Plant-based metal avant-gardists BOTANIST have planted the new track ‘Angel’s Tumpet’, named after the highly toxic and hallucinogenic nightshade shrub as the first single taken from their forthcoming album VIII: Selenotrope, which has been sowed now in order to bloom on the release date May 19, 2023.
Listen to ‘Angel’s Trumpet’ here:
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BOTANIST comment: “The notion of a ‘Selenotrope’, a plant that only blooms in moonlight, was in the mental vault since 2016, as were the drums that I had recorded for when the day came”, mastermind Otrebor writes. "The added solitude of the lockdown, in addition to the solitude that I normally prefer, was the conduit to entering this new place in the Verdant Realm. After I completed tracking, I sent the session to Dan Swanö, with whom I had already loved working for the Photosynthesis album. Dan felt that ‘Angel’s Trumpet’ was the album’s banger. So here it is to introduce you to the nocturnal floral world of VIII: Selenotrope.
Witch Ripper have unveiled their next single, the slick mid-tempo crusher ‘Icarus Equation’, which is taken from the forthcoming album The Flight after the Fall. The sophomore full-length of the American melodic sludge metal outfit is scheduled for release on March 3rd, 2023.
Witch Ripper have announced the first US shows in support of the new album. A European tour is in the making.
The title of the track ‘Icarus Equation’ hints at the ancient Greek mythological character Ikaros, who flew too close to the sun on wings held together by wax during a daring attempted escape. The wings melted and Ikaros fell to his death, and the story is generally used as a metaphorical warning against having unrealistically high ambitions.
Listen to this epic cut here:
Witch Ripper comment: “The new single, ‘’Icarus Equation’ was the first song written for the new album”, guitarist and vocalist Curtis Parker writes on behalf off the band. “I think that we rewrote the final part six times before we landed on what’s on the record. We’re incredibly happy with how that ending turned out. ‘Icarus Equation’ represents perfectly how our two vocalists can not only juxtapose against each other but come together in unison – like we do on the bridge. In the story of the album, this song represents loss. A loss of life and a loss of wanting to carry on. Our protagonist is at his lowest during this song. That being said, we wanted to show that there is a light at the end of the tunnel by ending on a giant major key ballad-style moment.”
Live
18 MAR 2023 Seattle, WA (US) Substation 29 MAR 2023 Portland, OR (US) High Water Mark 30 MAR 2023 Eugene, OR (US) Old Nick’s 31 MAR 2023 San Francisco, CA (US) Kilowatt Bar +Brume +Nite 01 APR 2023 San Jose, CA (US) The Caravan Lounge 02 APR 2023 Los Angeles, CA (US) Redwood Bar 04 APR 2023 Tempe, AZ (US) Yucca Tap Room 05 APR 2023 Albuquerque, NM (US) Moonlight Lounge 07 APR 2023 Denver, CO (US) Skylark Lounge 08 APR 2023 Salt Lake City, UT (US) Aces High Saloon 09 APR 2023 Boise, ID (US) The Shredder
Right off the back of a 6 month world tour the Berlin-based, atmospheric post-metal juggernaut The Ocean (Collective) returns with the new single ‘Preboreal’, the band’s first new music since the critically acclaimed Phanerozoic double album.
The band from Berlin brings its restless exploration of our troubled nature close to home. ‘Preboreal’ opens with haunting synths, shimmering vibraphones and beckoning horn-sections. Purposely building towards an explosive finale lamenting the loss of our critical faculties, The Ocean deliver a striking mirror of our souls.
Voice of the Unheard/Shove Records – 10th January 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
Italian / Swedish post-metal sextuplet Ropes Inside A Hole follow up their 2019 debut Autumnalia with an album that’s expansive, mellow, and melodic. I do often wonder just how much separation there is between the softer end of post-metal and the chunkier end of post-rock, and after years of straining my ears, I’m no closer to an answer. And So I Watch You From Afar are categorised as post-rock, but pack more riffs than a lot off post-metal. Than again, Pelican bring the riffs, but they’re balanced by so much space and texture, it doesn’t feel particularly metal.
Ropes Inside A Hole balance riffs and space, there’s no question of that, and it’s hard to really say if those riffs are rock or metal or anything really. What there can be no dispute about is the fact that those riffs are immense – as is the album as a whole. The six tracks are expansive to say the least: the shortest, ‘Overwhelmed’, is over five minutes long, and of the rest, four are well over seven-and-a-half minutes in duration. They really know how to conjure a soundscape, and A Man And His Nature is a rich and detailed work that is remarkably nuanced and at the same time intensely forceful. When the riffs hit, they hit alright, although for my money they sit more with the sustained crescendos common to many post-rock works, without the serrated bite of anything metal.
