Posts Tagged ‘Heavy’

Khanate – Things Viral (reissue)

Posted: 21 December 2023 in Albums, Reviews
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Sacred Bones – 1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Released simultaneously with the reissue of their eponymous debut, Khanate’s second album originally released in 2003 – which is, incomprehensibly, 20 years ago further evidences just how far out they were at the time. And the time is worth assessing: in 2003, Nu-Metal was in its final throes, and Post-Rock was in the early arc of its ascendency. It was something of a wilderness time in many respects, with no real dominant trend: it was the year Avril Lavigne and Evanescence broke and Muse exploded, amidst an ocean of limp indie and even shitter commercial pop and r’n’b. The underground was the only place of interest, but even in those underground circles, there wasn’t anything quite like this.

The bio accompanying the release points us toward the darkness that pervades the album and does so from the start: ‘“Pieces of us in my hands, on the floor, in my pockets/red glory,” Dubin howls on opener ‘Commuted,’ setting the stage for Khanate’s second installment of existential dread. Dripping in death, murder and desperation, the album is somehow less forgiving than its predecessor. Which was probably the point”.

On this outing, they really do seem to have gone all-out to engineer an album that’s as stark and brutal as is possible, and the four tracks are drawn out to torturous lengths to achieve maximum discomfort. The aforementioned opener, ‘Commuted,’ is over nineteen minutes long, and the instrumentation is sparse, minimal and heavy with lugubrious atmosphere, while Alan Dubin howls like he’s having his fingernails pulled out slowly and painfully, one by one. It’s as bleak and harrowing as one of Derek Raymon’s ‘Factory’ series novels. It’s not pleasant, not even slightly, it’s not even enjoyable, but it’s perversely compelling. When a rhythm and guitars do coalesce, it’s at a glacial BPM, the kind of crushing, feedback-strewn, bludgeoning grind of Swans around the time of Cop, but with the more paired-back, spacious sound of Greed and Holy Money. But Khanate didn’t simply take these as templates – they scrawled all over them and then trampled on them in order to forge something even more challenging and even more fucked-up. There are lengthy passages where there is little more than crackle and hum, and the occasional burst of percussion. It may employ the tropes of avant-garde jazz, but it ain’t jazz. But what it is is hard to define. It’s not industrial, and it’s not doom. It’s not really metal in any recognisable form. But it is heavy. And it is unsettling, harrowing, and an absolute endurance test.

By the end of ‘Commuted,’ you feel utterly beaten and find yourself wilting from the sheer brutality of it all. And then ‘Fields’ crawls in, lower and slower, taking obvious cues from Earth 2 and marking clear parallels with Sunn O))). This is sinister, chthonic, demonic, not so much other-worldly as nether-worldly. It’s almost ten minutes before the bowel-juddering billows of overdriven, low-tuned guitar slides in like a slow-crawling river of lava. It’s monstrous, ugly, explicitly outright horrible. The hovering hum that takes hold around the fifteen-minute mark isn’t in any way a calming pause, but a nuclear wasteland of tension that pressurises the skull. Dubin raves maniacally like a psychotic locked in a soundproofed cell, and there’s a sense that the whole of Things Viral is a prison, whereby the listener is trapped within walls of sound. ‘I did this for you’, he screams murderously. It doesn’t sound like a kind favour, but like it’s time for payback. It’s chilling and grotesque. This is a fair summary of Things Viral overall. Even the quiet segments – and there are many – are occupied by sections of such weight that make your body feel as if its being dragged down, not by gravity, but by a darker force, one which will suck your very soul.

‘Dead’, at ten minutes, is but an interlude, but it radiates serial killer raving lunatic mania vibes for its entire duration, as the guitars throb and burn. It’s messy, and so, so heavy: you feel the pressure in your ribs, a weight in your limbs. The final track, ‘Too Close Enough To Touch’ is an absolute monster, which sits more closely alongside the harsh noise and overt extremism of Whitehouse and the point at which industrial strains its mangled way into power electronics than anything even remotely metal. ‘Stay inside… stay inside’ Dubin snarls, his vocals distorted and crazed. You barely dare move a muscle, let alone leave the house.

