Posts Tagged ‘dark’

Watch: ‘Going Numb’ by Mekong

Posted: 8 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Polish post-punk/darkwave band, Mekong has just unveiled the first single from their upcoming album, Danse Danse.

In ‘Going Numb’, the hypnotic fusion of post-punk and dark-wave weaves a haunting tale of a girl’s last night out. The dance floor becomes her sanctuary one final time. Amidst the pulsating beats and disco-inspired rhythm, she embraces the numbness, surrendering to the melancholic melodies that guide her through a poignant journey.

The song encapsulates her bittersweet dance, capturing the raw emotions of her final moments before the inevitable darkness descends.

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Watch: ‘Werewolves’ by Sky Lions

Posted: 26 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Portland post-punk alt-rockers SKY LIONS presents ‘Werewolves’, a wild offering from their debut album Inside The Circle. The duo is made up of Radio Sloan and Outer Stace, who over the years have performed with or as a part of Courtney Love’s band, Peaches’ band, Le Tigre, The Need, Time Bitch and Photona.

Sky Lions’ musical collaboration began in childhood, before they were aware of any rules. Outer Stace says, “’Werewolves’, in part, is about the idea of shifting from our outer selves to our inner selves, the fleeting peace that can bring; transformation and adaptation… So, the art direction possibilities were pretty endless. It was a lot of fun to create the different versions of ourselves that we could be.”

Watch the video here:

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“It’s like a metamorphic reality of death and the future. It feels like things we’ve seen,” says Radio Sloan. “Our sound is that of accepting existence for all its flaws. Sky Lions has a darkness that isn’t entirely heavy metal, post-punk or darkwave. Rather, it’s a culmination of who we have been, who we currently are, and how we interpret the world around us. Moving within that world is the core of our musical expression.”

From early days experimenting with instruments to their evolution into Sky Lions, they’ve carved a niche where innovation, music, feminism, Trans/queer identity and horror come together. Sky Lions weaves together the threads of life’s absurdity, unquestionable magic and tragedy. Their trans / queer / feminist lens adds a relatability of lives lived and times to come, creating an immersive sonic journey that challenges the mind and ears. Through genre-blurring compositions and evocative lyrics, they hope to channel their ethos into a call for transformation! They hope that their songs challenge stereotypes, and ignite conversation.

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Watch: ‘Dream One’ by Cold in Berlin

Posted: 21 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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New Heavy Sounds is stoked to announce a new multi-record project by Cold in Berlin The Wounds.

Consisting of an EP, The Body is the Wound, and an album, due in 2024, The Wounds is a musical vade mecum of what is to come in a fresh era for the band.

Vocalist Maya explains: “The Wounds started as an idea about bringing together stories of loss and the idea that wounds can be growth, healing and that slow burn you use to fuel other fires.”

The Body is the Wound EP launches the next chapter in CIB’s journey.

Released on 19th January (New Heavy Sounds), the four tracks cover diverse musical ground, drawing ideas from krautrock, post-punk and doom, but always with the requisite  amount of weight. 

Watch the video for new single ‘Dream One’ here:

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Watch: ‘A Hand to Hold the Gun’ by Hanging Freud

Posted: 16 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Glasgow-based duo HANGING FREUD join hands with the Belgian label Spleen+ (division of Alfa Matrix) for the release of Worship, their most personal and emotive full length ever.

On this 7th studio album, Paula Borges and Jonathan Skinner continue refining their unique sound identity that nobody managed so far to narrow down to one specific music style, often evoking influences and elements of post punk, ethereal, synthgaze, cold wave, ambient pop or yet experimental electronica.

With the heartbeat of a drum machine as metronome, Paula’s vocals are dark, haunting, almost glacial, her enunciation is both plaintive and full of echoing fragile grace. While the cinematic music warps them all in a melancholic ethereal cocoon made of mechanical funeral melodies, icy minimal sequences and suffocating synth atmospheres. The overall ambience is dense, lingering, almost claustrophobic, but so poignant and uplifting that it takes you by the throat and touches you at the deepest end of your soul.