But does genre mater even remotely, especially when the music is this good? A Man And His Nature is a vast and ambitious set that really pushes the parameters.
‘Others Are Gone. I Don’t Care’ drifts along and chimes tunefully to begin, but when the distortion pedals hit and everything flares up so the band are firing on all cylinders and rocking it to eleven, it’s a thick, middy welter of noise that blasts from the speakers. The drums become muffled beneath it all, and the sense of volume is immense.
‘Loss and Grief’ introduces vocals, and in keeping with the title, they sound plaintive and lost, before ‘Feet in the Swamp, Gaze to the Sky’ brings – quite unexpectedly – a more jazzy vibe, and not just on account of the woodwind – specifically sax – sounds that breeze in and float around over the jangling guitar and loping drums, but also with the loose composition and rolling beats. Its mellow but it’s tense, too, and this is perhaps the most accurate summary of the album overall.
According to the band, the album was ‘Written during the pandemic and the global lockdown… [and] deals with feelings of isolation, doubt, nostalgia, fear and anger and also marks a shift in the band’s sound towards a more introspective approach materialized by the use of acoustic guitars, cello, violin and saxophone that contrasts perfectly with the more aggressive and heavy side of the band.’
All sides of the band are equally represented on A Man And His Nature. But the thing is, isolation is not something that seems to have really dissipated post-lockdown – because it was always there, and always will be. The pandemic only heightened underlying anxieties, and in some respects, were yet to fully leave lockdown and reclaim the lives we had before. It’s not simply that we’re still quaking and feeling insecure; many of us simply can’t afford to live the lives we had before, to gad bout by train, to visit people and places like we used to – assuming those people and places still exist.
The closer, ‘Time to Sleep’ begins as a beautifully simple acoustic song, and it builds through a series of transitions to hit peak crescendo and it maintains a sustained peak propelled by powerhouse percussion from around the mid-point of its immense eight minutes. It’s a truly glorious finale to an outstanding album.
US post-metal trio Girih have recently shared a music video for ‘The Key’, a new song off their forthcoming second album Ikigai, due out on vinyl and digital formats on October 14th via A Thousand Arms and dunk!records!
Filmed by gotdamnjoshua and Brad Griffin and edited by Brian Luttrell, this video was captured at local show in their hometown Manchester, NH and is now playing here:
Named after the Japanese conceptual philosophy of finding purpose and fulfilment, the eight-track release was recorded at Wachusett Recording Co. by Girih and Mike Moschetto, who also engineered and mixed the album, and was mastered by Zach Weeks.
Girih formed in 2016 in New Hampshire and released their debut album Eigengrau in 2018, which was met with great critically acclaim and allowed them to play numerous shows throughout their local scene, including a slot in 2019’s Post Festival.
Comprised of Alex Paul (guitar), Brian Luttrell (guitar) and Jeremy Dingman (drums), Girih made significant strides towards to improve and evolve their sound and new effort Ikigai is not merely a continuation of their impressive capabilities; it is an evolutionary progression in every tangible facet of their artistry.
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!
Russian Circles have just released the audio for new song ‘Betrayal’. Perhaps the heaviest song on the album, ‘Betrayal’ is a five-minute unmitigated assault and follows the first single ‘Conduit’. Both tracks show how the Chicago stalwarts have created their most fuming and focused work to date – an album that favours the exorcism of two years’ worth of tension over the melancholy and restraint that often coloured their past endeavours.
Forthcoming full length Gnosis eschews the varied terrain of those past works by employing a new song writing technique. Rather than crafting songs out of fragmented ideas in the practice room, full songs were written and recorded independently before being shared with other members, so that their initial vision was retained. While these demos spanned the full breadth of the band’s varied styles, the more cinematic compositions were ultimately excised in favour of the physically cathartic pieces.
Gnosis is arriving via Sargent House on 19th August.
