Halifax Collect

BIRDS IN ROW - Cottbus

2012-02-13T04:35:00.000-08:00

Explosive. Creative. Energetic. Thoughtful. Searching. Intense. All words that come to mind while listening to Cottbus. Here you'll find familiar genre conventions but from different directions and the colors used to fill in the gaps between said genres and the band's influences, that's where the the band cuts away from the herd.

Cottbus bulldozes over you without looking back. Seven songs go by and your speakers are left drenched in sweat. The production is huge. The guitar tone is warm, the drums sound organic and the vocals are distorted. Still there's such an oomph to this whole affair that immediately - even though tempting - comparisons with impressive European "screamo" acts feel uncalled for. So I won't go there. But keep it mind. Cottbus applies pressure on you. The only respites from all the rage is the intro-like "Among The Ashes" and "Outro". Everything else booms and crashes in a heartfelt and beautiful fashion.

There's familiarity herein. Birds In Row - like so many other before them - tore out a page from the Modern Life Is War's Witness. They echo the criminally overlooked Danish masters Lack. And you do not have to dig all that deep in order to imagine a 2011 rendition of Shape Of Punk To Come's more dramatic moments. When I think about it, that's a breath of fresh air because everyone and their mom has been borrowing that album's rocking and anthemic moments for more than a decade now.
That said, Birds In Row make it their own because what happens before and after parts that resound the past is what makes the band stand out. It's hard to explain. It can be the drum patterns and beats. Transitions between parts within the songs. The stops. The occasional French prog-black metal styled guitar picking. There are carefully placed twists and turns here that lend themselves to the albums short length. Never over-doing it or burdening the songs with too many goings on. That's songwriting. That is maturity. It renders Cottbus fresh and stirring.

This young three piece is already impressing the hell out of me. Cottbus' persuasive powers hint something great. Watch this space. Listen good. [Throatruiner]
- Birkir Fjalar Viðarsson

"Hacksaw" Jim Duggan VS "Rowdy" Roddy Piper

2012-02-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

Who was capable of more butt kickery? If they were a band, which band would they be? These are important questions and some of you had great answers!

I don't know who I was talking to or what was going through my mind at the time but quickly I found myself reminiscing about '80s and early '90s wrestling and for whatever reason, I started talking about Hacksaw and Rowdy. I mentioned how they weren't blingy characters and surely not extravagant or fly. On the contrary, I remembered them "men amongst the people," working-class, pedestrian but butt-kicking and stupidly entertaining.
I never was an expert on WWF or WWE, and living in isolation, I was not exposed to a lot of matches, tournaments and build-ups live or in real time. Hell, I had a hard time following the simplest story lines and only got the gist of the more publicized rivalries. But I, and my brother included, where lucky enough to know an older guy in our village that had a satellite disc. If we asked him nicely and ahead of time and fed him constant reminders of something we suspected was going down in America that weekend he'd tape wrestling for us. We just had to give him some tapes. Me and my brother loved Piper and Duggan. They were easy to get into. Piper was bat-shit bananas and Hacksaw looked like an uncle that would fight anybody and probably win because he had balls over wits.

So I posed the question to Halifax Collect's followers on facebook, twitter, tumblr and a couple of messageboards: who was capable of more butt-kicking and which band's represented them the best. Quickly Piper was collecting the votes which garnered him the title "Better Butt-Kickerer". Here are some of your thoughtful and fucking amazing reactions:

Tyler Larson (twitter) wrote
Hacksaw Jim Duggan is the spirit of America. Who else ran to the ring with a flag & 2x4? When he came out, you knew he was about to take care of business. Roddy Piper was a brawler, but really how scared are you going to be of a full grown man in a kilt? Duggan had a beard, won the first Royal Rumble, had the balls to take Andre the Giant on in a feud, he was also on the Hulkamaniacs. Piper: One of the best heels in wrestling, beat up Snuka and started a long feud, kicked Cyndi Lauper in the head during the Hogan feud, great shit talker/instigator. The question you should ask yourself is, who would you rather face in a bar fight? The guy wearing the kilt and holding a chair, or the man with the crazy eyes and 2x4? I think the answer is obvious.

Dugga = All Out War

Piper = Integrity

Kevin Hare wrote
"Piper for sure. Duggan was kind of a one trick pony, but piper could be a sadistic son of a bitch."

JustinThunderLiger (tumblr) wrote
Both guys had limited move sets and came across as brawlers as opposed to mat technicians or martial artists. Piper had a boxing and amateur wrestling background and used what technical ability he did have to generate heel heat with almost everything he did. Duggan relied on “USA” chants which seemed to be the cheapest of face pops even back then. Piper sold and flopped around like crazy, making his opponent look like a beast, (even Shawn Michaels would say he over-sold at times) and would blade like it was nothing (see the bottle promo on Youtube). Duggan barely flinched.

ADVANTAGE: Piper

Character:
Like I said, Duggan relied on the jingoism inherent in the wrestling fan base. His work on the mic was extremely basic, but it never had to be all that complicated. Piper was an artist on the mic. Bobby Heenan and Ric Flair (two of the best talkers in wrestling history) both name Piper as one of the best talkers in the history of the business. The guy could work the crowd like no other. See: Half-black face when feuding with Bad News Brown, Snuka and the coconuts, and his huge feud with the Guerrero family and the infamous La Cucaracha near-riot. Although Piper takes all the credit for being Hogan’s main nemesis and therefore responsible for launching Hulkamania , you can’t discount the impact he did have. The good guy needs a bad guy to beat. Piper was tricky, slippery, and cheated like crazy. The audience paid to see if he finally got his comeuppance. As Hulkamania fizzled out it became apparent that a monster face is only as good as the evil he needs to overcome. Good guy is boring without a challenging bad guy.
Advantage: Piper

Band:
Duggan is Lee Greenwood cashing in on 9/11. Piper is like a self-aware Nickleback trolling the shit out of the world. Or like an established classic artist that would only play their new album or an acoustic set in concert just to fuck with the audience that wants to hear the hits.

Steve Shell, first-hand experience pro-wrestling aficionado, Asheville, NC, wrote
Piper was and is a moron. Greatest heel ever? Maybe but if you saw the guy when he worked for WCW before he hung it up 1) He couldn't carry a match in a bucket and 2) He'd go on shows like Larry King and still act like his character and had the balls to compare his career to someone like Mick Foley. I thought he was an asshole at first, but the more I heard him talk the clearer it was that he was completely delusional. Also, Piper thought he was getting out of wrestling when he was in John Carpenter's "They Live" but never really got another role and kinda sucked as a worker after that. Hacksaw is a sadder story. Dude got to play a legit badass in the UWF before he became a cartoon character for the WWF. By the end of Hacksaw's career, he wasn't a character that could ever hold a title, do more than five moves but by god he stayed over and HOOOOOOOO! and USA! USA! USA! are still over with crowds.

Chris Burnett wrote
Piper would be Sheer Terror.

Dan K (wrestling tape/DVD trader, Syracuse edgeman, father of 2 (email / website) wrote
Piper grew up in the streets homeless. Duggan beat cancer. Tough call.
I think Duggan was def tougher (he was Bill Watt's boy for Christ sakes), but like someone above said, Piper was crazy (but not insane).

Duggan = Warzone

Piper - Cro Mags

Matt Weber, Ontario, Canada, wrote
Rowdy Roddy Piper is Thin Lizzy, a band that was so influential and never got the attention they deserved while Hacksaw is the guy singing the national anthem at a ball game where it's part of the show but is more or less filler.

Matt Jennings (website) wrote
Duggan is your favorite wrestler when your 9, Piper is your favorite wrestler when your 29.

Morgado wrote
Lot of people here need to brush up on their Jim Duggan history. Eddard Stark is the only person with a clue about the guy beyond the Rock N Wrestling era that I see (though I don't really agree with him on Piper). Check out his tuxedo/coal miner glove on a pole match with DiBiase, it's a classic and isn't a joke match AT ALL.

Not only was Hacksaw considered one of the businesses legit tough guys in an era where 90% of them were tough guys, the dude once busted DiBiase's nose because Bill Watts wanted them to start getting double the color they had been getting by going full Muta for the 2 weeks prior. Before he became a cartoon, dude was hard.

In the end tho, both guys became washed up shells of themselves, so who was a better in ring guy and who was actually tougher irl are a draw, and there's no need for me to rehash what others have said. But in terms of looking at actual careers in full, Piper takes it by a mile. He had more longevity, never became a one note cartoon like Duggan did (not the same as becoming washed up imo), had way more memorable moments, branched out into mainstream media in a way that Duggan never really even tried to do, and is arguably as much of a house hold name as Hogan, or at least was for a time.

If you want to go with bands... I would say Piper is Suicidal Tendencies (legit sketch factor, what hits he has are super good and memorable, but there's a lot of crap and experiments into other genres).

Hacksaw would be AC/DC (was considered hard when he started off, found a niche role that led to greater fame and then just stuck with the formula with out ever changing to the point where now he's the wrestling equivalent of a senior citizen playing guitar in a school boy outfit: it's totally goofy but is still a popular act that you get psyched on once a year)*.

*- yes, I know the flaw to that is that AC/DC was and is by far a bigger band than ST, but the rest of the comparison I think outweighs that factor.
........................................................................................................................................
So there you have it folks! I'm not taking credit for any the analysis and thoughtful contributions to this spur of the moment idea of mine. Sincere thanks and appreciation for everyone that chimed in, did some writing and participated... This was a blast!
- Birkir Fjalar

Loney, Dear - Hall Music

2012-02-11T03:24:00.000-08:00

Loney, Dear made its mark on the indie music scene in 2007 with the album Loney, Noir and now the band has a new album out, called Hall Music. Behind Loney, Dear is only one man, a young swedish dude named Emil Svanängen but he'd actually been at it for a few years before becoming an international success and produced his first album on his own, as well as releasing it himself, in 2003. An album called The Year of River Fontana. Hall Music is his fifth album.

The name Hall Music is quite fitting for this album as the music sometimes feels a bit like chamber music and would be very much at home in a large concert hall with a sitting audience. It starts off a tad Sigur-Rós-y with Loney/Emil's voice blending in with the instruments on the song "Name". But the Sigur-Rós connection is very minor and superficial so all comparisons end here.

What Emil/Loney has done here is create an album that melds soundscapes with melodies and while the album overall has a specific sound to it not all the songs sound the same, the album has a varied sound so it doesn't grow wearisome after a while but instead grows on you with each listen. It does still have it’s dull bits and sometimes you zone out while listening and don't notice the music anymore, but that probably depends a bit on your mood. It's maybe not quite an album that can be listened to just anytime of the day.

Ethereal could be a good word to describe the music on Hall Music. It has a floating, airy feel to it as if it doesn't quite belong in this world. It's not spacey or anything but simply suggests a different world beyond the one we know. Emil's voice is also sometimes mixed in a way so that he sounds like some sort of angel, a digital angel! The music keeps itself in a low key much of the time but sometimes jumps into a more epic tone with somewhat bombastic string arrangements. Emil/Loney both pulls back and lets go of his inhibitions on this album.

There is a certain familiarity to the album nonetheless. Parts of it sound like some sort of amalgam between The Arcade Fire and Bon Iver with a touch of the Fleet Foxes, but it never feels like a rip-off. But if you like those artists this album is worth checking out.

It's not quite a mind-blowing album, well made and very well produced but still a little too familiar. It mostly does what it sets out to do but perhaps just needed a little more edge. [Polyvinyl]
- Atli Sigurjónsson

GAUNT is here: interview / stream. "None of us are card-carrying metalheads"

2012-02-09T03:12:00.000-08:00

Woeful, grim and cold, Gaunt comes forth with no ado about anything. There are no trumpets beings sounded. There's no parade. No build-up. They literally emerge out of darkness. They surface victorious. No one will know. Or will they?
I got in touch with Mr. Compulsive himself, one Kolbeinn Þorgeirsson (a.k.a. Kolli) and asked him about his latest endeavor. Having raged against Cylon God and the Gods of Kobol alike in squadrons such as Gavin Portland, Fighting Shit, Grimmd, Eðli Annara and countless others I was curious to learn of Gaunt's mantle in this clandestine jihad.

Kolli, you're back in a band but then again, your always involved with host of bands in one dimension; in real-time spanning multitude of geographic locations. What's different this time around?
The main difference is that I'm only in one band. I'm used to having to divide my time up between multiple projects so it's nice to be able to focus all your energy into one thing. Because all the members live in different places, Gaunt isn't as fast-paced as newborn bands tend to be. That can feel frustrating at times but the silver lining is that we get to take our time with everything and not rush. I'm also playing bass and leaving vocal duties to someone else, which is refreshing. I'm glad I'm not having to write lyrics, I've done it so many times. I still write lyrics and do vocals for Grimmd but since they are in Icelandic it feels a bit different.

Latest tracks by GAUNT
Surely not a SXSW black metal band - from where do you draw your inspiration and where are you going with this raw baby of yours?
I'm guessing SXSW black metal is what the LastFM metal-defenders refer to as 'false black metal'? [I doubt it because I just coined it - Ed] Maybe we'll be perceived as that, I don't know. None of us are card-carrying metalheads... but I guess that's becoming more common now as the genre expands. As for inspiration, all four of us have been legitimately geeking out about all sorts of black metal for a few years now so we try to pull as much as possible together without losing grip on the atmosphere we want to create. Also, we all come from the punk scene and I think that will always partially dictate our songwriting and how we approach the band. We don't have any grand plans where we want to take the band, we just got started. Baby steps.

Lyrics, themes? Women and blank canvases?
To be honest, I haven't seen any of the lyrics yet. It's probably something really intense. Samwise is an intense person.

Can you tell us something about your fellow warlords, how the band came together and if they are in other functional bands at the moment?
We started like pretty much every band starts: "Hey do you want to be in a band with me and him and him?" They're all in active bands that also happen to be fucking fantastic. Samwise does vocals in the absolutely crushing Lich (Bandcamp) as well as the fantastic Battle Of Wolf 359 (Myspace). Oli has long arms and plays guitar in Lich with Samwise. Richardson does drums/vocals in some of the best stuff coming out of the UK at the moment: the fast, thrashy and absolutely incredible Human Junk (Bandcamp), the Darkthrone worshipping Sacred Ritual (who have a split coming out this month with my other project, Grimmd) and the groovy Wedding (Bandcamp). He is also the best looking member of the band. On a related subject, people should check out both Man Hands (Bandcamp) and Sky:lark (Bandcamp) for some incredible noise. I guarantee you'll be kicking yourself for not having checked these bands out sooner.

Any gigs in the pipes? Future plans?
Our demo came out today (Feb 3, 2012) so now we're just looking for some gigs to play. Nothing's been booked but I'm sure we'll manage to squeeze ourselves onto a bill somewhere. As a band, our collective scrounging abilities are unrivaled.

For anyone out there wanting to get their hands on a physical format of your music, what to do?
Email Samwise on eyeheartdoom@yahoo.co.uk and ask for a demo tape. I don't know how much they are but it's a tape so it won't be much.
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
LICH - Demo tape
HUMAN JUNK - 2010 demo tape
Gavin Portland, live footage (2009)
PBP Records - free downloadable label sampler
Eðli Annara - new Icelandic hardcore punk

OF MONTREAL - Paralytic Stalks

2012-02-07T03:29:00.000-08:00

At first, of Montreal's new record Paralytic Stalks could be one of the most abrasive things you’ve ever heard. It's fucking all over the place, Kevin Barnes with a thesaurus in front of him comes off as incredibly desperate and it has terribly timed 'freak-out' moments, amongst other things. It's hardly a welcoming record. However, after several spins, it really begins to stick.

Some of the tracks are incredibly cluttered, different sounds and melodies twisting and turning in between each other, trying it's best to fit into the pop/rock structure the band wishes so desperately to achieve but barely ever does. However, sometimes this aesthetic can be saved by well crafted melodies, an example of which is "Dour Percentage," where the awkward chopped-and-screwed style is subsided by the very real fact that these melodies, though steeped in cringing nostalgia, completely save the sucker, not quite causing the near five minute song to feel as a complete waste of time.

What "Dour Percentage" allows the audience to do is to become a sort of active listener in the material, where the audience must cue themselves as to what's happening now as a separate moment, within the same track, passes. I believe this is a reaction Barnes has been wanting to achieve throughout his catalogue. Of Montreal has always been this kind of band; progressive pop that found interesting rhythm and melody for people to latch onto as Barnes weaved in and out of experiments with structure and tones. In past attempts, the candy our ears were to suck on as we were fed new tastes to challenge our palettes came to overshadow the whole thing. On this record, the melodies don’t seem to take a back seat, they're simply not as good and, therefore not as enticing to latch on to as Barnes tries some shit out. However, this allows Barnes experimentation and his experimental agenda come through moreso than on any other record he’s made thus far. This can be best summed up in the albums second half, which is clearly the moment where everything gets thrown out and of Montreal borders onto something that drastically departs from its old self and becomes something to look forward to in the future.

The second half of the album absolutely trumps the first half and it can be attributed to a very simple thing. The songs are longer and structure becomes less strict and, therefore, much more noticeable. When this is the case, of Montreal shines, with very few songs in recent memory coming off as brilliant, weird and fun as "Ye, Renew the Plaintiff." On the record’s second half, the parts come to their logical conclusion, unlike the first half where, though sometimes enjoyable and challenging, the tracks can really feel like a mess. From "Ye, Renew the Plaintiff" to "Authentic Pyrrhic Remmission," Barnes manages his ideas better, creating this really interesting moment of chaos created through control. The beginning of the record sounds like Barnes pushing and scrunching all these ideas into less than 4 minutes, concepts going over others and not allowing anytime for the person to process it. As Paralytic Stalks draws to a close, it's impossible not to feel a bit of fatigue, especially after Side A, but the last half allows moments of reflection, more easing you into what Barnes wants to express, making that fatigue feel less like a hard day of menial work and more so like a tiring attempt at something you've willingly pushed yourself through.

Don't get me wrong, these latent observations don’t redeem this record. It's hardly enjoyable and, while I do think Barnes wants to challenge, he doesn’t want you to be bored or annoyed, which occurs many a time during Paralytic Stalks. However, it's hardly a record to be glanced over and called bad simply because it doesn't immediately attach itself to its audience. Instead, trying to consider what's being done in terms of style, pacing and such shows that it's certainly a record that can cause many discussions and, in many ways, isn't that better than a record everyone unanimously likes? [Polyvinyl]
- Dru Morrison

BENIGHTED- Asylum Cave

2012-02-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

On Asylum Cave, France's much lauded Benighted are able to cater to vide range of extreme metal fans and especially those of the death metal variety. Make no mistake - this LP kicks ass but in the long run that might not be enough.

There's a lot going on here. Too much in fact (similarly to Abacinate although Benighted are technically more accomplished). Like hinted before, almost everyone gets a shot; the grinders, brutal death metallers, slam-death gets its space, thrash metal riffs and almost Machine Head-like catchiness rears its head (example: the part during the solo in "Let the Blood Spill between my Broken Teeth"). With this in mind - coupled with the fact Benighted is one of those bands that switches up and changes between tons of parts within each song - calling Asylum Cave modern, is within reason. Coincidently this also makes it hard to indulge and remember songs. Nominating "hits" then becomes a bit of a beard-scratcher. Which is a shame because there are parts herein that are fantastic and noteworthy, showing beyond any doubt that these guys can write music that could be mixtape-worthy. But unlike great death metal albums, it's worryingly easy to pick favorites. Truly stellar albums make it a pain in the ass for one to comfortably decide which songs end up on the cassette. If I had to tell you which songs best demonstrate how good Benighted are, and to a frustrating end: hint on how great they could be if they just chilled the fuck out, "Hostile," "Fritzl," "Infected Children" and "A Quiet day" all get my votes.

Cramming bunch of cool parts into songs and connecting them in a commendable way does not yield greatness. And quite frankly in this day and age it is far from original. So what are we left with here? A band with big potential and players that can hold their own against pretty much anybody. But some serious soul and excitement as sorely missing and so is intrigue and the ability to make it stick - to leave the album etched in the listeners brain. Too ambiguous? Lets try this: Ghost's full-length is not original at all but give it ago and it'll will glue itself onto your dried up brain not showing any signs of letting go. And in the interest of not sounding like an old fart yearning for the past, Asylum Cave is entertaining and energetic.