Things Viral goes way beyond darkness, and plunges into purgatorial depths that would have terrified Milton, and 20 years on, still sounds like the dankest, nastiest thing you could hear in any given year.

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Tyrannus / Magicide – Tory Punching Music

Posted: 16 December 2023 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Fiadh Productions – 15th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

My love of a good split release is something I’ve effused about variously here and elsewhere, and in a way, the contents of this particular split is pretty much secondary to the sentiment. The last thirteen years in the UK have been absolutely fucking shit. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. We can’t blame the government for the pandemic, but everything was shit a long time before that, and besides, we can blame them for the shitshow handling of everything, and for the way these disaster capitalist cunts milked every last penny of profit from it for their mates and their vested interests, their undisclosed shareholdings and all the rest.

And I’d keep hearing people defending Johnson, saying ‘he’s doing his best’. Only, he wasn’t. The dishevelled cretin would roll out of bed, half-cocked and probably half-cut after one of the lockdown parties he claims he didn’t know about, babbling bollocks, his only interest being self-interest. And the worst of it is that he wasn’t even the worst. And yet still people defend them, still people vote for them.

I remember watching the news after the last election, and a woman in her 70s appeared being interviewed on a street in Peterborough. She went on about how she was ‘thrilled to bits’ to have the Conservatives back and to have a Conservative MP: she ‘turned out in the pouring rain’ to put her ‘little cross’, and tells why she voted conservative, and how pleased she is that they got in:

“Well it’s the education system really. Oh, and the homeless. So many homeless people here, I’ve never seen it like this.”

And why’s that then? After years and years of Conservative government, you actually buy the line that they’re the part of change? When you say ‘the homeless’, what do you expect this government to do about them? Hire 20,000 more street cleaners by actually retaining 10,000 existing street cleaners and hiring 10,000 more over the next 40 years to come and toss them into refuse trucks? Or round them up into camps and line them up for euthanisation? I’m guessing she meant clean up the streets rather than help them, because well, where’s the fiscal value in that? Anyway, good luck with recruiting minimum wagers to dispose of the bodies once you’ve closed the door to all the Poles and other EU nationals who are currently propping the country up by doing the jobs no-one else wants.

I feel the rage. Every single day. And I feel the urge to punch Tories, and their voters, every single day, too. The current crop of Tories are fucking fascists, and anyone who supports them is complicit.

This EP’s three tracks are a head-shredding blast. Tyrannus bring us ‘Bricks And Flesh, Ashes And Iron’, five minutes of blastbeat-driven snarling black metal that’s both fast and furious, not to mention utterly relentless. It gets the pulse racing alright,and as dark and gnarly as it is, it’s pure, it’s raw, it’s exhilarating, and the guitar solo is absolutely wild.

Magicide give us two tracks, each a minute and thirty-nine seconds long. The contrast is the perfect reminder of the joy of the split release: their offerings bring a different shade of brutality, of pulverising pace. It’s a new hybrid, too, combining frenetic drum ‘n’ bass beats and an industrial edge which calls to mind turn of the millennium Pitch Shifter when they moved away from guttural industrial to create a beat-heavy, post-Prodigy Nu-metal hybrid. Black metal with tripping, stuttering rapidfire drumming, this is simply eye-popping. Thick, trudging riffs growl against grinding percussion and explosive breakbeats. There’s a load of shouting and growling, but the only audible lyric comes when everything pauses for a split second, and the line ‘this is Tory punching music’ rings out crisp and clear, in a strong Scottish accent.

And it is. The EP is full-throttle, an adrenaline rush that really gets you pumped. The message is clear and hard to disagree with for anyone with a brain or a soul. Whether you’re on board with new new labour or not, fuck the Tories. And feel the rage through this EP.

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Plague Rider – Intensities

Posted: 15 December 2023 in Albums, Reviews
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Transcending Obscurity Records – 10th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Somehow, despite James Watts having about a dozen musical projects on the go, with each touring in support of recent releases in addition to running a label, Newcastle quartet Plague Rider have come together once more to record a new album. It’s been out a few weeks already, but now, in addition to the myriad packages which include all the merch bundles you could possibly want and more besides, from mugs to denim jackets, it’s available on some pretty lurid-looking coloured vinyl. One might describe the retina-singeing flame-coloured hues of the disc as intense, which is fitting, given not only the album’s title, but its contents.

