Posts Tagged ‘Noise Rock’

Listen: ‘Midnight Slaughter’ by Brainbombs

Posted: 18 August 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

The differences between proper indie labels and major labels are manifold, but a key one is not professionalism, but passion. Riot Season release records for the love, not the money: they make enough to keep releasing albums, and that’s pretty much the aim. It’s by no means a capitalist endeavour. So when Andy announces the next release thus, it’s a sincere reflection of what it’s like to release an album by a band you love:

Over the years, I’ve released many a great noise rock (for want of a better term) record.

And pretty much every one of those bands have been influenced at some point by the Swedish underground legends BRAINBOMBS.

A band that thrills and disgusts in equal measure. With their bludgeoning repetitive riffs, and interesting lyrical themes, They’re pretty much held up as masters of the genre.

So, to be sat here in August 2025 announcing I’m releasing their new album on my little label is a fucking thrill. I’ve been listening to it non stop for about two solid months, and now you lot finally get to have a taste yourselves

And the press blurb is gold. Read it, and then get stuck into ‘Midnight Slaughter’ below. It’s a killer.

PRESS BLURB

The Swedish underground legends return with a brand new album.

Let this reddit user take over …

“Listening to Brainbombs has been one of my weirdest experiences with music.

Brainbombs are most definitely a band. I guess at the core they’re a hardcore punk/noise rock hybrid I guess? But… its so unlike anything I’ve ever heard and I still don’t know if its good or bad. I saw the edgelord Ed Gein album cover, and it intrigued me, so I listened to their biggest song and it was easily THE WORST thing I had EVER FUCKING HEARD. I shut it off as soon as it got to the vocals. I was shocked by the fact that it had almost a half million streams. But, a few hours later, I clicked on it again and didn’t know why.

Over the past few days, I’ve listened to all of their discography and looped a lot of it. And I don’t even think I like them. The music is abysmal, its the same single riff and verse repeating for 5 minutes. To make it worse, the vocals are just a guy with a swedish accent awkwardly talking about murder and rape. That sounds awful right? It is awful. But at the same time I want to keep listening? It’s so childishly edgy and obnoxiously repetitive but so.. intriguing? Catchy? I’m not even sure. Its one of if not the weirdest experience I’ve ever had with music and I don’t know how to feel about it.”

Anyway: this is good noise. Listen for yourself:

AA

a1584943159_10

Listen: ‘Saddle Rash’ by Needlework

Posted: 27 June 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Needlework caught our attention a few months ago when they supported Aural Aggravation faves Soma Crew.

They’ve just dropped the track ‘Saddle Rash’, and we dig. Check it here:

AA

13838193987112654144

Why Patterns – Screamers

Posted: 17 June 2025 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Human Worth – 11th July 2025

Why Patterns’ latest offering marks something of a shift from Regurgitorium, released back in 2022. I say ‘back’ in 2022 because it feels like a lifetime ago. Some of that is, admittedly, due to personal circumstance, but for most, 2022 was a very different time. We still weren’t all that long out of lockdown, for a start. We were still coming up for air, and finding our way – and likely crawling our way back to the office, while a lot of shops still had their Perspex screens in place. I remember in the checkout queue in Aldi just willing these weird cunts who had seemingly either forgotten the preceding year and a bit, or had lost all sense of how to engage, by looming and leaning over and pressing too close would fuck off. I revisit the context of the last album because it somehow managed to capture the mood in some obtuse way, and when I wrote ‘It’s fucked up. It’s deranged. It hurts,’ I could as easily have been referring to life itself at that point in time.

Screamers is different again. Or, if not so much, different, compressed, compacted, distilled, the intensity amplified by the concision of the tracks.

The crunchy, gnarly bass still dominates, and it’s snarling away and tearing strips straight out of the traps on the frenzied ‘After the Bullfight’. Clocking in at a mere minute and forty-seven seconds, it’s noise rock smooshed down to the tight parameters of grindcore, and with insane amounts of reverb, the stuttering, stammering vocal yelps from Doug Norton, the man behind the ‘Mouth Sounds’ owe an equal debt to Suicide and The Cramps, and this may be the spawning of industrial psychobilly as a new genre. Everything is overloading, the speakers are crackling with megawattage overload, and when ‘Clown in a Housefire’ blasts in, you actually begin to wonder if it’s supposed to sound like this of it your gear’s fucked.

