NYC-based electronic punk band LIP CRITIC have detailed their anticipated debut album – Hex Dealer – out 17th May via Partisan Records. To coincide with the announcement, the band has shared the album’s lead single and accompanying music video: ‘Milky Max’.
‘Milky Max’ is a pulverising slab of electronic hardcore. The song’s shapeshifting groove anchors a sound that’s theatrical, captivatingly irreverent, and completely outside so much of modern experimental music. Meanwhile Bret Kaser’s vocal delivery feels like it’s being delivered by a cult leader who has occupied the announcer’s booth at a football stadium and refuses to come out (“All my life I just wanted to live / Now I gotta die just because of what I did”).
The official video for ‘Milky Max’ showcases a fully playable video game inspired by the song and designed by Jesse Natter (brother of Lip Critic drummer Ilan Natter). Direct link to play the video game HERE.
Check the video here:
‘Milky Max’ follows previous singles ‘It’s The Magic’ and ‘The Heart,’ which earned early critical acclaim from NME (“on their way to becoming the next great NYC band”), Paste (“an apocalyptic wasteland of NYC’s best underground punk”), Rolling Stone (‘Songs You Need to Know’), Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC 6 Music, and Matt Wilkinson (“totally essential”).
Produced in collaboration by vocalist Bret Kaser and Connor Kleitz, ‘Hex Dealer’ represents an evolution of the eclectic style that the group began cultivating on earlier projects. Drummers Danny Eberle and Ilan Natter combine breakbeats and pingy snares with heavy cymbal and tom work, creating a singular mixture of classic punk/hardcore and electronic styles. The end result is 12 frantic tracks of postmodern pop for the genreless future. A project of wide-reaching sonic and thematic curiosity, above all ‘Hex Dealer’ is an inquisition into the state of spiritual marketplace and the isolating results of consumption.
Audiences have also already been captured by the sheer energy and undeniable chemistry as they toured the US, sharing stages with IDLES, Screaming Females, and Geese, and made their way across the UK / EU including a stop at the Pitchfork Festival in Paris. Lip Critic will tour extensively behind ‘Hex Dealer’, including stops at SXSW, End Of The Road and further UK dates. UK dates are listed below.
LIP CRITIC – UK TOUR DATES: 13 May – The Louisiana – Bristol, UK 14 May – The Deaf Institute (The Lodge) – Manchester, UK 15 May – The Windmill – London, UK 29 Aug – 01 Sep – End of the Road – UK
Today, the long-running New York band A Place To Bury Strangers announce the single/video ‘Change Your God’, from their new 7-inch series, The Sevens, via Dedstrange. ‘Change Your God’ appears alongside ‘It Is Time’ in the first instalment of the series, out digitally today and physically this Friday, 23rd February. The Sevens are four 7-inch vinyl records on white vinyl being released each month from now through April. They unveil a treasure trove of previously unreleased tracks from A Place To Bury Strangers’ critically acclaimed sixth album, See Through You. Renowned for their visceral sonic assault and immersive live performances, A Place To Bury Strangers has cemented the end-all-be-all space for over-the-top post-punk/shoegaze destruction. With this special vinyl collection, the band invites listeners to delve deeper into their sonic universe, exploring uncharted territories and hidden gems.
“When looking back at the recordings that were done around the time of See Through You, there were a bunch of great tracks that just captured life back then and really had something incredible going on,” says frontman Oliver Ackerman. “Even though they are a bit raw and a bit personal, I thought it would be a mistake if they didn’t come out. I thought it would be best to go back to my roots and put out a series of 7-inches the way A Place To Bury Strangers started. That strange weird format where the tracks each speak for themselves; no album context to muddy the water. These tracks are such a contrast to the way I am feeling now and the current songs we’ve been working on so slip back into this moment in time.”
Watch the video for ‘Change Your God’ here:
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A Place To Bury Strangers Tour Dates:
Thu 22 Feb – Queens, NY @ TV Eye [The Sevens Release Show]
Thu 21 Mar – Boise, ID @ Treefort Festival [The Sevens Release Show]
Portuguese blackened post-metal collective Music In Low Frequencies have just dropped a music video for a new track off the band’s second full-length album Catharsis, which was released in early December via Raging Planet Records.
Check it here:
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The band offers the following comment about this new track: “’Unconsciousness’ talks about a variety of ambiguous feelings residing in our inner self. It’s the expression of the unquieting sensations that come from loving someone too much, and as you rise them to a godlike level, you start seeing all the toxicity coming from there. While you can see the beauty of it all, you also become aware of all the inherent harm and danger. That’s something that hits us all sometime.