All of the various outfits featuring Watts are at the noisy end of the spectrum: the man has been blessed – or cursed – with vocal chords which have the capacity to evoke the darkest, dingiest, most hellish pits of hell, and the ability to transform the least likely of objects, like radiators and so on, into ‘musical’ instruments capable of conjuring the kind of noise that would bring forth demons.

Whereas Lump Hammer are devotees of relentless, repetitive riffs, and Friend are heavy buy dynamic, Plague Rider are… Plague Rider.

This isn’t just about Watts, though: guitarist Jake Bielby is of Dybbuk, and ex-Live, Lee Anderson (no, not that one) on bass is ex-Live Burial, and ex-Horrified), as is Matthew Henderson on drums. They make for one mighty unit, who, according to the accompanying notes, exist to weave together ‘vile, repulsive, and challenging death metal music whose original influences are now twisted and decomposed beyond recognition. Sure, you can find bits and pieces here and there, traces of hair, fingernails, broken teeth fragments, but overall their music is too far gone for any obvious comparisons. And that’s only remarkable because it adds an element of uniqueness and unpredictability in their music, a rare thrill to be derived from this style these days.’

There is so much going on all at once, it’s brain-blowing. It’s not technical metal, because it’s simply too raw, to ragged, and it’s not jazz, because, well, it’s just not – but they apply the principles of jazz to extreme metal, resulting in a mess of abrasion that’s… I don’t know what. I’m left foundering for marks and measures, for adjectives and comparisons and find myself grasping at emptiness. ‘Temporal Fixation’ explodes to start the album, and within the first three minutes it feels like having done six rounds in the ring. It’s as dizzying an eight minutes as you’ll experience. When I say it’s not technical, it’s still brimming with difficult picked segments and awkward signatures – but to unpick things, the technicality is more jazz-inspired than metal, the drums switching pace and fitting all over. The vocals are low in the mix, lurching from manic frenzy to guttural growling at the crack of a snare.

And at times, those snare shots land fast and furious, but not necessarily regularly. The rhythms on this album are wild and unpredictable – but then the same is true of everything, from the instrumentation to the structures. The mania and the frenzied fury perhaps call to mind Mr Bungle and Dillinger Escape Plan, but these are approximations, at least once removed, because this is everything all at once.

It’s as gnarly as fuck, and if ‘An Executive’ is all-out death metal, it’s also heavily laced with taints of math rock, noise rock, jazz metal and grindcore. It’s a raging tempest, an explosion of blastbeats and the wildest guitar mayhem that sounds like three songs all going off at once, and that’s before you even get to the vocals, which switch between raging raw-throated ravings and growls so low as to claw at the bowels. The sinewey guitars and percussive assault of ‘Modern Serf’ are very Godflesh, but in contrast, immediately after, ‘Toil’ is rough and ragged, and dragged from the raw template of early Bathory.

The lyrics may be impossible to decipher by ear, but thanks to a lyric sheet, it’s possible to excavate a world that’s broadly relatable to the experience of life as it is: ‘Psychically exhausted / Yet still plugged in and wired’ (‘Temporal Fixation’);

‘An Executive’ nails the way corporate speak has come to dominate everyday dialogue:

‘Chant the slogans

With conviction

Doesn’t matter

What we tell them

All that is solid melts into PR’

Fuck this this shit and capitalism’s societal takeover. As if it’s not enough to dominate the means and the money, the cunts in suits are taking over the language, too. But they’re not taking over Plague Rider. No-one is touching them as they lay convention to waste with this most brutal album. ‘The Refrain’ takes the screaming noise to the next level and brings optimum metal power for almost ten minutes before, the last track, the twelve-and-a-half minute ‘Without Organs’ is grim and utterly relentless.

With Intensities, Plague Rider deliver a set that lives up to the title. It’s utterly brutal, frantically furious, and devastatingly dingy. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the rapid transitions between segments, and it’s likely many will move on swiftly because it’s simply too much. But that’s largely the point: Intensities spills the guts of dark, dirty metal. Utterly deranged, this is the best kind of nasty.