Unfortunately this promo did not come with a lyric sheet to enhance my experience. Whatever. I conclusion I can't help but think that Benighted need a big dose of "less is more" and to shun today's demand for ADHD-like compositions on the altar of simplicity would benefit this talented bunch in ways the probably cannot imagine. So, I'm filing this under; check them out - another album might do the trick. [Season Of Mist]
- Birkir Fjalar

Atrum adds another language to their arsenal. Plus: live at Wacken (video)

2012-01-27T05:54:00.000-08:00

"I'm excited about trying out some Icelandic in my lyrics soon"

Extreme metallers (death / black / thrash respectively) Atrum quickly proved that they are a force to be reckoned with. Yet, in spite of critical acclaim and roaring approval from metal fans wide and far, they've remind relatively silent were no life dwells as opposed to flogging their bits at the market square. But the beast is alive, preparing shots to be heard around the world.
After watching a video of the band's performance at last year's Wacken (find it at the end of this post), I felt inclined to get in touch with songwriter/choir member conductor Sigurður and ask him about the Wacken show and more importantly about what Atrum has been up to musically since our last chat.

It's been some time since your appearance at Wacken. Looking back at it, what was the experience like and in which ways has it benefited the band after the fact?
Well, of course it was an amazing experience. We had a big crowd and we kept their attention. After the fact, this is obviously something we'd love to do again and again. I think the greatest benefit of the trip was that we got a taste of "touring", how different the scene is outside of Iceland and how professional big festivals like Wacken actually are. It's not that we are a careless bunch, but it was surprising and refreshing to see how many people, the audience, stage hands etc. cared so much about an unknown Icelandic band, even if it was only for a few hours.

Without a label or PR company to push you online, you still managed to stir up a lot of favorable interest in the band by putting professionally executed recordings online for public consumption. Many now know that Atrum is a force to be reckoned with and of the highest caliber but then you quickly withdrew into the shadows from which you seemingly just appeared out of not that long ago. The giant sleeps some say but what is brewing as of late, what's new and what is there to expect from Atrum?
It's no secret that our activities are sometimes quite scarce, but when we do something we pride our selves in doing it the right way. I don't think that's a bad thing, even though it might not sound ideal. Perhaps we also approach the subject differently, while many bands see their type of music, or their respective scenes, as a lifestyle where you're either all in or you're out, we see Atrum more as a state we get into. We might not see each other for weeks but when it's time to hit the stage everybody knows what it's all about. 2011 was the busiest year for us yet, we finally got some music out, played many great gigs with, and for, a lot of great people. What is there to expect? We have two exciting gigs coming up, first with superstars Skálmöld february 4th, and then we'll entertain at club NASA while the judges decide which band will represent Iceland at Wacken 2012. Other than that I'm getting very excited about writing new metal music, I'm constantly writing all sorts of music, but I want to just take a month or two and focus solely on Atrum and finish an album in record time. That should be fun or disastrous... We'll see.

Can you give the readers some insight into the band's sonic development since we last spoke and an idea about the lyrical topics and themes that will accompany your next attack.
Our new songs are definitely a little more to the point. We want to make a full-length soon, so the approx 10 songs will likely be more character based, while the album in a whole is a bigger totality. We plan to continue our integration of classical elements without going overboard, still structurally built on the principal quartet. Lyrically I'm leaning toward some motifs I find hard to explain, so I won't try to at the moment, but the ones that are finished are somewhat picturesque but chaotic, whatever that may tell you. I'm also excited about trying out some Icelandic in my lyrics soon.
- Birkir Fjalar

*Photo credit: Gunnar, Season Of Mist

Atrum @ Wacken Open Air 2011 from AtrumIceland on Vimeo.

Related stories
Out of the Shadows in the Deep comes Atrum's mighty Opus Victum: interview / album stream
Atrum - Video teaser for Opus Victum
Metal and hardcore/punk in Iceland, 09
Iceland metal and rock "heads up" extravaganza #2

Maximumrocknroll's very best 12"/LP of 2011

2012-01-26T07:08:00.000-08:00

So, another year, another list. I like lists, however, even though I should despise for their reductive nature and reaffirmation that everything in this fucking world can be reduced to a taxonomy, be it nature, art or funny pictures of weird families. I like them because they're simply a catalyst and, pretty much, nothing more. They get the conversations going and before you know it you’re discovering things about each other that are completely outside of the lists topic. Some fight, some gang up on others, some hug that shit out in the end, but we all come out a feeling little better inside and about those we share records with.
Now, this is a cumulative list so a little bit of humanity has been sucked out of it because there's literally no author of this list. It's just stupid fucking numbers (something else I despise). Isn't this fun!?!
Fuck it though. The real reason I'm posting this list is because I've listened to several of these records over the year and this is a nice and tidy way of presenting some of these records that have been spinning on mine, and apparently others, turntable for a bit now.

Logistics. None of this is weighted upon where an author placed it upon their respective list, something I probably should have mentioned in last years MRR cumulative list. Besides, most of the others specifically state "In no particular order," atop of their list anyways, so I don't think it would have mattered either way.
Basically, I created a list from the most mentioned record down, until I got as close to 10 records without omitting any records that tied with the same amount of mentions. Pretty simple stuff that results in fist-fighting nerdery. Love it. Another thing, If you're wondering why there's gaps in numbers, I think of it this way. 5 records are tied at fifth place, so if there was a 6th, 7th , 8th or 9th place in this list, these records reserve those places. Ya? That sorta confuses me to. I saw it done this way somewhere else so I'm doing it. Fuck off.

Lastly, this list does not represent the collective that is MaximumRockNRoll. I did this for shits and giggles. So, without further ado…

MRR’s Top 10(?) Records (12” or LPs) of 2011

1. Total Control - Henge Beat (11)

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://hengebeat.bandcamp.com/album/henge-beat"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Henge Beat by Total Control&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

2. Shoppers - Silver Year (6)

2. Hygiene - Public Sector (6)
4. Rank/Xerox - LP (5)
5. Royal Headache - LP (4)
5. Brain F≠ - Sleep Rough (4)
5. Isterismo - Tokyo Crusties (4)
5. Iceage - New Brigade (4)
5. GG King - Esoteric Lore (4)
10. Crazy Spirit - Demo (3)
10. Video - Leather, Leather (3)
10. Household - Items (3)
10. Dead Language - Paranoia (3)
10. Milk Music - Beyond Living (3)
10. Foreign Objects - No Sensation (3)
10. Folded Shirt - LP (3)
10. No Statik - We All Die in the End (3)
10. Death Token - All Dreams are Nightmares (3)

Honourable Mentions (More Than One Mention)

Brown Sugar - …Sings of Birds and Racism
Homostupids - Strawberry, Orange, Peach, Banana
The UV Race - Homo
Ripper - Into Oblivion
Midnight - Satanic Royalty
The Omegas - Blasts of Lunacy
Dadfag - Probably
Total Abuse - Prison Sweat
Brain Killer - Every Actual State is Corrupt
Arctic Flowers - Reveries
Sex Church - Growing Over
Future Virgins - Western Problems
Deathcharge - Love Was Born to an Early Death
Morbo - De Baja Calidad
The Pheromoans - It Still Rankles
Inversibles - LP
Warning//Warning - There's Nothing Left
Kromosom - 8 Tracks LP

Get your a copy of Maximum Rocknroll #345 • Feb 2012 The 2011 year-end top ten issue from which this post was compiled. Stare-it-down and pick it up from your local (international) distro.

-Dru Morrison

Related stories
Maximumrocknroll's very best of 2010 - 7"/EP edition
Maximumrocknroll's very best of 2010

MOUTHEATER - Colonial

2012-01-24T04:24:00.000-08:00

Moutheater's Colonial comes into my life with a little bit of everything. And that's good for a change. They sound to me as a well established band who are into differnt things and pretty good at mixing these influences into a coherent whole.

Colonial is similar in style to Moutheater's previous material in my opinion; heavy yet accessible, angry and I'd even say catchy at times. Opener "Keeping Secrets" is a strange combination of Queens of the Stone Age and heavier metal which switches up at the end of the song, like two songs tied into one. It starts of with a thundering Nick Oliveri-escue bass line and ends with screams of bloody murder, quite the opposite to where it started. An experiment that works.
"The Benefits of Self Mutilation" sounds like Kylesa, minus the blasting stoner type riffs. Like they stole Kylesa's rythm section and just sprayted some very simple and effective, brutal riffage on top. Also, again, the same bloody Neurosian screaming! Scott Kelly would be proud!

"Enslaved does sounds similar to Neurosis (before going all ambient) and also a bit slow and drony. It's a simple song, with a simple riff just repeated over and over again but somehow doesn't tire. Sort of like "Floyd the Barber" by Nirvana, which is an idiotically simple thing but somehow makes sense. I guess it's the delivery which counts at the end of the day. Simple verse chorus verse metal song, with a twist of lemon, as the man said.
Then to tie it all up the album ends with "Nauseous" which has these dreamy vocals layered on top of heavy rythms, leading to the hard rocking chorus. I can imagine this is what it feels like drifting in and out of a coma. Great way to end the (way too short) album.

Colonial clocks in at under 20 minutes so while listening on repeat it all somehow comes together as a consistent whole. I found myself leaving it on for long stretches of time, which incidentally also made it feel like a single long song. Next time I'd love to get a full LP out of Moutheater. It's one of those bands I really like when I listen to them but there isn't enough material to keep me hanging around for too long, although I always enjoy the time spent listening. Let's hope that changes soon. [Last Anthem]
- Theodór Helgason

Nauseous by Moutheater by HalifaxCollect

Related stories
Interview: Moutheater "less is more"
MOUTHEATER - Ornament
MOUTHEATHER - Lot Lizard, 7"
VEGAS / MOUTHEATER split 7"

Get in on the action with Plöw and In Siren

2012-01-17T05:28:00.000-08:00

Stoner metallers Plöw (Denmark / Iceland) have been in these digi-pages before. What's to report this time around then?, you ask. Well, they've made their debut EP, Bicentennial Picnic, available for streaming and download in two different locations; bandcamp and Gogoyoko. There's been an wave of reviews (Bicentennial Picnic is easily one of the more noteable end-of-the-year stoner metal releases from an up-and-coming stoner metal band - Doommantia). and interviews following the release of Bicentennial Picnic many of which you can get a hold of via their Gogoyko profile and facebook. I'm not convinced by this band yet but there's quite a lot going on in their sound so give this EP a spin or two.

<a href="http://plowmetal.bandcamp.com/track/spring-tide">Spring Tide by Plöw</a>

Musically ambitious, proggy and hard-to-pin-down In Siren (Iceland), recently gave us plebs a three song preview for things to come. Featuring members of Momentum, Ask The Slave, Árstíðir, Black Earth and more, you should not expect anything ordinary or easy to digest. But there's grace and finesse here that might instantly appeal to the mort patient listener. I for one am still on the fence. But then again, I like to be on the fence. We'll see how this relationship develops later. Oh, and check out the strangely Mew'ian vibes in "Innocence."
Feather Minds by In Siren

- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
PLÖW's first yet impressive debut video

Marc Broude's "Vampire Salt" (Listen / Download / Stream)

2012-01-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

"I am a schizophrenic as far as music is concerned"

Marc Broude's restlessness can be felt when reading his bio, his emails and when enjoying his music. And this is a good thing for you and I 'cause the man has a lot to offer. Yet I wonder if he's going to go mental one day from staying up late so often writing, recording and performing. Therein lies some of the intrigue. That being said, his need to create music and art is there for us to take in. Recently Marc Broude gave us permission to feature his brand new demo of "Vampire Salt" on our Soundcloud (joining the merry company of Gang Related, Tongan Death Grip, Muck, Kalel, Gone Postal, Svartidauði and Moutheater), where you can stream and download the track. If The Jesus and The Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Jesu laden dreampop/shoegaze sounds like something you'd be into, give the song a listen before proceeding with this piece you're reading.

Marc Broude - Vampire Salt (Unreleased Demo) by HalifaxCollect

Broude will dabble in anything. I mean, at any given moment you'll find him lumped in with black metal, ambient and electronic music, experimental noise, avant garde jazz, one man performances, random colabs and I could go on. Will he exhaust himself? Is he nuts? I don't really want to find out. Still, I got in touch with him and threw some questions at him to which he replied in one long, insightful reply.

"I am a schizophrenic as far as music is concerned. I don't really have favorite bands or listen to any specific genre and am more attracted to individual songs of multifaceted songcraft. Without intention I have sort of incorporated this into my music. The bulk of my music leans towards dark ambient and experimental but that style is only 25% of what I listen to and my inspiration for those releases were not derived from music or artists but psychology and emotional communication through music. However, the two industrial singles were more musically inspired and intentionally spit out 12 years too late."

Transcend the Rubicon

"I try to create a transcendental state of consciousness though all my music which gives it a sort of cinematic vibe or something the less intelligent call music for a horror film. "Vampire Salt" started as an improvisation in 2004 or 2005 and over time I would simulate it, adding a structure which eventually turned into a G major + F minor + D major + B minor + A major + E major chord progression. Late 2008 or early 2009 I recorded this adding F minor at the end of each break and then weeks later I played the recording though headphones as I created a drum pattern. After mixing the tracks I was stunned and inspired by the outcome and decided to make a complete song out of it."

No love for the pro-tools generation

"I am not a trained musician. Aside from some basic guitar lessons in music therapy during my sophomore year in High School, I am completely self taught so I was rather content with the outcome. I despise the pro-tools generation and I am appalled with overproduced, polished sound and wanted to defy that sound while creating something melodic, visceral and atmospheric instead of the typical "listeners of music need not apply" anti-art attitude most of my music carries. The vocals might have been the most difficult part of the track. I am a very high stung person, mostly only around other people and my voice is generally loud, I talk fast and have a slight nasal tone. I spent about eight hours in two days recording the vocals. The lyrics are about four different people I know. I used a few poetic metaphors to keep it anonymous and to try make it sort of universal, so each listener can interpret it differently through their own perception.

There is also an intentional sense of mystery about the track that definitively individualizes it from your typical song, a sort of loose nonsensical art form that meshes an airy, relaxing image with minimal dissonance."

A lone wolf disbanded his pack

"Upon completing this track I wound up in a band that failed in less than a month. I was hoping to continue with this sound and tour but apparently it wasn't meant to be. Less is more so maybe this track is enough. This is what I contribute to society and nothing more. "Vampire Salt" will be manufactured on a CD with a couple other tracks at some point this year but for now it is free to download. I do not make music to make money. I make music to survive and it is released to help others in whatever way it can."
- Birkir Fjalar

Facebook Youtube Mediafire

CASIOKIDS - Aabenbaringen over aaskammen

2012-01-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

Every couple of years or so, I catch myself absolutely hating on a genre of music. It’s so easy these days. We’re exposed to so much stuff at once that it seems we’ve all reverted to funny and jabbing genre names, whose ability to represent the music are moot at best, in order to gain a sense of separating the wheat from the chaff. What would be a better way of doing this is to criticize the artist particularly, instead of an entire group of musicians haphazardly grouped together by some asshole with a keyboard (hmm….).

Anyways, back when I was in high school, my friend showed me a video of Amon Amarth. I fucking hated this band simply because I hated all metal. Eventually I came about challenging myself to try and pin-point, figure out, what it was that pissed me off so much and whether or not I could find anything redeemable in this genre. Of course, like all genres, there was, and while I don’t really stay up with Amon Amarth’s career, I am following other bands that share the same characteristics of Amon Amarth that I once criticized said bands for; absurd dedication to musicianship, indiscernible vocals, etc.

Recently, my latest personal genre challenge was everything dancy and poppy. There was a sense of weakness amongst many of the bands, to me. There were very few dance bands that I would, somewhat reluctantly, admit to liking. Caribou, Junior Boys, Friendly Fires, Lindstrom, Hot Chip and a few others. These bands weren’t guilty pleasures (I don’t believe in guilty pleasures), but bands that I knew if I told people I liked them, they’d assume I’d be down for anything to do with dance music. I liked these bands because I felt like they delved below the surface of what I then attributed to dance music; a simplistic ploy to aim for the common denominator in order to get people to dance. This sort of motivation to create music, for me at the time, reeked of desperation as though they didn't care what the music meant to them, or any attempt to express, but that they only wished for people to find their music fleetingly enjoyable for its duration. Of course, there are several bands within this genre that try to achieve this goal (the worst of which are Girl Talk and White Panda who have reduced the art and expression of music to time signatures, computer tinkering and complete unoriginality. It’s not hard to create a dance song with songs that have already established themselves as such), but I’ve come to realize that many dance musicians certainly have this wish in mind and it’s not fair to simply right it off as void of any redeeming qualities.

I believe bands like Casiokids, who perform within a dance rock vein similar to Cut/Copy and Friendly Fires, achieve a strong sense of musicianship, penchant for melody, all the while creating cohesion in their albums that separates them from many pop albums coming out today that feel like a compilation of singles with little context. What Casiokids are able to achieve is an atmosphere that is aided by their ability to slow it down, strip the song of a rigid backbeat, and to let the melodies and tones take their place center stage. Allowing melody to dominate their songs, Casiokids achieve an undeniable level of pop authorship. The levels of musicianship compliment each other, instead of many other pop songs these days that either focus primarily on vocals or beat. Casiokids explore new tones, both in terms of instrument tones as well as melodic tones, and don’t shy away from switching it up. This is most certainly music created by a collective of people who understand each others quirks and quarks.

However, while the Casiokids’ approach to dance music is refreshing and somewhat impressive, it doesn’t mean it necessarily brings anything new to the table. There’s no sense of challenge on this record, which ultimately results in an overbearing sense that it’s a somewhat forgettable effort by a band who clearly has the pieces to create something imaginative, without disregard for their alliance with pop melody, in the near future. On this release, however, we’re given some moments of déja-vu. There are many moments on this record where it’s impossible not to either drift off or simply get bored. Every song bleeds into the next and before you know it, you’re on the last track, probably the record’s standout moment, “Aldri ska me ha det gøy.” Many of the tracks between the album’s first two tracks, “Aabenbaringen over aaskammen” and “Det haster!” and it’s final cut seem like filler, continuing many of the things explored on the first two tracks to their exhaustive ends. There are, of course, stand out moments within those 7 tracks filling up the middle ,but, overall, you’re gonna come out feeling like the album’s bookends are the shining moments and the rest can be readily forgotten due to their dogged attempts to recreate the shinning moments found elsewhere.

Casiokids third effort is marked with some highs, but many “mehs.” They deserve praise for their attempt to create a cohesive album that builds on themes and sounds throughout. This attempt ultimately falls short, but it’s hardly an easy task, especially since they’re performing amongst a group of artists that have seemingly forgotten the album format and, in turn, create more pressure on themselves when they rise to the occasion and try creating a solid, “45 minute” piece of work. These kids are hardly slept on, however, so they’ll have plenty second chances and I’d be hard pressed to imagine an album coming from these guys that isn’t a better effort at creating an album experience that is whole and impressive. Until then, there are a couple of tracks on Aabenbaringen over aaskammen that will tie their audience over, some of which are great examples of a band who is clearly more ambitious than their counterparts and their success at watering down the electronic and dance genres I’ve come to appreciate. [Polyvinyl]
- Dru Morrison

Related stories
CASIOKIDS - Topp stemning pa lokal bar

Music videos: Jeff Waters, Gang Related, Rosvo, Volture, Wormrot, Jeff Loomis

2012-01-04T04:55:00.000-08:00

LETS LOOK AT SOME FUCKING VIDEOS

ROSVO - Seasick from Rosvo on Vimeo.

Rosvo - Seasick
"Nevermind the nuclear meltdown, I want to dance in the streets of Tokyo as if it was all a dream... All a dream..."

"Wasn't sure if that video was great or just original (there is a difference). How did the guys pants get this way? Can't be no accident. And was he trying to show off his balls at one point in the video? I like the yellow tone overlying the video, gave it an even more foreign feel."

