Posts Tagged ‘collaboration’

Remote Viewing – State Violence

Posted: 22 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Human Worth – 18th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Remote Viewing’s second album, Modern Addictions (2023) was a hypercharged, uncompromising beast of an album. This came as no real surprise, given that, as their bio reminds us, ‘Remote Viewing are formed from the ashes of Palehorse, consisting of current members of Million Dead, Sly & The Family Drone, and Hands Up Who Wants To Die’. Sure, when most people hear the word ‘supergroup’ they think of Hollywood Vampires, or Audioslave, or, I dunno, The Travelling Wilburys. They’re ‘super’ by virtue of big names coming together, but their output has a tendency to be underwhelming, because there tend to be super egos cancelling one another out and stifling any spark. But a supergroup at this level – a coming together of musicians of quite different stripes, but all with something different to contribute – in my experience, brings a different kind of energy. Perhaps it comes from the sense that they need to prove themselves, but equally, from the thrill of collaboration. This is the thing with collaboration: sometimes it gels, others it doesn’t. Modern Addictions proved that Remote Viewing gelled, coalescing into a colossal guitar-driven powerhouse.

Imagine my frustration at only being able to be in one place at a time when I pitched up at The Brudenell to see Mogwai to discover Remote Viewing were supporting Humanfly in the other room.

State Violence is pitched as ‘Their most direct statement yet… an unapologetic reflection on the increasing levels of injustice, social division, extreme wealth and human atrocities we are seeing the world over’.

Direct statements – certainly credible ones – have been in short supply in recent years from the political classes, and worse still, criticism of their actions – and inactions – have been subject to increasingly harsh penalties. While one genocide has been televised in real-time around the globe, it’s been all too easy for people to fail to even appreciate the state of things in Sudan, and to shrug off the war in and around Iran as being a distant thing. Here in the UK in particular, there’s a sense of collective smugness that we’re ok because we’re not there, and we don’t have to contend with ICE either, and it’s from that state of bubble that we conveniently overlook that to criticise the state of Israel using the wrong terminology could see you lose your job or even imprisoned. A portion of the populace has been distracted with finger-pointing at immigrants as the reason their lives are shit. Meanwhile, peaceful protest in support of a direct action group has been outlawed.

This is the point at which State Violence arrives, and hits the spot, and does so by driving straight to the heart of a very British way of living.

‘#makemoneymakelovemakemoney’ kicks off – literally – in a rabid squall of dingy guitar accompanied by churning bass and a raving vocal performance, a raw-throated scream. A hybrid of sludge, black-hued metal, and noise rock, there are some blankly nihilist passages which call to mind Kowloon Walled City – but when they slam the pedals on, the overdrive is a speaker-ripping blast. Opening an album with a six-minute mid-pace trudge that makes the skin crawl is inspired: it’s a move that will grab those who are on the market for a challenge, and send the rest running after a minute or so – if that.

‘Retrain as a Swan’, the album’s lead single is one of the least single-like singles you’ll hear all year. It’s great, but it’s bereft of hooks or an obvious road in, and is, instead, a gut-churning sonic assault. The title, incidentally, was the lead line on a poster / flyer / meme which proffered a parodic take on training and recruitment advertisements, and highlights just how typically British State Violence is in its outlook and humour. Yes, humour. Remote Viewing remind that rage doesn’t have to be without humour, and that if anything – and again, this is a uniquely British trait – the more abstract or self-deprecating, or sarcastic, the humour, the better.

The sludgy squall of ‘Disrespect the Arts’ appears to be a raging attack on the way that not only funding for the arts has been stripped (something also in a state of advancement in the US) and the teaching of art and music cut from school syllabi and courses in the arts – including those in literature – dropped from university programmes, while creative jobs are being canned in favour of fucking AI, which is killing the planet but benefits billionaires. Go figure. ‘HUMAN RIGHTS’ is just straight-up, slowed-down and sludgy, trudging, pounding, relentless, Godflesh heavy. It’s like the heels of heavy boots pounding on your chest, knocking the air out repeatedly until you have no breath, and feel blacked out and lifeless.