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Hanging Freud – Worship

Posted: 9 December 2023 in Albums
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Spleen+ (Alfa Matrix) – 1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Christmas has come early this year, with an absolute deluge of releases landing on1st December, many from acts I like or am otherwise keen to hear. Hanging Freud are in the former bracket, and Worship marks their seventh album release, following 2021’s Persona Normal.

The duo have established themselves as purveyors of premium-quality dark, stark, gothy electro, and with Worship, they solidify their position with aplomb. Persona Normal was recorded at a leisurely pace between 2018 and-2020, and, like so many other releases in the last couple of years, Worship was written and recorded during the pandemic and under lockdown conditions, and the accompanying notes lay out both the contents and context in further detail:

‘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.’

If it sounds like a grim and oppressive set of circumstances for creating art of any kind, then the singles which prefaced the album have set the tone and expectation, while affirming the claustrophobic intensity of the music which emerged from these challenging conditions.

The result is a hybrid of Siouxsie and 17 Seconds era Cure with a hefty dose of New Order’s Movement and dash of Editors circa On This Light and On This Evening. Reference points may be lazy journalism, but they serve a purpose. While this album stands alone like an icy obelisk, singular and a monument to the darkest introversions, some musical context is probably useful for discursive purposes.

The stark ‘Falling Tooth’ is as bleak and haunting as it gets: Paula’s vocals are breathy but theatrical, pitched over a strolling squelchy synth bass and a vintage-synth sound that wanders around over just a few notes, while ‘I pray we keep the world’ is low, slow, sparse, and lugubrious, as well as emotionally taut, and dominated by a truly thunderous drum sound. ‘This Day’ is particularly drum-heavy, withy only gloomy, droning synths sweeping through a heavy mist of atmosphere.

There are some who bemoan the use of drum machines, and who complain that they lack the vibe of a live drummer. Hell, there are contributors to forums and groups devoted to The Sisters of Mercy who question why they don’t get a real drummer, some forty-two years on from their inception. These people are missing the point. Drum machines can do things that human drummers can’t, and one of those is how drum machines can be louder, heavier, more monotonous than a live drummer. And in context for certain music, this can be a real asset, accentuating the sensation of dehumanised detachment of synth music that sits at the colder end of the spectrum. And Worship is one of those albums which will leave you with chapped lips.

It’s against brittle snare cracks and sweeping synths that Paula claws her way through complex emotions, and where the lyrics aren’t immediately decipherable, the haunting vocal delivery is heavy with implicit meaning. It resonates beyond words alone. Everything is paired back to the barest minimum, exposing the darkest recesses of the psyche.

Standing alone as a single, ‘A hand to gold the gun’ was bleak and heavy. Sitting in the middle of the album, this sensation is amplified, accentuated, and the gracefulness of the vocals as they drape around the broad washes of sound which surge and well is that of a dying swan.

‘Her Joy’ is perhaps the least joyful thing you’re likely to hear in a while, and if ‘Beyond’ feels somewhat uplifting, it’s only because it’s a flickering candle flame in an endlessly dark tunnel, as devoid of air as light. The mood is heavy, and presses on the chest, slowly pressing the air out and crushing the spirit, and as the album progresses, the effect is cumulative. By the time we arrive at the piano-led ‘Don’t save yourself for him’, I feel my shoulders sagging and my back hunched forward from the endless weight of this.

Worship is a masterful exercise in poise and restraint, a work which conveys the purest essence of isolation, of desolation.

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Aches – 42 Year Sunset

Posted: 29 November 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

I’ve harped on about my appreciation of physical releases a fair few times here, and while I am myself striving to declutter my home of late, miscellaneous crap is more clutter than collections. Placing CDs and records snugly on shelves satisfying, and collections are the culmination of what can be a lifetime’s work. I started collecting at the age of around thirteen, having discovered The Sisters of Mercy via Floodland, and the fact that they had a significant back catalogue which wasn’t available on cassette in WHS or Boots, and so started hitting record fairs, which were commonplace at weekends in the late 80s and early 90s.