"I'm sick, sick to my stomach. Thank God this video is as short as it is. Two minutes of Swedish Umpa Lumpa humor in Japan."

"Another one of those hybrid fun-times metal bands. It's the rage these days and this song is alright. It has some energy to it but annoys me for some reason, as Kvelertak, Every Time I Die and Cancer Bats often do as well. Not stoked on this video but it is rad that they did it in few hours using nothing but an iPhone. Looks mint."

" How cool is this video?? I actually watched it three times in a row. Brilliant idea. Why am I not in Japan crossing a street?"

Jeff Waters - Guitar clinic
"Dude! More masturbating white men!?! Fuck me. At least he had the decency to stay in… with two cameras and another man present. Safe."

"One of the first things I've taught all my bass-students throughout the years is the "thumb-advice". To which they always at first respond "Oh dude, but that's so much harder for the fingers!". Well, it really isn't as the video shows. It always amazes me how many great bassists don't use that technique, I find my sound so much sharper and precise when I use it (I just recently tried the other way, sure it saves a bit of energy - but for me it really does crank down the dynamics of my playing). As a guitarist i've never really had any touch with the guitar pick, mostly i've played on acoustics just finger-picking. This video reminded me of that guilty conscience I have, the 12 year old me points his finger: "You should have done better... Or well, at least faster!"

"Excellent video, very idiot proof and I like that he explains everything in layman's terms. It's great as a starting point for kids (or adults) that want to start playing metal."

"Is it possible to get guitar lessons from Waters because I want to learn how to play guitar right now! Yeah, I'm going to get myself a guitar and watch all the demodulator videos."

"Jeff Waters is God! And this is a further proof of that. One of metal's best and most humble guitar heroes ever. Here he is, thoughtfully explaining in terms a dumb ass such as myself can understand and relate. The nerd-o-meter is set high and I fucking love it. Fight me if you don't think Never, Neverland isn't good."

Volture - Rulebreaker
"a) This video was made in 2011?! b) This song was recorded in 2011? c) Why? d) I love how the other band members kind of threaten to sing along by doing this hand-movements at the same time as the singer, but never really go for it (maybe they don't know the lyrics?). It gives the video an even stronger feel of "we're just so really, really trying to look like our heroes of yore". e) AlmightyPorkchop comments on youtube: "*Wipes tear from eye* There is hope yet for future generations on metal." - I'd like to interpret this comment in the way that poor Porkchop was soothing himself after enduring these five soul-wrenching minutes. This comment was an attempt on his behalf to reassure himself and others that there is still hope to be found no matter how terrible this song and video is. It can't be because he really liked the song?! Can it?! f) No, it can't be.

"'Animal instinct compels me to seize my prey.' Beautiful. Couldn't do the whole thing. Sorry."

"White trash glam? How much are they inspired by the New Wave of British Heavy Metal from Sweden? I know they are going to 1980 but they sound 2008."

"I don't believe in these guys. I call poserdom. My roots are in the metal and hard rock aped in this song but regardless of the funny "we don't take ourselves seriously" factor in this video the insincerity rubs me the wrong way. Women as "prey" and drunk driving is cool... Fucking lame and pathetic. The song itself is alright though."

"This song and the video are so bad, they're making me sweat with embarrassment. Please guys, go pet each other with machetes. For the love of Pete, stop making music!"

GANG RELATED - Jesús jólasveinn from Helgi Petur on Vimeo.

Gang Related - Jesús Jólasveinn
"Sir. You stay the fuck away from my goddamn gingerbread house. Do you know how fucking LONG that took me? Look at it!"

"Things to like about this track: Love the retro style of the drummer, the sound as well. I love how the vocals in the breakdown are at the same time sloppy and really precise. The guitar sound reminds me of Nolo, which released perhaps the best icelandic album in 2011."

"How cosy, wholesome and normal. A nice antithesis to the other videos. It's a christmas song that doesn't sound christmassy. I've heard better from this band. The song doesn't really get good until they start destroying shit in the video itself. One of the burnt christmas ornaments looks like the Death Star."

"If you're fortunate enough to understand Icelandic the lyrics are hilarious and spot on. The song is rather boring but a stupidly good video makes up for it."

Jeff Loomis - Enemies of Reality (Nevermore) : Asia Clinic Tour 2011 Jakarta, Indonesia

"There's a reason there are so many different riffs in this song - it's because not one riff in this entire song manages to make you feel or think anything besides "That guitarist is really playing that guitar". And for plenty, that's just enough."

"I don't understand. Why are we watching a man masturbate in front of an audience? I thought this was about music."

"I kept waiting for some Yngwie Malmsteen shit to happen and when it finally did, it was way too short. All this video left me was a boring playback stuck in my head."

"Never understood the point with clinics of any kind. I like the guitar sound, very Swedish Death Metal. After checking out the full song I do like the one without the vocals better."

"I'm not a cool dude and I like Loomis and always have. This is pretty perverted and strange though. The whole set-up reminds me of meetings and conferences you don't belong at but need to stay at for some reason. The only thing that got me going though was the potted plant behind that stage monitor. Potted Plant Metal.

Wormrot - Spot A Pathetic
"Sometimes 35 seconds are more than enough. In a good way."

"Wormrot. Seriously. Stay the fuck away from Indonesia. They ain't your friendly neighbors no more."

"If all grindcore songs averaged this length the world would be a great place! Face it, they all loose momentum after the 40 second mark. Even Carcass realized that and changed style when they wanted more than 40 seconds."

"Little to report about this video because it is boring, uninteresting and there are millions just like it. Not the best song from otherwise a bad ass album."

"36 seconds of pure awesomeness!"

Opinionatorz: Dru Morrison, Eyvindur Gauti, Birta Borges, Birkir Fjalar, Hjalti Jón...

Related stories
WORMROT - Dirge
Gang Related premiere new song "Dumb" / interview. "Tolstoy-esque lyrical brilliance ensued"

WORMROT - Dirge

2011-12-21T11:13:00.000-08:00

Fans of fast music will be familiar with the feeling you should get when listening to grindcore and powerviolence - that vicelike grasp on your testicles, dragging you forward and compelling you to move no matter your current mindset or situation.

Wormrot's sophomore effort, Dirge, initially passed under my radar for some reason, and must say, I am kicking myself for those months lost in sloth when I could have been running into walls or circlepitting alone in my living room. This album is the embodiment of all things fast, loud and ridiculously violent.

Wormrot hail from Indonesia and play a modern style of grindcore, with nods to all the old classics. Their first album - Abuse - was a thrashy, fun affair with violence aplenty. This time, they've subtly slipped some powerviolence-esque tempo changes and structures into the mix, with the result being the most raging release I've heard all year. Imagine Kill The Client and Magrudergrind hyped up on amphetamines in a no-holds-barred cage match and you'll have some idea of just how fucking insane Dirge is. The band consists of a guitarist, vocalist and drummer, and to be honest, you don't notice the lack of bass at all because the riffs are so ridiculously well-written and infectious. The vocalist belts out shrieks, grunts and everything in between at the drop of a pin. The drummer knows when to blast and when to groove and keeps the intensity well above recommended levels. All 25 songs pass by in the fastest 18 minutes you're ever likely to hear, with the only moments of respite being the opening and closing tracks. Dirge sounds excellent, the instruments and vocals are very well-balanced but everything still sounds extremely raw - the aural equivalent of a rusty hacksaw.

Anyway, this is the most intense album I've heard in a long time. If you're into any kind of grindcore, do yourself a favor and pick Dirge up. You can thank me later once you're able to move again. [Earache]
- James Frigge

Time traveling with Milk Music, Dinosaur Jr., Cannibal Corpse and Stafrænn Hákon

2011-12-09T09:08:00.000-08:00

The last 24 hours have been spent going back in musical time. It started with the surprisingly good and informative Cannibal Corpse documentary Centuries of Torment: The First 20 Years. This film is great. Not only is the Corpse's history, rise to fame and respect very interesting but it gives great insight into the beginnings, history and evolution of North American death metal. And how fucking rad was underground thrash metal in Buffalo? Damn. If anyone out there has link to some of the demos and early releases mentioned in the film, please email me!

I had also just finished reviewing Full Of Hell's full-length and elements on that thing send me back in time as well, what with all the '90s extreme metal/punk/hardcore goings-on found therein. Check the review for more thorough (but not so...) articulation as to what I was feeling.

And most recently, this very morning in fact, my buddy (also old timey death metaller), all around musical multitalent and a songwriting beast from the shadows, Mr. Ólafur Josephson who's musical-self is widely knows as Stafrænn Hákon (press: Icelanders Stafrænn Hákon move toward Rock described as Power-Ambient, currently only audible to left handed polar bears. A daring but natural step with pop singalong melodies, which may sound unlikely for the ambient post-rock/electronica band) got at me on facebook.

<a href="http://shakon.bandcamp.com/track/temporality">Temporality by Stafrænn Hakon</a>

He shots me a youtube link for Dinosaur Jr's. "Kracked" from You're Living All Over Me. I started reminisce. The good 'ol days were mentioned. Then he throws me a link to Milk Music's "Beyond Living." A band I'd never heard before and I was immediately transported to years long gone by. The song is perfect. I figured it was a band from the '90s I'd overlooked but Stafrænn Hákon assured me this was indeed new shit, a current song by a current band. Hell. In 2011 throw-back and revivals are o.k. to even the hippest of the hip because the bloke told me he'd just read about them on Pitchfork. The past is the new future, if only for a while. See what I did there? So Im listening to "Beyond Living," I'm loving it hard and my mind races...

A current song from a current band making me feel real young again. I’m in a time machine. The ’90s are not even close to finished in our minds. The year 2000 still has a sci-fi ring to it and none of my friends carry cell-phones on regular basis and hardly anyone has internet access. If anything, we’re not concerned about the internet as an invention, concept or a tool at all. We're not interested, really. We're busy doing everything else. We’re getting mailorder catalogs through the door. We use highlighters to mark our albums of choice. We send well-concealed cash in envelops to the US and the UK. We patiently wait for our package to arrive. In the meantime we start bands, play Sega, hang out in groups of three or more many times a week. Me and my brother engage in home-brewing. Our group of friends is a tight one and we know all the same songs because there’s no free downloading or social websites to scatterbrain our musical menu. We listen to albums rather than check out songs. The albums do the rounds - from house to house, apartment to an apartment. These are good times.

Check out and follow Stafrænn Hákon on his website facebook bandcamp twitter
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
FULL OF HELL – Roots of Earth Are Consuming My Home
Concerts: Mark Kozelek, J Mascis, Kurt Vile, Murs, Haymaker and more

FULL OF HELL – Roots of Earth Are Consuming My Home

2011-12-08T10:21:00.000-08:00

Maryland's Full Of Hell are faced with an interesting dilemma on Roots of Earth Are Consuming My Home. They are caught in between savagery and artistic, ahem... hell.

I've been walking around with this album in my stomach for a long time trying to articulate how I feel about it. And this is a good thing. Writing it off quickly would have meant it didn't have enough interesting attributes for me to go back to. Blowing smoke up its ass after one listen would do this review a disservice. But what I'm left with is an album that's lacking in certain areas but it's eagerness and passion drags me back to it. So lets look under the hood shall we.

Amongst keywords that come to mind when discussing this album are: early Earache and Peaceville records. Late '80s early 90's crusty death metal. Good ol' Dismember, Grave, Carnage etc. Grindcore. Early and mid- '90s "evilcore." Lost and Found record's In Crust We Trust compilation. Dystopia. Black metal flirts. East coast hardcore. Noise. Intense and brutal dual vocals. Right here you got the ingredients for total devastation and ugliness. By the same token it's clear that this young band is trying to find their sound in the world of extreme music. So although Roots of Earth... sounds undecided it furthermore depicts a band that regardless of the band members' young age and inexperience they are searching for something substantial. They respect and appreciate the history and pillars of extreme music. So don't go thinking these are some messageboard warriors that picked a uniform one day and lazily decided to be an Integrity type of band or Botch clones (to name a few beaten to death uniforms). Full Of Hell look beyond that.

The intent to decimate the listener is clear. And it works because even for an old fuck like myself, there are moments herein that make me wanna hurt myself. Album opener "Pile of Dead Horses" is a prime example of this. It's simple, nasty, ugly and with enough drive to make you not care about your well-being. It's like fucking Dystopia and Terrorizer in a blender. Grind your teeth you must. "Endless Drone" is a perfect successor, following similar lines and now I'm picturing questionable concert behavior from the crowd's point of view. What a banger.
"The Bed is Burning" continues with the evil sounding hardcore meets crust unpleasantries. Ugly chords are afoot and the riff progression sounds a bit more contemplative. Doomy single-string riffs come into play and will reappear later on the album. The vocals have entered new realms of torture and I fucking love it how they are coming unhinged and damaged. It's beautiful. Three songs deep and no complaints.

Inexperience, youthful excitement and its cons... Songs like "Rat King" (regardless of its killer final part), "Dregs of Pluto" (in spite of its black metal/crust cocktail), "Black Iron" (where east coast crossover hardcore gets a nod) are too predictable and hurried for their own good. The noise elements found throughout the record get their own podium in "The White Mare" but don't serve the album well in general and its (noise) function is unclear. Its artistic merits fall flat but Full Of Hell's handle on noise fits when mixed into their regular songs.
After a bit of a lull the album picks up again. The title track brings back the depression and blackness of Dystopia but the vocals are the show-stealer. I've actually been lucky enough to witness the singer force those out of his neck and it was painfully glorious. Shivers. "Pisces Legs'" similarity to other moments on the album gets broken up by a twisted clean vocal bridge and music which smartly ties into "The Oars are Broken." This due of songs gives off a Amphetamine Reptile/Today Is The Day/Swans vibe that's not very compelling in the hands of Full Of Hell but a interesting reprieve from everything else. Their love for sludge/doom metal is fully realized on the album's last number.

Roots of Earth Are Consuming My Home is an exciting and spirited effort by a band you want to get familiar with because at this rate they are going to be turning stones and heads and blazing their own trail before long. This album is all the evidence you need. Some flaws notwithstanding, extreme music is in the hands of young guys like Full Of Hell and not armchair critics such as myself. And that is a comforting. [A389]
- Birkir Fjalar

Muck debuts third new song, now on Gogoyoko

2011-11-07T20:24:00.000-08:00

"Mother" is the most recent song to be debuted and this time around on the mighty Gogoyoko. Previously the band joined hands with your very own Halifax Collect to debut another song from the same session, namely "Island." And a ripper it was! Incidentally Gogoyoko now features a three-song-deep taster of what's to come on the band's debut full-length that will see the light of day in not too distant future.

Muck has gone through a quick and drastic transformation in a short span of time and are now oceans away from the brooding post metal and crusty beginnings (although luckily there are traces of crust to be found) of Vultures. You'd be forgiven if you thought there were two different bands in question. Not too long ago I had a raffy binary sit-down with Kalli (guitars/vocals) where he touched on said progression, the band's ambitions and all-around take on being a hardcore band. It's rather insightful and helps one understand where these boys come from and where they are going. Have a gander. Have a rager. It's open ended and crazy bent.
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
Muck exclusive: new song premiere and interview
Muck: brand new song (rough mix) publicized
New material from Death Metal Super Squad and Muck
Muck is working on new material. In the meantime...
So much going on in Iceland I decided to do a triple news treat

Þórir Georg (aka My Summer as My Salvation Soldier) / PBP records interview

2011-11-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

"There’s a palpable air of “we don’t care what anyone else is doing or if they like what and how we do” around Paradísarborgarplötur label/collective. It’s the quintessential hardcore/punk and beyond type of operation, ambitious yet somewhat mysterious..."
CONTINUE READING

Recently I did this piece for Reykjavík Grapevine. It's a split interview so to speak focusing on Iceland's only punk label. The Paradísarborgarplötur (aka PBP) label related questions were mostly answered by Fannar Örn (of every punk/hardcore band in Iceland) and Þórir Georg (of PBP and every punk/hardcore band in Iceland) got the obvious task of answering questions regarding himself and his newest album "Afsakið." In hindsight I should have asked both of them what is up with their fantastic Death Metal Supersquad (do CPR that shit soon) and even yapped about Ofvitarnir who are arguably the most buzzed about of all the PBP affiliated artists aside from Þórir himself perhaps.
Follow Grapevine on Facebook and Twitter. It is solid stuff. On their website you can enjoy the magazine via cool flash, pdf's, download and what not. Couple of weeks ago they featured this in-depth chat with Björk. So yeah, you might wanna bookmark this lot.
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
Norn wants you to download their three songs
HRYÐJUVERK interview
DEATH METAL SUPERSQUAD announces a new record

Logn: new song - new video - brutal

2011-11-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

Logn - Blóðormar from Fritz Hendrik Berndsen IV on Vimeo.

The new Logn song "Blóðormar" (eng: Bloodworms) is an absolute monster. This band just keeps getting leaner, meaner, heavier and more formidable with every passing year. Video created by singer Fritz. It's been an absolute pleasure nibbin' on the heels of these boys since the beginning (see related links after the jump) and witness the level-up's with each recording session.
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
More noise, heavy riffing and pulsating island-beats
Manslaughter, Logn and Hark are feeling generous: free downloads
Metal and hardcore/punk in Iceland, 09
New Logn song
LOGN / MANSLAUGHTER - split

Live: Dope D.O.D., Blaz Roca, Forgotten Lores and more @ Iceland Airwaves Oct 14. 2011

2011-10-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

A Night of Hip Hop and its Bastards

I went to one show during this year's Iceland Airwaves to report back for the Reykjavík Grapevine and its fine readers. The Grapevine is stellar. You can read the magazine online via of, fancy flash and all kinds of shit. You can keep up with it on twitter, facebook and all that stuff. Tap into all of this here. Additionally you can read reviews of EVERY Airwaves show here and there are interviews, features, videos and photographs too. Believe it.

“What was to become one of the fest’s most consistent night (sub)genre-wise didn’t go down without some ups and downs.” CONTINUE READING

DEAD CHANNELS - Soul Pollution

2011-10-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

So, lets say you're a professor, right? You get a paper from a student you're totally neutral about. They spoke a few times, each time with something somewhat intelligent, but they've missed a few classes and their assignments were neither here nor there. Totally indifferent.

It's the end of the year and the final paper's in. Let's also forget that there's such a thing as plagiarism and all its legal implications. It's a non-issue here. So, you're going through it, and so far so good. Actually, really good. It's most definitely in the high-B, low-A range. Then, you come by a really good statement that sounds a little too good. You look deeper into it. It's a rip-off of one of the greater specialists of this topic from the past two decades. However, can one ignore it, go past it, see what the rest of the paper has, or at this point do we completely neglect that this is a fine project simply because of the fact that there was an moment of plagiarized thought we can't ignore?

This is the standstill I'm in regarding the Dead Channel's LP, Soul Pollution, and the problematic song, "Conversion Syndrom" and how it sounds eerily similar to Botch's "Transition from Persona to Object." Of course, it doesn't sound exactly like it, the pitch is lower and the picking pattern is slightly different, but in terms of pace, style and construction, it's impossible not to notice. I mean, perhaps they didn't realize, but I find that HIGHLY doubtful. There's no way they’ve never heard Botch's We Are the Romans. I can't imagine that. It was a staple in our curriculum. However, the rest of this piece is very, very strong, rendering that slight slip up mute, with every listen slowly revealing slight differences (I won't be convinced, however, that it doesn't sound exactly like Botch’s song) that allow me to blow past it and just begin to enjoy the record for what it is; fun, confrontational, smart, well-crafted and, again, fun.
Every track suggests drinking music for those of us who rarely drink and when
we do, know that shit is still fucked up. Soul Pollution is similar to Down in that sense.

It creates an atmosphere of rock’n’roll, blues-heavy riffs, with lyrics that don't allow the listener to get too lost in the music's deceptive allure of enjoyment. On Soul Pollution, we're constantly propelled into carelessness and fun, for 8 or 16 bars of pure head-banging induced convulsions, only to be brought back when the dude starts talking about heroin, lost love and all that good shit that makes life worth living.
Speaking of which, the vocals are fantastic. Angelo has a clear talent for not only evoking emotion and ideas via their lyrics, but also through delivery, pitch and pacing. When he perfectly screams “Editor, editor” on the album’s standout track, “Mobile Homes,” I can’t help but scream along with him. The swing to it, the aggression, it is perfectly rock.

