Crippled Black Phoenix have always been a hard one to pin down to a
single genre so its no surprise to find multi-instrumentalist Justin
Greaves still warping any pre- or mis-conceptions we may have of his
band. This long-playing EP comes hot on the heels of last year’s White Light Generator – an album that marked their 10th anniversary.
Having tackled the emotional journey from stoner doom to freak folk
they continue their homage to the likes of Pink Floyd by covering their
classic composition “Echoes” from the 1971 album Meddle. Here
they strongly echo the source material yet manage to expand it from its
original 23-minute running time, employing some neat little tricks and
charming affectations, to a whopping 37-minuter in two parts. Definitely
a melange that Floyd fans will want to check out.
The two original tracks here provide most insight into their
evolution. With trumpets and gunshots opening the album the scene is set
by “Spider Island”… something wicked this way comes. Slow, clean, dark
instrumentation with a long, languid, deeply affected vocal brings the
constituent parts to climax somewhere between the damaged grunge of
Soundgarden and the dizzying wash of Monster Magnet.
Nestling up to this
the title-track and album focal point is a psychedelic journey down a
more occult side-road. Big on cyclical effects, pinged bass and warming
Hammond organ, the structural twists stand out like bullet-points. The
central rhythmic break is a doozy, lingering within an echoic chamber of
Jarre-ish Oxygene effects. From here, the instrumental
patterning continues to morph until It becomes apparent that the track
has already reached its peak and lost its sense of direction long before
it meanders to a close.
A record that is not without fault then, but one that sits pretty on its perch.
Moksha is total instrumental immersion from the first warm blushes of
the mesmerising opener “Prithvi” to the closing twinkle of “Agni”.
There’s a cotton-wool effect going on that dampens each and every note,
cosseting you in down, absorbing you into its arms. Long, languid,
gentle-warping notes intensify the mix of psychedelic trance, stoner and
post-rock by bringing to bear a rich variety of Rajastani string,
percussion and wind instrumentation. Engaging at every turn, the tracks
consistently bear fruit, stretching the experience with a mind-boggling
degree of layers. In a word, faultless.
2: Between The Buried And Me – Coma Eliptic(Metal Blade)
Since the birth of his solo career, Thomas Giles Rogers, has
strengthened his vocal performance no end and BTBAM are reaping the
rewards. With Coma Eliptic they continue to yank the wildest of genres
together, everything from polka and bossa nova to death metal. However,
what is different this time around is the simplified vision and
consequently the interconnectness of each part. The music gently segues
together with a single tone in mind. What that does is create continuity
within each individual track and across all tracks. The joy of “The
Coma Machine” is both explosively progressive and consistently
engrossing but its relationship with “Famine Wolf” and to an extent the
powerful “Option Oblivion” is undeniable. Even the beguiling dark
two-minuter “Dim Ignition” breaks boundaries. In my mind, this is none
other than BTBAM at their peak.
3: Periphery – Juggernaut(Century Media)
On release, Juggernaut hit me like, well, a juggernaut. Right smack
between the eyes. Rabbit in the headlights. It is a concept double-album
which could incite you to violence. It will make you both wince and
weep. Even after playing, it will lodge itself permanently in your
psyche. The story, told in heart-rendering first-person, will break even
the hardest of you. Containing the groove, psychedelia, hardcore and
jazz all ripped through with rhythmic conflict and dark lyricism, it
truly is an essential piece of psychological musical warfare. You have
been warned.
4: Heights – Phantasia On The High Processions Of Sun, Moon & Countless Stars Above(Basick)
Ignore their somewhat erratic output – this is no ordinary side-project.
Sharing a drummer with cult post-rockers Tesseract doesn’t count for
shit. Yes, getting my hands on this was a case of luck rather than
judgement, but that doesn’t alter the impact it has had upon me. It’s an
instrumental work of sheer beauty that will see you speeding through
the cosmos like a meteorite, pausing merely to marvel over the joy,
colour and sparkle that Heights inject into their compositions without
ever resorting to repetition; without ever sinking into use of force to
get their concept across. Phantasia… is an utter delight from Big Bang
to Big Freeze.
5: Enslaved – In Times (Nuclear Blast)
With their usual unrestricted vision, Enslaved have created a wonderful,
drive-dominant, hook-laden album filled with chugging gallops, dark
roars and menacing anguish. It is a work that will suck you in then cast
you adrift. Replete with invention throughout, the highlight arrives at
the album close. “Daylight” is the band at the peak of their powers
throwing out choral builds that warm the heart. And it comes all washed
through with strong echoes of Devin Townsend’s epic structuring, tones
and textures – well, I’m sold.
