Album Review: Sedna - S/T

“No politics. No religions” screams their biography.

Italians Sedna are obviously keen for you to focus on their musical output alone and they needn’t worry. At times abrasive and antagonistic, at others soul-sapping and desolate, their self-titled debut album is going to grab your attention. In fact, its nothing short of cathartic. By pumping out exploratory, hardcore-tinged doom/sludge accented by a landslide of drums and throat-ripping screams, their music demands of its listeners.

Their pitch black tone draws influence from inventive monsters like Amen Ra, Wolves In The Throne Room and Year Of No Light, but there is also a keen, morbidly fascinating edge similar to that explored by post-‘core fiends like The Elijah and Amia Venera Landscape. Punishing initially then ebbing into a sequence of sanguine oscillations around 13 minutes, “Sons Of The Ocean” drinks deep upon these influences creating an angular construction of heart-wrenching ebb and flow, whilst “Sons Of Isolation” has an achingly slow build – although its slightly tiresome, it does put one in mind of Russian Circles’ last album, so adds some spice to the mix.

“Life / Ritual”, with bone chimes jangling and tortured chants circling in bouncing echoes around temple walls, disturbs on a whole new level. Somewhere within this band lies a deep rage and here you can feel it cracking through the crust as the vocalists combine to great effect. Then, with a final crackling flourish full of latent feedback, “Sons Of The Ancients” plucks at fresh wounds by cycling two chords until the roars of vocalist/guitarist Nil bring us raging round to an invasive sequence of powerful chugging.

There’s a fascinating range of styles at play here and it marks an enjoyable initial foray. Initially bruising, the impact of it becomes less of an issue with further listens. The so-called “sphere of deep hope” that they wanted to convey within their music is well hidden here, but I certainly felt their passion and it sparked a wide range of emotions ranging from anger to misery.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2014/11/sedna-st-drown-within/

Album Review: The Room Colored Charlatan – Primitives

The story behind The Planet Of The Apes, a French novel by Pierre Boulle, was deemed great enough to warrant a movie of its own. That birthed a 70s franchise which then kicked off a comic book series, a TV series and went on to inspire other movie-makers, novelists and Simpsons scriptwriters (“You finally made a monkey out of me!”). Then came a 2001 reboot of the original movie, followed just 10 years later by a reboot of the franchise. It seems fair to suggest that Boulle created a bit of a monster.

Of course it has also inspired musicians (Devin, I’m looking at you) and digging through The Room Colored Charlatan’s new concept album Primitives you’d believe you were listening to the same story of ape-like creatures set on some far off planet. In fact, initially, the intuitive polyrhythms, riffing, prog-addled soundscapes and lyrics that tell of “an earthly biosphere created for a species of consumption” will have you picturing The Contortionist’s Exoplanet. Seriously, if ever that world was to be populated, you could imagine that Primitives might just be describing their failing symbiotic relationship.

Of course, the revelation will hit you at some point, as it does in Boulle’s great novel, and like the ruined Statue of Liberty rising from the sands, you’ll realise this damning tale with such imaginative wordplay is about your own home planet. Of course, Primitives refers to the past and the present more than it does the future. It is describing the inexorable rise of mankind and its position as the dominant, planet-destroying beast we are today.

No matter where you look here, these Indiana-based purveyors of attack-and-release tech metal consistently warrant comparison with bands like Veil of Maya, Between The Buried And Me, The Faceless and the afore-mentioned Contortionist. Throughout they suck you in with vast, sprawling passages of ambience before gobbing you out headfirst into scrambling walls of antagonistic death vocal and hammering strings.

From the opening hit of “Instinct”, far more than just an obligatory introductory piece, the album grips you. The track yawns into life before building into a steadily thumping, abrasive monster. Layered to the gills, you’ll pick up a warbling effected by fast string-tapping, some eerily cosmic keys, a strong Steve Vai-esque axe tone evoking the emphatic styling of 80′s prog rock, bruising drum patterns and the brutal death growls of Jared Bush. It all feeds, through the curiously detached instrumental punch of “Native Habitat” into the scrambling, scattergun shape-shifting of “Apex Predator”.

The title-track struggles to find a natural cadence but heading into the second half of the album, they really get stuck into the songs. Here the songwriting is much improved with far-less opaque structuring and some sweet vocal hooks. “Questions of Origin” settles things down immediately, inciting a deep bouncing rhythm into which they tip scrambling tech, some nifty electro touches and a backing vocal that repeats something very reminiscent of Suicide Silence legend Mitch Lucker’s scathing “Wake Up” line.