So ya, the album has a bit of a glaring blemish. As I've mentioned, it begins to subside after every listen and sooner than later, it becomes a totally enjoyable. Who knows, maybe I'm the only who hears its similarity. But with all that aside, this album is very good. Well paced, well sung and well played. There's really not much else you can ask for, eh? [Innerstrengt]
- Dru Morrison

OMEGAS - Blasts Of Lunacy

2011-09-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

More like "blasts of awesomeness". A perfect mix of punk swagger and hardcore panache. A hearty casserole comprised of catchy, well-crafted songwriting; simmering, punchy, well-blended production; and adept, but not over-the-top musicianship.

What made an instant impression on me was how non-derivative Omegas' overall sound is. I'm sure the legions of obsessive, gotta-hear-every-band, record collector types could probably spout off the top of their heads half a dozen bands that these guys sound like, but I can't really match them up neatly with a single one. Pretty amazing and refreshing in this day and age.

This is firmly embedded in the mid-tempo punk/hardcore vein, but Omegas manage to navigate those relatively-narrow confines without sounding hackneyed or really straying off the path. There's a tinge of metallic glints in the astringent, taut production, and a few guitar solos that are a step or two above what one expects from this genre, including a few of the divebomb-kamikaze-whammy-bar-riding variety (is that Johnny X of Psycho on "F.S.O.M."?), but it totally works. Still, like I said, this is decisively a punk record. A very well-crafted one. From the tastefully-layered guitar tracks to the fresh and interesting riffs to the varied, but not forced, tempo changes, it's obvious a lot of care and talent went into this album.

The one song that did really remind of something else was "You Ain't Nuthin'", the melodic parts of which are uncannily reminiscent of Black Flag's "Retired At 21", and its solo has that same chill-inducing, syrupy, reverbed, strung out, discordant "In My Head" quality. Also, to a lesser extent, the verse of Black Flag's "Police Story" is very similar to that of the coincidentally-titled "Excessive Force". However, this track relies largely on its epic, marathon-circle-pit-enducing intro, which is, no word of a lie, a full 75% of the song's running length! Oh, and the intro to "F.S.O.M." sounds familiar to me, but I'm probably the only one who would think so...

Overall, a highly original work and an unqualified triumph. Hard to pick a favorite track, but I'd have to say "Kill For Control" would have to be it for me. I can't make out any of the lyrics, but you gotta dig song titles like "Disgusting Fun" and "Sex Hero". So, yeah, bottom line is this is the shit. Get it now and start practicing some psycho dives on these slam skank anthems. [Parts Unknown]
- John Evicci

Related stories
The positively brilliant Omegas
Omegas: Obey Your Music Vol 2
OMEGAS - Sonic Order

OF LEGENDS - Stranded

2011-09-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

Luis Dubuc is an interesting guy. He's the kind of bloke that can play anything; various instruments and he'll dabble in different genres and styles as well. Prior to this Of Legends debut he'd made a name for himself in the soul pop and Motown laden The Secret Handshake. But here he is getting all sick and shit with modern metal act Of Legends. How does he fare in this arena?

It's indeed impressive that he can shift shapes like this. I can relate to that. It's striking how seamlessly he can play pretty much any of the instruments you'll find in his two bands (know that Of Legends has a full line-up of quality performers though) and he has a good "singing voice" (see: The Secret Handshake). But that's where the oh wow factor ends I'm afraid.
His tortured screams on Stranded are quite weak but the most troubling aspect of the whole album is the music itself. It's forgettable and for the most part predictable if not wholly familiar. Too commonplace for its own good. I hate to be the guy that tells you that the Dillinger Escape Plans and Meshuggahs of the world already beat this horse to death, but it is true.
Couple of songs deep I found myself anticipating the"open chugg" parts and rarely did they not present themselves. This robs Stranded of the little excitement it musters because the few parts that are engaging get overshadowed by aforementioned anticipation (dread?).

Without getting into track-to-track details its worth noting that Stranded does also have moments of Candiria and even later Burnt By The Sun. But it is too little too late really. Of Legends do not offer anything new nor is the much traveled road they chose traveled with any real gusto. This is where "too inspired" and plain-vanilla meet in the middle. To answer my own question; No. Mr. Dubuc doesn't fare well in this metalized arena. [Season Of Mist]
- Birkir Fjalar

SOMEONE STILL LOVES YOU BORIS YELTSIN - Tape Club

2011-09-19T06:51:00.000-07:00

OK, another release by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin who begrudgingly won me over with their last album, the superb Let It Sway. When I downloaded Tape Club (seems no one sends out actual review copies anymore... Wish I had it so easy when I was running my label) I was shocked to see no less than 26 tracks. A cursory look at the song titles revealed a few songs from Let It Sway and I immediately surmised that this must be some kind of singles/outtakes/b-sides collection.

Some internet investigation confirmed this to be the case. Of the 26 tracks, four are demo versions of songs on previous albums while another four (or maybe three and a half?) were bonus tracks from previous albums. Of the remaining 18, I don't know how many were previously released on singles or whatever, but I imagine a fair amount of them were.
OK, that being said, I didn't look into all of this until after I had listened to the material several times. I actually wanted to try and guess which songs (that I didn't already know from Let It Sway) were from taken from previous albums. Coincidentally, the only one I guessed correctly (out of my eight choices) was a song called "Dead Right"!

I'm guessing this is presented in chronological order as it improves as you get into the meat of it. It starts off relatively weak, in my opinion, and gets increasingly better as it goes along. As was the case with Let It Sway, it took a few listens to really appreciate this stuff, but the same brilliant songwriting and melodic craftsmanship is on offer here. So much so that I now feel compelled to seek out their first two albums!

I'm a little bit surprised that I'm digging this so much as it's a little too close to the Jackson Browne end of the pop spectrum than I'm comfortable with, but again, it's just undeniably fucking good stuff. Kinda like vanilla pudding. Mild and smooth, but tasty and satisfying. OK, maybe not quite that smooth. Let's say more like tapioca pudding. They have some moments that at least nod toward a slightly harder-edged approach if not fully place a foot in it. A song like "Lower The Gas Prices, Howard Johnson" has a somewhat early Nirvana feel to it, maybe tempered by a Ben Deily-sung/Creator-era Lemonheads sound. "Song 1000" almost gets snotty in its super-catchy chorus.

By and large, though, it's all about the gentle, delicate pop. The vocal harmonizing on the lead track is eerily reminiscent of that of the Beatles' "Because". "Chili Cook-Off" reminds me of the laid-back, jaunty side of Simon & Garfunkel. The bulk of the remainder paint the sonic mural in various other shades of pastel. One exception is the out-of-left-field electronic treatment of "Yellow Missing Signs" which is surprisingly refreshing in an '80s kinda way. Some of the really stand out tracks include "Half-Awake (Deb)", "We Can Win Missouri", and the sublime "New Day."

Overall, a very worthwhile release, culling together the odds and ends of a band carving out an increasingly-distinguished career for themselves. I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of their stuff. [Polyvinyl]
- John Evicci

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sslyby.bandcamp.com/track/half-awake-deb"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Half-Awake (Deb) by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

Related stories
SOMEONE STILL LOVES YOU BORIS YELTSIN - Let It Sway

PICK YOUR SIDE - Survival Prayer

2011-09-18T06:07:00.000-07:00

I was halfway through this review when I realized that I had pretty much just written about how much I fucking love Haymaker so I deleted it and started over.

Sure, you sort of have to mention Haymaker when talking about Pick Your Side, since Jeff does vocals in both bands and unfortunately, it is the vocalist’s curse to invite the most immediate comparison between projects. The guy on guitar was in Fuck The Facts but that is not what you’re going notice as soon as you press play. No, what you’ll be thinking is “isn’t that the guy from Haymaker?” So yeah, it’s not fair but that’s the way it is.

And that, sadly, is the biggest problem with this release; it just sounds like a slightly underwhelming Haymaker. The riffing isn’t as tight, the songs aren’t as hard and the overall sound just lacks that extra punch that I really wish it had because this could be right up my alley. This is their first release so you never know where it might go but for now I’m going to have to file this one under ‘lacklustre’. [A389]
- Kolbeinn Þorgerisson

Related stories
Haymaker / Gunnar Hansen / Fog of Leprosy/ Ox Baker / Roach Bank This Ain't Hollywood, Hamilton ON January 15

SEVEN SISTERS OF SLEEP - s/t

2011-09-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

I don’t think I’ve ever listened more to anything I’ve reviewed than I have listened to Seven Sisters of Sleep’s self titled. It’s not because it’s necessarily the best thing I’ve reviewed, I think it is because for a long time I wasn’t sure if I liked them or not. The album runs about 20 minutes and I let it run through at home, at work, listening intently and having it in the background of whatever I was doing.

So I almost brushed them off, as simply yet another band with nothing that special to offer. Then one evening I decided to Google them and see what I could find on Youtube. And then it hit me. After watching this performance I realized that there was something special here. These guys were the real deal. The same way as Down and EYEHATEGOD are the real deal. Heck, if I hadn’t read somewhere that these guys are from California, I would have guessed they came from New Orleans or somewhere in that neighborhood.
I really only have one thing to complain about on the record and that is the vocals. I don’t think they come through as powerfully as they do live, so I definitely recommend watching the short gig linked above.

I’m sure these guys are driving around the US somewhere in a cramped little van, heading for their next gig. There are not a lot of people that know about this band and I’m sure they’d appreciate you checking their album out. In fact so would I. [A389]
- Thedodór Helgason

More music and videos here and here

OATHBREAKER - Mælstrøm

2011-09-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

If you think about it, metal can’t really lie back on a good lyricist/vocalist to push the band into critical acclaim and success the same way as pop, rock, punk or hip hop. Metal is very much a genre dominated by musicianship, at least more so than those other genres. This is something to consider when listening Oathbreaker’s second album Mælstrøm.

There's perhaps one of two possibilities that could have lead to such an impression; either the music pales in comparison to the vocal delivery, or the band wished to use simple and predictable melodies and structures in order to showcase Caro's vocals. Either way, what results is a half-realized experience that leaves an unfulfilled, yet promising feeling that this is a halfway decent record.

The music is fine, but void of much depth or originality. Simplicity and candidness are key here and this sort of fashioning results in a couple of great songs (“Thoth” and “Sink Into Sin – II”), some with their moments (“Origin,” “Heirophant” and “Glimpse of the Unseen”) and some that are ultimately forgettable (“Fate is Nigh” and the album’s title track and, overall, worst track, which doesn’t help the album considering it’s also its final track).
The amazing thing is that even the lyrics aren’t all that good, but Caro’s delivery is absolutely fucking spectacular, saving the whole experience of this album from feeling like a waste of time. She fucking belts it. Something brilliant is is experienced during the closing minute of “Sink Into Sin – II” as she screams over and over again “DROWN!!!” evoking a moment of great emotion and engagement. Also, Caro’s accuracy in pacing her words is fantastic. Between every breathe, we cling on, just to here her scream out another syllable. Jaw-dropping is the only way I can describe Caro’s delivery here, with every track featuring a highlight in her performance. Nothing is more true of her talent than “Black Sun” where, after a minute and a half of a song going pretty much nowhere, Caro steals the fucking show with her sustained screechings of each syllable. Perhaps that’s what weakens the album’s title track, where Caro delivers clean vocals over a solo acoustic guitar. Ya, one of those songs.

What can I say? Clearly, this is a noble effort on all fronts, but, at the end of the day, even though you put in a lot of hard work, it’s usually your star player who’s going to get most of the attention. This is the case with Oathbreaker’s second effort. Though the band achieves some highs on this album, with riffs that get the head and feet a-goin’, to deny the overbearing effect Caro’s vocals have on this album would be a fallacy. She’s a talent that cannot be denied. Hopefully, for the band’s next effort, the rest of the band can catch up and match Caro’s undeniable talent as a premiere metal vocalist. [Deathwish Inc]
- Dru Morrison

Seraphim interview /prize package giveaway, "To us the past is equally as important as the present."

2011-09-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

"True, fearless expression is rare, and I hope that is what we're doing"

There’s a subtle grandiosity to Seraphim’s work on their latest The Light in the Distance. This juncture in the metal genre Seraphim have taken, the intellectual, atmospheric and experimental kind, is somewhat rife with diddles and doodles from guys who seemingly only play to prove themselves as “virtuosos” of their instrument. Seraphim have a different angle, a more introverted angle where the music reflects on mood. Unlike the other guys, Seraphim’s music matches their words and its sincerity flourishes with tracks like “Empty Sea” and “Without a Soul.” While these cuts are layered with melody and subdued noise, there are other moments that come in with crushing urgency, best presented on the title track, “The Dust Filled Our Lungs” and “Frustrations.” To speak more on this and their current situation regarding everything that surrounds being a band these days, via email, Halifax Co. chats it up with Brian Hillhouse, who plays guitar and shares the vocal duties with bassist, Joey Plunkett, as Warren Evans covers the drumming duties. Ya, this band’s a 3-piece…

**** At the end of this interview you'll find information on how to win the stellar prize package that includes Seraphim's The Light in the Distance vinyls and CDs courtesy of the ever so reliable and stimulating labels; Chainsaw Safety Records and A389 Recordings.****

Seraphim are winged beasts that surround the holy throne of God, protecting it and continually chanting “holy, holy, holy.” How does this imagery relate to your music/intent? Do you see yourselves as protectors of something?
To be completely honest, the name didn't really mean a lot in the beginning. Not all of us are original members, and we have gone through a lot of changes and grown a lot as people, and in that, the name has really come into it's own. We are not religious, but the concept of a Seraphim is quite beautiful and sorta odd. I'm sure the name can be taken in several different ways, but the best way I can describe it is that the "face of God" here is our music, or music in general, and I think anyone who plays music with meaning and from the heart is "protecting" just that. True, fearless expression is rare, and I hope that is what we're doing.

This band comes from an area that doesn’t seem to be the most fertile of grounds, especially in your genre, for bands that break into the popular conversation. What’s it like in your scene? I’m sure there are some nuggets of sound here and there y’all could clue us in on.
Our scene is a strange thing. Some truly great musicians have come from our area, but few decided to stick with it. Most have moved on with their lives, whether that be school, a career, etc. At one point, our area was strong with good bands of all types, and we felt that some good things were happening. Seraphim was always the band that made the least sense, and I guess I say that to say that a lot of people didn't exactly understand. Our sound is a product of our lives and the surroundings we grew up in. That is the best way I can put it. We feel that the music we write isn't for fans of a specific genre, and we hope that anyone could take something from what we're doing. Most people know Tupelo, MS solely based on it being the birthplace of Elvis Presley. People ask us if we are Elvis fans or if he has influenced us at all, and we never quite know how to answer that. I feel like the main similarity would have to be the fact that our goals exceed our small town upbringing. A lot of things still go on here, but it's very different. I can honestly say that we feel more disconnected from our area than ever. One of the only bands in Mississippi that we feel deserves every bit of attention is a band called Colour Revolt. They just finished a tour with Thursday and Taking Back Sunday, and they are a truly great band.

I find the vocals interesting in that the melody and measure of the words seem to take a more prominent position over the actual lyrics. What place do you think the lyrics have in your music?
We feel that the lyrics are the point of the song, and we try to write music that further conveys that point and feeling. The lyrics are a complete reflection of us. We realize that lyrics don't stand out to everyone, but it seems like the lyrics take on more importance with every song we write. The Light In The Distance was written about what we have lost and what we have given up to pursue this band. We want to be able to look back on every song we write and relive those feelings. To us the past is equally as important as the present. That is the goal, and that is the "light" we are talking about.

Listening to your latest record, you can hear lots of influences coming together in perfect unison. It’s super impressive. But there’s seems to be loads of different sounds on The Light in the Distance that depart from the metal-fold. Can you talk about these more subtle nuances in your music and who inspires you in creating these soundscapes?
The differences found in our music are a result of the differences in the three members. We all come from different backgrounds and the way these songs express each of us is very unique. All three of us had things going on in our lives while these songs were being written that completely shaped the final product. It's not the record we thought we would write, but that is why it is so different from the earlier sound. We like to think that The Light In The Distance was written from a completely different place than the S/T 7" (A389). Like I said, not all of us are original members, but we all feel like the band found itself with this lineup. We are inspired by the power of music in general due to the affect it has on peoples lives. Everyone is looking for a better understanding of themselves. Our music is the questioning of our understanding.

Collaborating with A389 Recordings and Chainsaw Safety Records for your releases is a pretty impressive deal. What place do you think labels have in music today? As everyone bashes the behavior and manners of management of the major labels as they continually fail to recognize the current generation, do you think smaller labels play a bigger or lesser role in today’s music?
Honestly, I feel that very few labels put in the work to actually make an impact on today's music. It is easier now than ever for any kid with free time to put his name on something and call it a label. While I feel like independent labels are one of the only reasons genuine music still exists, I also feel like some bands get lost in the clutter. I feel that both A389 and Chainsaw Safety are ran by genuine, hard-working people who care about what they are doing. This is why we are so happy to work with these people, and why we are so appreciative of them both.

Finally, what’s in the works? Clearly y’all don’t seem to stop touring, but any releases coming up?
We plan to continue touring as often as we can. We have been very fortunate to be apart of some really great compilations, one of which is The Show That Ends The World 10" which allowed us to play and be featured on a record with some of our favorite bands. Another great thing we have coming up is the Hate5Six Diaries DVD, which is a relief effort for Haiti and is a really great cause. This also features some incredible bands, and we're honored to be included. Sonny is a great guy and everyone should support what he is doing. We are also about to release an EP called Waste. This will include a song from the LP session that didn't make the record called Through These Years, the full version of the song “Sleepless”, and three acoustic interpretations of songs from The Light In The Distance. We're not sure right now if this will be a physical release or simply digital, but it is almost finished. We have also been writing non-stop this year, and already have a good bit of new material in the works. We have no idea when we will record or make plans to release this, but we are very excited about it.
- Dru Morrison

**** Here's what you need to do to win gracious The Light In The Distance prize packages from Chainsaw Safety Records and A389 Recordings. Answer the following questions (answers found in the interview): What three A389 releases have Seraphim appeared on? What do Seraphim and Elvis Presley have in common? ****

Send the answers and address to halifaxcollect(AT)gmail.com and tell us why you should get the album prize package. If you do not want to miss out on other Halifax Collect exclusives and giveaway presentations, add and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to get up-to-the-minute information as soon as it drops.
&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://seraphim.bandcamp.com/track/frustrations"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Frustrations by Seraphim&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

Related stories
Albums: Pulling Teeth, Seraphim, Last Chance To Reason, Onward To Olympas, Gideon, Mighty Sphincter

GRAVEHILL - Practitioners of Fell Sorcery

2011-09-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

A389 Recordings strike once more, presenting to us now the re-release of Gravehill's 2001 debut release. Death-Thrash covered with molten lava, it's the end of the world.

This is the band's only release, it seems, with its original line-up. Back in the day, before Mike Apocalypse was replaced by Mike Abominator, Gravehill played Celtic Frost inspired Metal ov Death. Kind of like Gospel of the Horns during the demo period. Judging by their latest album, which was released this year by Dark Descent, things haven't really changed that much. If all. I mean, why not stick to a formula you like, right?

The guys peak at "Mandrake and Liquor" in my opinion. When ideas of breaking something start popping into your head you know things are on the right track. Yeah, it's true, I'm all about the fast pace. I love it. That feeling when you've almost pedaled yourself to death on your BMX up the hill and it's time for the ride down, no helmet and no guarantee of getting all the way down the hill in one piece.

