REVIEW: SEALCLUBBER - STOICAL

Starting with a song titled “Tales of a Romanian Horse Whisperer,” UK mood-ruiners Sealclubber immediately bludgeon the listener with noisy sludge. Based on the prevailing sense of dread and hostility in the scabrous songs on Stoical, I’m guessing this horse whisperer has more in common with the deranged theatrics and animal mutilation of Equus than that Robert Redford snooze-fest.

Speaking of animal mutilation, you might have frowned at that band name already. If it’s any solace, the violent intentions of these songs don’t stop at aquatic mammals, and humans are very much in danger once pressing play. With their barbed riffs and the pitch-black ugliness of Drunk Dad and Trap Them, Sealclubber feel like Deadguy if they lasted long enough to have an experimental sludge phase. Like the bands mentioned, Sealclubber’s songs aren’t just sutured opiate-abusing crusty gutterpunk riffs tuned to the brown note. Even in a furious barnburner like “Haima,” the song scavenges elements of hardcore and stoner metal to create a richly textured soundtrack for giving and receiving shit news.

Despite a three-plus minute atmospheric interlude frustratingly murdering momentum, the album quickly regains its footing with “Vows of Silence.” Between suckerpunches of distortion, the reverb of callused fingers scraping over guitar strings leads to a foreboding bass tone that floats above the song like a storm cloud ready to empty apocalyptic rainfall.

It’s a fitting prelude to the disarmingly pensive epic “I Only Desire the Things That Will Destroy Me in the End.” That title likely applies to most fans of heavy music, whether it be regarding their bad habits, currently undiscovered crimes, or the headbanging riffs that will eventually snap their necks. The song proceeds patiently, feeling its way along desolate corridors. Two-thirds of the way through its almost twelve-minute runtime, the song confronts the bloody aftermath it was seeimngly trying to avoid. While the climax isn’t as destructive as hinted by the album’s first half, it still feels like the inevitable victory of baser instincts, where volume rules and subtlety burns away like bong resin. It’s a nuanced track that lingers in the listener’s mind long after it gently fades out.

While their two-song EP Sticky River was impressive, this is a definite leap forward for Sealclubber. While retaining their nihilistic bite, they also build soundscapes that reflect a rotting metropolis in a puddle of mud, blood, and petrol. Looking out my window right now, the view sure as hell sounds familiar.

Follow Sealclubber over on Facebook and check for news on a Stoical pre-order, available from Medusa Crush Recordings on February 5th.

REVIEW: SEALCLUBBER - STICKY RIVER

I’m gonna go out on a flimsy limb and guess that the seal this band threatens to club (jokingly, they revealed in a recent interview), is the semi-aquatic marine mammal and not the singer of “Kiss from a Rose.” Both acts are illegal, but the imagery here is important. Sealclubber are from Black Country, UK, which to an ignorant American like me sounds exactly like what I picture Cormac McCarthy novel landscapes look like: Brutal deserts, harsh temperatures, and unforgiving rain droughts. After some investigation it’s totally the opposite of some barren cowboy wasteland and is one of the first heavily industrialized areas of Britain.

The idea of the ground covered in black soot and the air thick with gaseous pollution totally makes sense when you hear this band’s music, though. On their two-song debut EP, Sticky River, Sealclubber dips crust punk in hot tar and drags sludge through toxic, black water populated with fanged, mutated fish. There is nothing manufactured about this music and it doesn’t fit perfectly in any mold, but it’s deformed, disgruntled, and ready to throw you into the gears of whatever machine will pulverise your bones the quickest.

“Losing a Fighting Battle” opens the show with harmonized guitars before diving through a landfill wall of garbage and discarded rotting pets and blasting into a greasy crust punk riff. The guitar parts groove with inspired flourishes that invoke dusty rock’n’roll and swampy sludge that would fit in the Savannah, GA scene. The heaviest moments remind me of The Abominable Iron Sloth if they grew up listening to Cro-Mags, but with less predictable structure. Simon Blewitt’s vocals are husky, harsh, and could give a colony of seals cardiac arrest, making them easier to subsequently club.

