Posts Tagged ‘math rock’

Hands Up Who Wants to Die – Nil All

Posted: 9 March 2023 in Albums
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Human Worth – 3rd March 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Irish foursome Hands Up Who Wants to Die feature members of Shifting, No Spill Blood, and Wild Rocket, and – as you’d expect from an album released on Human Worth – it’s heavy. But it’s not just lumpen-headed thumping: there’s a lot to absorb on Nil All – and so much more than noise.

The opening of ‘Clothbound’ is atmospheric, subtle, intriguing. And then the bass slams in like a lump hammer. The guitar, rather than following with any direct riff, creeps around, twisting and turning, while the vocals are those of a strangled gargoyle – ugly, menacing, perturbing.

There’s a fair array of stylistic variation across the album’s eight tracks, and it’s this unusual relationship between the guitar and bass that is most intriguing. ‘0-0’ is a deconstructed jazz semi-spoken word piece where neither bass nor guitar confirm to the time signature of the drumming: Enablers may be a touchstone, but ultimately, this is something unique. The same is true of the low and slow theatrical math-rock of ‘L’inconnue’ that comes on like a dreamed reimagining of Shellac that lumbers its way into a howling psychodrama before slowly falling apart over the course of an eight and a half minutes that will make you feel like your limbs are slowly being separated from our body.

Satre famously wrote in Nausea that ‘hell is other people’ and this messy-sounding gut-churning bass-driven, feedback-strewn behemoth is a worthy soundtrack which corresponds with the urge to purge after too much time among the masses – like the excruciating torture of a trip into town on a weekend or lunchtime. It’s a crushingly heavy dirge, and the guitars nag and gnaw at your skull while the bass kicks you hard in the guts. And then it goes off-kilter and lumbers and lurches all over, and that hellish throb continues into the grainy drone of ‘Hell Is Just More Of What’s Already True’. It may only be a couple of minutes long, but it’s lugubrious as fuck.

‘God’s Favourite’ is like a three-way pileup of Shellac, Pavement, and Her Name is Calla, and these guys seem determined to drag the listener through some dark and difficult places – sonically and emotionally. This, of course, is the selling point for Nil All. It’s an album that rages, raves, groans and sighs as it explores those uncomfortable spaces and challenges the listener in a way that delivers optimal rewards. It channels the pain, anguish, and confusion of being alive and articulates it in a way you didn’t realise was possible.

Signing off with the blasting noise-fest that is ‘Ludger Sylbaris’ – a morass of booming bass and sinewy guitar havoc – Nil All is not overtly uplifting or cathartic. It’s schizophrenic, twisted, dark, unpredictable, deranged. And absolutely fucking top.

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Mammock – Rust

Posted: 19 December 2022 in Reviews
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Venerate Industries – 4th November 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Now this is a fine justification of why I don’t do end of year lists. This may or may not have made mi ne, because I simply haven’t had time to process or digest it, but it’s been out a month and a half and I’ve only just got my lugs around it, with only a week or so left of 2022 – and it’s one of those albums that slaps you around the skull and has that instant impact by virtue of its sheer force.

Their bio tells us that Athens-based ‘Mammock’s compositions stray from the typical rock forms, incorporating various elements from punk to jazz, post-hardcore and the nineties’ US noise rock scene. The quartet possesses the self-awareness and technical capabilities to carve their own sound and explore their character into finely tuned songs, which grab the listener from beginning to end.’

What it means is that they make a serious fucking racket and sound a lot like The Jesus Lizard, from the rib-rattling bass to the off-kilter, jarring guitars, and the crazed vocals. Some of the songs sound like they have some synths swirling around in the mix, but one suspects it’s just more guitar, run through a monster bank of effects. Overall, though, they seem to be more reliant on technique than trickery.