The 10 songs featured on this album literally come from a place of contradiction hanging somewhere between courageous vulnerability and fearful resilience, and deal with themes such as collective distress and loss, finding beauty in tragedy or yet questioning about what makes us human in the symbolic contrasts of life and death.
It’s no surprise to hear that this “less is more” introspective ode to melancholia was written in particular claustrophobic circumstances during the pandemic lockdown. “Because of what was going on, we were essentially stuck in temporary accommodation in Scotland, away from our studio and forced into a period unexperienced before. The songs that came out therefore come from a different place. Everything was done within a laptop and is proudly 100% digital. It was recorded and mixed while literally sitting on the side of a bed in a mouse infested apartment…” explains Paula Borges.

Strong from their somewhat nomadic past with multicultural backgrounds of coming from Sao Paulo (Brazil) and London (UK), HANGING FREUD sign here a timeless chef d’oeuvre full of beautifully dark simplicity, an emotional body of work that is uncompromising and genre defying at the same time. If you missed HANGING FREUD so far, the moment has come to fall under their freezing spell and addictively hit the play-button again and again.

As a taster of the album, out in December, they’ve unveiled a video for ‘A Hand to Hold the Gun’, which you can see here:

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Listen: ‘The Primitive Covenant’ by Cirkeln

Posted: 14 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Cirkeln, the black-metal project of the Stockholm-based underground musician known as Våndarr recently unveiled another from track his third album The Primitive Covenant, which is set to be released on November 3rd via True Cult Records.

“Writing this song was probably the most fun I’ve ever had writing for Cirkeln”, says Våndarr. “Usually, the process is quite laborious and takes a long time. There´s rarely a spark of inspiration that then flow naturally into the recording process. But, with the Witch Bell I knew I wanted to take a rawer approach to writing and recording. At that point I knew the mission of the record was to strip away and get down to the basics. I set up the recording as close to a live scenario as I possibly could in my living room-based studio. This meant that the drums were laid down first and then I tracked all the guitars and all the bass in one take for each instrument. There was no editing or refining of the recordings after the fact. There were rarely even second takes. I think this gives the song a sense of unapologetic ugliness and momentum. There was no click track, so the pace of the instruments is entirely dictated by listening to the drums. It’s not the tightest Cirkeln track – but to me it’s the one that sounds the most alive. I also wanted to experiment with incorporating a different vocal technique and style on this album – and the Witch Bell is one of the best examples of this. To me, this is the point where Cirkeln doesn´t allow itself to be confined by one idea of what Black Metal is. There’s more than one shade to darkness.”

On the follow-up to his critically second album A Song To Sorrow, Våndarr is once paying homage to the forefathers of black-metal, yet this time The Primitive Covenant sees the Swedish musician incorporating more elements of old-school thrash-metal, primeval death-metal and even punk.

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Watch: ‘Ochre’ (feat. HEALTH) by Venera

Posted: 12 October 2023 in Reviews
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As a final preview from Venera’s self-titled debut album, the duo have shared the track and video ‘Ochre’ (featuring HEALTH). The darkly surreal Venera is out tomorrow via Ipecac Recordings.

About the track; “’Ochre came early on in the recording process of the album. For me, it recalls a beast stealthily moving through a dark space, or a strange ritual unfolding in moonlight.” – Chris Hunt

Jake Duzsik from HEALTH adds, "It was refreshing to contribute to a track that is focused on creating atmosphere and feeling rather than simply capitulating to the endless regurgitation of standard verse/chorus structure.  It is grounding to reconnect to the building blocks of music making that are elemental and emotional, and I wish I got to do it more often.”

