French/Irish alternative rock-metal outfit MOLYBARON, known for their energetic, hard-hitting sound, are set to release their new album Something Ominous in just 2 weeks, on the 15th of September via InsideOutMusic/Sony Music.
Today, MOLYBARON are pleased to share the epic 4th single from the album – ‘Reality Show,’ a high-energy track, fusing driving guitars and bass with soaring synths, alongside a catchy memorable vocal melody.
You can check out the video here:
Formed in Paris, early 2015, by Dublin-born singer/guitarist Gary Kelly, MOLYBARON have become one of the most talked-about bands in the modern metal scene.
Fusing together elements of alt rock, hard rock, and modern metal to create an eclectic, sonically dynamic experience, MOLYBARON deliver an intensely raw, original musical signature, appealing to fans across the genres.
This one has landed timely and on trend, with a title quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer, in turn quoting The Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse Hindu scripture, which contains (in translation) the phrase “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” With things potentiaally still on the brink in nuclear terms between Russia and Ukraine, the prospect of global nuclear annihilation stands as likely now as any time as in the early nighties. To take a line from The Psychedelic Furs, ‘get smart: get scared’. And if it’s not nuclear annihilation, it’s climate change… we are all fucked, and the clock is ticking.
And yet…
If Barbenheimer has become a thing, whoop for the resurgence of cinema. Really. This is not an easy time to stay afloat, to keep things together. But… bigger picture. The world is on fire, but instead of funding fixes to climate change, the mega-rich are taking holidays in space. Hawaii will take billions to rebuild, but instead of donating from their spare billions to support it, Musk and Zuckerberg are facing off over a cage fight in the most embarrassing showcase of a machismo pissing duel this millennium. Fuck! This is wrong, so, so wrong.
In the face of this, it figures that black metal and goth and a host of genre forms which emerged from the bleak times of the 80s and early 90s have taken a firm hold on the now. Sure, I’ve mentioned it before, but it clearly needs reiterating: dark times inspire dark music and dark moods, and these are certifiably dark times. Fascism, racism, and oppression, are on the rise. You can’t trust anyone, least of all the government. They’re fucking you, and they have an eye on your escape.
We’re told that ‘Now I am Become Death’ is ‘a powerful and thought-provoking journey through the depths of human emotion and introspection. With hauntingly intense instrumentals and emotionally charged vocals, this track encapsulates the band’s vision of merging extreme metal’s raw power, progressive metal’s experimental arrangements, and psychedelic rock’s mesmerising spirit into a genre-defying sonic experience.’
We’re also told that ‘Their music is an exploration of the human psyche and the complexities of our existence with the new track a journey through the darkest corners of the mind, confronting our fears, and the struggle to emerge with a newfound sense of purpose and strength. ‘Now I am Become Death’ is part of a series of singles, which will be released over the coming months, from upcoming album All Too Human.’
Emerging from a hovering hum and an electrical crackle and darkness visible, a whistle of feedback pierces the eardrum… slowly descending, for a moment ominous and eerie, before the drums and guitars start to build… and then everything kicks in, a monster trudge of overdriven guitars and gasoline gargling vocals.
It’s brutal, pure devastation. ‘Now I am Become Death’ is four and a half minutes of ferocity. From the low, slow, insistent bass and wailing anguish of otherwordly voices before things assimilate into a demented, dark, groove. Where Stoneflies succeeds is in their balance and menace at the same time; the weight isn’t without detail, but the detail doesn’t diminish the weight, making for a tune of massive impact.
Swedish crust/death-metal unit Industrial Puke have recently shared a music video for a new track off the band’s debut album “Born Into the Twisting Rope” is, which was released in mid-May on Suicide Records.
Filmed and edited by Mathias Coulouri, the video for this new track titled ‘Hell Is In Hello’. Watch it here:
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In 2017, with fresh memories of previous musical trials and tribulations, Jens Ekelin (Rentokiller) called out for comrades sharing a love for Disrupt to start a new band. Swiftly Linus Jägerskog (Burst) and Marko Partanen (Rentokiller) both roared out a non-hesitant YES! and off Industrial Puke went. Following a long period of writing music and finding members, Mattias Rasmusson (Obstruktion/Blessings/Gust) and Erik Harald (Rentokiller) completed the line-up and recording ensued.
After the band self-released the debut single and video ‘Mental Taxation’ in June 2022, Gothenburg-based Suicide Records offered to work with Industrial Puke. The partnership began with the release of the debut EP Where Life Crisis Starts in September 2022.
