REVIEW: GORGUTS - COLORED SANDS

Sometimes there’s music that just isn’t made for the 13 year old mind, the age I bought my first Gorguts album, the now-legendary Obscura. At that that I couldn’t appreciate the artistry involved, and I wanted, above all else, more breakdowns. It’s like expecting a teenager to get totally pumped about Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. Go live a little, then revisit.

Gorguts have never been an easy listen, and Colored Sands (their first studio album since 2001’s From Wisdom to Hate) certainly doesn’t deviate from their reputation as a challenging band that demands patience and full attention from their audience. That being said, there are moments here where they sound almost traditionally heavy, with head-banging momentum and groove amidst the chaos and cacophony. When they’re at their best, Gorguts sound like death metal an alien species might make when trying to replicate earthling heavy metal, trying to slowly worm their way into our population. Starting with “Le Toit du Monde,” band founder Luc Lemay and company dazzle with technicality that lures you into its confounding labyrinth of sound. The title track is simply one of the best metal songs of this young century, with clean guitar building like an escalating warning call that builds to a fanged burst of crawling death. It’s a song that will hunt and haunt you to the end of human existence.

The only thing predictable about Gorguts is their unpredictability. Just when you think you’ve figured out their discordant brand of planet-melting metal you hear “The Battle of Chamdo,” a piece performed by a string quartet that feels like Danny Elfman composing music for a long-lost Hitchcock film. Throw in the John Zorn freak-out of “Enemies of Compassion” and the intoxicated, kaleidoscopic sludge of “Absconders” and there’s no shortage of standout performances on display here. Anyone familiar with Coneheads knows that extra-terrestrials claim to come from France. Judging by the alien sounds of Colored Sands, however, they may actually say they’re French Canadian.

Colored Sands released TODAY in North America, so order it from Season of Mist over here:  http://e-shop.season-of-mist.com/en/bands/gorguts/913

REVIEW: KYLESA - ULTRAVIOLET

We all suffer from demons of defilement at some point. I won’t pretend to totally understand the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of the Kilesa Mara mentioned in Buddhism, but they seem to represent the factors that delude us and cloud our minds, like greed and ignorance. Kylesa were named after some of these strong forces, but after listening to their newest album Ultraviolet I don’t think the music is suffering from any of these “mind poisons.” This is a daring, expansive album building from their psychedelic crunch and double-drummer pummel , full of large ideas and progressive melodies. Unfortunately, with great experimentation comes a varying degree of success. Still, you can’t make progress through the forest without stepping into a few ditches and bear traps along the way.

The familiar sludgy Savannah stomp roars from the opening seconds on “Exhale,” featuring the best tandem vocal work on the album as Laura Pleasants and Phillip Cope trade barbed lyrics with venom and conviction. The song feels like riding red waves on a splinter of driftwood, surrounded by sharks and figuring out how you’re going to kill all these finned bastards with the guitar on your back as your only weapon. Opening with the most vicious song on the album may make what follows slightly disarming for those seeking more of the same mud and blood. But clearly those listeners weren’t paying enough attention to the moments of light in Spiral Shadow, because those seeds of melody have blossomed here, an album later. Sure, there’s the massive stoner riffs of “Grounded” and the excellent bong-blitzed burner “Vulture’s Landing,” but most of the album is more pensive, brooding, and eases forward with entrancing rhythm and nearly oxymoronic bright melodies that paint the black’n’gray sky with strokes of turquoise and (ultra)violet.

Some of these songs work beautifully, like the Porno For Pyro smoking hesher hash vibe of “Quicksand,” and “Low Tide,” which captures spacey new wave pop that could get the goth kids at the nearest cellar night club two-stepping. Others struggle with delivering the melodic undercurrent without distracting from the main pull of the song, or worse yet, murder the momentum. “Steady Breakdowns” suffers from the latter, kicking off with witchy occult rock before vanishing into smoke and space dust as the song loses focus. “Drifting” is just a mess, unfortunately closing the album with a bombardment of disagreeing parts played with the enthusiasm of a guilty elegy. The overall results may be inconsistent, leading to frustrating so-god-damn-close moments where you understand that sometimes less is definitely more, but it’s also fascinating and inspiring. Beneath the proggy spazz-outs and the lightning strikes of pop melody this is still a loud rock album, just one that values patience and excitedly experiments with tone. In the middle of the record Pleasants sings that “You have lost your soul.” After listening to this record it’s clear she’s not singing to a mirror, because Kylesa is displaying more soul and courage than any previous recording, even if it doesn’t pound mountains to dust like Static Tensions.

Listen to Ultraviolet now on Spotify and check out Kylesa over at Season of Mist:  http://www.season-of-mist.com/bands/kylesa

And check them out on Facebook. With over 47,000 likes it’s not like they need you, but I heard they think you’re cool and funny and stuff:  https://www.facebook.com/KYLESAmusic

REVIEW: BEYOND CREATION - THE AURA

I try not to obsess over traffic statistics for this site even though I am a numbers junkie, caused by years of playing Strat-O-Matic Baseball with my father and perusing obscure career stats from New York Mets bench players. That being said, I can’t help but notice that my readership in Canada is lower than my readership in Germany, despite the fact that I’ve covered bands across the great North while I’ve yet to review a German release. Enter Montreal’s Beyond Creation, who I’m relying on to make my Canadian readership EXPLODE and make me as popular as maple syrup, or whatever stereotypical treat my ignorant American ass relates to Canada.