Watch the video here:

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Photo credit: Rizz

Euchridian – Philia

Posted: 9 October 2023 in Singles and EPs
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1st September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Details around Scottish black metal act Euchridian and sketchy. They’re a trio, and the drums were recorded at a different studio from the rest of the instruments. And this is to the good. I don’t need to know, and ultimately, probably don’t want to know. What does it matter when they formed, where they live, what gigs they’ve done? The lack of social media presence is admirable: in the absence of corny posed photos and candid snaps and videos of them gurning away at their instruments, I have nothing to judge them on but the music and the enigmatic cover art. And a little enigma goes a long way.

The advent of social media has not been a great thing for many artists. Before social media, it was possible for the music and the record sleeves to represent, and promotion didn’t have to involve endless posts about pointless shit like pictures of the band’s takeaway delivery before a rehearsal. Social media says that bands now need to build a rapport with their fans, to interact, to engage, and frequently to keep them engaged. But acts like Sunn O))) and Khanate prove it’s possible to not do that and build an immense fanbase. Likewise, you won’t see JK Broadrick doing rounds of inane interviews, spouting pointless opinions on pointless subjects to flog a few more Godflesh albums, or GYBE raffling off drum skins and offering personalised hand-written lyric sheets for £75 or whatever.

Musicians by nature tend not to be as extrovert as the act of making and performing music may suggest – and there’s a world of difference from being a pop act with aspirations to performing arenas, to murky metal which channels all the pain and anguish of existence and is much less about reaching an audience than it is about having an outlet for all that shit.

Philia is, according to my light research, one of the four ancient Greek words for love, and compared to agape and eros, it’s perhaps the most obscure. This may in part be a reason for the choice for the EP’s title, but philia is usually translated as ‘friendship’ or affection, and this is what carries into the first track, the nine-and-a-half minute ‘Sweetness’.

Sweetness and black metal may seem unusual pairings, and sure enough, this absolute monster of a track. The guitar sound is quite bright, and it’s a solo riff that opens what starts a crunching slow-burner. The drums crash in slowly next, before Matt Davies’ manic mangled rasp of a strangled snake spitting venom enters the fray. There is a sense of pomp, a sense of ceremony, but above all, this feels maniacal, murderous, deranged and fucked up. The temp shifts here and there, and there’s the obligatory monster guitar solo, but it’s the driving riff that blossoms into something truly epic.

And on the subject of the truly epic, the second track, ‘The Rule Of Three’ is an absolute monster, clocking in at over thirteen-and-a-half minutes and built around a slow, trudging riff. The guitar may be bright, but it’s mangled as fuck and squirms in an agonised tandem with the raw, ruined vocals. Around the mid-point, it switches focus and embarks on a break that s beyond epic – but it’s not corny, either. It is, however, one of those chord sequences played in a way that makes you feel. And the it goes really dark.

Overall, Philia is properly nasty: this is the sound of a band fully committed to plunging the deepest depths of darkness, and ‘Philia’ doesn’t punch you in the guts, but pulls your guts out and squeezes them. Philia is full-on intensity, and hits where it hurts.

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Listen: ‘Panic’ by The Neuro Farm

Posted: 9 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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‘Panic’ is the new single from DC goth rockers The Neuro Farm. The song is inspired by a childhood episode of fevered delirium, and it will be featured on their next album planned for 2024.

The Neuro Farm is a darkwave gothic rock band based in Washington DC. Combining vocal harmony with soaring violin melodies, driving rhythm guitar, and ethereal sonic textures, their music has been described as hauntingly beautiful. The Neuro Farm draws on influences such as Joy Division, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sigur Ros, Chelsea Wolfe, Portishead, and Rammstein.

Listen here:

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North Vänern Appreciation Society – the moment multibillionaires realise that their money could be better spent helping humanity on Earth

Posted: 9 October 2023 in Albums
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Dret Skivor – 1st September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

This twenty-two-minute continuous composition is ‘A consideration and contemplation of the stupidity of people who have more money they could ever spend and fritter it away on dick-waving projects instead of paying the tax they should be paying and contributing to society’, adding ‘Billionaires shouldn’t exist at all and we need to start having this conversation.’