The nine-minute ‘Accidental Holiday’ marks quite a contrast, exploring spacious, post-rock territory for the first three minutes, before the riff powers in, and then… POW! All the rage explodes here. If it’s not one of the sludgiest, most brutal, slugging doom riff blasts you’ve heard this year, you haven’t actually heard it. But at the same time, it alludes to post-metal and neoprog, and the guitar textures and the spaces are remarkably well calculated: it’s so clearly apparent that there’s a rare musical intuition between these performers that however dark and gnarly State Violence gets, it’s still exhilarating.

But it’s the two-and-a-half-minute closer ‘Birds of the Feather is on in 7 minutes’ which really encapsulates what State Violence is all about, in that is encapsulates the absurd disconnect between the backdrop to life, and actual life as lived in Britain. It manifests as a delicate, slightly warping, droning sliver of post-rock ambience, and its difference from the rest of the album is significant. That seven minutes is time to make a cuppa and fetch the digestives before settling down to some crap TV. “I don’t watch the news, me, it’s too depressing,” people say. I say, “know your enemy”. But who needs news channels to pump state-sponsored propaganda when they get fed rage bait shit while scrolling social media and watching Love Island? State Violence is more about them than for them, but for those who need a visceral soundtrack that screams back from the void, Remote Viewing have delivered it.

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Watch: ‘Paleomagnetic Resonance’ by Lustmord Lombardo

Posted: 12 August 2026 in Singles and EPs, Recommended Streams and Videos
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Lustmord, the pioneer of modern ambient electronic music, and Dave Lombardo, one of heavy music’s most influential percussionists, have joined forces as Lustmord Lombardo.

The pair release their debut album, The Pulse of Atoms, on October 2nd via Ipecac Recordings, offering a taste of their new collaboration with the release of ‘Paleomagnetic Resonance’.

Watch the single video here:

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“One thing about an album like this is that you can’t really point it out as being part of any specific genre or hopefully any specific period,” Lustmord explains. “Is it from last year? Is it from 10 years ago, is it from 20 years ago, is it from 5 years in the future? It’s trying to create something that has its own sound, not tapping into whatever musical language or history you’re familiar with. It goes way, way further back. This is the sound of planets dying or of stars being born. It’s about a bigger picture. It’s the sound of the birth of the universe and the death of the universe; it’s not rock and roll.”

The two musicians met backstage at a Fantômas show, introduced by mutual friend Buzz Osborne, around the time that Lustmord and Melvins released their collaborative album. Nearly two decades later, Lombardo and Lustmord convened as Lustmord Lombardo, crafting an album that is as cold and distant as it is frantic and engaging. The Pulse of Atoms showcases an unheard side of Lombardo and brings Lustmord back to his industrial roots.

Rather than composing songs in a traditional sense, Lustmord built evolving walls and vortices of sound, leaving room for Lombardo to add percussion and various synthesizer layers. Once the editing and arrangement was complete, Lustmord mixed and mastered the record, which was a balancing act between the two players’ large, loud musical presence

“I’m very proud of this collaboration because it’s so different from anything else that I’ve done,” Lombardo adds. “And to create this body of work with Lustmord – this guy is
legendary! He rattles the plaster off of venues.”

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Colin Webster / Balázs Pándi / Matt Cargill – Chewed Up And Spat Out

Posted: 13 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Raw Tonk Records – 15th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

I’m late to the party with this one. Can I pretend it’s fashionably late, rather than simply tardy? I’m going to say yes, since the event actually took place in 2019 and it’s taken till now to make its way into the world, but let’s focus on the fact that this is, indeed, one hell of a party.