6: Man The Machetes – Av Nag(Indie Recordings)
Whipping along at a dizzying pace, this sophomore effort from punk n’
rollers Man The Machetes draws its power from revelling in visceral
heft. Standout moments come with the stepdown in pace to the crawling
lead and sweet rock-a-bye riff on “Tung Luft” and with the crafty,
constructive forethought that has gone into the humdinger “Orkenmarsj”.
Their time is now; come join in the dance.
7: Acid King – Middle Of Nowhere, Center Of Everywhere(Svart)
Lapping up the echoing majesty of such bands as Monster Magnet and
Orange Goblin while sourcing the wild electric fuzz of St. Vitus, Acid
King offer up an absolute peach of an album. Live, the tracks are
mind-blowingly intense, yet here wrapped up in the smooth dynamics of
the studio the music actually becomes even greater than the sound system
upon which it plays. Then, just when you thought they couldn’t get more
monstrous or distortion-hungry, vocalist Lori goes and twists her
tonsils around “Laser Highlights” and take this beast to an even higher
plane.
8: Caligula’s Horse – Bloom(Inside Out)
Jim Grey’s vocal is utterly beguiling and here, progressive technicians
Caligula’s Horse, have created the perfect vehicle to show it off to its
full potential. From elegaic, melodic numbers to big grooves with
addictive choruses to malevolent pieces filled with hate-fuelled
lyricism. Bloom is riddled with passion – it lets in a little light and a
little darkness and is well worth your attention.
9: Wildlights – Wildlights(Season Of Mist)
Riddled with the uplifting braggadocio and enslaving hooks of Audrey
Horne’s moxy and Torche’s power-driven post-rock, this startlingly adept
debut is emphatically boisterous, consistently driving and engagingly
addictive. It is effortlessly light, airy and voraciously catchy. It
glows with an inner fluoresence, blazing a trail for others – I urge you
to follow.
10: Secrets Of The Sky – Pathway(Metal Blade)
Oozing mournful, subtle introspection, yet bursting with
gloriously-consuming black-edged terror and shrewd metal crunch comes
something akin to the storytelling of Agalloch, Anathema or Alcest
whilst drunk on Sabbathian doom and Opethian melancholy. This
Californian quintet strictly adhere to their concept and unveil an opus
that feels like a worn pathway to something truly sinister.
11: Intervals – The Shape Of Colour (S/R)
12: The Atomic Bitchwax – Gravitron (Tee Pee)
13: Kontinuum – Kyrr (Candlelight)
14: Steak Number Eight – Kosmokoma (Indie)
15: Arcturus – Arcturian (Prophecy)
16: Bauda – Sporelights (Prophecy)
17: Death Alley – Black Magick Boogieland (Tee Pee)
18: Vattnet Viskar – Settler (Century Media)
19: Ecstatic Vision – Sonic Praise (Relapse)
20: Intronaut – The Direction Of Last Things (Century Media)
Upon forming, back in 2010, Winnipeg’s Wilt’s original intention was
to create a black metal studio-only project. Since, the duo of guitarist
Brett Goodchild and vocalist Jordan Dorge have assembled a full lineup
and have started hitting the festival circuit with a bit of success.
Now, for this, their debut long-player, the quintet bring us four
snaking tracks of blackened doom filled with buckets of blast beats,
swathes of dissonance, extended chord couplets and the standard fayre of
screeching, drone-tastic, monochromatic, acid-gargling vocals direct
from the colourless lips of the undead themselves.
What hits you hardest of all, besides Dorge’s toasted throat, is the
lack of warmth or colour in their music. It’s to be expected considering
the subject matter offers “a unique glimpse into the human condition,
for all its faults, heartbreak and despair” but it is no less of a shock
to find it so brutally emotionless in the way in which it dissects the
insidious disease within.
Right from the off, they fire up the slow, atmospheric doom machine.
When the freezing blasts of drum and screech eventually kick in they cut
through the fog like a shadowy, howling phantom. The downbeat tone and
dark portents hit home and the temperature plummets. Beware the tuneless
quality of “The Elder” – it is particularly nasty and relentlessly
unforgiving. You absolutely get the sense of the horror and of the soul
being torn asunder.