The slow tunes like "Necrosummoner" also kick a bit of a punch and it's never about going through the motion here. Things are crafted tenderly on Practitioners of Fell Sorcery, with a lot of care put into delicately creating a timeless classic here, able to withstand Father Time's cold claws. [A389]
- Eyvindur Gauti

Gang Related premiere new song "Dumb" / interview. "Tolstoy-esque lyrical brilliance ensued"

2011-08-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

"This beats lying at home watching Two and a Half Men"

Gang Related are a bunch of sneaky bastards. Couple of emails into Halifax Collect's affair with the band misconception after misconception is shattered. Here I was thinking they'd only recently hashed out a plan to form a band. The band came out of nowhere, yet they had been strutting their stuff in hiding from the outside world for good five years. But it was only few months ago people knew about the band and quickly there's a buzz. Granted the inception took place five years ago, my brain insist Gang Related just happened. Investigation had to commence. I had to get on their case or else suffer no sleep. I rode a horse to their Iceland and took the púlsinn.

Gunnar and Albert are brothers. Yes, as in they have the same mom and dad. They play speed metal guitars exclusively and howl. Jón Ótti plays bass and feverishly looks for a tattoo artist that can ape the silly neck tattoo the Bring Me The Horizon singer has. Helgi plays the garbage cans when dreamy. When obnoxious he plays a rack filled with Octopads and china-cymbals for Morðingjarnir as well.
Downscroll a bit to hear "Dumb" before that other cool guy gets the chance to.

Figuratively two songs and handful of low profile shows deep, many of Iceland's taste-makers start singing your praises. To what do you attribute this reaction and how does it sit with you?
Those two songs; "My Last Name" and "Mona", are pretty accessible and there isn't, to our knowledge, many bands in the Icelandic music scene playing this exact style of music. At first, when we put the first song (my last name) online, we didn't really expect any reaction, good or bad. At that point we just wanted to put something out. Then people seemed to like it so that gave us some encouragement do play live and actually make a record. So yeah, we were definitely surprised how good the reactions were, and how many kind words came from people we respect and admire as musicians and music-nerds.

Gang Related - Dumb by HalifaxCollect

Gang Related seems to come out of nowhere. What sparked the band, how did the whole thing come together and how has the infancy been so far?
In contrast to what people thinks we have been playing together for over five years. We all knew each other before we started playing together. Through the first four years we have changed our musical focus quite frequently. We somehow never got close to playing live or record our earlier songs mainly due to the fact that we didn't really have the balls to write lyrics and sing. It was probably the lack of vocals that also caused the frequent shift in focus, as the songs somehow didnt "feel“ finished. Late 2009 we decided to take current musical direction and we figured that if we were going to start from scratch yet again we were going to stick with the plan this time which meant writing lyrics. Which we did. Tolstoy-esque lyrical brilliance ensued.

First thing I notice how fully-fledged the band sounds right from the get-go. It's pretty ridiculous. Most new bands spend a couple of years cutting their teeth through active gigging and by putting out releases for public scrutiny and in doing so finding their niche. You guys seem to have it all figured out already...
We suppose this spurs from the above mentioned fact that we are actually far from being a new band. Good things come to those who wait? I don‘t know. We actually just kind of just sat down and decided the whole concept before we wrote the songs for our album. I don't know if this is how it normally goes or not. But I guess it helps that the songs are written with a certain sound in mind, a niche we had kind of virbally conceptualized before writing the songs.

Does the brother connection come in play here?
Well, one of the main characteristic of our music is the heavy use of vocal harmonies. Our voices sound just about the same which gives the harmonies a very distinct sound and feel. We also really like writing music together and we have been doing that since we were kids which makes the whole songwriting process very fluid.

The members of this band can hardly be accused of being loud, attention whores. Is this in some way a part of the reason why you sound like you do and how you operate: no hurrah's, limited social networking, no website and those mysterious videos...
I think you are spot in on. People have actually approached us and asked why we arent promoting ourselves more actively. First of all we don't know how. Secondly we are not really looking become rockstars. I‘m not saying we would mind growing bigger but we're not gonna sweat it.

I spied comments comparing you to acts such as Vivian Girls, Waves, Best Coast and Bring Me the Horizon. How does this find you and is the association warranted?
Bring Me To The Horizon has definatelly been a huge inspiration, appearance and stage antic-wise. We do not recognize the other artists. But yeah we understand perfectly why people would associate us with those fine bands. Yet we can not really say that these bands in particular have had any kind of major influence. Honestly, when we wrote our first songs in 2009 ("Mona", "My Last Name", "Bars") we hadn‘t heard any of those bands (exept BMTH, as our bassist is a „horizon-freak“ as he puts it) and at that point we had our ideas on how we wanted to sound. When these bands came along I guess they rather gave us an idea of how we could mould our ideas into something that could work. I guess we have been influenced by the some of the same artists as those bands people have been comparing us to (Pavement, The Zombies, The Beatles, Springsteen, Guided by voices, The Proclaimers etc).

Which Icelandic groups should people be looking out for?
To name a few great yet relatively unknown bands; Ofvitarnir, Logn, Buxnaskjónar and Baku Baku.

What can we expect from the band from this point on? Are we alone or there obscure and unpopular marine animals out there?
Our debut will be out in a few weeks (could be four weeks, could happen tomorrow) and will be released by Brak. We will be playing loads of shows in the next few months including our record release show and at Iceland Airwaves. We will keep following up our album for a few months but we have actually already started writing material for our next album. Our bassist will write that album solely and people should brace themselves for some kind of Bring Me The Horizon / The Proclaimers facemelter. Regarding the goals, we kind of don't have any. None of us are hoping to become full-blown rockstars. I guess the ultimate goal is to be able to do this while we become middle aged and start buying Dire straits DVDs and wearing crocs, but yet make it a financially sustainable thing. The bottom line is that we all very good friends, and we really like making music together but we are not hung up on one day playing in the Harpa with Sinfó. This beats lying at home watching Two and a Half Men.
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories:
Agent Fresco, Gang Related and Fist Fokkers have very little in common...
This is my friend's new band

DESTRÖYER 666 - To The Devil His Due

2011-08-29T06:17:00.000-07:00

When I was asked if I'd like a review assignment on Deströyer 666 by one of my most stalwart cohorts in musical ponderings, I sure as Hell said yes, as I am a very big, although not a die-hard, fan of the band. But when it was revealed that it was to be the 2010 compilation To The Devil His Due, originally a strictly limited 12” vinyl release consisting of tracks from four very hard to find 7” releases, that has now found it's way onto CD, I have to say that my initial reaction was rather belated.

I have never even considered reviewing compilations, as most of them are just glorified and overpriced mix-tapes, bereft of the atmosphere and context of the releases that the tracks are lifted from and serve only people that are checking the band out or are to goddamn lazy to burn out a best-of CD of their own, which would most likely consist of a vastly different tracklist than said compilation.

This one is a tad different though, as the tracks from these hard to find releases have never been available elsewhere. So for the casual listener, Hell, in this case I'd even go so far to say everyone along with the die-hards that originally got their hands on a precious copy or the ones that are willing to part with large wads of cash for a second hand copy if one pops up for sale, this one is a must-have. Now, as I have gotten this off my chest, I delve into this rather wonderfull collection of tidbits that were released between the years 1998 and 2010 and which quite nicely showcase the evolution of the band as a whole, but there's no constant to be observed here as they differ greatly in both sound and structure.

Kicking off with the two songs from Satanic Speed Metal from '98, a rather amusing release, very raw blackened speed metal outing garnished with some splendid NWOBHM guitar work and even more amusingly, audience participation in the title track, which reminds me very strongly of Slayer's Live Undead, where even some vulgarities from the crowd are captured. Some say that this release concludes the bands golden era, where Unchain The Wolves is hailed as their absolute masterpiece, but that is a different subject altogether which I'm not getting into here.

On King of Kings from 2000, a stark contrast to the blisteringly heavy Phoenix Rising, their second full-length album released the same year, this little ditty has a demo-like approach where the sound is overloaded at times and the live feel plays out well, almost if the tracks were just hammered onto tape in the rehearsal room. The songs featured on this 7” are more to my liking and if I'm not mistaken, it is the first material I heard with the band. "Lord of the Wild" is a particularly good track due to it's fantastic melodic and relentless buzz saw guitar work and a very cool drive throughout. The two and a half minute ambient outro could have been skipped on this release though. The three track ...Of Wolves, Women & War was released in 2002, again coupled with a full-length release the same year, this time the fantastic Cold Steel... For An Iron Age. "Ghost Dance" and "Levens Bloed" are both very much in the vein of their latter era blackened thrash/death metal style, and though the band retains some of the rawness presented on the previous EP's and Warslut's absolutely venomous vocals on it rank among my favorites in their career.

Ultimately, we're presented with the magnificent 2010 EP, See You In Hell and as the buildup to the final two tracks has been great, the earlier material doesn't come close to the splendor that "Through The Broken Pentagram" offers. This release was a truly a breath of fresh air and a return to form according to my taste after the slightly disappointing Defiance album of 2009, as both tracks featured on it are superior to each and every song on it. It's an epic conclusion to a very entertaining collection of tracks from their career and as I said earlier regarding my take on compilations, I wouldn't recommend any of them to anyone unless they were something extra special, which this one most certainly is. To The Devil His Due is not just for the die-hards, it's for any fan and follower of the band. [Hell's Headbangers]
- Atli Jarl

Albums: Hope for the Dying - Dissimulation, Frontline - The Gas Tank Incident

2011-08-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

The following were originally published in Exclaim! magazine/website.

HOPE FOR THE DYING - Dissimulation
This record isn't so much a tapestry of creative bursts influenced by the band's idols as it is an embroidery of everything they like and desire to be. In doing so there's no character to be found, no heart. [Read more]

FRONTLINE - The Gas Tank Incident
Frontline carry on what has become an almost quasi-Quebecer tradition of metal-/deathcore bands featuring two singers. Also on display is super-down-tuned fight metal of sorts. [Read more]
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
Albums: Pulling Teeth, Seraphim, Last Chance To Reason, Onward To Olympas, Gideon, Mighty Sphincter

HIGHGATE - Black Frost Fallout

2011-08-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

Highgate is a band I should really dig, but for some reason I can't get into it. Black Frost Fallout is a compilation of the band's material, spanning demo tracks to live numbers for a total of fifty-seven minutes. In small doses, Highgate's brand of sludgy black-metal is quite good. There are moments of drone and other genres, but for the majority this is a strange black metal band with a love of weed.

The album kicks off with the ten-minute title track. As a disclaimer, I know this is a demo track but the sound is just terrible (which sadly is the album's biggest downfall). There's no depth; you can make all the noise you want to, but that doesn't mean it's good. Now, this track would probably be a good listen live. The next three tracks are much of the same - which makes sense as all four were on the band's 06 demo. There's a violent sound but there's never that moment where you go "goddamn this is good." The sound-scape is interesting, mixing together the aforementioned genres along with a moment of seemingly random psychedelia. "The Wolf" is the stand-out track thus far. It has that distinct black-metal sound and when mixed with the vocals, things get interesting.

Interludes are tricky to pull off. When done right, it can serve the album immensely. Unfortunately, this isn't the case with "G.H.H". The track is nothing but a droning background with a sample being played. Given the album, it's definitely a throw-away track and doesn't serve any great purpose. "Sermon Of The Apocalypse 2005" brings back the sound of the first handful of tracks yet doesn't add anything to the pot. Because of that, it's another cumbersome four minutes. Then the listener is then subjected to another sample heavy piece "The Sea Of Perdition." This time it works much better. The sound is grim and nasty and the actual sample's volume is low enough to sound sinister. It brings to mind a less heavy Moloch (UK) at times.

The final two tracks are live cuts. "Untitled, Second Movement" is a harsh ten-minute assault. This actually sounds pretty good - the vocals really make this stand out. They're absolutely primal and pained. The length is a bit of a set-back because around the middle it seems interminable. "Black Frost Fallout" makes a second appearance as the album's closer and once again the live version blows the recorded one out of the water. You can hear the agony and viciousness clearly as opposed to the muddy, weak mixed one that greeted the listener.

Black Frost Fallout isn't going to be an album put in the day's rotation too often - in fact most of it will disappear quite shortly. There are moments of brilliance, but the total package is quite lacking. The album was nearly saved by those last three tracks... But the first half just murdered that thought. If you're in the mood for some sludgy black-metal and don't mind poor recordings, please check out Highgate otherwise discard it in the rubbish bin. [Total Rust]
- Evan Coonly

<a href="http://highgatedoom.bandcamp.com/track/the-wolf">The Wolf by Highgate</a>

LIKE WOLVES - Like Wolves

2011-08-18T05:16:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why the name of this band made me skeptical before I checked them out. I feel like there has been somewhat of a surge in bands with ‘wolf/wolves’ in their title of late and they’re usually not very good. I may be wrong but hey, who gives a shit, right?

After all, a band’s name is pretty much irrelevant since people will get used to anything as long as the band delivers. Musically, I feel Like Wolves sit somewhere between Gutter Phenomenon-era Every Time I Die and The Bronx. That wasn’t a compliment, by the way.

This review will be pretty short because, to tell you the truth, I’m finding it very difficult to write anything about this album. It’s not that it’s bad; it’s just such a bog-standard, middle-of-the-road inoffensive rock album.
You could try to pick out the very faint Suicide File influences echoing in the background or maybe the slight Drive Like Jehu sound of the guitar work to make it seem more exciting but you’d really just be lying to yourself. Listen, I’m not trying to slag these guys off, I’m just through with giving bands points for having a good sounding album or being tight when the overall performance is so incredibly lacklustre. If you’re genuinely into this sort of well-produced rock ‘n roll-infused hardcore you’ll probably like this. Personally, I’m trying to forget about this band as quickly as I can and, to tell you the truth, it looks like it’s not going to take too long. [Hex]
- Kolbeinn Þorgerisson

Blogspot Facebook

<a href="http://likewolves.bandcamp.com/track/her-as-earth-2">Her As Earth by Like Wolves</a>

GREAT LIKE CAKE - Stallion Italian and the "White Promos Movement" revealed

2011-08-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

San Diego is yet again back in the building. My first impression listening to Stallion Italian was that it sounds like something that was going down in the late '90s and early '00s when the lines between hardcore/punk and indie rock were getting blurred. It was an exciting time, energetic and creative. This being my first introduction to the band and presumably their first for public consumption, I'm reluctant to get down on them for being unoriginal. Yes, this sounds tad dated but bare with me.

It feels as if they are in opposition of current trends of super polished "post hardcore" and overtly stylized and pretentious indie rock, in that Stallion Italian has this "taking it back" vibe to it. So instead of multi-layered studio trickery we have raw, lively and catchy songs performed in an aggressive manner. Everything is open; each riff and each drum hit comes crashing down distorted and unhinged giving this endeavor a punk rock urgency their contemporaries lack by and large. Just listen to "Hot Strokes" for context. Les Savy Fav during a car chase anyone? I'll have that. This is the only real pedal-to-the-floor song. The majority of these recordings are brought forth at more civilized pace.
The familiarity of Stallion Italian makes comparisons hard to avoid. I'm trying not to, but I cannot contain myself. Engine Down, No Knife, Fireside and Pilot The Gunner all come to mind and it is not a bad company to be in. These guys know how to write bangers and the execution is laudable. So if you are tired of today's show offs and the endless stream of overwrought facebook singles, you might wanna investigate.
Great Like Cake's got my attention. To keep me on their gravy train the lads must drug their enthusiasm up to the next tier and add more creativity and surprises to their already sharply honed sound. [Self Released]

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://greatlikecake.bandcamp.com/track/code-red"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Code Red by Great Like Cake&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

The "white promos" are watching me. There's a source located in the trenches of San Diego. Said source keeps sending me illusive and unassuming packages that are uniformed in both appearance and comportment. A collective modus operandi? I got in touch with one of the culprits, namely one Greg Gerardi of Great Like Cake (guitar) and Architect Sketch (drums) in order to expose the cult.

Ah yes, the "white promos." An aesthetic result from my artistic inabilities coupled with my limited resources. The short story is, yes, we are a bunch of friends that love playing music with each other. As a whole, I have found San Diego to have a particularly incestuous music scene, with many people playing in two or three different bands.
The long boring story is that my first band when I moved to San Diego was The Challenger Deep (Greg, Andy & Rob). When Rob moved back to NYC, Architect Sketch (Greg & Andy) was formed. When Andy moved to Chicago I did a solo project, inviting friends to play on the record when they were visiting SD. This project was called Great Like Cake (Greg, Andy, Rob & Mario). While all of this was happening I've been playing in other bands around town (Swore, plus a few others).

I always wonder if having a unified design theme for all of the promos helps or hurts us in terms of getting reviews or air play. If a reviewer hated one release, they may be less inclined to listen to subsequent releases, but on the other hand, it may work to our favor if a reviewer liked a previous release. Either way, it seems they are memorable at least, and you may be cursing my name in another few months as I prep more "white promos" to send your way.
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
ARCHITECT SKETCH - The Great Dilemma
THE CHALLENGER DEEP - 2 Song EP
SWORE - Bird - 3 Song Demo

OUR LIFE STORY - I'd Rather Change Than Stay The Same

2011-08-14T20:58:00.000-07:00

I don’t know about you guys, but I often overlook a quite a bit of bands because of what someone says they sound like. Everyday conversations about music usually begin with, “have you heard of this band? Oh, you’ll love them if you like (blank).” This happens in other instances as well. If you walk into a record store, you’ll see stickers on CD's (wait, those still exist?) that advertise said band sounding like exhibit A, B, or C. I find these “recommendations” ultimately misleading.

Said band rarely sounds like the mentioned recommendations since the recommendations are usually from a broad spectrum (a real life example: Misery Signals: for fans of Shai Hulud, Thrice, and Between the Buried and Me). These headache-causing situations are prevalent in the world of modern music. Take this band for example, Our Life Story. I had previously heard about them through a magical thing called the internet. I recall reading about the band on a popular music forum and one of the writers reviewed the same release. This particular writer put this band in the same boat as New Found Glory, Set Your Goals, and The Wonder Years. I passed on listening to the band since I figure that this was a style way too many bands try and emulate. Boy, I should’ve second-guessed.

I’d Rather Change Than Stay The Same is a far cry from the three bands mentioned above. The five-piece band from Twin Cities, Minnesota put out this release on Barrett Records in May of 2011. The release contains five songs that last thirteen minutes collectively. I guess one can define this release as “pop punk” even though one can find elements from other genres (hardcore/punk, for example). The result is a dynamic, refreshing take on modern pop-punk that hits the ball out of the park.
This band nails what I think is the basic framework of pop-punk: a juxtaposition of melody and speed. Songs like “Suffering in Solitude” and “Clark St.” present the band’s focus on melody amidst a fast, perpetual rhythm section. Even though the music remains at a fast constant, the guitar work truly shines. Some of the guitar parts this band has written have been stuck in my head for days (a good example being the lead in the middle of “Over Thinking.”) No-holds-barred catchiness.

What separates Our Life Story from other bands in the saturated genre is their ability to write a great song. I feel like solid songwriting (especially in pop punk) is almost a lost art nowadays, but this band has given me faith. Even though some of the songs seem to lack a traditional structure, they flow incredibly well. OLS makes great use of dynamics as they take listeners through buildups and releases. Another thing to take note of are the lyrics. Some of them are reminiscent of bands like The Movielife (“I don’t want to see what this has done to me. Years fading, dissipating the threshold of my sanity”) and that’s definitely a good thing.
Why hasn’t this release received more attention? I don't understand how some bands on the genre blow up with watered-down music and generic lyrics. This band hits every aspect a modern pop-punk band should: great lyrics, fantastic songwriting, and the use of dynamics. Check this band out. [Barret]
- Ian Caramanzana

<a href="http://ourlifestory.bandcamp.com/track/over-thinking">Over Thinking by Our Life Story</a>

OAK - ii

2011-08-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

When it comes to doom, there are two standout releases in my book: Crippled Lucifer by Burning Witch, and Halls Of Amenti by Cephalic Carnage. Both of these releases really define DOOM in my opinion; one is spacey and chock full of occult atmosphere, while the other is just...well....really, really stoned. Therefore, one would think that a band combining elements of both aforementioned releases would be right up my alley. This is precisely what OAK are, but for some reason, this release is definitely not doing it for me.

