Steve Von Till shares another piece from his forthcoming ambient album A Deep Voiceless Wilderness approaching on 30th April via Neurot Recordings. "Called From The Wind" arrives by way of an elegant video from Chariot Of Black Moth, which can be viewed below. The track is also available on all the main streaming sites. About the video Steve comments, "Jakub Moth hints at the emotion behind a timeless story about humanity and landscape without saying too much, without limiting the universal scope of the sound. As I have removed the verbal language from the ambient version, he has added visual poetry to accompany it."
Tomahawk today release their first full-length album in eight years, Tonic Immobility (Ipecac Recordings), and with it they have shared a new video ‘Predators and Scavengers’ directed, animated and produced by Diego Cumplido.
‘Perpetual Sequence’ is the ninth full-length album by Croc Shop, an electronic based act featuring long time members Mick Hale and vMarkus. With a post-electro, pop and synth-rock approach over the duration of its eleven captivating songs, the duo also make occasional nods to their post-punk goth and electro-industrial origins.
Originally formed as Crocodile Shop in a flat above a record store in West Berlin, the band released their debut album, ‘Lullaby’, in 1988. Produced by Dave Fielding of The Chameleons, the record displayed dark goth-rock influences that only hinted at what was to come. They subsequently transitioned towards an electronic-industrial sound as they began replacing band members with machines, releasing ‘Celebrate the Enemy’ in 1993.
In 1995 they signed to Metropolis Records and issued the albums ‘Beneath’, ‘Pain’, ‘Everything Is Dead And Gone’, ‘Order + Joy’ and ‘World’. The last of these was a nifty fusion of EBM and synth pop that arrived in 2002 and their first album under the shortened name Croc Shop. 2004 saw the release of ‘SEA’ (Self Extracting Archive), which was a double CD ‘Best Of’ the band’s musical output. Pursuing other musical interests, group mainstays Hale and vMarkus then took a longer than expected break from recording together.
Fifteen years later, with the ‘election’ of and chaos caused by Trump, the band’s creative and political fires were rekindled and they began to work on new material that resulted in the blistering ‘Resist!’, a nine song digital album released in 2020, followed by ‘(TRiP): The Rest In Pieces’, a thirty track ‘Rest Of’ Croc Shop that featured tracks not included on ‘SEA’ as well as a number of remixes.
Croc Shop have toured heavily across North America and Europe throughout their career and have garnered loyal fans the world over. They have shared stages with acts such as Rammstein, Front 242, The Damned, Nitzer Ebb, Project Pitchfork, Xymox, Switchblade Symphony and Numb. Their live show has been described as an “audio-visual-assault”, with multimedia video projections, bold lighting and an energetic stage presence.
Ahead of the album ,they’ve unveiled a video for second single, ‘Secrets’: what it here:
Chicago-based industrial rock band Nuclear Sun has released a new single/visualizer clip covering the iconic Nine Inch Nails hit, "Head Like A Hole." The track appears on Nuclear Sun’s new tribute release, Couldn’t Have Said It Better Vol. 1, available digitally via Bandcamp and all major streaming services.
Frost* recently announced ‘Day And Age’, their first new studio album in 5 years, set for release on the 14th May 2021. The band’s fourth record features Jem Godfrey once again joined by John Mitchell & Nathan King, as well as 3 guest drummers: Kaz Rodriguez (Chaka Khan, Josh Groban), Darby Todd (The Darkness, Martin Barre) & Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson, Mister Mister). The album also features actor Jason Isaacs.
Today the band are pleased to launch ‘Terrestrial’, the first single taken from ‘Day And Age’, and you can watch the video here:
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Jem Godfrey comments: “Terrestrial is about Donald Crowhurst who disappeared while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race never to be found.The last page of his logbook contained the words: “I have no need to prolong the game. It is finished – It is finished IT IS THE MERCY.”
‘Day And Age’ was recorded over the course of 2019 and 2020, featuring 8 tracks and striking cover artwork by Carl Glover of Aleph Studios (Steven Wilson, Marillion, Steve Jansen). The album will be released on Limited 2CD (including a bonus disc of instrumentals), Gatefold 180g 2LP + CD (with etching on Side D), and as Digital Album. Pre-order now here: https://frost-band.lnk.to/DayAndAge
The full track-listing is below:
1. Day And Age 11:49
2. Terrestrial 5:13
3. Waiting For The Lie 4:31
4. The Boy Who Stood Still 7:33
5. Island Life 4:14
6. Skywards 4:13
7. Kill The Orchestra 9:27
8. Repeat To Fade 6:14
In September 2019 Godfrey and Mitchell rented a cottage for a week in Helford, Cornwall and set about converting it into a recording studio. Day one saw them write and record “Skywards”, “Island Life” was written on day two. On day three, the duo wrote what was to become the title and defining track of the new album, “Day And Age”.