“You can consider it as a love song, but above all we wish you’d listen to it as a song of hope and inspiration. The imagery we created for this video is particularly dark, with slightly bright tiny details, for we intended to recreate the vibe of the message going with the lyrics of this song and also with the hovering drone guitars.”
Formed in 2012, Music In Low Frequencies, is a gathering of three old friends that thrive throughout the music they create together. They were born from the desire of making something meaningfully intimate with hints of the harshness of our times. With that being said, it is understandable that their sound is charged with gloomy melodies, heavy riffs and doom tunes.
They released their first album Sowing the seed in 2014 and promoted it through Europe, headlining some shows and also playing in some important festivals in Portugal and other smaller showcases. They went through a period of time where creation was delayed by some other important matters, but soon time passed and new melodies started to follow.
Music in Low Frequencies felt they wanted to go deeper down the rabbit hole as they started to feel the urge for darker and sludgier notes. They refine and redefine their sound and Catharsis is born. Resembling the atmosphere of these past times, this album is the result of a period of darkness, reflection, contemplation of the soul and purgation of the spirits and it hopes to embrace all the heavy spirits we have within our minds and put them to rest. Catharsis wishes to indulge all the senses whatsoever, and purge all the demons we carry through our music. “
“This song describes a state of emergency. When the concentration and focus that an urgent situation demands, completely overruns and obliterates the concept of time. An hour becomes a few seconds, or the other way around – the usual routes of communication fall flat to the ground and become unnecessary. Somehow there is this telepathic understanding of what has to be done. The image is a large field of withered grass standing in roaring flames, with a handful of people desperately trying to put the fire out” – Erika Angell
Her debut album The Obsession With Her Voice is out 8th March 2024.
With the release of The Body & Dis Fig’s debut collaborative album Orchards of a Futile Heaven just on the horizon, coming 23rd February, the group share smouldering new single ‘To Walk a Higher Path.’ Heavy without conforming to any of the usual tropes of metal or electronic music, the trio here carve out their own distinctive soundworld, neon-lit scenes slowly unfurling amidst light and shadow. Rippling synthesisers beam out like searchlights scanning the horizon, slowly coalescing into strafing melody and staggered rhythms, with Dis Fig’s vocal vapour trails floating weightless above The Body’s obliterated howls and blasted electronics.
Orchards of a Futile Heaven’s walls of sputtering texture and tectonic booms are soaked in the reverence and melancholy of sacred spaces brought to life by palpable intensity by Chen’s voice. Crafted during a time of personal fragility, the album’s devastating force lies beyond any of the expected noise and abrasive textures typically associated with both The Body & Dis Fig. Suffused with a raw vulnerability and a longing for catharsis, Chen’s voice searches for escape in the midst of oppressive atmospheres as if determined to find relief from guilt.
Following the new single, The Body have also announced a string of U.S. tour dates. The Body & Dis Fig plan to tour throughout the US, UK, and Europe in 2024, with collab tour dates to be announced.
Sometimes, a song has the capacity to make you feel different. I find this happens most often when it’s least expected. ‘Coming Good’, the debut release by Learn to Surf came particularly unexpected. It’s certainly not my usual kind of thing – but there’s just something about that melancholic, reverby picked guitar and the washes of rippling chords cascading down over the top, and there’s a nuanced complexity in the relationship between this, and the layered harmonies, which are imbued with a carefree dappled-haze chilledness with a twist of wistful pining that’s hard to really put a finger on.
Because all music is now a vast nexus of intertext and influence, unravelling or otherwise attempting to frame songs – and bands – in a clear and specific context is nigh on impossible, not least of all because so much context comes from within, from one’s own spheres of reference, and as culture has become increasingly fragmented, so our experiences and references lose the sense of universality they once would have had. Time was, when there were only four, or five, TV channels, the entire nation was glued to the same show at the same time, and the following day, everyone would be talking about that episode, even if it was only EastEnders. This was a time when the main way to access music was via the radio, and if you wanted to hear anything beyond the charts or the classics, you needed to tune into John Peel, or Annie Nightingale after the Top 40 on a Sunday night. How times have changed!
I digress, but for a purpose, insomuch as the more disparate our experiences and reference points become, the less relatable and relevant they become to anyone who doesn’t live inside your head. I spent an age wondering what it was about ‘Coming Good’ that sounded familiar, before eventually concluding that it was ‘Gentle is Her Touch’ by Post war Glamour Girls, and the Alt-country / Americana act Sons of Bill on their Cure-influenced last album Oh God, Ma’am. It would likely be more useful for a broader audience to draw comparisons to Ride, and note the jangly indie psychedelic aspects of what is an absolutely marvellous, goosebump-inducing song with ‘classic’ vibes radiating from it in every direction.