But while vinyl and cassette have been enjoying a sustained renaissance, CDs remain at a low ebb, and this is a sad state of affairs. Considered by many to be inferior by virtue of their clinical, impersonal nature, they’re the perfect balance of a physical format, and practicality, in that you can skip tracks, for a start.

Receiving a CD copy of Aches’ release through my letter box truly made my day, initially for the simple reason that this is a wonderful physical product – a hand-numbered digipak with a nice sleeve, with a Japanese-style wraparound strip, although it’s not an Obi but a semi-opaque slip which bears the band logo and the track listing. It has quality written all over it, and it’s a joy to hold it. If it sounds like I’m being a physical format enthusiast wanker, so be it: the element of tactility is completely absent from the streaming / download experience, and those who have never experienced it are missing out.

And so turn my attention to the band – well, another experience, but of a different kind. Aches aren’t quite a supergroup, but featuring members of Helpless, Gunderson, The Imperfect Orchestra, and Caracals, they are very much a new hive mind collaborative collective that represents the best of the Plymouth scene – a city which isn’t particularly renowned for its musical exports, but did bring us the unparalleled Cranes at the very least. Aches are a whole lot heavier than Cranes, though.

Heave-ho! ‘Sky Shanty’ comes in hard with a roaring grunt and heft that strains the guts and blasts on a tidal wave of brutal black metal guitar. The roaring impact is enough to stop your breath for a moment. The band’s bio explains how they draw inspiration from writings on capitalism, neuroscience, and drug use, as well as from personal experiences and research on mental illness and suicide, and that this release ‘responds to the feeling of hopelessness we feel, as combating climate change is increasingly minimised by those in power in return for gargantuan profits of archaic industries…’

It may be an incorrect and assumptive joining of the dots to suggest they’ve individually been impacted by these in various ways, but when one in four are likely to suffer mental heath issues in any given year, it’s not unreasonable – but it’s reasonable to recognise the fact that any release which confronts these issues is culturally critical. And those feelings of hopelessness… One suspects they’re widely relatable, and anyone who doesn’t clearly has too much money, and this is about you.

Aches don’t require a trigger warning: life doesn’t come with trigger warnings, after all. But Aches confront all of the topics head-on, and 42 Year Sunrise is hard, heavy, unflinching.

If ‘Sky Shanty’ is fucked-up post-hardcore noise rock, then the brutal ‘Bruxism’ start out hard and heavy before drifting into softness. I’m reminded more of Bjork and Zola Jesus during this soft close. Spinning together dramatic post-punk and elements of post-rock into a multi-faceted roaring torrent of raging anguish which essentially encapsulates the essence of 42 Year Sunset. ‘Bruxism’ is a post-hardcore explosion; switching rapidly between psychotic mania and theatricality, equal parts Dillinger escape Plan and Muse via Oceansize. To pack this much into just over four and a half minutes is a monumental feat which evidences just how articulate and accomplished this release is.

The shortest track is also the heaviest, with ‘Is That It’ bringing a barrage of crushing riffs and packing about three songs’ worth into less than two frenzied minutes, before the monster title track brings forth absolute devastation. It’s a slow, heavy, monotonous crawler that slugs relentlessly. The way the drums roll and patter busily while the guitars grind at a snail’s pace and you feel this pulling at you slowly like a thread tied to your intestines. Five minutes in, the bass cuts in low, slow, dark and heavy, and by the eight-minute mark, it’s burst into a shrieking riot of demonic torture that’s gother than goth: it hurts.

With 42 Year Sunset, Aches articulate the anguish of feeling utterly powerless in the face of everything as it piles up, end on end. It packs so much force, and it hurts. Aches bring the pain, and this is a phenomenal debut.

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Watch: ‘Propaganda feat. Worst Doubt’ by LIES!

Posted: 26 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Dutch heavy hardcore gang LIES! dropped the video for ‘Propaganda,’ which serves as the second preview single from their upcoming album, Mind Pollution, set to be released on 8 December 2023.