They formed in early 2018 by Giannis (guitar) and Klearhos (bass) with the addition of Vangelis (drums), they started out as an instrumental trio, before the addition of Andreas (vocals), and if it seems like a contradiction to remark that they feel like a coherent unit when cranking out so much jolting, angular discord, but that’s one of the key tricks or deceptions of music like this: it isn’t mere racket, and in fact requires real technical precision: those stuttering stops and starts, judders, jolts, changes of key and tempo require a great deal of skill, intuition, and of course, rehearsal.

They take many cues from Shelllac, too: the drums are way up in the mix – to the extent that they’re front and centre, something Shellac make a point of literally on stage, and replicate the sound on record, with the guitar providing more texture than tune, and the vocals half-buried beneath the cacophonic blur.

The last minute or so of ‘Dancing Song’ blasts away at a single chord that calls to mind Shellac’s ‘My Black Ass’ and ‘The Admiral’. The lumbering monster that is ‘Bats’ is a bit more metal, in the sludgy, stoner doom Melvins sense.

Stretching out to almost seven minutes, ‘Jasmine Skies’ blasts its way to the album’s mid-point, a wild, grunged-up metal beast with an extended atmospheric spoken-word mid-section which gives the lumbering black metal assault that emerges in the finale even greater impact.

If the semi-ambient ‘Interludio’ offers some brief respite, the ‘Boiling Frog’ brings choppy, driving grunge riffage and a real sense of agitation and anguish, and the album’s trajectory overall paves the way for an immense finish in the form of the seven-minute ‘Away from Them’ that roars away as it twists and turns at a hundred miles an hour.

Yes, Rust packs in a lot, and it packs it in tight and it packs it in hard.

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Fighting Colours – Wishing Well

Posted: 9 December 2022 in Singles and EPs
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25th November 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

What we all need is a jolt, a shock. Right NOW. You may not even realise it, but consider this: while life and the world seems to be swirling in a vortex of addling bewilderment, a lot of music seems to have become incredibly safe, a retreat. I’m not even talking about that slick, mass-produced mainstream fodder: even so-called ‘alternative’ rock has become increasingly safe in recent years, in the post-emo, post Foos world. And while a few acts on the peripheries are smashing all genre conventions with sledgehammers, they’re pretty niche, and what the world needs is something that can really get into the mix and shake things up. Has anything turned the world even halfway on its head singe grunge?

I’m aware that even reminiscing about grunge places my voice in a time capsule and in the ‘old bugger’ demographic for many, but has anything really been even remotely as evolutionary since? Has there ever been a seismic event since? We talk – or talked – about the zeitgeist, but what is the zeitgeist at the flaccid tail-end of 2022? Disaffection, discontent, strikes? Maybe, but what’s the soundtrack? Ed Sheeran and the new Adele album sure as hell aren’t the voice of disaffected youth.

Brighton’s ‘rising alt-rock rebels’ Fighting Colours might not be the face of the revolution, but they are the band to deliver that much-needed shakeup.

The vibe around the opening of the first of the EP’s four tracks, ‘Your Choice Now’ is a bit post-rock, with a nice, clean, chiming guitar sound – but it yields to some beefy riffage that’s pure grunge, it’s clear from the outset that they’re keen to mix things up and create their own blend, and it’s one that works well. And then Jasmine Ardley’s vocals enter the mix, and with this kind of chunky alt-rock being so male-orientated, to hear a female voice is unusual – and while Ardley has a clean vocal sound, it’s not unduly poppy.

‘The Boat Starts to Shake’ shuffled closer towards the jazzier, noodling end of the post-rock sound that was ubiquitous circa 2004, but the mathy verses contrast with massive slugging grunged-out choruses and a climax that’s nearly nu-metal and beings some hefty noise.

‘The Cure’ is different again, venturing into almost urban territory, while still anchored in jazzy math rock elements, before rupturing into a bold chorus that’s in between Evanescence and Halestorm, both gutsy and melodic and with an ‘epic’ feel, and it’s delivered with style.

The final cut of the EP plays the slower, emotion-filled arena anthem card, but still has more than enough guts and a keen melody, not least of all thanks to Jasmine’s voice, to separate it from the countless Paramore-wannabe alt rock acts out there.

