Posts Tagged ‘Riff’

Watch: ‘Crows, Sparrows and Cats’ by Blacklab featuring Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier

Posted: 17 August 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Doom metal meets dreampop on ‘Crows, Sparrows and Cats’ by Blacklab, the self-proclaimed ‘Doom Witch Duo from Osaka, Japan’. Featuring a lead vocal by Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier, the Hawkwind riffs, motorik heavy stomp and fuzz fat guitars coupled with that cool pop vocal is a surprising combination that hits the spot.

Hot on its heels comes a new video, featuring Hanaka the thirteen year old daughter of Blacklab drummer Chia, who creates her own dance routine for the track whilst footage (from their recent stay in London) is projected ‘Liquid Len’ like, for full psychedelic overload.

Watch the video now:

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‘Crows, Sparrows and Cats’ is taken from their latest album ‘In A Bizarre Dream’ which is out this Friday (New Heavy Sounds).

Their debut ‘Under the Strawberry Moon 2.0’ saw them taking Sabbath inspired doom, mashing it with a Japanese sensibility and a fuzzed-up groove. It certainly caused a stir, but only hinted at their potential.

Album two ‘Abyss’ added to the mix. A Stooges like squalor to the riffs, dollops of lo-fi hardcore punk and loose riffing, pointing the way towards a signature sound.

So what of the ‘difficult’ third album? Not so difficult at all it seems.  ‘In A Bizarre Dream’ ups the ante considerably, to let rip and define what Blacklab are about.

The combined talents of Jun Morino on production and Wayne Adams (Big Lad, Green Lung, Pet Brick, John, Cold In Berlin) on the mix have conspired to produce a towering beast of a record. A real step forward for the ‘Doom Witch Duo’.

The drums have a humungous ‘Fugazi’ like welly, and the guitars are a boiling maelstrom of fuzz dense riffola and warped psychedelics, with added synth. Yuko’s throat shredding snarls are as mean as a pissed off Satan, and melodious, often within the same song.

This is doom meets hardcore punk, hooky melodies, and killer riffs, all cranked up to the max. Japan has always had a special take on ‘noise’ and ‘heavy’ and with ‘In A Bizarre Dream’ Blacklab add their own spin to that tradition.

Gone is the lo-fi approach, here is Blacklab in full effect.

EDIT MASTER

Aidan Baker – Tenebrist

Posted: 22 May 2022 in Albums
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Cruel Nature Records – 27th May 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Aidan Baker – classically-trained multi-instrumentalist from Toronto (now resident in Berlin), who specialises in electric guitar works – using treated and otherwise non-conventional playing methods – is an artist who I seemingly can’t escape from. His ever-shifting styles and labels may be as difficult to keep pace with as his ever-expanding catalogue, but it seems that whoever’s releasing his work, I’m on their mailing list. This is very much a good thing, as Baker is one of those artists who, despite – or perhaps because – of being impossible to pigeonhole, never disappoints.

Baker’s second release on Cruel Nature, following 2021’s Stimmt, marks something of a shift, from what the accompanying notes ‘was big on atmospherics and abstraction’ to a sound that ‘shoots a bullet straight into the heart of the riff and explodes it, in all its scorching white-out fuzzed-up glory’.

On listening to the album’s grunt and growl guitar assault, the specific meaning of the album’s title remains unclear: ‘tenebrous’ is either obscure, or murky, or otherwise causing gloom, while ‘tenebrism’ refers to ‘a style of painting especially associated with the Italian painter Caravaggio and his followers in which most of the figures are engulfed in shadow but some are dramatically illuminated by a beam of light usually from an identifiable source’. ‘Tenebrist’ seems to lack a specific definition. So is Baker casting himself in the role of an artist whose musical compositions follow in the shadow-casting tradition of Caravaggio, or is this a nod to obscurity, darkness, gloom?

It’s perhaps an amalgamation of all of the aforementioned meanings. The title track, which comes in two parts, lifts the curtain, with a heavy overloading trudge of massive distortion, the guitar too loud of the mics recording, while the drums plod, half-buried but strangely crisp and clear, down in the mix. Unexpectedly, I’m reminded of the production and mix of Moby’s Animal Rights, although the guitar here is much less trebly, angled instead toward the mid and lower ranges, with ‘Tenebrist II’ really plunging deep into psychedelic sludge. The speakers positive crackle with the thick distortion, wrapped in swathes of feedback.

‘Turgid’ is a crackling, buzzing, math-rock explosion: it’s busy and blistering, and somewhere towards the end, the sound thickens, become denser, darker, more abrasive, culminating in a spark-flying meltdown.

