Posts Tagged ‘religion’

The Battery Farm – O God

Posted: 26 July 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Rare Vitamin Records – 26th July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The accompanying blurb informs us that “‘O God’ is the 13th single from Manchester Doom Punks The Battery Farm’, and promises that ‘The single marks a bold expansion of the band’s signature Gutter Punk sound, adding elements of UK Garage and Metal to an already potent mix to create something dark, heavy, taut and unhinged.’

It’s quite phenomenal that they’ve racked up thirteen singles in what feels like a fairly short time. But this is a band who are absolutely driven, driven to make music and get it out there. They’ve grafted hard, and scoring increasingly high-profile support slots has done a lot in terms of reaching a wider audience, and it’s richly deserved. And I don’t mean it’s deserved simply because they’ve worked hard: they wouldn’t deserve it if they sucked! But they kick serious ass, and possess the one thing no amount of effort and luck or songwriting skill or musicianship can get you, and that’s authenticity. And with Rare Vitamin Records, they’ve found a label who are more than happy to provide a platform to their high-volume output, with this being the fifth single on the label (and it looks like the 7” has sold already, so hard luck vinyl enthusiasts, and CDs are running low already, too).

Unlike many acts from the punkier end of the spectrum, they’re by no means anti-intellectual, or given to base anti-establishment sloganeering (as my introduction to the band, ‘A Shropshire Lad’ abundantly evidenced. It’s a rare position they occupy, balancing poeticism and introversion, and deep reflection, with brute sonic force. On this front, ‘O God’ is exemplary.

As they explain, ‘O God explores the idea of being alone in a universe of chaos, with no guiding hand to stop you plummeting into a hell of someone else’s making. We always ask why, and we always search for meaning. ‘O God’ reflects starkly on the idea that there is no why and there is no meaning. Just one action leading to the next, merciless and unfeeling. Is that a thought infinitely more terrifying than the guidance of His healing hand? Or is it just life?’

The timing of this release couldn’t be better: half of America seems to be frothing at the mouth over the ‘divine intervention’ which saved Donald Trump from a sniper’s bullet just the other week, proclaiming that he has been ‘chosen by God’ to lead America and the world, while at the same time, the IDF continues to pulverise every inch of the Gaza Strip, reducing buildings to rubble under the pretext of revenge, of rescuing hostages, and eliminating terrorists. But ultimately, it’s about reclaiming land some see as having been God-given. And where is God in all this? He seems strangely silent, yet those of a certain mindset are absolutely convinced this is all God’s will. For those of us not of this mindset, it seems deranged, and that humanity is off the rails, and we live in disturbing, and truly terrifying times.

This renders the sentiment of ‘O God’ remarkably prescient.

It pairs a nagging, vaguely mathy, snaking bass groove with guitars that sounds like a bulldozer, atop which Benjamin Corry delivers a quivering, tremulous vocal in the verses, and then swings between menacing and absolutely bruising in the explosive choruses. It all adds up to a blindingly intense two-and-three-quarter minutes which conveys the complexities of internal conflict and existential anguish with a rare – and raw – power.

Flipside, the acoustic, ‘Find’ showcases a far gentler side of the band, and its intimate, tranquil feel is genuinely pleasant.

Once again – and again – The Battery Farm have excelled themselves and delivered something immensely powerful and uniquely their own.

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Watch: ‘FEARBOMB’ by Sea of Treachery

Posted: 8 June 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Ohio metal veterans Sea of Treachery, newly signed to Mutant League Records, are debuting ‘FEARBOMB,’ the second single which follows last month’s release of their label debut What’s Past Is Prologue.

Watch the video HERE:

Guitarist Christian McManama says, "Fear is a powerful motivator, and as a result it can sometimes lead to people doing the right things for the wrong reasons. FEARBOMB conceptually and lyrically is a meditation on both that notion, and how certain agents of the media and organized religion will drum up and capitalize upon people’s fears, doing their best to distill that emotion into something palpable that makes people feel more divided than we truly are."