Listen to ‘Betrayal’ here:
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RUSSIAN CIRCLES N. AMERICA TOUR 2022
Sep 15 Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line
Sep 17 Denver, CO – Gothic
Sep 18 Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge
Sep 20 Seattle, WA – Croc Showroom
Sep 21 Portland, OR – Revolution Hall
Sep 23 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
Sep 24 Felton, CA – Felton Music Hall
Sep 25 Los Angeles, CA – The Regent
Sep 26 Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom
Sep 29 Austin, TX – Empire Garage
Sep 30 Dallas, TX – Amplified Live
Oct 01 Memphis, TN – Growlers
Oct 27 St. Louis, MO – Delmar Hall
Oct 28 Louisville, KY – Headliner’s
Oct 29 Atlanta, GA – Terminal West
Oct 30 Orlando, FL – The Social
Nov 01 Asheville, NC – Grey Eagle
Nov 02 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle
Nov 04 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
Nov 05 Philadelphia, PA – World Cafe Live
Nov 06 Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw
Nov 08 Boston, MA – The Sinclair
Nov 09 Montreal, QC – Theatre Fairmount
Nov 10 Toronto, ON – Opera
Nov 11 Detroit, MI – El Club
Nov 12 Chicago, IL – Metro
RUSSIAN CIRCLES EU TOUR 2023 (Co Headline w/ Cult Of Luna)
“The Earth moves whilst the Giant slumbers. The Wind will turn, and he will awaken from his Crypt of rebirth. With every breath he takes, humanity’s fate falls deeper into decaying light. WE ARE GOZER.”
Are they gods? Probably not. An unholy trinity perhaps…. and their new single is good…
GOZER is formed from the ashes of post-Metal project ARCHELON. Craig & TJ founded the band in 2013, which shifted and changed in lineup many times until Kieran of Bruxism joined on Bass. After many years of venturing through the vast scope of heavy music and experimental sound, they have come together and changed face to take their art to new horizons, but with same unerring drive and passion. Settling back into their origins as a Triad, they move forward renewed and unchained.
Their approach to sound is grounded in a uniquely hypnotic aggression. Slow grinding riffs and experimental sound moving through a nightmare-scape of tribal drums and claustrophobic density that mirrors the darkest corners of our minds, as demonstrated on new single ‘Augur’. Guitarist/vocalist Craig Paul states, “’Augur’ is a track that came very naturally in the writing process. It grew almost as its own entity. The addition of Viola, played by Richard Spencer (Ba’al), brought out the hidden melodies that exist within its droning chord structures beautifully. I’m particularly proud of how this one came together. Lyrically it is about our hopes and fears of the future. We are constantly bombarded with the idea that life will be better, and that our desires will be fulfilled if we just hold hope, meanwhile being told what it is we should desire and hope for."
Watch the video for ‘Augur’ here:
AA
New album An Endless Static was written and produced in the final hours of ARCHELON’s existence. Recording took place during the turbulent and challenging times brought on by the Corona Virus Pandemic, which had its hand in shifting the sounds of the album and solidified the desire for change felt by the members of what would become GOZER. It tells the story of our struggles with mental health as we are haunted by our own thoughts. It is an expression rooted in the war with suppression and inequality at the hands of the self-appointed ‘elite’. An exercise in exploration with the desire that the listener may find their own catharsis buried within the noise.
GOZER has teamed up with Trepanation Recordings for the release of CD, Tape and Digital Download versions of the album. An Endless Static will be released on 17th June.
“As individuals we are touched by different struggles in our mental wellbeing, but one thing we agree on is that it’s like never ending noise that forms a constant sense of dread and discomfort. For us, coming together and creating art and music offers a respite from the daily trials and tribulations, drowning it out with our own expression and the expenditure of creative energies. The world we live in is designed to suppress those who don’t fit in the views of those who claim themselves in power, and the more power they gain, the louder the noise becomes. We align ourselves with those who deserve to have their voices heard and have been silenced for too long, and within all the internal disparity and discourse felt by those who are different, we hope they would find the same respite we feel in the music we have created.”
Seattle, WA’s Museum of Light just dropped ‘Drug School’ the second single off the band’s debut album Horizon, scheduled for release on June 10th, and recorded with Kowloon Walled City’s Scott Evans (Thrice, Heiress, Thou, Sleep).
Limited edition vinyl pre-orders for the album are currently available at spartanrecords.com and include an instant download of the single.
Listen to ‘Drug School’ here:
On Horizon the trio (which notably includes Rob Smith of Traindodge fame on drums) expertly balances the opposing worlds of heavy and ambient music; Equal parts big, crushing, overwhelmingly heavy riffs and dreamy, Zen-like washes of ambience and found sound.
Guitarist/vocalist Ted Alvarez explains, "Those would seem to be incompatible, but the more we played, the more we realized those two things could mesh, and could be incredibly appealing to us. For us, both are coming from places of joy, pleasure, and serenity as opposed to anger or rage. Don’t get us wrong — there’s plenty of wonderful aggressive music that comes from those places. But there sure is a lot of it already. This stuff should be a release to listen to and certainly to play, and that’s ultimately a positive vibe."