The album shows Industrial Puke honing in on their collective influences from hometown Gothenburg, the Swedish hardcore and death metal-scenes as well as the furious energy of acts like Disrupt, Kontrovers, Drop Dead and Napalm Death. The idea from the get-go was to focus on short straightforward songs and this album leaves little space for contemplation or rest.
From the galloping opening in ‘Mental Taxation’ to the raging closer ‘Innards on the Outside’, every song has its own belligerent identity. There is d-beat mosh on ‘Reactionary Warfare’, high-velocity crust on ‘Neurosexist Motherfucker’ featuring vocals by Hanna Stjernlöf of Socialstyrelsen, heavy HM-2 groove on ‘General Gluttony’ and relentless death metal in ‘Hell Is In Hello’. The lyrics deal with issues of self-doubt, conservatism as the new black and feeling out of place in crowds and out of touch with the world.
One thing I find – often – is that I keep encountering acts who have been going for quite literally decades without my having the slightest knowledge of their existence. This is a source of frustration: after all, I like to think I not only have my ear to the ground – so to speak – when it comes to emerging artists, but that I am pretty well connected with labels and PR. But then, so much of the music industry, it seems, is about luck and change encounters, and being at the right place at the right time. That, and the fact that existing in underground circles for a decade or more doesn’t mean that the chance of rising up toward the light is anywhere near remotely assured.
And so it is that I have been blissfully unaware of Slighter – the solo moniker of Colin C., who it appears, according to the bio, ‘has been fine-tuning the future of electronic music since kickstarting his music in Mid City Los Angeles in the early 2000s… Creating from a unique vantage point, he was involved in collaborations for various Metropolis Records releases and Cleopatra Records compilations, in addition to Slighter releases via his own Confusion Inc. imprint.’
‘How?’ I ask myself, and again, ‘how?’ I’m not only a fan and follower of these labels, but frequently get sent releases for review. I’ve mentioned perhaps a few times now – or more – how Cleopatra tapes were an integral part of my introduction to goth, and subsequently, Metropolis have been the outlet for some of my favourite more industrial-leaning acta like PIG, who I’ve been a fan of since they supported Nine Inch Nails on The Downward Spiral tour back in 1994. It might have wiped me bang in the middle of my A-Level exams, but fuck, the trip to Wolverhampton was worth it.
This is apposite. It seems almost impossible to discuss anything in the bracket of contemporary industrial without recourse to either Niner Inch Nails or Ministry, depending on whether the music is of an electronic or metal persuasion. It wasn’t always this way: from the 70s and through the 80s, industrial was a different beast, but circa 88 or thereabouts, something happened. It’s hard to really pinpoint what that something was, but it definitely happened.
And so it is that Slighter’s latest, The Futile Engine, is some strong work, which sits in the post-NIN industrial bracket, while owning a certain debt to 80s Wax Trax!. ‘Introspection Illusion’ announces its arrival with a squall of noise, a scream of electronica, and some muffled, subterranean vocal whisperings which are dark and unsettling… and then the machinery grinds into action and things really get heavy, and in no time we’re submerged in a throbbing barrage of noise, driven by a thudding industrial disco beat.
‘Pulling Me Under’ is more obvious brooding industrial dance with whirling synths and mangled, menacing vocals pitched against pounding beats. This sets the tone for the album as a whole: ‘Have No Fear’ is dark and sparse, a mechanised beat pulsating in the background against menacing close-mic vocals and we’re deep in PHM terrain here. In contrast, ‘Nostalgia Hysteria’ launches headlong into trance territory, tweaking the 505 in a full-on Josh Wink style.
They plunge deep into dark waters with the more experimental ‘Memory Corruptor’, but so much of The Futile Engine is simply dance music with some darker edges that it’s hard to really engage with. And the trouble I have with so much dance music is that it feels cold, clinical, impersonal. Perhaps it was the lack of drugs that mean I never got 90s rave or techno. But this doesn’t gain more appeal with time, and that’s a fact.
The Futile Engine has its moments, for sure, its execution is pure perfection, and the album displays a knack for insistent beats… but it’s exhausting. Unless you’re seeking relentless beat torture, you probably won’t dig this.
French/Irish alternative rock-metal outfit MOLYBARON, known for their energetic, hard-hitting sound, will release their new album Something Ominous on September 15th on InsideOutMusic/Sony Music. The announcement of the new album comes following the success of the recent single and video ‘Something Ominous.’
Over the course of two subtly radical records, 2017’s self-titled debut and 2021’s acclaimed The Mutiny, this eclectic quartet have casually bent and broken all the usual rules of modern heaviness.
In 2023, they return with their third and most fervently diverse record to date, Something Ominous: further evidence that MOLYBARON are operating in a field of precisely one.
When MOLYBARON released The Mutiny in 2021, the world was still reeling from the effects of a global pandemic. Nonetheless, the album struck its mark with ease, garnering countless glowing reviews and comparisons to the likes of System Of A Down, Tool and Muse. Two years on, Something Ominous reveals a band that have sharpened their focus and found their groove. Comprising ten succinct and characterful songs, which range from thunderous acts of aggression to noirish, mutant balladry, MOLYBARON’s third full-length is invigorating and immersive in equal measure.
“I don’t think our sound can be defined by one genre,” says guitarist/vocalist Gary Kelly .“It’s certainly not by design. I write and produce all the music in the band, but I’m strange – I never really listen to music. I have no idea what’s hot or what’s not these days. I suppose this makes it easier for me to create songs, I’m not trying to mirror any one style, I just write as it comes to me, probably based on what I hear floating in the ether; in the cinema, on the TV, on the elevator, it really doesn’t matter!”
MOLYBARON are also pleased to share the second single from the album.
You can check out the lyric video for ‘Breakdown’ here:
With their anticipated new album, VOID, just a few months away, KEN mode has given us another look into what to expect from the full-length, out Sept. 22nd via Artoffact Records. Today, the band shares a new single, true to their unforgettable and unique sound – ‘He Was A Good Man, He Was A Taxpayer’!
On the new track, Jesse Matthewson comments candidly that it is, "perhaps a little more post-punk than people are used to hearing us – but we had fun playing with synth and pushing the boundaries of the emotionality of this track. Is this noise goth? I don’t know. Does that sound stupid? Did I just invent a new genre? There are equal parts Bauhaus and Unsane on this, so maybe?"
‘He Was A Good Man, He Was A Taxpayer’, follows the band’s absolutely bone shattering single, ‘The Shrike’, which last month gave us 4 minutes and 10 seconds of sheer energy, fueled by the frustration of the ‘lost years’ of the pandemic, pelting fans’ eardrums with blissfully crass instrumentals and a vocal approach like no other.
Listen here:
AA
With their anticipated new album, VOID, just a few months away, KEN mode has given us another look into what to expect from the full-length, out Sept. 22nd via Artoffact Records. Today, the band shares a new single, true to their unforgettable and unique sound – ‘He Was A Good Man, He Was A Taxpayer’!
On the new track, Jesse Matthewson comments candidly that it is, "perhaps a little more post-punk than people are used to hearing us – but we had fun playing with synth and pushing the boundaries of the emotionality of this track. Is this noise goth? I don’t know. Does that sound stupid? Did I just invent a new genre? There are equal parts Bauhaus and Unsane on this, so maybe?"
‘He Was A Good Man, He Was A Taxpayer’, follows the band’s absolutely bone shattering single, ‘The Shrike’, which last month gave us 4 minutes and 10 seconds of sheer energy, fueled by the frustration of the ‘lost years’ of the pandemic, pelting fans’ eardrums with blissfully crass instrumentals and a vocal approach like no other.
TOUR DATES:
09.24.23 Porto, PT @ Amplifest*
09.26.23 Rouen, FR @ Le 106
09.27.23 Lille, FR @ Aeronef
09.28.23 Paris, FR @ Point Ephemere
09.29.23 Angouleme, FR @ La Nef
09.30.23 Clermont-Ferrand @ La Cooperative De Mai
10.01.23 Yverdon, CH @ L’Amalgame*
10.02.23 Karlsruhe, DE @ Jubez
10.03.23 Dresden, DE @ Ostpol
10.04.23 Wroclaw, PL @ Klub Lacznik
10.05.23 Berlin, DE @ Urban Spree
10.07.23 Aalborg, DK @ 1000 Fryd
10.08.23 Aarhus, DK @ Headquarters
10.10.23 Liege, BE @ La Zone
10.11.23 Haarlem, NL @ Patronaat
10.12.23 Bruxelles, BE @ La Botanique
10.13.23 Brighton, UK @ The Hope & Ruin*
10.14.23 London, UK @ Perpetual Flame Ministries w/Lingua Ignota*
When it comes to band names, metal is one of those genres that has a unique way of throwing out monikers that mean you know it’s a metal band just from the name – unless, of course, you can’t read it because of the unintelligible spiky logo, in which case you absolutely know what to expect without even knowing the name. Indian deathgrind act are a quintessential example. Just look at that cover! It’s all the thorns – and it encapsulates the listening experience perfectly. Yes, it’s sharp, it’s a set of songs that snags and tears at your skin and your psyche.
Fifteen years into their career, Carnal is their third album, and if it sounds like that’s perhaps slow progress, the eight brutal cuts on here suggest that the time goes into compressing everything down to its tightest, densest form, honing it to the point at which its mass and velocity is absolutely optimal.
With the exception of the six-minute epic closer and the forty-one second blast of mid-album track ‘Insidious’, the songs range between around three-and-a-half and four minutes – and they pack everything into these compact sonic slabs. They don’t do fiddly, twiddly stuff, and there are no squealy notes or solos, apart from on ‘Bodysnatcher’ where they work -and wank – all the frets in a frenzy: this is music which sounds like it’s the output of a car-crusher – compacted, mangled, brutally fucked and as dense and weighty as it gets.
The album’s themes are clear from the song titles, with opener ‘Son of Sam’ setting the tone, ahead of ‘Bind Torture Kill’, ‘Body Snatcher’, and ‘Alter of Putridity’, which, like the font and everything else, pretty much speak for themselves. They’re well into their serial killer shit, but as I observed just the other day, this stuff is mainstream now. Pouring over mass murder and serial killing is no longer the domain of trenchcoat-wearing loners who aspire to wreak their own revenge on this cruel world; it’s David Tennent on ITV scoring eleven million viewers per episode.
That doesn’t mean that this kind of brutal tempestuous racket is mainstream, but people can no longer judge the work of a band like Gutlsit as sick or perverse when their subject matter is primetime. We’re all murder junkies.
‘The Killing Joke’ opens with a sample from an interview with notorious sadistic serial killer John Wayne Gacey (who makes Son of Sam with his seven victims look like a mere hobbyist), saying ‘The dead won’t bother you. It’s the living you gotta worry about’. Gracey may have been somewhat flippant in his remarks, but he had something of a point.
Gutslit sound neither dead nor living, their grating attacks sounding more like the undead on EST, a least vocally, and they go all out to deliver punishing intensity on a satanic level. It’s a churning mass of guitars that grinds at your guts as beats blast so fast as to blur to a flickering rattling sound rather than form an overtly structured rhythm. The obligatory guttural vocals growl and snarl, switching between styles fast and often between growl and barks, coughs and vomiting streams of vowels. It’s frenzied, demonic, furious. It sounds murderous, it sounds brutal, disturbed and disturbing.
‘Primeval’ is slow in terms of chords, but countered by a thunderous rush of beats, which renders it disorientating, harsh, and high on impact, and as a whole Carnal is pretty nasty – just as intended.
Norwegian metallic hardcore four-piece group SPLIT//BITE have recently shared a new song off the band’s debut EP, which is set to be released on June 9th via Loyal Blood Records.
SPLIT // BITE is a fresh new four-piece group from Bergen, Norway, yet all members have a vast experience in other projects from the local hardcore and metal scene. The band’s debut EP "404 ends" shows a highly-energized quartet playing a chaotic and pummeling metallic hardcore full of heavy riffs and caustic vocals.
Set for release on June 9th via Loyal Blood Records, this new EP is according to the band "about establishing a precedence in a society defined by cultural norms adapted to your average joe. With this we bring about subjects like existential anxiety, apathy, and also artistic freedom. We preach this through our intensive tempo, and a clear message from start to end."
XASTHUR unveil the next sinister single, ‘A Future to Fear II’, taken from the forthcoming double-album Inevitably Dark, which is set up for release on June 23, 2023. The stylistically highly diverse American outfit instigated by multi-instrumentalist Scott Conner has created a kaleidoscopic double-album that is ranging from acid folk to black metal.
A visualizer of the eerie track ‘A Future to Fear II’ is available here:
AA
There is hardly a more fitting title for the new XASTHUR compositions than "Inevitably Dark". Darkness is the element that holds all the tracks together despite the fact that they are expressed in a multitude of genres, which even includes black metal. This time. Be warned: this album is neither meant as a return to black metal of mastermind Scott Conner, even though he does this time, nor a guarantee that it will happen again next time – although, he might. Maybe.
This monolith of musical darkness that is balefully towering in the shape of a monumental XASTHUR double album has been made from sonic granite. Like the intrusive igneous type of rock, it is coarse-grained, composed from different minerals that have formed from magma erupting to the surface from infernal depths, and has a high content of metal oxides that do not always show at a superficial glance.
Instead of quartz, alkali feldspar, and other types of rock, Conner has used black metal, dark ambient, acid folk, doomgrass, and other genres to express what he has seen and felt, as well as a way to find his own sound or style at a point in time – for example when he was without a steady home and often living in hotels or cars. His insights into the underbelly of the American dream are reflected in the lyrics of "Inevitably Dark", which are there even though there is no singing on the album. Conner is taking a look into the minds of the mentally ill. The puzzle of people that he encountered on the road and that might be homeless because they are ill, or whose minds shattered when they lost their homes.
Documenting what he has heard and seen, Conner recorded all the tracks of "Inevitably Dark" live and by himself, which might make it sound coarse to modern ears, but it is just the grit and stain of unfiltered reality. His way is the old hard way of a live sound and not the fake glitter of a perfectly polished product. XASTHUR are sounding exactly as the mastermind has envisioned his album to be: real.
It’s been fourteen years since there was new music from Khanate, the experimental doom outfit featuring members of Sunn O))), OLD, and Blind Idiot God. It’s perhaps not surprising that my social media feeds have been bursting with the news of the surprise arrival of their fifth album on digital platforms ahead of a physical release next month– and because it landed from nowhere overnight, you couldn’t say it was eagerly anticipated, but it’s got a lot of people excited.
As you would expect, given the members’ main projects, and the previous Khanate releases, To Be Cruel is an absolute monster, with just three tracks spanning a full hour. You don’t tune in to Khanate for snappy pop tunes.
The first chord hits like an atomic bomb, blasting from the speakers with such force it’s almost enough to floor you, and rising from the sustain, crackling synth notes, then another sonic detonation that’s so hard and loud it hurts. Many of the tones and tropes of To Be Cruel are heavily redolent of the crushing doom drone of Sunn O))), but as the first piece, ‘Like a Poisoned Dog’ abundantly evidences, Khanate are different. This difference may be less apparent to the casual listener, but the stop/start power chords and skewed, sinewy shards of feedback are cut from a different sonic cloth, and if Sunn O))) are renowned for their indebtedness to Earth, there are elements woven in here which seem to owe more to early Swans, and while I wouldn’t necessarily want to speculate on whether the album’s title is some kind of response to Swans’ 2014 album To Be Kind, there is some kind of contextual interface here, in that both acts are pushing parameters within a longform song format.
And then there are the vocals: it’s a good seven minutes before Alan Dubin makes his first contribution: the song takes another swerve, the blistering blast simmers down and as he howls and roars, the feel is a cross between the darkest of mangled metal and brutal hardcore. And his manic screams are powerful and affecting. He sounds troubled, but in a way that conveys the kind of tortured mental suffering that’s common to many: it’s a primal howl of rage ad anguish that we struggle to unleash, and so to hear this is to feel emotions channelled by proxy, and as much as it hurts, it’s a release.
‘It Wants to Fly’ takes it to the next level, presenting almost twenty-two minutes of pain. The guitar is slow, crushing, punishing. What can you say? It hurts. It’s also minimal in arrangement but maximal in volume: this is first-gear BPM, with decimating feedback between the crushing chords. At the same time, it’s doomy and ominous as well as raging, making for a powerful cocktail of weight and raw emotion. There is no question that Khanate bring both.
And so it is that the album’s third and final track, the twenty-minute title track, is twenty minutes of low drone and tortured screaming that sounds like a breakdown captured on tape as Dubin yelps and screams about spiders against a sparse backing of a distant rumble and clanging guitar. ‘Look! In the closet!’ he shrieks in what sounds like abject terror. You dare not look. You don’t even want to hide under the bed: you just want to leave the house. The composition takes its time, it hums and drones, and in time, it hits and it hurts, and in some way you wish you could be Dublin, you want this release to have a channel into the unhinged. But you’re stuck on the outside, an observer to what sounds like either the ultimate catharsis or mental disintegration.
Ground down to nothing beyond and anguished screams and squalling feedback, this is bare bones, the sound of desperation. It isn’t pleasant, and there is simply no room to breathe: this is dark, dense torturous, and it’s exactly what fans have been waiting fourteen years for.
Aural Aggravation 