The following January, the band setup a new temporary studio for a further week in a converted coastguard tower at Dungeness in East Sussex. “We were 30 feet by the sea, next to a nuclear power station and a lighthouse, in midwinter. So there was hardly any daylight and the weather was dreadful”, laughs bassist Nathan King, “We wrote “Terrestrial” and “Repeat To Fade” there and you can definitely hear the bleak isolated oppression having an effect on us. The songs we wrote were far darker – the wind howling round the building at night, the power station generating crackles on the audio, a huge lighthouse next door sweeping light into the fog every 30 seconds and John screaming “ENJOY YOURSELVES YOU SCUM” into a microphone. It was absolutely brilliant!”.
Minimalism and instinct, structure/freedom and meticulous timing form the cornerstones of BIG | BRAVE’s precise, rhythmical sound.
Lyrically, the new album VITAL explores the weight of race and gender, endurance and navigating other people’s behaviours, observation and protest. The band further commented “this album involves what it means navigating the outside world in a racialized body and what it does to the psyche as a whole while exploring individual worth within this reality.”
Our first glimpse of the album arrives today in the form of a video for the track "Half Breed", consisting of a single shot of a single performative action that can be read as the representation of the damage an external force can have on someone or something without ever having to bear any responsibility and consequence. BIG | BRAVE adds "The action of shovelling dirt onto the person, also acts a way to discredit, shame and discriminate the individual. With the victim (on screen), being painfully covered with dirt by the perpetrator (off screen), all we have to witness is the damage done and left behind. We are aware of what is happening, what has happened, but the source is kept anonymous and can easily be missed and overlooked."
VITAL features the core trio Robin Wattie, Mathieu Ball and Tasy Hudson, for their most collaborative record they’ve made so far. The band say “having cut our teeth in very different musical backgrounds respectively, our intuitions vary, which has an interesting effect on our individual approaches and ears.” For this record, BIG | BRAVE once again made the trek down to Rhode Island to record with Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets. They remark “we fully trust his instinct as an engineer and his creative output, getting to experiment with textures, concepts, layers, and with pretty much every single recorded sound, the process of making records with Seth is an absolute journey in sonic exploration".
Tomahawk, who recently announced their first full-length album in eight years, Tonic Immobility (March 26, Ipecac Recordings), have shared a second track from the twelve-song album, debuting the graphic video for “Dog Eat Dog.”
"It’s a statement about competition, oppression, and unity–served up with a healthy dose of slapstick humour,” said Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard/Unsemble) of the Eric Livingston directed clip. Mike Patton (Mr. Bungle/Fantômas) added: "Dogs patiently wait, obediently, for humans to snuff each other out…so they can take over the world. Dogs rule!!!!”
Danny Kiranos, otherwise known by his musical alter ego Amigo The Devil, will release his highly anticipated second full length album, ‘Born Against’, on 16th April (Liars Club/Regime Music Group). A song from it entitled ‘Quiet As A Rat’ is available from today and is the second single taken from the record. ‘Quiet As A Rat’ is comprised of three vignettes that feature characters hiding their inner turmoil in order to maintain a strong outer façade. The video for the song is packed full of gallows humour, in fact literally so, with Kiranos as the narrator of its interlinked tales with themes modelled after both fables and biblical elements. Subjected to what appear to be Jodorowsky-esque tongue in cheek torture and execution attempts, they ultimately represent questions of faith and the doubt of it.
As with many of ATD’s songs, everything serves as a metaphor for something larger that resides within. “Faith without doubt seems unhealthy,” states Kiranos. “It’s an extreme that leaves no room for growth and honest learning, only the mindless repetition of old and sometimes hateful traditions. This song explores the bridge between faith and doubt, nurture and abandon…the fine line between belief and control. It plays to the true value of our spirit and whether we have a purpose to find or if we are the purpose and are simply here to be used and forgotten. You know…real fun stuff.”
Born of the long dark winters of Norway Årabrot was too black for metal and too avant-garde for punk so it forged its own path. Hewn from empty roads and the cold impenetrable depths of the fiords of its home.
A Norwegian Gothic, tales sung and stories told in screams and whispers. With its steel guitar, a steely gaze a sneer and a Stetson, Årabrot is the bastard offspring of Billie Holiday and Elmore James. It is The Velvet Underground if Johnny Cash was a member and Nico was able to sing. It is Camus, Sartre, Poe and Burroughs cut-up and regurgitated in an unholy erotic mass. It is all the great bands you haven’t even heard of. It is you. It is here it is now and there are other bodies to bury. Årabrot is not fucking around.
Årabrot is Kjetil “Tall Man” Nernes and Karin “Dark Diva” Park. They live in the Swedish countryside with their two children in the old church that they own. Rock’n roll is their religion.
Discussing the new video for ‘Kinks of the Heart’, Kjetil comments, “’Kinks Of The Heart’ and ‘Hailstones For Rain’ is one narrative in two parts. It is the tale of Årabrot, preachers of rock’n roll. The videos are shot in the church where we live and its surroundings, our neighbours and friends as the congregation. Karin is 8 months pregnant. If you want to know what Årabrot is all about this is where you want to start. Brilliantly directed by Thomas Knights and Kassandra Powell of Obscure Film Collective.”
Watch the video here:
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Årabrot’s 9th full-length album Norwegian Gothic sees the band collaborate with Lars Horntveth (Jaga Jazzist), cellist Jo Quail, Tomas Järmyr (Motorpsycho), Anders Møller (Turbonegro, Ulver) and Massimo Pupillo (Zu).
A stellar production by Jaime Gomez Arellano (Black Eyed Peas, Paradise Lost, Hexvessel, Oranssi Pazusu) makes this the quintessential Årabrot record. Commenting on latest single ‘Kinks of the Heart’, Kjetil adds,
‘There is a certain beauty to living in the countryside- there’s clear crisp air, fresh water, splendid sunsets. Every day we see wild animals coming down from the forests that surround us. There is a freedom attached to all that. The other day I went out of the church where we live and found a dead crow on the porch. It was only the head, its eyes gorged out and it had a huge claw stuck in its neck. There is also a brutality to nature which is ever-present out here. It is this duality Cormac McCarthy so masterly puts into words. It is also what Kinks Of The Heart is about.’
While the 20 years history of the band is a story of change and correlation, it would be too simple to
break this creative duality down to the stereotypical dichotomy of the yin and the yang… and if one attempted to do so, it would turn out to be quite difficult to determine which of these forces would be represented by which individual.
A chubby child from a Christian family, growing up in a small Swedish village and years spent in a Missionary school in Japan made Karin desperate to break away from narrow thinking. And she used her only advantages to do so; her unique voice and personality. By the age 15 she had moved away from home to find her place in music After studying at Stockholm Music Conservatory, a Norwegian poet took her to Norway where she started her pop career, this was followed by a move to London to write songs, and working as a model.
After five albums, a few Grammy’s, writing a Eurovision entry for Norway and hits for other artists and performances with Lana Del Rey and David Bowie, Karin returned to the village of her youth and bought the church where she first sang in front of an audience as a child. She turned the church into where they rehearse and record, surrounded by pianos, organs and hundreds of old bibles that the church left behind when the congregation stopped.
The clerical environment has proven to be an excellent creative tapestry for a band whose lyrical focus orbits around sex, death and defiance.
Kjetil Nernes was diagnosed with malignant throat cancer in 2014, in the middle of a tour. Instead of heading in for surgery right away, the band finished a full European tour first, "Every night of that tour was like the last show ever“, Nernes comments, "It was really strange. When a doctor calls and says, ‘you’re terribly sick’, it’s surreal. You go into this phase where life is more vivid and more real, in a weird way. We’ve done so many shows through the years and sometimes it’s a little like going to the factory to do a job. But with an axe hanging over your head you perceive the world differently.“
But the axe did not fall, and after successfully recovering from cancer, Årabrot are now stronger than ever.
The band has collaborated with procuders like Billy Anderson and Steve Albini, and musicians like Ted Parsons (Killing Joke/Swans), Sunn O))))’s Stephen O’Malley, and Kvelertak’s Erlend Hjelvik. They have composed music for silent movies like “Die Niebelungen” and “Doctor Caligari”, and have teamed up with The Quietus founder John Doran on his spoken word tour. Their album “The Gospel” was named “Album of the Year” by The Quietus.
Norwegian Gothic is released 9th April (Pelagic Records).
Chelsea Wolfe has shared new video for her latest single, “Anhedonia” which features vocals and guitar by labelmate Emma Ruth Rundle. Wolfe joined efforts with stop motion editor and video producer Cressa Beer for a moving creation that reflects grief and loneliness, yet brings hope that with time and support, healing is possible.
Cressa explains, “The core idea of the video came from an artist and mutual friend that Chelsea and I both love – Jess Schnabel (Blood Milk Jewels) – who created a ‘grief moth’ inspired by real moths that drink the tears of sleeping birds. It’s an idea I’ve wanted to animate for a while. So, that became the backbone of the project: the lifecycle of a moth literally born from overwhelming sadness. From there, the video grew into a reflection of what I was experiencing during quarantine, as I found myself confronting my own grief and deeply rooted trauma. I suffer from PTSD that envelops me like a black void. I wanted to visually articulate how that feels, as well as feelings like disassociation and loneliness; the way that trauma can physically alter your body and mentally reshape the world around you. But still, the moth can fight its way out, can fly, can follow the light; just like the comfort in the final verse of the song, I wanted to still show that healing is possible.”
Aural Aggravation 