“Pissing in an Open Wound,” besides being at least mildly uncomfortable for the recipient of the urine, is also a noisy little patchwork of twisting post-metal, nasty knuckle-bruising punk rock, and the same black-water sludge appearing in the first track. Blewitt’s vocals drop an octave as his growl guides the song into darker territory and the band’s second Simon (Ingram) provides stand-out drumming as the song writhes riff to riff. In the most discordant sections of the song it sounds like the guitars are being played like a cello with a bonesaw, and that someone could step into one of these songs and drown in the muck.

This is a great teaser from a new band that likely doesn’t hate seals with enough zeal to club them, but will settle for clubbing eardrums instead. If you follow this blog you’re familiar with my label-crush on Witch Hunter Records, and this is another example why. Each band on their roster flashes originality, ugliness, and intensity, and none of them feel like clones created to fill a need. Sealclubber don’t care if you’re offended, and luckily I’m only offended by uninspired music. This nasty slab of scuzzy sludge is so good even the most hardcore seals would wear their logo as a backpatch.

Sticky River releases on August 2nd, but go listen to it now over at Bandcamp: http://sealclubber.bandcamp.com/music

And follow them on Facebook for news on merch and gigs:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sealclubber/473306152706632

REVIEW: CONFINE - SETTING FIRE TO THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

Take a breath before you listen to Setting Fire to the Western Hemisphere, because it’s the last time you’ll taste air for almost eight minutes. Depending on where you live, that could be a good thing. Here in Brooklyn the air tastes like old deli meat, diesel fumes, and sun-baked dog shit.

Written and recorded in a span of four days (that probably saw black clouds raining rusty nails and suicidal stock market traders onto the roof of their UK recording compound), Confine assault listeners with a relentless blast of grinding powerviolence that strips extreme music down to the bare essentials: Loud and heavy. I’ve never seen a picture of drummer Rich Speakman, but with his gatling gun fills I’m guessing his arms and legs have bionic components. The riffs may share DNA with the dirtiest strands of punk, but Confine are to punk what salamanders are to Komodo Dragons. If this music bit you the bacteria would kill you within the hour.

While most of the album feels like the blur of a hollow-tipped bullet racing towards its target, there’s also the drum’n’vox breakdown transitioning into murky hardcore of “Perception,” the filthy sludge intro of “Abstraction,” and the queasy roar of “Formation and Transformation,” my personal favorite track that feels like it’s high on white phosphorus. But the band excels at grind, and cuts the oxygen supply while Chris Reese siphons just enough air to peel the skin from inside his throat with possessed shrieks that bring to mind Todd Jones of Nails. The only song that didn’t work for me was “Legacy,” with its jarring stop-and-start rhythm. This is still a vicious release from Witch Hunter Records, and would be perfect for a grindcore picnic with a portable stereo, accompanied by Napalm Death and Full of Hell LPs in the picnic basket. It’s officially summer here in the states now, so I hope I’m not the only one having grindcore picnics.

Listen to Setting Fire to the Western Hemisphere over on Bandcamp here:  http://confine.bandcamp.com/

And follow Confine on Facebook for news and merch:  https://www.facebook.com/confinegrind

REVIEW: HUMMUNE - CRAFTED IN DARKNESS

According to their Facebook page, the band name refers to an immunity to humans, which sounds like the best immunity ever, since humans are just about the most destructive and dangerous force the Earth has ever known. This band’s brand of pummeling, hardcore noise is a very close second.

Hummune was seemingly constructed in 2009 by sinister robots in some Southampton, UK factory with the intention of beating human brains to a gelatinous pulp. I haven’t been able to locate surnames for the three lethal members of this band, furthering my suspicion that they are not human at all, but Terminator-style machines that just happen to have been programmed to rock hard enough to splinter teeth. Crafted in Darkness, their full-length debut, pulses with Unsane’s jarring energy and drags hardcore through sludge like the best work on Fudge Tunnel’s Hate Songs in E Minor. Guitarist/vocalist Stu and bassist/vocalist Mike have rasps that finds the broken glass-covered middle ground between Justin Broadrick’s growliest moments in Godflesh and Lars Göran Petrov’s work in Entombed, just drenched with reverb. The rhythm section (Rik on drums, Mike mentioned previously) is phenomenal, digging deep trenches for mosh pit victims while the guitar soars and stabs. These guys have the tools and skill to do some serious damage.