The blurb describes Tenebrist as ‘low-down and heavy, and serving up ‘swathes of grunge, pummelling the senses and scattering rhythms through its maximalist energy’, but this is an understatement that only goes so far in conveying the massive sonic impact. ‘Violet Contrast’ is missing an ‘n’: driven by thumping, thunderous drums in a mist of low, slow, smoggy synth drones, it builds gradually to a monumental, percussion-driven climax over the course of a sustained crescendo of drums on drums.

‘Dramatic Illumination’ – in two parts – seems to cast a nod to Caravaggio, and this thirteen-minute suite cuts a dark sonic furrow, as clattering percussion and drones of low, low frequency feedback moan in an avant-jazz mess of calamitous noise, whereby the entire song sounds like the slow wind-down at the end of a set. You wonder when and where it will end… but it doesn’t. Finally, on ‘Dramatic Illumination II,’ the guitar glides in, but it still feels like the end.

The eight-and-a-half-minute closer ‘Chiasroscurious’ is a culmination of the album’s journey; a shuddering, juddering, wall of noise that makes you momentarily think your stereo’s fucked and your speakers are knackered with it’s massively overloading distortion that’s absolutely ruinous, swelling to a sonic tsunami that redefines devastation.

Tenebrist hurts. It’s immense and devastating on every level. The volume hurts. It’s a beast, and exactly the exercise in punishment we all need.

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10 Gauge – Demons

Posted: 28 February 2022 in Singles and EPs
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4th March 2022

James Wells

Almost a year to the day (well, the week) after 10 Gauge announced their arrival with the release of ‘I’m Broken’, they return with ‘Demons’, which sees the Hereford quintet plunge deeper into thunderous hard rock territories, and do so with confidence and aplomb.

The oblique lyrics suggest the demons may be the kind you wrestle with in the mind rather than literal, physical ones racing around on trips up from the underworld, but perhaps ultimately the two are effectively the same thing – ugly and unpleasant, they torment and torture sadistically.

But ultimately, this single is all about the hefty riffery. Christ, it hits like a juggernaut, and lands like a punch to the solar plexus. It leaves you winded, but it’s also a rush. The guitars are thick and meaty and everything about the track evokes the spirit of Sabbath. Solid, heavy, old-school but with a contemporary slant, ‘Demons’ is an absolute beast.

Borderline Toxic – Mr Obsanity

Posted: 3 October 2021 in Singles and EPs
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17th October 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Sometimes, a track just slaps you round the face in just a matter of bars and it’s an instant grab. It’s not always possible to pinpoint what it is that’s got you by the throat in those mere seconds, but sometimes, it’s simply everything – and that’s the case for ‘Mr Obsanity’, the debut single, from London / Norway trio Borderline Toxic, who’ve come stumbling out of lockdown with all the rage and a new band on their hands, proving tat when it comes to creativity and collaboration, geography is no obstacle. If / when it comes to operating as a live unit, it may, but for now, let’s focus on the matter at hand – that of this release.

It tears from the speakers with a ball-bustingly weighty riff with grating distortion all over it. If the intro is pure sludge, then things fizz all the harder when the vocals arrive, all punky sass as they swipe hard at powerful figures who swing around casual misogyny racism like it’s ok – and it’s not.

‘Obsanity’ is one of those compound words – of which I am a fan, I have to admit – that had somehow bypassed me, and so I had to look it up to find that the definition, as noted way back in 2004, is ‘foul language uttered by an insane person’. And without naming names – just as the band don’t name names – the song’s targets are at best thinly veiled, but in rendering the lyrics non-explicit, they become applicable on a wider scale. It’s not just high profilers who this applies to: we all know at least one or two of these types in person, at work, on social media, and you find yourself thinking, shut up. I really don’t need to listen to this shit.

Settling into a lumbering groove, ‘Mr Obsanity’ really kicks ass, and we need more of this.

Borderline Toxic Artwork

Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard – Yn Ol I Annwn

Posted: 19 March 2019 in Albums
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New Heavy Sounds – 1st March 2019

Christopher Nosnibor

There aren’t many Welsh-language bands who’ve made much progress beyond the border: Catatonia only really broke through when they switched to English, and they were pedalling accessible indie-pop tunes, not pulverizingly heavy sludgy doom metal.

And so it seems very much against the odds, that the absurdly (and most certainly not mainstream-media-friendly-monikered) Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard broke into chart territory on the release of Yn Ol I Annwn (Welsh for ‘Return To The Underworld’) the third part of the trilogy of albums that began with Noeth Ac Anoeth in 2015 and 2017s Y Proffwyd Dwyll, and is pitched as ‘the final phase of the band’s first intergalactic voyage.’