Sea of Treachery’s summer tour with The Convalescence kicks off June 8th.

Tour Dates

6/8 – Toledo, OH @ Toledo Death Fest (w/Oceano)

6/10 – Fort Wayne, IN @ Pierre’s

6/11 – Des Moines, IA @ Lefty’s

6/12 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Bigs Bar Live

6/13 – Denver, CO @ The Rickhouse

6/15 – Jeffersonville, IN @ Wrong Side 812 (Knocked Loose Aftershow)

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Listen: ‘Delusion’ by Sodomisery

Posted: 20 July 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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We are living in troubled times and it is hardly surprising that this is reflected in any form of art including music. On Mazzaroth, SODOMISERY have spun a dark lyrical yarn about mental illness in society, religion, and the struggle of the individual, which is running like a red thread through their sophomore full-length. The Swedish melodic death four-piece are underlining their loosely conceptual approach with a remarkable musical evolution.

Check ‘Delusion’ here:

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SODOMISERY are expanding their original sound that combines the power and precision of death metal with the frenzied and cold aggression of black metal, and they have now added a layer of dramatic depth by including keyboards. It is hardly surprising that the Swedes, who are counting DIMMU BORGIR, CRADLE OF FILTH, and CHILDREN OF BODOM among their major sources of influence, came to steer towards such a course.

The band from Stockholm did not take this decision lightly. When all the new tracks were written and pre-produced, SODOMISERY decided to create two versions of the album. One mix included keyboards and orchestration, while the other version had no such additions. After an extensive period of deliberation and many listening sessions, the Swedes decided that the new dimension and cinematic feeling added by the keyboards was exactly what their songs needed.

The speed with which SODOMISERY expand and mature their sonic nature is breathtaking, particularly since the band was born out of a studio project originally envisioned by Stockholm based guitarist Harris Sopovic in 2015, who enlisted the help of NETHERBIRD frontman Johan Fridell, bass player Niklas Sandin (KATATONIA, LIK) and drummer Pär Johansson, who is best known for his work with CRAFT and DIABOLICAL This resulted in the eponymous 3-track EP "Sodomisery”, which was digitally released in 2017.
When the EP was heaped with massive praise, Sopovic recruited new members and decided to continue the band under the name SODOMISERY. Their debut album "The Great Demise" (2020) can be viewed as a deliberate statement of intent, not to blindly follow in the giant but also somewhat worn out footprints of the legendary Stockholm death metal scene. Instead, these Swedish newcomers favoured a more melodic and versatile approach.

In the short time period from their inception to the forthcoming second album, SODOMISERY have progressed by leaps and bounds and Mazzaroth is the audible proof of this bold statement!

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Watch: ‘Lock & Key’ by Feral Vices

Posted: 13 June 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Louisville KY alt-duo Feral Vices take on abusive religious systems on new single ‘Lock & Key’.

Lead vocalist and guitarist Alexander Hoagland says, “’Lock & Key’ is about the abusive religious systems that I think a lot of us grew up in where leaders were taking advantage of their positions for money, power, sex, or some combination of those. Being in that world, you’re taught that this is a blessing or that is a blessing when in reality you’re being taken advantage of and are forced to experience the evils of it alone because once you start tugging at the strings of that, the whole system falls apart. It’s a very hard and lonely place to be even though you’re surrounded by people and I think that makes it even harder to get out of or acknowledge the reality of. So, this song was my way of talking about that and processing it for myself.”

Watch the video here:

As a two-piece alternative rock band out of Louisville, KY, Feral Vices has created a sound and feel all their own. Drawing from influences ranging from Queens of the Stone Age to Refused to The Jesus Lizard and even The Dillinger Escape Plan, lead singer and guitarist Alexander Hoagland and drummer Justin Cottner bring a feel to the world of two-piece bands not yet well tread. Constantly touring and releasing new music, the prolific duo has earned spots on the stage with bands like Four Year Strong, Microwave, Save Face, and more. As well as having their song "Mass Produce Your Revolution" as the end credits to the Scott Adkins and Ray Stevenson film Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, Feral Vices is a band to keep an eye on.