It all stacks up for a strong set with a lot of bold and exhilarating rock action. It’s the kick up the arse alt-rock needs.

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Fighting Colours - Wishing Well - EP artwork (Gypsy Rose Design)

### – Nasilno

Posted: 15 August 2022 in Albums
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9th May 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Back in the spring of last year it was our honour to stream ‘Pretvorivši se u ogradu, prošao sam kroz ogradu’ by Croatian noisemakers ### (which, their Bandcamp page advises is ‘pronounced by hitting a random object three times’) from the Nim Brut compilation Deprived of Occupation and Pleasure We Feast. And now they’re back with a full-length release in the form of the seven-track Nasilno. Produced by the band’s bassist, Anja Tkalec, they’ve made a conscious shift from using unusual locations in which to record, and instead spent some time camped out in Rattus Rattus studio in Zagreb ‘which allowed the band to fully record the wall of noise that is well known to all those who witnessed their concerts’.

The titles and lyrics may be lost in translation, but equally lost in a totally shredding, overloading wall of noise. There are magnificent quiet passages – brief as they are – and there are strong elements of post-rock and post-metal as well as the grainy, timeless analogue of Neurosis and associated acts, and they pack countless twists and turns in the sinewy, dynamic five minutes of opener ‘Jer život je ljepši kad se zaustavi’, with tense builds and an abrupt ending that collapses the expectation of a crescendo.

The blistering ‘Negativ cvijeće’ cuts free of genre to deliver a cataclysmic sonic blast that in time yields to shrieks and yowls of sculpted feedback atop crunching riffs, and of post-rock ad post-metal tropes have begun to grow weary – and yes, it’s fair to say that many of them have – ### breathe new life into them and then some. They also bring plenty of their own angles and a unique energy to proceedings: ‘Jednom kad tebe ostavim Satano’ and ‘Pretvorivši se u ogradu, prošao sam kroz ogradu’ have the angular jolt of Shellac, but the but the forrmer brings the juggernaut riffage of the likes of Amenra, and while it may not even extend to three-and-a-half minutes in duration, it’s expansive, solid, immense in scope and sound, and hot after lands the seven-and-a-half-minute ‘Oprostite, što u taj sumrak pada’ which blasts soaring riffs and squalls of feedback on a truly epic scale.

They do a lot with only a little: instrumentally, they work with a conventional rock format of instrumentation, but sonically, they’re staggeringly ambitious, and so often sound greater than the sum of their parts. Closer ‘Dvanaest boja za nasilje’ goes full Sunn O))) with grating drone and eternal feedback hums, and it makes for an intense and powerful eleven minutes of organ-kneeding that’s equally exhilarating and exhausting, in that it seems to go on for ever.

Nasilno is not an easy album, and it’s not an album that confirms to any one form or genre: it’s abrasive, angular, challenging – and GOOD!

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alien machine – the sea complains

Posted: 29 July 2022 in Singles and EPs
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30th June 2022

James Wells

‘i write weird songs for weird folks’ writes alien machine, all in lower case. ‘A solo artist pretending to be a 3 to 5 piece garage punk outfit,’ ‘the sea complains’ is their fourth release. Details of this US-based artist are sparse to non-existent, but it appears that having emerged in 2014, they lay creatively dormant before deciding to reconvene with racketmaking during the pandemic, which seems to be a common thing as people sought ways of dealing with the strangeness and the isolation.

This is raw, primitive, and psychotic. The skewed, angular, murky mess of the first track, ‘math’ sounds like it was recorded on a Dictaphone in the living room while the band play their first rehearsal in the basement. The overall effect is very much early Pavement (pre-Slanted, those EPs collected on Westing were betonf lo-fi) / Silver Jews lo-fi so slack as to not give a shit about being in time / holding a tune / anything at all really, and it’s played with the wild, frenzied mania of Truman’s Water. Then again, ‘coward’ is a pulverising screamo-fest that brings in elements of Shellac, the guitars sliding and jerking in all directions over a loping drum beat, and closer ‘aquaburst’ goes fill Truman’s, with clanging Big Black guitars and everything going off all at once, but not necessarily in the same key or time signature.