Beyond Creation’s new album from Season of Mist, The Aura, is a fresh pulse of time-warping progressive death metal that should probably be traded person to person through a media format that hasn’t been invented yet, like transferrable brain chips or spinal download disks, which slide between vertebrae and fuse music directly with your neural system. Beyond Creation’s brand of next century’s technical death displays virtuosity without distracting from the songs, allowing ample room for exploration while the structures keep each track contained in its own definite universe. The music on The Aura is elastic and borderline aquatic in nature, swimming naturally from extra-terrestrial djent to finger-blurring death metal riffing to what I like to call “progressive space jams.” No, they do not feature the most dynamic basketball players of the 90s and WB cartoons, but they do have passages of radar-pinging guitars and a bass tone that sounds like the bellow of some intergalactic worm-whale while  resourceful drumming slyly twists beneath. But these are only brief escapes from Beyond Creation’s sinister pummel and mathematic trickery, brought to life through vastly impressive performances from the entire band. From Dominic 'Forest' Lapointe’s nimble bass work (which calls forth memories of Roger Patterson’s best work in Atheist) to Simon Girard’s on-point vocal attack to the Kevin Chartré/Girard tag-team guitar assault, this is top notch progressive death metal executed with spit, sweat, and whatever fluid will replace blood a thousand years in the future.

The only song that felt uninspired was “Omnipresent,” which shifts from mid-tempo chugging to a bastardized “Snakes For the Divine” riff. This is the only song that doesn’t hold up under multiple listens, as The Aura rips through uncharted territory by achieving oxymoronic herky-jerky groove. Considering how many tempo shifts alter the path of each song the catchy nature of the music is, as Wallace Shawn would say, inconceivable. The instrumental track “Chromatic Horizon” rampages beautifully in my headphones while the title track manipulates my brain into head nodding motions, growing more violent as the song progresses. The album's centerpiece, “The Deported,” winds through outer space like one of those intergalactic worm-whales I mentioned earlier, surprisingly elusive for such a powerful beast. It’s rare to find death metal so cunning, so difficult to trap into a corner and identify before it bites your throat out.

Decibel Magazine revealed that Beyond Creation will be playing several dates of the magazine’s tour, opening for the three-headed killing machine that will be Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death, and Immolation. If you’re able to catch them on the May 21st - June 2nd leg of the tour DO IT. I need you to report to me if they’re actually playing instruments light-beamed here from a distant planet populated with tentacled metalheads, because considering some of the rhythms and sounds on this album, that’s about all that makes sense.

Seek more Beyond Creation data here:  http://www.season-of-mist.com/bands/beyond-creation

The Aura releases in the United States on May 14th. Order this madness here:  http://e-shop.season-of-mist.com/en/items/beyond-creation/the-aura/cd/34199

REVIEW: RAGE NUCLÉAIRE - UNRELENTING FUCKING HATRED

With an album title like Unrelenting Fucking Hatred the listener shouldn’t expect subtlety. While the lingering results of genocide, war, and hate crimes (among other atrocities) may impact the human psyche in subtle ways, the violent results are as immediate and brutal as the album title suggests. If Rage Nucléaire had a collective ringtone it would be the bomb sirens that blare in several tracks, warning of the oncoming onslaught. This record is a dizzying lo-fi assault that captures the rawness of the tape-trading age of black metal while maintaining its own peculiar charm. Charm may be a strange word for a vicious black metal record, but this is not your grand dad’s sullen strand of black metal. And if it is, then your grand dad is pretty awesome.

Rage Nucléaire features vocalist Lord Worm, a provocative and engaging frontman formerly of Cryptopsy. Now as the demented elocutionist of a black metal band he spits and screeches with startling commitment. There’s not a single half-assed snarl on this album. These (inaudible) words are absolutely screamed with conviction. I picture Lord Worm as some mad preacher rummaging through the ruins of bomb-blasted cities surviving on the flesh of charred battle casualties. His voice is deranged and menacing, from the high-pitched howls to the strange robotic croaking that becomes so unhinged it seems unconcerned with the accompanying music’s rhythm in “Gift of the Furnace” and  “30 Second in the Killhouse.” There is charisma, danger, and wit in Lord Worm’s songwriting/vocal performance on Unrelenting Fucking Hatred. This is just another example of why Lord Worm deservedly became a household name in the metal community.