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Photo: Riley Aaron (@imrileyaaron)

Herod – Iconoclast

Posted: 12 April 2023 in Albums
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Pelagic Records – 5th May 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

‘Biblical’ has become a byword for something tremendously large, epic, or of intense proportion, but also brutal and torturous and bloody. King Herod the Great is perhaps best known, not for his extensive construction projects, but for ordering the slaughter of the innocents: fearful of the threat of a ‘new king’, the story goes (although only according to Matthew) that he ordered the execution of all male children who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. The legend has inspired some pretty horrific depictions in art, from Duccio Di Buoninsegna to Reubens, and in context, Herod is an outstanding name for a metal band. And Herod live up to their name, too.

Iconoclast is a clear step on from Sombre Dessein, released in 2019. Back then, they were touting a ‘progressive sludge’ sound: in contrast, their lasts bio sees the band describe themselves as ‘atmospheric groove metal’.

“I’m obsessed with late 90’s Meshuggah, early Dillinger Escape Plan, and early Cult of Luna,” explains guitarist Pierre Carroz deftly about the influences behind the sound of his brainchild.

But for all the stylistic progression, thematically, they’re still squarely focused on the societal scourge of religion, as the title suggests, and it kicks off hard and heavy with ‘The Icon’, a barrelling, churning grind of dirty guitars which at the most unexpected moments switch tempo and gets tetchy and technical. Then, just shy of five minutes on, there are some clean, drawling vocals reminiscent of Alice in Chains – but disembodied, bent, it’s like Layne Staley is calling from the other side, and within just six minutes and a single track, Herod have slammed down a whole album’s worth of ideas.

The thematic thread is also apparent in the song titles, all of we which are ‘The…’ something. If imbues the album with a sense of being a book with the songs as chapters with corresponding titles which guide the way through a discursive exploration. Only, that discussion is a blast-out, a levelling by force.

There are eight tracks all, most well over the six-minute mark, and they blend sedated melodies with expansive guitar, raging, raw-throated vocals and thunderous percussion. There are slow, sedate passages, as on ‘The Girl with a Balloon’ which invite comparison to the earthy, low-tempo grit of Neurosis, and they really bring the weight when the riffs crash in. As much as the monolithic power chords dominate, the earth-shattering bass is absolutely essential to the sound.

‘The Ode to’ marks a significant shift in form, a resonantly vocal chorus scaling the heights and looking upwards to the heavens, a works of majesty that speaks to the ethereal and the eternal – but over the duration, the guitars harden and drive until the mid-point achieves a punishing plateau of distortion before returning to a mesmerising sway brimming with Eastern promise – before once again a landslide of guitars bring absolute devastation.

Herod get devastation, and get atmospheric, too. They get the merit of a melody, but tend to really delay gratification in favour of punishment before reward. Mostly, though, they get the power of punishment, and they mete out plenty of that over the course of fifty minutes. It’s a big fifty minutes, and it’s as heavy as fuck.

The nine-minute finale is heavily immersed in progressive sounds and styling, but when the crushing riffs blast in, all is well.

For all of the moments of levity and mindfulness, Iconoclast is everything fans – myself included – would want from Herod – snarling, churning riffs and roaring vocals, which combine to absolutely devastating effect. They’ve certainly evolved, but they’ve not lost sight of their sound, and have simply expanded it.

The resultant Iconoclast is an absolute monster.

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Watch: ‘Religious Soldier’ by SINthetik Messiah

Posted: 29 November 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Industrial bass act SINthetik Messiah has just unveiled their new single, ‘Religious Soldier’.

‘Religious Soldier’ is about exposing religious leaders for brainwashing, abusing their followers and specifically, how they want their flock to be ‘good soldiers’ in their own twisted version of what it means to serve God. Setting the tone of the new single, SINthetik Messiah’s ‘Religious Soldier’ features a recording of a fake priest performing a fake exorcism on a brainwashed woman.