This three-song doom monolith is basically snail's pace all the way through. The first track ("Cowards and Undeserving I2) is disjointed and extremely slow, and as a result, very boring. The riffage on display here sounds a lot like leftover Burning Witch, minus all the occult atmosphere... and it just goes on and on and fucking on. Things start to get a little more interesting towards the end as the tempo picks up with a nice death/doom section that wouldn't be out of place on an Incantation record. But then, of course, OAK slow down again and descend back into mediocre riff land. "Cowards And Undeserving ii" shows more promise than the preceding track, opening up with growls over a slow drum beat and a cacophony of voices, then proceeding into an introverted and haunting passage reminiscent of Forgotten Tomb or Wolves In The Throne Room. Unfortunately, this is the high point of the album, as the last track - "Sorrow Is Dead" - meanders through its 10-minute run-time, and somehow manages to be even more disjointed than the first track. The Halls of Amenti influence becomes so obvious around the six minute mark that it's almost embarrassing. But by now, that's not even enough to pique my interest. I just want this goddamn album to be over so I can get back to listening to something more enjoyable.

My gripe with this album is just that: It doesn't grip me at all. There needs to be more framework in the ultra-doomy sections, some of the riffs don't really make sense, and it's not focused enough. It's also extremely obvious what OAK's influences are - when listening to a band, you don't want to be able to point to a certain section and say "Oh hey, these riffs are total Burning Witch ripoffs!" More originality, please. However, the second track does show some promise, so there may be good things to come. But for now, you're better off torching a joint and listening to Halls Of Amenti for the thousandth time. [A389]
- James Frigge

OAK "Cowards & Undeserving ii"
Stream borrowed from CVLT Nation

FESTER - Winter Of Sin

2011-08-09T12:44:00.000-07:00

Lets be honest here. Winter Of Sin is not a great album. Hell, it's even a bit clumsy and awkward at times. But for the death metal enthusiast it's an item deserving of a place in the collection.

Indeed, we have a piece of history in our hands and for those of us that like to connect the dots and fill in the blanks - be they factual or a product of our imagination or self-serving assumptions about who was first, what inspired this and that, geographic concerns and what have you - Winter Of Sin is an intriguing piece of work and this particular reissue makes it even more so. There's something tangible era and area specific about this album, that will immediately tell you that this is a relic of the past - even if you have no idea when the music was recorded.

Welcome to Askim, Norway. The year is 1992. Fester's lo-fi sensibilities parallels Norway's second wave of black metal. Now if that was intentional or not Winter Of Sin bares witness to how early death and black metal met midway on a barren battlefield of cold winds and frosted blood, thus rendering it a relevant document of not only how a young underground band might have approached the two genres but yielding a charm only limited resources could spawn. This resulted in a vibe unique to Winter Of Sin because Cadaver, Entombed and the likes were on another grid entirely. If anything, Fester's juvenile take on all things dark, miserable and metal feels like a stripped down nod to Bathory, Hellhammer with a hint of Celtic Frost for an added "ritual" aura. At the risk of sounding ambiguous when throwing around words like "vibes", "youth" and such, songs like "The Ancient Gods Wore Black" and "Victory!!!" are straight up hellish bangers.

Winter Of Sin feels like isolation, youth and dark fascinations only teenagers could channel in such a raw and untempered way. Isolation in that it really does not sound anything that was coming out in Norway and Sweden at the time and I'm willing to bet it was not because of artistic vision, rather that the band wasn't tuned into the trends of the time not big city metal communities in aforementioned countries. Youth, because they do not perform as seasoned or well rehearsed players but like eager and self-assured youngsters hellbent on showing everyone who's the meanest in town. Dark fascinations? On the original release of Winter Of Sin the boys inked the inlay using blood! Enough said.

Living in disconnected to the sprawling scenes at the time, not being excellent performers, their take on blackened death metal was sluggish and had a very cold and sparse quality to it. The vocal style might have barely predated the 2nd wave of black metal - which enhanced that cold feel I'm talking about. If it predated said wave or not doesn't really matter. It's the context that matters. The voice had a hint of "suicidal black metal" (worst moniker ever) quality in the voice. I'm naming a bunch of elements in a non cohesive manner here but bare with me, because these are the ingredients for something special. It's not excellent, but special. And that's the key thing here.

This reissue is an excellent document. It sounds good, looks good and more importantly it has liner-notes and anecdotes that make a purchase a sure shot. The liner-notes set up the context and are a joy to read offering often hilarious and fascinating insiders account into what went down twenty years ago in the municipality of Askim, Norway. And as an extra special bonus you get a extended live version of "When Darkness Confirms" performed at a repugnant death and black metal gathering in Askim 1991. [Abyss]
- Birkir Fjalar

Find more Fester songs at Myspace Music

GDP - Useless Eaters

2011-07-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, when I was talking about Shad, a Canadian MC from London, Ont. that’s been making some waves down south, I said conscious hip-hop doesn’t seem to attract weak rappers. For some reason, when someone tends to lean towards social observations and political awareness as subject matter for their rhymes, their lyrics tend to be just as interesting as the content. I wouldn’t say GDP is exactly in this pool of rappers, but his lyrics would suggest so. GDP takes these topics to a whole new level however, embodying the internet-age’s hyper-connectivity; today’s ability to not only be ridiculously well informed, but also our ability to develop very, very stubborn point of views wrapped in a thick layer of paranoia.

These are some of the more apparent qualities in GDP’s lyrics. It’s impossible to not only notice how outright aggressive he is with his point of views, using apocalyptic scenery and disparaging themes, but also the fear, the paranoia surrounding his lyrics, which are always looking at the future in a very bleak manner. I don’t know about the man himself, but his lyrics seem to suggest he doesn’t see many positive things coming our way. This future world GDP is describing seems to be a facet of the artist's character and ideology. I doubt GDP reflects the man's entire point of view, but is simply an outlet for his most sinister, depressing and saddening images. I have immense respect for this because it’s hard to be a character in hip hop, the medium seeming so personal and intuitive, but the man behind GDP has done something here.

GDP has a voice that has never been heard before, at least not to these ears. Yes, the images evoked in the lyrics are pessimistic and grim and GDP seems to focus more on one side (the negative) than the other (hope), but these issues are very, very real and some of which seem to be entirely secluded from the hip hop mindset. GDP could soon be seen as a trailblazer. I can pull out lyrics upon lyrics from this record that speak about issues of huge importance, but are not only overtly ignored in hip hop, but many genres. Here’s one for your face, “Bargain for carbon/Greenhouse exhaustion/Newfangled energy versus modern economics” and “We’re ruining the land we stole/But you don’t feel responsible/ So let the next of kin pay our carbon toll” and that’s all from one song! There’s certainly more where that came from too.

He’s not only dealing with environmental/economical/political issues as a person looking in on it all, but GDP also tries to draw in his experiences to the fold. Drugs and addiction are an incredibly pervasive theme throughout all these songs, as well as observations pertaining to that type of lifestyle. GDP, as he admits on his song “Oxypolicontin,” was once himself a “junkie.” This song in particular has GDP revealing how drugs have affected his life negatively, as well as the life of a friend and collaborator. But this entire record seems like a lashing out to that man he once was. Every line where he looks down upon the masses and masses of people who live apathetic in a drug-induced stupor is filled with this questioning sense where the rapper says to himself, “Fuck man. That used to be me.” “Oxypolicontin” feels like watching an episode of Intervention; it’s dirty, desperate and depressing. It’s also beautiful, sincere and real.

A more rounded representation of GDP's creator comes in the record’s final track, “Someday When Things are Good.” Backed by a chopped-up jazz number, GDP doesn’t exactly brighten things up, as the title seems to suggest, but instead of spewing angry lyrics about out of control politics or economics or depression or drugs, he talks about the smaller things. Failed love, reflecting on less than stellar actions and traits, you know, self-awareness, or if you’d like “emo.” Though it doesn’t sound as such, this is definitely a breather for us as listeners. As GDP talked about issues that I’m sure many of his fanbase are aware of, we were kept a safe distance from the man’s emotions and there’s no sense of connection to the artist up until the final track. Once the album comes to a close, there’s most definitely a sense that we’ve gotten to know somebody.

Lastly, and briefly, the production on this album is fantastic. The first time I heard opening track “Neural Circuitry,” I admit I was under the impression that I couldn’t get into it. It’s very abrasive, loud, spastic and digital. Almost ugly. But, soon enough, I began to not only really enjoy these beats, but also came to realize just how perfect they were as tools to compliment GDP’s themes and ideas. This kind of production could not be put to any other rhymes, and vice versa. It’s a marriage made in heaven, creating a very strong and almost revolutionary release that perfectly captures many of today’s turmoil. I just hope we end up better than some of the images GDP conjures up. [Run For Cover]
- Dru Morrison

Neurosis @ Apolo, Barcelona Jul 21st. 2011

2011-07-25T15:54:00.000-07:00

As anybody fortunate enough ever to witness a Neurosis show (emphasis on show, for Neurosis do not merely gig) will tell you, the experience is somewhat of a religious experience. The lights go down, the projector fires up, and the ominous samples are turned on in the background- both to carry the mesmerized floor through the breaks between songs, wherein never a word is spoken, and to keep the never ending atmosphere of impending doom cracking.

Neurosis are an act that ebbs and flows like the emotional tide of a lifetime and accordingly the music builds up slowly, slowly, ever intent to lure you in but then to tear you asunder as at the moment that anticipation becomes the very onslaught of a prolonged and ever so overwhelming breakdown.
While the onscreen projections of the forces of nature draw you in and further enhance the experience of total immersion of the two senses, one really only wants to close ones eyes and dive head first into the crushing aural paradigm on display, while giving but a moments glance of ill will towards the few idiots who mistake a Neurosis performance for an appropriate occasion to mosh, and are quickly shut down buy the rest of a full house of people come to marvel and not molest.
The band wisely shies away from the angular and at times annoying material from Given to the Rising, save for an odd number or perhaps two, and lingers for what seems like eternity in golden trilogy of spectacular releases written between the breakthrough Through Silver in Blood album and the rather disappointing latest outing previously mentioned.

As Stones from the Sky and similar climactic fare breaks loose like incarcerated spirits spawned of some weird emotions tittering on the borders of utter joy and bottomless pits of depression and endless sorrow, the room oooohs and awwws in sync with the slow pulses of aural fury and the intermittent bumps of the closest spellbound onlooker undulating in awe serves to retrieve the listener from the brink of falling into a comatose state.
A new cut promises perhaps not new ground being broken, but a much wanted step away from the latest release, and as it violates an unspoken mantra by breaking into chaos at an unexpected time where the false lulling had yet to properly mature into a furious passage, it does however yearn back to the long lost era of Times of Grace by introducing the bagpipe. But as another new number explodes the Neurosis of yore is thankfully back, albeit with the unexpected twist of a Chinese string instrument whose name currently escapes me.

In normal Neurosis fashion four tom-toms are carried on stage as the customary closing song, "Through Silver in Blood" of off same said album, prepares to be set free. What awaits is a build up of frenetic drum head punishment so brutal in its tugging on the strings of your very deepest emotions that when finally the raging outburst of the song’s middle passages is unleashed one could very easily be forgiven for ones misunderstanding that the aural waves ripping through the venue could not possibly have made a leap from what was already surprisingly crushing to these which are nearly intolerable to the senses.
As the music explodes in a final ambush of seven throbbing tom-toms blood drips from axe man Scott Kelly’s forehead, the result of a microphone head butt in the heat of the moment. Steve von Till beats away at his side in an attempt to out-do even himself after what has been a set during which I have been so drawn into his sphere that I feel almost as one with his persona and the stage is a whirl of reckless abandon as the keyboardist’s outbursts have long since displaced his mic-stand. The lights then go out entirely and encores will not happen no matter the incessant urging of the public, as Through Silver in Blood can not and will not be followed by any musical piece yet written.
- Bogi Bjarnason

Picture by Bogi Bjarnason

ANCIENT SHORES - Step To The Edge

2011-07-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

I’ve always thought A389 to be an important label. The people who run it obviously have their ears firmly pressed to the ground, picking, seemingly with ease, bands that are able to carve themselves a niche in their respective over-saturated scenes. I have also always thought that I was quite clued up on all their releases but seeing as, prior to being handed their EP, I had never even heard of Ancient Shores, I had clearly overestimated myself. It was, therefore, with some curiosity and, dare I say it, excitement that I gave Step To The Edge a spin.

First thing: it’s heavy. I love it when bands take their recording quality seriously, even if they’ve only been together for a couple of years. It shows dedication and ambition, which is something far too many bands disregard. Ancient Shores have obviously sat down, thought about their sound and where they want to take it. Either that or they have someone who really knows what they’re doing behind the mixer desk. The music itself brings a few bands to mind, mainly from the late 90s/early 2000s American metalcore scene. Early Dillinger Escape Plan and perhaps Deadguy; there’s a little bit of Coalesce in there but they’re faster than that. The odd twiddly bit here and there is probably the reason why I’ve seen the term ‘technical’ thrown around these guys but I wouldn’t call them that. There’s a certain element in the riffs that makes me think of early Isis and when they really slow it down, they do so with an appropriate level of ugliness. They do really tick all the boxes when it comes to an aggressive, heavy, metal-influenced hardcore band, which begs the question: why am I so bored?

Here we have four short songs of well produced, pummeling metalcore and I’m struggling not to turn it off halfway through the second track. At first I thought it must be something to do with myself because, as I said before, these guys are doing everything right, but after several listens I’ve come to realize that what this EP lacks is character. It needs some extra flavour, something more than the nods to their inspirations. Now, that may well be a subjective opinion and I accept that but I can see no other reason why this ambitious effort fails to grab a hold of me, especially when I was completely ready to be mesmerized. Having said that, I do feel quite optimistic about this band; I see this EP sort of as a few rounds at the shooting range before the war begins. Even though I will probably never listen to Step To The Edge again, I will keep an eye on Ancient Shores in the future, if not for any other reasons than that they are label mates with Gehenna. [A389]
- Kolbeinn Þorgeirsson

WORLD NARCOSIS - s/t

2011-07-21T15:13:00.000-07:00

With so much of today's generation of heavily stylized metal, grind and hardcore bands sounding pre-packaged, dry and fucking boring, World Narcosis' debut seven inch is a breath of fresh air.

This shit is bananas in more ways than one. The pessimism and abandonment of the lyrics fit the spastic heaviness perfectly. Soaked in "evil chord" progression (see; "Deathbed" a long lost child of Need To Control Brutal Truth), blast beats and two-speed galore, singer Viktor Kaldalóns tops this cake of doom as he belts campfire pleasantries such as "We will never be well. Brainscam," "There's no home where there is control. We might as well give up - stand up - choke ourselves." And lastly "I'll let myself in dead shadows, before "I love you" ever reloads our guns again." Now, these are just short excerpts from the poems on hand to give you a glimpse into this Warped Tour bound material.

Although the performance of the players is bulldoze tight (bonkers drums afoot), the productions gives it a loose, crude feel, a credit to engineer Erling Bang (Celestine/I Adapt) who mercifully avoided the pitfalls of overusing computer-compressors thus befitting the violent and relentless nature of the music. There is seldom a break between songs. No time to breath to check your facebook updates.
And as if this wasn't enough to set these guys apart from other young contemporaries debuting their stuff, the vocals give World Narcosis yet another edge and arguably the most distinctive ones. Mr. Kaldalóns is absolutely unhinged in his delivery. You could even say that the lad comes undone. Yet a midst the carnage and disappointment there's glimmer of hope... Well, not really.
The whole records spits insightful shots of disillusionment, hopeless commentary on consumption, the rat-race, pride, personal defects and addiction. Joy! Play this during a spring break. The long-board brahs will love you for it.

Pig Destroyer atonalism, faint echos of His Hero Is Gone's/Artimus Pyle's apocalyptic rumble and the blast-burst effects of Iron Lung married with bat-shit crazy vocalist that make Das Oath's/Charles Bronson's Mark McCoy sound like a perfectly balanced individual. In this seven inch you've got yourselves a fresh, untamed, disparate and glorious carnival of extreme metal, grind, power violence and hardcore (what have you) that should satisfy fans of fast and nasty music. This release is limited to only 200 copies so you better make it quick - get in touch with these young lads and secure a copy.

"Where a man puts a tag on men and shouts for sale!" Indeed. All hail the new flesh.
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
Violent, raw, loud, ridiculous and Icelandic

VICEGRIP - Savage Struggle

2011-07-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

It's mean, rough, hard and conceivably pissed off. This is the type hardcore that goes circle after circle. Talk about tradition.

Let me just start out with saying that Vicegrip's Savage Struggle is not likely to make under my needle in the future. There are things I like, stuff I dislike but most of all there is hardly anything that excites me.

Lets start with the like's. The touch of Holy Terror fits nicely with the street-hard Cro-Mags anthemics. Shit like that is prone to ignite the dance-floor. I like the no-bullshit approach to the delivery and recordings, which in turn has more to do with pre-messageboard hardcore. "Equal Balance" is pretty solid, showing dynamics and transition that help keep the flow of aggression in tact.
The don't like's include how by-the-numbers this whole thing is. If a band takes that route it has to have that extra oomph of tension and quite frankly, presence. There's always a band out there that sounds pissed and hateful but they get lost in a sea of identical groups and that could be the fate of Vicegrip. It's too done for its own good. And the guitar solo trade-offs in "Lion's Den" isn't the best idea, mostly because the solos are not very good. Fun live maybe, but on this record it holds back the song.
In addition the band seems to want to let their hair down and release flashes of their inner metal-beast but it never really happens to the extent it maybe needs to. Perhaps next time, uncage the animal and things get exciting.

Maybe I would have been more involved in Savage Struggle if I knew what words were behind the rage found herein. But as with a lot of hardcore releases/promos these days, lyrics are not included.
This 7" is pretty heavy and undeniably straight up hardcore, so if you like the Mags inspired bands and moshing side-to-side into people, ready to fight, this could be your fix. [Last Anthem]
- Birkir Fjalar

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://vicegrip.bandcamp.com/track/equal-balance"&amp;amp;gt;Equal Balance by Vicegrip&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

CONVERGE / DROPDEAD - Split

2011-07-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

When news surfaced about a Converge, Dropdead split I was immediately intrigued and excited. Firstly, it is an odd pairing. Secondly, I hadn't heard new stuff from the mighty Dropdead in a long while. But, "will this work"? was my initial question.

But lets get back to this unlikely couple. Converge: all their adventures, longevity, influence, crossover ability and, quite frankly, ownership of a legendary status that parallels an insanely successful career given the extreme nature of the hundreds of songs they are responsible for through the years.
Dropdead is a different animal altogether. Similarly though, they are ancient in "hardcore years" and all the while they are respected in small circles, the glorious inferno, that is Rhode Islands' greatest export, can hardly be called popular or well-known. Which is a shame really, but it makes sense. Their gritty, fast and often dark as hell, machine-gun crust has had many a hardcore-pretty-boy-mosher run for the door with Bob Otis' (singer) anti-authoritarianist barks gnawing at their messenger bags. Coupled with the fact that they don't tour vigorously, their records are released by bunker-like labels (until now) and their fierce D.I.Y. punk ethics hardly win them over any hip friends with "happening" connections.

This is a two song 7"/EP/digital release. Converge start things with the blinding "Runaway". Fast and simpler than Axe To Fall, this song is also meaner and more imminent than last year's impressive yet loaded full-length. I wouldn't mind hearing more of this in the future. Somehow the rawness of this track is refreshing and exciting.
One bar into Dropdead's "Path Of Glory" and it is hard to imagine it's been seven years since their split with the sorely missed Look Back And Laugh. The song's fast pace compliments Converge's need for speed while inciting the need to clench my fists, run around like a headless chicken and jump off anything and anyone with a grin across my face. Something that breakneck, ugly hardcore punk does best. And Dropdead are one of the best. Hell, I'd pit this song against "A Disease Called Man". That's proper. Welcome back boys!
In tow with Converge I hope Dropdead will find more people to listen to their glorious racket and pissed-off, proactive message.