And ‘intergalactic’ is a fitting description. The band’s intention was to move even further from the standard doom tropes without losing sight of their origins: this involves pulsating, gloopy synths and rippling waves which introduce the album, before a wibbling waft of retro-futuristic analogue wobbles give way to the album’s first megalithic lumbering riffage on ‘The Spaceships of Ezekiel’. It’s every bit as preposterously huge and epic as the title suggests; galactic and of biblical proportions, with fizzing lasers firing left, right, and centre, all framing Jess Balls dreamy, melodic, almost folksy vocals to create something that’s out of this world, but also has clear ties to vintage Hawkwindian space rock.

‘Fata Morgana’ pursues the folksy aspect further, and colours it with picked guitar that’s pure vintage gothy post-punk and wouldn’t sound out of place on a Sisters of Mercy record circa 1984/85 before the power-chords crash in at the mid-point – from which point it builds, and builds, to a sustained crescendo propelled by pounding percussion.

It’s all in the detail on Yn Ol I Annwn. For all the devastating grind, the ribcage-crushing, heart-stopping heaviness, there are layers and details that make it an album to listen to. The nuance doesn’t reduce the force, but simply makes this an album with more points of interest than your average in its field. The spiralling synth incidentals should sound corny but work incredibly well; it’s perhaps because it’s delivered with both conviction and panache, meaning MWWB rise above pretence to drive it home not only sincerely, but artfully.

Significantly, for all the synth and cello, there’s no shortage of repetitive, grinding riffage, with the thirteen-minute ‘Katyusha’ bringing all the overdrive as the band up the pace and really rock out while synthy fireworks blossom and bloom all around. It bleeds into the slow, heavyweight trudge of ‘The Majestic Clockwork’, and the closer, the ten-minute ‘Five Days in the Abyss’ is a full-weight doom crusher of a climax.

With each release, MWWB have broadened the scope of doom, and Yn Ol I Annwn sees them forge another immense expansion, and further solidify their unique place as trailblazing innovators in the genre.

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MWWB

Listen: ‘The Heavy Hoof’ by Eagle Twin

Posted: 5 March 2018 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Salt Lake City-based duo Eagle Twin share ‘The Heavy Hoof’ from their incoming and third album, The Thundering Heard (Songs Of Hoof And Horn), due out on March 30th via Southern Lord.

About the track Gentry Densley comments,”The Heavy Hoof is the first Eagle Twin song we ever wrote so it has been something we have played throughout the years but never properly recorded until now. Its a simple ditty, that has only gotten heavier over time, all about death and the devil and all that good stuff!  Its also about, you know, leaving your particles tingling, dancing in space, after your consciousness has been trampled."

‘The Heavy Hoof’ is heavy alright: get your lugs round it here:

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Eagle Twin - Thundering

Brooders – Lie

Posted: 4 March 2018 in Singles and EPs
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Come Play With Me – 6th April 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

I happened to catch Brooders when they supported Hands Off Gretel in York last summer, and was taken by their grungy tunes. Specifically, the combination of weight and melody. They’re probably to young to grow stubble, let alone have been born when Kurt Cobain was still alive, and yet they’ve got the whole thing nailed, encapsulating the spirit of c.1992 with aplomb.

‘Lie’ captures all of this, along with the energy of their live show, perfectly. The hefty psychedelic aspect of the sound is also well-represented. You might reference Alice in Chains and Queens of the Stone Age, and justifiably but there’s a sludgy density to the sound that brings another dimension.

Adam Bairstow (guitar / vocals, and to differentiate from the other Adams in the band – they’re like the Ramones or something, only they’re all called Adam) says of ‘Lie’, “It’s a culmination of the stresses and pressures that come with love, loss and paranoia all rolled into one brutally honest, twisted, chaotic track.”

For all this, it’s a strangely ambiguous sensation that bubbles in my gut when I wrestle with the notion of the youth of today appropriating the music of my own youth. However objectively one tries to critique music, it’s inevitable that any response to music or any art is personal and entirely subjective. Because the purpose of art is to stir an emotional response which has nothing to do with the mechanics and technicality of its production or process.

Is part of their appeal to me the fact they stir a certain nostalgia? As it happens, no. Grunge may have embossed itself within the sphere of my musical appreciation in my teens, but what I, like anyone else – I like to think – responds to is the language of sound and the overall sonic experience, spanning lyrics, instrumentation and dynamics.

These elements are all fundamental to the driving force that is ‘Lie’. There’s nothing about this snarling mess of overdriven guitars that suggests they’re trying to artificially recreate the zeitgeist of a previous age, or that they’re anything but entirely authentic. Most importantly, ‘Lie’ is a full-blooded, full-on riff-driven effort that sees Brooders come on with all guns blazing. And it’s a real rush.

