Posts Tagged ‘Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings’

Pak40 – Superfortress

Posted: 9 December 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings – 4th December 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Before we arrive at the present, let’s rewind a bit. Everyone likes some backstory, a hint of prequel, right? So we’re going back to 2018, and the arrival of the Crusts EP by Pak40, a band named after a German 75 millimetre anti-tank gun, and a review which I started by saying that ‘I practically creamed my pants over Pak40’s live show in York, just up the road from my house, a few months back. I didn’t exactly know what to make of them, which was part of the appeal – they didn’t conform to any one style, but they were bloody good.’ 2021 brought the arrival of debut album Bunker, a heavy slugger by any standards.

They’ve always been a band devoted to sonic impact, and since guitarist Leo Hancill paired up with Cat Redfern to form Teleost and then relocated to Glasgow, Pak40 have been resting – but not giving up or growing tame. And more than anything, that time out has been spent in contemplation over intensifying their sound.

It may be that production plays a part, but Superfortress goes far beyond anything previous in terms of density and intensity. This is not to diminish the potent stoner riffery of Bunker, which contained some mammoth tracks with some mammoth riffs, but Superfortress is a major step up. Sure, Bunker was all the bass, but here, they elevate the volume and intensity in a way which replicates the thunderous, ribcage-blasting, ear-flapping force of the live show.

Four years on from Bunker, Superfortress very much solidifies the Sabbath-influenced aspect of their hefty doom / drone sound with the reverb-laden vocals, but also ratchets up the monstrous weight of previous releases by some way.

The first track, the ten-minute megalith that is ‘Old Nomad’ is as heavy as it gets. The drumming is relentless in its weight and thunderous force, but the bass… Hell, the bass. It lands like a double-footed kick to the chest, even through comparatively small speakers, replicating the impact of the live sound on the current tour. ‘Crushing’ may be a cliché but Pak40 deliver a density of sound that just may smash your ribs and smash your lungs. The title track begins tentatively, the riff only forming at first, before the drums and distortion kick in and from then on it’s massive, even before the vocals, bathed in a cavernous reverb arrive. Its low and it’s slow and it’s doomy, but it’s also earthy and rich in that vintage folk horror doom vibe, and it’s the slowed-down Black Sabbath inspired riffing that dominates the third and final cut, the feedback-squalling instrumental ‘Ascend’.

There’s something wonderfully old-school about this – but at the same time, it pushes things further in terms of weight and volume. And in those terms, Superfortress sees Pak40 push those things to an extreme. This is a monster.

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Yes Grasshopper – Ghost Dog Pagoda

Posted: 3 October 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings – 6th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Yes Grasshopper’s ‘Ghost Dog Pagoda’ is the lead single from the forthcoming album of the same name.

Grasshopper? Yes, grasshopper. Not cricket. While on a recent day trip to Berwick Upon Tweed, my daughter was asking about the sounds of the crickets or grasshoppers, and I had to confess I was unaware of the difference, and had to look up the main visual difference is the length of their antennae, and the main biological difference is how they make that distinctive sound.

While I’m still unsure if we were hearing crickets or grasshoppers, it’s clear that despite being in the north-east, we weren’t hearing Yes Grasshopper, as their most informative biography clarifies: ‘Grasshoppers are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic period around 250 million years ago. Those species that make easily heard noises usually do so by rubbing a row of pegs on the hind legs against the forewings, this is known as stridulation. Yes grasshopper formed in 2020 and make noises with a guitar and some drums. Emerging from England’s unforgiving northern coast, this dynamic duo present a wholly unique take on noise rock, with crushing riffs, white water rhythmic twists and barking intertwined vocals making way for heinously catchy hooks.’

As titles go, ‘Ghost Dog Pagoda’ it’s simultaneously visual and abstract. As songs go, it’s absolutely mighty.

The single starts out with a tight picked guitarline, which nags away, before the bass and drums crash in, hard and with the kind of density that feels like a body blow. There’s a moment of pullback to build the tension further before POW!! Fuck!

This isn’t the sound of innocuous insects: it’s the sound of ground-razing devastation. The distorted vocals are way low in the mix, only adding to the impression of monster volume – those smallish gigs where the backline and guitars are so fucking loud the in-house PA simply cannot compete and so the vocals are lost but somehow cut through and the thrill is just beyond words because the sheer sonic impact is beyond words… If you’ve ever experienced this, you will know, and this is the blistering force of ‘Ghost Dog Pagoda’. If you haven’t experienced it, then you need to get out and witness more small-venue live music.

Back to the single, it’s a mess of noise, a full-tilt, all-out sonic assault. The hooks really come in the respite, where the nagging guitar returns, because the rest… it’s a brain-shredding attack. The vocals aren’t only low in the mix, but they’re a frenzied howl blanketed in distortion, and the song’s structure is a long way from a neat verse/chorus alternation. Fuck, it’s impossible to follow, and I have no idea what’s going on from one second to the next. But herein lies its sheer brilliance: ‘Ghost Dog Pagoda’ isn’t pretty, and makes no concession to commercialism or accessibility – not a single one. It hits you, hard, with a wall of abrasive noise, and it’s a beast alright.