I'm not a fan of two-song seven inches although I have quite a lot of them in my collection. Seems like a waste of wax really and especially since the wait for Dropdead output has become so long. But both songs are keepers and your interest in this release should be axiomatic... unless there's something wrong with you. To answer the initial question: yes this split fucking works. [Deathwish Inc]
- Birkir Fjalar

DANGEROUS TRAP / THE END OF SCIENCE - Split

2011-07-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

What we have here is a split EP/cassette from two post-rock-ambient-instrumental-whatchamacallit bands.

Dangerous Trap makes music that start slowly but builds into something epic, somewhere in the vicinity of Sigur Rós or Godspeed You Black Emperor. It’s purely instrumental and would probably work quite nicely as background music for a film. Listening to the first song, “Muppet Walk”(nice title!), I first thought of fantasy film, like LOTR, but then I thought it would probably work better for some sort of life-affirming drama. Like for instance in a scene where the hero starts wandering around the city, trying to understand what the point of everything is. Gradually he starts to understand things and eventually realises how he can
get the girl, and goes and gets her.
The problem is though that this song, as well as their other song on the EP, “Oh I’ve been to Prague”(which to me sounds like a title for dance track from a band like Hot Chip or !!!), just sound too familiar. It’s nicely done but I still felt like I’d heard both songs many times before, and they also both sound quite a bit like each other. The members of Dangerous Trap sound to me like very able musicians but on this EP they take no chances (probably because they’re still developing their sound).

I liked End of Science a little more than Dangerous Trap. I’m not sure why exactly, I guess they’re a little more fun. Their track “Hornet”, the former of two on this EP, starts with some clapping which of course is not very common in prog or post-rock. Then a somber piano tags along with the clapping and soon the rest of the instruments kick in. That’s some pretty powerful build up there and I can imagine is quite awesome live. But overall the song is not quite as awesome as it eventually gets more conventional (and a little Sigur-Rós-y).
The second track, “Orange Sunshine”, has an equally strong, albeit more typical, opening. The song remains pretty much the same throughout but in this case that’s not a bad thing. It builds up nicely and reaches a pretty cool climax.

Overall this EP is pretty familiar stuff but both bands show a little promise and I’d be interested to hear more from them in the future, especially End of Science. [Meters and Miles]
- Atli Sigurjónsson

Interview: Tongan Death Grip, "premium punk"

2011-07-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

This is punk to drink with. This is punk to dance with. If you’re trying to create a playlist to that revolution you can dance to, you should put these guys some where in the mix

I mean, if the local magazine on everything happening around this town of Halifax, Nova Scotia, gives a group the title of the town’s “premier punk band” on its cover, you know, you take attention. The best thing though is that The Coast wasn’t that far from the truth regarding their evaluation of Tongan Death Grip. The band plays a familiar brand of fast garage punk, with all the expected leanings towards surf rock and such. The band, however, take it into very refreshing directions, even to pretty cool experimentation (check out their song “Something’s Wrong” which seems to have been recorded onto a 33, and then it’s played back and rerecorded as a 33 at 45 rpm. It’s funny, smart and topical because who of us hasn’t accidentally done this). The band’s melodies are intricate and up beat with witty lyrics and fantastic vocals from a dude who can fucking keep a melody. This is punk to drink with. This is punk to dance with. If you’re trying to create a playlist to that revolution you can dance to, you should put these guys some where in the mix. Before I even swept through their MySpace playlist, I knew this was a band I’d like to do my part in promoting to those I think will appreciate them. So I got in touch and asked Craig, the guitarist and vocalist for the band who spoke on behalf of Shane, the bassist and their alternating drummers Myles and Mike (Mike being the one on the recording, but not currently residing in Halifax and Myles who plays with the band live and will be seen on Tongan Death Grip’s upcoming summer recordings).

How did you guys feel making the cover of the prestigious local music rag The Coast?
I thought that was pretty cool. Seemed like a few people read the article and wanted to check out our first release show at Reflections at Rockin4Dollars; there seemed to be a lot of new faces there that night. I was really happy with Allison Lang's article about the band and the new album, she's great!

Tongan Death Grip - Something's Wrong by HalifaxCollect
What does it feel like to be in a band round here? Is it easy? Hard? Does everyone get along? Is it stuffy and up-tight or easy to be part of?
I find it very easy, but I'm in a lot of bands so that helps. It's a good scene out here in Halifax; lots of cool bands. I think the fact that Halifax is a smallish university town helps bands out a lot. It seems like bands of different genres share shows together quite often and this allows for a real mix of people at most shows and more exposure for bands if they are looking for that sort of thing.

Have any comments on the state of Canadian indie music?
A lot of my favourite bands are from Canada. I don't listen to indie rock (indie music? ) at all but for punk and powerpop stuff I love new bands like Fear of Lipstick from Moncton (my fave Canadian band), Crusades, The Visitors, The Creeps, Steve Adamyk Band, Sonic Avenues, Cold Warps, Statues, so many great new Canadian bands. Plus older bands like Pointed Sticks, Forgotten Rebels, Teenage Head, Dayglo Abortions, etc. Canada rules!

What's in the future for y'all?
We're gonna go tour Germany soon and release more records on labels that we like. We're playing a bunch around here over the summer in both Halifax and Dartmouth. Check out their music here and see if you can’t go out and see them. Also, Tongan Death Grip’s debut LP, Chula Vista, is available on P Trash Records here (gonna have to scroll down a bit). Thanks to Chris for answering these questions and the rest of the band for providing their awesome music.
- Dru Morrison

Myspace

Agent Fresco, Gang Related and Fist Fokkers have very little in common...

2011-07-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

... Other than the fact that they all hail from Iceland, abide to a fairly conventional band set-up and all have pretty recent video somethings out. So why not look at video evidence, eh?

GANG RELATED- MONA from Helgi Petur on Vimeo.

Gang Related's fussy and dreamy lo-fi rock has yet not failed. Probably because they only have two songs out or something. So, their next batch of songs might turn up the suck-o-meter but lets hope that won't happen. In all honesty, I don't see that happening at all. This is their new song and second music video (the first one was for "My Last Name") for "Mona". I love it. The video was made by a band member and I love that too. They say it's a rough mix but in this day and age of mp3's and horrible speakers and headphones that cannot touch all the frequencies of a good music file, who gives a shit? Sounds fine in my ears. So there ya go, two videos to two solid songs from one of Iceland's bet kept secrets.
Facebook Soundcloud

Agent Fresco's Long Time Listening found itself amongst my last year's most spun records. Their eclectic, dynamic and technical music somehow was amazingly easy to digest and get into. A rare success of intricate in a perfect marriage catchy. The two rarely go together but these guys make it look easy. It's almost an anomaly to witness people depart from their set ways and get into this sort of stuff - varying cliques eat it up and the band transcends cultural demographics. Witnessing this has been a pleasure. Anyway. This makes the selection of "Implosion" an odd one as it doesn't really represent the overall feel of the album, subsequently coming off as one of the simplest ones tracks on it. An odd man out really. That said, it is also one of the best tracks on the record. I've had friends complaining over this video being too intimate.
Facebook Myspace

And last but not least we have the 19 members orchestra of a stadium rock band called Fist Fokkers. You may remember me singing their praises a bunch of months ago. Their loose-as-balls-on-a-humid- day noise rock brings me back to the '90s when me and my brother sat in front of the stereos, listening to chaotic alternative music that had just as much to to do with fucked up hardcore, no wave and punk rock. Those were good times. Fist Fokkers are good times. Kick it.
Facebook Myspace
- Birkir Fjalar

Related stories
This is my friend's new band
More noise, heavy riffing and pulsating island-beats
Best Extreme Releases In Iceland 2010
ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2010: Writers and friends pick 'em #1
Nordic Music Prize: Best Album 2010 - Halifax Collect helps select candidates
Agent Fresco and We Made God: new thongs

Interview with Godstopper's Mike Simpson

2011-07-10T18:10:00.000-07:00

"This band has freed me from the vast majority of the barriers that people put in front of themselves when making music, specifically heavy music"

It's been a couple of weeks since I found out about Toronto's Godstopper via Survivalist Deathcult and I have not been able to get them out of my mind ever since. And that speaks volumes about the band's strength. It's not that a song or a particular chorus was so catchy or that they sounded similar to a band I love. It was the alien feel of the music and Godstopper's unorthodox take on noise rock, metal, doom or what have you. And said feel made me so excited and glad to have stumbled on a band so fresh that I felt compelled to tell my friends about them and all I could say was, "they kinda feel like... uh, like they are hovering above you in a distance, like in a small tunnel, you know, you are hearing their sound coming from the end of a long tunnel, but you cannot really see were they are coming from. They sound like nobody, man!" Add to this adventurous vocals, left-field production values and nuanced song structure and development, these guys are amongst the best new act 2011 has offered thus far.
Godstopper's latest EP Empty Crawlspace sounds thoughtful, strange, distant, vibrant, stimulating and a bit scary at times. This, coupled with my need to tell everyone about them, prompted a very drunk email one night to one Mike Simpson who in turn was glad answer anything I threw his way.

I ran your bandcamp tracks by a couple of friends and we all agreed it is almost impossible to categorize Godstopper and we concluded - in a cloud of ignorance - that you probably didn't belong to any scene.
We don't belong to any scene, at least not that I'm aware of. It falls somewhere within the heavy music umbrella, but I'd be at a loss to accurately describe to you a convenient, one-word stylistic label or stable of bands who are cut from the same cloth as us. There are bands that we play with and correspond with who we share certain elements with, but we're not a genre-specific band.

Sounding this unconventional it makes me wonder how different your songwriting and recording approach is to other more "easy to figure out" bands and moreover the bands you used to be in before Godstopper, presumably groups that were easier to swallow.
Yeah, I've been in other bands in the past, mostly in the area of heavy, somewhat more progressive sounding music- I was the vocalist and bassist for a band called The Womb, which was a sludge band of sorts with some progressive tendencies, and then I also played in a band called the Great Collapse, which was very progressive death metal.

Godstopper originally developed out of a desire to move into simpler territory, in all aspects of the music and the overall aesthetic. I had the feeling in my previous bands that in order to possess the highly coveted "originality" tag my band mates desired to achieve, the music had to be complicated and dense, and as a consequence that the recording quality had to be top notch to allow people to pick up on all the nuances. By contrast, the songwriting process is fairly simple for Godstopper; when I write I am looking to encapsulate everything into themes, and as few themes as possible. I take a lot of influence from pop songs in that regard - I do actually want the listener to remember the individual parts of the music, not just the overall "feel" of it.

As for recording, I was and continue to be just as inspired by DIY as anybody else who's taken that route. I've never professed to be the best recording engineer, drummer or guitar player for that matter (we are a full band now by the way, and future recordings will reflect that), but I don't really care; I think most appreciators of this kind of music have a pretty high tolerance for "imperfections". This band has freed me from the vast majority of the barriers that people put in front of themselves when making music, specifically heavy music- IE, "you have to go to a studio and spend $_____", or "you must master your instrument or find players who are masters to play the music", or "your music is heavy and modern-sounding therefore it must be unintelligibly complicated, non-repetitive and atonal".

One final note regarding the writing/recording process is that I don't labor over anything; I tend to write and record quickly, and when it's done it's done. In a lot of ways this was single-handedly inspired by a quote I read from Edgy 59 of Burning Witch off his myspace page- "why can't you let something SOUND the way it SOUNDS??" That's my mantra these days.

I was thinking about the name. Stop God? Which god in particular? If he needs to be stopped does it mean that the lads in the band believe in God's existence or is the name more ambiguous than that, a comment on specific cultural trends and so on? There are more things that sprung to mind but yeah, the name?
The name has no religious significance. I'm curious to see if it'll end up acting as a red herring for people. I think it's a comment on cultural trends but only inasmuch as the overwhelming weight and emphasis that many of my contemporaries choose to put on religion forces one to think that there must be some significance to the name, some protest, some grudge, something...but in reality those Gods are all so distant that I'm not particularly concerned with how much they do or don't exist. If anything, if you accept the absolute nature of God, or at least understand the concept, then the name is really about stopping everything, a total cessation. Which is more getting to the heart of what this band is about thematically.

Judging by the adventures and untamed nature of the music, I cannot for the life of me imagine what your lyrical "subject matters" are dealing with. I'm tempted to assume that they do in some way touch on unconventionality, living... thinking beyond the status quo...
The lyrical topics are pretty rooted in the personal/interpersonal, actually. Lots of stuff relating to wasting potential through selling oneself short, "settling down"-check out "Clean House" - song and video, that is my comment on those who choose to settle for some shred of security at the expense of ever becoming someone/something greater or taking a glimpse out into the scary unknown; the desire for acceptance and all that needy bullshit, all of this being written with full knowledge of there being a certain amount of denial and projection inherent on my behalf...small minds discuss people, so apparently I'm no better. There's some serial killer mindset/depravity in there too, trying and failing but then trying again (possibly succeeding?), and that which is hidden, not to be named- that is ckultur. I think that sums it up.
&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://godstopper.bandcamp.com/album/empty-crawlspace"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Empty Crawlspace by Godstopper&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;
I knew it wasn't as simple as just AAEERGGHH GODSTOPPER! FUCK GOD AND CHRISTIANS! TO HELL WITH GOD! JESUS IS A TWAT! GLEN BENTOOOON!
In being such an un-genre specific band and without a scene of kids that can easily latch onto you because you sound like their favorite band at the moment, I wonder how frequently you guys play in your Toronto, if you travel with your music and how people act to your music.
Well, we've only been playing shows for the last four months, and we've played a handful of them. This is still a new band. People's responses to live shows are usually "you guys are fucked you remind me a bit of harveymilkburningwitchfloormelvinstheflystodayistheday etc etc etc", usually comparisons like that. I like to think of the fact that we're not slotted in heavily to one particular genre as an asset which gives us the potential to appeal to a wider audience- we've got shows on the books with crusty black metal bands and avant garde death metal bands and we've also had shows with indie and noise bands.
- Birkir Fjalar

Listen to a quality stream of Empty Crawlspace, download it and support the band here. To keep up with Godstopper visit their website.

ARCHITECT SKETCH - The Great Dilemma

2011-07-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

I hate these fucking attempts at creating a new genre by taking a genre name and adding some sort of suffix. But, alas, nothing seems to be able to sum up Architect Sketch’s work here better than Krautrock, 2.0. Sorry ‘bout that.

Don’t know Krautrock? Well, it’s pretty much become a huge hipster revival genre. These cats lick that shit up. And, a couple of them think they’re pretty fucking cool for knowing the discography of CAN and Tangerine Dream. And if you ask one of them what it is, they’ll probably be all, “It’s like… you know how… it’s too hard to explain.” It isn’t, actually. It’s rock, from Germany, that’s sort of minimal with electric quirks and repetitive. I swear to fuck, that’s it to a goddamn tee. And a modern version of that is what San Diego duo Architect Sketch do, and they do it pretty fucking well if you ask me.

The sound they achieve on The Great Dilemma EP (available for free here) is incredibly lively, which is probably due to the fact that there are only 2 members in the group. Something about less members in a band makes a recorded work seem more tangible and real, as compared to normal sized bands whose recorded output seems dense, at least denser than their live shows. The lively and spacious sound can also be attributed to the band’s method. The bassist, Andy Kondrat, uses a loop pedal heavily on this recording, a device typically used in live settings to recreate a full band experience in a live environment where the band is smaller than their sound. As drummer Greg Gerardi keeps the pulse, Kondrat throws in a riff and you can almost see the moment where he kicks that loop pedal into next gear because the beginning of the next riff is very abrupt as the last one loops over and over again to keep the momentum going. It’s a method of creation that’s wholly new to me, and while it’s very experimental, the music is still incredibly accessible, melodic and overall fun, though the lack of lyrics may turn some off.

Architect Sketch achieve a very interesting blend where the listener isn’t only paying attention to the music, but also the method through which the music is achieved, an experience that seems to have been lost decades ago. This is a fine, fine release.
-Dru Morrison

<a href="http://architectsketch.bandcamp.com/track/orans-lament">Oran's Lament by Architect Sketch</a>

2011 Polaris Music Prize Shortlist

2011-07-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Austra – Feel It Break
Braids – Native Speaker
Destroyer – Kaputt
Galaxie – Tigre et Diesel
Hey Rosetta! – Seeds
Ron Sexsmith – Long Player Late Bloomer
Colin Stetson – New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges
Timber Timbre – Creep On Creepin’ On
The Weeknd – House of Balloons

First off, 6 out of 10 again. Not bad for a dude who hasn’t kept up with his country’s music scene, am I right? I tells ya, in terms of taste, this country hasn’t changed much, though our palette is pretty huge. Now, I won’t say this is the best list Polaris Prize has compiled (that would be the ’07 list), but I will argue that this is the most well rounded/unashamed list made by the panel. If you can recall, I said not to be surprised if Arcade Fire don’t make the cut. What I meant by this is that, basically, Canadians tend to shit on anybody who has success outside of our homeland, especially the success that
Arcade Fire have had. It’s not good. It’s not bad either. If the album had had only chart success in the States, it wouldn’t be here because the panelists would say, “I mean sure, it’s popular, but couldn’t someone else use the limelight for a moment.” But because it was successful to the degree it was, it couldn’t be ignored and I couldn’t be happier to have such a band come from my home country.

Now, most people would say, “who the fuck is Colin Stetson?” I don’t know either (he was born in Michigan by the way, sure that will cause a conversation or two), but the Polaris panel always has to include a nominee that is completely left-field, both because we want to give such an artist some time in the light, but also so we can say we did. I would be more concerned about The Weeknd nomination. I’d never think the guys and gals over there would think of putting that on the list. It has the Canadian quality of being facetious and shit, but it’s the dude’s first outing and it’s pretty well known across
borders. Usually, the Canadian indie media doesn’t recognize an internationally known debut album. We like our artists to struggle a bit before we give them a pat on the back, and if they don’t struggle, we pretend to ignore them.

While it still holds some predictable nominations, showing our ridiculous sensitivity regarding regional/cultural representation [the Atlantic Canadian album (Seeds), The French album (Tigre et Diesel), the hip-hop/R&B album (House of Balloons), etc.] as you can see, it seems like the tide is changing in terms of how Canadians interpret music. It’s interesting and I seriously enjoy watching. Hope y’all are too.
- Dru Morrison

Read and listen to Dru's countdown of his ten favorite albums ever nominated for the Canadian music prize, excluding long list nominees, here.

Related stories
Polaris Music Prize predictions
"6 out of 10, BITCHES!!!". The Polaris Prize shortlist announced yesterday
"The Polaris Prize is the Best Award EVER!", by Dru Morrison

CHAO: "Vomit Orchestra" (New song)

2011-06-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of years I've championed Chao as one of the best and brightest in Icelandic metal but with their new song "Vomit Orchestra" they have in an instant, outgrown that particular leather jacket.
In July last year I wrote of Chao "...Clearly a band set in its course - students of a genre they indubitably adore. So do not expect any wild twists and turns here nor revelations. Fitting in nicely with bands such as Watain and Katharsis, Chao are ready to kick down international doors."
Now more than ever, the last line rings true. In addition, "Vomit Orchestra" keeps in the neighborhood of the French wave of black metal but with added touch of mid '90s Norway which gives the song a steady and drill-like pulse often lacking in those spastic French acts. And just when you think you've got it figured out 2:05 happens. Close to perfection my only gripe is that the song starts to drag close to the end. That said, this is a formidable glimpse into the band's future. Chao are no longer just one of Iceland's finest but surely a contender for Europe's most promising up 'n' coming bands.
Chao - Vomit Orchestra by chaobm
- Birkir Fjalar

Myspace Facebook Soundcloud Reverbnation

Related stories
Wormlust grandeour continues - Chao liberate with the lights off
Iceland metal and rock "heads up" extravaganza #2

Polaris Music Prize predictions

2011-06-27T13:09:00.000-07:00

Me and Canadian indie music have had a bit of a falling out this year. I don’t know what triggered it, but I wasn’t paying as much attention to CBC Radio 3 this year as I was to MRR and demos being sent in from the Halifax Co. offices. It’s natural for best friends to grow apart for a tick or two. I mean, I was deep into that shit since 2007, when I discovered Radio 3 and began to get more involved with my local and seemingly unstoppable scene blossoming in Sackville, NB. As news began to surface of this year’s Polaris music prize, the national prize recognizing Canadian records, I knew it was time to get back in. I downloaded the latest R3-30 podcasts and waited in anticipation for the past 12 months’ top 40 Canadian records as seen by major Canadian music critics.