The Melvins’ latest opus, Tarantula Heart (April 19, Ipecac Recordings), is quite possibly the band’s most unconventional, catchiest and imaginative work yet, continuing a legacy celebrated for its eccentric and extraordinary output.
A preview of the five-song, 39-minute collection arrives with the release of ‘Working The Ditch,’ and the accompanying Jesse Nieminen-created video. Nieminen previously directed the band’s short film, ‘A Walk With Love and Death.’
Watch the video here:
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“The way we approached Tarantula Heart was different than any other Melvins’ album,” explains Buzz Osborne. “I had Dale and Roy Mayorga come in and play along with Steven and I to some riffs, then I took those sessions and figured out what parts would work and wrote new music to fit. This isn’t a studio approach we’ve ever taken. Usually we have the songs written BEFORE we start recording!”
“The majority of Tarantula Heart has dual drum parts,” adds long-time Melvins drummer Dale Crover. “Roy is an amazing drummer. We would discuss what we would do pattern wise, then we’d just go for it. Improvising riffs and trading off on drum fills.”
In actuality nothing appeared out of thin air. Buzz spent hours and hours with the drum tracks by himself writing songs to what he was hearing drum wise. “When the rest of the band heard these songs I’d created from the sessions, they were blown away,” Buzz shares. “These were fully developed new songs that they’d never heard before that had seemingly appeared out of thin air. Presto!”
Recorded, mixed and co-produced by longtime Melvins’ collaborator Toshi Kasai, the album also features We Are The Asteroid guitar player Gary Chester. Gary and the Melvins’ history goes back to their days on Boner Records, with the guitar player formerly having been a part of the legendary band, Ed Hall.
Next month sees the Melvins head overseas, playing in Japan for the first time since 2019 following a stint where they join current labelmates, Mr. Bungle, for a trek across Australia and New Zealand. Buzz and Bungle bass player Trevor Dunn team up later this year for the “King Dunn Tour,” a 45-date excursion that sees the pair play songs from the King Buzzo releases: This Machine Kills Artists and Gift of Sacrifice. The full list of dates can be found via Ipecac.com/tours.
Hypnotic French Post-Metal quintet Uncomfortable Knowledge have a video out for ‘An Empty Heart Cannot Break’; the fifth and final single to be released from the upcoming sophomore album Lifeline. About the track the band expound that “To be able to accept love, to receive it and to give it weakens us. The phoenix, on the other hand, survives and is reborn alone, no danger because an empty heart cannot break. Therefore the title reflects the evolution of the narrator. He finally achieves a state of completeness and balance through the acceptance of love. He understands that far from weakening, his heart is only strengthened by it. Through a big riff, and an intense melodic progression, this piece aims to put us back on our feet in the face of life’s adversity”.
Watch the video here:
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With Lifeline, we are invited to think about our position in the world, about the meaning of our life, as well as the many sided interplays we may share with our fellow men, while remembering every instant counts. The album will also reveal baroque stringed settings and dark film atmospheres that will add a unique dimension to their sound and is an invitation to both perseverance and resilience.
The band have a series of gigs announced this year…
03/02/24 – Paloma – Nîmes – France 10/02/24 – Black Lab – Wasquehal – France 11/02/24 – MCP Apache – Fontaine L’Evêque – Belgium 16/02/24 – Dropkick – Orleans – France 09/03/24 – Ciné Concert – Ales – France 19/05/24 – AK Shelter – Nantes – France
Finnish post-metal collective BESRA have recently shared a music video for a new song off the band’s second full-length album Transition, which was released in late September on Suicide Records.
Titled ‘Valor’, this new video was directed by Atte Heinonen and Ville Kaisla and is now playing here:
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The band’s vocalist, Hannes Hietarinta had this to say about this new track: "’Valor’ is a good example of the journey we have taken from our debut to the present: from a slow, almost sludgy post-metal groove to a dynamic, progressive, and tighter rhythmic groove. While the new album explores very vast landscapes, ‘Valor’ is definitely on the more energetic side thematically as well: the familiar melancholy and distress have been replaced with courage, honor, and a yearning for lost virtues. In our opinion, a tight song overall!”
Recorded at Rødhouse Studio and mixed and mastered by Cult Of Luna’s Magnus Lindberg, the follow-up to their critically acclaimed first studio album Anhedonia is the result of a long and arduous writing and recording process and sees BESRA circling through a vast spectrum of emotions and sonic textures encompassing elements of post-rock, post-metal and ambient.