Smith adds, "We are massive fans of complexity and wonderfully dense and abstruse music, and I think there are some surprising ways in which that sneaks out. But we placed that immediacy at the forefront."
Horizon was recorded at Sharkbite Studios and Anti-Sleep Studios in Oakland, CA with Kowloon Walled City’s Scott Evans (Thrice, Heiress, Thou, Sleep).
It’s an auspicious date to release an album, perhaps, but there is absolutely nothing jovial, mirthsome, or bantery about this new offering from GGGOLDDD, as the accompanying notes to ‘the band’s most ambitious and masterful work to date’ explain: This Shame Should Not Be Mine was conceived in the silence of 2020’s pandemic lockdown, partly as a way for GGGOLDDD lead singer Milena Eva to confront parts of her past and partly in response to the Roadburn Festival’s invitation to propose a commissioned piece for its 2021 online edition. As Milena expands, ‘While the album tells the story of my personal experience with sexual assault, the most recent song ‘Notes On How To Trust’ is about learning how to trust again after such trauma. When every boundary is blurry and every person you meet is a possible risk, it’s a challenge to keep sane.’
I’ve purposefully avoided other reviews so as to prevent the risk of them colouring my own, and also, and not least of all, because I’m acutely aware of how easy it is to applaud the bravery of tackling such a difficult personal subject in song, and even more so to place that traumatic experience at the very front and centre of an album in such a direct, uncompromising way. But perhaps bravery isn’t what this is about: more that This Shame Should Not Be Mine is a work of compulsion, and an essential part of processing. It’s not uncommon for writers and musicians to place their innermost throughs on paper, and it’s absolutely not about attention seeking. It’s simply the only way to make sense of things, and once on paper, those horrors are somehow neutralised in some way: as if by seeing the words on the page, it’s no longer ‘yours’ so much as something that simply ‘is’. There’s no doubt a substantial body of writing on the psychology of this that I haven’t discovered, but that’s for another time and another forum.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there’s a lot of anger channelled through This Shame Should Not Be Mine. It’s directed both inwards and out, and it manifests in both the lyrics and vocal delivery, and is matched by the music, with sharp blasts of raging noise. Elsewhere, we find immense power chords blasting into the abyss, post-rock / post-metal crescendos surging skyward, not in exultation but in surrender and cathartic escape.
‘I Wish I was a Wild Thing with a Simple Heart’ pitches Minela’s almost blank, crystalline vocal against a low, monotonous thrum that builds and bursts into a multi-layered, multifaceted bloom with all shades of extraneous noise and torment crashing into the climax to the most nightmarish effect. There’s something palpable in the anxiety of those final seconds that see something of grace and elegance tear apart in an instant.
Minela escorts the listener through an internal monologue that finds her replaying the scene over and over from different angles, different perspectives, different emotional standpoints.
‘I wanted to be loved / like everybody else / I wanted to be beautiful’ she sings wistfully at the start of ‘Strawberry Supper’. On ‘Spring’, she sings in a steely tone, ‘I want the smell to leave me / I want to shower till my skin comes off / I didn’t see it coming / I didn’t think that I would be this quiet’. ‘I should not let it define me in any way / but it’s easier said than done’. Through these reflections, the picture builds in its fullness. But this is not for our benefit: it is not an explanation, a justification. We are simply being granted access. ‘Comfort comes from the weirdest places’, she muses on ‘Invisible’ which warps into MBV-like shoegaze then stammers with machine-gun-like drumming into a more techno passage. If the music and its extreme dynamics strike as bordering on schizophrenic, it’s entirely appropriate in the way it follows the unpredictable swings in mood and perspective. And yet it all fits and flows perfectly: for all the angst, for all the channelling, for all the raw emotion, This Shame Should Not Be Mine is an outstanding album, and outstanding because it has truly outstanding songs. Every one is simply breathtaking in its power and intensity. The aching fragility of the slow-burning piano-led ‘I Won’t Let You Down’ simply leaves you stunned. The aforementioned ‘Notes on How to Trust’ calls to mind Cranes, but in collision with Nine Inch Nails and Daughters. It’s beautiful, majestic, but also painful and desolate. The title track, sparse, minimal, is so incredibly potent, as Milena finally delivers the conclusion that ‘This shame should not be mine’. It’s powerful, and her delivery sends a shiver down the spine.
An emotional and sonic rollercoaster, This Shame Should Not Be Mine is one hell of an album: hard-hitting on every level, it’s one best absorbed while sitting down and with a large vodka to steady the nerves.
Aural Aggravation 