Of the track, LIES! shares: “We’re thrilled to have Worst Doubt’s singer Hugo Zerrad on our latest single, ‘Propaganda.’ Our admiration for Worst Doubt’s music dates back quite a while since their debut. They combine Kickback with everything we like in metallic hardcore and metal. Hugo is a phenomenal creative artist. He also crafted the artwork for our album. So, this collaboration is a fusion of two artistic forces.

“The video for the song is a creation of Dark/Half Agency, Alfie, and our singer Rene. It reflects the turmoil described in the lyrics of the song — constantly inciting people, creating division, and addressing abuse of power. The world is in chaos, and this is particularly relevant. The song is short, powerful, and a tornado of aggression. An ideal anthem for moshing and headbanging, the song definitely sets the tone for the entire album, which leans towards heavy hardcore with a lot of metal influences.”

Watch the video here:

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PC: Rob van Sleen

Upcoming Shows – Dec/Jan:
Dec 18: Neushoorn, Leeuwarden (Netherlands)
Dec 28: TBA (Germany)
Dec 29: Holz, Niesky (Germany) /w Born From Pain 
Dec 30: TBA (Germany)
Jan 26: Fla Fla, Herford (Germany)
Jan 27: Available for booking

Tote Kinder – No Gene Will Save Us Now

Posted: 25 November 2023 in Albums
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21st November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s now an established fact that many, if not most listeners make judgements on a song within seconds – to the extent that back in 2014, it was revealed a quarter of Spotify tracks get skipped within the first five seconds. And only thirty seconds or more counts as a stream. I suspect that figure may be even higher now, as attention spans have hardly increased in the last few years. I only speak for myself when I think of the jittery hours where scrolling and skipping has become more of a nervous twitch than social media engagement – although I still refuse to use Spotify, meaning any review request containing only a Spotify link is an instant rejection. It’s one way to filter the fifty-plus daily submissions.

But while I’m likely to give a track more than five seconds, I am prone to making pretty snap decisions when it comes to new music. The chances are the squalling mess of noise that crashlands ‘Overfed’, the opening track on No Gene Will Save Us Now by Greek ‘machine-driven noise rick duo’ Tote Kinder will repel 95% of potential listeners in less then five seconds, because its skronking scrape of slanting, skewed guitar is an instant headache – and the very reason I love it immediately. It’s a shouty, angular mess of – well, everything, and probably the first time I’ve heard anything overtly mathy and a bit Truman’s Water using quite such a barrage of drums right up front. It’s like The Young Gods in collision with Daughters and slams hard between the eyes, and the crunchy bass-led ‘Permanent Damage’ is equally hard-hitting. Taking its guitar cues from Gang of Four, it’s noisy and difficult, despite its leaning towards a groove.

‘Hard to Swallow’ really is, arriving in a shrill blast of power electronics with overloading noise before plunging into darkness and with distorted bass and thudding relentless drums. It’s a hybrid of DAF and PIL, and it’s strong. It doesn’t stop. ‘Die Letzte Weste’ is all thumping beats and grinding bas, again reminiscent of DAF – at least until the blasting guitar noise crunches in, and thereafter, it’s Foetus and KMFDM who spring to mind, but there are others, too. This is some full-spectrum noise.

Tote Kinder are taut tight, poised, in their delivery of churning industrial noise. ‘The Falling Man’ is a sneering, snarling, industrial chug worthy of Filth Pig era ministry, a workout that froths with nihilism. The last couple of tracks don’t exactly offer a mellow finish – and nor should they.

No Gene Will Save Us Now may only contain seven tracks, but they’re all strong and incredibly hard-hitting. – and fittingly reminds us that we are all fucked. Why will people not accept or otherwise recognise this? They just continue as normal, booking their overseas holidays. We are so over. And this album will so break your head.

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Watch: ‘Nausea’ by Farsot

Posted: 23 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Avantgarde black metal outfit FARSOT unveil the first disturbing video single ‘Nausea’ taken from the Germans’ forthcoming fourth album Life Promised Death, which is scheduled for release on February 16, 2024.