Then you listen to “Moth” and “Into Dust” to open the album and realize you’re in for even more harm than you anticipated. These songs hit hard but still contain a ton of texture, from splashes of shoegaze to the whispered vocal delivery on “Claw.” Some of the gentler moments remind me of early Deftones and work beautifully to enhance the foreboding mood before the distortion levels every building in a kilometer radius. Not every song hits with the same efficient fury (“Inside” features a jarring rhythm that unfortunately murders the momentum, “Driven to Husk” plods along without the demolishing riffs that made predecessor “Rise” so deadly) but Crafted in Darkness is still a damn good slab of noisy, metallic rock and hardcore. The sneaky groove of “Era” closes out this album on a muscular note, ending so ferociously that you almost forget the intricate songwriting and melodic guitar work snaking around the bass rhythm just a few minutes prior.

Listening to Crafted in Darkness may not make you immune to the frustrations and dangers of dealing with humanity, but for almost one hour you’ll feel like Hummune have toughened you up to deal with all their shenanigans in stride. Either that, or your brain will be gelatinous pulp. But hey, this is metal, you can’t make an omelet without bruising some brains.

Check out Hummune on Spotify or over here at Bandcamp:  http://hummune.bandcamp.com/album/crafted-in-darkness

And follow them on Facebook for news on shows and releases:  https://www.facebook.com/hummune

REVIEW: WRAITHS - EP 2012

So Wraiths call themselves “hell metal,” and despite the unreliable nature of most self-applied monikers this is actually pretty god damn apt. I would be tempted to substitute “hardcore” for metal, but when it’s this heavy and bruising that’s me just mincing words and being a genre-humping elitist douche. While they’re from the UK, Wraiths’ sound exists somewhere in the combined headspace of Travis Bickle and Richard Ramirez, mixing the horrors of urban isolation and suicidal Satanism in a bucket of bleach, ammonia, and goat blood, resulting in lethal fumes and grotesque hallucinations.

Their 5 song EP is completely dedicated to creating a mood of total hopelessness. These songs are the sounds of life hitting a dead end. If you’re looking for music that soars across the whole kingdom of emotion you’re in the wrong neighborhood, pal. There’s no triumph or love or positivity here, just riffs that are down-tuned, punishing, and blackened with gutter grime. A lot of the credit for the convincing unpleasantness can be attributed to Rae Robinson’s chilling roar, which seems genuinely tortured and resembles Sammy Duet’s supporting vocal work from Acid Bath/Goatwhore when he reaches into the higher registers.

Outside of crust punk bursts in “Black Vultures” and “Monolith,” most of the EP lurches forward at a mid-tempo stomp, a pace matching the somber tone crafted throughout. Despite the overwhelming bleakness there’s still a lot of texture here, from the gang-shouting on “Pyramid Head” to an audio clip from Devil’s Rejects that confirms that Wraiths’ music is here to do the devil’s work. Oh, I should also mention that this may qualify as a concept album, as it seems to follow the same character’s descent into violent vengeance as he pursues a future, following his likely suicide, as a demon in Satan’s horde. Maybe I’m incorrectly analyzing the lyrics, but I have a feeling when the words “I can’t wait to fucking die” are screamed over a sledgehammer of distortion it’s entirely literal. I guess it’s possible he means “die” in the Shakespearean way, as in having a totally killer orgasm, but this EP seems to enjoy shouting fuck more than actually fucking. What can I say, depression sucks.