One may cling in references to the Jesus Lizard and all the rest, but really, this sounds like a psychotic reimagining of early Blacklisters – specifically early because of THAT bass racket. But whereas Blacklisters were, and remain, quite song-orientated, at least structurally, Screamers sees Why Patterns take their template and smash the living fuck out of it by throwing it against a brick wall and stomping on it until there is nothing but splattered pulp. None of the songs – I mean, they’re not really songs, more demented blasts of discord played at three hundred miles an hour, all of the instruments playing at angles against and across, rather than with one another, the vocals the sound of a breakdown in real time. And listening to this as bombs and missiles are going off everywhere and no-one knows what is going on anywhere, I fin myself listening to this tumultuous mayhem and thinking ‘yep, they’ve done it again. This is the closest I’ve heard anyone articulate this moment.’ I mean, they don’t really ‘articulate’: as the title suggests, Screamers is a raw, primal scream. It’s a frenzied, lurching, gut-punching racket that rattles the bibs and kicks the balls, hard. Pleasant, it is not. Especially that grungy bass that churns the stomach.

There aren’t really any riffs: it’s just a relentless assault of jarring noise. ‘Nervous Laughter’ brings hints of the latest mclusky album, but does so with menace, malice, and a hint of the unhinged, and following on ‘Wind Up Chattering teeth’ is a minute and six seconds of rabid raving. It’s almost enough to make you want to puke.

Then there’s ‘Club Foot By Kasabian by Blacklisters’. It extends the joke of the original – since the Blacklisters song, ‘Club Foot By Kasabian’ wasn’t a cover, and had nothing to do with Kasabian, and so it is that ‘Club Foot By Kasabian by Blacklisters’ is a minute and a half of squalling, brawling, guitar-led abrasion. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Castrovalva in its deranged intensity, and frenzied, squawking disregard for decency. The title track is fifty-two seconds long. It’s rabid. It has to be heard to be comprehended.

The last track, ‘Buffoons and Barel Organs’ is both the longest and most structurally coherent. ‘Why do I cross the road? Why do I cross the road? Because I’m a fucking chicken!’ Norton hollers amidst a raging tempest of bass and drums.

Screamers is certainly appropriately titled. Every song is a brief but blistering assault. It’s full-on, and will melt your face, and as such, I wholeheartedly recommend it, unless you’re a wuss.

AA

AA

a3117811268_10

mclusky – the world is still here and so are we

Posted: 5 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Ipecac Recordings – 9th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

mclusky was one of those bands which built a cult following without ever really breaking through in the period they were active, in the period which spanned from 1996-2005. None of the greats are ever appreciated in their time, of course. Their albums would fetch premium prices second-hand, in the years after they called it a day, and my local Oxfam had prohibitively-priced copies of a couple of them for a while, which got progressively more tired and shelf-worn. With Future of the Left, Andrew Falkous found a wider audience while still doing much of the same, but as loved as they became, there was always a sense among fans that ‘they’re bloody brilliant… but they’re not mclusky’.

Of course, nostalgia has a large part to play here, and it’s almost inevitable that practically no second or subsequent band, however popular or successful, will experience the same affection as their forebears, unless, perhaps, they’re The Foo Fighters, in which case that affection is misplaced anyway.

mclusky flirted with occasional comebacks, while Falkous would release solo work as Christian Fitness. But, somewhat unexpectedly, the Wikipedia note on Mcluskyism (2006) that ‘This compilation is, without doubt, the final chapter in Mclusky’s nine-year saga, as Falkous informs in the Mcluskyism liner notes, “that’s it, then. No farewell tour… no premature deaths (at time of writing), no live DVDs…”’ First, there was the EP unpopular parts of a pig in 2023, and now, here we have it: their first full-length album in a full two decades. What has happened? I really don’t know, but seemingly from nowhere, a stack of bands from the Jesus Lizard to Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, have re-emerged with their first new albums in twenty years or more, and they’ve not been some second-rate, tepid late- (or even post-) career cash-ins, but up there with the best of their work.

‘Is it any good?’ people will be asking. ‘Is it as good as the old stuff?’ Anyone who has heard lead single, ‘way of the exploding dickhead’ will probably already be thinking that the answer to both of these questions is in the affirmative, and they would be right. the world is still here and so are we is indeed up there. As they put it, ‘it was important not to cos-play the past but also not to flubbity-flub over everything like a gang of big stupid flubs.’ Yeah,. There’s definitely no flubbing, or flab here. This is lean and full-on, and sheer quality.