It’s a headache-inducing discordant buzz, and it’s wonderful.

There’s nothing particularly weird about this – although fans off mainstream chart music would likely disagree – but it is a hard-on-the-ears trebly racket, that’s so slack it can’t even be arsed raising a finger to production or concessions to clean sound. It doesn’t get much more DIY than this.

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Berries – How We Function

Posted: 4 July 2022 in Albums
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Xtra Mile Recordings – 8th July 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

She sang it! She sang it! Yes, the hook to the album’s opening song, ‘We are Machines’ is ‘We are machines / it’s how we function’. Simple pleasures and all that. But there are many pleasures packed into this album’s forty minutes.

Having been showcasing BERRIES tunes since the time of their second EP back in 2017, the arrival of their full-length debut is a cause of excitement. And the anticipation is justified, with a tight set of songs that don’t disappoint.

What’s promised is an album ‘rammed with taut, angular guitar lines and packing a gritty, garage-grunge punch’, and that’s what’s delivered. None of the songs are over four minutes in duration, but they each contain so much action, so much traction, so much movement, each takes time to unravel the tightly-woven, knotted, intermingled noodly jumbles of guitar lines. There’s a lot of taut, tense jangling and angling going on here, as they cut across the mathy aspects of the guitar lines and the spiky post-punk chop of Gang of Four, and they marry it all together with strong melodic vocals.

The tension is appropriate for an album that tackles themes of mental health, feeling overlooked and sexism ‘with a searing honesty and intensity’ to present, as the put it, a collection of songs about “growth, strength and rising above all of the negativity and noise”.

There isn’t a duff track to be found here. Yes, the singles are obvious choices and standouts, not least of all the gutsy ‘Haze’, which is more or less representative of the album as a whole with its bold , grungy guitars and dynamic construction, exploding into the chorus after an understated verse, but then ‘Discreetly’ really pushes things hard, and rocks more overtly than much of the album with a monster chorus and driving riff – and frenzied guitar solo – and packs it all into two and a half minutes. ‘Fabricate’ calls to mind Kenny Loggins’ ‘Dangerzone’, and is propelled by a thick, gritty bass, while the guitars stop and start and stutter, and ‘Basic Tables’ starts with some tightly interweaving, stop/spart guitar work before breaking into a breezy chorus.

What BERRIES achieve is a perfect balance of passion and personal honesty, with sass and a pop sensibility. That means that How We Function feels sincere, as it is, but isn’t lecturesome or lugubrious. It doesn’t sugar-coat difficult emotional matters, but isn’t whiney or woeful. How We Function is an album of empowerment, of determination. The songs are both instant grabs and growers, and with this much energy, it’s exciting, not just the first time, but again and again.

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Insolace – I Won’t Cry

Posted: 29 June 2022 in Singles and EPs
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1st July 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

London / Brighton quartet Insolace consist of Millie Cook (vocals), Conor Hyde (guitar), Sam Bryant (bass) and Onyi Olisa (drums), and I suppose you could reasonably summarise ‘I Won’t Cry’ as one of those ‘strong’ songs – one whereby the ultimate message is one of empowerment, despite it’s primary theme being of mental struggle. Here, against a backdrop of busy, accessible math-orientated jangle Cook pitches lyrics about being in the place of the supporter to someone who’s struggling.

Sonically, on the one hand it’s kinda buoyant emo, and even a bit poppy, but on the other, it’s got a bit of a 2004/5 vibe that I have a certain nostalgia for, which is something I never expected – a time when every other band was jangly, noodly, mathy, and some if it was fun, but ultimately you only need one Explosions in the Sky, and so many Spokes style acts, and probably only one Wintermute…a nd then my brain pokes me with a reminder of Everything Everything. And then you reach a point where less is more, and actually, just a little variety goes a long way.