But these songs, despite their themes, will push depression aside and invigorate fans of loud, ugly music. Nothing makes you want to punch God right in his/her/its face more than Wraiths’ bludgeoning attack. This is another raw, uncompromising release from Witch Hunter Records for any fan of music with a black heart and a mean streak. Also, it looks like they borrowed Slayer’s logo for a little while, with promises to return it as good as new. But after hearing this EP I know that when they give it back it will be burnt like a Norwegian church, slick with new blood, and stink like an unearthed prostitute. Such is the danger when making logo-swap deals with Wraiths.

Listen to this nasty slab of hell metal over yonder:  http://witchhunterrecords.bandcamp.com/album/wraiths-ep-2012

And “Join the Pre-Order” by grabbing one of these bad ass T-Shirt/Tape bundles:  http://witchhunterrecords.bigcartel.com/product/wraiths-ep-2012-tape-t-shirt-pre-order

REVIEW: UNCLE ACID & THE DEADBEATS - MIND CONTROL

A few minutes into Mind Control and I’ve already slipped into that dreaded Wikipedia sinkhole, descending deeper into Gnostic texts, Mojave geography, and the Beach Boys discography. There’s just no telling how weird things can get when Charles Manson is one of the major influences of a band’s music. All I know is that when Uncle Acid sings, “Don’t you worry baby, you’re safe with me,” I don’t believe that mularkey for a second.

There’s a fuzzy, retro sense of danger and sleaze on the latest album from Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, a phenomenal band from Cambridge, UK. It harkens back to memories of drive-in theaters and grindhouse cinema, pulpy horror comics and psychedelic serial killers. This is the album Ghost B.C. should wish they released in 2013, full of melody and just a touch of technicolor menace. The songs expertly walk that line between charming camp and genuine creepiness while slugging out crunchy hooks from amplifiers stacked in a swirl of cemetery fog and hookah smoke. “Mind Crawler” and “Poison Apple” rumble with mid-tempo swagger and bad boy sex appeal, while “Evil Love” feels like the James Gang started wearing black capes and playing Deep Purple songs. “Death Valley Blues” finds the middle ground The Beatles left vacant between “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and “Strawberry Fields,” brimming with deceptive harmonies and metallic blues.

While “Follow the Leader” drones on a bit long for my liking, this is a brilliant 70s throwback track and is that song that every band made while experimenting with the grooviest ‘shrooms they grew out in their secret gardens. “Valley of the Dolls” can’t hold a black candle to “Mt. Abraxus” or “Desert Ceremony“ earlier on the album, but its mediocrity is snuffed from memory immediately by closing track “Devil’s Work,” which stomps, swoons, and grooves to lure the listener into a trance before soaking them in the low hum of an ominous organ note befitting one of Dario Argento’s giallos. This is an album that takes an LSD chaser with every shot of whiskey and takes castle dungeon tours while stoned on its lunch break. I know, I’m anthropomorphizing this album quite a bit, but I seriously want to have a beer with it. I just wouldn’t leave my drink unattended, as I might later wake, strapped down to a concrete coffin, surrounded by women with forehead tattoos and janbiya daggers. Still, inspiring their next song might almost be worth it.

Check out Mind Control on Spotify and visit the band’s website here:  http://acidcoven.com/

And head over to Rise Above Records to keep an eye on the band’s merch, which has been selling like hotcakes. Unless hotcakes don’t sell well in your region, then it’s not like that at all:  http://www.riseaboverecords.com/products/view/364

REVIEW: BONGRIPPER / CONAN - SPLIT

Warning, this may be the first and last time Anne Hathaway has been referenced in a doom metal review. While AMC theaters were pushing promo hype for Les Miserables this past year I must have seen their 7 minute making-of featurette twenty times. It really didn’t matter what sort of movie I was seeing, AMC felt it was an appropriate regardless of genre. Nothing pumps you up for a bloody action flick or a supernatural chiller quite like Russell Crowe in a Napoleon hat. As much as I resented being forced to see this promo video so many times there was one line from Hathaway describing her ill-fated character that came to mind while listening to the Bongripper/Conan split album: “She's literally at the bottom of a hole and realizing she's never going to climb out of this.”