Watch the video here:

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FARSOT comment: “The first video single, ‘Nausea’, which is taken from our forthcoming new album Life Promised Death deals with the radical realisation of nothingness”, vocalist X.XIX writes. “Within the absurdity of life we are like numbers without any deeper meaning. We are stuck in our roles and alienated from ourselves, which makes life feel surreal and sickening.”

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Binary Order – The Future Belongs To The Mad

Posted: 21 November 2023 in Albums
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28th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Following on from the interim Thrown Away EP release, which boldly, and perhaps somewhat unexpectedly – pitched a Papa Roach cover front and foremost, and taster single release in the shape of ‘Slow Blade’, Binary Order drop the new album The Future Belongs To The Mad. In doing so, Benjamin Blank’s techno / industrial / metal vehicle reveal just how much has evolved since previous album, Messages from the Deep.

So many acts in this musical sphere seem to exist in a sort of genre-specific bubble, grinding out endless psychodramas centred around dark sexuality and degradation, having taken the first couple of Nine Inch Nails albums as templates for their musical existence. Fair enough. It’s easy enough to become embroiled and fixated on the relentless turbulence of your angst and relationship disconnects and how they fuck with your head. At least when you’re a fucked-up hormone-explosion, which is pretty much anyone’s teens and probably twenties.

This could perhaps explain in part the difference in focus of The Future Belongs To The Mad. Blank has been operating as Binary Order since 2008 – the same year I got serious about reviewing music – and it’s been a ling and tempestuous fifteen years. Older, wiser… and more bewildered by the world.  Blank’s statement which accompanies the album is stark, bold, bleak, and honest – but at the same time suitably vague, and I shall quote in full in order to provide context:

“It’s never easy to be honest about these kind of things, but I feel it’s important with this release to be so. The Future Belongs To The Mad was written during possibly the most difficult period I’ve ever had to get through – a period I’m not actually done dealing with – and one from which I now fear I shall never depart.

This album is an expression of my own inability to find meaning or purpose in life. And the utter disdain and emotional distraught that comes from the accumulation of living like that year, after year, after year. With this album I’ve managed to turn something that is for all intents and purposes destroying me, and created what is without any doubt in my mind, the greatest accomplishment of my life.

I don’t know if there is going to be anymore Binary Order after this. Finishing this album felt like an impossibility at one point, and now it’s done I feel like I am too. I hope anyone who listens to this can find something of value for within it. If not then I just appreciate having this platform to express myself in this way because it has kept me alive.”

Whether so much of this existential trauma was triggered by lockdown or other personal circumstances, we don’t know, but the fact that Blank is British and subject to the daily hell of living in a country in turmoil and seemingly hell-bent on utterly fucking itself and its citizens is worth highlighting, in that this seems to reflect the mood of many people I know. It feels as though the mad have already taken over and are stealing the futures of the rest of us, and our children. From this vantage, you look in, you look out, and you feel hollow and broken.

The Future Belongs To The Mad is harsh, abrasive, and rages hard from the offset, with the blistering hot guitar inferno of ‘Consternation’, which judders and stutters, halts and race, blasts of noise slamming in your face in the first bars. The vocals alternate between snarling, impenetrable metal roars in the verses and cleanly melodic choruses abrim with bombast.

Elsewhere, ‘Perfect World’ builds to a truly magnificently anthemic climax, while ‘Feel Again’ brings some crisp dark electropop that calls to mind mid/late 80s Depeche Mode with its layered synths and backed-off but crunchy guitars, over which Blank wrestles with his entire soul over darker feelings. There are dank instrumental interludes to be found during the course of the album. ‘Hope is a Mistake’ is every bit as bleak and life-sapping as the title suggests. ‘Skin’ is tense and claustrophobic electro, but again, there are segments which are smooth and soulful. ‘Face Beneath The Waves’ is a black blast of aggrotech metal / glichy electro / industrial / emo which takes your face off then soothes your raw flesh with some nicely melodic passages.

If nu-metal at its best / worst battled with stylistic duality, Binary Order carry this through to a Jekyll and Hyde manifestation of internal struggle on The Future Belongs To The Mad, which incorporates elements of numerous genres. These contrasts serve the album well in terms of it being a dynamic, energised offering, but such schizophrenic sonic stylings make for an album that’s almost pitched at two or more different markets. But more than anything, it feels as if these stylistic conflicts are the manifestation of Blank’s internal conflicts – and with this interpretation, The Future Belongs To The Mad works well. Blank hauls the listener through his difficult experiences, one at a time, and you bear witness to his self-torment a song at a time.