Chewed Up And Spat Out was recorded in a one-off session in London. Hungarian master drummer Balázs Pándi (Merzbow, Thurston Moore, Mats Gustafsson etc.) was in town for a few days and contacted saxophonist Colin Webster (Sex Swing, Dead Neanderthals etc..) who suggested adding Matt Cargill (Sly & The Family Drone) to the session on electronics. And if that lineup isn’t enough, the whole thing was recorded and mixed by Tim Cedar of Part Chimp, who knows a thing or two about noise.

We’re deep in wild jazz experimentalism here, and this is apparent from the groans and honks of saxophone which warp and drone amidst a simmering cacophony of rolling drums – not so much a rhythm as a gathering storm. The electronic elements are subtle at first, a few bleeps and twitters of treble pass here and there while a low drone hums almost subliminally on the first track, ‘To Arise from Sleep’. But the drone mutates into a thick, throbbing pulsation which gargles like a digital didgeridoo on ‘Chewed Up’, while the percussion is more subtle, predominantly manifesting as clattering rim shots initially and the sax is similarly restrained, simmering under until it finally cuts loose. At over eight and a half minutes, counterpart ‘Spat Out’ is something of an endurance test, and works backwards, starting with a crescendo before lurching stop-start blasts of noise which almost approximate a riff give way to a prolonged freeform spasm.

Not only does it have the best title, but ‘Money Shitter’ is peak freak, one of those crazed cacophonous jazz monsters that starts like its ending and ends like its starting and never goes anywhere but at the same time flies in all directions simultaneously. It sounds like unplanned, unco-ordinated chaos – and perhaps it is – but the thing to remember is that it’s supposed to sound like that, and they manage to navigate a succession of explosive crescendos interspersed with subtler, more ponderous passages, and in combination, they interrogate the interplay between the instruments, the tones, the textures, the dynamics. The final piece, ‘Blot’, sees them inspect these sonic relationships in a more granular detail, ponderously pushing through a succession of peaks and troughs for almost twelve minutes. Here, the abrasive intensity is tempered in favour of atmosphere – although the mid-point finds Webster wringing some prolonged bleats over rolling, fluid beats, building to a frenzied extended crescendo and a slow collapse.

There’s a lot of movement on Chewed Up And Spat Out, an album which conveys not only great energy, but a physicality and kineticism – which does, ultimately, leave you feeling as the title tells it. This is the good shit, and by the conclusion, it’s fair to say that from a listening perspective, it does what it says on the proverbial tin.

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Earth Mother Fucker / Pound Land – Earth Mother Fucker / Pound Land

Posted: 12 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 31st July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s too hot. Granted, I make this complaint whenever it goes above 24C, but on day three – or maybe it’s day four or five or ten – of a 30-plus heatwave – the third heatwave of the year – I am absolutely dying. Typing is making me sweat like running a marathon. Hell, even thinking about typing is making me sweat like running a marathon. My brain is jelly.

The two bands have a side each on the vinyl, plus collaborative tracks closing each set.

I’ve devoted a fair quality of words effusing over the output of dour Derby dingemongers Pound Land, and as theirs is the second half of the album, I’ll focus first on the EMF who didn’t have any bouncy dance-driven indie hits in the 90s. Earh Mother Fucker formed in Ipswich – the hometown of the equally commercially-orientated Extreme Noise Terror – in 1988. Only unlike ENT, EMT (so close) didn’t record a bunch of Peel sessions, sign to Earache, or perform at The Brit Awards with The KLF before releasing a ridiculously rare collaborative single available only by mail order through Melody Maker or The NME. Again, so close.

Instead – and respect is due here – they’ve ploughed their own noise-rock furrow with a slow – very slow – flow of albums released on tape and CD-R. There was nearly a 20-year gap between Let Him Go Up (2001, CD-R) and It’s Shit (2020) and then another six years before the arrival of Do Not Resuscitate earlier this year. It seems they changed their mind, and are very much resuscitated, and two releases in a year is a real cause for celebration. Well, it is if you like Earth Mother Fucker.