But it’s easy to be critical, and over time, things do change. Where’s all the noodly math-rock now? Some of it’s here, it seems, and ‘I Won’t Cry’ feels like a 21st Century response to The Cure’s seminal classic ‘Boy’s Don’t Cry’. I Won’t Cry I Won’t Cry’ is busy, and a shade technical. But it’s crisp, and has a solid hook, and for that alone it deserves a wide audience.

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Listen: ‘Weird Five’ by Hifiklub x Scorpion Dagger featuring Iggor Cavalera

Posted: 12 May 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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We love mental shit, and this is some mental shit.

Avant group Hifiklub has shared a new track, ‘Weird Five,’ featuring the legendary Iggor Cavalera (MixHell, Cavalera Conspiracy, Pet Brick, co-founder of Sepultura). The song is a part of the French trio’s audio-visual collaboration, ScorpKlub I & II Original Soundtracks, with the Montreal animator James Kerr (Scorpion Dagger). The double-sided record — which features Alain Johannes (Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, Eleven) in addition to Iggor Cavalera —will be out digitally as well as on different colored vinyl on 27 May 2022 via Electric Valley Records.

Hifiklub bassist Régis Laugier on ‘Weird Five’: “1 Day as A Lion, 2Pac, Spacemen 3, Gang of 4, Electric 6, L7… Something was missing. What about the “Weird 5”? Let us know what’s your favorite band with numbers in their names. In the meantime, here is the first track of Hifiklub’s collaboration with Iggor Cavalera, from ScorpKlub I & II. 18 more videos to come!”

Check ‘Weird Five’ here:

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Watch: ‘I Am…’ Featuring Aisling Whiting by a-tota-so

Posted: 11 December 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Midlands based math-rockers a-tota-so are back though not quite as mathy as you might remember them. When COVID19 hit the UK and the never ending lockdowns and lack of support for the music industry started signalling the end of live music for what many thought might be a very long time, a-tota-so decided to change things up and keep themselves busy working on their second album entitled Lights Out.

The biggest change sees the usually instrumental band enlisting a gang of their vocalist friends from the UK and Irish music scene, putting a fresh spin on their music and create something different this time around. Each of the 8 tracks boasts a different vocalist from the likes of Damien Sayell (The St Pierre Snake Invasion/Mclusky), Ashley Tubb (Sugar Horse), Jake O’Driscoll (God Alone) and Ellie Godwin (No Violet).

With most of the music being written during the first lockdown and recorded over winter 2020 at JT Soar, the legendary DIY venue and recording studio in Nottingham, the band sent a track to each of the vocalists they had in mind and they were given free reign to do what they wanted over the instrumentals. The result is an exciting and eclectic album which covers a wide range of genres and changes the bands sound completely.

Guitarist Marty Toner comments, “The album deals with a variety of themes including depression, anxiety, feeling lost and the general state of the world we are currently living in while providing hope that we can carry on with the things that we all love and enjoy in the future."

Now the band have shared the beautifully animated video for recent single “I Am” which features vocals from Aisling Whiting (Sang Froid). Video director/animator Steve McCarthy comments,

“When Marty from a-tota-so  shared the song with me I knew I had to get involved! initially I’d wanted to keep it simple, but he gave me full creative freedom on the video and as I started experimenting the idea started to grow.

Taking some inspiration from Simon J. Curd’s album artwork, I developed a story around a scene in a forest that changes through the cycle of the seasons and the cycle of life and death.

This was such a great opportunity to really explore some creative ideas and tools, and the whole thing was a learning process. It was a pleasure to work on and turned into a real passion project and a learning exercise for myself.” 