The Future Belongs To The Mad is not an easy album, but it is one that carries much weight and is well-realised. I won’t be alone in hoping it isn’t the last of Binary Order – but if it is, it’s a grand final statement.

AA

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Ex Everything – Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart

Posted: 16 November 2023 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Neurot Recordings – 10th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s practically impossible to overstate just how grim things have got lately. It’s not just any one thing, either. The climate is fucked, the economy is fucked, the world is at war. This isn’t about local pockets of fuckedness. It’s all fucked. Ex Everything very much appreciate this, as set out in the notes which accompany Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart: ‘Our world has been gradually falling apart. This may seem like a bleak point of view, but the collapse we’re all witnessing inspired post-mathcore outfit Ex Everything as they created their eruptive debut Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart… “Everything around us–politically, socially, environmentally–seems to be stretching and breaking,” says guitarist Jon Howell. “Our record sits in that terrifying place where you’ve been watching it happen.”

A fair few people I know – my age bracket in particular – have said they’ve stopped watching or reading news because it’s detrimental to their mental health. No doubt it is, but the bliss of ignorance can’t last forever and ignoring everything that’s going on is the ultimate compliance. British politicians in particular repeatedly begin sentences with ‘let me be clear’ – before rolling out an endless ream of obfuscations. So let me be clear. Everything is fucked, and things are only going to get worse.

As their bio summarises, ‘The Bay Area quartet boasts current and former members of Kowloon Walled City, Early Graves, Mercy Ties, Blowupnihilist, Less Art and others, but listeners shouldn’t mistake this for a short-term project or side band. This is a priority, every member focused and committed, and it only takes a few minutes with the album to understand how serious they are. “This band is completely its own thing,” says Howell. “It addresses the part of us that wants to write fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music.”’

Fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music is precisely what these chaotic, knotty, messy times call for. It feels as if the world was waiting for the pandemic to end to go absolutely all out to annihilate one another. There has, throughout history, always been a war somewhere, but now, there’s pretty much a war everywhere, and in less violent, bloody battles, governments wage war on the poor in the interest of ‘the economy’ and fuck over society’s most vulnerable, from the unemployed to the disabled, not to mention the homeless, the wounded, mostly in the interests of capitalism.

Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart packs eight hard-hitting, heavy tracks which rage and rage and rage and hit so hard, in a furious frenzy. The guitars are often busy and brittle and mathy, but the rhythm section is welded together and blast the hardest sonic attack. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart is the sum of its parts, and that’s a positive here: it brings together the best elements of the contributors and fuses them into something tight, taut, uncomfortable. Single cut ‘Exiting the Vampire Castle’ is exemplary: full-throttle noise rock with dominated by shuddering bass and thunderous drums, with guitars which are both grimy but also reverby clanging over the top, while the vocals and raw and nihilistic. This is some full-on angst: ‘A Sermon in Praise of Corruption’ is a full-on, blistering rager, and there really isn’t much let-up in terms of ferocity. This is an unashamedly political album, as titles such as ‘Slow cancellation of the Future’, ‘The Last Global Slaughter’ and ‘Plunder, Cultivate, Fabricate’ suggest. These are highly political times, so it’s only right that Ex Everything tackle the issues.

There is detail, there are moments where they pull back on the pace and the blunt force, but they’re brief, and serve ultimately to accentuate the immense and intense power of the rest of the album when they put their collective foot hard on the pedal And drive forward hard.

In the face of everything, rational contemplation and collected consideration are difficult. The real urge is to give in to the temptation to simply give up, give in, and to scream at the world to fuck off. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart comes close, but better than that, it noisily articulates the nihilistic rage which sprays in all directions. There’s no one thing that’s shit or fucked up: it’s everything. And sometimes the only way to deal is to let it all out. Ex Everything do that, channelling every last drop of fury into this bleak and hefty beast of an album.

AA

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