It’s ‘unpopular parts of a pig’ which launches the album in a scratchy blast of cutty treble, a skewe(re)d tumult of stop / start angular punk which is frantic and irreverent, compressing elements of Nirvana and Shellac and Butthole Surfers, Dead Kennedys, and the Jesus Lizard into a manic two minutes and twenty-one seconds.

It was often the case, especially in the 70s, 80s, and 90s – before streaming, essentially, but while record company exploitation and the industry gravy train was racing at a seemingly unstoppable pace – that the singles, which would lure you in to buy an album, were the only decent songs on it, and you’d feel pretty bummed and short-changed at having forked out £7.50 for an LP or cassette – unless if had been one of your bonus purchases through Britannia Music – when you might as well have just paid 99p for the 7” and not bothered with the album. This may still be the case in some instances, now that the album format is supposedly dead in the world of the mainstream, where people only stream the songs they know already as part of the playlist they’ll loop for weeks, but beyond the mainstream, it feels like the album is stronger than ever, and acts are committed to making albums which are 100% quality from beginning to end. This certainly rings true for the world is still here and so are we.

Of the album’s thirteen songs, only three are over three minutes in duration, and it feels like there’ve compressed and distilled everything to achieve peak intensity. The bass is absolutely immense, a thunderous boom that dominates the sound, leaving room for Falkous’ guitar to wander and explore sinewy tripwire picked lead parts and discordant textures.

‘people person’ also released as a single, lands with a swagger and showcases a gutsy bass-led groove, while also highlighting the sarcastic, ironical humour and misanthropy that’s integral to both mclusky and FOTL: bursting with pithy one-liners and sharp commentary, it’s everything that makes them so loved and so bloody great. Elsewhere, the more overtly mathy ‘not all the steeplejacks’ channels the spirit of Shellac rather nicely.

the world is still here and so are we is gritty, unpretty, full-throttle, and fiery. It’s a racket. And yes, it’s fucking mint.

AA

Print

Mars, and Beyond: Mark Cunningham interviewed by John Wisniewski

Posted: 30 March 2025 in Interviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Interview: John Wisniewski

Introduction: Christopher Nosnibor

It’s fair to say that Mars was a band ahead of its time. Formed in 1975, they were early to land on the No Wave noise-rock scene, and they’d called it a day before the scene really broke, and with only a handful of performances under their belts.

The history goes that Mars played live about two dozen times, and never ventured beyond Manhattan. Their first show was at CBGB’s in January 1977; their last one was at Max’s Kansas City on December 10, 1978. Their sole release during their brief existence was a seven inch single, plus a track on the influential No Wave New York compilation, produced by Brian Eno, although a live EP would emerge shortly after they called it a day, and their entire recorded output – which totalled half an hour’s music – would be released a couple of times in the mid ‘80s and in the ‘00s.

As is often the case, the legacy and influence far exceeds their brief history and scant catalogue, no doubt enhanced by the fact they never reformed. However, while most of the band’s members have disappeared from view, and both co-founder Nancy Arlen (drums) and vocalist Sumner Crane died in the early 2000s, since the end of Mars, bassist Mark Cunningham has remained active, and very much forward-facing in his musical output, most recently with solo albums Odd Songs (2020) and Blue Mystery (2023)

John Wisniewski caught up with Mark Cunningham to ask about Mars and their legacy, his recent releases, and plans for the future.

JW for AA: How did you get involved with music, Mark?

I’ve been playing since I was a kid. my uncle was a jazz drummer and he hooked me up with my first horn, and I played in the school band growing up. and as a teen I picked up guitar and bass to play in cover bands, but when I learned to really play and improvise was at college, surrounded by likeminded rock, free jazz and acid freaks studying avant-garde movements and playing all the time.

Any favorite music artists?

Lots, I grew up in the 60s, out in Jersey, and started going to shows at the Fillmore East in 68. saw a lot of the greats there, as well as little known strange psychedelic bands. I ate it all up, not discriminating too much, but of course Hendrix, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Zeppelin and a few others were extra special, and Electric Miles, who I first saw in 69 and showed me the future. Later at college I discovered the Velvets, Eno, Bowie and all the free jazz greats. I still followed Miles though.

0018927842_10

When did you join MARS, and what was the idea for how MARS should sound? Did you improvise?