“Survivalist Notion” could really be a monster of a track for them with a butch groove, an inspirational section of Gojira-esque grumbling and some curveball boy-girl harmonics. It all comes welded to a keen industrial edge. Moving on there’s plenty of added crunch and some stomach-dropping bass drops popping up throughout “The Atlas Effect” to balance out the dream-like backdrops (themselves a nod to Uneven Structure’s Februus) and leaping out of bonus track “Nexus Point” the second vocal channels the achingly-beautiful vocal of Dan “Skyharbor” Tompkins. This, here, is music for fantasists.

All told, there is something of an overdose of rhythmic dropouts and they don’t consistently nail the balance between rough and smooth. The detrimental knock-on effect is to the natural flow of the album. However, this is mere nitpicking when you consider the bustling enthusiasm of it all, the strong production levels and the players’ immense skill. Primitives is a marriage of originality and inspiration and TRCC have gifted us an album loaded with passion. As a consequence, the end result is bursting with colours, strong and rich enough to sell this incriminating account of woe to your mind’s eye. I believe an anguished cry of “Maniacs! You finally blew it all up. God damn you all to hell!” is in order.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2014/05/the-room-colored-charlatan-primitives-subliminal-groove-records/

Gig Review: Shrinebuilder + Wolves In The Throne Room - Scala, London 2/12/10

Ducking into the Scala to escape the capital freeze is a pointless exercise tonight as, be it deliberate or not, the band room is chilled to the point where their cloakroom becomes wholly redundant. It’s the perfect temperature for Wolves In The Throne Room though, who proceed to ramp up the emotion with a combination of gloom, jettisoned fog, etched banners and a protracted candle-lighting ceremony. With the stage fully anointed, their crushing gloop of malevolent black metal, crust and doom rings out, regularly dipping into a burbling, Neanderthal-paced melancholy before bursting out into a session of grating barks and power chords. Like creeping death, they wash over us sparking neither disgust, nor true passion. A few nodding heads and the odd round of gentle applause are all they can muster from those attending, although their fastidious lack of eye contact, rather than their music, is most likely the reason for this.

Nothing less than a volcanic eruption (remember those newsreaders trying to pronounce Eyjafjallajoekull?) could stop Shrinebuilder visiting these shores last Spring, so to finally hear the crowd roar as Dale Crover (Melvins’ drummer/vocalist), Al Cisneros (Om’s bassist/vocalist), Scott Kelly (Neurosis’ guitarist/vocalist) and Scott ‘Wino’ Weinrich (The Obsessed vocalist/guitarist), legends all, mount the stage is enough to cause several grown men’s lips to momentarily quiver. The lank-haired Crover and Cisneros, resplendent as the class clown in his woolly hat, immediately fire up the rhythm section; Dale beats the snare into submission with the minimum of effort whilst Al uses his grotty basslines to overwhelm as much of the room as possible. Kelly and Wino try hard to make headway into the deluge with dissonant guitar and a mixture of vocal howl and croon, but they seem to make little impression. Only a trip up to the Glass Room, where a vast pane dissolves the sound, can cure the problem and single their individual efforts out.

They mix the songs up nicely, firing up the mighty ‘Pyramid Of The Moon’ and ‘The Architect’ as an opening salvo and saving ‘Solar Benediction’ for a raging finish. The middle of the set wanders away from the punchier material to slip into a spot of almost mystical noodling – it marks a period where the now fervently headbanging crowd find space for mild introspection. The band also happily fit in a couple of less well-known tracks; ‘We Let The Hell Come’ shining out like a beacon. Kelly, looking like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards and sporting a perma-stoned expression, is constantly impressive, digging out arse-clenching riffs and scowling vocal which Wino latches onto, plugging any gaps in sound with wah, extravagant slide and morphing melody. In fact it’s also Wino who adopts the role of ringmaster, legs spread, urging the audience to greater heights with a combination of vein-popping head jerks and fierce eyeballing.

There is really only one real spoiler to this brutal showing and it comes in the form of this evening’s stringent ‘no flash’ policy. One fan dares to forget to switch his off and suffers the indignity of having a roadie repeatedly pelt him with flying cups until he ceases. When you’ve got four of the world’s finest musicians before you, performing at the top of their game, turning your brain into mush, it seems the perfect excuse for a little lack of self-control.

All photographs by Rich Etteridge

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/12/shrinebuilder-scala-london-021210/