Posts Tagged ‘Post-Punk’

Abrasive Trees unveil ‘Mill Session’ short film featuring new songs

Posted: 26 December 2023 in Previews and Editorial, Recommended Streams and Videos
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Totnes-scene post-rock/post-punk band Abrasive Trees, who have become regular features on the pages of Aural Aggravation, have announced the premiere of their latest work, ‘Mill Session’ – a short film featuring new songs, interview material and spellbinding visual art, all filmed within an ancient mill.

The five-piece, which includes Matthew Rochford and Ben Roberts from Bella Union project Silver Moth worked with a team of local professionals and producer Pete Fletcher from the Isle of Lewis to produce the 20-minute video which features two unreleased tracks ‘Star Sapphire’ and ‘Tao To Earth’.

As well as the new music there’s also a live version of the previously released ‘Kali Sends Sunflowers’ and interview material sprinkled through the film – guided by music journalist Andy Hill.

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Visual artist Jess Wooller’s work has also been used throughout to produce a solid document of the band’s current creative direction. Filmed in a centuries-old mill in Totnes, the video was crowd-funded by fans of the band from several countries including Scotland, France, Belgium, and Germany.

Matthew said of the film: “We’d aspired to create this film after meeting earlier this year to discuss what we could and couldn’t do – given our commitments to all of our other creative projects. We had considered going into a recording studio but decided to do something completely different and release some of our new material in this way. Somehow it all came together with the right people at the right time and the right place. We received financial and practical backing from the Abrasive Trees community – so it’s a genuinely crowdfunded project”.

It’s an ambitious project from a musically ambitious band, and you can watch it here:

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Cold in Berlin – The Body is the Wound EP

Posted: 19 December 2023 in Singles and EPs
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New Heavy Sounds – 19th January 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Cold in Berlin’s latest project, The Wounds looks to see the band scaling new heights of ambition, being a multi-record work consisting of an EP, The Body is the Wound, and an album, due in 2024, and promises ‘a musical vade mecum of what is to come in a fresh era for the band.’

I was gripped by Cold in Berlin from day one, on the release of their White Horse EP, a tense and intense burst of spiky goth which was razor-sharp and raging, bringing a zippy electro element to jagged guitars and a vocal that drew clear influence from Siouxsie and Skeletal Family. I must have conveyed my excitement pretty well, since my review is quoted on the BandCamp for the release, some twelve years on. Their debut album, Give Me Walls, still stands as a latter-day goth / post-punk classic.

Over the course of three further albums, the band have further defined and refined their style, becoming doomier, darker, heavier, but still with a clear commitment to concise and focused songwriting, proving that doom doesn’t have to be all about formless seven-minute dirges. I’m a fan of formless seven-minute dirges, but variety is the spice of life, and Cold in Berlin are one of those rare acts who’ve succeeded in creating their own niche in not one, but two crowded genre spaces.

Two of the EP’s four tracks have already been released as digital singles, both accompanied by visually striking videos. It so happens they’re the first two tracks on the EP, and they’ve been released in the order they appear. But the rest of the EP is absolutely on a par.

As the band write, ‘The lyrical themes dance around sex, murder, suicide and broken dreams, brought together in loose storytelling that allows listeners to add their own experiences and bring personal meaning.’ The words only begin to emerge after a few listens, after you’ve shaken your head clear from the initial impact. It’s a proper punch in the face, a full-force kick in the eye. The Body is the Wound packs four songs of equal quality back to back, and is as strong a document of the band’s work that they’ve laid down to date.

‘Dream One’ is a towering monolith which combines pulverising power chords with stark, icy vocals, and the effect is spine-tingling. Maya’s vocals have never sounded more powerful, more commanding than here. Then again, ‘Spotlight’, which slows the pace and amplifies the weight matches it, while emphasising the band’s doom leanings. It’s some heavy shit, alright, and hits with a punishing intensity.