There’s a sense that they don’t particularly want to be liked, and instead exist to test listeners with a uniquely English form of noise rock. Their solo cuts are scuzzy, grungy, abrasive and raw as it comes, but there are some sublime moments of melody, at least in the guitar department.

‘Happy Shopper’ powers in amidst a squall of angular guitars, landing primarily somewhere between The Fall and Sonic Youth. It’s a ramshackle racket, lo-fi grungy, gloriously unpolished. ‘Changeling’ does low-slung twisted country crossed with wonky noise and vocals – half-spoken, half-shouted, bridging Enablers and A Band of Susans. That’s a substantial gap to bridge, superficially, but Earth Mother Fucker span it with discordant, chaotic ease.

‘Puppy Fat’ is very much a spirit of 77 punk blast at heart, but twisted with a strong element of Krautrock as defined by its motorik beats, and almost veers into Fall-like Mancabilly. It also feels like the optimal summary of what EMF are about.

‘Second Aunt’, with Pound Land is a raucous maxed-out rendition of Eno’s ‘Third Uncle’, but based more on the Bauhaus cover than the original, and manifesting as a wild punky thrashabout.

Pound Land push things further still, ‘Liar’ being a rampant roar of disaffection. The bass is thick and booming, the production as gloriously primitive as the sax freak-out that runs all over it is wild. They lumber into even sludgier territory on ‘Janet’s Here’, a mangled mess of noise and snarling vocals atop that gut-churning bass giving it a hint of early PiL. ‘Feeling Sick’ lumbers and lurches in such a way it becomes a work of self-fulfilment, a musical manifestation of dire disgust and seething (self) loathing.

‘Shitoctacy’ sees Pound Land joined by Earth Mother Fucker, and is a true monster, with a collage of sped-up samples overlaid across some weirdy, warping drones before a ten-minute trudge begins, grimy bass and spewing vitriol atop the nastiest, most discordant racket, and from time to time there’s some pained sax from Jo Stone which wails in anguish over the whole heaving mess.

As split albums go, this one couldn’t have been better curated: it feels like the two bands – particularly with the collaborative works – are egging one another on to take the levels of grime and slime and nauseating churn up, notch by notch. The result is gritty, gruelling, and spectacularly visceral.

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Sun Ra ǀ Merzbow – Strange City

Posted: 8 July 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Reviews
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Cold Spring – 26th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

This release is something of a curio, in the sense that it’s a collaboration between two of the most famously prolific recording artists of recent times – Sun Ra recorded over 100 full-length albums, comprising well over 1000 songs prior to his death in 1993 at the age of 79, while Merzbow, active since 1979, has released in excess of 500 albums to date. However, this collaboration occurred posthumously for Sun Ra, and it’s worth quoting the context as given by the label, Cold Spring here:

Officially licensed from Irwin Chusid, who oversees the catalogue of the late Afrofuturist artist/composer/bandleader Sun Ra, Cold Spring negotiated rare and unreleased tracks from the Sun Ra archive to be remixed and treated by Masami Akita (aka Merzbow). The tracks incorporate the jazz power of Sun Ra with the brutal excess of the Japanese noise artist Merzbow.

Originally released by Cold Spring a decade ago and long sold out, the music was spread across vinyl and CD, with completely different music on each format. The tracks have now been collected together for the first time, using the original master tapes and presented in the order intended (the vinyl format dictated the order due to optimal sound quality restraints).

Included for the first time on any release is a bonus two minute track entitled ‘Granular Jazz Part 5’, a special composition created for ‘Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone’, a weekly radio show on BBC 6 Music in the UK. It was broadcast ahead of Merzbow’s live concert at the FAC251 venue in Manchester in September 2016.

There are obviously practical reasons why the different formats featured different track listings on the original release, although these things can prove frustrating for fans finding themselves faced with the dilemma of missing material or forking out for multiple formats. This ‘complete’ reissue has the added incentive of an unreleased track, and while it’s only a couple of minutes of unreleased music, it does round off what is unquestionably a monster release – the six pieces having a combined run time of a massive 104 minutes.