There’s a prevailing sense of hopelessness in both of these tracks, but Bongripper’s Side B offering “Zero Talent” truly captures the horrific disintegration of joy. Even the song title feels like someone who has cut their own worth down to nothingness. The track begins with droning ambience, like a room-tone in some desolate futurescape of dilapidated office buildings filled with skeletons where the only sounds are the computers that keep eerily humming. Once the riffs drop from the sky they land with enough force to sink continents. The guitars are weighed down by suffocating pessimism, crawling forward through glass shards and rat shit through cobbled streets where the dreamless wait to die. “Zero Talent” also pops an upper late in the song and rampages at about a million times their normal speed, blasting forward and suddenly halting with a vicious stop-and-go pattern that bruises brains like slapping the listener’s skulls against a truck windshield. It’s a nasty slab of grimy depression that should be the bright spot in every doom fan’s year.

Conon’s track, titled “Beheaded,” also plows through the muck at a frighteningly low speed, tasting the sewage as it shuffles deeper into a steaming fecal swamp. There was once a moment when I saw Winter play and felt like the distortion seeping from the towering speakers was crushing me into the ground. It was like the gravity in the venue was exponentially increasing each minute, threatening to flatten me across the cement floor and squeeze the precious fluids from my skin. Conan’s entire discography reproduces that feeling. If you’re looking for pure, unrelenting heaviness, the type of sound that feels like the widening anvil shadow right before impact, then Conan is your lethargic jam. While I usually think of decapitation as a swift punishment this song feels like someone is just pulling their enemy’s head off with their bare hands, working at it patiently with fingernails and brute strength. The song doesn’t offer much in riff ingenuity or tempo shifts, but it does transport listeners into a slow-motion world painted with dried blood and fresh shit. It’s not pretty or clean, but there are people who will feel completely at home there.

I also want to mention here that both of these bands will be terrorizing audiences in Conan’s home country, commencing a nine day tour towards the end of the month. If you can check out these bands and survive without feeling like their bass guitars laid a demon egg in your stomach I commend you.
 

Listen to Bongripper’s track here: http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2013/03/exclusive-song-stream-bongripper-zero-talent/

And the Conan track is streaming yonder:  http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/15163-conan-beheaded/

And pre-order from Holy Roar Records over here: http://holyroarrecords.com/album.php?id=2010&shop=1

REVIEW: END REIGN - SUICIDE COLLECTION

I did some quick research on Durham, UK in preparation for this review of End Reign’s Suicide Collection, featuring the band's compiled releases over the last several years, and was greeted with a ton of tourist information regarding lovely coastal strolls and picturesque castles. I did, however, also come across a nearby mining museum appropriately called Killhope. This is where I imagine End Reign perform their brand of crusty, dark hardcore; deep in the dusky, dusty bowels of a subterranean labyrinth savaged of its precious metal and left dry, now just a series of cold tunnels waiting to implode under the weight of the earth above. I can safely say the music contained in Suicide Collection is heavier than all those layers of rock and soil above the mine. I won’t say that being in an End Reign mosh pit is more dangerous than being a 19th century lead miner, but the two could be a draw.

Witch Hunter Records has put Suicide Collection together in preparation for a new LP from End Reign expected later this year. The track listing is chronological, starting with the newest tracks first. The opener, “Sacrifice,” is a nasty cut of blackened crust and offers a sneak peak of their new material as the sole demo from the upcoming record. It’s manic and razor-sharp and single-handedly creates buzz on its own merit. The rest of the album, gathered from self-released demos, split albums, and EPs, is consistently awesome, proving that End Reign is not some flash-in-the-pan hardcore group lucky enough to hop on the hype train. Release to release, the material is reliably ornery and absolutely bruising. This music will never, ever wake up on the right side of the bed, and it’s very interested in sharing it’s bad mood with you as loudly as possible. If you’re like me, you’re happiest when you’re listening to others in a bad mood.