The cuts which haven’t yet been unveiled are every bit as strong as those which have. ‘When Did You See Her Last’ twists stark synths and gothy guitars behind a chilling set of lyrics – the most spine-chilling I’ve encountered since ‘Shooting Dennis Hopper Shooting’ by The Twilight Sad.

To describe the final cut, ‘Found Out’, as ‘poppy’ might be slightly misleading, but it’s a question of context. There’s some stealthy picked reverby guitar that’s pure 1985 goth that laces the verses with some fine texture before the thunderous chorus blasts in on a tidal wave of distortion. And in some ways, it very much recalls their earlier works, only thicker, denser, more driving, more powerful on the riff front, and they deliver all-out epic compressed into less than five and a half minutes.

Not only is there not one remotely lesser track on this EP, but it’s consistent and utterly relentless from beginning to end: no breathers, no ballads, no instrumental interludes. In short, The Body is the Wound is an utter blinder and absolutely blistering, and if the album is half as good, it’ll still be their best yet.

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Watch: ‘Hollowed’ by Velcros

Posted: 23 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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No words needed: just check it.

Watch: ‘No Justice’ by Orcus Nullify

Posted: 20 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Orcus Nullify has just unveiled their highly-anticipated new full-length album, Creatures Of The Wheel.

The new LP was influenced by the current of darkness running blatantly through the United States’ politics. This has brought with it a blood red flood of gun violence, inequality and cultural warfare.

Society’s eyes are closed tightly shut as it votes in well-branded neo-fascism. This blindness is an abandonment of a government for and of its people. There is indifference and lack of respect towards our fellow man. There’s a struggle between environmental policy and greed. It’s a short, dark road we’re on.

As a taster, they’ve released a video for the track ‘No Justice’, and a song that’s brimming with early 80s UK goth vibes. Watch the video here:

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Orcus Nullify is mainly a solo project of Bruce Nullify. Bruce is a multi-instrumentalist that has been creating music under this name since 2012.

Bruce had his start in the mid eighties, playing bass for a  hardcore band, Birth of a New Generation (BONG). During this time, Bruce was fortunate enough to open for acts like 7 Seconds, Agnostic Front and Gang Green. He then played guitar and performed vocals for a few other local bands in Central Florida.

After almost a fifteen year hiatus from music, Bruce returns with the band name Orcus Nullify – a name that he created for a previous band back in the 90s.

Despite his youth, Bruce had been hurt, seen people hurt and hurt others deeply. He saw that lies were very powerful and evil – something to be destroyed. Orcus is a mythological Roman god, specifically, the punisher of broken oaths. Orcus Nullify is the weapon which destroys lies and takes revenge for the oppressed.

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Neon Funeral – Banned From The Goth Club

Posted: 9 November 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Cleopatra Records – 8th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The goth crowd are an odd bunch. Like many subcultures, there’s a strong tribalism ingrained among them, and not even simply the older adherents or trad goths. There’s a perplexing contradiction here, in that a subculture born out of a broad church of outsiders should be so defensive and exclusive, even antagonistic towards those outside their club, while at the same time many are the most broad-minded and accommodating people you could encounter. I suspect the less accommodating are keen to protect their thing from people who aren’t really into it. Casuals, weekend goths, emos and metallers who misrepresent what it is to be goth… yeah, there’s a logic to not want to be tarred with the same mascara brush as some.

In my experience, some goth gigs – and I have been to many, although can’t claim to have been ‘there’ in the early 80s when it was all starting out because I simply wasn’t of an age – do seem to attract more than their share of ‘gother than thou’ posers, and while my collection is very heavy on vintage goth records (and CDs) and my wardrobe is 90% black (as Andrew Eldritch once quipped, and I paraphrase, it saves on laundry), I’ve always felt that I’m not goth enough for the weekend tribal gatherings in Whitby.

This is all to say that I get where Neon Funeral are coming from with this release. The New Jersey-based darkwave/post-punk band, are on Cleopatra Records, which has some pretty strong goth credentials. But then no doubt there will be British goths who will say that it’s an American label and the Americans don’t really ‘get’ goth and created their own strain and yadda yadda yadda.

