and also the trees will be releasing their new album, Mother-of-Pearl Moon, on 23rd February. Ahead of its release, they’ve unveiled a video for the track ‘Valdrada’, which you can watch here:
and also the trees (AATT) formed during the original post-punk era in rural Worcestershire, an environment that has provided a constant inspiration to a group whose music has often explored the dark underbelly as well as the beauty of the British countryside. They are renowned for their captivating live performances, a unique style of mandolin-like electric guitar, evocative lyrics and dark jazz rhythms – not to mention a creative independence fiercely preserved for over four decades.
AATT immediately caught the attention of Robert Smith of The Cure, who invited them to tour with his group on several occasions. Smith was also involved with their early recordings alongside his bandmate Lol Tolhurst, who produced their first records, a long-term friendship and mutual respect further solidified when AATT were invited to perform at the 2018 edition of the Meltdown festival in London, an event that Smith curated.
Founded by singer Simon Jones and his guitarist brother Justin, AATT have maintained a continuous presence on the post-punk, alternative rock and Gothic scenes worldwide. They have released fifteen studio albums and toured frequently throughout mainland Europe, as well as North America and Japan where they have also built a sizeable following.
The panoramic soundscapes on AATT’s compelling new album, Mother-of-pearl Moon, were born from a series of extraordinary electric guitar improvisations created in the pre- and post-dawn hours during a month of solitude in 2020. With the artful integration and imagery added by the voice, clarinet, piano, percussion, autoharp and Moog, the listener is taken on a voyage from the depths of the English countryside far out in all directions of the compass.
The music on Mother-of-pearl Moon is often filmic and reminiscent of various genres from the ‘50s to the ‘70s, perhaps most apparent in ‘This path through the meadow’, which explores the intertwining of nature in its human, animal and botanic form. Elsewhere, AATT visit ‘Valdrada’, an imaginary city described by Marco Polo to Kublai Kahn in the novel Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, telling us what they saw, while the album title track transports the listener oceans away to the Far East…to its exotic gardens, still waters and the Mother-of-pearl Moon.
Mother-of-pearl Moon will be released on 23rd February and promoted with tours throughout the year, beginning with a rare UK show in Birmingham on 24th March followed by six dates in Belgium and France in early April.
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
Belgian shoegaze outfitNewmoon are back with ‘Crazing’, the 3rd single taken from their brand-new album Temporary Light, set for release on March 22nd, 2024 through [PIAS] Recordings (EU) and Manifesto Records (US).
“Crazing is one of the noisier songs on this album”, singer-guitarist Bert Cannaerts explains. “We’re always looking for that one melody that hides within a song. With Crazing we wanted to try our hand at a song that incorporates loads of guitar textures but still feels melodic and airy. On one hand it has these dark and droning fuzzed out guitars but on the other hand it sounds fresh and uplifting. The song exists on the edge of dark and gloomy with a hint of brightness and optimism. The exact spot where we like our music to sit”, he adds.
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:
The members of MISSILES are no new kids on the block. Coming from punk, rock, and metal, as well as surf and rather diverse backgrounds, they all answered to the call of their good friend Gabriel Forslund – sincerely interested in doing something new and exciting together.
The band’s trajectory began with a 7" single released by the Swedish label Fetish in 2016. Initially viewed as a project, MISSILES have organically evolved into a fully dedicated band with a laser-guided focus, causing shock waves in the underground with their jet-fuel genre-clash. Combining abandoned sounds with new inventions on Weaponize Tomorrow, MISSILES promises to both pat you on the head and stab you in the back, delivering a unique blend of post-punk with a touch of goth rock.
MISSILES claim their debut is a one-of-a-kind album, truly a loved bastard. Weaponize Tomorrow will appeal to those who enjoyed the certain “je ne sais quoi” found in the New Wave movement, a line of thought that is liberating to hear today when artists go to the bank with a genre description. MISSILES couldn’t be bothered; it’s rock, it’s pop, its punk, it’s je ne sais quoi.
Hard to pin down, but undeniable to freak out to, Weaponize Tomorrow is a high yield blast wave that will leave MISSILES hot on the tongues of those looking for a sudden and dramatic, incendiary kick. A gut smashing future shock that will resonate across diverse musical landscapes, Weaponize Tomorrow will be the perfect atomic cocktail for fans of Wipers, Dead Moon, The Birthday Party, The Gun Club and even modern iconoclasts Molchat Doma and Beastmilk.
