would do what I did in composition/studio work but in a live setting: combining together dozens of sounds with open feedback and generative channels, and discrete control for each. Then when I finished building that system using digital and analogue tools, I preferred what I heard and recorded ‘on the fly’ more than what I was doing in composition, so that system is now my instrument in a way.’ Precisely what this system is and how it works is unexplained, and we probably don’t need to know: process and tech can very easily become tedious and adds little, when ultimately, it’s about output.

As the title suggests, this is the fourth in his Combinations series, and here, Francis suggests ‘there’s a bit more structure and layering to the works, if that makes sense’. It makes more sense in context, I assume, because on its own, Combinations 4 is a tour though difficult terrain, and any structures are at best vague.

‘Four A’ is a deluge of dirty noise, curtains of white noise rain cascade, and ‘Leave it all alone for months’ is a queasy mess of drones and groans, a morass of undulating dissonance. This piece is quiet but uncomfortable, the sound of strain, whining, churning unsettling. ‘Parehuia’ booms frequencies which simply hurt. In places, it gets grainy and granular, and the experience is simply uncomfortable. I feel my skin crawl. From here, we plunge into ‘My Fuel! I Love It!’ It’s six-and-a-half head-shredding minutes of sonic discomfort, dominated by rising howls and rings.

Assuming ‘Phase effect on wet road’ is a purely descriptive title based on the source material, it’s three minutes of the sound of heavy rain heavily treated while undulating phase hovers and hums, creating an oppressive atmosphere which bleeds into the slow ebb and flow of ‘The alphabet is a sampler’. The effect of Combinations 4 is cumulative, and while the final four of the album’s ten compositions tend to be comparatively shorter, they’re dense and difficult to process. By the arrival of the quivering, quavering oscillations of closer ‘Four J’, which become increasingly disjointed and discombobulating as the piece progresses, you’re feeling a shade disorientated, and more than vaguely overwhelmed.

For an album which appears, on the surface, to be a fairly innocuous work of experimentalism, with Combinations 4, Richard Francis has created something which delivers substantial psychological impact by stealth.

AA

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Zu – Ferrum Sidereum

Posted: 23 December 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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House Of Mythology – 9th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Zu just keep on defying genre and creating music that lands from a different angle every time, even after the best part of thirty years. While postmodernism – which emerged in the 1950s and became the defining mode of art and culture from the 1980s – fundamentally revelled in endless recycling, embracing the notion that anything original has already been done, and that the future of creativity lies in how creatively one may appropriate and hybridize the past, Zu have spent their career bucking that trend with relentless creative innovation.

After a six-year lull, Ferrum Sidereum is their second release of 2025, following the wildly eclectic Jazzisdead under the moniker of RuinsZu in April, a live document of a collaboration between Zu bassist Massimo Pupillo and saxophonist Luca T. Mai, with drummer Yoshida Tatsuya, founder of the Japanese band Ruins.

Ferrum Sidereum – Latin for ‘cosmic iron’ finds the core trio back in the studio, and drawing inspiration ‘from the mythological significance of meteoritic iron, found in artefacts like ancient Egyptian ritual objects, Tibenta ‘Phurpa’ blades, and the celestial sword of Archangel St Michael. This elemental force,’ they write, ‘imbues every moment of the album’s apocalyptic sound.’ On a purely personal level, I’m drawn immediately by the idea of an ‘apocalyptic sound’. We live in what feels like apocalyptic times, after all. I am surely not alone in feeling that since the arrival of the pandemic, we’re racing towards the end of days, and if anything, the exponential rise of AI only seems to be accelerating that race.

Zu are staunchly anti-AI when it comes to their own approach to art – a topic they touch on with single cut ‘A.I. Hive Mind’ – and explain, “We are very spiritually-oriented people,” says Massimo. “Machines and AI do not have spirituality. So they can mimic and they can assemble existing things, but they cannot create. That spirit is probably the most important thing that our music carries.”

Recent AI releases by the howlingly abysmal artificially-generated retro-rock act The Velvet Sundown and even more cringe-inducingly gash country wank of Breaking Rust may show how far the technology has come, but simultaneously reveals just how it’s absolutely no substitute for real, human-made art. This derivative, soulless wank is beyond derivative: that is to say, it’s precisely what you’d expect from melting down the entirety of a genre and regurgitating the lowest common denominator output. It also demonstrates precisely why Zu could never be recreated by any kind of digital modelling. They are completely off the wall in every direction all at once, and on Ferrum Sidereum, ‘The music combines the complexity of progressive rock, the grit of industrial music, the precision of metal, the spirit and energy of punk, and the freedom of jazz. The result is a sonic journey that is as cerebral as it is visceral, defying easy categorisation while remaining unmistakably Zu.’

‘Charagma’ makes for a forceful opener. It’s a full-on sonic blast, at first harsh noise, then pounding industrial riffery, which lunges into sprawling jazz-infused metal, then lurches back to the riffery but with an expansive, proggy twist. It’s a big seven minutes – which is different from a long seven minutes. It doesn’t drag, but what it does do it leave you with whiplash. ‘Golgotha’ whips out all the brass and woodwind at once, and this provides the backdrop to some highly-detailed math-rock which goes all-out crazed around the three-minute mark. And it turns out they’re just warming up.

There’s some hefty chug and churn going on here. There’s also a whole load of manic horns blasting away. Recent single ‘Kether’ is representative, but at the same time not, in that it’s a seven-and-a-half-minute beast of a piece that lurches and lumbers all over, but there’s no way anything can be truly representative of an album that covers so much ground, and is so wildly unpredictable. ‘Kether’ reflects the heavier end of the album… and also the more twisty, melodic side, too – which essentially makes my point. Any thirty second snippet of the album would present a different story. The aforementioned ‘A.I. Hive Mind’ is spasmodic, jazzy, mathy, frenetic, intense, six songs in one.

‘La Donna Vestita De Sole’, the first of the album’s megalithic cornerstones cocking in at nearly ten minutes stands, towering, in the centre. Initially it’s soothing, smoothing, restful, ambient, but of course built to tumultuous towers of monumentally powerful prog, and they lay down some seriously solid grooves. ‘Hymn of the Pearl’ – clocking in at just over nine and half minutes again starts out easy in a haze of slow-building bass and electronic, a bass groove building until it eventually erupts – and when it does, it does, massively.

Arriving at the title track and finale, amidst a whirlwind of noise and all kinds of otherness, there’s something of a post-punk vibe in the build-up… not to mention bass to make you shit your pants. But then it’s got desert rock vibes and elements of Krautrock as it pushes forward, and they still find time for an explosive post-rock crescendo around a third of the way in. The finale is devastating. It’s too much to keep up with – and at the same time, it’s perfection. Zu do zu, as they say. Alright, not, but close enough. The bottom line is that this is a uniquely crafted work, to which AI could never get close. Not remotely.

Ferrum Sidereum is simply huge in every respect: scope, scale, ambition, sound, production. It’s heavy, it’s inspired, and it’s an album to lose yourself in.

AA

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Ulver – Neverland

Posted: 22 December 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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House of Mythology – 31st December 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Ulver’s fourteenth studio album is described as ‘a journey into undiscovered lands’, and promises ‘more traditional song and production structures’; than the preceding three, as well as marking ‘a new chapter in the revered Oslo band’s history’. By this, they explain that “With Neverland we embraced a more ‘punk’ spirit – more dreaming, less discipline – freer, quite simply”. For a band which started out black metal before shifting towards electronica and ambience, this does seem like another substantial shift, at least on paper. This is encouraging, as some recent releases – not least of all The Assassination of Julius Caesar had seen them push quite some way into pop territory, and not in a good way.

It begins promisingly enough: ‘Fear in a Handful of Dust’ presents a collage of tweets and chirrups, jungle birdsong and a suitably bombastic spoken word narrative, which sounds quintessentially sampled, reverberate across atmospheric ripples and washes of synth, paving the way for some melancholic neoclassical piano work on ‘Elephant Trunk’. Glitches and static haze cut across this as atmospheric electronics build, and before long we find ourselves in expansive electronic post-rock territory, the likes of which sits neatly alongside the likes of Nordic Giants.

The transitions are subtle, and the changes creep up on the listener in such a way that one finds oneself nearly halfway through the fourth track, ‘People of the Hills’ to the nagging awareness that this is some quite upbeat trancey dance tune which doesn’t feel in any sense out of place. I mean, it’s not fucking Pendulum and there’s a meaty bass groove and some rather pleasant progressive stylings going on, but it’s a bit pop, a bit commercial-sounding, too.

‘They’re Coming The Birds’ blurs the lines still further: the samples are warped, the synths cinematic, the bass in places a deep, dark post-punk groove, but the beats veer from gothy electronica to more club-orientated fodder. In contrast, there are some magnificent widescreen ambient moments to be found, as on ‘Horses of the Plough’ and ‘the evocative and stirring ‘Quivers in the Marrow’, while ‘Pandora’s Box’ is an exploratory noise work which delves deep into dissonance amidst a swirling quasar of sound where Krautrock meets late 70s early 80s industrial. But then ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ returned to some pretty naff ‘90s new age dance tropes and it feel corny and cheap. There are dudes all over tinkering away with expensive gadgetry in the back bedroom and trying it out to twenty people at EMOM (Electronic Music Open Mic) nights up and down the UK and around the globe creating stuff so, so much better than this. And perhaps this is the frustration with not only Neverland, but Ulver’s work more broadly: some of their compositions are great, absolutely outstanding, rich in atmosphere, big on texture, the concept and execution so perfectly aligned, but a similar number are just lazy and frankly shite.

Neverland is definitely an improvement on The Assassination of Julius Caesar and the Sic Transit Gloria Mundi EP – which deterred me from bothering with the next few releases – but it’s still very hit and miss, with the emphasis on very here. Experimental and varied are one thing, but this is simply wildly uneven and unfocused.

In their summation, they proffer questions as to what Neverland actually is: ‘Pop music from in-between worlds? A sonic hallucination? Or better: a collage of dreams. It’s up to you’. It’s generous of them to leave it open like that. A collage of my dreams would be a lot scarier and more intense, and would consist of buildings collapsing, ruins, cars crashing, being late, being lost, being chased. Neverland certainly isn’t that. It seems that in pushing the question to us, they’re trying to avoid the question of their own identity crisis. Come on then, Ulver, what is it? What is it supposed to be, and is what you’ve given us what you intended when you set out? Is it?And is it punk? Really? Really?

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David Shea – Meditatons

Posted: 21 December 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Room 40 – 7th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Today, December 21st, is the Winter solstice: in terms of daylight hours, the shortest day of the year, and the longest night. As I write, we’ve had cloud, fog, mist, and rain most days here in York for weeks, so it’s essentially felt like one perpetual night for nigh on an eternity. I’m certainly no summer sun lover (I have fair skin and suffer with hayfever), but do struggle with this time of year – always did, but personal circumstances have accentuated the struggle. Watching Shutter Island with my fourteen-year-old daughter earlier (it seemed like a good idea to avoid conventional ‘family’ ‘Christmas’ fare), she commented on how the ‘man with dead wife is troubled and has wild dreams’ trope is perhaps disproportionately common in movies. She’s absolutely right, of course, but the observation hit hard and brought me back to the reason we were avoiding the schmaltzy family Christmas shit – and reminded me that there’s simply no escape from my personal narrative, that my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer just before Christmas in 2021, and died just after Christmas in 2023. These facts not only make it hard for Christmas to be happy, but dealing with all of the stuff like Christmas shopping, present-wrapping, arranging seeing relatives, etc. – stuff that was primarily her domain – on my own is a significant source of stress.

And this is why, on seeing this release had arrived for my attention, it made sense to do myself a favour, for a change. Music is, after all, one of the best therapies. While I’ve little to no interest in new age cack or pseudomystical bullshit, and have generally failed at any attempts to mediate with the limited assistance I’ve had, the idea of a method of achieving mental calm still holds significant appeal.

As David Shea explains in the album’s accompanying notes, ‘Meditations is a set of 8 works based on the experience of meditation practice. Music made for both meditation and reflecting the realities of a life of daily practice. The breath, the quietness, the listening, the distracted dissonant and consonant thoughts that pass through. The texts throughout the pieces are fragments of the Buddhist Heart Sutra, the shortest and created from a mixture of traditions and sources, produced long after Buddha’s death and meant to be chanted or sung as a ritual and personal meditation. The experience of meditation, so often covered in mythology and one dimensionally peaceful symbols, is in fact a complex set of traditions in all cultures and has roots in indigenous cultures world wide and involves the limitations of thought as well as the quietness of the mind as a source of understanding and health.

‘The Buddhist teachings that are in focus in this album are in a sense a sequel to the record Rituals of 2015 in that they are adapted as Meditations that cross and combine traditions with any attempt consciously to synthesize them into a new whole. A conversation between traders, in the form here of musicians, languages, sound sources and the peace and struggle of maintaining a real meditational practice and living in the chaos and violence of society as well as accepting the world as it is, with all of the internal conflicts and release and rise of tension.’

Each of the eight pieces is around eight minutes in duration, and are centred around Shea’s piano, with a host of musicians bringing a range of electronic and acoustic additions, ranging from singing bowls and vibraphone, to samples and midi guitar. The resultant work is gentle, subtle, and sedately-paced. There are tweeting birds flitting around notes which hang, suspended, resonating for substantial durations. Hums and drones. Hints of melodies. Any structures are not based around motifs or repetition, but a flow. That flow is not a linear trajectory, a passage from A to B, but a flow which weaves into the places where the calm is residing.

As much as I’ve always struggled to work with visualisation in guided meditation, Meditations somehow conjures mental images through its abstraction – perhaps because of its abstraction. Being told to visualise a stream, a woodland, a beach, is too much direction, too much ‘relaxation to order’, the meditative equivalent of mandatory of fun in a corporate environment. But with open-ended, non-specific assistance, the channels seem to open more freely. Just as I find ideas and words come to me more readily while out walking, when my blood is oxygenated and my lymphatic flowing comfortably, music which invited free interpretation and successfully evokes images without directed prompts unlocks doors and presents access to unknown passageways.

Piano and acoustic guitar ripple and trickle and ebb and eddy. On ‘Sitting in a Painted Cave’, which ventures more overtly into experimental and Eastern-influenced territory, picked acoustic guitar weaves a textured tapestry. The spoken word interjection is something I find proves to be a distraction in terms of the flow, but I feel this is more because my ideal tranquil space contains no evidence of human existence whatsoever. As a human being myself, I do accept this contradiction, just as I accept the irony of my rage at the presence of others when out for a walk seeking solitude. The track’s second half is rather more dissonant and difficult, with muffled voices adding an unsettling edge. It’s rather less relaxing.

The harmonics, drone, and piano-led ambience of ‘Stillness’ is rather more tolerable, but still wailing drones and tapers quaver before the rippling piano rises from the dissonance of amid-range feedback.

I might have expected ‘The Morning I Awoke’ to be more uplifting, and more… hippy, but it’s largely piano and calming acoustic strums and brooding strings. ‘Tye Heart Sutra’ more than compensate, and offers a spiritual trip and then some. But how to differentiate between business as a need to maintain production? It’s felt like It’s felt like the longest night of the year for about 2 months now.

‘The Heart Sutra’ arrives unexpectedly, before ‘Svaha’ arrives boldly but swiftly tapers into a droning serenity. The sound is dense, a resonant ‘om’, and it leads the listener – at last – to slow, deep breaths, as an undulating vocal –a folky, almost shanty-like lilting quaver- comes to the fore.

Despite its intentions – as specified by the title – Meditations is not quite the sonic still water is first implies. There are dark currents, difficult swells amidst the soothing flows. But for that, it feels more honest, more real.

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