As the blurbage explains, ‘The EP’s theme is based upon the band feeling alienated from the goth scene. The name of the EP, Banned From The Goth Club was given because of the band’s challenge in finding their audience given their contradictory sound.

The band states, “The goth audience can’t exactly get fully immersed into the music because of the aggression and intensity of the vocals and the hardcore scene can’t exactly understand the softer and dance-driven instrumentals for moshing. We once performed at a goth venue and seemed out of place and out of touch with the audience. We then coined the phrase ‘Banned From The Goth Club’ to welcome the eclectic sound and introduce it playfully.” As is to accentuate this point, the last track on the EP is a cover of Eddie Murphy’s 80s foray into music-making, ‘Party All The Time’.

‘A Void’ is probably too synthy for the traditionalists who like their guitars, trebly and drenched in chorus – but then the switch to gritty, snarling vocals are too metal for the darkwave fans. Of course, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but what do you do when the people are ultra-picky and pedantic? In the words of Valor Kand – fuck ‘em! It’s a cracking tune, dreamy on the surface but with a heavy dash of nightmare in there. On ‘Avolition’, the heavy synths and hyperactive programmed drumming, melded to solid bass and overlaid with theatrical vocals bring all the ingredients of 90s goth as represented by the likes of Suspiria and the Nightbreed Roster (although thankfully not Every New Dead Ghost). ‘High Tech Low Life’ is short – a mere two minutes and fifty seconds – and gloomy, a droning, drifting synth that lands between Faith era Cure and New Order circa Movement, but with some roaring metal vocals, before it skips into something that’s more like The Mission on crack and fronted by Carl McCoy. All to often, hearing the popular elements of goth being jigsawed together is a bit of a yawn, but it would be way off to describe this as derivative. With its harder edge, Banned From The Goth Club isn’t going to appeal to a large portion of the crowd, particularly the trads and the purists, and it’s not one for the dreamwave, darkwave, or cybergoths either. But for anyone who isn’t set on genre limitations, and with ears, and who likes it dark and a shade gnarly, this is a winner.

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Watch: ‘Going Numb’ by Mekong

Posted: 8 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Polish post-punk/darkwave band, Mekong has just unveiled the first single from their upcoming album, Danse Danse.

In ‘Going Numb’, the hypnotic fusion of post-punk and dark-wave weaves a haunting tale of a girl’s last night out. The dance floor becomes her sanctuary one final time. Amidst the pulsating beats and disco-inspired rhythm, she embraces the numbness, surrendering to the melancholic melodies that guide her through a poignant journey.

The song encapsulates her bittersweet dance, capturing the raw emotions of her final moments before the inevitable darkness descends.

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Distance H – Intimacy EP

Posted: 7 November 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

It’s a common issue for artists, even those with labels, that a release simply fails to gain traction. There are myriad reasons and multiple factors, and it’s often a combination of them which contrive to leave a release sunk like a stone, dead in the water. It’s rarely a question of quality. Even A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’ and ‘West End Girls’ by the pet Shop Boys took more than one attempt to break through, despite major label backing at a time when labels would plough absolutely hods of cash into new artists.

Sometimes it’s simply a question of timing: some weeks and months there’s a glut of major releases or releases that otherwise grab the attention that mean some great records slip through the cracks. This month is a classic example, and it seems there are at least half a dozen truly killer releases all landing on the 10th. I can’t even listen to them all, let alone write about them.

And so it seems to have been the case when Distance H dropped debut EP Intimacy a few months ago. The single cuts released in advance of this EP grabbed my attention, not least the first, ‘Bitch 16’, featuring Ophelia from Saigon Blue Rain. In fact, there wasn’t a weak selection among the three singles: ‘Waters of Woe’ by Distance H feat. Marita Volodina was – and remains, as I described it at the time – ‘vintage goth with a contemporary spin’ and ‘a cracking tune’.