The sonic hammer of sound behind ‘Religious Soldier’ draws musical inspiration from the hardcore drum and bass, power noise, EBM, and old school industrial music scenes. The main vocalist, Bug Gigabyte takes his vocals from a punk rock type scream to a full on male choir. Lyrically, he begs the audience to wake up and not fall into a cult.

This two-track EP precedes a full length album due out in 2022.

Check it here:

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Lingua Ignota – Sinner Get Ready

Posted: 26 July 2021 in Albums
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Sargent House – 6th August 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Here in England – and Britain, as elsewhere further afield – division is rife: views and positions have become increasingly polarised and entrenched in recent years, and man, it’s fucking ugly. From here, it’s perhaps difficult to appreciate just how much uglier it gets when fervent religiosity is added to the mix. And while the white, Christian west expends boundless energy vilifying Islam, much of this feels like so much hypocrisy. For a religion that officially preaches for its adherents to ‘love thy neighbour’, Christianity is prone to being particularly harsh and judgemental, and as the album’s title suggests, there is a strong element of Christian judgment at the heart of the songs here.

The press release describes Sinner Get Ready as ‘an abrasive, unsettling portrait of devotion and betrayal, judgment and consequence, set in the severe and derelict landscape of rural Pennsylvania, a neglected and interstitial region deeply embedded with a particularly austere brand of Christianity, and where Hayter currently lives.’ It goes on to explain: ‘The rigorous and almost procedural site-specificity reflects an obsession with externalizing that site as the locus of great personal pain – pain that is the Will of that region’s presiding God; an atonement for sin that only the blood of Jesus can cleanse’. There is a certain specificity about the songs collected here, but, as is so often the case, the personal radiates out to become the universal, and however specific the subject and inspiration on a personal level to the artist a work may be, true art resonates far beyond.

Sinner Get Ready is an album that proves, demonstrably, that you don’t need noise or volume to achieve levels of devastating intensity. It’s spectacularly simple, raw, and at the same time complex and layered, not least of all in the vocal arrangements, and also hits like a tsunami. Sinner Get Ready is an intensely spiritual work, but it’s also quite simply an intense work, and one that conveys the power of the word of the Lord, that conjures fire and brimstone and that forewarns sinners- and non-believers – what they can expect.

The album begins gently enough, with rolling piano and strong but melodic vocals, operatic and elevating. But it doesn’t take long before things grow dark and disturbing on the nine-minute opener, ‘The Order of Spiritual Virgins’. The delicate, ethereal, choral evocations are rent with crashing, violent blasts of piano – fist-smashing thunderousness. It hits hard.

There is something of the musical about this, at least in terms of there being a narrative thread and a sense of characterisation running through it. It’s certainly more than simply a collection of songs: there is a sense of sequence, of progression. ‘I Who Bend the Tall Grass’ is sparsely arranged around a soft organ drone, and over which Hayter’s vocal cracks and breaks with force and emotion, and harmony melts into warped dissonance. ‘He has to die! There is no other way!’ she barks, rough and raw, before an atonal chorus of voices and drones carry it away.

Contrastingly, ‘Many Hands’ is traditional folk with an element of roots American country. It’s also dolorous, painful, its many-layered beseeching vocal, and ‘The Sacred Linametnt of Judgement’ is similarly folky, with a rich earthiness that speaks of tradition and evokes bygone times. Yet, as ‘Repent Now Confess Now’ brings into sharp relief just how alive some of those traditions still are in certain places, and these aren’t just small pockets, but huge swathes, and while the deep south is most commonly associated with hardline Christianity, it’s a trait of many rural areas. It may be 2021, but fire and brimstone and divine retribution are still dominant in these places, and what may seem strange to an outsider – like the material for a Louis Theroux documentary – this shit is real, and people live and die by their beliefs. There are some well-selected, well-placed samples, too, which accentuate this.

The songs on here soar, but rage with intensity, trembling with the fear of God and the weight of judgement and the threat of punishment. It would be hard to hear Sinner Get Ready and not feel moved in some way or another.

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