Other highlights include the sludgy re-recording of “Release the Wolves,” the versatile ripper “Azrael,” and my personal favorite, “Dream Eater.” Starting with a clean guitar intro that lures the listener into an apocalyptic doom riff, “Dream Eater” mutates into a d-beat thrasher before settling back into a grimy hardcore stomp. When End Reign play at their fastest they remind me of Young and in the Way, another group of misanthropes who make blisteringly heavy music. End Reign leans more into the hardcore camp than punk however, with fist-pumping tempo shifts and chugging breakdowns joining the crusty fray, and use a wider variety of stylistic approaches to shape their songs. Occasionally a riff overstays its welcome (like in “Horror” and “The Freeze”) but even these songs finish strongly after they splinter off into faster paced directions. Geoff Cairns’ vocals sound like they have been scraped raw and now only pure, primal rage remains. You can’t teach or fake the sort of passion on these songs, they feel totally, and terrifyingly, genuine.

I’ll be impatiently waiting for the new End Reign LP to surface, listening to Suicide Collection and urging others to do the same. This collection makes you feel grimier than the black soot and mud covering the original Killhope miners. Forget oil, this music is the real black gold worth digging for.

Check out their entire discography here:  http://end-reign.bandcamp.com/

Pre-order the Suicide Collection tape and keep track of the upcoming LP over at Witch Hunter Records:  http://witchhunterrecords.bigcartel.com/product/end-reign-suicide-collection-tape

REVIEW: TREE OF SORES - A CRY OF DESPAIR

I usually have no problem picturing an album’s evolution. From pen on paper to the rehearsal space to early drafts in front of a live audience, I have great fondness for the creative process and can feel the work put into the best songs. Tree of Sores write music so organic that it feels like they cultivated a rare seed in the black marsh behind some long-forgotten cemetery and from that seed a birch grew with skin instead of bark, with pus and blood oozing from its open wounds like gruesome maple syrup. Now I’m hungry for some flapjacks.

Tree of Sores are a three-piece who started exploring all corners of the doomiest void from their home in Leeds, UK in 2009. I have never been to Leeds but I always pictured it as an industrial wasteland much like the nameless city in David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” because I’m an ignorant American. On “A Cry of Despair,” a single 28 minute track, they nurture frail melodies and build them into crushing monoliths that dwarf everything in its shadow.

From the release of their first EP it’s been evident that Tree of Sores are patient musicians trusting the listener to watch their songs grow from the roots up. On “A Cry of Despair” the sickly, wailing guitar in the opening seconds feels like a will-o’-the-wisp leading weary travelers into the darkest part of the wilderness. The sudden deluge of thundering drums and distortion is no surprise to fans of slow-burn doom, but this album truly stands on its own when Matt Faragher’s guitar soars with melancholic reverb over the cacophony, guiding you through the storm and out the other side. The guitar arrangements between heavy onslaughts are delicate and provide warmth and texture often unheard in droning doom. Tree of Sores have created a world with this album, one where you can feel the seasons pass and plants rot and grow again. They do this with moments of light shining through the thick black tangle of branches. It feels alien to write it, but there are moments that are actually even, um, pretty. But let’s not forget that this album is still crushingly heavy with a great mix that drowns the listener in bass. The song is vast enough to engage all senses and still every minute seems essential, and that is no easy feat.

I have heard people compare Tree of Sores to many trudging sludge bands and post-metal juggernauts but the closest comparison I feel comfortable with is a band like Rwake, who also use tasteful floral flourishes to bring soft touches to even their heaviest compositions. But Tree of Sores feels even more contained, totally dedicated to creating an exact mood that will consume every person who listens.

While I try to focus on what an album is, rather than what it is not, I must admit I miss Talia’s supporting vocals on this release. Still, vocals are absolutely not the focus of this album, and this is a minor “what if” rumination from a fan geeking out after multiple listens.
 
“A Cry of  Despair” has grown on me like graveyard moss over the past few months and needs to be heard by Mogwai/Explosions in the Sky fans who may want to picture what those bands would sound like if they were weaned on leech blood in a desolate swamp. Tree of Sores write demanding music for people willing to feel a song, not just listen to it. This is definitely a band to watch, support, and encourage.

Listen to them immediately here:
http://treeofsores.bandcamp.com/
And like them on Facebook you lazy bastards:
https://www.facebook.com/TreeOfSores