Leeds based militant dance-punk duo Polevaulter dropped their debut album ‘Hang Wave’ on Friday to widespread acclaim.
If you haven’t heard it yet, it’s a superb sonic assault of seismically sharp bass and loin-grinding beats, and we wrote about it at length recently.
Now following the album release and ahead of their UK / EU tour starting this week, Polevaulter have unveiled a brand-new video for the album’s latest single ‘Pissed In The Baths’, which you can watch here:
The sonic assault the two create is almost arrogant, fathered from the marriage of seismically sharp bass and loin-grinding beats. The words are quipped and brayed atop the aural landscape. They are boastful, accusing, repellent and inviting, they question and skewer the veins of masculinity, sexuality, the order of things, the music industry and the miserable reality of the North. Polevaulter have toured with JOHN, shared a stage with Thank, Mandy Indiana, Pink Turns Blue, Bambara, A Place To Bury Strangers, VR Sex, and others.
Now, following the album release and ahead of their UK / EU tour starting this week, Polevaulter have unveiled a brand new video for the album’s latest single ‘Pissed In The Baths’.
On writing the track, Polevaulter’s Jon Franz explains; “Pissed In The Baths came about from Dan’s chorus riff which he just pulled out of thin air, we made the verses more straight and got it to swing with my delay. I wrote the lyrics pretty quickly on a bus to the doctors, lyrically it’s about manifesting strength and about us setting sail, I tied the chorus into it as those lines came from a while ago about warming oceans and rising sea levels, it all got glued together.”
The result is a cacophonous injection of climate change activism, brimming with hypnotic beats and thick fuzzy bass and glossed in a coat of sharp unnerving darkness. Chaotic and smashing you in the face with its tidal wave of full-on noise and addictive shouted refrains, Polevaulter are not holding any punches with ‘Pissed In The Baths’ as they continue on their bulldozer-like mission to tear up boundaries.
Debut Polevaulter album ‘Hang Wave’, is a hard-hitting dark and fiercely off-kilter slab of awesome sickly noise alongside baritone-led lyricism acerbic, vitriolic and intense throughout, raising eyebrows and dropping jaws. The album features recent hits like ‘Trend’ and newly released single ‘Violently Ill’ which Polevaulter’s Jon Franz explains- “has more sparse vocals than most of our tracks, gives our music a chance to shine. Its maybe my favourite song on the album.” Other tracks like ‘Pissed In The Baths’, ‘Mint Condition’ and ‘Mia Goth Made Me Do It’ all stand out in what is essentially an absolute mind melting juggernaut of a punk electro dance record for 2024, which lays down the gauntlet from a studio perspective alongside Polevaulter’s diligent process to earnestly take the title of ‘hardest working band in showbusiness’.
Polevaulter weren’t always a duo though as Jon Franz recalls, “We were steaming along as a post-punk band with various noise elements and then lost some members over covid, but me and Dan wanted to keep going. We thought about starting a new band, but we felt that this still had legs. Ultimately, it’s not that different, me and Dan did most of the composition, and we’ve got a clear vision on what we want to do. After touring last year as a two-piece, figuring out whether we could even do it, we realised there’s definitely no reason to stop – and it’s definitely getting better every time we have a round of gigs. I like not carrying instruments around – that’s quite nice. Although, having said that, we’re a duo now and we have more amps, which is weird. Dan has three amps now, and I have two.”
The album was co-produced by longtime friend and artist Shaene Hunter which straddles confidently atop several themes, to which Jon Franz says, “This being our first album or our maiden voyage, I dunno why, but I like a lot of nautical terminology and see that kind of visual imagery when this album was being made. I also write a lot of lyrics about things that directly affect me, like my masculinity, my mind, about being tough and overly arrogant to sell the image of us we’ve created. We have a lot of reference points that I work in, and since we’ve become a two piece, I think there is a lot more depth to everything we do now. We’ve made ‘Hang Wave’ because it’s about time we made this kind of a statement about who we are, what we want to do and what we sound like after multiple line-up changes and situations slowed the progress me and Dan were desperate to make. Since we’ve been a two piece, we’ve got far more done, and we both feel really proud of this album, and we feel strongly that it will do what we need it to do.”
Polevaulter recently performed their debut album on repeat for 8 hours straight via a livestream to raise funds for the Gaza Sunbirds, a para cycling team based in the Gaza Strip. The team is currently providing emergency food parcels and aid to families sheltering around the Gaza Strip. Watch the livestream back here:
