EP Review: Lazarus Blackstar / Black Shape Of Nexus – Split

For this eagerly-awaited Split LP, the North-West of England meets the North-West of Germany as two storming merchants of doom crash headlong into each other for half-an-hour of immersive Sturm und Drang. From an early pressurized melting pot where Bradford and Liverpool’s Lazarus Blackstar’s crust-coated doom and blackened death-drone brews inside a morphing structure, the record steadily winds up the tempo until Mannheim sextet Black Shape Of Nexus take over and begin to introduce experimental layers of feedback and replace grit with groove. It all adds up to a wonderfully wretched experience that aims to bury you deep beneath six-feet of stinking, blackened soil.

Setting off through the sludge and buzz-heavy riffing of Lazarus Blackstar’s “Command and Control”, Mik Hell’s growl and dissonant rage pitch us downwards until they find their spiritual nadir in a ponderous hole where two sets of layered vocals tear lumps out of each other upon a bedrock of whining drone. From here they dust themselves off and settle into the patchwork quilt of sections that form “Whispering Through Broken Teeth”. Reminiscent of St. Vitus and, to a point, Eyehategod there is also a moment where, disconcertingly, it all begins to sound a bit like a slowed-down Iron Maiden tape. Walking you through, we’ve got an introductory riff that cuts abrasively into a rumbling verse, before heading down to half-time for the chorus and then out into a displaced, yet memorably upbeat riff. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

Experimenting with much more success, B.SON tug at their Neurosis chain and flush out a tongue-in-cheek offering to the Gods of doom. The 11-minute “Honor Found In Delay”, littered with psychedelic hits of feedback and noisy electronica, gets you deep in the gut with a thunderous, soul-shaking series of chords. The construction is much more organic here and stands in direct opposition to Lazarus Blackstar’s harsh segues. When they find their chug-friendly two-note doom boots they stomp about in them like pigs in muck with Malte Seidel screaming blue murder from, what sounds like, the other side of the street.

Best of all, closer “Always And Only” spends its entire 9-minute length revelling in the joys that a simple-spined, steadily evolving, quality tongue-and-groove doom song can supply. And who better than George Orwell to provide the LP’s morbid epitaph? His soundbite taken from the BBC Series “The Life Of Orwell” plays this intriguingly miserablist LP out – “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face… forever”.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2014/01/lazarus-blackstar-bson-split-alerta-antifascista-records/

Album Review: Scott Kelly And The Road Home – The Forgiven Ghost In Me

Whether you are digging down to the heart of one of his multitudinous, yet always nefarious, music projects, tuning in to discover what he’s currently promoting via his co-owned internet radio station, vicariously living through the bands he’s signed up to his co-owned record label, Neurot, or eating up every one of his blogged words of wisdom, you’ll quickly discover Scott Kelly is a man who isn’t afraid to expose and promote his true feelings. U.S. Christmas frontman Nate Hall never said it better when he spoke of Kelly earlier this year: “Only a true artist would be so willingly and completely exposed; so intensely focused on truth, redemption and healing; so in tune with the song he has always heard inside.” Ladies and gentlemen, here we have a bona fide living music legend.

Of Kelly’s third solo opus, The Forgiven Ghost In Me, Hall has said “With another collection of sparse, introspective songs, Kelly delves even further into a personal, private space that he occupies fully and solely. His path has been a narrow, dark and difficult one, but… Kelly shows that his strength and vision has endured it all.” That’s quite a build, then, for what is essentially something so, well, “sparse”.

Here, his music, created with the help of friends Noah Landis and Greg Dale plus guest spots from Jason Roeder and Josh Graham, is centred very much around his deep, time-worn vocal performance and semi-acoustic guitar, with only a smattering of atmospheric touches and odd incision of other instruments popping up every now and then. There is no drumbeat here, just Kelly’s internal sense of pacing, which unsurprisingly varies from a wary snake-like slither to a laid-back, metronome-munching, elephantine slog through the undergrowth.

His weary West Coast drawl and desert-dry croak chew around “A Spirit Redeemed To The Sun” as rapidly we re-acclimatise ourselves to the way he feels around each note very deliberately. It’s one of the few brighter, more uplifting moments in what is essentially a pretty intense and downbeat album. The messages come pouring thick and fast from the guts of the man; here, he is a burst piñata of emotions. “I washed the blood from my hands / I’ve forgiven myself in my soul” leads to “In a field of death, screaming at the wind / My desires reach and hold me” for the oppressively painful crawl of “The Forgiven Ghost In Me”. By the time Landis’ gurgling dirge melts into the dark tones of “Within It Blood”, Kelly is conjuring images of “ravens” drowning and “demons” being brought on to the stage.

We are soon eagerly cutting ourselves on “the blade of the Reaper” as he submerges us in the album highlight “We Let The Hell Come”; a track that stirs the blood as he stretches his vocal. It is all polished off eloquently with the simplest yet most powerful of riffs. Keep an ear out, too, for the colour-soaked and spine-tingling “The Fields That Surround Me”. Roeder’s subdued drums and buoyant cymbal sweeps kick-start a slow build through to brusque synth and guitar fills. “The watcher watching me”… creepy.

With The Forgiven Ghost In Me, Scott Kelly takes us on yet another dark, brittle, and emotional journey. Hearing him slowly running through his personal neuroses, one by one, past the all-seeing-eye of Neurosis, is a strange, immersive experience. The strange tones and textures, those that initally seemed so impenetrative, then so lacklustre, can quickly become all too familiar and, in turns, magically accessible, so that by the album’s end (and this is for those with an open mind) he has absorbed you, purged his and your mind and, in the process, begun the cleansing process.

Also online (with album preview) @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/scott-kelly-and-the-road-home-the-forgiven-ghost-in-me

Album Review: Suma - Ashes

The anguished hellfire they summon forth for 'War On Drugs' prove they really can crack the earth open. No matter how many times you listen to what's on offer here, and there is well over an hour of sonic battery on display, you always seem to take away something new. It can, at times, seem utterly mesmeric, at others a complete chore. If Suma go easy on the see-saw structures, saving most for the playground of the practice room, and bring more complex crust-shattering tools to the studio they might just have the cojones to obliterate us all. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Full review = http://www.metalteamuk.net/july10reviews/cdreviews-suma.htm