Mars came together in late 75, a chance meeting that led to a year of working out our own way of expression before playing shows. At first we took the Velvets as a model, even jammed on some of their songs, and from there started making our own, somewhat similar frameworks and improvising on them. But we weren’t free improv. The character of the song and lyrics always came first. This has stayed with me through all my bands, although i do play 100% free in some duos and trios dedicated to that.

Why did you want to form your own record labels?

The first and most serious venture was Hyrax Records, which I managed to make happen in 1980 to release the John Gavanti LP and a Don King cassette. In those days it was possible to get distribution in the States and we sold quite well. But it still became a hassle and an expense to keep it going. DIY labels started getting popular in the 80s, when cassette recording and reproduction got cheap and easy. And in the 90s with CDRs. So I did some of that, especially with our duo Convolution, with my partner Silvia Mestres. We put out all our albums on CDR. Of course streaming killed that off completely. Nowadays all you have to do is put it out on Bandcamp and / or use the streaming platforms, which suck but do get it out there. So I do that with the more experimental stuff which we record on the cheap.

What were audience reactions to the music of Mars?

We had a pretty loyal and very vocal fan base in the city, which you can hear on some of the live stuff I’ve curated through feeding tube records and bandcamp. We always managed to draw enough of a crowd to keep things moving, even playing once or twice a month in the same clubs, which we did in Manhattan for two years, in *77 and *78. Unfortunately we never made it out of the city. Sometimes we got on bills with some more conventional bands and a mixed crowd, which provoked some interesting reactions. When we opened for Patti Smith at CBGB Theater, we had screamers both for and against, it was great!! We certainly were extreme, but never for its own sake, for us it was always about the music.

Mars,_12__EP_cover

What did you think of the No Wave New York scene?

That’s quite a question. At the time it was mainly a lot of work and fun. all of those bands worked hard to make their own music and sound. Mars rehearsed at least 5 days a week and sometime more. Something that could never happen later, when life became too expensive and distracted. So we were really a product of a time and place very special, with a lot of music and art movements sharing the same neighborhoods. It was a 70s phenomenon, which continued into the 80s but wasn’t the same as everything else was changing too quickly. It was over for us by the mid 80s, when I was working with my band Don King and started going to Europe, and in 91 I moved to Barcelona. Another thing altogether is the echo it’s had over the years, which keeps expanding, especially for Mars.

What was it like working with Brian Eno?

We got on really well. in fact we’d become quite good friends in those months he was in the city, I was living with Arto Lindsay at the time and he used to come over and listen to our records, as we had a lot of African and Asian stuff. So actually working with him was great though it was only a couple days, one for recording and the other for mixing. Recording he just let us get on with it, but then he was really hands on with the mixing, and had great ideas.

Tell us about your latest Blue Mystery album, and Odd Songs, your 2020 release? What was it like recording these albums?

Odd Songs, which came first, was half collaborations which I’d recorded over the previous few years and the other half playing everything myself, and on Blue Mystery I got deeper into that, plus it was during the Covid lockdowns, so it was really easy to spend all day working at home. Now I’m working on the third volume, Asombra7, which I’m recording at a rehearsal space I have in an arts factory in Barcelona, and some of the other residents are helping me out. Promising stuff, which I hope to finish by end of summer or so. I like taking my time and going as deep as I can, songwise and soundwise.

AA

Any future plans and projects?

I have lots of other projects already, some full time like my band Blood Quartet. which is marking 10 years now, others occasional, duos and trios with improvisers mostly. I have two recent LPs out, one, Infini with Marc Hurtado, formerly of the French industrial band Etant Donnes, the other Next, also a duo, with Jørgen Teller, a Danish experimental guitarist.

Watch: ‘Bug Out Bag’ by Barren Womb

Posted: 27 March 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Nordic noise-rockers Barren Womb are back with a brand-new video for ‘Bug Out Bag,’ taken from their critically acclaimed fifth album Chemical Tardigrade, which got a  thumbs up from us here at Aural Aggravation.

The video premiered at Decibel Magazine, who praised the band’s sound as “angular and pulsating electronic rock/noise/hardcore that lands somewhere between Refused, Daughters, and NoMeansNo on one end, and the ‘Bigs’ (Business and Black) on the other.”