So, to begin with a brief content comparison, the contents of the original CD – the 32-minute ‘Livid Sun Loop’ and ‘Granular Jazz Part 2’ (34 minutes long) makes up the corresponding first disc here, while the 2016 vinyl contained ‘Granular Jazz’ parts 1, 3, and 4. Chances are that some will still be dissatisfied that the CD tracks still haven’t made it onto vinyl, but you can’t please all the people all of the time, and as much as I’m a fan of vinyl myself, the longform nature of the compositions does seem well-suited to CD.

As for the contents of this ten-year expanded reissue… it’s no criticism or complaint to comment that it very much sounds like what you’d expect. ‘Livid Sun Loop’ encapsulates the album in its entirety in the first few minutes – shrieking horns flying in all directions against an apocalyptic churn of cement-mixer noise with the treble cranked to the max, feedback and flayed circuitry exploding like fireworks on New Year’s Eve. A squall of treble, scraping, screaming, like a Brillo pad scouring away at the inside of your skull. There are prolonged segments which are pure Merzbow, shredding digital noise, but then, suddenly, amidst the blitzkrieg, there are honking horns and random toots which pop through the raging wall. The track is a truly relentless assault, and brutally harsh. The frequencies very much favour the top-end, with howls and hisses of tinnitus-inducing quality tearing from the speakers with not so much as a second’s let-up. Every time you think that this must – must! – be the limit, Merzbow does the Merzbow thing of finding new frequencies with which to cause injury. Oh yes: this hurts. But what else did you expect? Some cozy club vibes, a bit of mellow sax and piano? Right. Merzbow brings the harshest head-shredding hell.

Twenty minutes in, there’s a segment that sounds like everything is breaking – not just the gear, I mean it sounds like a field recording of the collapse of civilisation, the absolute end of the world as we know it. And it just goes on. And on. What have I done to deserve this? What has anyone done to deserve this? Actually, perhaps this is the answer to the UK’s issues in the penal system. Being forced to listen to this a couple of times may be a viable altern alternative to shorter custodial sentences. But here I am, listening with great interest and even with a degree of perverse pleasure – although after half an hour, I will admit that I’m wilting somewhat, and not just because it’s 30C with 70% humidity in my office at 9pm. This is nothing short of punishment: it hurts. And it ain’t very jazzy. It’s a mangled mess of skin-peeling, face-melting horror.

But if ‘Livid Sun Loop’ makes for a long and challenging half hour, you’d better buckle in and brace yourself for the endurance test of all endurance tests. To dissipate any doubt, I am a big fan of noise, and enjoy basking in blistering waves of aural annihilation. And Strange City is special in its vision and scope, and its sheer enormity. There are fleeting flickers of strolling double bass which pep through the wild bleepery, woozy drones and sheet metal shredding.

‘Granular Jazz Part 1’ yawns and snarls, bibbles and bleeps and pulses and creaks and swashes and swinges its way through just shy of eighteen minutes of existential anxiety, but it’s simply a prelude to part 2. The slow fade-in and trickling digital cacophony is simply a lure, creating the illusion of listenability. And it does take some time to build. But, of course, build it does. A quarter of an hour in, and it’s reached a sustained crescendo or chaos that’s dense enough to crush your skull. The jazz quota is ratcheted up, too, and the result is something else. Finding the words for this is a challenger, but I’m starting to feel that it’s not words I need, but an ambulance.

Strange City is… intense. In large parts, it feel like Merzbo is the dominant party in this mash-up (which is essentially what it is), and at its best, Strange City makes for a fitting posthumous release for Sun Ra. But from whichever able ou approach it, Strange City is one serious blast of noise. Killer all the way.