The accompanying music on Unrelenting Fucking Hatred is driven by keyboard melodies while the buzz of the guitars and the mechanical hammer of the drums provide the spine for each song. While the album is undeniably fast and heavy it’s more of a foundation for the gothic flamboyance of the keyboardist’s electronic strings and 8-bit organ. The keyboards do the real heavy lifting when it comes to what differentiates the songs from each other, which makes this brutal music still feel weirdly warm, and at times, harmless. While Emperor and even Cradle of Filth (like on their early demo, titled with eerie similarity Total Fucking Darkness) have experimented with this approach before, both of those bands featured the guitars more prominently, using the keyboards strictly as a supporting instrument for additional texture. Mystic Circle’s dragon saying concept album Drachenblut might be the closest comparison, though it doesn’t possess the fuzzy grit Rage Nucleaire achieve on this album.

If it’s not clear yet, Unrelenting Fucking Hatred is a strange animal. At its best, like in “Endziel” and “The Gallows and the Black Coffin,” Rage Nucléaire change speeds to highlight the crunchy, crusty elements of their black wall of sound and include terrifying sound-strokes like Lord Worm’s occasional droning delivery or samples of screaming swine. These songs definitely have sharp teeth, but not all of them have the strongest jaws. A few of them grab the listener and let them escape as the keyboard’s dominance distracts from the surrounding mayhem. For songs about unrelenting fucking hatred the keyboard sounds pretty unrelentingly fucking polite at times.

I think this album is definitely worth your time if you’re a fan of black metal and feel immense nostalgia for mail-order days spent studying ‘zine back pages for obscure, evil music. Also, if you’re tired of the grim grind of pitch-black metal and want something with (comparatively) softer edges, Rage Nucléaire offers that while still featuring an entertainingly combative, confrontational vocal performance. It’s not the most brutal release of the past year, but it ranks among the most interesting. Also, I’m not sure what a Murderworm is, as mentioned on  “Hunt with Murderworms, Sculpt With Flies,” but I imagine it looking like one of the creatures from Tremors, and I really want one as a pet.

Support Rage Nucléaire on Spotify or over at Bandcamp to hear the horrors of the Murderworm:  http://ragenucleaire.bandcamp.com/releases

 

And check out their humorous band description/mission statement over at Season of Mist while checking out merch over at:  http://season-of-mist.com/bands/rage-nucleaire

REVIEW: COMPLETE FAILURE - THE ART GOSPEL OF AGGRAVATED ASSAULT

I have no idea if the guys in Complete Failure are Steelers fans but this brutal Pittsburgh band hits harder than James Harrison, the (recently released) defensive star who has been fined around a quarter of a million dollars in his career due to brutal tackles and excessive force. He’s one of the most feared players of the past decade, a role that Complete Failure understands quite well. There is no worrying about your well-being here, just the determination to break every bone in your body if you get in the way.

Complete Failure absolutely highlight the “core” in grindcore with their latest album, The Art Gospel of Aggravated Assault. While the album grinds as viciously as anyone in the genre, their hardcore sensibilities surface often, separating their sound from the legions of faster-than-thou bands who buzzsaw into one ear and out the other. From the opening taunts of Mark Bogacki’s bass and Joe Mack’s charismatic bark in “Mind Compf,” the album blasts forward with speed and precision. The first four tracks pummel with great passion, with Mike Rosswog’s amazing drumming keeping the runaway train wobbling on the tracks around every sharp turn instead of crashing off a cliff. The album’s namesake and “Head Hanger To Be” are more catchy than music this abrasive has any right to be. They hammer the listener with blast-beats, breakdowns, and an official shit-ton of groove that feels like sludge on hyper-effective basement-brewed stimulants.

When The Art Gospel of Aggravated Assault deviates from crusty, grinding hardcore and slow things down the songs don’t quite hold up. I can appreciate “change of pace” tracks, and there are often lumbering mid-album songs that work well to divide the faster, shorter bursts of intensity. In fact, some of the very best songs on Complete Failure’s previous release (the excellent Heal No Evil) were those that slowed things down and oozed between the grind attacks. “Drag Migrator” limps forward with dissonant unease but doesn’t build to a pay-off. After the first underwhelming half of “Hero of the Church Herd,” where Mack summons the spirit of Henry Rollins for some un-screamed spoken word that feels out of place, the song amps up the aggression and even achieves effective melody before speeding to the finish line.

The album’s second half still possesses great cuts like “Disinvictus,” which is driven by punk riffs dyed black from sewer grime, and “The Unlove Unhue,” which violently thrashes before ripping the mosh pit an asshole with a queasy breakdown. With songs focused on the specifics of the human experience, not generic anti-establishment/pro-bloodshed posturing, Complete Failure has a lot to say, and they say it loudly. There might be a couple missteps on this album, but it features absolutely top-notch grind execution and drumming, projects unrivaled rage, and at full-throttle the album is totally untouchable. If you’re speeding towards a bleak future and want company, The Art Gospel of Aggravated Assault is the perfect surly companion for your downfall.

Listen to the album on Spotify or at Bandcamp here:  http://comfail.bandcamp.com/

And learn more about Complete Failure and their mission statement over at the Season of Mist site here:  http://www.season-of-mist.com/bands/complete-failure