With each of the first three tracks cruising on past the 11-minute
mark, all the while hammering their mournful tune with the same
monochromatic attack and pitch, it really is heavy-going. The crumb of
comfort here is the variation of pace which allows for some particularly
neat shifts in vehemence. After 41 excruciating minutes it seems safe
to surmise that this really is a work bereft of joy.
With so little variation and such a harsh, caustic attack marrying
itself to the depressive tone, it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of
tea but, as they probably say in Canada, if you don’t like the cold, get
out of the fridge.
Blackened death with hints of post-metal, proto-punk, and occultism,
London’s Shrines are nothing if not inventive. Their combination of
emotion and rhythm paints a series of visceral sounds splattered with
bright phrasing. Raw and uncompromising it reeks of their lust,
self-loathing and comes loaded with the explosive aggression of their
inner punk.
The first run-through of this experimental debut will have you
scratching your head whilst marvelling at their adaptability. Allow the
collision of soft melodics and brutalistic rhythms to wash over you and
you’ll start to feel the dark concept begin to snag your mind. You’ll
suddenly feel like the essential cog in their machine; the key to
connecting the dots.
From the all-consuming introduction of rattling double-kick and
ritualistic chanting that encompasses “Ariadne’s Thread” through to the
otherwordly moaning and jagged rise-and-fall blitzkrieg that forms
“Truth”, this debut album is one wild rollercoaster ride of
genre-crossing that pitches and tosses you along whilst sneaking attacks
from every conceivable angle. The jagged rhythms, slo-mo chugs and
exploding cosmic experimentalism of tracks like “The Drowned” and
“Eternal Return” feel like some bizarre Vreid / Wolves In The Throne
Room / Mastodon musical collision.
In stark contrast, the majestic 6-minute centre-piece “Of The Wolf”
is the key to the piece. Working like a finger to the lips it is
dramatic, incisive and other-worldly. Inevitably it is the key that
opens the door into understanding the band and the album. Without it the
the thing wouldn’t have a mooring.
If drummer Daniel Blackmore is the tormenting villain of the piece
then vocalist Sam Loynes (Voices, ex-Ackercocke) is equally as divisve.
He switches between smooth melodics, antagonistic roars and pig squeals
with apparent ease. Check out “Multitude Of Sin” for his full range – it
is one track that really has fun bending genre boundaries. Staid,
dyed-in-the wool, anodyne? Shrines are not.
It does feel slightly dissolute as a complete work and tends to ties
itself in knots when simplicity is called for. However, when the
backline tightens up, it provides the perfect canvas for the musical
theatrics and vocal gymnastics to really make an impression.
Instrumental metal isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea but it’s most
certainly a genre that lends itself to emotional abandonment. And with
post-metal burgeoning, it seems everyone’s at it these days. Another for
the melting pot, Greek three-piece Arrakis formed late in 2012 with the
intention of creating the ultimate stoner experience. None of these
messy lyricisms for them, just pure, pounding rhythms, heaps of
distortion and cyclical riffs into which the listener can blithely
stagger and drop out.
Recorded live in the studio, Ammu Dia shows promise but lacks punch.
Roughly produced, its consequently loaded with honesty and raw power,
yet is somewhat imbalanced and has plenty of niggling inaccuracies.
Thematically lacking also, the album relies all too often on mere
stringwork to discover the heart and soul of the tracks, rather than by
using layering and soundscaping to dig into the emotional bedrock. Bands
like Russian Circles or Red Sparowes are masters of both, whilst
Arrakis attempt to fuel a different fire. They are more about the riff
and the head-down groove. Only the final few tracks, and in particular,
both “Noema” and the 12 paper-thin minutes of “Diplomacy?” even attempt
to draw a little introspection from the listener.
With just the single lead guitar forging ahead to mingle with the
battering kit and gutsy bass there’s little room for string interplay
and, as a consequence, the big bloated monsters of one-dimensional
“Audium” and the anomalous “Aztec” create nothing but a swathe of flat
noise, losing what little craftwork there is in the muddy production and
heaving dissonance. One recognisable touchstone lurks as “Oppose” tips
its hat to the dark patterning and simplistic doom of both St. Vitus and
Black Sabbath.
As a jam in a live setting with their chords blasting through chests,
Arrakis have the tuneage to really make bonces bounce, but with so
little to offer in this crudely-produced recorded format they are
unfortunately just more of a racket.