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Watch: ‘Shame!’ by LiVES vs Dolium

Posted: 12 May 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Dolium x LiVES collide on ‘Shame!’, a high-friction joint single that blurs the line between collaboration and confrontation. Rooted in indie rock and sharpened by punk urgency, it’s a track driven by tension, energy, and shared intent.

Since reforming in 2024 for the 20th Anniversary of their label, Sister 9 Recordings, lo-fi/post-punk/scuzz-rockers Dolium have been quietly building toward a new chapter. In their early days, the band caused quite a buzz on the UK underground music scene, catching the attention of BBC radio legend, John Peel.  That legacy is captured in their critically acclaimed limited-edition 4CD box set, The Products Of Our Own Demands And Commands. Now, in 2026, they return with renewed focus, and a new era of furious punk rock.

Born in Cornwall and sharpened in Kent, LiVES are a visceral collision of post-punk intensity and hard rock precision. Their debut album Let Them Eat Cake landed like a fist through a wall, fast, aggressive, and socio-politically charged. Louder Than War called it “a nihilistic expression of anger and disillusionment.” Their track Just Can’t Get Enough reached a wider audience through its placement on the Netflix series Lucifer. With airplay across BBC 6 Music, Radio X and BBC Introducing, a sold-out European tour, and support slots alongside Buzzcocks, SPAN and Danny Wildheart, LiVES have built a reputation as a band made for rooms that sweat. They return here in full force.

The creative spark was immediate.“I knew I wanted to work with someone that had as much anger and attitude as me. The moment I heard Rhys’s work, I was like, hell yeah… this is fire.” – Peter (LiVES) What started as a skeletal, verseless track quickly evolved into something more dynamic. Dolium took the initial framework into the studio and, as Rhys puts it, “added their venom,” with the song ultimately “bent beautifully into shape between us from across the miles.” Built remotely, with ideas passed back and forth, ‘Shame!’ became a true crossfire – LiVES driving the choruses while Dolium took command of the verses. The result is a track that feels both fractured and unified: two bands, one shared fury…

LiVES vs Dolium – UK duel headline shows

15 May 2026 – The Dead Famous, Newquay

16 May 2026 – The Water Rats, London 

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Exit Void – Void of Escape

Posted: 7 April 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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3rd April 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Exit Void represents the coming together of no fewer than six notable names from the Austrian scene. Some may even designate them the title of ‘supergroup’. Their bio spins it that ‘EXIT VOID functions as a spontaneous search for sound, where the distinct artistic signatures of Manfred Engelmayr (Bulbul), Katrin Euller (Rent), Alex Kranabetter (Drank), Wolfgang Lehmann (Voyage Futur), Anja Plaschg (Soap&Skin), and David Reumüller (Reflector) collide in productive friction, giving rise to music that remains open to the unpredictability of the moment.

For context, they first played together in September 2025 at Dom im Berg in Graz, and first came together to work on a soundtrack for a video installation, and we learn that ‘the ensemble combines electronic and acoustic instruments with structured compositions and open improvisational passages’.

There’s little room for experimental passages on this single release, though, with ‘Void of Escape’ clocking in at just over four minutes, and virtual flipside ‘Residual Breed’ at a minute and a half.

The former is an off-kilter and intriguing composition that builds – from a lone, mournful trumpet, subsequently joined by slow drumming which is simply immense, positively industrial… but is nothing compared with the powerful vocal performance. The lyrics themselves are sparse, but Anja Plaschg’s delivery is nothing short of devastating in its power.

Lately, I myself have struggled to articulate the thoughts circulating – or moreover frothing in a wild frenzy – about my mind. I can’t keep pace with the news. I lived through and watched – compulsively – the Falklands War, and the first Gulf War. I was a kid, and it felt exciting, especially living near an RAF base and during the Falklands I would the planes take off over the back garden, and later see them on the news. But right now is the worst and most scary shit we’ve ever seen unravel in real time on TV, streaming live 24/7, and then there’s social media… It’s hard to find the words.