A chaotic burst of gritty visuals and manic energy, the video perfectly mirrors the band’s twisted blend of punk defiance, sludgy grooves, and raw minimalism. Watch it now here:

AA

Their latest LP, Chemical Tardigrade (Fucking North Pole Records / Blues For The Red Sun), dives deeper into melodic and emotional territories without losing their unhinged core. Tracks like ‘Campfire Chemist’ and ‘Dung Lung’ showcase their evolution while retaining the band’s punchy edge and signature offbeat humor (‘D-Beatles,’ anyone?).

And they’re taking it back on the road with the newly announced More Chemicals 2025 European tour, check out the confirmed dates below.

MORE CHEMICALS 2025
01.05 – CZ Pilsen, Družba
02.05 – DE Leipzig, Zwille
03.05 – DE Bielefeld, Drum Hard
04.05 – BE Licthervelde, PrintbaAr
05.05 – FR Strasbourg, Le Local
06.05 – BE Antwerp, Antwerp Music City
07.05 – DE Osnabrück, Bastard Club
08.05 – DE Braunschweig, Spunk
09.05 – DK Odense, Ilter Festival
10.05 – NO Oslo, Desertfest Oslo
16.05 – NO Trondheim, Pøbelrock
26.07 – NO Hønefoss, Malstrømfestivalen
01.08 – NO Horten, Kanalrock
03–06.09 – SE Örebro, Live at Heart
18.09 – FI Turku, TBA
19.09 – FI Tampere, TBA
20.09 – FI Helsinki, TBA

37ac0235-2354-7d38-98dc-69c18461e7fd

Noisepicker – The Earth Will Swallow The Sun

Posted: 20 March 2025 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Exile On Mainstream – 21st March 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Noisepicker get a pass for a rather lame name by virtue of being absolutely phenomenal purveyors of noise rock, and that they are absolutely phenomenal purveyors of noise rock is a fact, not an opinion.

It’s also a fact that the album’s title, The Earth Will Swallow The Sun, is factually inaccurate. But again, they get a pass, not least of all because without Earth, there would be no Sunn O))) and the whole world of drone metal was born from Earth and the sun, or at least Sunn O))) revolve around that… but I digress. The Earth Will Swallow The Sun marks the return of Noisepicker after a seven-year break following the release of their debut, Peace Off, in 2018, because… life, apparently. This seems to be how it goes. Stuff happens, you get busy dealing with it, and simply doing everyday stuff, like laundry and life admin, and before you know it, shit, five years have evaporated, and that’s half a decade.

‘Do not expect neat, polished, note perfect, carefully constructed sound. Noisepicker are loud and abrasive. They pay homage to the genres which made them fall in love with music in the first place – doom, punk and blues – and bring it all together in a hearty and heavy concoction that is all their own.’, they forewarn, and yes, it’s all true. The Earth Will Swallow The Sun places texture and impact and density over palatability and accessibility. And that’s for the good: the world is engulfed in slick digital mass-produced music, and there seems to be something of a rebellion against it in underground circles, with artists with nothing to lose going all-out to splurge their souls with unapologetically raw output. And this is something that feels relatable, it’s music to connect with, because it’s real, immediate, direct, and without compromise. To listen to something so unfiltered is to feel alive.

The album starts sparse, with strong hints of Mark Lanegan, with Harry Armstrong delivering a heavy-timbred vocal croon that emanates from the chest and crackles in the throat, over a simple guitar strum and some anguished drones, until finally, almost two minutes in, it all kicks in with some big guitars, thudding drums, booming bass. It’s a hint at the potential energy that Noisepicker offer, and if opening an album with a slow-paced dredger of a song seems like an odd choice, it paves the way for some high-octane, high-impact racket, sliding immediately into the darkly chaotic snarl of raging riff-out roar of single cut ‘Chew’, which lurches and lumbers between grunge and metal and heavy psychedelia.

Things only get more intense from hereon in. ‘Tomorrow Lied the Devil’ is built around a solid blues-based boogie, but with everything cranked up to eleven and Armstrong giving it some gravel-throated grit while the guitars chug hard against thunderous percussion. ‘Leave Me the Name’ sees them coming on like Chris Rea not on the road to hell, but dragged up, charred and rotting from the depths of hell, and ‘What Did You Think Was Going to Happen’ is dense, dark, gnarly, menacing and lands like a punch to the gut. The riff is actually a bit Led Zep, but with so much distortion and a vocal that sounds like a death threat, it all takes on a quite different dimension, while ‘The End of Beginning’ is simply a slow but blistering assault. None of this is pretty, and none of this is gentle. All of it is strong, and rabid in its intensity. ‘Start the Flood’ offers some wild bass runs amidst the raving riff-driven mayhem – because we need for there to be more happening here. There’s some rabid raving about supernovas, and then the title track comes on like some deranged stoner rock blitzkrieg that has hints of Melvins and a megadose of daftness. We need that daftness as much as we need the guitar carnage. There’s a smoochy swagger to the blues / jazz-hued ‘Lorraine in Blood’ that’s like Tom Waits narrating a pulpy crime novel, before ‘Lunatics’ brings the album to a more experimental conclusion with its dominant crowd noise backing.

It’s rare for a side-project to stand above the main band, but Armstrong has his fingers in many pies beyond Orange Goblin, and Noisepicker are a rare entity in every way. The Earth Will Swallow The Sun is something else. It’s the sound of a pair of extremely capable musicians really testing themselves, and having fun in the process. It’s fun to listen to, too. Hard, and harrowing at times and in places, but ultimately fun.

AA

AA

420726

Guiltless – Teeth to Sky

Posted: 4 March 2025 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Neurot Recordings – 7th March 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

If a release is on Neurot, there’s almost a guarantee that it’ll pack some heft, and that it’s likely to be good. And so it is with the debut album from Guiltless, who feature members of A Storm of Light, Intronaut, Generation of Vipers, and Battle of Mice and were ‘born from a love of experimental rock, noise rock, early industrial, sludge, and doom’. Their bio describes their first release, the EP Thorns as ‘crushing and cheerless’, adding that ‘it seemed to welcome the apocalypse looming on our collective horizon.’

The horizon is feeling closer than ever, the Doomsday Clock now set to just 89 seconds to midnight, reported as being ‘the closest the world has ever been to total annihilation.’ Teeth to Sky is a worthy successor to Thorns, and while it may not be quite as unutterably bleak, it sure as hell isn’t a laugh a minute, or even a month. And if anything, it’s heavier, denser, and it’s more layered, more exploratory.

‘Into Dust Becoming’ crashes in on a howl of feedback before the riff comes in hard. No delicate intro or gradual build-up here: just full-on, balls-out explosive power. It’s a veritable behemoth, dragging a megalithic weight and a brutal rawness as it churns away with devastating force. It’s one hell of an ear-catching way to open an album, and serves as a statement of intent.

‘One is Two’ barrels and lurches, the bass booming low while the guitar slices and slews across at jagged angles, and with the roaring vocal delivery, it’s dark and furious, as is fitting for a song that explores human behaviour and the fact that as a species we seem utterly hell-bent on destroying our own habitat. It’s a perverse contradiction that as the most advanced species to have evolved on earth, we have seemingly evolved to bring about the hastening of our own extinction, but then again, perhaps it’s for the best. But considering this, and the state of everything, brings a range of complex emotions which aren’t necessarily easy to articulate through language, or language alone – and this is when one comes to really appreciate the catharsis of visceral noise. And it’s a crushing force that blasts from the speakers on ‘In Starless Reign’; the guitar tone rings a squalling dissonance, and there are some deft tempo changes which accentuate the textural detail and enhance the impact.

They slow things to an eerie crawl on the epic ‘Our Serpent in Circle’ to round off side one, and although it doesn’t exactly offer respite, it does provide some variety ahead of the assault which ensues with the title track at the start of side two, followed by the utterly merciless ‘Lone Blue Vale’, a track of staggering density. Combined, they deliver a relentless sonic barrage. ‘Illumine’ closes the album with slow-paced precision, a harrowing seven-minute dirge designed to snuff the faintest glimmers of hope in your soul.

It’s a significant achievement that Guiltless manage to maintain such a punishing level of intensity for the duration of the whole album: Teeth to Sky will leave you feeling utterly pounded, breathless, and dazed.

AA

160821

Listen: ‘Cost of Living’ by the Jesus Lizard

Posted: 14 November 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
1

What’s that? A new song from the Jesus Lizard that isn’t on RACK?

‘Cost Of Living’ is out now on streaming platforms.

“Simply because I wrote the words to ‘Cost of Living’ doesn’t mean that I know exactly what it’s about. I think it has to do with the dread and self-loathing that addicts experience on a very regular basis. You can pick whichever type of addict you choose.” – David Yow

“A friend asked me if we had any tricked-out, odd timing type things with twists and turns, and I said ‘Yeah, I think so….’” – Duane

Hear it here:

AA

a0590213148_10

Older Entries