Yes. Yes. And yes. It’s been something I’ve been silently raging and experiencing existential agony over in recent months. During the summer, half the planet was on fire. Meanwhile, tax-avoiding billionaires were jetting off into space and planning cage fights to settle the argument of who’s the bigger testosterone-fuelled egotistic manchild.

August saw Oregon flooded following hurricane Hillary and a billion-dollar plus restoration project in its wake: the same week, Virgin Galactic was jetting people into space for fun at a cost of around half a million dollars a ticket. If the ticket fees had been put towards the recovery operation, they’d be well on the way. But these cunts just don’t care. Fuck the plebs in their flooded homes: they’ve all got multiple penthouses well above sea level and they’ve earned their jollies – through the labour of the people who have so little, and some who have even lost everything.

I suffer corpuscle-busting rage at people who jet off on skiing holidays bemoaning the lack of snow. They’re one of the primary reasons there is no snow. How fucking hard is it to grasp? And if cars and planes are heavy polluters, launching rockets is off the scale. Not that they give a fuck. They’ll be dead before the earth becomes inhospitable to human life, and their hellspawn will have all the money and can go and live on Mars, so everything’s fine in their megarich world.

It begins with a grand organ note, as if heralding the arrival of a bride or clergy…and so it continues. On… and on. Five minutes in, and very little has changed. Perhaps some light pedal tweaks , a shift in the air as the trilling drone continues, but nothing discernible. The note hangs and hovers. It fills the air, with the graceful, grand tone that is unique to the organ, a truly magnificent instrument – and I write that with no innuendo intended, no reference to the Marquid de Sade submerged for my personal amusement here.

Admittedly, I had initially anticipated something which would more directly articulate my frothing fury at the fucked-up state of the world, but begin to breathe and relax into this rather mellow soundtrack… I start to think that this abstract backdrop is the salve I need to bring my blood pressure down, and think that perhaps this is the unexpected purpose of this release… but by the ten-minute mark, I find myself bathed in a cathedral of noise, and before long, it’s built to a cacophonous reverb-heavy blast which sounds like an entire city collapsing in slow-motion. And this builds, and builds. Fuck. I’m tense again. I feel the pressure building in my chest, the tension in my shoulders and back aches. It makes sense. This is the real point of this recording. Everything is fine until you log onto social media or read the news, and you see the state of things. Momentarily, you can forget just how fucking terrible everything is, how the world is ruined and how there is no escape from the dismalness of everything, and how capitalism has driven so much of this, creating a life stealing hell for those who aren’t in the minuscule minority.

Fact: 1.1% of the population hold almost 50% of the global wealth. A further 39% of wealth is held by just 11% of the population. 55% of the world’s population hold just 1.3% of the wealth between them. So remind me, how is capitalism working for the world? Trickle-down economics is simply a lie as the wealthy retain their wealth and simply grow it. Liz Truss may think that the UK importing cheese is ‘a disgrace’, but this statistic is mind-blowing.

Eighteen minutes in and my mind is blown, too. It feels like it could be part of the soundtrack to Threads. It’s a dense, obliterative sound, a blowtorch on a global scale, the sound not of mere destination, but ultimate annihilation. It seems fitting, given the future we likely face.

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Modern Technology – Conditions of Worth

Posted: 4 October 2023 in Albums
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Human Worth – 13th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

From the moment Modern Technology blasted in with their eponymous debut EP, simultaneously launching the Human Worth label, it was clear that they were special. The duo made the most fucking incredible, low-slung, dense mean-ass noise going. The lyrics were social, political, and sharp, paired down to stark one-line declarations dissecting with absolute precision the fucked-up situation in which we find ourselves. And with a percentage of proceeds of every Human Worth release going to charity, they’ve put their money where their mouth is. It’s not done in some crass, virtue-signalling way: this is their model, and they just get on and do it. And through Human Worth they’ve released some – no, many – absolutely incredible records, rapidly establishing HW as purveyors of quality product with a keen ear for quality noise. In an increasingly fragmented and challenging musical market, the trick for any label is to find a niche and excel within it. And that’s precisely what these guys have done.