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Wreaths – Golden Threads From Riven Rot

Posted: 6 April 2021 in Albums
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Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings – 2nd April 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

This is one of those albums you can judge by its cover – and title. Golden Threads From Riven Rot continues to trace the same themes of death and decay as its Inverted Grim Mill predecessor, The Sea To Which The Body Is Drawn.

The liner notes promise Wreaths’ ‘signature swells of fragile strings [which] drift and fluctuate throughout, laying down a thick atmosphere that draws the listener in. While there’s a swamp of sadness to be sinking in, there’s also a hopeful tone.’

The hope isn’t always immediately apparent, and it’s the bleakness of eternity stretching out with nothing to grasp hold of that dominates the album’s eight pieces, the majority of which extend beyond the six-minute mark, giving them room to fully immerse and envelop the listener. The compositions are rich in texture, and the long, slow, droning swells of sound – not notes, not chords, just dense, yet at the same time wispy and intangible, like layers of smoke or fog hanging in the air. The grand sonic vista of ‘The Throes of Them’ is defined by a slowly pulsating rhythmic chime, while ‘That’s How Buildings Burn Down’ grows deeper, darker, denser as it progresses, a rumbling lower-end drone sonorous and heavy beneath the creeping stealth of the top layer, a thin, stratospheric drone that twinkles and shimmers.

The theme of decay dominates the bleakly suffocating smog of ‘Words Come to Rot in the Throat’, the title conjuring the sensation of all the thoughts we fail to articulate as the rise and catch in our throats and remain unuttered, for fear, for shame, for cowardice. Where do those words go? Sometimes, we swallow them back down, but something remains lodged and decaying as those recollections return and manifest as angst and self-loathing. Here, the sounds quiver tremulously as they linger, lost, directionless in the darkness.

Originally self released as a digital album, this CD reissue of Golden Threads From Riven Rot includes the lengthy final ‘lost’ track, ‘A Cloak For Rotting In’. Where it’s been and for how long is unclear, but it’s a sixteen-minute expanse of cold sonic desert. Strings scrape and whine as they suffer in quiet solitude and a sepulchral chill descends. It’s a gloomy, dolorous affair, steeped in sadness.

After Golden Threads From Riven Rot has drifted into nothingness, it leaves you cold, shaken, somehow empty and adrift. The prospect of moving feels beyond attainment, and there is nothing you want to do or listen to afterwards, but sit and bask in the faded silence.

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EXCLUSIVE album stream: Lump Hammer – Beast

Posted: 28 September 2020 in Previews and Editorial
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Cruel Nature Recordings – 2nd October 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

If ever a band’s name perfectly encapsulated their sound, it has to be Lump Hammer. The Tyneside trio go all-out on sludgy sonic bludgeoning. Similarly, Beast lives up to its name, with nine tracks and a running time of one hour, two minutes and 48 seconds, it’s a monster of epic proportions, and man, it’s fucking ugly.

‘Alarm’ sounds the album’s arrival in the dankest, grimiest of fashions. A downtuned chord, dense and dirty tears from the speakers gradually picking up pace to become a proper riff, before everything gets truly fucked-up and mangled, as if the mixing desk was suddenly buried in a landslide. It sets the bleak, monotonous tone perfectly.

If you’re after variety, you’ll be disappointed: Lump Hammer’s approach to songwriting consists of taking a simple riff and driving away at it until they stop. Sometimes, it’s a long time till they stop, and sometimes it’s a very long time. The eleven-and-a-half minute closer, ‘Gravy (Beef)’ crawls into the space between Sunn O))) and Earth. Each chord is a whirling vortex of overdrive, its colossal density and mass utterly crushing. The pace is very much in the mid-to-low tempo range, accentuating the monstrous weight of the music. And there are probably words, but mostly Watts’ vocals are indecipherable, elongated guttural growls.

There are some quieter, more subtle moments, as evidenced by the first half of the gloomy nine-minute ‘Where’, which carves a trough of claustrophobic isolation – but it’s all just a protracted build-up to the next megalithic deluge of noise.

With Beast, Lump Hammer continue the trajectory of their two previous outings, the eponymous EP from 2017 and February’s split album with Bodies on Everest: you wouldn’t really call it an evolution, beyond the fact that this time they’ve gone one louder, and over the duration of a full-length outing, the cumulative effect of their relentless grinding trudgery achieves optimum impact. Beast is blunt forced trauma manifested in sound.

Beast is their first album for Cruel Nature and is available on 2 October as a limited-edition cassette and digital download, and will be released on CD by Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings. The release coincides with the band’s performance at Tusk Virtual 2020 online festival. It’s available to order from today, but you can stream it EXCLUSIVELY in its entirely now, here:

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