Their inaugural album, Weaponize Tomorrow is out on May 10, 2024, under the banner of Svart Records. Witness the album’s opening track ‘Dead Summer Moon’ here:
Farhood Nik and Anis Oveisi have reunited to form a new electronic group called Delusive Relics. After touring internationally with the band they had in China, Iran, Turkey, France and USA. Farhood reignited his love for electronic music and finally followed his childhood dream of being an electronic artist Delusive Relics describe their music as a culmination of genres such as Synthpop, Industrial, EBM and Electronic Rock and are inspired by artists such as Depeche Mode, Massive Attack, NIN and Tangerine Dream.
Their reminiscent love for older forms of electronic music allow for them to create music in a style that is a breath of fresh air in today’s electronic scene. Delusive Relics’ 2018 debut went off with a bang as they released their single ‘A Woman’s Diary’, the first in an 11-track series titled ‘Chaotic Notions’ was release in February 2019. ‘A Woman’s Diary’ has already been broadcasted on MTV and VH1 and racking up thousands for views on YouTube. Delusive Relics pride themselves on addressing taboo issues with their music too as they dedicated their debut song to gender equality.
In 2019, Delusive Relics was nominated to New England Music Award as Best Band from New Hampshire. The band released the "Blind Owl" album in 2021, They are currently working on an EP called "Mycelium" which is set release later in 2024.
The noisy punk band from Los Angeles, CA are back with their second album release for Ipecac Recordings, Thoughts & Prayers (29th March). Pre order/pre save here.
The band features guitarist and producer Mike Crain (Dead Cross, Retox, Festival Of Dead Deer), drummer Kevin Avery (Retox, Planet B) and vocalist Matt Cronk (Qui).
Today, they share a first taste of their second album, the track ‘Smart Mouth’.
Watch the video here:
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Following a devastating car accident in which frontman Matt Cronk lost his vocal cord – couldn’t speak, let alone sing – the band thought they might have to call it a day. Then against the predictions of his doctors, Cronk’s injured vocal cord began to heal and within two months his voice returned, as did CNTS.
“We got together and ran through a song and it sounded good. We kept playing and my voice held up, sounded cool, and we all felt good playing together. It was clear immediately that we could do it again, that we’d really missed playing together and we wanted to do it.” says Cronk. “Personally, the experience was a significant marker in my recovery. I got a little teary after that first song.”
Reinvigorated by Cronk’s recovery, CNTS spent the rest of the year hard at work on their new record, Thoughts & Prayers, the title inspired by the banality of our collective reaction to crises. With a great deal of inspiration from their recent challenges, CNTS have channeled several years of frustration and hardship into a well articulated and aggressive statement. Songs such as the aforementioned “Smart Mouth,” and “Thoughts & Prayers,” chronicle Cronk’s pain and anger throughout his various injuries and subsequent recovery. “I Won’t Work For You,” and “Eating You Alive,” deal with the inequity inherent in modern life. “For A Good Time (Don’t Call Her)” is a screed about the age-old theme of fighting with one’s romantic partner.
Guitarist Michael Crain adds, “I really wanted to have SONGS on this record. Hooks. Choruses. Shit I listen to. In all times of confusion or indecision during the making of this album we’d stop and ask ourselves… What would AC/DC do?”
Equal parts catharsis and blood-letting, CNTS as a live entity is an unapologetic display of rage and sex, of belligerence and contempt, a warm gob of spit in the eye, all done with a sarcastic smile.
They may have switched labels and stepped things up a bit, but you couldn’t exactly say they’ve sold out.
Watch the video here:
The video was filmed in a barn in Roxbury, NY, and follows their Partisan debut single ‘It’s The Magic’, which earned them praise from Rolling Stone (‘Song You Need To Know’), NME (“on their way to becoming the next great NYC band”), Paste (“an apocalyptic wasteland of NYC’s best underground punk”) and more.
‘The Heart’ is a high-speed train of delirious percussion (two drummers!) and wonderfully demented electronic samples, weaving in and out of frontman Bret Kaser’s lyrics that inquire into the state of spiritual marketplace and the isolating results of consumption. It’s an exhilarating and singular piece of hardcore electronic punk, with Lip Critic using a broad palette of only the most extreme hues of emotion, each marked by a distinctive danceable mania.
Fresh off dates with Screaming Females for their last-ever tour and shows in London and Pitchfork Paris, Lip Critic will tour extensively in 2024. Their first-ever headline tour will kick off this summer. Prior to that, the band will play a special hometown show on 22 Feb at Elsewhere (Zone 1) in Brooklyn and stop at SXSW for a string of shows.
Aural Aggravation 