On ‘Void of Escape’, Exit Void keep it simple and focused ‘War in the East… War in the West…’ Plaschg sings, with all of her lungs. And that’s it – succinct, simple, direct: there is war everywhere: the world is at war.

‘Void of Escape’ hits hard, a powerful musical experience and a statement of… of what, exactly? It feels like music for the apocalypse. It’s music of the moment.

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Stine Janvin / Morten Joh – Or Gare: Funeral Procession Music from Ryfylke, Norway

Posted: 4 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Futura Resistenza  – 24th Match 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Well, it is Good Friday, so it seems an appropriate time to settle down with a large whisky and some candles to engage with an album of funeral procession music from Ryfylke, Norway. And as the title suggests, this is actually what this collaborative album contains:

Rooted in the bygone custom of ‘Liksong’ (literally ‘corpse song’) that was once sung by small groups of singers who guided rural funeral processions, Janvin and Joh tap into its uncanny, unbearably slow intervallic structures, reanimating the practice as a kind of ancient electronic microtonal devotional music. Voices and vocal effects, synths and melodic percussion seep into the cracks between major and minor, and the whole thing carries the creaking weight of ceremony, yet glows with an otherworldly modernity, as if a forgotten liturgy had been retuned for a dimly humming chapel of circuits.

The duo, with Janvin on vocals and electronics and Joh on synths, tape machines, and percussion, also enlisted Lucy Railton (cello) and Jules Reidy (electric guitar).

The nine tracks present a remarkably structured, linear funeral journey – and while the premise of the album is already most uncommonly literal, so is the linear structure, which begins with ‘Leaving Home’ and concludes with ‘Postlude’, which it arrives at via ‘Pasing neighbours’, ‘Before the burial site’, ‘By the grave’, ‘Lowering the coffing’, and ‘Processing grief’, among other almost instructional titles.

The pieces them selves are quite minimal in their arrangements: drones, hums and haunting, folk-inspired vocals, bathed in reverb and surrounded by echo come together to create soundscapes which are haunting, and, at times, other-wordly. ‘Pasing Neighbours’ is a slice of detached, rippling electronica, which on the surface couldn’t be further removed from ancient Nordic rituals… and yet Janvin and John succeed in subtly manipulating the sounds to conjure something which reaches deep into the psyche with its rippling dissonance.

There’s a gravity to this album which underlies the twisting, processed electronic experimentalism which is befitting of the subject and the context, and while ‘Passing neighbours’ does amalgamate shoegaze with robotix 80s electro, it doesn’t feel disrespectful to the source.

‘Rest – Bordvers’ which features Jules Reidy) is a sliver of ghostly folk which sounds like spirits ascending over an early Silver Jews outtake, and ‘Before the burial site – Jeg Raader Eder Alle’ is a heavily processed, almost space-age reindentation of a folk incantation – but it’s the haunting, eight-minute ‘By the grave – Akk, Mon Jeg Staar I Naade’ which really grips the attention with its ghostly wails and insistent pulsations and expansive, arcing drones. The dronerous ‘Lowering the coffin’ features vintage spacemuzak ripples and reverberating ululations contrasts sharply with ‘Processing grief’, which begins hymn-like, before swiftly transitioning to shuffling, fractal synthiness reminiscent of Tangerine Dream.

One suspects that in this modernisation, in this translation, something has been lost. But at the same time, this interpretation serves to keep an ancient heritage alive. And this is the sound of dark woodland, of glaciers, of spartan spaces – ice-dusted woodland. Often, it’;s trult beautiful, and this is nbowhere more clear on ‘Acceptance – Kom, Menneske, At Skue Mig!’, another piece which is more than seven minutes in duration.

The final track, ‘Postlude’ is gentle, and even alludes to a brighter future on the horizon. For mem it feels a little soon, although there s no use of timescale by which to orientate oneself available in the immediate entrance of the accommodation.

Having spent the last three years processing – and documenting – grief following the loss of my wife, Or Gare: Funeral Procession Music from Ryfylke, Norway is a difficult album to approach on a personal level. But there are times in this expansive, exploratory work, that death, in all its suffering, has been muted and spun into niceness – if not a palatable, packageable sound.

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Listen: ‘Rip the God’ by The Melvins and Napalm Death

Posted: 12 March 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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The Melvins and Napalm Death share ‘Rip The God’, the latest in a chaotic alchemy conjured on their joint album, Savage Imperial Death March (10th April, Ipecac Recordings).

The album shares its name with the bands’ Savage Imperial Death March tours from 2016 and 2025, but marks their first full-length studio collaboration under the moniker.

About this next track, Shane says; “The opening Buzz riff begins with that classic timing – a hiccup right at the end of the riff cycle making the riff extra special! Simple yet tricky to remember…  it had my head spinning when I played the bass to it – Multiply that head spin with the guitar pedal noise static we all added – God was ripped and drunk on joyful noise…”

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The album was recorded at the Melvins’ Los Angeles studio, with Buzz Osborne (vocals/guitar) and Dale Crover (drums) joined by Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway (vocals), Shane Embury (bass), and John Cooke (guitar).

“I have loved the Melvins forever and their outlook on music,” Embury explains. “A chance to make an album of eclectic musical madness with them was truly an honour and a whole lot of fun, which surely is the whole point! Let’s do another one soon.”

“Napalm Death are one of my favorite bands ever,” Osborne says. “It was an absolute pleasure and a dream come true to do this collaboration with them. We wrote songs together. I would write a riff and we would learn it and record it right there. They wrote stuff and we would learn it immediately as well. It was truly a 50/50 partnership.”

"Funny how life turns out sometimes… collecting hard-to-find Melvins 7-inches on Bleecker Street in 1989 and then touring twice and doing an album with them within the following 35 years,” Greenway adds. “Had a great time with it all, and nice to work with fellow travellers in the Melvins who also couldn’t care about pandering to ‘demographics’. I felt myself almost
babbling lyrically during the recording, and that alone made for very fun recording times."

Savage Imperial Death March pre-orders are available now. The eight-song album will be released on CD, digitally, and across four limited-edition vinyl variants: Black As Your Soul, Indie Exclusive Obnoxious Orchid, Ipecac Exclusive Absurd Aqua, and Revolver Exclusive Neon Coral. An abbreviated version of the album was released during the band’s 2025 tour as a hyper-limited vinyl/CD edition. This iteration features new Mackie Osborne-created artwork and two new tracks (‘Awful Handwriting’ and ‘Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy’).

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Watch: ‘Corpus’ by Stabbed by Prongs

Posted: 8 March 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Dark electro project, STABBED BY PRONGS has just unleashed their new full-length LP, Static Skin.

Drawing from EBM, electro, and 90s industrial influences, protagonist Craig Drabik has crafted six original soundscapes blending dance and destruction. Longtime collaborators Ry White, Andy Breton, Kimberly Kornmeier (Bow Ever Down), and Lail Brown return, along with newcomer Gabrielle Emerson. 

Human relationships are a primary lyrical theme that permeates the album.  The opening track, ‘Corpus’ hints at imposter syndrome under its moody S&M vibe, while ‘Another Realm’ embodies the longing and isolation of a long-distance relationship. ‘Violent Delights’, the album’s first single, is a harrowing look into an intimate relationship with a malignant narcissist. ‘Fall Into Darkness’ wraps up the album, longing to escape into the kind of love that consumes your sense of self.

STABBED BY PRONGS founder, Craig Drabik states, “Static Skin seems to have two personalities split between the male and female vocalists. I think there’s a nice contrast between the thumpy, heavy aggression of tracks like ‘Corpus’ and ‘Big Fake World’ and the laid-back electro-trip-hop of ‘Pyromancer’ for example. It provides more surface area to attract different kinds of listeners.”

As a taster, they’ve released a video for the opening track, ‘Corpus’, which you can check here:

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