And all the while, as a band, Modern Technology just get better and better. Any concerns that they had said all they had to say following the EP and debut album Service Provider (as if there ever were any!) are allayed with the arrival of Conditions of Worth.

Lead single ‘Dead Air’ opens it up with dense, grinding anguish. Chris Clarke’s bass and vocals seem to have got heavier. Then again, so does Owen Gildersleeve’s drumming. But it’s more than just brutal abrasion. In the mid-track breakdown, things go clean and the tension in that picked bass note is enough to spasm the muscles and clench the brain. It’s brutal start to a brutal album.

‘Lurid Machines’ begins in a squall of feedback and wracked, anguished vocals, and it’s harrowing, the sound of pain. The lyrics are comparatively abstract, and all the more powerful for it. Written out in all block caps, they’re in your face but wide open to interpretation and elicit the conjuring of mental images:

WHY ARE THEY SO ALONE?

THE LIES THEY ALL SHARE

LET GO

INSIDE NOTHING GLOWS

BENEATH A SHADOWED PHONE

The drums and bass crawl in and grind out a low, slow dirge, Clarke’s vocals are down in the mix and you feel yourself being dragged into a chasm of darkness.

These are harrowing times, and if the pandemic seemed like a living nightmare, it seems it was only the preface. The ‘new normal’ is not the utopia some commentators suggested it may be. For a moment, it looked as though we would achieve the golden goal of the work/life balance, that we may abandon the commute and save hours a week for ourselves and slash our carbon emissions in the process. But no. Fuck that. Get back to the office, tough shit that fuel prices are rocketing and bollocks to the anxiety you developed in lockdown and bollocks to the environment because power trumps everything. Government power, corporate power, media power… we are all fucked and have no hope of breaking this. And this is the backdrop to Conditions of Worth.

They pick up the pace and start ‘Salvation’ with an uncharacteristically uptempo stoner rock vibe, but around the midpoint they flip things, slowing the pace and opening up towering cathedrals of sound as a backdrop to painting a stark depiction of life on earth.

WIDESPREAD

FAMINE

WIDESPREAD

CONFLICT

WIDESPREAD

PANIC

WIDESPREAD

SHADOW

The song ends with just a spare, fragile but earthy bass that calls to mind Neurosis and Kowloon walled City. It’s this loamy, organic texture which defines the altogether more minimal ‘The Space Between’, the first of the album’s two longer pieces, with the second being the ten-minute title track. It’s here that their evolution is perhaps most evident, as they stretch the parameters of their compositions to forge such megalithic works and really push the limits of their two-piece arrangement. In contrast, there’s the super-concise ‘Fully Detached’, , and the last track, ‘ Believieer’, which are absolute hardcore ragers, clocking in with short running times, the former just making a minute and fourteen seconds. And the variety on display here only adds to the album’s impact. While each track hits hard, the overall impact is obliterating.

They crank up the volume and the shades of distortion in the explosive choruses of ‘Lane Control’ – because you can never have too many effects when it comes to bass played like guitar and blasting screaming noise to articulate feelings, and as for the title track… it’s an absolute beast, with heavy hints of latter-day Killing Joke in the mix as they flay mercilessly at a pulverising riff. The noise builds and the vocals sink beneath it all and you’re left feeling dazed.

But more than that, there’s something about the production on Conditions of Worth that’s deeply affecting. There’s a skull-crushing sonic density, but also simultaneously, remarkable separation and sonic clarity. These elements only make it his harder.

Conditions of Worth is more than just heavy. It leaves you feeling hollowed out, drained, weak. This is life, and this album is the perfect articulation.

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