Watch the video now:

Part Chimp / Objections

Posted: 5 December 2021 in Live
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Wharf Chambers, Leeds, 3rd December 2021

This is a show I’d been revved for for quite some time: on their last visit to this venue, back in 2017, noise veterans Part Chimp blew me away with the sheer quality of their performance, as well as their sheer volume, prompting me to ruminate on how ‘they radiate noise from every orifice and every pore’ and how ‘the guitars serrate your skull and the bass vibrates your solar plexus and every riff is as heavy as a small planet and the drums as hard as basalt.’ Experiences like that are rare, but also addictive: as a gig—goer, you want every show to replicate that level of thrill, that mind-blowing intensity, and it’s a dragon you’ll chase and chase but rarely capture. There’s also a thing about seeing a band for the first time, when you don’t know really what to expect, and then whatever your expectations may have been, they’re confounded tenfold. Second, third, fourth time around, it’s unlikely you’ll feel that same sock in the face.

Anticipation for the evening stepped up a few notches on disclosure of the support act, Objections, being ‘a pair of Bilge Pump’s and a Beards’. ‘Formed in 2007, dispatched in 2018’, the latter splattered their way onto the scene with their sound defined by the explosively angular racket of their debut album ‘Brick by Boulder’, and during their existence, proved to be a stunning live proposition. Meanwhile, the former, revitalised in 2019 after almost a decade’s silence had been reaffirming their status as Leeds legends prior to the pandemic halting their live activity.

Objections is Bilge Pump’s Joe O’Sullivan and Neil Turpin with ex-Beards’ Claire Adams. Claire covers bass and vocals, while Joe’s weapon of choice is a 12-string, which brings some real depth and density to their brand of sinewy post punk. It’s goth meets math rock, and at the same time combines the best of both Bilge Pump and Beards. The guitar provides texture and tone rather than tune, sculpting shapes, and watching O’Sullivan is always a joy, not to mention exhausting: the man is a relentless blur of energy (and impossible to [photograph without better kit than mine), and plays every chord with his entire body, leaping, lurching, and perspiring heavily every whichway. Adams’ bass is stop/start, lumbering, and the choppy, angular songs with their variable time signatures are held together with precision percussion from Turpin. Oftentimes, a relentless repetitive rhythm grinds a backdrop to peeling shards of guitar splinters, and chunk funk bass drives a collision between Shellac and Gang of Four, leading towards an ultimate space rock finale. They are stunning, and the place is busy, and the reception they receive is well deserved: this is one of those occasions where you could leave immediately after the support and feel that you’ve easily had your money’s worth.

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Objections

But then, it’s Part Chimp headlining, promoting their latest album, Drool, their sixth proper in their twenty-year career and the follow-up to 2018’s Cheap Thriller, and it’s the final track from this album that they power into a blistering set that’s a massive barrelling noise of relentless riffery from the off. They’re out as a three-piece sans bass tonight, but make enough racket for infinite members, with enough downtuning to cover the low end. And when I say that they’re loud, I mean they’re seriously fucking loud. Standing front row stage right I’m overwhelmed by the speaker shredding backline of Iain Hinchliffe’s guitar but it’s magical – obliterative, immersive, cathartic.

At this point in their career, they’re no longer young, and they’re not overtly cool, with their beanstalk singer and somewhat squat and unsvelte guitarist, but it’s the music that matters and makes them the coolest guys around: they make the best fucking noise, and may have just released their best album, which occupies half the set and reveals its range magnificently. Battering away at a couple of chords blended with all the distortion and feedback, the vocals buried in echo, and there’s a sample that runs between the songs throughout set in a fashion that’s reminiscent of the loop that runs through Rudimentary Peni’s Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric. With guitars like bulldozers blasting out rifferama ear-bleeding volume – did I mention that the volume’s up to twelve or thirteen?

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Part Chimp

There are occasional hints of Hawkwind happening, but overloaded with distortion and howling feedback at a thousand decibels and there’s some bad trip psychedelia slow and hypnotic in the mix. But Once again, it very quickly becomes a haze, and it’s impossible to do anything but yield to the wall of sound and enjoy. Live music fans live for moments like this, and it’s clear that everyone in the room was in the same space. If there is a heaven, it has to be this.

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