But having failed to make a splash, Intimacy is getting a PR reboot, and it’s a good thing, because the tracks which didn’t get single releases a year ago or whenever, are just as strong, and this makes for a full and founded EP. Casting an eye back to the 80s and 90s when big bucks were doing the rounds, it was often the case that albums would depend on a strong single or two, and that those singles would stand as beacons in set of mediocre slop, or, as was often the case, indulgent turd. It’s rather harder to get away with that ‘lead single’ marketing approach now people can stream the album or hear to by other means in advance without needing to go and check out a listening booth or blag it off your mate.

But Intimacy is truly all killer. ‘Twilight’ is a big, sweeping slab of majestic melancholy, balancing cool synths and chiming guitars that lean on Disintegration era Cure and sits nicely alongside The Twilight Sad circa Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave. It’s a song with a sadness that aches, but at the same time, there’s an ethereal majesty about it, due in no small part to the sweeping, soaring vocals. The epically multi-faceted ‘Waters of Woe’ we’ve already raved about here, but hearing it afresh in the context of the EP, it seems to gain power. The same if true of ‘Reasons to Rush’ which features Liset Alea, combining heavy goth vibes with the electric rush of 90s alternative acts like Curve.

The final track, the epic six-minute ‘Leaden Sky’ now selected to lead the reboot, again features Ophelia on vocals. It’s another gothy epic, clocking in at over six minutes, with a bulbous bass and a wash of echo-soaked guitars weaving a richly textured backdrop cut through with programmed drums which punch out a rolling rhythm. In the context of the EP, it rounds off a big journey ending as it begins, while stepping through some memorable terrain. For these collaborative cuts, Manu H has made some truly immaculate selections. Each of the vocalists brings a subtle but essential twist to the sound, and while tied tightly to the templates of his stated influences (The Cure, Joy Division, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Cocteau Twins, The Sisters of Mercy or The Chameleons), Intimacy sees Distance H emerge victorious by capturing the atmospheric aspects of his forebears without falling to cliché, and the quality of the songs seals it.

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Watch: ‘Bleak’ by Deadset

Posted: 7 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Deadset were formed just last year, originally a product of guitarist James Massey and vocalist Sam Mellors, who discovered a genuine bond over writing together. Their sound was moulded into a more claustrophobic, gritty and tense direction when bassist Adam Arnold and drummer Rio Campbell joined, taking the classic indie sensibilities of the two original members into harsher new territories.

Deadset truly came to life when the band wrote as a group and embraced each other’s musical preferences, their influences now relying to an extent on alternative 80s and 90s bands. Influences being taken from bands such as New Order, Fontaines DC and Interpol. Striving to be ever more progressive and unique, the band’s live sound is renowned for fluctuating between genres. Chorus laden and loaded with fuzz and grit.

New Deadset single ‘Bleak’ encapsulates why Deadset is a band and what they want to achieve from it. The track, which was produced by Pat Pretorius (The Talks, Life, Counting Coins) and mastered by Howie Weinberg (Nirvana, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Daft Punk), really feels like it is humming with the anxiety and fever that everyone feels around Hull. It’s both a commentary on what they see and how they feel, looking at the social issues the band see in the area and how that’s impacted and twisted their lives. ‘We all want something to believe in’ is a feeling that resides in every member of Deadset. All feeling at times as if they’re stuck in a rut. Deadset being their opportunity to escape that rut.

“There’s a really prevalent mutual feeling about the area we all live in. Its rife with boredom and it feels like everyone’s stuck in mundane, monotonous cycles here”, says Sam Mellors. “Most people fall into traps of binge drinking or substance abuse to get away from it. It’s really hard not to fall into that trap when there’s genuinely nothing else to do. There’s still a great community of people here, everyone trying to make it a special place and it will always be a special place to us. But it’s still difficult to get away from the fact a lot of people are struggling”, he further explains. “Deadset became a band because we wanted to escape that cycle, dream of something better and create new horizons for ourselves. It’s our own escape from the depressing reality around here”, adds Adam Arnold.

‘Bleak’ is out now via Man Demolish Records.