The reason for all this background is just to say, “Guy’s, I’m not as trustworthy about this year’s Polaris nominees as I was last year.” But I’m still going to give it a go because I think that I still have a finger on the pulse of how the Canadian music critic thinks. This would be the best time to say that, these are not my personal favourites, but what I think the shortlist will look like. Here are my predictions for the finalists to be included in the shortlist, to be announced July 6th.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Austra - Feel It Break
Braids - Native Speaker
D-Sisive - Jonestown 2
Destroyer - Kaputt
Diamond Rings - Special Affections
Hey Rosetta! - Seeds
One Hundred Dollars - Songs of Man
Timber Timbre - Creep on Creepin' On
Neil Young - Le Noise

A side note. Don’t be shocked to see Arcade Fire’s groundbreaking third album, The

Suburbs, not included. If it comes to this, I’ll explain why in the upcoming announcement
of the short list.

Also, check out my tumblr where I’ll be counting down my top 10 albums ever included
in the Polaris shortlist, including a track from each album.

- Dru Morrison

Follow Dru's tumblr The Song O' The Day

"The Polaris Prize is the Best Award EVER!", by Dru Morrison

Albums: Tryggvi Hübner - 2.0, Svartidauði - Temple of Deformation, Melchior - 1980

2011-06-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

The following were originally published in The Reykjavík Grapevine magazine/website.

SVARTIDAUÐI - Temple of Deformation
Svartidauði have made unpleasantries their business for some time now. But despite a loyal cult following, they’ve hardly been prolific. In times when a large number of black metal bands are trying to not sound black metal... [Read more]

TRYGGVI HUBNER - 2.0
Tryggvi Hübner is an accomplished guitar player. He’s tactful, tasteful and many other positive adjectives that end in -ful. And he’s skilled as a motherfucker. [Read more]

MELCHIOR - 1980
Melchior is one of those prototype renaissance artist groups, consisting of multi-instrument-wielding folks performing music as a vehicle for poetry. [Read more]

Related stories
Svartidauði: new, unreleased song and interview
Ask The Slave: The Order Of Things reviewed for Grapevine
Swords Of Chaos,The End is As Near As Your Teeth reviewed for Grapevine
Logn / Manslaughter: Split
Hark

PYRAMIDO - Salt

2011-06-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

What happens when you mix a Melvins and an Iron Monkey? You might get a Pyramido, I can tell you that much.

Because this is howling like only Johnny Morrow only could when he was alive. Because this is good, slow and heavy. There are also parts here that remind me of old Mogwai and Breach. Big fat drum sound, slow breakdowns all over the place, guitars and bass blaring and this voice on top of it all.
Salt is Pyramido's second full length album, their fifth overall release. Opener "Walking Blind" grabs your attention and the album never really lets go. At the end of the album's last song; "Dr. Milton (Destroyer of the World)", you wonder where the time went, -and then you most likely hit the play button again.

This simply is a continuation of Sweden's metal lineage, which is paved with great bands. These guys have done their homework, there really isn't anything to pick at here. Good songs, playing and recording. Check this out and go see them play live if you get the chance to! [Total Rust]
- Theódór Helgason

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://pyramido.bandcamp.com/track/onward"&amp;amp;gt;Onward by Pyramido&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

RUINED TONGUE - All of My Bad Habits

2011-06-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

Progression. It’s not often that we see progression in hardcore music these days. Can the blame be placed on bands? Hardcore bands have a short “shelf life”: the bands usually release a demo, a 7”, and maybe a full-length before calling it quits. It’s a shame because the longer a band stays together, the more refined their sound becomes.

Ruined Tongue may be Las Vegas’ only hope. They’re one of maybe three active hardcore/punk bands left in the city who are constantly releasing new material (in fact, I reviewed their last review here, take a gander at that). The band plays shows regularly and they do a damn good job at it. Their latest effort, All Of My Bad Habits was released on Radical Friends Records in April of 2011. The 7” includes five frantic songs that last the duration of ten minutes. And let me tell you, those ten minutes are the best ten minutes of this band's succinct discography.

All of My Bad Habits starts off with a chilling guitar melody that sets the tone for the entire record. As soon as the first note hits, listeners will take note of the record’s grim and dark theme. Throughout the five tracks, listeners are exposed to a familiar sound that is somewhat unique as well. This is a far cry from the band’s original premise to start a band heavily influenced by Life Long Tragedy. As the band constantly wrote/released new material, their sound shows growth. The result is a solid, incomparable work that gathers influences from a variety of genres such as screamo, thrash, and of course, hardcore/punk.

Musically, I think that this record stands out as the band’s magnum opus. This release sounds very different from the band’s previous efforts and it’s evident that the band has matured. The same can be said about how the band compares to others. The song I enjoyed the most, “Cave Kid,” is a two-minute-long amalgam of somber hardcore/punk. The song starts off with catchy, heavy palm-muted guitars and evolves to a despondent screaming finish. The ending of this track (as well as the beginning following one, “Daylight Wastings”) expresses an overall mood that can be described as dark or grim.

As far as lyrics go, vocalist Eric Larsh stays on the same subject as their other releases. However, I feel as if the lyrics match the music very well on this release. Delivery is spot-on as well. Larsh (pardon the cliché) screams the lyrics as if he really means it. The songs “Son of A Biker/Ghost Rider” and “Summer Gorillas” contain lyrics so pessimistic, they can make Edgar Allan Poe seem like a happy mess (“I haven’t been alive in years!”). Though pessimistic in nature, they maintain a sort of poetic caliber and that’s good because Larsh doesn’t go overboard. My favorite lyric from this record “Hurricanes of human waste, can’t get enough of this acid rain.” Brilliant.

Standing as the most solid release from the band, All of My Bad Habits by Ruined Tongue have put their name (and their city) on the map. Hopefully both the band and the listeners have gotten some sort of satisfaction from the release. I sure did. [Radical Friends]
- Ian Caramanzana

Related stories
RESIDUALS / RUINED TONGUE - Split cassette

BLASPHERIAN - Infernal Warriors of Death

2011-06-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

A new take on an old sound and I couldn't be happier.

I was only on the first song, but I was into it. Little did I know that the rest of the album would be dirty, blazing death metal from Texas. Blaspherian is two guys who absolutely love Incantation and Bolt Thrower (along with many other influences). They add their own twist to this album. It is a ferocious slab of grimy death metal served on a hot platter.
Whenever someone says "Texas death metal" I automatically think that the music will be dirty, fast, and heavy. That is exactly what this is. For some reason the idea of a Texas death metal band really makes me think of dirt and filth with good reason. We've all heard of Pantera and hopefully you're familiar with their material to know that it is not a tame band. Not at all, it is fast, groovy, and downright dirty heavy metal. It's edgy. Devourment is another band that rings out the filthy sounds of Texas strife and struggles and continues to remind you that they are not to be fucked with. Blaspherian are on another level of dirty. Like I said earlier, the Incantation and Bolt Thrower worship is there and you know it, but they make everything their own and pump out 8 songs clocking in at about 36 minutes. Once you get past the first song you know that the rest of this album will be amazing. One great thing about "Infernal Warriors of Death" is the vocals. I love the vocals a lot. They're pretty monotonous, however, they fit with the music perfectly. They go with the flow of the music so well and it sounds great.

If you're looking for a great death metal record to sit down and relax to, then Infernal Warriors of Death should be your number one choice. It is not an album that you should listen to one song here and there. It is best listened to as a whole. You'll get the feel for it and know why I enjoy it so much. I highly suggest this album to any one who digs Incantation and Bolt Thrower. [Deathgasm]
- Taylor Smith

Maximumrocknroll's very best of 2010 - 7"/EP edition

2011-06-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

Again, I should bring this to the attentions of readers first. This isn’t the opinion of the people at MaximumRockNRoll. This is just me and Birkir being nerds with too much time on our hands. So, what do we got here? Basically, we went through every EOY (End of the Year) list in the March issue of MRR again. Instead, this time we focused on the EPs, 7”, singles, etc. All the other stuff outside of the LP format, a list we made previously that can be found here. Just as a little side note, we excluded tapes. They wouldn’t have made the cut anyways. So why am I telling you this? I want us to be honest with each other, man.

Anyways, here they are and, like the other list, we’ve provided links to places where you can purchase said music. Often times, the links are to the labels themselves instead of wholesale joints like interpunk.com and revHQ.com. If a label couldn’t be found or something or other, then we’d use those links from distribution websites. Also, I put the format beside the record’s names, as provided by the people who made the lists in MRR #334. Without further ado…

MaximumRockNRoll’s Top 5 (with lots of ties…) EPs, singles, 7”s, etc. of the Year.

1. Glam – S/T EP (10)
2. Crazy Spirit - Burning Churches EP (9)*
3. Crow - "Vertigo/Occupied Japan" Single (5)
4. Fogna - Merda Come L'oro EP (4)*
- Ilegal - Error De Orden EP (4)
- Low Threat Profile – Product #1 EP (4)*
- No Statik - "Clarified, Distilled, Recomposed/We All Die in the End" Single (4)
- Talk Is Poison - Rage to Infinity EP (4)
- Vaccine - Human Hatred EP (4)
- Vile Gash - Life-Rot EP (4) FUCK ALL COCKSUCKING FLIPPERS!!!! Sorry, continuing…
5. Arctic Flowers - Slouching Towards Bethlehem EP (3)
- Confines - Withdrawn EP (3)
- Inversibles - Triguena EP (3)*
- Ke Se Mueran - Histeria Katracha EP (3)*
- Knife Fight - Isolated EP (3)
- Las Senoras - Digitacion EP (3) [band website, couldn’t find a store link]
- Nerveskade - "Insanity/Forced to Live" Single (3) [OOP, for now]
- Rayos X - Mi Desorden EP (3) [OOP, as well] * = Gonna have to scroll a bit to find the sucker.

So there ya go. Enjoy!
- Dru Morrison

Related stories
Maximumrocknroll's very best of 2010

THE LOVE BELOW / HOMEWRECKER - Split

2011-06-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

I became a Love Below fan almost immediately after hearing their debut Reproductive Rights. The EP made such an impact that it went into my top-10 list and introduced me to The Mistake*. Musically they mix no bullshit, pissed off hardcore a la The Swarm and slower stoner jams that brings to mind bands like The Farley Overdose.

The Love Below starts things off with “Uncomfortable” and within the first twenty seconds I knew this was going to be good. The guitar builds up and up until finally exploding with Jerry's agonized vocals. Lyrically it doesn't break any new barriers but it's a good track and a very good opener.
Things continue with “Rotten Fruit From A Shitty Tree.” This first appeared on the A389 2011 Sampler. The sound really reminds me of their first record, but it has much fuller – heavier – tone, one that I can get behind. As a biased fan, I hope that the upcoming LP has more songs like this.The side's curve ball comes in the form of the final track, “High Friends In Low Places”. The slower elements noticeable in the previous two are completely excised, replaced with a raw fucking fury. It's a welcomed transition and shows the band's versatility. Overall, three excellent tracks that makes me stoked on hearing the LP.

On the flip side, Homewrecker contributes a pair of tracks “Cemetery Man” and “Internal Morgue”. They compliment Love Below's style of hardcore but have a much more metal sound. As the first track opens it has a great, “I dropped acid and floated into space” feel as it takes the listener through an interesting forty-five second calm. Then things are put into overdrive as the savage vocals appear. Admittedly my first exposure to this band was on the aforementioned A389 sampler, but this is a really well done track that will please fans of Xibalba and Harm's Way.
Their second track “Internal Morgue” is my favorite of the two. The drumming is vicious and the vocals are definitely on point (an appearance by Weekend Nachos singer John Caution helps this track really stand out). It's one of those numbers that would have the crowds just go ballistic. I'll be on the look out for new material from Homewrecker for sure after this very impressive split.

Music aside, the art work is something just has to be admired. In a time where most covers are safe and boring, the Love Below's side has Jesus on the cross, surrounded by moons – not just any moons, but moons that either have an erect penis or breasts. Jesus' lower half is transformed into a snake that has the band members coiled up. It's refreshing to see such provocative work. If you aren't offended by this, stop by the A389 and pick yourself up a t-shirt. Wear it to your next PTA meeting or Church gathering.

I first heard rumors regarding this split back in August when it was going to The Love Below and the now defunct Judas. When the latter disbanded, I feared that the tracks recorded were going to be lost but luckily that wasn't the case. While Judas was one of my most-listened to bands, Homewrecker brought the fucking house down on this split.
Summed up, this is a great split released by the best label around. Do yourself a favor and purchase it. [A389]
- Evan Coonly

* Carry The Casket, a pre-Love Below band, had a split with The Mistake.

Related stories
ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2010: Writers and friends pick 'em #4
THE LOVE BELOW - Reproductive Rights

MEADOWS - Meadows EP

2011-06-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

Fucking hell! What is happening in the South East of the UK at the moment!? Everything I hear coming from there is fucking balls-to-the-wall awesome.

First of all, what is the deal with the sound on this record? I know it’s labeled an EP but, it being the band’s first output and available in limited quantity, it serves pretty much as a demo, right? Then why does it sound like a mammoth and a hammer had a baby?! So fucking heavy.
These guys have obviously been playing in other bands for a while because these songs are not only intelligently structured but also incredibly controlled, making their impact that more effective. Musically, Meadows can be summed up with four capital letters: R-I-F-F. I’m thinking early Torche for those interplanetary-collision-style riffs, Eyehategod when they sludge it down and Leviathan-era Mastodon (before they went too prog) for the faster, more intricate bits. Best of all is, that despite all this metal, there is a faint but distinguishable thread of crust-punk running through the music. Granted, the crusty bands it evokes are the more metal sounding ones, like Tragedy or maybe Wolfbrigade, but it does provide an edge that steers Meadows clear of being yet another clone hanging on the coattails of aforementioned metal bands.
On top of everything, the EP comes packaged in a lovely cardboard sleeve with an inlay sheet and looks just all round awesome. I need to experience this riffage up close and personal because I know it will be a total beard-fest and who doesn’t love beard-fests? Lame people, that’s who. [Self Released]
- Kolbeinn Þorgeirsson

LICH - Demo tape

2011-06-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

So, okay, the main thing to take note of here is that this demo fucking rules. Hard.

This is so delightfully and horrifically dirty. Now, you could latch onto that metallic Shikari/Zann sound and call Lich a screamo band but mate, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Lich is absolutely drenched in the horrible sludge that reminds me of bands like Acrid and Acme. Hell, there’s even some His Hero Is Gone in there for that added end-of-the-world feel and the blown-out, crackly sound only makes things worse (‘worse’ meaning awesome).

Okay, enough with the namedropping. After all this is a demo, it’s the first step of a band which is solidifying their style and getting to grips with where they’re heading. Having said that, though, this is a remarkably focused first effort. Get in touch with Parade Of Spectres to grab a hold of the demo. I know they have a split 12” coming up with Resurrectionists, which will no doubt be total beast, and they’re touring Europe this summer on the back of that, I think.
Thinking about how many bullshit Cursed-clones are out there today, where some bro-dudes just heard Tragedy for the first time and now they’re totally into inverted crucifixes, bands like Lich are a necessity. Necessity? Yes, necessity. We need more bands that sound like anvils. [Self Released]
- Kolbeinn Þorgeirsson

HUMAN JUNK - 2010 demo tape

2011-05-31T10:54:00.000-07:00

This demo came out late last year so it might not exactly be classed as new but do I care? No. Why? Because listening to Human Junk feels like driving fast with your eyes closed.

This two-piece from southeast England is so fucking raging. It’s fast and thrashy with a fine heap of that well-controlled stop/start element we know and love. Chuck in a few ultra-short, groovy, mid-paced bits and you’ve got one hell of a party. There is a bit of a snotty punk feel to it, which reminds me of some of the New Jersey bands in the early ‘00s but the band it makes me think about most in terms of pure rage-ability is Scholastic Deth. Just in case you didn’t catch that then yes, I did compare them to Scholastic Deth. That alone should make you interested. Seriously, I don’t think you should be allowed to listen to this and operate heavy machinery at the same time. [Retreat To Nowhere]
- Kolbeinn Þorgeirsson

OMENS - Self titled EP (download)

2011-05-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

A new band straight out of the Midwest! Omens call Des Moines, IA home and the music they play would fit perfectly in your playlist next to Cursed or His Hero is Gone.

This EP will go by fast but each song has something memorable about it. On the first song, "Deeper", it starts off swaying back and forth, making you sick, all while keeping a constant pace. It really reminds me of Converge. Then it gets going with those guitars and those drums. All played at the same exact time! Wow! I can't believe it. But really, this song sets the stage for the rest of the EP. Six songs of pure mayhem, sometimes this mayhem gets a little crusty and you think you need to clean it up a bit, but why would you do that? This sounds perfect the way it is.
A word that comes to mind to describe the recording is "grimey", you could even use "filthy". But the point is that some music just doesn't need to be cleaned up or polished. The recording quality fits this band's music very well and it doesn't sound bad at all. Not one part of this EP sounds like filler or forced. Everything sounds natural and comes into place. The sound bite on the song "Drag" is a clip from a Charles Manson interview. I personally find that it is a great fit for this song. This song is slower than the others and I think the purpose of it is to let you take in what Manson has said on his sound bite and reflect on that.
Omens' self titled EP is perfect if you're looking for something dark and heavy. Hopefully you enjoy it as much as I do! Go like them on Facebook while you're there download their self titled EP!
- Taylor Smith

Download

HEATHENS - II

2011-05-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

Last time I listened to Heathens was in early 2009. Richmond's hardest are back with II, sounding even more pissed off, mean and crushing but the issues I took with their self titled seven inch back then still prevail.

II starts with "intro" track called "Inceptum" and luckily it's not a useless number like so many intros in today's hardcore (can we stop this trend already or at least give it a break?). You'll immediately notice a step-up from the '09 seven inch. The production has improved greatly, bringing back similar organic crush that of mighty His Hero Is Gone and the bass cuts through, rattling the skull unlike anything I've heard since Celestine's This Home Will Be Our Grave. "Soothsayer" kicks off the carnage proper and absolutely rips; dark, raging with a distinctive metallic crust touch to it. This is good. Blast-beat dirge shreds faces in "Ruins" and the song just gets more ridiculous in the heaviness department as it progresses and in less than a minute we have a song that could square off with Weekend Nachos in a "no rules" street fight any time of the day, anywhere. II then looses its momentum with the sludgy but redundant "Medius." A filler if there ever was one and at best it would have suited better somewhere else on the album. But fret not because "Victory" picks up the pace with a gloriously simple Disfear worthy punk metal riff and double bass drum savagery and even if this track is hardly fresh it just fucking nails it. "Victory" is memorable, put together just right and I'm left foaming at the mouth looking for trouble; anticipating more blasts of energy and destruction. But it is not to be.

Like stated in the seven inch review and earlier in this one, Heathens are not doing anything new but that not a cause for alarm as such. What's troubling is - how from this point on - the sameness of the music, lack of excitement, predictable arrangements and want for surprise, that never presents itself, robs II of its staying power and as a result, having repeated and complete sit-downs with it is not likely to happen often. As it stands, they did not have a full-length in them.
Not one to be a Negative Nancy I've got to mention the delicious cover art and simple yet striking gatefold layout. The drumming is fantastic, befitting big ol' Iron Monkey and I'm sure Jimmy Bower would bang his greasy hair in approval. Pretty bad ass.

Surely there are people out there that wanted the seven inch to be longer or are craving a new doze of Heathens, and if one of them is you, make sure you give it a try. But at the end of the day II uneventful nature is disappointing and would have fared much better in a shorter format, with fever, carefully picked songs. Ultimately, there's not enough here to sink your teeth into nor leave a sweet taste in the mouth. [Last Anthem]
- Birkir Fjalar

Find more artists like HEATHENS at Myspace Music

Related stories
HEATHENS - Heathen 7"