Album Review: Landskap - I

Landskap may be a common word in Scandinavia (you can probably guess its meaning) but this coming-together of 60s and 70s heavy psych obsessives actually hail from London, England. Formed in 2012 by members of Father Sun, SerpentCult, Fen, Pantheist and Dead Existence, their debut LP reeks of retrospective magick - right down to the tracklisting. It's a 34-minute, 4-song, 2-track disc - the 2 tracks being a hypothetical Side A and Side B in true arcane vinyl tradition. It is Landskap's refusal to fully bow their heads to modern music industry demands that lands the first blow in their war on the new world in which we all dwell.

From the off, the delicately-balanced 12 minutes of layering that constitute "A Nameless Fool" draw inspiration from Pentagram's psychedelic catalogue combined with Sabbath's soft-sided drift. There's an opening explosion of cymbals and strings that drop off into a cosmos-wandering solo. As the bell tolls in, the emotional atmosphere and elephantine pacing is set for Jake Harding's sultry resonant vocal to impart his words of wisdom into the echoing yonder.

"The things you crave, they draw you near / Desire's reason remains unclear / But still you crawl on weathered hands / Dragging down your fellow man."

As the demonic solo drops you'll find yourself straining to pick up a wedge of fat-stringed dissonance. Had they thrown that in, you'd be staring straight down the barrel of St. Vitus. In its place, a warbling organ rumbles along in the background sprinkling a fresh layer of cheese. It's immediately clear that Landskap are the preachers and us fans of old school doom are the converted.

Somewhat precariously tacked onto the end of Side A is the menacingly-titled "A Cabin In The Woods". Surprisingly it takes us about as far from the dark horror that its title suggests. Instead, we get a 3-minute gently warbling instrumental full of warming tones and astral patterning that takes us floating towards the exploratory edges of bands like Procul Harum and Pink Floyd.

As Side B kicks in, "Fallen So Far" rolls up with a feisty riff and a dark purpose. There's one initial smack of heady psych rock before it all settles back into doom-laden verses with a dissonant, splattering bass and antagonistic choruses. The whole stomp soon steps it all up into double-time and we're quickly careering towards a noisy oblivion. Headbangers beware - this is a beast.

"To Harvest The Storm" is another warm-toned instrumental with top-end wandering bass and twinkling, echoing Doors-esque organ. As the guitars kick in the rhythm gets more urgent and the smacks of Deep Purple and Hendrix begin to really come through. By the end you'll be jiving to the Hammond-induced psychedelics like a tripped-out turkey, arms flailing, head rotating, lost in the midsts of some intense Woodstockian flashback. Yes, at 12:30 it is a monster but, by god, it's worth every second for the intense surge of climactic pleasure that it offers.

Way too short, yet beguilingly sweet and utterly absorbing, you could wedge this debut into the heart of your old man's record collection and he wouldn't even flinch. It's hard to decide whether Landskap are retro to the point of being reclusive obsessives or whether they just invented a time machine and brought this "debut" back as a gift. Whichever, a debt is owed.

Also online @ Scratch The Surface = http://www.scratchthesurface-webzine.com/2014/04/landskap-i-review.html

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: Wino - Adrift

Scott ‘Wino‘ Weinrich has powered through the last four decades in a blaze of ear-bursting, buzzing psychedelics as he’s set about forging a successful career in the doom metal genre, fronting bands like Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan and, more recently, Shrinebuilder. To find him entering his fifth decade keen to switch off his amps and tone down his booming roar of a voice is a bit of a shock to the system. This latest solo album sees him detached from the melee, stripped down to the bones and bursting with a bluesy, emotion-soaked, rasp of a vocal backed up by little more than a swathe of delicately-layered, razor-sharp, acoustic strings...

Full review = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/10/wino-%E2%80%93-adrift/