Watch the video for ‘Bleak’ here:

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Watch: ‘About The End Of The World (FULL ALBUM – Official Music Video Saga)’ by Darkplace

Posted: 27 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Darkplace is a mysterious new Swedish dark dream pop/post-punk group whose just released debut album, ‘About The End Of The World’, is a conceptual work inspired by the bleak landscape of the Stockholm suburbs that birthed them.

Centred around an alternative reality – or is it just a grim present and future? – the album has been unveiled gradually via a series of videos based on animated digital paintings for several of its tracks.

Four singles have been issued ahead of the album, with the introductory ‘Arken över Hesselby’ (The Ark Over Hesselby) presenting the outskirts of a city haunted by an unknown aerial presence. Its follow-up, ‘Fearmonger’, offered an apocalyptic scenario with sirens wailing and a lone soldier fleeing the prying ‘eye in the sky’ of a mysterious airship. The third, ‘Cars’, was the first to feature vocals and saw the story move on to a man travelling north following cryptic messages written on motorway signs. ‘This Is Loud’ saw the plot thicken and bring the story full circle…back to the beginning and Hesselby…with another stunning visual to accompany it.
A video for the track ‘The End’ has been made available to celebrate the release of the album and can be seen HERE. The band cryptically comment that “when the Monuments switch on you can taste metal and your ears pop. Working from home became vital for people who lived close to them. GPS’ seem slightly off. Is it because of interference from them? My regular walks also seem to differ in distance.”

A 25 minute video for the full album can be seen here:

Although rooted in late 80s/early 90s indie styles, Darkplace incorporate a variety of other genres into their sound. However, for the members of this highly secretive group, it is not just about the music. They perceive themselves as more an art project that happens to be exploring and commenting on the state of the world through their chosen mediums of music and video.

The majority of the tracks on the album are short instrumentals that were written with specific storyboards in mind, with the group revealing that: "We started creating the art before we had the music in most cases, so the tracks were written as soundtracks to the animation.”

The art itself is a multi-layered process that involves photography, sculpting, oil painting, digital editing and animation. Using apps like Nomad Sculpt to create it before exporting scene specific angles and imported into Procreate to be painted, they add: “we use oil paintbrushes and paint over the photo. It is layers upon layers and it gets messy. Exporting gets even messier since we want depth in the scenes and need to export them in layered depths. A few scenes in this project have been animated frame by frame and it has taken almost two years to complete.”

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Watch: ‘Werewolves’ by Sky Lions

Posted: 26 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Portland post-punk alt-rockers SKY LIONS presents ‘Werewolves’, a wild offering from their debut album Inside The Circle. The duo is made up of Radio Sloan and Outer Stace, who over the years have performed with or as a part of Courtney Love’s band, Peaches’ band, Le Tigre, The Need, Time Bitch and Photona.

Sky Lions’ musical collaboration began in childhood, before they were aware of any rules. Outer Stace says, “’Werewolves’, in part, is about the idea of shifting from our outer selves to our inner selves, the fleeting peace that can bring; transformation and adaptation… So, the art direction possibilities were pretty endless. It was a lot of fun to create the different versions of ourselves that we could be.”

Watch the video here:

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“It’s like a metamorphic reality of death and the future. It feels like things we’ve seen,” says Radio Sloan. “Our sound is that of accepting existence for all its flaws. Sky Lions has a darkness that isn’t entirely heavy metal, post-punk or darkwave. Rather, it’s a culmination of who we have been, who we currently are, and how we interpret the world around us. Moving within that world is the core of our musical expression.”

From early days experimenting with instruments to their evolution into Sky Lions, they’ve carved a niche where innovation, music, feminism, Trans/queer identity and horror come together. Sky Lions weaves together the threads of life’s absurdity, unquestionable magic and tragedy. Their trans / queer / feminist lens adds a relatability of lives lived and times to come, creating an immersive sonic journey that challenges the mind and ears. Through genre-blurring compositions and evocative lyrics, they hope to channel their ethos into a call for transformation! They hope that their songs challenge stereotypes, and ignite conversation.

Sky Lions

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