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Brooders

Watch: ‘Adrift (Parts 1 & 2)’ by Upcdownc

Posted: 6 September 2017 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Ahead of the release of their upcoming album I, Awake, progressive, post-rock and general riff-heavy outfit Upcdownc have shared a new video for the track ‘Adrift (Parts 1 & 2)’. At just 1 min 27 sec in length it’s a short and sharp blast of intense heavy music.

Watch the video here:

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Upcoming live shows:

15th Sept – Birthdays, London
16th Sept – Sticky Mikes, Brighton
20th Oct – Hijack, Bolougne Sur Mer
22nd Oct – Music City, Antwerp

Silver Snakes – Saboteur

Posted: 21 February 2016 in Albums
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12th February 2016

They come straight on with all guns blazing on this one. A repetitive, driving riff, amped up to eleven dominates the album’s first track, ‘Electricity’. It may be corny an cliché to say it grabs the listener by the throat and gives an instant hook, but the bottom line is that it’s entirely. As a music reviewer who received anywhere up to 50 albums and Eps a week for review, I know as well as anyone the importance of making an impact in the first minute or two. We live in a world that’s time-precious and time-pressured, of instant gratification and low patience thresholds. If whatever you’re pitching don’t grab the attention immediately, then fuggeddaboutit. ‘Saboteur’ is a riffcentric album that blasts off with the claws out, sinks ‘em in deep, and digs right in.

Full-on as it is, it’s got range and dynamics, and they don’t resort to formulaic verse/chorus/loud/ quiet structures by way of a default. Although, then they do tale the more conventional path they end up with ‘Raindance’, a full-on grunger reminiscent of Nirvana and lesser known T&G acts like Tar, and it’s belting – arguably, the most obvious single choice from an album that’s dominated by raging, overdriven guitars and angst-laden vocals, ripped with rage.

They stalk stealthily through the breakdowns and bring it all back with tumultuous overdriven attack. ‘Dresden; hit s a slower, more stoner-rock vibe, with some heavy-duty tom-driven-drumming propelling a slow, grinding riff into oblivion over the course of an expansive nine-minute sprawl. It’s one of three longer tracks (as in over seven minutes), through which they explore more prog territories, but without losing any momentum.

There are elements of Soundgarden and Korn are at play here, not to mention Nine Inch Nails (as exemplified by the full-tilt ‘Charmer’, but it would be wrong to tag them as 90s revivalists. Regardless of decade, the driving guitar riff and thunderous drumming is always king, and the song that conveys sincere emotion and delivers a tangible punch to the gut is god. Silver Snakes are both kings and gods, on the strength of this album.

They come straight on with all guns blazing on this one. A repetitive, driving riff, amped up to eleven dominates the album’s first track, ‘Electricity’. It may be corny an cliché to say it grabs the listener by the throat and gives an instant hook, but the bottom line is that it’s entirely. As a music reviewer who received anywhere up to 50 albums and Eps a week for review, I know as well as anyone the importance of making an impact in the first minute or two. We live in a world that’s time-precious and time-pressured, of instant gratification and low patience thresholds. If whatever you’re pitching don’t grab the attention immediately, then fuggeddaboutit. ‘Saboteur’ is a riffcentric album that blasts off with the claws out, sinks ‘em in deep, and digs right in.

Full-on as it is, it’s got range and dynamics, and they don’t resort to formulaic verse/chorus/loud/ quiet structures by way of a default. Although, then they do tale the more conventional path they end up with ‘Raindance’, a full-on grunger reminiscent of Nirvana and lesser known T&G acts like Tar, and it’s belting – arguably, the most obvious single choice from an album that’s dominated by raging, overdriven guitars and angst-laden vocals, ripped with rage.

They stalk stealthily through the breakdowns and bring it all back with tumultuous overdriven attack. ‘Dresden; hit s a slower, more stoner-rock vibe, with some heavy-duty tom-driven-drumming propelling a slow, grinding riff into oblivion over the course of an expansive nine-minute sprawl. It’s one of three longer tracks (as in over seven minutes), through which they explore more prog territories, but without losing any momentum.

There are elements of Soundgarden and Korn art play here, but it would be wrong to tag them as 90s revivalists. Regardless of decade, the driving guitar riff and thunderous drumming is always king, and the song that conveys sincere emotion and delivers a tangible punch to the gut is god. Silver Snakes are both kings and gods, on the strength of this album.

 

Silver Snakes

 

Silver Snakes Online